.. am now just finishing writing the sequel, VPS Admin for Newbies.

For $20 a month, unless you've got a hobby site or a simple site with little traffic, I recommend an unmanaged virtual private server as the way to go. The guide I've put together explains the lot, and you can literally copy/paste the instructions, for this ..

Serve multi sites & blogs on a budget .. at the fastest possible speed .. with the least downtime .. in the most secure environment .. and future-proofed for easy admin.

After being with Gisol for more than two years and paying for another two, they suspended the account without any warning. I just removed the pointers. I didn't or haven't yet received any money back. Fastnext suspended the account twice, without any warning. They reinstated the account after my constant complaint but I never trusted them. I also removed the pointers. I used the account for a small account I had and they suspended that after I time.

In both Gisol and Fastnext, their reasoning for suspension was that I was using too much bandwith, even though bandwidth was unlimited with Gisol and way more that I was using with Fastnext. When Gisol suspended my account I was using half the bandwith I had been using six months previous.

Having nine servers, the bandwidth was never that much, 2G to 3G a day never more for each server.

Unlike you of the nine servers I found IX to be the fastest and most reliable. Lypha is also a great hosting service.

I have to tell you I had LunarPages and did not renew after the two years. Their service was the slowest of the nine. I had about a quarter traffic on Lunarpages than I had on IX and Lypha, per the daily logs. This was all to the same domain. There is a filtering system in place on shared hosting and Lunarpages seemed to be the most extreme, per my daily logs. I figured Lunarpages pick up is slower.

Recently have gone to a virtual server. This is my first. Have been on it for a month. Like having root access and learning a lot from this expanded capability. I have WHM which is the over program for cpanel. Having WHM, I haven't tried Plex yet, so cannot comment on Plex. WHM seems to provide all that I need at the moment.

I am thinking of going to another virtual server, so as not to have all eggs in one basket. I asked for 512mg memory, and it costs in the 40 dollar month bracket. Now I have six shared host, three in Malasia, Ix, Lypha and MidPhase. In truth I could probably use those last three and they would handle the traffic. MidPhase moved me to another of their servers because I had a lot of traffic, but they never mentioned suspension, and when they moved me I had more traffic.

Both Lypha and Ix have been excellent.

I recommend MidPhase, Lypha and Ix for even mid-size traffic requirements. Certainly for startups.

Where I am not responsibly I need to have a virtual server. Out of the 13 pointers I use, 4 nameservers are going to the one virtual server. I will likely increase this to six nameservers, so the virual servers will be handling half of the traffic and the six other shared hosting servers the other half. If the vitual server goes down, the others can pick up the traffic temporarily.

It traffic increases I will open up another virtual server in some other geographical location. That's the plan.