February 23, 2021

All you need to know about Dedicated Server vs Cloud Server

After developing a website with a seamless UI/UX design, the most challenging question that a company faces is whether to host its website on a cloud server or a dedicated server. To distinguish between both, let us start with a basic understanding of what a server is. A server is just like your personal computer, with its own CPU, RAM, and processors, that acts as a host to make your website accessible to the world.

There are five factors help you choose between a dedicated vs cloud server: availability, reliability, durability, performance, and cost. In this article, we examine both these servers so you can take an informed decision for your business.

Performance:

If you are running a website with thousands of people visiting your website on a day-to-day basis, dedicated servers clearly have an edge over cloud hosting. Dedicated servers source their data locally without any lag as the server is exclusively for your use. However, in cloud servers, the processing must go through Storage Area Network (SAN) to access data. Furthermore, requests must also pass through the hypervisor. This additional processing time adds latency, that unfortunately cannot be reduced. If you are looking for a server that lets your website perform at its optimum, dedicated servers certainly have an edge here.

Verdict:

Dedicated servers:

Cloud Hosting:

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.

Verdict:

Dedicated Servers:

Cloud Servers:

Dedicated Servers and Cloud Migration

One of the important factors to consider when choosing between Dedicated vs Cloud server, is migration. When it comes to migrating with dedicated servers, planning ahead is essential. The planning must focus on not just the current but also the future aspects of your requirements. For example, if your dedicated server is outdated and you plan to switch to the latest operating system, just copying and pasting your files wouldn’t work; you will have to reconfigure your new server to adapt to the latest version to avoid data loss. A carefully curated plan in hand is necessary to be gradually created and executed over time.

This gets a bit tougher when it comes to the cloud. A lot of checkboxes need to be ticked when it comes to migrating from one cloud to another. Are your applications compatible? Would your enterprise licensing be impacted by the multi-tenant environment as opposed to a single-serving dedicated server? These are some of the many questions that need to be taken into consideration when porting your cloud.

Verdict:

Dedicated Server:
Cloud Server:

The Cost Factor

Cloud hosting 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.

Verdict:

Dedicated Servers:
Cloud Server:

Conclusion:

In the debate of dedicated vs cloud server, clearly the former is the winner, especially for long-term hosting. Stable, reliable, and with optimal performance, dedicated servers are the way to go. However, constant maintenance and monitoring could be daunting for a non-technical person.

Which is where we come in. With an experience of over 18 years, and over thousands of satisfied customers across the globe, we provide managed dedicated server hosting and 24 x 7 technical assistance to cater to your requirements. We will guide you through the process and help you reap the benefits of managed dedicated hosting.