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Cloud Server vs Dedicated Server: Which Is Best For Your Business?

Picking up the correct hosting plan is a tough task for businesses that are planning to start their website. One does not only have to deal with a range of hosting types to go but also decide as to which plan is best among many packages. At present, there are two types of hosting servers in trend – Cloud Server and Dedicated Server.  To help you out in taking a wise decision, we have noted down some points that will help you choose which hosting server is the right one for you. We also talk about why you should choose Cloud Server vs Dedicated Server because at present most companies are facing immense troubles in choosing between these two.

Performance

The cloud server will perform better than the low-end and average dedicated server. If you have a higher-end dedicated server, it can outperform most cloud servers. Another important performance consideration is server and power redundancy.

With a cloud server, if a physical server fails, high availability enabled cloud server will be automatically switched to other live physical servers. If a dedicated server fails, your IT team will have to build a new server, reinstall OS, and restore data from backups unless your company has failover in place. Failover is the switching to a redundant or standby server upon the failure or abnormal termination of the previously active server. If your business did not have backups or failover in place, this can be a timely and costly process.

A cloud server often runs on a computing resource pool that is served by redundant power PDUs, power UPSes, power generators, and redundant power grids. This allows for the cloud server to remain operational in the event of a single power grid or single power supply failure. While some dedicated servers are now sold with dual power supplies, many still run on a single power supply. For those servers running on a single power supply, in the event of a power loss normal system operations will be affected.

cloud server vs dedicated server

Cloud Server vs Dedicated Server: Scalability

In dedicated servers, scaling is a little challenging when compared to cloud servers. The physical nature of dedicated servers makes them limited to arrays or drive bays when it comes to scaling. Even though a dedicated server may be capable of adding a drive through a Logic Volume Manager (LVM) filesystem, it is challenging to scale and also requires more time and resources.

Owing to their virtual environment, cloud servers are relatively easier to scale. This means, as your environment grows, scaling can be easily done by adding more compute, instance, and storage resources.

Migration

Both dedicated server and cloud server solutions can achieve seamless migration. Migration within the dedicated environment requires more planning. To perform a seamless migration, the new solution must keep both future and current growth in mind. A full-scale plan should be created.

In most cases, the old and new solutions should run concurrently until the new server is completely ready to take over. It is also advisable to maintain the older servers as a backup until the new solution can be adequately tested.

Server Management: Administration and Operations

Dedicated servers may require a company to monitor its dedicated hardware.  Therefore in-house staff must understand systems administration more closely. A company will also need a deep understanding of load profiles to maintain data storage requirements within the proper range. Scaling, upgrades, and maintenance is a joint effort between client and provider that must be carefully engineered to keep downtime to a minimum.

Cloud servers are more accessible to administer. Scalability is faster with much less of an impact on operations. Where dedicated platforms require planning to estimate server requirements accurately, cloud platforms require planning to work around the potential limitations that you may face.

cloud server vs dedicated server

Cloud Server vs Dedicated Server: The Cost Factor

Cloud servers do have the lowest entry cost as opposed to dedicated servers. While it may seem advantageous in the beginning, due to the pay-as-you-go model of pricing, it loses the edge as time goes on. For example, you buy a smartphone, and you fill-up the internal storage with pictures, videos, and other data on a day-to-day basis. As time goes on, the storage is full and you need to invest in a Micro SD card to rely on storage.

Cloud computing is more or less the same. Here, you can keep adding files and utilize the compute resources for as long as you want to, but it gets more expensive with time. Beyond a point, you realize that the savings from cloud servers no longer outweigh the dedicated servers. In the case of dedicated servers, while the entry cost is relatively pricier, it has steady and fixed monthly prices and comes with exclusive benefits over cloud computing.

Conclusion

Selecting the right server is one of the most important business decisions you will make. While cloud servers (sometimes referred to as virtual servers) can often save a business time, money, and space— dedicated servers(sometimes referred to as physical servers) are still preferred by many businesses worldwide

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