[geeks] Virtual Machine Hosting

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm wondering if anyone knows about what I'll call VM Hosting, where a
> CoLo facility runs a client-provided VM, I know they exist
> (lunahost.com is but one example) - anyone have any insight into this
> from a customers perspective?
> 
> My concerns would be:
> 
>  - Speed of VM, since you are sharing the host
>  - Network load handling (heaven forbid something I'm involved in gets popular!)
>  - Cost compared with other, more conventional shared hosting solution
>  - Any gotchas or suprises to be aware of

It is cheaper than even the cheapest dedicated server.  The very
cheapest is the $2.00 websites where you are sharing a machine with
thousands of other domains.

A VM gets you your own IP and root access to configure it how you want.

The CPU speed is usually not a problem, what will get you is disk access
of random reads/writes since the disks will be shared amongst all the VMs.

Probably the cheapest are the Xen-based ones if you are running Linux,
the VMWare based hosts usually charge more.

--Patrick