What are some differences in VPS and Dedicated server in terms of what you can do with them? Is VPS pretty much the same as a dedicated server in terms of functionality?
Functionality and and usage is barely the same it juz that with VPS you have limited resouce for a certain VPS tech. Now there is 2 type virtualization, OpenVz ans Xen. OpenVZ: Advantages: Allows overselling. Very light weight. Can accommodate more Virtual Machines in a server. Disadvantage: There is no per vps swap. Why this is important: OpenVZ will KILL your application if it goes beyond the limit, and this can cause some trouble. There are people out there who want to host oracle on a 64MB vps, and with such customers, using openVZ will lead to constant application crashes, which ultimately will be blamed on the provider. (This is actually something that is common with openvz/virtuozzo hosting in general; you can check some threads at wht). With Xen, each vps has its own swap, and thus you get an EXACT dedicated server like environment, but with lesser resources. So here, the customers applications will NOT crash, but rather it will become slower. Also, majority of the applications, like apache, spamassassin expects a lot of memory, and OpenVZ makes memory a very valuable commodity. Now think again. If you dont use a lot of CPU resource and so on you can use OpenVZ VPS but if you planning to use it for eg: rapidleech script. You should take Xen VPS. VPS vs Dedicated. If you have budget to get a Dedicated you better go for it. VPS is basically for people who want own control over own server or for people who use server resource more than shared hosting allowed. Nocster is a good & CHEAP dedicated which is reliable out there. For VPS I recommended Santrex for offshore hosting. (BTW they offer me a good price for Silver Plan VPS so im happy with it ^^)
You can get better performance on a high end vps then on a cheap budget dedicated server. Also, usually, on high end vps, the node is equipped with raid10, which give your data an extra protection. On a cheap dedi you dont get this, plus to add raid10 it will cost you way more.
Virtual Private server meaning you can have more than 1 inside 1 dedicated server yet it acts as if the dedicated server was yours. It is depends on a dedicated server, but there may be other 4 or 5 VPSs on that same server. With VPS you are basically sharing the resources of a single dedicated between all of the VPSs hosted on it. So, depending on your needs a VPS may be better, because they are reasonably priced as compared to a dedicated server, or a Dedicated server might be better, because it is completely yours and there are no other root users.
Another things is you might get suspended (but u can ask to reactivate without paying anything unlike shared hosting once you suspended you wont be able to reaaactivate it again) for too much cpu load. With dedi.. you dont have to worry anything about this.
That's right. You get full blown root access. However, majority of the VPS providers do not allow IRC and/or proxy. Check their ToS/AUP first. Same can be said to dedicated providers as well. If you intend to provide private tunnel I suggest you go with Xen. OpenVZ can do this too, but requires some work on the master node. I see a lot of OpenVZ providers oversell/overload their master node, this resulted in slow VPS performance all across for the customers. Finding a good reputation provider don't oversell and pay that little extra a month is worth it. A lot of times people get a VPS is like a stepping stone. They don't want to pay the amount for a dedi but it's somewhere between a shared host and dedi.
if you want to get good perfoırmance use dedicate. if you use vps you can connection lost sometimes. and it can be slowly connection.
The difference between vps and dedicated is that with dedicated you are the only person with files on the server. VPS is a virtualization environment where everyone gets root access inside a virtual machine, but there are multiple people with these VMs on one given physical server. If you are comfortable managing your sites in a VPS as root, then it won't be any more difficult to manage them on a dedicated server.
'Virtual' means that it is not real. Basically, it is still a shared hosting account but unlike a normal shared hosting account, each VPS has its own dedicated slice of the CPU, RAM and disk space. So basically, what you do will not affect the other VPS on the machine. You can reboot your VPS anytime you want and you will have root access. Think of it this way. A Dedicated Server is like owning and living in your own mansion, you can share or use it completely yours, it is up to you. A Virtual Private Server is like living in an apartment or a hotel room. You have your own doors, walls and private bathroom. You have the privacy of your own room and you more or less can do anything you want. Of course, you will share the infrastructure with the other residence in the apartment building. A Virtual Hosting/Shared Account is like having a bed in a dormitory. You basically share a bathroom, common area and so on. Of course, in a virtual hosting account, if you are the only customer on the machine, you can more or less use all the resources there is. If you share, as long as all the customers do not use more than what the server can handle, it does not matter. A VPS on the other hand has stricted defined slice of the CPU/RAM and Diskspace and most of the time, unless permitted, you cannot go beyond that allocation. The good news is that no matter how crowded the server is, you still have your minimum allocation. The bad news is that if your site requires more than what the VPS slice can handle, you will bare with it even if there are more resources that is unused on the server. Of course some VPS application allow bursting to a reasonable limit but some don't.
Ganguly155, really cool explanation there, that will clears up the misunderstanding from the OP...well, whatever it is i'm still up to VPS as they are up to my budget
VPS web hosting (or Virtual Private Server) is you get control over a chunk of a server's resources (CPU usage, disk space, etc.) and you share it with other users. With a dedicated server you get control over the entire server and don't have to share it with anyone else.
I rather try it on VPS before goes on dedicated.. It's not really good to jump directly to dedicated unless you know what you need.