What is Windows Virtual Private Servers?

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What is Windows Virtual Private Servers?

Posted on 30. Apr, 2009 by admin in Web Hosting

It is commonly assumed amongst computer professionals that the next step above shared hosting is either a dedicated server, or a move to professional co location services. Quite often, this shift comes about due to limitations of the shared hosting service in their ability to provide the client with the flexibility they need to manage their applications.

However, windows dedicated hosting is significantly more expensive than windows shared hosting and may provide a lot of extra processing power that the client is not ready to fully utilize yet. In these situations, a new option that is much less well known, is the Windows Virtual Private Server.

How a Windows VPS works

A VPS is a server software running on a virtualization platform. A virtualization platform (or a hypervisor) allows a single computer to run multiple instances operating systems (OS), with each OS thinking that it's running on a separate physical server. OS's can be hypervisor aware meaning that they know they are running on virtual hardware which can allow them to improve their performance. Microsoft calls these Enlightened OS's.

Modern Windows operating systems like Vista (After SP1) are enlightened and can take advantage of the knowledge that they're running on virtual hardware. Even Windows XP SP3 is enlightened. But you're not going to use XP as a server!

Benefits of a Windows VPS Hosting

Firms that choose a Windows VPS can confer significant cost savings. Clients have all the software flexibility they could ever need from their server. For example, the virtual server can be rebooted, new applications can be installed and updates to the server can be downloaded. All without the need or cost to lease a separate physical server!

Management of a Windows VPS hosting comes in different packages. You can choose hands off management whereby you offload the responsibility to the service provider, or you can choose more flexibility and manage all the software and updates yourself. People usually choose a VPS for it's flexibility so you're likely to choose the latter.

In addition, having your own licensed copy of a server contains several major advantages.

Finally, a Windows VPS can give you better speeds and access to more resources than a simple shared hosting service where you are sharing your server with (possibly) thousands of other customers.
Choosing the right Windows VPS

A Windows virtual private server can run on a number of virtualization platforms including Hyper-V, Xen, and Virtuozzo. Virtuozzo is a bit unique in the sense that it runs on top of an already installed operating systems and the guest OS's are instances of the main OS. This has licensing implications as Microsoft allows only 4 instances of each operating system to run per license. Depending on which hypervisor you choose, your cost will vary.

Hyper-V has excellent support for device drivers as it requires the parent partition to run Windows Server 2008 which in turn, will lend a helping hand to other guest operating systems.

Summary

Choosing the right Windows VPS is a great way to get the advantages of a Dedicated server, but without the associated hardware costs. If you require more flexibility and root access to a server, but don't need the full throttle hardware of a dedicated system, then a Virtual Private Server is your solution.

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