All Vultr Server Products Explained

Last updated on May 30th, 2022 at 06:23 pm.

Watch the video above to understand all the different Vultr Server products.

In the video above : All Vultr Server products explained – compute vs optimized compute vs bare metal – Vultr Tutorial

All Vultr Server products explained

Confused about the different Vultr Server products? This post will explain the different Vultr servers. If you want to deploy a server and are not sure which one to choose, read about the different Vultr products below..

Use this Vultr $100 Credit coupon to get $100 worth of free credit added to your account when you sign up on Vultr.

Below are the different Vultr products explained

Introduction : 00:00

After the Vultr products update, you may be a little confused about which server to deploy for your website or project. In this post I’ll briefly explain each of these products. For each product there is a link to the video timeline.

Overview of all products : 00:23

You may watch this section in the video. Click on the timeline link to watch a brief introduction for each of the products. .

1) Cloud Compute : 1:23

These are simply VPS servers . That is, a typical Virtual Private Server with shared resources. They are virtualized machines where you can deploy a server and run your own website. It is like renting a virtual computer in the cloud. Only that some resources such as CPU are shared with others in the same Virtualization network. 

Under Cloud Compute, there are different server types to choose from. They are explained below.

i) What is Vultr High Performance Cloud Compute : 2:06

High performance cloud compute servers are the latest addition to the Cloud compute products. High performance servers are built with new generation technology. They are built with new generation AMD Epyc and Intel Xeon processors. They also utilize the latest NVME SSD and Memory.

You can therefore choose either AMD Epyc or Intel Xeon VPS cloud servers. The prices for AMD and Intel are the same , hence you can choose one or the other.

ii) What is Vultr High Frequency : 2:28

High Frequency servers are  powered by fast 3GHz+ intel processors and fast NVME SSD. They are also fast loading Virtual servers. They are faster than regular performance cloud compute servers.

They are similarly priced as the high performance servers, however you get slightly more NVME storage.

iii) Regular Performance : 2:47

Regular performance cloud compute servers are powered by previous generation Intel processors and regular SSD drives.

These are the VPS servers that have been around the longest on Vultr. They are still formidable in performance. They are best used for testing or development environments.

If you have a lightweight website such as a static website, these servers can still be used in production.

For production environments, when looking for a VPS, always choose your Vultr server in the following order.

1. High performance
2. High Frequency
3. Regular performance

2) Optimized Cloud Compute : 3:35

Optimized Cloud compute are virtual dedicated machines. These are still VPS servers, however they provide fully dedicated resources. The vCPU is not shared among clients on the same host.

Since they are dedicated, they are more expensive and will provide a stable performance for your Website or App.

They are powered by new generation AMD EPYC vCPUs. 

Vultr Optimized cloud servers are categorized as follows.

i) General purpose : 4:11

General purpose optimized cloud servers provide a balance of CPU, Memory and NVME storage.

All components are balanced and there is no focus on one specific aspect of computation. The processor , RAM and disk storage is balanced giving an overall balanced performance.

Use cases based on Vultr recommendation : Web and application servers, E-Commerce, game servers, video and audio streaming, API serving, relational databases.                   

ii) CPU Optimized : 4:21

CPU optimized servers provide more CPU than RAM and NVME. They are best used for computation processes such as video/audio encoding and large batch processing.

Use cases for CPU optimized servers: audio/video encoding, batch processing, big CI/CD tasks, high performance computing tasks , advertisement serving, data analytics processing.

iii) Memory Optimized : 4:37

Memory optimized servers provide more value on Memory than CPU or NVMe SSD.

You will get more RAM than you get CPU and storage.

Use cases: relational databases such as MySQL, in-memory databases and DB caches (e.g. Redis, Memcached), real time data analytics.

iv) Storage optimized : 5:00

Storage Optimized Cloud compute provide more NVMe storage. If more NVMe storage is more important to your processing than RAM or CPU, these are the servers to go with.

Use cases: large non-relational databases such as. Cassandra, MongoDB etc, OLAP Systems, high frequency online transaction processing (OLTP)

3) Bare Metal Servers : 5:10

Bare Metal servers are dedicated servers with no virtualization. Bare metal are physical server computers you can hire from Vultr and set up remotely.

