Major differences between cloud hosting and VPS hosting

The environment of a VPS is exactly same as the Cloud. A Cloud server can be called as a VPS server but a VPS is not a cloud server.There is a lot of talk these days about cloud computing or cloud hosting. Many companies are using these terms loosely to discuss either VPS or cloud servers (public or private). But, what do these terms mean? You will definitely see a difference when you look at the price tag, so understanding what each of these services are will help you in your quest to determine the best option for you or your company.

Below are some key differences between a cloud hosting & a VPS or VDS hosting.

1. Infra

In a VPS hosting, one dedicated server (suppose a dedicated server with 64 GB RAM and resources) is partitioned into multiple servers. All these partitions are virtualized further and each of them work as a dedicated server, hence called Virtual dedicated server or VDS or VPS.

But in a Cloud hosting, we rent a small portion of a Big network of machines connected together. (Talking about public cloud) A giant setup of machines that offer resources are connected together and then they are further rented to clients. You can always scale up your resources as per your requirements and it will be done in a few minutes of clicks.

2. Availability

In a VPS server, if a machine or part of the machine fails, your VPS will go down causing downtime till the problem is fixed but in case of Cloud server, In case of any failure, the system is re-routed to another available physical resource causing minimum downtime.

3. Payment Model

In a Cloud, things are pretty fast. Every server slot is available and is always ready to be served in seconds. But in a VPS, it takes time to virtualized a dedicated server and then allot VPS slices to the client. That is the reason Cloud uses optimum resources as anyone can occupy any slice by making its payment. But in a VPS, you are not sure when all slots will be sold. Your resources might not be utilized well if you are hosting only one client on a parent server.

4. Resource distribution

In a Cloud environment, you are totally separated from others. You will be getting dedicated resources of what you have been told. But In a VPS, you get a virtual environment with portioned disk space & certain bandwidth, however the CPU & the memory of the parent machine is equally distributed among all VPS slices. VPS companies offer you a minimum allocation of resources that is guaranteed 24/

For example, just because a VPS package claims to offer 1 GHz of CPU performance and 512 MB of memory, does not necessarily mean that either the memory or CPU allocation is not split into multiple slices.

Also, In a cloud, a client is completely isolated from the files of other client, it is more secure than VPS hosting.

5. Choice of Operating system

Depending upon the virtualization method used, A VPS can offer you only one operating System. But in a cloud, you get the freedom to choose any operating system you want. You can install or replace any operating system from a range of OS available.

Cloud Hosting vs VPS Hosting

The following tabular comparison between Cloud hosting and VPS hosting will present a more clear picture of these two hosting models

Which is better?

There are multiple parameters to consider while chosing the best. If you are chosing a Private Cloud then VPS will be cheaper for you. But in this case, you will get limited features of VPS and security risk as private cloud is way more secure.

Also If you chose to host your files on Public Cloud (DigitalOcean,Linode etc), it is relatively cheaper but less secure than Private cloud.. But as compared to the VPS, Pubic Cloud hosting has the edge and that is why it is getting popular everyday.

In a Cloud hosting, you get relatively cheaper price, secure environment and freedom of resource scaling. What else do you need.

Below is a quick summation of what I've said.

One physical server, divided into several smaller server slices that each act as their own virtual server environment.

Pros:

Typically less expensive than cloud servers.

No file or data access occurs between VPS clients on the shared server. They are kept separate.

If needed one VPS can be rebooted without affecting other VPSs on shared server.

Cons:

They do not offer high-availability. If physical server fails, all VPSs on that server fail.

There can be security concerns. If a customer on your shared server does not take security seriously, and gets hacked or gets a virus, then your VPS could be negatively affected.

Computing resources are shared between all clients, therefore, RAM, bandwidth and CPU performance can be affected if another VPS on the shared server is demanding a higher load.

Only one operating system can be utilized by each physical server.

They are not scalable. Storage is based on physical server limitations. Once you meet your max VPS capacity, you have to either buy more space or look into other options. This could take many hours or days of downtime to migrate to a new solution.

Cloud Servers

Cloud servers utilize multiple servers connected together in a cluster which is backed by SAN storage. Customers utilizing a cloud platform will benefit from the multiple servers because they will receive unlimited storage, maximum bandwidth, managed load balancing and no ties to a specific piece of hardware. The basic difference between public and private clouds are in public, the cluster is multi-tenant and a private is a single client.

Pros:

Scalable – add more server power in a moment’s notice.

Custom Infrastructure - clients can include custom network architecture, firewalls, load balancing and IP deployment.

High Availability - if a physical server fails, cloud servers are migrated to another physical server without experiencing an outage.

Burstable Computing Resources - no concern about lagging RAM or CPU power, even if another cloud customer's load grows.

Completely secure since you virtually have your own server. If a client on the shared cloud gets hacked or gets a virus, your cloud server will be completely separated with no risk to your data.

Each customer on the cloud can select their specific operating system.

Unlimited storage as it is based on SAN storage.

Cons:

Typically, a little more expensive than VPS.

As you can see, the cloud servers are a little light on the con side. And, if you are utilizing a shared cloud, the cost is not significantly more than a VPS and there is much upside.

The term cloud hosting or computing can be defined in several ways. To respond to this question and contrast the two services, I’ll define cloud hosting as a utility where a cloud service vendor provides a virtual machine instance that does not have fixed computing attributes. While there may be a minimum or maximum size configuration for the server, the virtual machine computing configuration can grow or shrink dynamically dependent on the resources requested by the application. The billing method for the resources is based on usage over a period of time for the CPU, RAM, HD, and Network.

VPS or managed virtual servers are delivered as a traditional managed server although running as a virtual server, typically in a multi-tenant environment. The customer will order the server with fixed attributes and alter those attributes manually, when necessary. Vendors will typically price this service as individual components associated with the machine or as a service bundle and the resources are guaranteed to be available.

Both services have a place dependent on need, environment, application and supporting IT team.