VMware hosting providers offer web hosting services based on the popular VMware hypervisor. As with other hosting services, VMware hosting providers offer a wealth of options and services that may be relevant to your needs.

Benefits of VMware hosting

Hosted VMware solutions offer much higher levels of reliability than standard hosting options such as a dedicated server. As with other virtualised environments, VMware hosting does away with reliance on individual pieces of hardware and instead spreads your virtualised server across multiple hardware nodes. Failure of an individual hardware component should not affect the performance of your server.

VMware goes one step further with the concept of Dynamic Resource Scheduling or DRS. In order to maintain the highest performance of your server, DRS monitors the load on individual hardware components to ensure even distribution of virtual machines. Where a hardware component is under high load (e.g. CPU) it will move virtual machines away to other CPU units in order to restore the equilibrium.

VMware hosting providers

VMware hosting is a specialist field and thus it's beneficial to find a hosting partner that specialises in VMware. All genuine service providers work under the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP) which regulates how hosted VMware environments can be offered.

Of particular importance is to choose an accredited VMware hosting partner as they will have certain accreditations such as qualified VMware experts on their staff. Some hosting providers have been offering VMware services as a sideline without the technical expertise to manage the environment and thus are to be avoided.

VMware Licensing options

There are 2 options to VMware licensing - standard and enterprise. Some providers will offer you a choice of the two but I would suggest enterprise is the only one worth considering. Only enterprise offers the DRS and high availability features that are what makes VMware hosting so beneficial. In addition enterprise licensing allows the hosting provider to use storage vmotion which enables zero downtime when performing maintenance on hardware nodes; another important feature.

Licensing is often based on the amount of provision virtual ram to your server so it is worth monitoring your usage in order to keep costs down. An over specified server will offer no performance gains but will certainly cost you in terms of annual budget.

Be buyer informed

The beauty of VMware hosting is that moving your entire server between hosting providers is relatively straightforward. A highly effective way of testing the performance of a hosting provider is to create a standard virtual machine using a tool such as VMware player. After creating your server image you can upload this to several VMware hosting providers in order to test how it performs. Many providers will offer you a low cost or free testing period which will allow you to be fully informed of the host performance before making any commitment.

Summary

VMware hosting has huge advantages over traditional hosting options and is becoming increasing popular. By taking a pragmatic approach to VMware hosting providers you can find a highly reliable host for your virtual server requirements.