3v-Hosting Blog
13 min read
Choosing VPS hosting is rarely a conscious decision the first time around. It usually starts with a simple request: “I need a server for a project.” Then filters are applied for price, country, memory capacity, and ten minutes later, the provider's tab is open, the order is placed, and the server is up and running. A week later, questions start popping up: why is the network unstable, where did these sudden limits come from, why does support respond with templates, and what does “virtual server” even mean in this particular case?
VPS is not just renting resources. It is the foundation on which a business website, CRM, online store, SaaS service, CI/CD infrastructure, or personal pet project. A mistake at the hosting selection stage almost always results in unnecessary migrations, downtime, and lost time. So let's figure out how to choose the right VPS hosting, avoiding marketing traps to prevent problems with your project in the future.
Formally, a VPS is a virtual server with dedicated resources, i.e., when the resources of a specific physical server are divided, isolated, and used separately at the software level. But the implementation of this virtualization can vary dramatically depending on the technology. In some cases, it is honest virtualization with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and disk space, while in others, it is fierce overselling, where “dedicated” resources exist only on paper or in marketing texts on the host's website.
The key concept here is the type of virtualization. A modern and reliable option is hardware virtualization (KVM), as it provides isolation at the kernel level, its own kernel, and full support for Docker, Kubernetes, and other tools that are sensitive to environment restrictions. When using KVM, you can install any operating system on your virtual machine.
But if the provider uses container technologies instead of full virtualization, such as LXC, this immediately narrows the range of tasks and can lead to unexpected limitations.
It is important to understand that VPS is a kind of compromise between a dedicated server and shared hosting. A good provider makes this compromise invisible, while a bad one saves on everything and, as a result, shifts all the risks to the customer.
| Criterion | KVM | Containers (LXC / OpenVZ) |
|---|---|---|
| Isolation | Full, at the virtual machine level | Limited, shared kernel |
| Dedicated kernel | Yes | No |
| Docker / Kubernetes | Full support | Often with limitations |
| Resource predictability | High | Depends on neighboring workloads |
| Performance under load | Stable | Performance degradation possible |
| Software compatibility | Maximum | Occasional limitations |
| Security | Higher due to strong isolation | Lower if kernel issues occur |
| Production-ready | Yes | Mostly for simple use cases |
| Typical use cases | Business projects, APIs, SaaS | Testing, small websites |
| Cost | Usually higher | Often cheaper |
This simplified table clearly shows that for more or less serious projects, hardware virtualization is not a plus, but a basic requirement.
Processors, disks, and networks are the three pillars of any server infrastructure. If a provider is not willing to be transparent about the hardware their VPS runs on, this is a red flag.
Modern VPS hosting should use the latest generation of server CPUs, not outdated platforms from a decade ago. This is especially critical for projects with heavy loads on databases, search engines, and analytics services. For example, the difference between SSD drives and old SATA drives is not felt in illusory synthetic benchmarks, but in real work, such as database migrations, backups, deployments, and CI processes.
The network deserves special attention. Port speed, uplink quality, redundancy, and basic DDoS protection directly affect service stability. Many problems with “floating” website availability are often related not to the code of the website itself, but to overloaded network channels at the host.
| Component | What it affects | Real-world examples |
|---|---|---|
| CPU (processor) | Request processing speed, background jobs, parallel operations | Slow API responses under load, long Docker image builds, sluggish admin panels, delays in cron job execution |
| Number of vCPUs | Ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously | With 1 vCPU the site “freezes” during backups or DB migrations; with 2–4 vCPUs background tasks do not affect users |
| RAM (memory) | Database performance, caching, application stability | PostgreSQL starts heavily using swap, Redis is evicted, Django/Node apps crash with OOM errors |
| SSD / NVMe storage | I/O speed, application responsiveness | Long database migrations, slow container startup, deployment delays, backups taking significantly longer |
| Disk IOPS and limits | Performance under load | During peak hours the site slows down due to read/write limits despite having a “fast SSD” |
| Network (speed and latency) | Service availability and response time | API responds slowly for users in other regions, WebSocket connections drop |
| Uplink quality | Connection stability | Intermittent packet loss, “floating” timeouts without errors in application logs |
| DDoS protection | Project availability | Even a small Layer-7 attack can take down a server without traffic filtering |
| Redundancy (RAID, failover) | Data reliability | A single disk failure results in total VPS loss and full recovery from scratch |
We believe that the examples in the table above clearly illustrate the problems you may encounter if you chase after ephemeral “financial gain” and “low price,” risking ending up with a negligent host who has placed their only server in their grandfather's garage, without redundancy, proper maintenance and prevention, monitoring, etc.
One of the most underrated criteria is resource guarantees. After all, if you think about it, cheap VPS is rarely cheap by accident and is most often the result of aggressive overselling, when more virtual machines are placed on one physical server than the infrastructure allows.