Vultr provides both AMD and Intel servers :  Intel E3-1270v6 ,  Intel E-2286G,  Intel E-2288G,  AMD EPYC 7443P,  AMD EPYC 73F3P,  AMD EPYC 7543,  AMD EPYC 7713 etc

Kubernetes : 5:44

The Vultr Kubernetes Engine is available for all to use at no cost. You will only pay for the resources  used by your cluster. These resources could be High Frequency servers, High performance servers or any of the Optimized cloud servers. They could also be resources such as block storage, object storage, load balancer and so on. You will only get billed for the resources you use.

Vultr will manage the Kubernetes engine setup themselves. All you have to do is manage your cluster built on top of the Vultr Kubernetes engine.

What is Kubernetes? Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Orchestration is the automated configuration, management, and coordination of  systems, applications, and computer services.

Block Storage : 6:34

Block storage is like a separate drive you can attach to your virtual server. They add more space to your cloud server. 

If you need more storage space, you can purchase a Vultr Block storage and attach it to your cloud server.

If you run out of storage on your instance, instead of upgrading your server, just get block storage.

Block storage is not the same as object storage.

Object Storage : 7:06

Object storage is used for storing objects that can be accessed. This is like the S3 storage from Amazon. You can store and access static files such as images, videos and so on. Once you create an object storage space, you can access it through the links that Vultr provides.

You can use Object storage to backup files through applications that support the S3 API.

You could also use the object storage to host video files and embed them on your site. Typically in any way you could use the S3 storage, you can do the same with Vultr Object storage.

Object storage is like a raw dropbox for developers.

Object storage cannot be attached to a server like block storage.

Deploy a Vultr Server : 8:37

Other products

The following are other Vultr products you will encounter in your admin dashboard.

Automatic backups

If you choose to enable automatic backups for your server instance, your server will  automatically get backed up based on a schedule. Adds a 20% charge to your server cost.

Info from vultr docs: 

• Backups are stored in the same data center but on a separate, fault-tolerant backup storage system.
• Automatic backup can be scheduled in the admin dashboard to run daily, every other day, weekly, or monthly.
• The time, day of week or month that the backup takes place can be  configured in the dashboard.
• You can only restore snapshots of the entire server, not individual part files.
• Only the two most recent backups are stored. Older backups are removed after each scheduled interval.
• Backups include the VPS active file system. Backups do not include attached block storage volumes. 

Managed Databases

The database server is managed by Vultr. Just deploy your database and connect it to your application.

Supported databases : MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis. Signup here for this service. 

Snapshots

You can take a image of your server and use it to deploy another server with similar settings and OS. Snapshots cost $0.05/GB per month

DDoS protection

Vultr provides Denial of Service protection at a cost of $10 per month per 10GBps.

Direct Connect

Direct connect enables you to connect Vultr Data Center to your premise or connect your Vultr instance to other supported Cloud hosting providers. 

VPC Peering

If you need to connect two VPC networks on Vultr, this is where VPC peering comes in. You can connect VPC networks in the same account or from 2 different Vultr accounts. 

The cost of VPC peering is essentially $20/month. This means that if the VPC peering is for 2 VPC networks on the same account, the price is $20 p.m. And if the VPC peering is between 2 different accounts, the price will be split between the two accounts and it will be $10 p/m for account A, and $10p.m, for account B, hence the total for the peering will be $20.

Video captions for Vultr products video on YouTube

Hi there and welcome to this video. Vultr did an update of their products. They added more products and they’re still adding more. You’re probably confused, especially if you’ve never used Vultr before. You’re confused about which server should you choose.

In this video I’m going to talk about the different types of Vultr servers and I’m going to explain them so that you can know the one that you need to deploy for whichever service that you want to run. If you want to look at the products, I can just click there . I’m going to explain this on the surface and then the next thing, I’m going to come here under pricing.

This video is going to be slightly long. Not too long but just a little bit long because I want to explain everything so that by the end of this video you’ll have a clear understanding of all these different servers.

Here we have Optimized cloud. Just think of this as virtual dedicated servers. The resources will not be shared like they’re usually shared in cloud compute.

