Hello,

I'm looking for a company that offers a Windows Virtual Privater Server hosting plan. The only only I've found so far is maximumasp.com. Does anyone know of others?

Also, can anyone tell me a little about the advantages and disadvantages of virtual private servers? Basically, I'm looking for a server plan that can run dtSearch Web search software, which will only run on Windows. I was trying to avoid the cost and complexity of a dedicated plan, and the VPS seems like a good alternative. Is there any downside to VPS?

Thanks for your help,

Simon Lester

Keep in mind that VPN's are dedicated machines within dedicated machines.

Major question to ask is how many others are on there.

I would make sure that you get at least 20% of the machine, and less would be uncivilized...

Joe

Here I found one http://www.vitalserver.com/services/
I am not sure but saw somewhere that Verio started offering VPS too.
I can't open this web site (vpshosting.com) right now, but sure they claim to offer virtual private server as well.

I've just been taking a close look at MaximumASP, who claim to offer VPS on Windows 2000.

Now I may be wrong but having checked out the demo at

http://yourdomain.maximumasp.com/controlpanel/iisadmin.asp
(User: maximumasp\YourDomain Password: demo)

It looks just like any other virtual hosting control panel with the 'root' of the tree having 'VPS' in it's name.

Now I am not saying the service is no good, since it is probably one of the best Win2000 shared server offerings I have seen bar none (most ISP's won't let you register custom components for example), but I don't think it is a proper 'VPS' as we know it in the freeVSD, Ensim or Sphera world.

If it is a proper VPS then surely you could have full access via PCAnywhere (or similar) too? Does anybody know if this is possible at MaximumASP?

I think this is the same approach Ensim have taken with their Win2000 product. After all, I'm not sure it's even possible to get 50+ instances of MS IIS running on a single physical server.

Of the other suggestions, I don't see any information about Windows Hosting at all on the VitalServer site (FreeBSD only), or the VPSHosting site (FreeBSD & Solaris only).

Thoughts Anyone? Is it really possible to get 'true' Virtual Private Servers in Win2000?

I think you can to a extent. We will do up to 5 vpn on one machine, but ensim runs it well.

I think if your putting more then 5 your going to kill your machine whether its linux or win 2k.

Just a opinion

Joe

Thanks for your opinion. I agree that on a big enough server it may technically be possible to run multiple IISes on Windows using something like VMWare, but surely it would not be priced too competitively as a hosting product.

BTW - If somebody has got this up and working _practically_ then I'd love to hear about it.

On the other hand it is entirely feasible to run multiple Apache's on Linux and other UNIXes - here are just a few links for starters:

www.iserver.com
www.hostpro.com
www.dsvr.co.uk

All of these web hosts put around 80 Apache's (+ Sendmail, MySQL, OpenSSL etc) on a single server (Dual CPU, 1GB RAM). It's all about how much load you expect each running Apache to put on the server, and how well you tune it up.

There are two ways of doing this - you can either go the VMWare route, but as you pointed out it is not usually feasible to run more than 5 Virtual Machines on low-medium powered servers.

The other alternative is to go for something like freeVSD which creates 'virtual servers' as opposed to Virtual Machines. This means that only one copy of the operating system actually runs, but is able to appear as many independent servers. All of the above web hosting companies use this method to stay competitively priced.

So, getting back to the original topic the question is this:
Are 'Virtually Hosted' websites at ISP#1 running standard Windows2000 any more secure than 'VPS Hosted' websites at, say MaximumASP running their 'patent pending' VPS software?

Does anybody know what the difference is, or is it just a matter of how the Control Panel and marketing departments present the product to the customer?

This is turning into a good thread :cool:

Just wanted to give some additional info on MaximumASP's VPS plan. I asked them if I could install dtSearch Web on there, and they said no, because there was an .exe file involved. It also appears that there is no pcAnywhere access allowed.

So what's the difference between MaximumASP's systems and any other decent ISP running windows 2000 shared servers?

Their site says they have patents pending... Personally I'm inclined to think there's nothing new here.