If you are going to use cPanel control panel then you have two main choices for operating system
- CentOS ( or RHEL )
- CloudLinux
Most of you are already familiar with CentOS. So I will skip explaining the features of CentOS. Now Cloudlinux is based on CentOS. It provides modified OpenVZ kernel which creates a environment with its own CPU, memory, IO, IOPS, number of processes and other limits. Each user has it’s own limit and it prevent users from overloading the server. So in short servers with multiple accounts will be more stable with cloudlinux.
Pricing
CentOS is FREE but CloudLinux is charged $14/Server/Month at the time of writing this article. So the question now that comes to your mind is
Do I really need CloudLinux?
Well, it depends on the purpose of your server. If you are going to host a few sites then there is no need for CloudLinux. Your sites can use full server resources and run faster.
But if you are going to use the server to provide shared hosting services then we will recommend you to go with CloudLinux. Your server will be more stable. Cloudlinux will put limits on each account and it will prevent a single account from monopolizing the server resources. Cloudlinux also provides some additional features like Multiple PHP Version ( PHP 5.3 and older versions ) and user resource usage tracking.
