When running your business, it is important more than ever that the end-user experience is the best it can be. This is true especially if you are hosting your applications or website online. A server that is slow or has constant downtime will have an impact on your users and customers, resulting in a poor experience and lost revenues. VPS Hosting is becoming more popular every year because it deals with all of these issues for you, without all of the headaches of on-prem hosting.
Performance is key.
Arguably the most important aspect of VPS hosting is performance. If running your application on-prem is slow then perhaps a VPS option is the way forward. Since VPS systems are in the cloud, they are closer to your customers which results in a faster connection. VPS hosting companies also have access to economies of scale, meaning they can obtain the latest technologies at a fraction of the price and make this available to you. Such technologies include the latest flash storage solutions which you should run your application on for the best performance.
How good are your internal Service Level Agreements?
Having a good Service Level Agreement, or SLA for your hardware is important. Traditional SLAs that are available for your own servers typically take between 1 day and a week to solve failures. This means that you are forced to invest in costly redundancy systems or deal with customer complaints. With VPS hosting, issue resolution can be completed within minutes since the provider is physically located, with spare parts in the same location as your VPS. If your servers are currently not meeting your internal SLAs then moving your applications to a hosted VPS can help. Most VPS hosting companies will allow you to call them should you need them to resolve any issues. Many providers also have automatic remediation available, with the ability to fix issues before your users notice them.
VPS management is fast and maintenance-free.
Perhaps your business is suffering from slow procurement and deployment times. If this is the case, then check with VPS hosting providers to see how long typical server provisioning will take. It is also a good time to consider VPS hosting if you are experiencing system management headaches within your business. Switching to a Hosted VPS option can reduce your internal system management and maintenance. Consider hardware patching, upgrades, backups, and day to day health checks. A hosted solution can often include all of these features as standard.
How flexible does your application need to be?
When your application grows, so do the challenges to support the underlying infrastructure. This is often true when you need to scale the application. Since hosted VPS solutions can be rapidly deployed, this makes them a good location for hosting your applications. Many providers will also be able to install software for you to save you the headache. Should your application grow then VPS hosting can grow with you by including non-disruptive disk space increases and memory upgrades.
VPS hosting has a low TCO
When you review on-prem hosting from a cost perspective, be sure to review both CAPEX and OPEX. It’s surprising to see how costly operational expenditure is to manage server hosting in-house. Be sure to review everything from staffing through to monitoring and backup which is often found included with your VPS Hosting option of choice.
Summary
Ultimately your hosting requirements should be based around your end-users or customers’ needs. If your application is subject to slow performance, or disruption from maintenance then perhaps it is time to consider VPS Hosting. Manageability is also worth considering if your IT team is stretched and under pressure. If this is true then perhaps it is time to look into utilizing VPS Hosting even if it is just for a subset of your systems. It is also time to consider VPS hosting if your use-case or application is subject to seasonal or unexpected bursting then the flexibility that VPS hosting can bring to your business is well worth exploring further. Finally, if costs are spiraling out of control, then review your entire TCO for your current systems and future growth to see if VPS hosting could reduce your costs in the long term.
