What template should I choose?

This article applies to our Cloud VM plans only.

There are a lot of templates to choose from when purchasing a Cloud VM.  They can be broken down to being either Plesk, Windows or Linux templates.  Most linux templates are available at no extra cost, but the CloudLinux, and Windows templates require extra licences and so cost extra.

Plesk:
Plesk is a popular web hosting control panel tool that will allow you to more easily set up websites, email accounts, FTP accounts, databases etc. on your VM as it provides a web-based control panel interface to set everything up rather than using the command line or RDP access.

There are two Plesk templates available - one for Windows 2008 Standard Edition (on Business plans or higher) and one for Cloud Linux Server 5.6.  Both of these Operating Systems require extra licences, excluding the licence Plesk itself requires, so do cost extra.  Please note in particular that the Windows Standard Edition licence costs more than the Web Edition licence.  We would strongly recommend one of these templates if you are not familiar with administering a server and setting up a web\mail\database server via SSH or Remote Desktop and are not familiar enough with SSH\RDP to install a web management control panel interface such as Plesk yourself.

Windows:
Choose a windows OS if you want to set up a website that requires windows-specific technology like IIS, ASP, or MSSQL, or if you just want a Windows VM.  These are accessed via Remote Desktop\RDP typically and would not typically have anything other than a base install of the operating system. However, following templates will come with MSSQL pre-installed  by default:

Windows Server 2008 R2 w/SQL Express
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard w/IIS & SQL Express

As Windows requires an extra licence to run these templates do cost extra.

Windows 2008 Web Edition
This is what is installed on our shared windows 2008 plans.  Web edition is more restrictive than the full standard edition of Windows 2008.  It is designed mainly for just having IIS howver the licence for Web Edition is cheaper than Standard Edition.

Windows 2008 Standard Edition
If you require more features than Web Edition allows then you might want to go for the Standard Edition of Windows 2008.  However this is more expensive than Web Edition.


Linux:
There are multiple different versions available for most of the linux operating systems we offer.  Typically you should try match the operating system type of the system you are moving from, unless you require or want a newer version for any reason, or are looking to change operating system of course. 

All Linux templates are at no extra cost, bar CloudLinux templates.

x64 vs x86
The difference between x64 and x86 is that x64 is basically the 64-bit version of the OS in question, and x86 is the 32-bit version.  The 32-bit version of the OS would not utilise the set up of the physical server fully in terms of RAM\memory usage, but some applications you need might not be updated to work in 64-bit yet.  The only reason you should typically choose x86 would be if you know you will need an application that is known to not work well in 64-bit operating systems, though most 64-bit operating systems would support installing the binaries of any such application to have it run in 32-bit mode.

LAMP, LLMP, LNMP
LAMP stands for Linux Apache MySQL PHP. 
LLMP stands for Linux Litehttpd MySQL PHP
LNMP stands for Linux Nginx MySQL PHP

It basically means the VM will be installed with the OS in the template name, either the apache, litehttpd, or nginx webserver, mysql and php.  LAMP is the most common.  This is recommended for if you want to host websites on the server as then you do not need to manually install the webserver, mysql, and php yourself, it will be pre-installed.

CentOS
This is the most common operating system chosen for websites.  All of our linux shared hosting plans run on CentOS.  It is RHEL (red hat) based and so uses the yum command to install updates or packages.

CloudLinux
This operating system was designed specifically with website hosting in mind.  It is probably the best OS to choose if you are hosting multiple websites\domains due to how it can handle and share out server resources among websites automatically, helping to prevent any single website from hogging all resources.  It is also compatible with all major web hosting control panels.  It is RHEL (red hat) based and so uses the yum command to install updates or packages and does require a licence so costs extra.

Debian
This would be another very common operating system for hosting websites.  It uses apt-get for updates.  This is commonly chosen if you need Magento as it shipped with PHP 5.2 before CentOS.

Fedora
This operating system is not as stable as CentOS or Debian when used as a webserver and old versions of Fedora will no longer be supported by the Fedora vendors more frequently than other operating systems, however due to the short release cycles new versions of Fedora would tend to support the most up to date software (such as PHP and MySQL) quicker and so this may be the OS of choice for a development environment or where dealing with cutting edge technologies.  It is RHEL based and so uses yum for updates.

Gentoo
The average VM user would not choose this template typically.  Only users who specifically want Gentoo would pick this template.  It would be more technical to use than the other operating systems.

Ubuntu
This popular OS is commonly used for home computers but is also very suitable for webservers and personal-use VMs.


Notes:
Unless you choose a template that has the likes of php\mysql\webserver\application pre-installed then only what is included in a base install of the OS you choose will come with the VM by default.  Everything else you need you will need to install and configure yourself.

For more information on what php, mysql, and webserver comes with the templates that have these pre-installed please see here:
https://help.blacknight.com/entries/22917361-what-version-of-php-mysql-webserver-comes-with-my-vm