Virtual Dedicated Servers:

Virtual dedicated servers, as the name suggests, are servers that virtually appear to be dedicated. In reality, a server is partitioned in several multiple servers & each partition has capabilities of an individual dedicated server. Virtual dedicated servers combine the features of shared hosting & dedicated hosting servers. They are cheaper than physical dedicated servers but offer all the capabilities available in a dedicated hosting. In a virtual dedicated server, customer can have a super-level access to the operating system of that partition, and it is also compatible with any software installed by the customer on the O.S. However, there are certain limitations when considering a virtual dedicated server. Some software programs may not run properly in a virtualized environment like firewalls, anti-virus applications etc. you can even expect more or less restrictions depending upon the virtual service providers. But having said this, these limitations are less than what you can find on a shared web hosting. Also, since the number of clients that run on this virtual environment are more, the server has limitations in processor execution time, ram & disk space. Most often, virtual private servers offer more security & hence also can be used for update testing. One virtual dedicated partition can be used for hosting live site & other partition can be used for testing purposes. This allows detailed testing of the site’s copy residing in the same physical server’s virtual server without requiring any other server. So the advantage with virtual dedicated servers is, it allows running any software even if it has any security limitations, because this does not endanger the rest of the server. Therefore, VPS can play the role of a program/data that is setup to trap any faulty behavior of the system. Thus, hosting your site on a virtual dedicated server has many advantages. Lot of hosting providers now offer virtual dedicated server hosting as part of their web hosting services. A virtual dedicated server is also called a virtual private server or a dynamic dedicated server.

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