A virtual private server is probably the best hosting option for a business. It’s a virtualized server that is normally hosted in the data center of a private or public cloud infrastructure provider. In this article, we’ll analyze the primary benefits of VPS hosting so that you can make an informed decision on whether you need it indeed.
Cost Efficiency
If you prefer to buy or lease a server, you should be ready to pay a minimum of $10,000. Plus, you should keep the following expenses in mind:
- Purchasing the software licenses
- Paying staff members or contractors to build, manage and maintain the server
- Powering and cooling the server
- Implementing fast network interconnect capabilities
If you opt for VPS hosting, all these costs will be included in your plan’s price. You won’t need to pay $10,000 or more upfront. You won’t have to hire or outsource a dedicated team to maintain the server. Compute nodes will be available in an extensive range of configurations.
VPS hosting providers can afford to offer low costs for their services due to a large number of clients.
Enhanced Reliability
Cloud computing that the VPS hosting relies on is defined by three main characteristics:
- Fault-tolerant
- Redundant
- Highly available
Its infrastructure was designed to be always-on and capable of solving infrastructure issues.
You might be able to find a provider that offers 100% uptime. To achieve this goal, cloud providers invest large funds in safeguarding server infrastructure. They rely on systems built with multiple redundant power, network and storage capabilities. Once such a system detects an issue, it will automatically failover, so that there will be no downtime.
You should appreciate the data retention and data backup capabilities of your VPS hosting as well as its disaster recovery services.
Improved Performance with Guaranteed Resources
A typical cloud virtual private server features guaranteed system resources 24/7. These resources should be available to all of its clients, regardless of whether they opt for dedicated or shared cloud tenancy. Even if you share the cloud with some other businesses, you will get all the resources you need when your neighbors experience a spike in traffic.
Cloud providers build data centers with powerful and expensive hardware. If you try to build a server with your own hands from scratch, you’ll hardly be able to reach the same level of complexity.
Outstanding Security
Virtual private servers can be characterized as inherently secure. Security operations are normally built into cloud server providers’ architecture from the ground up. The infrastructure that VPS hosting providers rely on is also very secure. Plus, providers put significant efforts into improving and upgrading it.
Typically, you should be able to deploy the necessary applications and server templates with just one click. These templates serve as the reliable base of your hosting’s security.
Simple Licencing
Licensing might be a challenge for enterprises that need to juggle dozens of operating systems and applications. In the case of a VPS, licensing should be remarkably simple. Your monthly charge for the server should include all the associated costs of licensing. You’ll get to know all your upcoming expenses in advance.
Fully Managed Service
The term “fully managed” means that you won’t need to take care of all the technical aspects of your hosting yourself. The support team of your provider will be ready to attend to you 24/7. You’ll appreciate the enhanced disaster recovery capabilities.
Plus, you’ll be able to benefit from the Cloud Backup and Cloud Snapshots features. The former is not exclusively focused on backing up essential data. It might also feature data protection capabilities out-of-the-box. Such an approach should ensure data integrity in any possible situation.
Cloud Snapshots allow you to revert, migrate and stand up exact replicas of your server. The process will take just a few seconds and you’ll be able to select any location for your server. Depending on the scope of services that your provider offers, you might also be able to carry out file-level restores, directly from the snapshot image into the live system.
The only shortcoming of fully managed service consists in the fact that you might need to pay extra for that. Nevertheless, it should be a more budget-friendly option than hiring and managing an in-house IT department. Besides, you can be sure that the provider’s support team already knows how to handle any issue that you might come across.
Scalability
Most likely, you want your business to grow. Maybe, it will experience explosive growth over a short period — or, it might develop slowly over a longer time. No matter what your case is, your virtual private server will be ready to scale with you. It can scale up, down, in and out. You’ll get access to more disk, CPU, memory and other resources as soon as you require them. All you need to do is to upgrade to a storage-optimized, memory-optimized or compute-optimized plan.
If you witness rapid growth in web server demand, you might want to scale out — that is, implement multiple virtual private servers in a clustered resource. When needed, you can easily deploy new virtual private servers and improve performance by balancing your network traffic between multiple nodes.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, you found this article informative and now you better understand the advantages of using VPS hosting for a business. This type of hosting is cost-efficient, highly reliable and can boast excellent performance with guaranteed resources. It is exceptionally secure, easy to scale and has simple licensing. If you don’t want to take care of all the technical aspects yourself, you can opt for a fully managed service.