(ve) Server is Here!
May 5th, 2010 at 12:03 pm(mt) is proud to announce the public availability of (ve) Server – our latest high performance utility VPS hosting service. “VE” stands for Virtual Environment, a term to describe a virtualization method that is lightweight and highly efficient. Offering near-native speeds, (ve) Servers are installed on premium hardware utilizing uncommonly fast storage.
The new service is designed for advanced users looking to harness the power of Linux in a flexible, scalable environment. (ve) is perfect for customers who wish to take their application from an affordable development setup, up to a supercharged production environment – without the scaling hassles associated with traditional hosting.
Since our advanced users require less support, Media Temple is able to offer great pricing and a tremendous amount of compute-value-per-dollar. Customers can begin with (ve) for around $1 per day.
Why (ve)?
Our technical customers asked for it.
After experiencing great success with the (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server, Media Temple has become one of the largest virtualization deployments in North America. Using two primary platforms, (gs) and (dv), we serve approximately 90,000 customers, with a wide range of technical ability. Our simplified approach has worked well for most customers, however some of our more technical Linux users haven’t been completely satisfied. These users need more flexibility and a much higher level of control for their hosting setups.
Partly ‘Cloudy’ or Mostly Sunny?
The term “Cloud” is confusing people. Our customers have asked for a better, more meaningful answer to the constantly evolving hosting landscape. We’ve decided to keep the buzzwords at a minimum, and provide the fastest, most efficient, flexible VPS product we know how to build, and we think users are going to love it.
Due to its performance characteristics and virtualization technology, (ve) fills a gap in the utility VPS market, and serves to be a simple alternative to the common, Xen-based cloud providers in the market today. We developed it to be a highly performant product, with Parallels Virtuozzo 4 OS virtualization, using high-end HP server hardware, RAID-10 storage on SAS disks, and premium connectivity with Gigabit ethernet inside our top-tier datacenters.
Is there a bigger picture?
Yes.
In 2010, our product line will serve our advanced users in better ways. A new product series has been created, ProDev, which caters to the side of our customer base that wishes to take hosting a step further. These users want more controls and low-level options. Therefore, we’re working on new ProDev products, such as an API, CDN and Advanced DNS, that compliment (ve) Server.
Despite our intentions to make (ve) and ProDev highly appealing to developers and technical users, we also are preparing for the new Linux user. In anticipation, we have launched a new Community Wiki for beginners and advanced users alike. Our desire is to make it easy for users to learn new Linux commands, setups, tricks, recipes, and more.
Tell me more about (ve). What do I get?

- Choice of your favorite Linux OS
- Choice of 512MB RAM up to 4GB RAM
- High speed SAS storage
- Highly efficient virtualization technology, powered by Parallels Virtuozzo 4
- Premium connectivity and hardware
- Full Root access
- Starting at around $1 per day!
For the full run down on all the product info, features, and pricing, head on over to the (ve) product area. Happy coding!

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May 5th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Very interesting… We might migrate our blog, and some secret projects to MediaTemple in the near future…
May 5th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Well, i’m already migrating to this.
May 6th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Awesome. I’ve been using a few (ve) servers for a couple weeks now and its simply awesome. Great work (mt)!
May 6th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I was thinking of switch from GS to DV. Now where does VE fit into the line up? It’s cheaper than DV but what are the trade offs?
May 7th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Is there a short answer to say where this new service is better than (dv), and where it is not?
May 10th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Thanks for the great feedback so far everybody!
@Ray and @Nick:
The short answer is that it depends what you are looking for and your technical ability. Check out this article in our new Wiki:
http://wiki.mediatemple.net/index.php/%28ve%29_vs_%28dv%29
It outlines the differences between (ve) and (dv).
May 10th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I’m curious too, is this a faster “better” than DV? why would one choose DV over this?
May 11th, 2010 at 7:49 am
I would like to read/hear a comparison between this and rackspace cloud servers…
May 15th, 2010 at 8:18 am
Judging from that link and the lack of specific hardware comparisons, it seems like a (ve) is hosted on equivalent hardware to a (dv) of the same RAM amount, but is much cheaper per month due to the required self-administration, the lower bandwidth cap, and lack of a licensed Plesk install. Is that a safe assumption?
