What is a VPS?

In my article on shared web hosting, I explained that you don't rent access to an entire virtual machine, but only access to a user account on a virtual machine.

For a VPS, on the other hand, the host gives you access to one of the virtual machines installed on one of their physical machines, which is actually what this acronym stands for: "Virtual Private Server".

Unlike shared web hosting, you'll therefore be able to have administrator rights on the system, create as many user accounts as you want, and install tools with complete freedom, within the limits of the performance allocated to your virtual machine.

Because yes, since a server is split into several virtual machines, its performance is distributed among the different operating systems depending on the commercial plan you've selected.

With a shared host, you need to pay attention to the security of your application, but with a VPS, you also need to pay attention to the security of your system because you're responsible for managing your network interfaces.

Some VPS providers nevertheless offer a firewall service directly configurable from your admin panel, but proper management of this firewall's rules is up to you.

Conclusion

Administering a VPS isn't that different from administering a dedicated machine (at a host), the resources are simply shared with other virtual machines, which can cause slowdowns if other users experience an unusually heavy load on the same physical machine that yours is hosted on.

Note that it's best to have at least some knowledge of system administration and security before diving into putting an application into production on a VPS.