NYCPHP Meetup

[Hans Zaunere]

> I was just doing some research into budget virtual dedicated servers
> and thought I might "inquire within".
> 
> a. Has anyone tried VDS hosting?

Yeah, in fact NYPHP is all based on VDS...

> b. what kind of experience did you have?

Excellent..

> c. what are the major factors to look for in a good VDS host?

Well, from reading the rest of the thread, there are some important
different technologies that are in play here, and different ways to do
it.

The most typical, popular, and best VDS solution is by way of FreeBSD
jails.  A jail gives a user root on their own virtual server, but at the
same isolates them from the other root users on the physical server.
There's also very little overhead in terms of performance, and people
run hundreds of jails on a single server.  Google for freebsd jail
hosting or some such.

Other options include vmware and Linux virtual stuff.  vmware is nice,
and delivers a virtual machine at the hardware level; that is, the OS
sees it's own hardware, as opposed to a FreeBSD jail, which is OS
dependant.  The problem with vmware is it's resource intensive, and
might be a problem for high load environment.

Linux now also has a virtual kernel support.  This basically means the
kernel can load itself multiple times, providing some level of virtual
services.  The big problem with this is security, and I doubt people use
it very often for mission critical servers.

Go with FreeBSD jails - you won't even know you're on a shared box.  If
you have the money, I think Verio provides this service, but there are
many other smaller shops who do a good job, too.  Check out the NYCBUG
(http://nycbug.org) Talk list; there are people who can recommend
providers, since many of them do it themselves  :)


---
Hans Zaunere
President, Founder
New York PHP
http://www.nyphp.org