May 15th, 2010 at 10:03 am
just curious, will DV be upgraded to Virtuozzo 4? When will VE be available in california?
May 17th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
(dv) 4.0 is in planning now. It will be offered on Parallels’ next-generation virtualization platform: “Bare Metal”. Release date is not yet set, but watch our Labs page for the Beta announcement.
(ve) Servers are currently hosted at our Virginia Data Center. European, US, and South American subscribers are all reporting excellent performance. (ve) Server will be available in the California Data Center later this year – probably late 4th Quarter.
(ve) Server price is so good because (mt) Media Temple is committed to providing maximum value. We are able to pass on savings by reducing support cost and omitting extra licensing fees, and glad to do it. (ve) Server is on better hardware, with faster drives, and has more burstable RAM, so we’re not cutting any corners, just price. Maximum performance with flexibility is what (ve) Server is all about.
If you want to run 64-bit software or have a choice among (Ubuntu | Fedora | Debian | CentOS) and you are confident with the command line, (ve) Server is your baby. It’s fast and flexible.
If you want a PLESK Control Panel pre-configured with LAMP using the 32-bit CentOS operating system, then (dv) Dedicated Virtual server is what you need. It’s fast and convenient.
May 18th, 2010 at 5:48 am
I am on rackspace cloud right now lets see if mt’s EV turns out to be good, i will certainly have a look at it.
May 19th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Is there more information on the Deployable Images, and when will that be available? I thinking that this is sort of the equivalent of EC2 AMI, is that right? What is Instant provisioning? I’m assuming that you can resize your (ve)Server anything and what is the typical downtime associated with that?
May 21st, 2010 at 10:54 am
@Khang: Deployable images are on the immediate roadmap, but I don’t have any solid dates or features I can share yet.
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:29 pm
@Khang: Instant provisioning means that when you order a (ve) Server, it is ready within about 5 minutes – usually less.
Yes, you can re-size your server (upscale/downscale) easily and immediately through controls in the Account Center. In most instances, there is no down time at all – you are simply allocated more resources. If you want to scale up to a *really* big server, say 16GB or 32GB, it might involve moving to another server and changing IP address. We can do that for you, and it would involve very brief down-time.
May 23rd, 2010 at 10:04 pm
If we get started with a (ve) server in the next few months, would it be possible to migrate our existing vm image to your SoCal data center when it comes online at the end of the year / early 2011?
May 25th, 2010 at 5:41 am
Very nice to see vps offerings by MT at a very fair price tag
May 28th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Impressive! Going to try it soon.
Keep it up!
May 31st, 2010 at 6:15 pm
@Mike Ho: Yes, migration from the VA to CA data center would be no problem. You will be able to schedule the move with our Support department once the servers are available in CA. Of course, it would involve a change of IP address, so please keep that in mind if you are developing software.
June 1st, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I am currently using Rackspace Cloud servers, i would love to hear some feedback
on how VE performs in comparision.
June 2nd, 2010 at 10:57 am
[...] Media Temple has listened to the masses and finally made a VPS offering aimed at developers and advanced users. While their (dv) Dedicated-Virtual VPS offerings allowed users to have root access and the ability to modify much of the installed software, it was still a fairly turnkey solution: create a new account, transfer files/databases over and everything is ready to go. It also ran Parallels Plesk control panel which sys admins and developers unanimously seem to despise for a mixture of Plesk being a resource hog as well as only working well for out-of-the-box configurations and becoming a burden with custom setups — say, a Rails app. There is a large market for tech-savvy folks that prefer to handle all aspects of server setup and administration themselves. Enter the (ve) Virtual Environment. A new product series has been created, ProDev, which caters to the side of our customer base that wishes to take hosting a step further. These users want more controls and low-level options. Therefore, we’re working on new ProDev products, such as an API, CDN and Advanced DNS, that compliment (ve) Server.— (mt) [...]
December 28th, 2010 at 7:36 am
[...] the launch of ProCDN, the newest addition to the (mt) ProDev product line. As we mentioned when we launched (ve) Server, we are continuing to build out our advanced product lines and ProCDN is the latest offering built [...]
December 31st, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Very efficiently written information. It will be supportive to everyone who employess it, as well as me. Keep doing what you are doing – looking forward to more posts.