Why SSD VPS Cloud hosting is vital to your company’s growth
VPS is increasingly popular for start-ups and SMEs (Small and medium enterprises) as it plays an important role in improving the online presence of the business significantly by making the website more sophisticated and user-friendly.
As the VPS packages are getting more and more economical due to the technology advancement, business owners are convinced to upgrade from the shared hosting plans. In your VPS hunting process, you may come across a few technical jargons like Solid State Drive (SSD), self-healing failover, VPS Cloud etc.
These are all innovative features that are meant to enhance the advantages of VPS on your business many thanks to the industry competitiveness and the urge of VPS host to satisfy the customers. In this article, you will get to understand what these technical jargons are and how you can reap major business benefits from it.
What is VPS?
First, it is essential to make sure that you really understand what is VPS hosting. Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a single hardware server that uses its own operating system housed in an actual physical computer located in a data centre.
In a space where multiple websites share a single server, VPS partitions a single physical server to form multiple isolated, self-contained units within it which are independent of its neighbours. By purchasing the VPS plan, you have a virtual environment all to yourself where you get to control the digital resources exclusively. It is up to you to choose the operating system, hard disk, RAM, bandwidth etc.
With complete control, you have the opportunity to truly protect your privacy and add in layers of security features. There are generally two popular types of VPS - Windows VPS and Linux VPS.
What is Cloud VPS?
VPS Cloud is where you get to access to the computer and information technology platforms remotely without any difficulty by expanded network connection. If your “stuff” is stored in the data centres, then you can access them via WAN (Wide Area Networking) or internet connections.
If the images of actual cloud floating in the blue sky comes to your mind when you read about Cloud in the context of IT, then you are not too far off from understanding it. What is Cloud VPS in the context of IT?
Using Cloud, you no longer need to rely on physical machine or infrastructure to access to your important information as everything is virtual. You may wonder “how to access my VPS” when you are away from your machine.
By using cloud VPS, no matter where you are or what device you are using, you can access to the data, utilize and manage your web hosting resources to the greatest advantage of your business website instantly.
You can adjust the resources in accordance with your business by scaling up or down the resources. It also secures your website against downtime as the entire website host can “jump” to another machine that is functioning well if unfortunate events happen.
What about SSD?
Now that you know what is VPS server, surely you have come across the technical term of “SSD” when researching on the list of VPS service providers which you have shortlisted. Solid State Drive (SSD) is located in the data centres and is a highly advanced storage device that utilizes integrated circuits composed of electronic components to strategise the semiconductor memory as a disk drive.
Its NAND flash memory eliminates any need of spinning mechanism resulting in instant fetching of data and a boost on your website loading speed. Since NAND is a non-volatile memory, the data will still be retained even when the power is off.
This feature is usually provided only by VPS service providers that are reputable who prioritise the quality of their services and plan as SSD is more costly than the traditional drive.
Top 15 reasons why you must choose only SSD VPS Cloud hosting
Now that you understand what exactly are VPS, Cloud and SSD, let’s go through what is VPS hosting going to do to your business and breakdown the benefits offered by VPS SSD Cloud hosting.
1. Scalability
VPS SSD Cloud hosting is most suitable for businesses who rely on their website to convert leads to sales whether directly or indirectly. Direct sales is where your website happens to be an online shop or transaction platform whereas for indirect sales, your website acts as a business card and brochure that provides vital information on your products, services and company profile.
Since the traffic to the website is directly linked to the revenue with a higher number of visitors increasing income-earning chances and lower number of visitors reflecting quieter period, it is important that you have control on the scaling of the resources.
When traffic is high, simple increase the bandwidth RAM, etc. to minimize downtime and ensure that your customers get a satisfied and enhanced experience when browsing your shop.
2. Control is all yours
Since you are able to adjust your resources according to your business demands, it is totally up to you on how to use a VPS to your greatest advantage including the control of expenditure. There is no need to gear up your website during a quiet period or it will simply be a waste of resources and most importantly, money. This is especially important for start-ups and small businesses where every cent count.
Some VPS service providers even offer automated allocation services. It means that if you are expecting a high influx of visitors during the eve of festivals such as Christmas, Easter and New Year, then you can inform your provider to allocate extra disk space and bandwidth just for the evening or the entire day. This essentially allows budget management and optimizing of resources.
