Recent studies show the results about how Linux VPS hosting benefits businesses and plays an important role if you are considering the performance curve of your online business or application. But how can you find the Linux virtual private server (VPS) hosting service that best fits your business demands?
Choosing the best plan isn’t about discovering the cheapest one. There are many companies offering Linux VPS hosting services, and each claims that they are somehow unique among the herd of akin services available in the market. To hire the Linux virtual server that best fits your business demands, you need a complete set of details about Linux VPS hosting plans and every bit of the chief technical elements associated with them.
Technical factors associated with a Linux VPS hosting service are the dimensions of the flexibility, opportunity and the quality it will provide to its users. The following information about these technical points will shed light on the factors to look for when choosing a tailor-made hosting service for your business.
CPU
If the execution load on a CPU is a concern, a Linux VPS server is less heavy than a regular computer. VPS servers run on virtual CPUs. Technically, it’s an assembly of multicores of a physical CPU of the entire server, although Web servers tend to use CPUs in a minimalistic way. In contrast, online game servers, live and rich chat box servers and similar businesses exert a heavy load on a server’s CPU. So, it’s important to select the proper CPU for a faster response if your business demands it.
RAM
Another deciding tech factor is the RAM, particularly its type and the volume. Statistically, 1GB ram with a single core CPU is more than enough for handling a website that sees 2,000 visits per day. So, for a simple website 512MB ram will run everything flawlessly; but when it comes to online games communities or similar amounts of visits, it will start to slow down the whole process. Considering the second situation, a bigger volume of RAM, anywhere between 2GB to 4GB, is needed. So, the volume of RAM is specific to your business requirements.
Moreover, everything in the future will need to be faster. Hence, your page-loading speed should obey this single rule and modern SSD (solid state drive) technology can slash your page-loading time from an industry standard of 20 to 30 milliseconds to a staggering 0.2 to 0.4 milliseconds.
So, being an owner you have to be really precise about your wants and choose this important element of your hosting service carefully.
Disk space and type
Disk space needed for your Web hosting totally depends upon how much data you want to store on that server. Further, that amount of data you want to store depends upon the type of website you are hosting. Is it a regular tech blog or a photo-sharing blog with a large online community? You can consider social community sites like Facebook and Twitter for this particular purpose.
Typically, a good 20GB hard disk space can easily host your personal blog; but when it comes to those online games websites with large numbers of active users in a single moment, that good hard 20GB will not deliver you the proper space. Normally, the amount of disk space can vary between 20GB to a colossal 500GB depending on the type of business or application.
Bandwidth
Another important factor is the bandwidth, and it completely depends upon the number of active users or visitors to your website and the nature of their communication. The volume of bandwidth starts with a bare minimum 300GB for a small website with less heavy text-dominated pages to beyond 1000GB for larger websites having media-heavy pages. So, an owner of a successful and wide-reached photo selling website should always go for a larger amount of bandwidth where a personal blog site can go with the bare minimum.
Overall performance
The overall performance of a Web hosting service can be measured on the following parameters:
- Server uptime
- Page loading speed
- Distributions
- Website monitoring systems
- Security protocols
Each aforesaid parameter plays an important role for ensuring the right execution and availability of your website that will build the necessary trust among your users.
Scalability
Everyone dreams to grow big with their business or application. I think it’s the prime mover of the continuous growth of our civilization. When it comes to Web hosting, popularity holds a direct proportional relationship with the scalability. Any online business will get grounded if its hosting server cannot handle sudden waves of traffic. Redundancy ensures that a layer of backup hardware resources are present. Consequently, scalability ensures the flexibility to handle the increased traffic loads on the server.
Managed or unmanaged
In VPS hosting you will get the root access of your server. Surely, it’s a powerful freedom; but this freedom is also expensive.
You will be the only boss of your server. It requires that you know the “bossing.” Simply put, if you hire an unmanaged VPS, you will be solely responsible for securing and monitoring its maintenance and performance. A deep technical knowledge is an absolute necessity here.
If you are signing up for a managed VPS, then the whole management from the hosting provider will cost you some extra bucks, but it will also bring you peace of mind.
Power comes with responsibility. So, to enjoy the full power of your VPS hosting you need good technical skills.
Pricing
A good service never comes cheap. So, you shouldn’t overshoot your requirements and at the same time you need to demark the bottom line of the same confidently. The proper balance between your need and affordability is the key factor here.
Lastly, before hiring a hosting service look for two essential things:
- A 24/7 tech support with live communication facility
- The age, current user reviews and the reputation of that hosting service.
These points don’t cover the whole scenario as there are further deep and time-dependent issues associated with a hosting service. Personally, I recommend for an even better understanding, you should always dig deeper.
Joy Mali is the digital marketing head at TIS India, a digital marketing agency in India focused on SEO, digital analytics, online advertising, CRO and Web design and development. She is a Google Analytics Certified professional and ecommerce analytics qualified consultant who helps online businesses to perform better on the Web.