Why does a gig of RAM to a VPS cost so damn much ?

[MoreBloodWine]

Ok, so this may sound a bit noobish to some where they might be thinkin, well duh it's so obvious.

Any way, why does a gig of RAM cost $20 to add ?

Also, here's something some people might not consider when looking at adding RAM, assuming your on the same package as me which is the VPS Pro plan.

The following is not a question but rather a statement.

If your on the same plan as me and want more memory, just upgrade to either the Enterprise or Business plan. Reason I say this is because the Enterprise plan is $20 more than the Pro and the Business is $20 more than the Enterprise but with each new plan you not only get the extra gig of RAM at $20 a pop but also get the bigger disk space and bandwidth limits etc.

[Ron]

I'm guessing that the reason is that RAM is pretty much the limiting factor in selling VPSes.

[MoreBloodWine]

I don't know that that's entirely true because compared to a fully dedicated server, VPS are the cheaper solution but hell, who knows.

[Main Street James]

MBW,
Please don't think I'm defending JPC with this post. I'm sure you can see from my previous posts that I don't exactly qualify as a "fan". That being said ...

I believe the cost of RAM is actually the cost of faster performance measured in a standard metric that most consumers are familiar with. More RAM means less swap and faster responses. You know how it works.

The actual cost of physical RAM isn't a one-to-one correlation to the cost of increasing the RAM for your plan. Each server is split into many VPSs, each allocated X, Y or Z gig of RAM. I don't know JPC's policy regarding the ratio of 'Physical RAM' to 'RAM Sold', but keep in mind that each server needs to have a lot of RAM (if not the maximum supported by the hardware & virtualization software). Since there are a limited number of RAM slots in each server, each slot requires the largest DIMMs available. The large DIMM's are disproportionally expensive when compared to the smaller DIMMs.

I'm sure there is a point at which the cost of adding even larger DIMMs exceeds the cost of adding an additional server. The costs of deploying, housing and supporting additional servers may make the cost of the larger DIMMs more palatable (if not more cost efficient). Additional servers may allow for more clients (and the associated revenues) but also introduce additional points of failure (and things fail, believe me). Squeezing as many clients into, and as much revenue out of, existing resources and configurations is the norm in the industry. Maximizing revenue from fixed resources is a tricky balance.

In the end, if you need the extra RAM, and if it means you can add an additional client or two (or more) to your VPS, then it will pay for itself and give you the same opportunity to maximize your investment in your VPS.


MSJ

[nayan007]

The cost of the ram is high because cost depends on faster response.So if a ram has faster response then the cost also will be more

[MoreBloodWine]

I don't have any clients on my VPS except for me. I just got it for full root access among other things. I would say that thankfully I havent had to many issues outside of setup problems so I may be on the greener end of the problem scale. In any event, it looks like I will need more RAM at some point so wether I like it or not I'll have to spend more cash at some point.

Thx for the replies guys.

[thecoalman]

I'm guessing that the reason is that RAM is pretty much the limiting factor in selling VPSes.

I'd have to agree with Ron on this, it's like real estate and this is the amount of square footage you have. If you're going to rent it you're going to want X amount per square foot because all the other things you can provide don't matter if the square footage isn't there. No sense having a 1000 spot parking space(hard drive) if you can't sell enough store space to support it.