On Friday, September 24, 2010 01:26:56 pm Chris Louden wrote: > It should be noted that what is commonly referred to as a VPS and a > VM/Cloud Server are not the same thing.
They're quite similar. A vps and vm are two words for the same thing; vm simply means virtual machine. vps, meaning virtual private server, is simply a marketing term, instead of having a shared hosting account or a shared server, or paying a lot more for a private dedicated server, you're getting a virtual private server, a server that to all intents and purposes (give or take a few of the actual mechanics) is the same as having your own server. Some isolate you from other vps instances on the same machine better than others. So far we're experimenting with and selling xen, but we're always watching the genre. > A VPS generally uses something like Plesk or cPanel. A VM/Cloud server > is considerably more versatile. Again a marketing thing. We put CentOS and DirectAdmin (similar to Plesk and cPanel in what it does, but different in design and implementation) on most of the VPS instances we set up, simply because most of our clients are using them for webhosting. But we'd certainly set it up with a different OS if we have the image, or even allow users to supply an image if that's what they'd prefer. The main difference I can think of is that a Cloud server (I'd rather say a cloud service) offers the ability to change size (memory, or disk space, or even processor power) in real time, usually without even shutting down. But even that may be considered a marketing distinction. On Friday, September 24, 2010 03:12:10 pm Chris Louden wrote: > A Plesk or cPanel VPS requires a specialized kernel and the > performance is not on par with what a say a Linux box running in XEN > or VMWare for example. While a distro might be optimized for running > in the virtual state it does not require a specially compiled kernel > to do so. Neither Plesk nor cPanel, nor DirectAdmin require a specialized kernel unless the underlying virtualizing technology does. Some virtualizing technology requires a special kernel, some actually share the same kernel, and some require virtualizing technology in the chip (some a combination thereof), but the control panels don't add any extra requirements to the mix. > Also in a Plesk or cPanel environment it can be difficult upgrade > certain packages. Run a different version of php for example. Perl > modules were a PITA as i recall as well. Its a completely different > user/admin experience between the two. This depends entirely on the control panel, and not at all on whether the underlying technology is VPS, Dedicated, VM, or cloud. DirectAdmin is much more flexible than the others you mention because it's a compiled c++ program and not a mix of php scripts (though it does use the underlying c++ and cronjobs to do certain things with scripts). DirectAdmin comes with the latest versions of the underlying hosting stack when installed, but it's software manager is very versatile and you can generally change versions at will. For an MTA it works only with exim, for DNS it works only with BIND, and for ftp it works best with proFTPd, but that's only because of the way it manages. > To my knowledge things like Plesk and cPanel do not allow easy > migration between hosts or access to additional resources on the fly. DirectAdmin and cPanel both have backup/restore systems which can be used as granularly as user level (not per domain, because a user can have multiple domains) and can easily move users between systems. I haven't had Plesk experience in many years so I don't know their state today. Years ago when I was a Plesk Gold Partner, their backup/restore was horrid; it only allowed you to back up and restore all. Jeff -- Jeff Lasman Post Office Box 52200, Riverside, CA 92517 Our jplists address used on lists is for list email only Phone +1 909 266-9209, or see: "http://www.nobaloney.net/contactus.html"; _______________________________________________ LinuxUsers mailing list [email protected] http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