Moving on to cloud compute. Cloud compute is VPS. If you’re looking for a vps you can just go under cloud compute. On the cloud compute you’re going to see that there are different types of servers as well. I’m going to talk about them when we get to the pricing page.

Bare metal. Of course bare metal are dedicated servers. There is no virtualization layer on top of these servers. If you want to deal with the server directly then you can deploy bare metal servers.

And then block storage. This is a storage that you can add onto VPS and your optimized Clouds .

Then Kubernetes. If you know what Kubernetes is then you don’t need me to explain it. If you don’t know what it is, it’s just a tool that automates most of these deployment processes. it is an orchestration tool that can help you to automatically scale your your deployments.

Object storage. Object storage, just think of this as the s3 storage.
And then load balancers. If you know what a load balancer is, I don’t need to explain that.

And then databases. These are coming soon. These are just managed databases.

Now let’s go to pricing and then we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into each of these. Let’s start with cloud compute. I’m just going to click there on cloud compute. And on cloud compute you can see we also have different server types. If you’re all on the same server in one of these cloud compute servers then the resources are shared.

High performance. These are just powered by new generation processors. You can see there is Intel and AMD. They use modern hardware. There’re some people that love AMD and some people love Intel. You can see the pricing for these are just the same so you can decide, do you want to use AMD or do you want to use Intel. Then you can choose that from the high performance servers.

Scrolling down we have high frequency servers. You can see these are powered by intel and the processors are much higher , but the the difference probably won’t be that noticeable. So you can use high frequency or high performance. If it were me I’d always choose AMD. Nowadays AMD servers are very reliable. So I’ll definitely choose AMD Epyc.

Then regular performance. These are the ones that were there when Vultr started. These are the servers that we used to use. If you want to use these they’re still good servers. You can use them. You can see the prices are very reasonable. These are the ones that we started with when we were hosting WordPress on VPS. And you can do the same. Ok. If these prices are appealing to you then you can definitely use this to host your website on Vultr. The thing is, when you go to the Vultr dashboard you’re going to notice that these prices are not there in all the different locations. Sometimes you have to search for which location has these prices. That’s very important for you to know because if you go there you might think that oh these guys lied to me. No! You’ll find them in different locations.

You’re going to see how to do that just in a moment. And then optimized cloud.

In other VPS you’ll find these are called Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS). These are virtual dedicated servers whereby the resources are not shared. Since they’re dedicated, of course they’re more expensive. 1 vCPU for 4gb you get it at $30. If it were me I’d just do an experiment. A performance experiment with this and then compare with one of the ones above, for the one of $30.
Maybe that, and then I would compare with this just to see which one gives me better performance. If the one above gives me better performance that’s the one I would choose.

General purpose. For this you get a mixture of everything. You can see the CPU, not too much CPU, not too little ram, as well as the storage space. Those are balanced.

Now if you come down to the CPU optimized, you’ll find that there’ll be more CPU than there is of ram. The value of CPU goes higher, If you have a process that requires CPU processing, you’d probably need to go with these ones because with these ones you get value for your money on the CPU.

Then down here we have memory optimized. The memory optimized are also dedicated virtual CPUs. Value for your money is on RAM. So you get more ram. If you have a database intensive application you should probably go with memory optimized because any database applications usually just use too much memory. Your server response time will definitely be much faster with these servers.

And then we have storage optimized. The same goes for these storage optimized cloud servers. If you need more storage then take the ones that have more NVME. Just remember that these are nvme .

Now bare metal. Bare metal of course these are like dedicated machines. There’s no virtualization layer that you access. You’ll just be accessing the system. Even if you deploy this server and use it for a week you’ll only pay for the week. That’s one thing I always love with Vultr. And that’s why whenever you have anything that you want to test just test it on Vultr because you’re charged hourly. Deploy your bare metal on the dashboard and then you can start setting it up just like you’d set up any computer remotely.

