Advantages of VPS over dedicated server?

From what I've gathered so far, Virtual Servers are the "chunks" one dedicated server can be split in, and it stands in-between shared hosting and dedicated server hosting in terms of performance.
However, being a "virtual" server must change something in the way hosting is managed, so there could be some additional upsides to it compared to dedicated server hosting, but I'm not sure about it (I've often heard about dedicated servers needing experience with Linux, for instance), so I'd like to hear from people who had hands-on experience with it (or even simply have valuable knowledge on it).

Does VPSs hold any advantages over dedicated servers? Or is price the only reason why you wouldn't upgrade to it?

You wouldn't notice performance change between vps or dedicated server. Even in shared hosting you wouldn't mind the performance. What's your budget? Take it easy first. Maybe first start with a vps and once you're capable of moving to a dedicated server, do that. Oh and the security is far better in dedicated servers. I'm not saying that VPS security is substandard but dedicated servers security is far better.

okayservers said:

Yes, price is the only thing that we can say is good about VPS over dedicated servers. If your website is not that large and have moderate traffic you can host your website on VPS, but if you have a large website and there is huge traffic coming to your website then you should go for dedicated servers.

Click to expand...

Phew, glad to hear that. Companies tend to promote the most expensive plans first, so I always saw dedicated server hosting plans around and presumed they were the optimal choice for all websites. Thanks!

martindrox said:

You wouldn't notice performance change between vps or dedicated server. Even in shared hosting you wouldn't mind the performance. What's your budget? Take it easy first. Maybe first start with a vps and once you're capable of moving to a dedicated server, do that. Oh and the security is far better in dedicated servers. I'm not saying that VPS security is substandard but dedicated servers security is far better.

Click to expand...

I'm just testing the waters right now, so I'm just making assumptions. If I had to go with a number, though, it would surely be the lowest possible one.
Oh, how so? Is it because VPSs share info with other VPSs in the same physical server?

Some Virtual Servers have the advantage of being able to backup the entire server, meaning not only the data (websites, mysql, etc), but the OS, control panel, etc gets backed up to an image. So that in the rare case of a complete failure, the restore time is a lot faster. This can be done with a dedicated server as well, but often adds more of a monthly expense to the server.

Depending on your needs, Virtual Servers can often be a stepping stone from a shared hosting account to a dedicated server.

With VPS's, you don't really have to worry about managing your own server. Less risk of hardware failure. Overall a much lower cost. They can be easier to use, etc.

- cheaper price, for the host, cpanel license, etc
- less risk, than dedicated server
- can backup & restore the whole vps, if sometime happened, like using solusvm etc

Virtual private servers have many of the advantages of dedicated servers, but they are quite more affordable. With dedicated servers, you get all their resources for yourself and you don't share them with anyone else. Dedicated servers are considered a lot more secure than VPSes. VPSes are perfect for simpler websites that receive not too high traffic and for those people who want to have root access to their server but do not want to pay a lot more money for a dedicated server. In contrast to VPSes, usually, dedicated servers require having more technical knowledge and skills.

if a VPS host goes down you can simply move it on to a new VPS host without the need to reconfigure the whole server from scratch even if you have back ups.
Unlike dedicated server if you move you have to re-configure the whole system then restore the back ups.

My company have VPS that are simpler specs of having a dedicated server for a faction of the cost .

There is a big different between VPS and dedicated. You cannot install a custom kernel on a VPS or install software that has to connect to the hardware on the node. For example if the date time stamps on your VPS is off our out. You cannot update the time on your VPS you would have to contact your hosting company to have them update the date time on the node. Once they do that then you would be able to update the time on your VPS.

There is a big difference between the performances of VPS vs a dedicated server. You could have a VPS and a dedicated with the same specs and the dedicated serve will always outperform the VPS. This is because the VPS does not have direct access to utilize the nodes CPU cores at 100%. A VPS cores are virtualized and only connect to the nodes hardware through the hypervisor.

VPS have the lower price point advantage and ease of use. But when it comes to crunching numbers a dedicated will always be the way to go.

The only reason to use a dedicated server is if you have a use case that requires control over the server hardware and/or personal knowledge of the hardware's physical state and location. If the only thing you are trying to do is set up a public-facing website, you are more likely to need a VPS hosting plan.

2 major advantages are more control of the server and a less expensive price. Cheers!

VPS is good to start with but Dedicated servers are always better.

One case I will say is in terms of resources. In VPs there are many kind of virtualization and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. So far in terms of resources I will say KVM VPS will be best as you will be getting what is guranteed.

KVM represents a full hardware virtualisation platform with loadable kernel modules, giving users the freedom to run a range of Linux distros with any kernel. Each virtual machine has private virtualised hardware including network card, disk and graphics adapter, and with no possibility of overselling, you get guaranteed resources at your disposal any time day or night!

But I am sure most of the VPS providers will be overselling CPU but memory and disk will be fine and will not be able to over sell in kvm / Xen. So if you need dedicated CPU, I will suggest to get a dedicated server and not a VPS.

VPS servers are used for the more common task, like web hosting. It is also much cheaper than dedicated servers, in most cases.

VPS usually has its limits in terms of what virtualization you can use, while dedicated servers are more open to customization, and you can choose almost anything to use for its management. Of course, that depends on the provider as well.

Think of it like in regards to slices. If you order a dedicated server, you are obtaining a 1/1 slice, or the entire servers worth of resources. Generally this is regarded as "bare metal" as you are installing the OS directly to the physical hardware. You have a lot of available options, though, like installed a single Windows Server, or installing an OpenVZ and selling slices to clients. Dedicated servers, that are installed as bare metal, also tend to be a bit more difficult to migrate, as they are not a virtual image that can be transferred around. Migrating a virtual server to another location can be as simple as shutting it down, running a single command, and starting it back up (barring any modifications to ip addresses) and some setups allow live migrations.

Another pro of a virtual server, is that they are generally easier to deploy. There are templates that allow them to be deployed instantly from a number of Linux OS and Windows OS, so you can get up and running in the matter of minutes. Backing up your data is generally a button click from a control panel to take a "snapshot" of the virtual server. Backups on a dedicated server usually require something customized, as well as having additional hardware to push the backups to. Providers who provide snapshot backups will take care of this for you, but you are at their discretion, as the backups are not always reliable, or routine. Virtual servers are also, technically, usually shared hosting. You are provided with limited resources, but since you shared the total amount of RAM and CPU of a dedicated server, one bad client up to mischief can cause an entire box of virtual servers to start running slowly (for example clients who try to run XMR miners, which can cause a VPS box to chug if not caught swiftly).

So to put it simply

Dedicated Server
- more expensive but more resources
- all of the resources are available only to you
- Requires more technical knowledge to get up and running and working as you would like. Most times, you have to install from a mounted ISO image file
- Generally requires you to perform backups manually, and own additional infrastructure to have offsite backups
- More difficult to perform a full migration to another box, or provider

Virtual Server
- Cheaper due to less resources
- Can deploy Operating Systems from Templates, and can get up and running in minutes
- Can run into slowdown on server due to other clients on box abusing and it being shared resources
- Easy to migrate entire instance between servers
- Can generally "grow" the available resources with a simple reboot (increase from 4GB of RAM to 8GB of RAM, for instance)

If you are just starting off, it is better to get a VPS, and move to dedicated as the situation calls for it. If that is the path you are planning, I recommend opening a ticket with your hosting provider and ask about the ability to move ip addresses, so that you can grow into a dedicated server, and migrate from a VPS to dedicated and keep the same ips so that your clients are not affected too much.