general query on server virtualisation technology and webhosting

cretaceous

ok.. I host a number of sites for clients and right now I am on a Virtuozzo VPS

it hasn't been very reliable but couldn't that equally be the webhost's infrastructure or crappy code I've written?

(I also look after another site on a differnt Virtuozzo webhost and that has been fine.. but that host at least runs mySql on another server)

VM Ware virtualisation seems several rungs above in terms of robustness
and maybe Xen virtualisation is better than Virtuozzo (and it's certainly cheaper than VMWare)

but I am still going to be dealing with the unknown quantity of webhost's infrastructure etc.
(I spoke to a sales guy at a webhost who run VMWare, who didn't even know the terms 'vps' or 'vds' - but should a thing like that make me think the sales guy is an idiot?)

so how the hell does one decide which webhost /virtualisation technology is reliable?

I need a control panel and prefer Plesk - I know zilch Linux management and don't want to learn on the job and break things.. so unmanaged seems several steps too far
but it all seems guesswork and this is after doing a lot of research on internet

any tips on what to look for?
(I think I asked this question two years ago before moving to current provider ..and see where that got me)

bpat1434

This is going to sound like 1 + 1 = a sack of potatos, but look at the Rackspace Managed Cloud.

When I say "Rackspace Managed Cloud" I really mean Slicehost, and by that I mean a VPS. What Rackspace has done with their cloud is just guarantee that a single server won't be overloaded with VPS's so that resources can't fully be utilized; however, they're billing on a cloud solution service. So while you pay for the server per hour, and you pay for your bandwidth, it's not that horrible. My company actually just started migrating to it. The nice thing is we set up one template server and use that to deploy other servers off of. So they're all the same software, setup, and everything. Makes managing them easier. We don't use a control panel; however, I think Rackspace would add one if you needed it.

Stability comes from a number of factors including code, hardware, infrastructure and how proactive the host is in keeping up with things. And of course if you put inefficient code on the server then that too can contribute to the stability.

Best thing you can do is (a) profile your code to see if it's consuming too many resources, (b) test individual sites out on a new VPS until it becomes unstable and then look at what's in that site.

cretaceous

thanks bpat - yes, that was the conclusion I was coming to - move to a high quality VPS purveyor
I can only guess at what you mean by 1 + 1 = a sack of potatos

that's a new phrase to me !

bpat1434

Usually when people speak of the cloud they talk about a farm of servers which run virtual machines across them all. So it can scale instantly without any downtime. The rackspace cloud is just a regular VPS. You pay on a cloud schedule (size and bandwidth) but don't get all of the features of the cloud (instant availability, instant expansion, etc.). If you resize their VPS it's down for a few minutes, and if you need to add an IP, it's down for a few more minutes. Not very "cloud" like.

So Cloud + Rackspace = VPS, not cloud e.g. 1 + 1 = sack of potatos. I can't take credit for it, but I did get the quote from Season 2 of The West Wing.