3. Make your website stand out
By using Cloud VPS hosting service, you can increase the RAM or enhance the performance of CPU with zero downtime. It does not matter even if your website is very sophisticated with special features, unique software or dynamic media files. Those VPS service providers that do not offer cloud hosting usually fail to deliver quick support for loading of features laden website and as a result, downtime happens. The only way to prevent this in a non-cloud hosting is to add more resources which are definitely not budget friendly.
With SSD VPS hosting, not only your customers get faster read of your website immediately, but you will also benefit from reduced usage of CPU. The longer the waiting time to load, the higher CPU usage is as the CPU is processing data to get the information from disk when in fact CPU can be used to process more information on your website. Since SSD is involved, the large volume of data is captured immediately by the disk without having to go through the spinning mechanism. It is dramatically faster, stable and more energy efficient.
4. Available 24/7
Anytime, anywhere accessibility is one of the strongest features of VPS Cloud hosting. As long as there is an internet available, you can easily access all your vital data of your website and make changes that are necessary to the circumstances. This is essential for people who travel frequently and yet would like to retain control over the business activities.
5. Budget friendly
You are actually “renting” the virtual system from the VPS service providers that do the upkeep and maintenance for you. In the event one node encounters a problem in SSD Cloud VPS hosting, the hosting is immediately and automatically transferred to another node. In essence, it is a cost saving option since there is no need to own or maintain any of the infrastructures of the server. Business owners can then focus on what they do best on the core of the business.
6. Flashing speed to retrieve data
Do you know why the traditional HDD delays the loading speed of the website? Put simply, when data is stored in HDD hard drive, the data is arranged in a very orderly pattern on each platter in a concentric, circular path which is then broken up into smaller areas. During the data retrieval process, the electromechanically movable parts spin to locate the data which takes time. If you are to retrieve a lump of data stored in many different tracks and sectors, that will take even longer and resulting in slow down of your website.
The new technology of SSD, on the other hand, is free from mechanical moving parts of spinning and fetching the data which are repetitive and time-consuming as it works on flash memory. What it means is that it keeps track of where data is located.
Hence, every time when data is to be retrieved or updated, the SSD controller merely looks at the address of the data requested and reads the charge status with almost no latency. This work excellently even on random data read/ write. Compared to the lengthy time taken to discover the data or reboot in HDD, it takes only a few seconds for your operating system to recognize the drive in SSD.
SSDs are also overprovisioned with storage to allow swift data movement so that there is room for the drive to move and delete data without affecting the overall storage capacity of the drive. SSD is definitely the hero in fast website loading speed especially in accessing performance-heavy workloads.
7. Durability
Heat is always the main culprit that kills electronic performance. This is the reason why data centres have to be maintained at a low temperature. SSDs reduce heat dissipation more than their spinning counterparts, as such it has life expectancies up to decades. Due to the spinning mechanism that heats up the drive fast, HDDs have a shorter life expectancy and many require a refresh only after a few years.
One of the factors that contribute to the round the clock availability is the hot plugging function of SSD which means that the whole system can be kept running when components are being replaced or added. The other factor is the unplug capability which means that in the very unfortunate happening of unfortunate environmental events that are disastrous to the data centre, the data will not be lost immediately and be retained for a period of time depending on the room temperature.
8. Reliability
SSDs are also stationary and have good shock resistance. On the other hand, HDDs with plenty of moving parts zipping around to access a high quantity of data at lightning speed and magnetic platters are prone to damage and physical harm when using more frequently. As such, SSD VPS Cloud hosting is more dependable due to less probability of failures on mechanical hardware.
The chances of the SSD drives failing are much less likely in the hosting data centres against earthquakes and other natural disasters. Further, even if there is a problem with one of your machines, there is no need to worry about your data being lost as Cloud VPS automatically stores all your files on several drivers for security and convenience in restoring those files.
9. Safety
Due to no movement of parts for accessing data there is hardly any wear and tear in SSDs contrary to the HDDs that often encounter data corruption or other kinds of unwanted interruption that mess with data.
10. Self-healing failover
The self-healing failover feature is one of the most impressive features of SSD VPS cloud hosting. If downtime is one of your top concerns, which it should be, then you must choose a cloud VPS host that provides this feature.
When the physical computer of the VPS is running on fails, this system detects it immediately and automatically mount your VPS on another node, then your IP address is pointed to the new system and your VPS is back online in the exact condition it was when the failure first occurred.
