A VPS, or virtual private server, is a form of multi-tenant cloud hosting in which virtualized server resources are made available to an end user over the internet via a cloud or hosting provider.
Each VPS is installed on a physical machine, operated by the cloud or hosting provider, that runs multiple VPSs. But while the VPSs share a hypervisor and underlying hardware, each VPS runs its own operating system (OS) and applications and reserves its own portion of the machine's resources (memory, compute, etc.).
A VPS offers levels of performance, flexibility, and control somewhere between those offered by multi-tenant shared hosting and single-tenant dedicated hosting. While it might seem counterintuitive that the multi-tenant VPS arrangement would be called ‘private’—especially when single-tenant options are available—the term ‘VPS’ is most commonly used by traditional hosting providers to distinguish it from shared hosting, a hosting model where all the hardware and software resources of a physical machine are shared equally across multiple users.
