Frequently Asked Questions.

What is a Windows VPS? Collapse VPS, or Virtual Private Server, is a term given to server virtualization technology by the web hosting industry. Basically, a large server, called a hypervisor, is "sliced" into "areas" of RAM, CPU and disk, and each of these "areas" can contain an individual operating system. Each of these "areas" is normally referred to as a virtual machine or virtual server.

But isn't an "instance", "cloud", "droplet", "virtual server", or "virtual machine" better than a VPS? Expand Shocking truth: they are all the same. Amazon AWS calls their virtual servers "instances", Microsoft's Azure calls them "virtual servers", and we call them "virtual servers" as well. The term "VPS" is just another way of calling it, although the hosting industry has chosen this term the most, and the service of a VPS provider is simply called "VPS Hosting".

Which version of Windows do you recommend? Expand We strongly recommend Windows 2016 for your Windows Server needs. Microsoft invested billions of dollars in the development of Windows 2016, its kernel and its incredible filesystem. It is, in our personal opinion, the best thing to have come out of Microsoft in a long time. It is incredibly stable! In fact, we use Windows 2016 internally for many of our essential functions, and not a single Windows 2016 server has ever crashed.

What about an easier way to use Windows? I don't understand the Server editions. Expand In that case, we recommend Windows 10. It is quite an incredible achievement over previous generations of Windows desktop editions, such as Windows 7. If you have applications that can't run in Windows 10, then we recommend Windows 7, but we don't recommend any older Windows edition.

How is the service billed? Expand We bill all servers by the hour. As an example, this means you can deploy virtual servers with different operating systems for just a day to test a new version of your application and then just delete them. To begin, you first make a "deposit" into your account, for example, $25, and as the hours go by, we deduct the hourly price of each of your virtual servers from that deposit. Before the deposit runs out, we will automatically refill your account by charging your credit card for an amount equal to the next 30 days of service. You may also pay by PayPal.

How much RAM, CPU and SSD disk space do you recommend? Expand Unlike Linux' low RAM requirements, Windows does require a good amount of RAM. Although it can run with as low as 1 GB, we recommend at least 4 GBs. However, if you will be using a web browser inside your Windows virtual server, we recommend at least 8GBs of RAM and four CPUs. Web browsers are notorious for using a lot of RAM! For disk space, at least 35 GBs or more, as Windows itself can utilize anywhere from 7 GBs to 20 GBs of space.

Deploying a Windows virtual private server at ColossusCloud; how does this work? Expand Normally, you would have a computer in your office running Windows. When you deploy a virtual server with Windows via our Client Portal, a fully functional copy of Windows will be created in a hypervisor within our large cloud platform. You would then access this Windows with a utility called Remote Desktop, which is most likely already in your computer (Mac or Windows). Once you run this utility from your physical computer, you put in the necessary credentials, and you hit "Go". You will then see on your local computer the Windows desktop coming from our cloud platform. It's as if you were sitting right in front of one of our servers.

How fast will it be? Expand Quite! However, always take into account the fact that the Windows VPS is on a server "far" from you, not right in front of you, and that you are accessing it via your local Internet provider. If your Internet is slow, well, accessing the remote desktop of the Windows VPS will also be slow. Also, out of our 6 global data centers, choose the one that is closest for better performance.