MikeTeo.net

Some short notes on choosing a VPS

Specifications

• Amount of physical RAM
  • Is it burstable ?
  • Is it guaranted to be of that minimum amount ?
  • Are you to compare the physical machine’s memory usage graphs ?
• CPU
  • Processor speed of physical machine
  • Processor type (Intel Xeon Single/Dual/Quad, or AMD Opteron)
  • Is the allocated CPU speed burstable ?
  • Are you to compare the physical machine’s CPU load graphs ?
• Virtualization solution (Xen, Virtuozzo, OpenVZ)
  • How many users are actually being hosted on the same physical machine ?
  • For linux, What is the choice of linux distro you can pre-install as the OS base ? (gentoo, fedora, redhat enterprise, debian, centos, etc)
• Network
  • How many bandwidth you can use per month ?
    Exercise common sense when the provider says it is unlimited; there isn’t true free lunch in this world.
  • What’s the cost you need to pay for overusage (i.e. dollars per GB) ?
  • What’s the number of dedicated IP addresses that is allocated as part of the package ? Is reverse DNS provided for these IPs ?
  • Is the provider’s network well-connected to you and your end-users ?
    If your end-users are regional, it’s best to choose a local provider, than to choose a provider that is a few oceans away.

Package

• Contract
  • Is there a minimum subscription period (i.e. 1 year, etc) ?
  • Is it a one-time payment for the entire contractual period ?
  • Is there a trial period, or a back-out period, or period with money-back guarantee ?
  • What’s the penalty if you decide to per-terminate the contract ?
• Pricing
  • Check for currency for the pricing
• Billing cycle
  • For monthly or quarterly billing cycles, is there an incentive if you pre-pay for one year ?
• Payment mode
  • Does the provider accept credit cards (Visa, Masters, Diners, etc) ? What about bank transfers ? Postal orders, and cheques ?
• Upgrades
  • What’s the cost to upgrade when your requirements grow with time ? Hard disk space, bandwidth, IP addresses, etc.
    Find out what’s the lead time and downtime for the upgrades to be activated.
• Acceptable usage policy
  • Find out the VPS can be used for what kinds of purposes, and more importantly, what it can’t be used for. Eg. adult sites, IRC services, mass-mailing, file sharing, etc.

Administration

• Do you have superuser (a.ka. root) access ? (If not, then it’s probably not a VPS)
• Can you administrate the VPS itself (i.e. restart, stop, start the VPS) through a remote GUI ?
• If you are not tech-savvy, is there a remote GUI for performing the following tasks ? If you are tech-savvy, can you do these from a remote console/shell ?
  • Start/stop services
  • Install/uninstall applications
  • Configure common services
  • Configure firewall
  • Configure network QoS (if you don’t know what is QoS, then you probably don’t need it)
• Are you able to compile your own applications ? Note that certain OS and distros, and sometimes even providers, may limit your ability to install your own customized applications.
• If you wish to setup VPNs in linux, check if you are able to setup your own ”tun” devices.

Technical/Customer Support

• Contact
  • How to contact them ? Phone, email, forum, web-based ticket support system, etc.
  • Does the provider have a manned 24×7 support ?
  • Does the provider have separate contact channels for technical support and sales enquiries ?
• Support
  • Is the technical support able to help with the service setup, firewall configuration and application installation/uninstallation ?
    Note that these may be classified as value-added services, and may warrant additional costs.

Bookmark This Rattle...