Shared hosting or VPS server
You’ve built a website and are wondering what the best way to run it is, and then you hear another three-letter technical acronym: VPS. This article explains what a VPS is, why you need it, and what advantages it has as a website hosting solution.
In the past, when a business owner wanted to establish or upgrade his online presence, he had two main options for hosting the website: shared hosting and private/dedicated hosting.
These were two extremes, and it was clear what need each solution served:
If it were a site/service that served thousands (or even more) of users simultaneously, required non-standard security, and other such end cases, it would be common to purchase dedicated storage (rent a private server), purchase a private server and store it in a server farm, and sometimes even place servers in the business itself (on-site).
For the vast majority of simple websites, shared hosting services would suffice.
So wait, shared hosting or a VPS server?
While the advantages of dedicated hosting are clear, it also had huge disadvantages: the costs of purchasing or renting the equipment and software started at hundreds of dollars per month, a price that did not include server management—which required an additional payment to the landlord, or an additional employee in the business to install and maintain the servers.
As part of the management, one also had to take care of the physical wear and tear of the hardware, which added to the high costs. This is compared to a few dozen shekels for shared storage, which included taking care of all these parameters.
What is VPS ?
Today, there is an intermediate solution that is financially accessible to most businesses and even individuals, and provides the main benefits of both dedicated and shared storage.
This solution is called a Virtual Private Server, or VPS. Virtual servers (VPS) are essentially allocations of computer resources on a larger computer or cluster of computers, which behave like a personal computer in every way.
Resource allocation is guaranteed for each customer, but at the same time, more efficient management of the “mainframe” resources is enabled by proper use of multiple processors or cores, and in general, efficient use of excess resources.
In addition, VPS has a huge advantage in the form of the ability to arbitrarily increase server resources, which is not easily possible on the dedicated servers of the past, or even with shared hosting.
There was an interim period in the transition from dedicated physical servers to virtual ones, so there were virtualization systems that performed dynamic prioritization (VPS), and those that permanently allocated resources without smart management, sometimes referred to as VDS – Virtual Dedicated Server.
Today, there is no such difference, as the systems know how to perform dynamic resource planning without harming the resources of any single virtual server. This is where another concept that has become a kind of buzzword comes in – “the cloud.”
In the past, as the famous saying goes, there was no “cloud,” but someone else’s computer. Today, there are more sophisticated systems, where a single virtual private server (VPS) is located on multiple computers, sometimes even in different physical locations.
How and why technology was born
There are clear and almost inevitable circumstances that made the virtualization technology we know today possible: falling hardware prices, adapting hardware to the needs of storage providers, and advances in the development of control systems such as VMWare.
However, virtual servers still cost more than shared storage, and still require some level of self-management—so how can the product be attractive to small systems today in a way that dedicated servers were not in the past?
The main reason is that a quiet revolution has occurred in both server management systems and content management systems for websites.
First and foremost, this is reflected in the standardization of all software in the development and deployment stack of Internet systems, thereby drastically reducing costs.
For example, despite much slander among programmers, there is no doubt that the LAMP stack (Linux–Apache–MySQL–PHP) has captured the vast majority of the website systems market.
The WordPress content management system based on this stack alone has a market share of 50–80% of dynamic websites (depending on who you ask), as of February 2017.
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The most common system not based on the LAMP stack is probably DotNetNuke, with a market share of less than one percent.
What’s special about the LAMP stack is that it is completely free and saves 100% of the initial costs of the software, although there are many paid additional services available if necessary.
Also, on the server management side, the cPanel/WHM system has become an industry standard, both for managing a server with a single website, and for managing a shared server that hosts hundreds of websites.
This system is not free, but saves enormous management costs that existed in the past, even for users of old versions of this system.
On the other hand, the aforementioned standardization of website management systems (such as WordPress, Joomla, Magento) has placed new requirements on every website, no matter how small, which are more difficult to fulfill on a shared server.
These systems are suitable for a wide variety of uses, and therefore have many options for the user, which require more permanent resources – a situation that worsens over time.
For example, the WordPress system previously recommended having 256 MB of memory (RAM) on the server, but these were not dedicated resources for the system.
Today, without any special add-ons or modifications, this is about the minimum requirement for dedicated resources.
Other systems (especially Magento) go much further, and actually require about 2 GB of memory, which is unreasonable for a single client on a shared server.
