DreamHost Private Servers

11Jun08

DreamHost now offer their own VPS product, DreamHost Private Servers.

Dreamhost Private Servers seem to exist somewhere between a shared hosting environment, and a VPS. A true VPS would also allow root access and the ability to run your own software on the server (such as cpanel, Plesk, etc).

With Dreamhost PS you don’t get the “fully yours” features but that has it’s own advantages such as Dreamhost’s control panel, 1 click installs, and all the other goodies in a standard Dreamhost account. You can also restart your server, and it’s got a groovy web 2.0 slider to set how much RAM/storage you get, which means you can scale up as you need more resources.

If you find yourself taking up too much server resources, or you have an suspicion that somebody else on your server is using too many resources and slowing down your sites this could be a great addition to your Dreamhost account.

According to Dreamhost here is a guideline for how much dedicated CPU/RAM typical websites need:

150 MB / 150 Mhz: 99% of all predominantly static sites. (e.g. www.dreamhost.com)
300 MB / 300 Mhz: A top 100 blog. (e.g. blog.dreamhost.com)
515 MB / 515 Mhz: A busy forum. (e.g. discussion.dreamhost.com)
2300 MB / 2300 Mhz: A very popular web app. (e.g. panel.dreamhost.com)

I am seriously considering leaving my current VPS at PowerVPS.com which I pay $45/mo for and moving to Dreamhost (which I use for some of my smaller sites and as a back-up server) and upgrading to “Dreamhost PS”.

Dreamhost also offers a service called “DreamHost PS MySQL” with the same sort of memory and cpu isolation from DreamHost PS for your MySQL databases. If you’re site is database heavy you may be interested in this feature.

Currently Dreamhost PS is invite only, unless you are already a Dreamhost customer. Current customers can login to web panel and upgrade to a private server.