This clustering technology and transition can happen fast without wasting your time and resources. It works the same way too during the maintenance by your VPS service provider.
11. Perfect balance between Shared hosting and Dedicated server
Cloud VPS hosting guarantees you the exclusivity of accessing to the server like you are the only one using it, like that in the dedicated server, as each cloud VPS has its own resources such as CPU, RAM, etc. and yet you pay only a fraction of the price for it.
There is also no worry that the activity of other customers of the cloud will influence the performance of your website.
12. Low failure rate
When the parts in the mechanical device are in motion, it has a higher risk of failing because of instability. SSDs which are stationary have very low failure rates compared to the standard technology.
13. Greener
If you are running an environmentally friendly business, do not want to make any negative impact on the environment or are just conscious about environmental responsibility, then SSD VPS Hosting plan is the one for your business.
Due to the fact that it is free from moving parts, stable memory chips and minimization of heat, there is less usage on power even at a full sprint whilst not compromising on the performance of the website and speed of data access.
As cooling is usually one of the major operating expenses for a data centre, by using a cooler system, the VPS service providers are able to pass the energy savings on to the clients. Making your customers aware that you are environmentally friendly can also boost profits.
A data centre filled with HDDs is extremely noisy because of the amount of fan and cooling system required to maintain workable room temperature. SSD, on the other hand, is very quiet using only the system fans, cabinet fans and the central air conditioning that regulates the room temperature.
14. Search Engine Ranking
Know how to make your website rank higher and hence, viewed faster by more people to attract a good flow of traffic? Speed. Google has taken the website loading speed factor as a quality indicator for search results. This means that the faster your website loads, the higher it ranks on the Google search engine results. SSD VPS Cloud hosting improves the speed for fetching pages, content and processing php instructions.
15. Power cut protection
The SSDs in data centres are equipped with reliable backup during a power failure. With the voltage changes monitoring feature, a secondary voltage hold-up circuit immediately ensures that the drives are in good order with sufficient energy to save pending writes to disk if the voltage suddenly drops below a certain threshold. This role energy storage is normally taken by a battery, supercapacitor, or a discrete bank of capacitors. As a result, the data centres are able to operate continuously without loss of data or damage to equipment.
Do I need to upgrade to VPS?
VPS is a natural progression and improvement from a shared plan as your website grows to the point where shared hosting will no longer be sufficient to support or provide the resources you require. Not making the change at the right time will only stretch your resources thin which are directly reflected in your website performance.
To determine when is the right time to upgrade to VPS, you must first understand the many differences between the two and how those differences can make a change to your business.
Differences between shared hosting and VPS
What is a VPS offering that most shared hosting don’t? In shared hosting, many websites share and are stored in the same server. As a result, the cost for the provider is low which explains why shared plans are usually the cheaper option. However, the cost saving reason is easily outnumbered by the numerous disadvantages that carry with it.
Put simply, your website uses RAM and CPU power to run and with the number of visitors increasing each day, the resources required to make it continuously smooth and user-friendly also increase alongside with it.
In a shared hosting environment, there is only a limited amount of resources available. That means that if your website experiences too much traffic or when your hosting provider allocates too many websites on the same server, you can run into the trouble of website slowing down.
1. Performance
What is a VPS performance doing to do to your business? Well, a happy customer today guarantees your business to grow tomorrow. To maximise your customer’s satisfaction, you need to give them what they want – fast website loading speed.
Shared hosting
Shared hosting is only suitable for simple websites that are static and informational without much activities going on. Since you are one of the many websites that are on one single server, you are most likely to hear some “noise” produced by your neighbour. The Noisy Neighbour Effect peaks at high traffic hours when most of the resources are being used by your neighbours causing your website to suffer from the bottleneck of inadequately allocated resources and as a result, slow speed and insufficient memory space.
VPS
The best option if your website receives average to a high volume of traffic or you are planning to run a few websites. You can easily enjoy the slice of server in peace by simply purchasing a decent VPS package from a good and reputable VPS service provider that ensures that the server is optimised and the network is not abused.
2. Security
Have you ever considered what will happen if your files and data including your previous customer’s information on the web are stolen? Securing data from being stolen is an ongoing challenge to many businesses. As technologies advance, so is the data theft act.
Next question, what if your customer finds out that you have failed to protect their data? Cyber-attack is one of the primary reasons that cause unsalvageable damage to the foundation of the business and the business’ reputation due to the loss of trust by the customer.
