Cloud Hosting vs. Dedicated Server

[mmh]

hey guys,

My company has had a dedicated server for as long as i have worked here (over 5 years) and its never been updated... its a Dual P4 3.0ghz with 2gb ram...
I brought it up that we should upgrade given that when it was first bought 5 years ago it was intended for 1 maybe 2 sites, and now we have it serving over 20 sql databases and about 10 websites, and it does get bogged down in high traffic times...
when my boss rang up the hosting company theyre pushing the new cloud hosting facilities which runs as a virtual server...

my question would be this: is it more beneficial to go with the cloud hosting and run a virtual server, which is garenteed 100% uptime, or go again with a newer more modern dedicated server?

I have reservations about a virtual server, and the reservation would be, what if we get high volumes of traffic, and so does someone else thats sharing the hardware with a vServer, wouldnt that effect our service?

so what are your guys opinions? to cloud, or not to cloud?

Thanks

Ste

[Phage]

Have been looking at this at work and there are a number of Pros and Cons. In the end it depends on the type of usage.
If it the cost is variable on traffic - you'd have to look at your stats to see if pays. What are the SLAs from the vendor ? Do you have DPA responsibilities ? How are they safeguarded ?

For us, there was a clear benefit in a highly variable market, such a sports site that would get hit hard in the relevant month and nothing for the rest of the year. The Cloud scales.
In lower traffic, steady state ecenarios it was less clear, and other factors came in.

[Moby-Dick]

There isn't really a problem with running as a virtual server , but you do need to read your T&C's carefully. Most "Cloud" ( which at the moment is a bit of a buzzword for Infrastrcutre as a Service) hosting shoudl give you a pool of Garunteed resource - if that resource isn't backed by an SLA , then it had better be really cheap hosting

I'll give you an example I know of someone who's compnay looked after a dedicated server for a client. The server went belly up , without any backups. leaving the client severly out of pocket. The chances of that happening with a VM are much less. It would also give you flexability to scale out your infrastucture ( ie seperate your front andback end processing ) and only pay for what you use.

As ever with these things If there are bits you dont want to discuss on the public board , ping me a PM and I'll help where possible - nb. I dont work for a hosting provider so no I can't get you any discount )

[IronWarrior]

Cloud hosting is just an dedicated server in an other location, not much difference is there?

Personally I would prefer the server at my location because you have full control, but you should compare the stats for their "cloud" hosting package against an dedicated server that you purchase and see what turns out to be the best.

[Splash]

Cloud hosting is just an dedicated server in an other location, not much difference is there?

Not quite - most (in fact all that I've seen) "cloud" offerings are virtualised, and benefit from an amount of abstraction so if one host fails the workload can be moved to another host, so they should be able to offer very attractive uptime guarantees (as Moby says, read through the T&Cs with a fine toothed comb) and can generally scale up and down reasonably on demand. Whether it's a good fit for the OP depends massively on the load they're generating, what is being offered and at what price.

[Moby-Dick]

Cloud hosting is just an dedicated server in an other location, not much difference is there?

Personally I would prefer the server at my location because you have full control, but you should compare the stats for their "cloud" hosting package against an dedicated server that you purchase and see what turns out to be the best.

Depends - have you got the kind of infrastructure where you can provision a new server in 10 mins ? with carrier class internet connectivity on site ?

[mmh]

Ok, i think i understand better now.

So if we were looking at websites that total around 100gb per month bandwidth, cloud would be better as we're not using a stupid amount of bandwidth,a nd if we do start using more and consequently more processing power we can add more resources via cloud, as opposed to having to upgrade a dedicated server.

Looks like cloud might be the way to go then.

we are looking at vi.net (our current dedicated server provider) and they offer 100% uptime.