A virtual private server is a virtual environment on a dedicated server that acts as a machine of its own. You can buy these from webhosts and can normally access them through SSH or a console that is provided for you. Do you have one? Why? And if not, would you purchase one?
I personally do - I use it primarily for cloud storage but sometimes use it to host things in an apache server in which others can access from my personal url. Very handy!
Discuss