Servers and hosting
VPS (virtual private server)
A share of a physical server with its own operating system, its own IP address and full root access. Between shared hosting and a dedicated server.
A VPS is a virtual machine on a physical host, running its own copy of an operating system with a fixed share of the host's CPU, memory and storage. From the inside it behaves like a server of its own: you install packages, run services, set up users, reboot it, and nobody else's software runs on it.
Compared with shared web hosting you get control and isolation; compared with a dedicated server you get a lower price, provisioning in minutes, and the ability to resize. The trade-off is that the physical hardware is shared, which is why how a provider allocates resources matters: dedicated shares per plan, or oversold ones that depend on the neighbours being idle.
A VPS comes with a public IPv4 address and, on request, IPv6, a control panel for power actions, reinstall and console, and reverse DNS you set yourself. It is the right size for a website with its own stack, a mail server, a VPN endpoint, a development environment or a small application.