Linux Community Magazine

Often, it so happens that small businesses struggling to make ends meet opt for shared hosting services at the beginning. But, as traffic starts to trickle in, grow and build into a deluge of customers, expanding companies experience the need to switch over to a better, faster and more powerful hosting service. While big companies may not be intimidated by the prohibitive cost of using dedicated servers, medium companies may find it difficult to bear the colossal cost. That is where Virtual private servers come in.VPS hosting services allow companies to hire a virtual server. That means, this server will, for all practical purposes, act as a dedicated server. However, it is not a dedicated server in reality because the main server is divided into a number of partitions. Each part works as a virtual server. Thus, members are able to enjoy the same benefits as dedicated servers, while paying a fraction of the cost.There are two kinds of VPS hosting services: Linux based and Windows based. Linux VPS hosting services are attractive because of the inherent power and flexibility of the Linux operating system. Linux VPS hosting provides an isolated environment on a server where the virtual server is able to share all the resources of the main server. Each Linux vps hosting server acts almost like a standalone server as far as the user is concerned. Thus, every virtual server can have its own applications without affecting the other virtual servers located on the same physical server. Each virtual server may be rebooted independently since it has its very own root access, IP address, users, files and processes. Each server even has its own mail and web server and control panel. This flexibility is possible because each virtual server has its own application and configuration files.Any company that needs a dedicated hosting environment but does not have the resource to hire a dedicated server can make use of Linux VPS hosting services. Linux VPS serve rs are so powerful that they even allow you to run versatile applications like Asterix and Java.Linux VPS hosting packages give the end user more power and control over their virtual servers, at significantly lower costs. In fact, companies that want to host unlimited domains, resell hosting or want to install a variety of applications can make use of the state-of-the-art features and flexibility offered by Linux.Linux combines the concept of ease of use, simplicity, flexibility and customization. Thus, customers are able to get the most value for the money they shell out. Unlike Windows systems that show a great bias towards Windows applications, Linux lends equal support to all applications. Little wonder that many web experts believe that Linux is the future of web hosting!