> I thought you were suggesting renting a physical machine and then putting it in a data center myself... That's an odd kind of colocation. Typically you'd buy

> I thought you were suggesting renting a physical machine and then putting it in a data center myself... That's an odd kind of colocation. Typically you'd buy a machine outright, colocate it and maybe sell it when you're done. > makes me wonder why VPS is even a thing since if you go the KVM route you have to set up everything yourself anyway... What am I missing? VPS are much smaller and are typically used by people buying on the very low end of the market, people who won't pay $40/mo for a server. They're also much easier to find in places like the US. There aren't many budget dedicated server providers in the US like there are in Europe. Typically cost efficiency looks something like this: owning DC < colocation < dedicated server < VPS < Cloud But also, the speed and ease with which you can change your infrastructure looks something like this: Cloud > VPS > dedicated server > colocation > owning DC. There's a tradeoff to be made.