Always look for the guaranteed RAM. You may not get the burstable RAM when you need it the most(peak hours).

For just parking a domain name, some registrars will do that for free, no hosting account required!

You certainly don't need your own server for that.

The same could occur with a VPS.

Pleask is expensive. cPanel is better. Get a reseller or even a shared.

I would second the opinion to look for registers that do the parking for a domain for free . Anyhow getting at least 256mb guaranteed ram is necessary if you are going to use it for medium load website or other works .

Never, ever bet on Burstable RAM though. Guaranteed RAM is always available to you, burstable RAM may or may not be. Depending on it may cause wierd side-effects, depending on your luck.

This is very true! I had the eco plan with godaddy and it came with 256 mb guaranteed and 1 gb of "burst". My sites don't get that much traffic at all, but I still found that my apache and mysql was constantly crashing every other night.

Lesson learned, never rely on something that doesn't exist. As far as i'm now concerned, "burst" memory is in the same league as "unlimited" bandwidth - just another marketing gimmick.

I recently ran the OpenVZ script that generates a configuration based on 1/nth of the host. I was a little shocked to see how much memory it was giving to each guest, and then I realised that it wasn't dividing up physical memory, but the combination of physical memory and swap space.

I certainly don't think that this is appropriate, and I am now a little concerned about what OpenVZ providers mean exactly when they offer plans with ???MB of RAM. As a client, if I was allocated a certain amount of "memory" only to find it swapping in and out all the time I would be very annoyed. As a hosting provider I wonder if, by doing what I consider to be the right thing, I am left competing on an uneven field.

In the worst case you could be getting guaranteed RAM that is prone to swapping, and burst RAM that is never available.

I chose to provide guaranteed RAM that there is enough physical memory for, and burst RAM that there is typically enough physical memory for, and certainly enough swap for. By typically, I mean normal operation, only in the event of one host dying (and thus its sibling node taking on both sets of guests while we effect repairs) would all the physical memory be taken up by the alloted guaranteed RAM.

This way everyone can allocate all the way up to the burst all of the time, but it might get a little swappy in an emergency situation.

So unfortunately, in answer to the original question, I would have to say that guaranteed RAM and burst RAM don't by themselves mean a thing. The rest of the story depends on how much of that is real memory, how much can be swap, and by how much both real memory and swap are oversubscribed in different scenarios. If you are considering a hosting company that isn't comfortable with divulging that information it could be a bad sign.

You make a good point Blueroomhosting.

Unfortunately, I believe that the only way to prove whether you're receiving real RAM or swap is to have the VPS up and running to monitor the resource usage. So basically, you still need to consider guaranteed RAM as the only 'sort of real' resource.

If I remember correctly, even without the virtualization sofware combining swap and RAM, a host can 'oversell' memory and storage during the creation of VPS's, so until you start using the VPS, you'll never really know for sure what your guaranteed resources are.

As the technology matures, it's becoming very much like shared accounts with regard to both price and resources. While VPS's are much more isolated, host machines can be over sold or be slowed by a runaway script running on a separate VPS which causes the entire host to slow or crash.

OpenVZ has settings to limit every aspect of a runaway VPS.

It can limit memory, burst memory, disk usage, disk io speed, cpu access and cpu %.

But how these things are configured and sold is the determinant for performance. Some companies oversell and your server does end up in swap land, slowing everything down.

Swap is done by the kernel and is not restricted by the cpu or io limit numbers that otherwise apply if you were writing a file in your VPS for example.

Burst memory if properly configured and properly used will save you a lot of money. The problem is some people treat it like guaranteed memory, expecting apache or mysql to be able to use it 24/7. Thats insanity.

Burst memory is intended for temporary usage, such as compiling a program or updating your system. You don't want to run a business in burst memory!

Get a VPS thats big enough to hold apache, php and mysql functions under load, and use that burst for when you're setting it up or updating.

More descriptions of VPS terminology: http://www.vpsville.ca/terms

more high your guaranteed ram will make the system more quickly,