VPS
What is a VPS? A beginner’s guide to virtual private servers
A VPS is a virtual machine running on a physical server. To the customer it behaves much like an independent server, with its own operating system, resources, network configuration, and administrative access.
How virtualization changes one physical server
A hypervisor divides physical compute, memory, storage, and networking among virtual machines. Each VPS can run independently even though several may share the same underlying hardware.
VPS vs shared hosting
Shared hosting gives you an account inside a hosting environment the provider administers. A VPS gives you much more control over the operating system and services, which is useful for custom applications but creates additional operational responsibility.
VPS vs dedicated server
A dedicated server assigns the physical machine to one customer or workload. A VPS is virtualized and shares the host hardware. Dedicated systems can provide different performance, isolation, storage, and hardware options but generally start at a larger infrastructure footprint.
What you can run on a VPS
Common uses include web applications, APIs, small databases, development environments, workers, self-hosted tools, staging systems, and application stacks that need custom packages or persistent processes.
What you are responsible for
On an unmanaged VPS, expect to manage system updates, access, firewall rules, services, backups, application deployment, monitoring, and incident response. Managed offerings shift some of those responsibilities to the provider, but the exact boundary should be stated clearly.