A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a emulation of hardware by a host operating system that allows other operating system to run on it.
VPS has two main advantages:
- It is cost effective respect to a dedicated PC because you can dimension the VM for using exactly the resources it needs
- It is a portable solution - you can transfer your VM from one physical server to another without reinstalling and reconfiguring your VM
A number of virtualization technologies make Virtual Private Servers possible: there are Windows virtualization platforms, such as VMWare, and Microsoft's Virtual Server, and Linux platforms such as Virtuozzo, OpenVZ and others.
VPS is available also as a hosting service from all major providers and resellers.