The developers of these systems have no interest in investing in lowering the technical requirements, as this requires a tremendous effort from engineers without significant benefit to the companies developing these products.
Which VPS is right for me?
As stated above, in 2017, systems are already fairly uniform, and on the surface, all that remains is to decide on the amount of resources required for the system. The hosting company will know how to tailor exactly what you need—another thing that saves on the costs of hiring an expert that were previously involved.
However, here’s the rub: It is still recommended to be familiar with some of the features of servers, and the above does not mention cases of dedicated system/service storage for the business for internal use, etc.
First, it’s important to state something obvious, which is actually not always clear:
If you have a system that requires more resources than you are allocated, you can contact the hosting company and request to increase the resources for an additional fee—except for two: hard disk speed and server speed.
I’ll touch on the disk issue right away, but when it comes to server speed, the bottleneck is latency – the minimum time it takes for a request to reach the server and serve it to the client.
Therefore, it is necessary to choose a VPS whose geographical location is as close as possible to your business’s customer base.
In other words, if most of your customers are in Israel, the server should also be located in Israel. The latency figure is not negligible at all, and could be the biggest factor slowing down your site if the server is not located in Israel.
Beyond that, here are the technical specifications that the hosting provider will provide for a VPS, and you need to be familiar with them. These are the same specifications as for a personal computer, but the requirements for a virtual server that hosts a website are different from a home computer.
It is recommended to consult with your storage and system consumption company regarding:
- Number of cores / processing power
- Memory size (RAM)
- Disk volume
- Bandwidth
It is necessary to purchase at least the amount of resources above that your system requires, in addition to the minimum operating system requirements.
Bandwidth is determined by the number of users viewing your site/system, and whether the site is media-heavy (images, internal video) or allows media uploads by users.
As mentioned, a disk has a speed characteristic in addition to its capacity. This speed is not usually measured in numbers, but there is a world of difference between “regular” hard disks (SATA) and even more advanced ones (such as SAS), and Solid State Drives (SSD).
It is important to request that the virtual server be located on an SSD.
A note on operating systems and the software to be installed on the server: As mentioned, a LAMP stack (Linux-based, usually CentOS) is suitable for websites in most cases.
However, your system may have different requirements, and there are also advantages to other systems. Keep in mind that Linux servers do not have a graphical interface installed, so managing a server with a non-standard system can be extremely difficult.
For example, if you have a system that queries external services (such as a system that analyzes tweets from the Twitter website), it may be worth running it on a Windows server.
Windows servers require more resources and cost a little more, but they have a built-in graphical interface, so they do not require special technical skills to perform many operations.
You can also receive technical support from Microsoft, and enjoy a variety of related software and services that work on Windows but not on Linux.
You can also install an Apache–MySQL–PHP stack on Windows (called WAMP).
Management, security and backups
The issue of management and what is involved is not the subject of this article, but as mentioned, there is no need today to hire a dedicated professional to manage one VPS or a small number of servers.
For small websites, it is sometimes possible to get by without any management at all, but it is recommended to use basic management services provided by the hosting company (this is a minimal cost compared to a private professional).
What is usually not included in this management are two very important points:
Advanced security and backups. Most storage providers provide this service, but it is only one level/tier.
Regarding security, the provider has network-level security, and even installed a firewall on the server.
This does not cover system/site security, which is the layer through which almost all breaches occur.
The most basic solution is to regularly update all website systems and only use systems without known vulnerabilities, but sometimes this is not enough and it is necessary to seek the help of a dedicated professional (this person may come on behalf of the website builder).
, or on behalf of the storage company, as an additional service).
On the backup side, the storage provider will usually provide a backup at the entire server level (snapshot), but this is a restoration with a high time cost and therefore generally a financial cost. It is recommended to work at least two additional backup levels:
- Backing up personal files on the server: Backing up all files at the site/domain level. The cPanel/WHM system allows this type of backup within it, but it is recommended to back up to an external destination.
- Back up critical system files: The system database, and sometimes the code files, will change frequently, so it is recommended to back them up separately. You can write a program to perform the backup, or purchase an external program with more options.
It is not possible to summarize everything there is to say about virtual private server (VPS) hosting in this short article, but we hope we have been able to provide a basic orientation on what is needed to purchase and operate such a server. We will be happy to answer any questions regarding our services.
