"Yes, you have your own dedicated server" - What you are not told is thats its a virtual server and you are sharing the physical box resources with others, however do you think it really matters?

Well, Technically if your on a VPS or virtual server, they should tell you. I honestly believe that if a hosting provider withheld that type of information then it wouldn't be right.

But, as we all know many providers do shady things like "overselling" as well, so I wouldn't put it past them.

__________________
Admin
Virtualization

A virtual private server (VPS) isnt a dedicated server as, as already mentioned you are sharing a physical server resources. It is however a machine that you have dedicated to you.

It certainly does matter, even if a server is not oversold which can be by disk space, CPU power the thing that will normally run out first on cheaper VPSs is IOPS (Input/Output operations Per Second) basicaly the disk cant transfer any more so slows down your server even though the physical CPUs arent really being touched.

Jen

Thats very intersting Jennip, so I guess if you are running a 'quite serious' mySQL database that would be the obvious reason for poor performance it hosting on a VM server with lots of others.

Do you reckon hosting companies would actual be prepared to give you a breakdown of resources?

Like most things when you virtualize its a bit of a balancing act, personally I didnt find that our MS SQL Servers slowed down when virtualised and these were running the company CRM system, and there was no real evidence that they were affecting the rest of the system.

However we did spend a LOT of time optimizing the disk configuration on the SAN, so IOPS wouldnt be an issue plus we had 5-10 dual quad core blades each with 16-24GB of memory.

Whether a hoster could give you a breakdown I dont know.

Jen

I hosted on a VPS server with VPSland not that long ago, and they had the problem JenniP talked about -> The server can't access the files fast enough.
I also think they oversold the connections, giving each vps about half a mbps speed wise, which to be honest, is pretty pathetic.
That's the main disadvantage of VPS servers, you don't always know what you're getting, I think.

__________________
Help Blogging

Ok you learn something every day! So I may have a VPS Server being as how my server often gets pathetically slow and it gets very frustrating when it doesn't bring up files how it should. You think this could be the problem? How would I find out?

If your host is selling it to you as a dedicated server, then you need to read their small print - somewhere in there it will tell you that it's actually a VPS.
Lets face it - for the price they are charging now for a "dedicated" server there not really going to give you a physical box - they couldn't afford it

I don't see anywhere that it states its VPS BUT I emailed them anyhow because like you said, I pay very little a month and so how could they afford this? I never even knew this was a possibility! See, THIS is why I am trying to learn all this stuff!

How low a price are you paying? The cheapest I've seen physical servers (I'm in the UK so dont know about anything outside the UK) is around £29 a month, if you work that out over 3 years (the time companies normally keep hardware as an asset on the accounts for) comes to around £1044. The cheapest 1U server I could find on Dell was for around £350 (Did have a £250 discount though).

Considering these 30quid servers are normally quite low spec (No where near the Dell one I saw), add the margin for power, cooling, maintanence, thats a pretty reasonable price.

Jen