What is a VPS?
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server, its name clearly tells you what we’re talking about, basically you rent a server which will be managed enterely by you, that is OS, patches, and applications, including security i.e. firewall and management authentication (SSH keys).
The main advantage of the VPS model is that you are in complete charge of the software running on the server, that means you can upgrade the OS and its patches as soon their are released that mean you can remediate vulnerabilities on your own.
And because you are accepting more responsibility that translate into lower costs, the only drawback is that the level of expertise required is high because you’ll playing multiple roles.
Virtualization allows service providers to offer VPS running on the same hardware and the resources (vCPU, Memory and Storage) of each VPS can be increased as they are needed, that mean you can instantly scale resources.
VPS vs Digital Ocean Droplet
There is no difference between a VPS and a Digital Ocean (DO) droplet, actually a “droplet” is just the name used inside DO to refer to the VPS product.
Where to go next?
Now that you know a little bit more about VPS, you can take a look a the following artilces to start working with the Digital Ocean droplets.