Learn what a VPS is and how it differs from other forms of hosting common in cloud computing

A VPS, or virtual private server, is a form of multi-tenant cloud hosting in which virtualized server resources are made available to an end user over the internet via a cloud or hosting provider

Each VPS is installed on a physical machine, operated by the cloud or hosting provider, that runs multiple VPSs. But while the VPSs share a hypervisor and underlying hardware, each VPS runs its own operating system (OS) and applications and reserves its own portion of the machine's resources (memory, compute, etc.)

A VPS offers levels of performance, flexibility, and control somewhere between those offered by multi-tenant shared hosting and single-tenant dedicated hosting. While it might seem counterintuitive that the multi-tenant VPS arrangement would be called ‘private’—especially when single-tenant options are available—the term ‘VPS’ is most commonly used by traditional hosting providers to distinguish it from shared hosting, a hosting model where all the hardware and software resources of a physical machine are shared equally across multiple users

At the other end of the continuum, some cloud providers (including IBM) offer a level of hosting isolation( and privacy) beyond a multi-tenant cloud server. Two common models include dedicated hosts and dedicated instances. In both of these models, the end user is getting access to virtual resources, and is likely taking advantage of a managed hypervisor, but is doing so on dedicated, single-tenant hardware

The next sections provide more detailed comparisons of VPS, shared, and dedicated hosting

When considering use cases for virtual servers, differences between providers can be truly significant. For traditional hosting providers, a VPS represents a nice balance of cost, flexibility, scalability, and control between shared and dedicated hosting and makes it a good fit for eCommerce, apps that have moderate or spiky traffic, email servers, CRM, etc

But, beyond that, virtual servers from the major public cloud providers are significantly more robust and feature-rich—they are the foundational building block for much of what is considered “cloud” today and can handle a much more diverse set of workloads


Building on the concept of “tenancy,” the most common analog to the differences between shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting is the difference between types of housing:
• Shared hosting is analogous to apartment housing, where tenants share services like parking, a laundry room, a swimming pool, etc

	
• Dedicated hosting is most similar single-family homeownership, where everything—including the property itself—is owned and dedicated to a single owner

	
• VPS hosting is somewhere in between—analogous to townhouse or condo living—where each occupant has more of his or her own services (laundry, parking, etc.)  but still shares a town green, a health club, and other broader, common physical infrastructure

Shared hosting is the most basic, most cost-effective form of hosting. In shared hosting, the resources of one physical machine are made available to all tenants in equal proportions. Shared hosting is ideal for basic, personal websites and web apps that have little traffic, few technical requirements and limited performance or security requirements

In a shared hosting model, because all tenants are allocated a finite amount of an individual server’s capacity, providers do not allow websites to scale beyond the limits of the plan. Nevertheless, shared hosting is the model most susceptible to “noisy neighbors” – tenants whose applications unexpectedly consume more than their share of resources, causing performance problems for other tenants. For more information about shared hosting, see “What is Cloud Hosting?” and "Web Hosting: An Introduction."

As already noted, VPS hosting is considered a premium option to shared hosting. In VPS hosting, shared resources are made available to an end user who has greater control over system specifications, guest operating systems, and the overall software stack than is the case in shared hosting

It’s important to note that while VPS hosting exists between shared and dedicated hosting when it comes to control, price, and simplicity, it is the most scalable of the three models, and is the closest relative of the VMs/virtual servers offered by most public cloud providers


Unlike shared and VPS hosting, dedicated hosting offers end users access to all the hardware resources of a given server. Dedicated hosting offers the greatest levels of isolation, security, performance, and control in comparison to VPS and shared hosting

Dedicated hosting is also the most expensive of the three models because of the level of hardware resources allocated to a single customer. It’s also somewhat more cumbersome to scale than VPS because scaling requires the provider to configure and provision new, physical hardware resources

The term “bare metal servers” is sometimes used interchangeably with dedicated servers, but providers offering bare metal typically offer more cloud-like characteristics in their dedicated servers, such as provisioning in minutes (vs. hours), billing in hourly increments (vs. monthly) and providing higher-end hardware, including graphic processing units (GPUs). See “Dedicated and Bare Metal Servers Explained” for a full exploration into the two options

A VPS is commonly understood as a single, virtual machine on a piece of physical hardware shared with other VMs. Dedicated instances and hosts bring another level of isolation, control, and visibility to VPS hosting by placing the virtual machines on single-tenant, dedicated hardware

A dedicated host involves renting an entire physical machine and maintaining sustained access to and control over that machine, its hardware, and whatever software is installed on it. This model provides the maximum amount of hardware flexibility and transparency, workload control and placement, and also offers some advantages for certain bring-your-own license software

A dedicated instance offers the same single-tenant isolation and the same control over workload placement, but it is not coupled with a specific physical machine. That means that it is an instance. So, for example, if a dedicated instance is re-booted, it could wind up on a new physical machine—a machine dedicated to the individual account, but nonetheless a new machine, potentially in a different physical location

Dedicated hosts and dedicated instances vary slightly in their management options, pricing models and visibility. Take, for example, IBM’s own dedicated host and instances:

IBM provides a full range of virtual server hosting choices, including public, multi-tenant servers as well as dedicated hosts and instances. In addition to virtual servers, IBM Cloud also offers bare metal servers, a managed Kubernetes service, PaaS, and FaaS to round out a complete set of compute models to support any application or workload


IBM also offers a broad range of supporting services across networking, storage, and database, as well as specialty services like Watson and Blockchain

To get started, create an IBM Cloud account today.