If you have a bigger website, the biggest disadvantage on a shared web server is the lack of control over the software installed on the server.

Many website owners usually don’t care about that fact and they shouldn’t. However, as we mentioned if you own a big website with a lot of visitors every day you won’t feel comfortable on a shared web hosting server. There is a solution to this kind of issue – it’s called Virtual Private Server or the also well used term VPS. The VPS or Virtual Private Server can offer that control over the software resources for the people with more websites under one account or the ones who own a particularly big web site.

To know the advantages over the shared web hosing, first you need to be introduced to some definition for a VPS. The VPS is again a like a virtual account, divided by a Virtualization software, located on a physical machine. This time however, the resources are not shared – every VPS account has own predefined(usually by the webhosting company, depending on the VPS package you have ordered) resources like RAM and allocated space. You have a control over every software aspect on your Virtual Private Server as well and every other configurations, available for a web server.

The main advantage for that kind of server is the access granted to the owner of the VPS. The owner has “root” access to the Virtual Server and this allow him to control the software, configuration and even create other user accounts. In other words, a VPS is like any other normal Server.

The VPS has other advantages like the better security. For example, if a hacker breaches in a shared web hosting server, where all the accounts are stored, he can cause alot of damage to the all these accounts, located on the server. A VPS however acts independently and you can customize the level of security for it on you own preferences.  The structure of a Virtual Private Server is such, that even if a hacker gains access to a VPS, he cannot get to the other VPS accounts, stored on the same physical machine.

Virtual Private Servers can be setupped by the hosting company in many different ways. The most common configuration is depending on the hosting package, they give you defined disc space and RAM. The Operating Memory or Random-Access Memory also known as RAM is very important for a web server, since most of software you will use tend to use the RAM more than the CPU. You can read more for the RAM on Wikipedia if you like. Depending on the Virtualization software the web hosting company is using, there are some different setups as well. For example, a web hosting company which uses Parallels Virtuozzo sets a soft and a hard RAM limit. Once you hit the hard limit, you get a warning that you are exceeding your resources.

The main advantage of a VPS can also be the disadvantage. It is highly recommended that you know what you are doing and have the technical know-how so you can operate with your VPS. The Virtual Private Server is not for people who don’t like technical stuff or are not willing to learn, shared hosting plan is perfect for them.

In general, a today’s VPS packages are highly affordable and are huge advantage to the common big web site owners. If you are wondering what type of VPS hosting package you should order, make sure you are familiar with the software you will be using and how much resources it will take.

Hosting.com are one of the first web hosting companies, offering the vCloud solution, wjoch can be adjusted with a pay-as-you-go model. However, their service is not yet officially launched since the beta phase has launched on Spetember 1, 2009.

Craig McLellan, the CTO of Hosting.com remarked “vCloud Express delivers control directly to customers. They can setup new accounts, adjust virtual machine resources, turn additional machines on or off and deploy and execute virtual machine commands with no human interaction – if so desired. We will continue to innovate to deliver on the promises of capacity and infrastructure on-demand, utility-based pricing, and cloud interconnectivity.”

vCloud Express is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution that will be presented on the Hosting.com’s Enterprise infrastructure. Hosting.com will be offering vCloud Express via their Cloud Enterprise solution. Cloud Enterprise offers the latest in the virtualization platform technology with the VMware vSphere 4. Hosting.com are making large investments in technologies like  Dell, EMC, F5,  Juniper and Intel so that a standard-based cloud solution is offered to the clients.

Jason Waxman, General Manager, High Density Computing Division, Intel remarked, ”Hosting.com has made a promise to deliver Enterprise-Class cloud hosting services to their customers. The Intel Xeon 5500 processor family delivers outstanding benefits to enterprises in performance, energy efficiency and virtualization. Investments in products like Intel’s Xeon 5500 processor family help Hosting.com to deliver this promise to their clients via cloud services.”

The vCloud Express prices start from $0.42 / hour and is available immediately after purchase.

Hosting.com is providing enterprise colocation, cloud computing, dedicated hosting, managed hosting and disaster recovery along with their packages so it can cover the demands of today’s level of quality of the services.