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hosting: moving away from shared, and into Virtual Private Servers (VPS)?

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urlwolf:
My year with my current Host is expiring, and I have to pay full (i.e. no coupons) to renew). I have seen that for a little more you can get into Virtual Private Servers (VPS):
http://www.webhostmagazine.com/bg/review_vp.asp

This seems pretty cool!
Have you had any experiences with VPS?

Veign:
I have been on VPS with GoDaddy for the past year and would never go back to shared hosting again.  Just understand that you are responsible for the server and the admin of the server which, in some cases, can be tricky...

tinjaw:
I have much experience with VPS. 80% of the time you can answer the question "should I get a VPS?" by answering the question "can you handle system administration of all aspects of a linux/windows/BSD that is sitting exposed on the internet 24x7?". If you can answer yes to that question, then you should get a VPS. If you can't, then I suggest you just get a feature rich web hosting account and start playing with linux/windows/BSD in your spare time until you can comfortable run your own server of your at home internet connection 24x7.

If you can safely and competently administer a VPS server, then there are some other things you should keep in mind.

With a VPS, you are paying for versatility, often at the expense of performance for popular tasks. For example, an inexpensive web hosting account will probably provide better performance for serving up static web pages and low-end PHP/CGI/Perl scripts. That is because the shared web hosting server is tuned for such work and probably has much better hardware.

Some VPS accounts are process/bandwidth sliced enough that you can't really run IRC daemons etc., even if allowed under licensing. You almost, without a doubt, cannot run a game server for more than two or three connections, if at all.

There are several other items, but in general:
1) If you are considering renting a dedicated server or collocating in the next 6-18 months, consider a VPS as a test run.
2) If you just want to play with a dedicated server without the cost of one, and you have the skills, consider a VPS.
3) If you just are an advanced user of hosting services, move up to a better web hosting account with more features, and don't deal with the hassles of updating, keeping secure, etc. that goes with VPSs.

urlwolf:
"can you handle system administration of all aspects of a linux/windows/BSD that is sitting exposed on the internet 24x7?"
--- End quote ---
I have done quite a lot of linux sysadmin stuff, and I know that you can easily spend a whole weekend just updating and cheking dependencies for new software. I have NOT done much re: "exposed on the internet 24x7" which sounds like a whole new level of potential problems.

With a VPS, you are paying for versatility, often at the expense of performance for popular tasks. For example, an inexpensive web hosting account will probably provide better performance for serving up static web pages and low-end PHP/CGI/Perl scripts. That is because the shared web hosting server is tuned for such work and probably has much better hardware.
--- End quote ---
Well. I was expecting having better, not worse, performance. This is news. For example, having ruby on rails and the ability to install gems is one of the reasons I want root access (it simplifies installation). RoR could be pretty intensive on the host.

There are hosts that provide "out of the box" RoR environments with mongrel etc. Dreamhost, my current host, does support RoR but the reviews are mixed.

RoR is not the only issue. Having several IPs can be very good,and being independent from your neighborhood is nice.

But you are right that, on paper, storage, bandwith etc is lower for the same $$ in VPS vs. shared. I was expecting better performance for VPS, mind you...

Thanks!

urlwolf:
on the other hand, some VPS share the kernel, so much of the updates, config problems, etc are their resposability. Plus some, like liquidweb, offer one-click install/updates with fantastico. I guess one could run a VPS leaving all the sysadmin stuff to the host. Again, with no VPS experience, I have no idea.

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