Shared hosting
In a shared hosting environment, you are essentially leaving the security part to your host. It depends on how much your host decides to invest in it. Though generally safe, your website is still very vulnerable and whatever attacks that may happen are beyond your control when your neighbour’s website makes a mistake. Your website will most likely suffer from the spillover of the attacks next door since you are all in the same community on the same server.
VPS
You are in control of the level of security. Furthermore, as all users are given an independent isolated IP address, it is not surprising that the risk of breach of security is much lower. With the freedom to build your own defense mechanism, you can install a security plugin, tighten the criteria of spam filtering and secure your SSH configuration that is more tailored to your business’ functions. This is why if your business collects any form of information from customers, then you have to choose VPS.
Don’t be intimidated by the whole DIY security features as you can opt for a managed VPS package where all these technicalities are taken care off by the IP expert.
3. Pricing
The pricing of the web hosting package should only be one of the many factors to consider. Do you honestly think that the host would give you high quality server usage if you are only paying one -dollar a month? Likewise, there is no need to pay a price that cost an arm and a leg for an entire server dedicated to yourself when all you need is a slice of the server with high quality features, which is exactly the package of VPS with reasonable pricing as low as $10 a month.
When should you make the transition to VPS?
These are a few indicators that tell you that you need to ditch the shared hosting and upgrade to a VPS:-
1. Your website takes a while to load
By a while, it means more than 5 seconds. That indicates that the shared resources are approaching being drained. There are many reasons that contribute to the strain on the website ranging from many users accessing the webpage simultaneously, on-going transaction, using live chat on your website, downloading files, postings on a forum to sending and receiving an email.
In a shared hosting environment, the amount of memory allocated to each user is limited and when your website can’t access the required amount of memory, page loading takes longer than usual. VPS package by a reputable and decent VPS service providers does not impose any of the limitations above.
As you are able to select the amount of RAM, it is anticipated that your website gets more responsive in a short period of time. As such, visitors to your website will no longer see blank screens and you don’t need to worry about any large influx of visitors affecting the smoothness of your website.
2. The traffic to your website is increasing
The right time to switch to VPS immediately is when you notice that your website starts to grow in popularity regardless of whether the growth is slow or fast. The indicators are increased in sales and revenue, traffic and positive reviews. Yes, it is a sooner or later task to switch to VPS but do not wait until performance is an issue before making the leap as the slow down of the website may have already caused some loss in reputation and revenue.
3. You are prohibited from installing an application
Majority of the shared hosting accounts limit the applications and services due to the scarce resources and security reasons. Once you upgrade to VPS, you can install any application you want to subject to the hosting provider’s policy and of course, legality. In shared hosting, you have to follow whatever PHP version opted by your hosting provider whereas in VPS, you can freely choose your own PHP module that best suits your business.
4. When more resources are in need
When you start to hit the quota of the resources that are allocated to you, you run into the trouble of limited access. Limitation includes the number of email addresses and mailing options, databases, FTP accounts, and so on.
In situations like these, it makes sense to switch to VPS where you get to select your resources such as CPU cores, dedicated RAM, SSD disk, SATA disk, bandwidth and operating system.
The boost of resources that are not available in a shared hosting environment also allows you to test out different configuration, changing different settings, learning various types of commands.
5. You want to make your website more user-friendly
The more sophisticated a website is, the more processing power is required to maintain the performance. Shared hosting with limited resources is hardly sufficient to handle websites with multiple apps, pages and files.
VPS hosting packages ensure your website to run fast with several processing cores even when handling many different kinds of request or performing different functions.
6. More storage space is needed
Many shared hosting are generous in the amount of disc space. However, don’t be fooled by this as it usually comes with many restrictions such as the number of files or folders that you can store. VPS, on the other hand, is scalable and allow a large number of files to be stored. It can be tens of thousands of images and high-definition media files which may just be required in the near future as your business grows.
7. You want your website to be available round the clock
Due to the limitation of the resources in shared hosting, there is a limit imposed on the number of visitors in order to make sure that your neighbours, i.e., all the other sites on the shared server get their fair share on the server resources too.
When your website exceeds the limits, two consequences may happen – you have to pay additional charges to unlock more resources or the access to your website is disabled completely.
None of these two outcomes are desirable as it impacts your business growth directly. With VPS, you can have your website available to all users round the clock even during peak times because VPS hosting allows the transfer of large amounts of data.
