The availability of your website online depends on your hosting provider, who ensures that your files upload to a web server you purchase from the hosting provider; this service is called web hosting. There are three types of web hosting – virtual private server (VPS), shared, and dedicated hosting.
VPS hosting falls in between shared and dedicated hosting; it suits users who have outgrown shared hosting but can’t afford dedicated hosting.
What is a VPS?
A VPS is a virtual machine owned by a cloud or web hosting provider, which acts as an isolated, virtual environment on a physical server, providing virtualized server resources. This technology splits a single virtual machine into several private server environments, sharing the server resources with other users.
Where you can have multiple sites residing on shared hosting, a VPS offers greater control and customization like dedicated hosting does. Fewer users can share allocated segments of a hard drive space, processor power, and memory.
A user on a VPS has access to a virtual machine running its copy of an operating system (OS) and experiences similar capabilities and performance to dedicated servers for their sites.
What does a VPS do?
A VPS acts like a dedicated server hosting environment, despite sharing the same physical server with other users. Your hosting provider installs a virtual layer (hypervisor) on top of the operating system (OS); the hypervisor divides the OS into virtual compartments.
Each compartment will effectively run its own OS and software, ensuring each environment functions independently. Sharing resources with other users does not affect your resources; no account can use the amount allocated to your virtual server.
What is the difference between a VPS and a VPN?
A VPN and a VPS are different technologies; their functions and purposes are distinct. VPN will mask your internet protocol (IP) address and sends your web traffic through an encrypted tunnel; these features of the VPN ensure that your browsing history is not traceable.
A VPS is merely a hosting service that allows users to host websites on a digital server; it doesn’t offer additional security. The VPN server assigns a different IP address to a user, making it seem as if the user’s web traffic originates from the VPN server in another region or country.
It’s crucial for a user who wants to subscribe to a VPN to consider the server location; server location will impact the speed of your data.
What is the difference between VPS and proxy?
One can confidently say that a virtual private server is a computer that you can use to host websites, providing a reliable hosting solution for apps and other services, while a proxy is a service. An example is the HTTP proxy, a very effective solution for maintaining online privacy and anonymity.
The HTTP proxy will inspect the web traffic source before transmitting to an internal web client, reducing the likelihood of potentially hazardous content entering your network and eliminating buffer overflow attacks.
In conclusion, the VPN, VPS, and HTTP proxy are not complementary. How you use them individually or in conjunction depends on your needs.
If you want to browse the internet anonymously, you need a VPN, HTTP proxy, or both. If you intend to host a website or cloud services without an extra layer of security, you will require a VPS only.
