Virtual Dedicated Server

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What Does Virtual Dedicated Server Mean?

A virtual dedicated server (VDS) is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud offering that allows users to provision an isolated server over the internet. It provides functionality and resources similar to an in-house server but is managed on a rental basis by a cloud service provider.

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A VDS provides small to full-scale server instances, depending on the provider’s resource requirements and capabilities.

Techopedia Explains Virtual Dedicated Server

As one of the most popular cloud service offerings, a VDS provides users the ability to lease a managed but dedicated server to develop, deploy and host web applications. Once provisioned to a client, a VDS is not shared with other customers and, thus, does not offer multi-tenancy.

A VDS is a composite of complete server hardware, along with the operating system (OS), which is powered by a remote access layer that allows end users to globally access their server via the Internet.

Although a VDS is similar to a virtual private server (VPS), there are slight differences. A VDS provides a remote dedicated server, while a VPS is a virtual machine (VM) on top of a physical server that hosts VPS instances and shares host machine resources.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.