Heard about VPS or virtual private servers but not sure what they are and what you can do with one? Our latest blog post gives you all the information.
What Is VPS?
A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is one of the hosting choices at your disposal when you set up a website. For those who may not be familiar with how a website is made available for the world to see, let’s travel back in time a few years. In the early days of the internet, a server was commonly a physical machine with lots of memories residing in a room somewhere on the premises of a hosting company.
As the idea of cloud computing developed, so did the concept of a VPS, which mimics the idea of storing those same website files, only in the cloud, or virtually. This makes it MUCH easier for the average person who is not a computer techie to easily create and publish a website. So far, we’ve talked about the obvious use for a VPS – hosting a website – but there are other VPS uses.
What Is VPS Used For?
While website hosting is probably the most common use for a VPS, there are plenty of other ways this cloud technology can be put to work. Here are a few of them:
Hosting Your Own Server: With a VPS you can jump around to the other side of the table and be the one leasing space to others for their websites. Or maybe you’ve always wanted to host your own gaming server so you and your best buds can play Minecraft together online. With a VPS, no problem.
Testing Environment: For the techie crowd, a VPS is an excellent environment to test new software, operating system setups, or even hardware components before you deploy them into actual use.
Seeding Torrents: Those who upload and download files through torrent technology know what a drain this can be on the physical resources of your computer. In fact, it can bring all operations to a screeching crawl. Moving your torrent activities to a VPS allows you to reclaim your computer.
Cheap Private Backups: On a gigabyte-to-gigabyte comparison basis, using leftover space on your VPS to back up your local machine’s files is a cost effective way to go and an easy way to move copies of your important files off site.
What Can I Do With A VPS?
Say you were left a nice VPS in your grandfather’s will. What can you do with a VPS we haven’t already talked about? Hopefully, you didn’t think we’d already exhausted the possibilities. Hold onto your hats, because now it gets really cool.
Create a Personal Syncing Service: Most of us interact with the internet using more than one device. Maybe you have a smartphone, laptop, tablet, or even a desktop machine. There are plenty of services that allow for keeping files synced in real time across them all but there is always a security risk. With your own VPS, you could set up a personal Dropbox-style service that is much more secure.
Email or VOIP Server: With a VPS, you no longer have to rely on other services for making internet phone calls or administering an email account. What businesses are starting to realize is that the audio quality of internet calls is superior in most instances to traditional landlines. Imagine replacing Skype or Gmail without losing a single bit of the service they provide.
Conclusion
Why use a VPS hosting? Ultimately, a lot of what we’ve just talked about goes to the idea of control. The more you are in control of the programs and services you use online, the better. Theoretically, you can provide better security for your personal information than a mass market third party. Granted, you have to know what you’re doing to achieve that level of sophisticated use, but it’s possible. The bottom line is that using a VPS can take you far beyond the usual constraints that many internet users encounter everyday and don’t even think about.