8. You are concerned about security
If you have plans to set up online retail or receive payment via credit card, then you have to pass the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance test. The PCI Data Security Standard is established by worldwide major credit and debit card brands such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express to protect against data theft and other kinds of fraud and to ensure that the data by online merchants is processed, stored and transmitted in a secure manner. With VPS, it is more likely that your website will pass the PCI test.
As there are multiple clients sharing a server in a shared hosting environment where a lot of data are jumbled up together, it is almost impossible to be PCI compliant as it requires isolation of data.
Further, VPS users are able to take measures to secure their websites from being threatened by doing housekeeping which is running only the software that is required and removing those that are not, configuring the firewall to allow only essential services and requiring high-level security passwords for user accounts.
How to choose the service provider for SSD VPS cloud hosting?
The first step you need to take after you have decided on the upgrade is to shortlist a few VPS service providers with a good reputation and contact them right away to inquire whether they offer the type of service you need and to ask on the upgrade process. A good quality host should have a balanced mix of excellent service, security and performance.
Customer support
The first thing to look out for is customer support. It is essential as they are the one providing all the resources that will run your website. How to use a VPS? How to access my VPS? How to use Windows VPS?
These questions may be difficult to answer for non-tech savvy people.
However, whether or not your business has an IT department that specialises in web hosting, you will need the customer support of the VPS service provider as certain information is only available at their end. You definitely do not want a customer support that takes more than a day or two to respond to your emergency issue or one that limits the contact by email or website form only.
You can call the VPS service provider to inquire on their responding timeframe and ways of communication which ideally include phone call or live web chat. Another point to take note is that a local Australian VPS hosting company is always better than one that outsources their call service to another country to avoid communication problems or lack of knowledge.
Cost
What is the cost of Aus VPS server? A basic Aus VPS package from a decent and reputable company cost about $10-$20 a month with additional cost for special features. Before you approach the VPS service providers, you should have with you a list of the details of each of the resources that you require such as memory space, storage, root access, dedicated IP required, CPU cores etc. Remember not to be too rigid on the particulars as they are scalable any time.
Reliability
A good service provider for VPS SSD cloud hosting should be able to guarantee a minimum of uptime ranges between 99.5% to 99.9% normally. When enquiring with the VPS service provider, be sure to ask them on this issue and how long do they usually take to fix the session of downtime, which should not last more than a few hours.
Data centre
Yes, it is cloud hosting but still, you do not want your data to be stored in a faraway place halfway across the globe if it is of extreme importance to your business as you too share the responsibility in guarding those data of yours and your customers.
The best VPS Australian service provider that truly cares should have its data centre located in no other place than Australia. A data centre outsourced to another country may run the risk of not being able to secure the data completely as it is totally dependant on the infrastructure and technology on that particular country which may not be as advanced as Australia.
It is also foreseeable that regular breakdown may occur due to lack of due diligence or low budget by the VPS service provider.
Self-healing failover
As mentioned earlier, SSD VPS cloud hosting provides this special feature of self-healing failover. That minimises the downtime of your website. When the physical computer of the VPS is running on fails, this special system detects it immediately and automatically mount your VPS on another node, then your IP address is pointed to the new system and your VPS is back online in the exact condition it was when the failure first occurred.
There is also no downtime during the maintenance session by your VPS service provider. This clustering technology and transition can happen fast normally especially if the VPS service provider uses Fast SSD Raid array.
Reputation
Reputation normally speaks for itself. A well-established best VPS service provider should provide intuitive support service and treat any complaint with the utmost importance and urgency. It is also advisable to look into the history of the company. How long has the VPS Australia company been in the Australian market? Are they as genuinely Australian as they claimed? The answers to these will reflect whether the company practice with an uncompromising level of honesty and integrity.
You may pay a few more dollars every month for an SSD VPS cloud hosting compared to the other non-SSD VPS package, but the long-term cost saving from various problems which may arise from other types of VPS will definitely offset the initial payment.
VPSBlocks is one of the best Australian VPS hosting companies specialising in cloud hosting that features SSD storage for all of our VPS packages. We’re highly acclaimed as being one of the most reputable Australian VPS hosting service providers in Australia with our data centre and all support staff based in Melbourne.
With high confidence in quality service and VPS systems, we offer a full 15 day money back guarantee knowing that our customers are happy with the full value of our services and products being offered at great value for money.