How is VPS Hosting Different from Cloud VPS Hosting?

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]There are lots of different ways to host a website. At the beginning of the internet, you’d need some form of dedicated server or at the least a shared server. As more websites popped up around the internet, a market for hosting developed. “VPS” means a virtual private server, which is essentially a way of turning a single server or a cluster of servers into smaller individual hosting environments. This provides more efficient hosting and a more secure environment for hosting at lower costs.

There are a couple of different ways to run virtual private servers. The traditional version is simply called “VPS hosting,” which can cause confusion because it sounds like cloud hosting doesn’t use VPS hosting.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”What is VPS Hosting vs. Cloud VPS Hosting?”][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Contents

What is VPS Hosting vs. Cloud VPS Hosting?

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]VPS hosting and cloud hosting are super similar because both create virtual private servers that run resources. VPS hosting uses a single physical server to run those virtual private servers. While this doesn’t limit the sheer number of virtual private servers that can run on the system, it does limit the available resources to that single machine.

Unlike VPS hosting, a cloud VPS environment uses a cloud created from a number of different physical machines. This means that the total amount of information available to the cloud is significantly more than the amount of resources available to any single server. The cloud VPS environment thus has vastly more resources available than a single VPS environment.

However, note that the cloud environment doesn’t need to have a ton of servers. You could create a cloud with only a couple of servers. Depending on the number of websites that a host puts onto a single cloud, a VPS environment could actually have more available resources than a cloud environment. Don’t be fooled by a hosting company using the name “cloud.” Both VPS hosting and VPS cloud hosting use the same kind of virtual private server solution, and both draw on an underlying structure of more resources than are used for the single site. Beyond that, nothing is guaranteed. Check your data plan and talk to the host about how crowded the servers are. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”Benefits of Both VPS and Cloud VPS”][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Benefits of Both VPS and Cloud VPS

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Heavy Customization

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Unlike a shared server environment, a VPS acts like a normal physical server. This allows you to change the OS and software that the server runs on. Because of the way that the resources are divided differently in virtual private servers and shared server environments, you get a better level of customization. Remember that shared server environments all share the same block of resources, while virtual private servers divide this block into a single set of resources for each of the virtual private servers. 

This is the same for both VPS and cloud VPS hosting. The only difference might be in the scale of applications. VPS environments that are not run through a cloud have fewer users on a single server, so by definition, there are fewer people to negotiate when optimizing servers for a single website on the network.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

High Performance

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]VPS and cloud hosting environments have a lot of data at their disposal and can distribute them well to cover the different hosts that run on the servers. With a shared hosting environment, there are generally less resources to go around from the different hosts. Of course, you’ll get less performance from virtual private servers because there is usually less data to go around.

But, the customization that you can get from virtual private servers can give you really high performance. Because each individual customer gets to run their data on a virtual private server, that virtual private server can have a customized OS and software that optimize it for the website that they are running.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Security

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]A VPS offers more security than a shared hosting solution. The difference between VPS environments and shared hosting solution occurs at the level of the way that the server divides up resources. Both VPS and shared hosting rely on the same physical server. There is a single physical server. In a shared hosting environment, the server resources remain as a single glob. There is one physical server and one set of server resources. On top of the single physical server and single server resources, there are all of the different websites. Each website taps into the same set of physical resources.

In a VPS environment, the server resources are allocated at a 1 to 1 ratio with the number of hosting environments. There is a single physical server, but the server resources have partitions between them. The unique server resource environments each have a single VPS attached to them.

This means that for security reasons, the divisions between the resources change the access points. In a shared environment, anybody that hacks beyond the individual website has now accessed the shared server resources environment. It is much easier to access different websites from within that environment. A VPS, on the other hand, has no access between the different individual resource environments. Hacking one website on the same physical server would not give you access to the other websites that share the same physical server. This is true of a VPS in the traditional sense of the term and a cloud VPS environment.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”Key Differences Between Cloud and VPS Hosting”][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Key Differences Between Cloud and VPS Hosting

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Performance Issues

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]A cloud environment uses a bunch of different physical servers to create a single cloud environment. This means that the cloud has more stability, emerging from the single physical servers. The failure of no single physical server would cause a website to fail. When a server goes down, the whole cloud loses resources but no websites go down. When you’re running a VPS off of a single server in a traditional environment, the failure of the server means that the websites on that server go down as well. Single server failure is the failure of the website.

Additionally, a site can be hogging the resources of the physical server. In both a cloud and VPS hosting environment, there is a limited number of resources available for all of the sites. In a hosting environment, these resources have to be drawn up between different websites. If the host does not partition the resources adequately, then a website can be a huge drain on the resources of the whole group.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Amount of Data

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Cloud server solutions generally have a ton more data available for their virtual private servers than VPS solutions carry. But be careful here. Remember that “cloud” simply refers to a way that data is pooled and organized. A cloud doesn’t make any claims about the size of the solution. While we normally associate the “cloud” with huge amounts of data, this is not what it inherently means. The cloud is a way of organizing computing, not the size of computing. A company could technically market “cloud VPS hosting” and be offering less data to both individual customers and the solution as a whole. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”Final Advice”][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Final Advice

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Both VPS hosting and cloud VPS hosting take physical servers and split them into virtual private servers. There isn’t a significant difference in the ways that both of these create the virtual private servers, only the way that the underlying architecture is built. Both VPS and cloud VPS hosting are great solutions for web hosting needs. They give you dynamic structures that scale well and have a lot of customization options.

While it’s easy to associate cloud hosting with big amounts of data and thus improved scalability, this isn’t always the case. Check the parameters that hosts provide in the fine print on their hosting solutions. In general, they both provide great performance and security. You may pay a bit less for VPS hosting than cloud hosting, simply because hosts bank on the name cloud hosting to float slightly higher prices.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]