Common VPS web hosting FAQs

Bandwidth
The amount of data that can be transferred to and from your hosting space, the higher the number of visitors you expect to receive to your site, the higher the amount of bandwidth you will use. There are multiple ways in which bandwidth is calculated by your hosting provider.

Burstable memory
The amount of memory that can be used by your virtual machine should you run out of your “guaranteed memory”.  Burstable memory is only available if there is available free memory on the virtual private server node.

Control panel
A control panel is a web based interface that allows you to administor your server through a GUI (Graphic User Interface) rather than through the command line.

Command line
This is a blank screen with a prompt similar to DOS or a command line interpreter or shell that allows the administrator to directly type in line commands to allow the system to run.  Most users user and prefer GUI Control panels like Plesk and cPanel as there is less chance of an error.

File System
A system for storing files on the hard drive in such a way that only your hosting package(s) can utilise/ have access to your files.  This is superior and more secure than shared hosting where everyone is on the same file system and theoretically go into areas where they should not.

Apache
Apache or Appache HTTP Server is an open source web server program that in 2009 was the first powers in excess of 100 million, and serves almost half of all websites and the majority of linux servers. Apache is often used because of its excellent performance, reliability, security features and that it is free.

Plesk Control Panel
Plesk is both a Linux and Windows GUI web hosting contrl panel that provides you the control and responsibility of managing your web site and all aspects of your email, backups, files, FTP, and a raft of other Plesk specific applications such as the web application vault.

cPanel Control Panel
cPanel is a linux based web hosting GUI control panel that provides you most of the control and responsibility of managing your web site and all aspects of your email, CGI scripts, backups, files, FTP and web site statistics.