Kubernetes engine. The Kubernetes engine. If you want to run Kubernetes and you don’t want to deal with manual installation of things. You don’t want to install Kubeadm yourself. You don’t want to install all the other things that you need for your Kubernetes setup to run. Your cluster will automatically be deployed using the Vultr Kubernetes engine. You’re only charged for the resources that you use. So what does that mean? That means that if you deploy Kubernetes on Vultr you’re only charged for the server you’re using. Maybe you decide to use one of this high frequency one.

Let’s say you decide to use the general purpose and you want to deploy a three set up Kubernetes whereby you have a control plane and two two worker nodes. The number of servers that you want to deploy in your kubernetes that is what you’ll be charged for .

And if you decide to deploy anything else like load balancing you’ll be charged for that as well.

Then block storage, as I said, block storage, if you want to add server space to your VPS you can add them one dollar a month 10 gb. Maybe you want more. Let’s say you want additional 100 gb. You can get that for ten dollars a month. If you’re maybe using this for backup you can usually add this and you can do that on your dashboard. There’s also a documentation for how to do it to make sure that your VPS can recognize your block storage. So, Block storage is just like an additional disk that you can mount on your vps.

And then object storage. As I said, perhaps you want to do backups. You want to share images, videos. You can use object storage. You can see it’s very affordable. Five dollars a month for 250 gb. You cannot get the same price on AWS. Most people use aws but in the end it’s just very expensive to use it that’s why big companies use. It if you are just a small guy trying to make it through the day, Vultr , Digital ocean, linode . These platforms are here for us.

Here’s a setup for object storage. You’ve installed Nextcloud and you need to connect it to something. Normally you’ll find that people connect s3 but instead of using s3 which is from aws you can use the Vultr Object storage. You can backup your things.

Another setup. Again let’s say you’re running a WordPress website and you need to backup your WordPress . You need to backup your server . You install a server backup application and then on the backup application where you’d usually tell the software where to backup, you can use the Vultr key. The key that you get from Vultr you can connect to that application for backing up.

Then load balancers. If you know what a load balancer is, I don’t need to explain. It you can use your load balancers to ensure that none of your systems are being overworked. If any system is being overworked the weight is taken to another server.

There are all these other add-on services. You can come here and read more about them.

If you’re setting up a website you should probably use high performance or high frequency. You can use either the high performance for AMD or intel.

Let’s go to the Vultr dashboard and just see how you can deploy a server. You’ll just come to your dashboard. Click on deploy and then of course you can choose the server that you want to use.

In this case let’s say you want to use the dedicated optimized cloud servers. You can choose that. You can also choose them based on what we’ve just looked at. The general purpose, CPU optimized and so on. But of course normally you probably just want to use the cloud compute. For cloud compute, let’s say you want to use AMD high performance.

Let’s choose a location. As I was telling you , you’ll notice that there are certain locations when you choose you’ll not get access to certain servers. I don’t know that this is a good example.

A good example would be with regular performance servers. In the regular performance servers you saw that there was one which was like 2.50 and there was one which was like 3.50. Three dollars 50 cents 2.50 cents . So for those you saw that there were some which had that but you can see that you can’t find it here. So it depends on the location. Sometimes they usually sell out .

Let’s go to America I know that’s where we’ll find them .
Miami. None. Atlanta . Yeah you can see in Atlanta you can find the 2.50 one. If you’re looking for the one for 3.50 . Chicago. It’s not there. Dallas… I don’t know where it is. Seattle maybe. No. So just keep searching for it, you’ll find it somewhere.
Depending on the operating system that you want to use, normally I just prefer Debian. Honestly Debian is a good OS. Reliable. Ubuntu is also good. People use ubuntu as well . Lots of people use Ubuntu nowadays. Almalinux, people that used to love CentOS have moved to Almalinux and Rocky
linux. You can use any of these too. Okay. You can see that they support CentOS stream. If you want to use CentOS stream it’s also there as well.
That’s pretty much it for this video. This video is about choosing a Vultr server. By now of course you know which server to choose because I’ve shown you the different types of the servers and explained each of them plus the implication of choosing locations and the servers. That’s pretty much it for this video. If you have any question feel free to let me know. Once you set up your server if you want to set up your server, I have a video for that and I’ll leave the link in the description as well as the post.

If you’re going to deploy a server on Vultr, you can get $100 credit in the description below.