Difference Between VPS and Cloud Servers?

[Alicebr]

What is the difference between VPS and Cloud Servers? Which one is the best option in terms of services and budget?

 

[Ian Sutherland]

Hi Alice,
What are you wanting to use the servers for?

 

[Alicebr]

Hi,

Hi Alice,
What are you wanting to use the servers for?

Hi Ian,
I want it for Blog hosting...

 

[arnydnxluk]

Traditionally, a VPS uses local storage while a cloud server uses some form of redundant network storage. A cloud server can then be migrated between physical hardware nodes without downtime, making maintenance periods less disruptive. That's generally called Live Migration and you can read how it works in the Google Cloud Platform documentation here: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/live-migration

However these days, you will find plenty of providers using the term "cloud server" to mean a VPS with local storage. It's become a marketing term for any kind of virtual server. So the only way to know the differences for sure is to check with each provider what feature set they offer. The feature I would be looking for is Live Migration, as it's not great to have long maintenance periods outside of your control during which your VM will be rebooted.

Hi,


Hi Ian,
I want it for Blog hosting...

How much traffic are you dealing with?

If you want quality service, I can strongly recommend both Google Cloud Platform and DigitalOcean, depending on the workload and budget. Google Cloud Platform offers what would always be considered proper "cloud servers" - network storage, live migration. DigitalOcean servers are closer to those of a traditional VPS provider in that their main boot disk uses local storage, however it's a bit of a hybrid because they do also offer network storage and have recently began offering Live Migration.

It seems DigitalOcean must transfer the entire local disk across the network during Live Migration, so the "brown out" blip is probably longer than that of a proper "cloud server" such as with Google Cloud Platform, but it seemed to work well enough the last couple of times we had DigitalOcean VM's live migrated (and is better than a reboot during a maintenance period outside of our control).

 

[webhostuk]

Hi,


Hi Ian,
I want it for Blog hosting...

What traffic are you expecting for your blog? The best cloud Hosting offered is Amazon cloud AWS ,nothing can match its quality. But for that the cost is never cheap.

 

[Zoe Williams]

VPS is an abbreviation used for Virtual Private Server where one big server is divided into smaller servers to represent their own virtual space. It is quite expensive as compared to clouding and you can’t share files as they are kept separate. They can even have some security concern about getting hacked easily or virus uploads.

Cloud servers are also known as a Virtual machine. Clouding gives unlimited space with no dependency on hardware. It is user-friendly and there are no issues of lagging. Users are free to select their own Operating system in use. The only issue you can have with clouding is that it is expensive.

In my opinion, Cloud servers are better than VPS. If you are using a shared cloud then cost won’t be an issue for you.

 

[ldjames]

In general, "cloud" is a marketing buzzword. Pick a hosting company based on their track record.

If it makes shopping around easier, you can replace "cloud" with "web"

cloud hosting -> web hosting
cloud server -> web server
...

 

[Alan]

Hey you all have been suckered into a dead thread by @Zoe Williams who has been re opening a bunch of threads this morning .... the OP hasn't been back for 2 month ....

I nearly responded too until I noticed the dates.