VPS Disk Space: “Enough” is Rarely Enough

• Tweet
• Email

• Tweet
• Email

Image via Wikipedia

VPS disk space is relatively inexpensive, and therefore it pays to make sure that you purchase a VPS hosting account with enough disk space to enable you to grow your site. As your site expands, and especially if it is a site that has static or archival information pages or downloads that remain or even increase in number or size, you will need sufficient disk space to store your customer or visitor data as well as to be able to have your visitors easily and quickly access all information and features on your site.

This is especially the case for Windows hosting with the Hyper-V virtualization platform. The highly reliable and stable platform, which is chosen by many Windows VPS hosting clients who prefer to rely on Microsoft solutions for their entire hosting environment, requires at least 8 GB of VPS disk space, and Microsoft actually advises reserving a minimum of 20 GB for Hyper-V.

On the other hand, according to Parallels, which publishes the Virtuozzo platform, only 500 MB of VPS disk space suffice for virtualization purposes. The difference is that when using Hyper-V, the entire operating system is located on the virtual machine, whereas Virtuozzo uses software to emulate and access the operating system (Windows or Linux as it is compatible with either) on the actual, physical machine that hosts the VPS servers.

However, that is not to say that Virtuozzo users or hosting providers do not have to be concerned with lack of disk space. In reality, given today’s prices and availability of disk space, the difference between 500 MB and 8 or even 20 GB in actual and practical, as opposed to technical, terms is not that great. What is most important is that VPS hosting customers have sufficient disk space to store all data and to run all programs that need to be hosted on the virtual disk.

For most users, starting with 40 GB is a reasonable suggestion, with 60 GB recommended for Hyper-V users with larger or multiple sites. Given the prices for extra disk space versus the consequences, namely a crashed site, of not having sufficient space, starting out with room for growth is best. Users who migrate from shared hosting where they were led to believe they had unlimited disk capacity often have become accustomed to using resource-heavy programs and they especially need extra VPS disk space from the very beginning.

Avoiding disastrous site crashes by having extra space to grow a site is the best way to take advantage of all that VPS hosting has to offer.