VPS (Virtual Private Servers) vs Physical Hosting vs Dedicated VM Hosting

VPS (Virtual Private Servers) are commonly confused with Dedicated VM Hosting, and while offering an affordable entry level to virtualised dedicated hosting, differ in many crutial areas.

This table allows you to easily and quickly compare your requirements against the pros and cons of virtualised and physical dedicated hosting infrastructure.

 

Function	Physical	VPS	Dedicated VM  Hosting	Detail
High Availability	Only available in clustered farms			High platform availability with automatic hardware failover is built into the VMware-based virtualised environment
Managed Infrastructure	Optional	Partially*		The hardware underlying the virtualised infrastructure is monitored and managed the provider
Deployment	Weeks/Months	Hours/Days	Hours/Days	Physical infrastructure needs to be specified, ordered and delivered
Dedicated Resources (CPU, RAM)				VMware ESX VI3 allows precise and accurate control over resource allocation, ensuring you receive what you pay for as a minimum
Dedicated Performance				VMware ESX VI3's precise resource control guarantees your performance cannot be impacted by other customers
Independence from underlying OS				Only the true virtualisation of VMware ESX VI3 allows complete independence from an underlying OS
Migration from existing hosting environment	Non-trivial	Possible*	Fast & Efficient	P2V (Physical to Virtualised) tools can be used to smooth the migration path
Upgrading Processor Speed	Non-trivial	Possible*	Fast & Efficient	Upgrading physical infrastructure requires specification, ordering and delivering and installation of any component. This is a trivial change in a virtualised environment.
Upgrading RAM	Non-trivial	Possible*	Fast & Efficient
Upgrading HDD	Non-trivial	Possible*	Fast & Efficient
Cloning		Possible*		Cloning a production environment for development purposes is easily delivered using virtualised dedicated hosting
More Information	Request a Proposal

 * VPS providers offer differing service levels