By Greg Rockwood, SoftsysHosting
Sooner or later most of us face with the crucial Web hosting choice for the existing or prospective online ventures. This selection is even more difficult, when there are some financial limitations and people are trying to find an ideal hosting package in terms of its price and resource allocation. Most know what I'm speaking about - the case when shared hosting is unacceptable and dedicated one is still out of budget. This is the case when virtual private servers (VPS) come into play.
Originally, there are two main VPS hosting types - self-managed and fully managed. Let's outline some important differences and main points to consider when making your VPS service choice:
1. Self-Managed VPS
Self-managed systems are those systems in which a client only deals with the operating system of the server so in that case, user can only operate the operating system. Self-managed systems will allow to manage the server, its updates and troubleshooting processes. The main advantage of using self-managed VPS is that a client handles his/her own server without anyone's interference and feels independent with full control over the server.
This gives freedom of handling a server in the required way, but on the other hand a hosting client is not provided with all the other major facilities which an administrator must have in order to run a server on its own (like control panel, etc.). A client is free to install own apps from the source provider and maintain a server accordingly. Customization is one of the major advantages of self-managed VPS and for someone this is the crucial point. Basically, a provider will just install OS and you will need to handle all server management tasks. The host only manages hardware and network of the machine.
2. Fully Managed VPS
Fully managed VPS is defined as the opposite of self-managed VPS because here a client has nothing to do on his/her own as compared to self-managed VPS. Hence, in this case, he is provided with all the latest updates, server network is managed by external expert staff, which only specializes in dealing with such things. This kind of system is a type of reseller Web hosting where a client only needs to handle the website and online business performance and all technical issues concerning the server and other server management aspects are managed by the Web hosting provider.
There are certain pros and cons of this system as well. The main advantage of this fully managed VPS is that it saves time as the hosting client does not need to focus on server updates or its maintenance, but on the other hand, he/she also runs into a risk whereby a managing provider is not an expert and hence VPS may not work effectively, which damages overall business productivity. Some of its benefits include proactive service monitoring, security firewall management and installation. Furthermore, software updates and troubleshooting assistance is also fully guaranteed by those professionals, which makes it easier to run an online business more efficiently and profitably.
These were some of the major pros and cons of the two major VPS hosting types and they hopefully will help in deciding what is better. Sometimes, people still overlook these facilities and opt for the one which is more complicated somehow, but these options are always there. It all depends on some particular requirements as to what meets business needs in full without breaking the pocket book.
Author's Bio
Greg Rockwood is a PR and community manager at SoftsysHosting, an established hosting company offering unmanaged economy VPS and fully managed Windows VPS with abundant resources.