In recent years, IT industry begins to be wild about cloud service. Especially cloud hosting, which has been studied and invested heavily in by more and more companies , becomes one of the most popular portion in the ranks of cloud services. Comparing with traditional VPS hosting, the burgeoning virtual network hosting service has more advantages in the performance, while still remaining the same function in some points. Hence, most of the users will feel a little bit confused if they should follow the general trend to choose cloud hosting service or keep the traditional VPS. In view of above-mentioned reasons, users should learn about the difference of traditional VPS and Cloud hosting firstly, then to decide which one is the most suitable for them.
First, let’s get start with the definition of the two hosting solutions.
VPS: Virtual Private Server, just as its name implies, is a private server, one of the several smaller server slices come from a physical server. This smaller server has its own operating system and the operating and management can work as a standalone server.
Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting is a kind of IT infrastructure renting service, which integrates the calculating, storage and Internet resources of multiple servers to form a cluster. Users can get the service from these servers including unlimited storage, maximum bandwidth, and managed load balancing.
Cloud hosting is the upgrade of traditional VPS hosting, so to speak. Below are some differences between cloud hosting and VPS hosting.
1. Infrastructure
Since in VPS hosting, one physical server will be distributed to several dedicated portions, the performance of these servers is limited by the physical server and if there is any issue, all the VPS hosting will be influenced as well as the websites. But for cloud hosting, it is based on the cluster of multiple servers, the operating will not be influenced even if one of the servers gets down due to surge in the traffic or any other technical issue.
2. Storage mode and availability
In VPS hosting, all the storage is based on the single physical server so it is limited and all the users will share the space, but the storage in cloud hosting is much bigger since it is based on SAN storage. Of course, due to the differences in the use of servers, if the server or part of the server has any issue, the VPS hosting will be influenced but if there is any issue in one cloud server, cloud hosting service can be migrated to another physical server without experiencing an outage. So cloud hosting can cause less downtime than VPS hosting.
3. Customization
As we mentioned before, VPS is just like a smaller standalone server, so users can customize and manage the configuration of the server partition. Of course, the setup will be easier since all data is stored in the same location. However, as a result of cloud hosting usually being distributed from multiple servers in different locations, users will have less control over all hosting parameters, and more technical knowledge is needed to manage hosting since it is more complex than VPS.
On the other side, according to the virtualization method, cloud hosting users can select their specific operating system as they want from a range of OS available instead of the established one in VPS hosting.
4. Resource distribution
In VPS hosting, users are told to get a virtual environment with disk space and bandwidth, however the CPU and the memory of the physical server will be distributed to them according to the amount of the users since they need to share with each other. Differently, in cloud hosting, each user will be separated from others, and users do not need any sharing resources, so they will get what they are promised and will not effected by other users.
5. Flexibility
Cloud hosting is scalable but not for VPS hosting, so the flexibility of cloud hosting is better and will not limited by the physical machine. This feature is specially respected in high traffic or traffic spikes. In cloud hosting, the multiple servers in the cluster make the resources available to any user at any time when needed. But in VPS hosting, RAM, bandwidth and CPU performance can be affected once another VPS on the shared server demands higher load, by then, the only way of meeting the requirement of high traffic is to upgrade the combo for more space.
6. Security
Since in both VPS and cloud hosting, users will have their own servers, they are completely secure. If one user gets hacked or gets a virus, this server will be completely separated from others with no risk to existing data.
And sometimes, it might be more secure for VPS hosting since there is less users and all data is stored in one physical machine.
7. Price
In cloud hosting, you can pay for what you use, no unnecessary options can be added in your service. In VPS hosting, you are allowed to use the allotted combo. In addition, both of them can be paid monthly and users can change the combo or option in anytime they need without limitation.
Hope all the above aspects can help you to learn about the differences between the two hosting solutions, and considering the actual situation, you maybe have your own opinion. If you need more storage and has high requirement in the traffic hikes, you can choose cloud hosting. But if smaller storage can meet your requirement , the VPS hosting will be more affordable for you. Choosing what you need should always be the most important thing to any user.