Many people are familiar with the result: everything works perfectly at night, but during the day the server “freezes.” This is critical for business projects, as peak loads usually coincide with working hours.
Reliable VPS hosting openly states:
This leads to a list of questions that should be asked to the host before paying for the server:
Clear and detailed answers to these questions are a sign of a mature provider that you can confidently do business with.
The geography or location of a provider's servers is not just a matter of latency. It also involves jurisdiction, data processing requirements, and legislative stability. For projects working with a European audience, personal data requirements are important, while for corporate and financial systems, the predictability of the legal environment is crucial.
In addition, the physical proximity of the data center to the target audience directly affects latency. The difference between an abstract “server in Europe” and a specific country can be tens of milliseconds. For landing pages, this is almost imperceptible, but for APIs, admin panels, and real-time services, this difference becomes fundamental.
One of the best places to locate a server is Amsterdam (Netherlands), as this city is home to a huge number of major communication channels and trunk optical lines, which has made it possible to organize so-called traffic exchange points there. The point is that any IP packet from Amsterdam reaches any point on the planet almost “in a straight line,” with a minimum number of jumps or hops, which reduces delays to a minimum.
Amsterdam is home to the main technical site of 3v-Hosting.
Technical support is usually something that is thought about at the last minute, but is evaluated at the most difficult moment. After all, when you order a server, you rarely think about what could go wrong in the distant future, because you are a confident specialist and have been in this business for a long time. For more information on the importance of support services, read this article.
A truly good VPS hosting provider doesn't just respond to tickets, but understands what is happening at the infrastructure level right now.
It's not just the response time that matters, but also the content of the response. Can support check the network, hypervisor, and logs? Will they explain the reason for the reboot or performance degradation? Or will they just give you simple advice like “reboot the server”?
To put it simply, formal support just rushes to close the ticket, while engineering support actually solves the problem.
In an emergency, this difference determines whether you will lose hours or minutes to restore your service.
If things go well, any new Internet project will need one VPS today, a whole cluster of servers tomorrow, and a backup infrastructure in another location the day after tomorrow. Reliable hosting thinks about this in advance.
Therefore, when choosing a provider, it is worth paying special attention to the following:
Typical mistakes and obvious problems are:
A low price is certainly a strong argument, especially at the start of a project. But it is important to understand that any VPS hosting always has a cost price, expressed in the price of hardware, electricity, network, and, of course, personnel. And if the price of the server looks too attractive, it means that the provider is obviously saving on something, which should definitely alarm you.
Most often, such savings are based on a complete or partial lack of redundancy, a lack of qualified engineering support, or the quality of the infrastructure itself. The result is downtime, instability, urgent moves to another provider, and at that point, the difference of a couple of dollars a month no longer seems so significant.
Shared hosting involves sharing resources between dozens or hundreds of websites on a single server. The load of one client directly affects the others, and access to the system is severely limited. VPS provides an isolated environment with dedicated resources, root access, and the ability to configure the server for specific tasks, making it predictable and suitable for serious projects.
Yes, VPS is one of the most popular options for online stores and SaaS projects. It allows you to flexibly manage resources, configure caching, databases, and security systems. The key requirement is the use of hardware virtualization and guaranteed resources, otherwise performance issues may arise under load.
Yes, Docker and Kubernetes almost always require a VPS with hardware virtualization. Container technologies depend on kernel capabilities and the correct operation of cgroups and namespaces. On container VPS or shared hosting, such tools either work unreliably or are completely unavailable.
With reliable providers, this is possible. They support online resizing of resources, snapshots, and migration between plans without stopping the service or with minimal downtime. However, on budget VPS, scaling often requires reinstalling the system and complete data migration.
Undoubtedly yes, but with reservations. Cheap plans often use overselling and do not guarantee resource stability. This is acceptable for test projects or pet projects, but for production it is better to choose a VPS with a transparent infrastructure and clear limits.
Yes, definitely. A VPS does not relieve you of responsibility for your data. A reliable provider offers automatic backups or snapshots, but it is always worth having your own backup strategy, especially for business-critical systems.
So, reliable VPS hosting is not just a set of numbers in a tariff. It is a combination of honest virtualization, high-quality hardware, a well-designed network, and engineering support. Such hosting does not promise the impossible, does not hide limitations, and does not shift responsibility to the customer.
When choosing a VPS, it is worth thinking not about the minimum price, but about how comfortable it will be to work with the server in a month, six months, or a year. Good infrastructure is invisible while everything is working. But it is precisely this infrastructure that determines whether a project will grow smoothly or constantly have to put out fires.
If you treat the choice of a VPS as choosing the foundation of your future home, then most problems simply will not arise.
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