What is the difference between a VDS and a VPS?

[Naleksuh]

VDS and VPS are similar terms in both name and meaning, and it is easy to get them confused. I even used to confuse them too. But here is the difference if you are curious.

NFO only offers VDSes, although the marketing page does use VPS as an alternative name both due to SEO and to clarify for anyone looking for the other term. A VDS is not the same thing as a VPS, and NFO's "VPS" only offers a VDS service.

The good news though, is that a VDS is actually better than a VPS. Here's the difference.

With a VDS (virtual dedicated server), you start by taking a machine and partitioning it into smaller machines - for example, if you've got a machine with 100GB of RAM and 1000GB of disk space, it might have 10 VDS machines each with 10GB of RAM and 100GB of disk space. Or they can be split unevenly, like 9 with 9GB of RAM and the tenth has 19. This is what a virtual dedicated server means, as the resources are dedicated to you and only you as it's like a dedicated server.

A VPS is not that. With a VPS, the machine's resources are used as a drawable pool for each machine to share as they need them. This sounds cool enough, but it's basically just for the server company to "overbook" the machine and rip you off. If we return back to our machine with 100GB of RAM, why have 10 machines with 10GB of RAM when you could have 12 machines with 10GB of RAM? It's not like they'll be using all of it at the same time, so the provider can borrow from other customers and sell more resources than they have--ripping you off! Some providers have really lame rules like selling you RAM for a really low price but the TOS bans you from using more than 25% of it for a period longer than ninety seconds or similar. If you see something like this, it's probably because they're ripping you off!

The good news though, is that most "VPS"es are actually VDSes, many people use the terms interchangeably, especially due to the marketing smoke and mirrors built up around the term. NFO offers VDSes, and anyone who is using a KVM or XEN hypervisor (NFO uses the latter) is not able to oversell resources. So you know your resources are dedicated to you and only you and are not being shared with anyone else.

I hope this clarifies any confusion people may have between VDS and VPS.