Hello all, I have come to WebHostingTalk to get some peoples thoughts on starting your own VPS provider. Does anyone know where I can find some usefull information on this? I currently have an investor that is willing to follow through with this, if the business plan and such, looks right. At this point I really don't know where to start researching and getting stuff together. Any information would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

www.parallels.com for software

for a server
www.softlayer.com
www.theplanet.com
www.hivelocity.com

Is this worth the money? Is it profitable enough if setup right and marketed right? Is it easier to "lease" the lines and servers?

I would think it would be cheaper to lease the servers, especially if your starting up.

I wouldn't know much about this as I don't do VPS things.

Also look at HyperVM and WHMCS.

Ok, Thanks for the information.

www.netdepot.com other good provider, and with virtuozzo licences.

Is this worth the money? Is it profitable enough if setup right and marketed right? Is it easier to "lease" the lines and servers?

Yes, it is certainly possible to quickly turn a good profit selling VPSs. However, if you are just testing the waters, it'd be a good idea to keep your costs down. Check out some of the dedicated servers FDC offers with Virtuozzo licenses.

Make sure you have a good business plan is all i have to say, otherwise you wont last very long.

Make sure you have competent tech(s) who know how to manage servers & the virtualization layer. It seems there are a lot of newbies in the market who have no clue about how much stress physical hardware can take.

It seems there are a lot of newbies in the market who have no clue about how much stress physical hardware can take.And right about those people selling VPSs at 10 bucks a month and place 50 VPSs on a C2D, are those who screw things up for the other hosters that *do* know how many VPSs they can place on one server.
Personally I never place over two users per 2GHz+ core (X3220 preferably).

Based on your feedback, you might want to consider a VPS reseller arrangement first. That way, you'll be able to build up practical experience without any kind of significant capital outlay. Once you're more comfortable, you can take the steps of renting dedicated servers and selling VPS's. After that, you can buy your own servers.

For VPS solutions, we firmly stand behind Virtuozzo and Swsoft. They do a fantastic job.

Like mentioned before, you're going to need to evaluate where you want to be in the market. For budget, I would recommend HyperVM. For premium and to give value to your offerings, I would recommend Virtuozzo. We have been a customer of Parallels (formerly SWsoft) for over two years now and its a great piece of software, though the initial investment could be high depending on the type of management you're looking for (as far as administrating your 'containers' or Virtual Environments)

You'll find that most of the larger VPS hosts own their hardware and co-locate it. Using dedicated servers would make it harder to use decent specification servers and maintain profit margins.

If you're looking at using Xen as your virtualisation platform then get some sys admins with strong Linux clue on board.