Moving to VPS anyone know what's involved?

[Shockwave]

Thought it would probably be best to start a new topic.

Trawling the internet these last couple of days has shown me that;

A: Dedicated hosting is not an option for us because of the cost.
B: Shared hosting is a minefield and I still can't find anything as good as Petahosting with more diskspace that will allow us to retain control of our domain name.
C: Probably a VPS is the long term answer for our future storage needs.

This opens a can of worms, I would like to know what exactly is involved in configuring a vps so that this forum software will run on it.
Does anybody here have any experience with server management?

Thanks in advance.

[Jim]

As I understand it, you get your own VM - Virtual Machine - it looks like a PC but it'll be sharing a blade server with other VMs.  Check out VMWare and VirtualPC, these allow you to install an OS inside them.  To the OS they look like a real PC.
So what you have to do is build your own install from the OS upwards.  OS, SQL Server, Webserver, SMF, whatever else it needs.
Not a lot of fun.  And it's not obvious how it solves the problem of your shared server getting slashdotted.

edit: wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vps

Jim

[Shockwave]

Sounds like a lot of work then Jim. Perhaps this would not be a great idea.

[Jim]

It's tricky, but you do have total control over your own PC - you could install pretty much anything and configure the OS however you like, use what webserver you like...but you also manage your own security, which we're not ready for yet.

Jim

[Shockwave]

You're right Jim.

The search is on for a good shared host instead then.