Both give you root and an operating system of your choice. The difference is underneath: a VPS is one guest among several on a physical host, and a dedicated server is the host.
What you are actually buying
On a VPS the hypervisor divides real processors, memory and disk between guests. Our Istanbul plans run 1 to 6 vCPU with 2 to 10 GB of memory; the plans abroad run 4 to 24 vCPU with 6 to 120 GB. Memory and disk are yours; processor time is scheduled.
A dedicated server has no hypervisor under it and nobody else's work on its cores. We are between suppliers on dedicated hardware at the moment, so there is no range of ours to quote here; write to us if you need one and we will tell you honestly whether we can help yet.
Four reasons to take the whole machine
- Sustained processor load. A VPS is sized for work that peaks and settles. Something that holds every core busy for hours is the case where scheduling against neighbours starts to show.
- Licensing by core or by socket. Some software is priced against physical hardware, and a virtual core is not the thing the licence counts.
- Predictability you can put in a contract. With one tenant there is no neighbour to account for, which is easier to reason about than it is to measure.
- Memory beyond what the virtual range offers. 128 GB is on the dedicated list and not on the virtual one.
Four reasons not to
- Cost. A dedicated machine costs a multiple of a virtual one, wherever you buy it. If the work fits a VPS, the VPS is simply cheaper.
- Delivery. An Istanbul virtual server is built automatically when the payment clears. A physical machine is racked and installed by people, which is why it is a day.
- Flexibility. Reinstalling a VPS from a template costs minutes. Changing the size of a physical machine means a different machine.
- You still administer it. A dedicated server is not a managed service. The work is the same as a VPS, on bigger hardware.
The honest test
If you cannot name the resource you are running out of, you do not need a dedicated server yet. The usual path is a VPS until something measurable runs short, and the measurement is what tells you which of the fourteen configurations to look at.