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Shared hosts usually don't guarantee resources, they just say unlimited bandwith and things like that and the performance is best effort.

Is it different with a VPS? For example, it says 1 vCores, 2GB RAM. Does it mean all these resources are mine? Can I utilize 100% of the vCore and the 2GB RAM all the time if I want to? Or does the 2GB RAM, for example, only mean this is the maximum I can use if the stars are right, but I can also get much less if other VPSs on the same server use too much resources?

So do VPSs usually guarantee resources? Or they don't and their only advantage is I have root permission on the server, but in terms of resources it's also just best effort?

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I can't speak for all vpn providers, but I've been using digital ocean for a few years now.

Digital Ocean allocate a certian number of cpu cores, memory and, disk space to your server. This means that those resources are only used by your server. Meaning that if you wanted to you can run on 100% cpu and ram for as long as you wish.

I'd imagine thats how other providers work, but can only speak from experience.

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  • That's good that DO guarantees these resources (do they explicitly say this?). I wonder if it is generally the case or only the better providers do this.
    – Tom
    Commented Dec 2, 2019 at 14:40
  • I don't think they explicitly say it, I was talking from my experience. I'd assume it's the case with most providers
    – Conor Grocock
    Commented Dec 2, 2019 at 15:58
  • So then it's not really guaranteed, I guess. I searched for it and it looks like CPU, for example, is shared. This confirms my suspicion that VPSs are not really different from shared hosting in terms of resource usage. You get what's available at the time.
    – Tom
    Commented Dec 2, 2019 at 16:47
  • "vpn providers"?
    – Patrick Mevzek
    Commented Jun 24, 2020 at 15:10
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Some providers do explicitly offer dedicated CPU cores (Hetzner for example). That means physical CPU cores on the host machine are allocated to your VPS only. These instances cost substantially more for good reason.

In all other cases, assume that you're sharing and beware the "noisy neighbour" effect. Yes, you can always run a vCPU at "100%". Just don't expect that to deliver the same response times and processing power constantly. In my experience even identical virtual servers from the same provider can perform very differently at different times. This is all down to the CPU load on the host machine.

So if your application/site really needs to deliver fast responses or perform CPU-intensive tasks (like video processing) all the time, go with a dedicated vCPU option or a dedicated server.

As for RAM and disk space: with any provider these should always be allocated and available to you. You can always use 100% of your 2GB RAM.

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