A virtual private server (VPS), also called a virtual dedicated server (VDS), is a virtual machine that an Internet hosting company sells as a service. Each VPS runs its own copy of an operating system (OS), and the customer usually receives superuser access to that copy.
History of VPS
Creator: No single creator; VMware released ESX Server in 2001. Year: 2001.
Server virtualization follows the same idea as time-sharing and multiprogramming. Those came earlier. Resources stay shared. Each virtual server is mostly isolated from the others. A virtual server can run its own full operating system. It can reboot without affecting the rest of the machine.
One server can appear as several servers. That became common on small computers after VMware released ESX Server in 2001. VMware later replaced ESX Server with VMware ESXi. ESXi is a hypervisor design. It removed the Linux-based console operating system (COS) of the original product.
The physical server runs a hypervisor. A hypervisor creates, releases and manages the guest operating systems. Each guest gets a share of the physical resources. It sees only what the hypervisor assigns to it. A virtual private server (VPS) generally has limited processor time, RAM and disk space. Many virtual machines (VMs) run on one physical machine.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a hypervisor. It gives each VM its own independent kernel. OpenVZ is a container method. It shares the host kernel among several containers. Containers use resources well. They usually offer less isolation and fewer options for each instance.
Many companies offer VPS hosting as an extension of web hosting. A customer can choose unmanaged hosting. The customer then runs the server. Or the customer can choose managed hosting. The provider then handles administration. A virtual server costs less than an equivalent physical server. Its performance may drop with the workload of other virtual machines on the same hardware.
Changelog and latest update
Wikipedia lists KVM among the hypervisors. KVM is part of the Linux kernel, as the kernel.org documentation shows. So a host that runs Linux can start a VPS with its own kernel. The Linux kernel release page lists each new version with its date.
Containers share the host kernel. OpenVZ is one example. All containers on the machine share that kernel. This method uses fewer resources than full virtual machines. But a container cannot run a different kernel from the host. So customers of container hosts have fewer customization options.
Unmetered hosting gives a fixed bandwidth line. It has no data limit. On a VPS this bandwidth is shared. A fair usage policy usually applies. Wikipedia notes that unlimited offers of disk space and bandwidth are generally limited by acceptable usage policies.
Wikipedia lists the licensing of proprietary software as a challenge in multi-tenant virtual environments.
Latest update: Linux kernel 7.2.10 (stable), 2026-10-11
The kernel.org release list shows version 7.2.10 as the latest stable Linux kernel, released 2026-10-11. KVM runs inside the Linux kernel. So each new kernel release can carry KVM changes. The same list shows the mainline version 7.3-rc7 for testing.
Usage examples
A VPS is administered over Secure Shell (SSH) with the tools of its operating system. The examples use the Linux command line on a VPS running Debian or Ubuntu. They show a key-based login, installation of a web server package, a check of the virtualization type, and a check of the memory, disk and processor resources.
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 admin@203.0.113.40
# after login the prompt shows the VPS host name
admin@vps:~$ whoami
adminThe ssh command connects to the VPS at its IP address with a private key, so no password is sent. The admin account is a normal user with sudo rights. The whoami command prints the account name, which confirms that the login worked.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nginx
systemctl status nginx --no-pagerThe apt tool on Debian and Ubuntu refreshes the package list and installs the nginx web server. The systemctl command then shows whether the nginx service is running. The --no-pager option prints the result without a paging program.
systemd-detect-virt
# sample output: kvmThe systemd-detect-virt command prints the type of virtualization that the VPS runs under. The sample output kvm means the VPS is a KVM virtual machine. A container host prints a container name instead, and a physical server prints none.
free -h
df -h /
nprocThe free command reports the RAM in use, df reports disk space on the root file system, and nproc prints the number of processors that the VPS can use. These three numbers show the limits that the VPS plan sets, which are often lower than the limits of a physical server.
References
These sources are outside Websnoogie and were checked on 2026-10-12.
Virtual private server
Wikipedia
The encyclopedia article on VPS hosting. It covers the definition, root access to the operating system, the history of VMware ESX Server, the hypervisor types such as KVM and OpenVZ, and the unmanaged and managed hosting options.
What is Amazon EC2?
Amazon Web Services
The Amazon EC2 user guide page that introduces the service, which provides virtual computing environments called instances. The page explains the features and the related services that a customer uses to run a virtual server.
Virtual machine
Wikipedia
The encyclopedia article on virtual machines, the software that runs a guest operating system on a host computer. It describes hypervisors, hardware virtualization and the isolation that separates one virtual machine from another. The page is cited here for the definition of the guest operating system.
The Linux Kernel Archives
kernel.org
The official site for the Linux kernel. The front page lists the latest stable, longterm and mainline releases with their dates. KVM is part of this kernel, so the release list shows the current state of the virtualization code. The release list is cited here as the dated source for the latest update.
A virtual server with its own reserved space
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