Virtual private servers used to be something that people set up if they wanted to experiment with some code base or run tests before they rolled out a site. Once they got done with whatever troubleshooting tasks they took on, they'd wind down the VPS and switch over to a shared host. Things are much different these days, however.

Industry analysts believe that North American VPS usage will grow by over 40 percent by 2025. This would make it one of the fastest growing back-end technologies, rivaling even the outrageous growth that Rails and Rust frameworks once enjoyed. Unlike those technologies, however, VPS services are growing at such a fast rate because of the fact that they're easy to work with and relatively secure compared to shared and co-located hosting packages.

Reasons Behind this Rapid Growth

By this point, anyone who follows tech industry headlines has probably grown tired of reading claims about the growth of GNU/Linux as a desktop platform. It became something of a joke that there would be a so-called year of Linux. Nevertheless, the numbers clearly illustrate that the growth of the VPS market clearly mirrors the adoption of GNU/Linux-based hosting packages. Since the Linux kernel is so lightweight, Linux-based VPS systems can be deployed on relatively low-end hardware. They can then be rented out to cloud-based client users who want to host their own sites or apps at a low cost. Unlike most other inexpensive alternatives, this doesn't require users to make huge sacrifices in expense.

These configurations come with all of the security benefits of a Linux-based environment, but they're still fully accessible from machines running any platform at all. Site administrators could theoretically manage an online store or a blog using a Windows PC or even an iOS device without any difficulty. Individual users could set up their own VPS with very little difficulty using this method. This versatility has even helped to ensure that people can build their own servers based around nothing more than their own hardware.

Once an administrator has something in place, it's extremely easy to access the server via ssh on the command line. Macintosh users and Linux pros have ssh tools at their fingertips all of the time, but those on the Microsoft side of things have been left out until recently. The fact that Windows admins now have more tools than ever before is helping to further fuel the growth of this technology.

Easy Access to VPS Tools

Back in 2018, Microsoft integrated ssh technology into PowerShell, so most people who have installed all of their relevant updates shouldn't have to worry much about whether or not they can virtually dial into their own VPS structure. Those who aren't can download one of several free open-source tools to get the job done. This is good to know, since the growth in virtualization software has ensured that many people are going to be turning to VPS-based solutions in the near future.

Tech-savvy system administrators can spin up a virtual machine with little to no difficulty, thus making it even more likely that people will start to build their own VPS systems. Using this kind of software, it's theoretically possible to turn any modern PC or tablet into a server. While this might not be the most efficient configuration imaginable, it's got the benefit of flexibility and should be a great way to test deployments before actually sending them out into the wild.

Throughput data performance has always been a major issue when working with virtual hardware, so it's likely that most people are going to opt for some kind of remote VPS service as opposed to rolling their own equipment. That being said, the fact that such services exist and are growing speaks volumes about the health of the VPS market as a whole. It's likely that any number of existing online resources will migrate to a form of VPS in the next few years, which will help the sector to expand even more.

The biggest winner of this trend might very well be the consumer, who may enjoy lower prices as a result of increased competition from web hosts.