Virtual Server Hosting

In the on-line web hosting industry the phrase virtual private server hosting has grow to be widespread. The technology is nothing new, because the idea has existed since around the 1980’s, produced by the large computing companies at the time on the Unix platform (DEC, IBM, etc.).
Virtual machine software (also called VDS software), is a system that splits real computing hardware into multiple virtual hardware containers which each run their own operating system, separate from one another. These virtual servers can be used for many reasons for example:

• Roaming computer's desktop substitution
• Optimising hardware resource utilisation
• Running sets of low intensity applications
• Presenting hardware independent hosting systems

There are various virtual technologies on the market, such as:

• KVM
• OpenVZ
• XEN
• VMware

They all have their particular positives and negatives, but basically perform a similar function, which is to generate a virtual hardware environment so as to run an independent operating system.
Lots of hosting providers offer virtual hosting solutions as a way to remove the need for clients to set up any server hardware at all. Instead a client simply leases a VPS on the hosting company’s infrastructure and thus eliminates the need to obtain any hardware at all. In these hard economic times we are seeing more and more people turning to VPS as a means to deliver their online services. Many organisations and individuals have saved large sums of money by not needing to deploy their own physical servers.
In addition, the use of a virtualised server often leads to increased uptime for the client, as they are less affected by hardware failures. In the event of a physical server experiencing a hardware failure, most hosting companies will be able to move the affected VPS to another physical node with very little downtime.