Cloud Hosting vs Dedicated Server vs Colocation Hosting

A New Company With Less Experienced CIO Often Fumbles Between Options and Land to Odd Comparison Like Cloud Hosting vs Dedicated Server vs Colocation Hosting and run Google Web Search. Google Web Search often brings the big advertisements which misdirect them. Here is a Comparison Between Cloud Hosting vs Dedicated Server vs Colocation Hosting in Plain English.

Cloud Hosting vs Dedicated Server vs Colocation Hosting : Basics

Cloud Hosting has different service models. Normally for the servers, we talk about Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). There are SaaS, Platform as a Service (PaaS). As we are talking about main servers with SSH access for GNU/Linux, we are limiting the discussion within Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for Cloud Computing service model, that is commonly referred as “cloud server”. Cloud Servers are using some Cloud Computing software or Virtualization software. OpenVZ is not same like Xen. One point is the virtualization technlogy. As general purpose rule of thumb – Cloud Hosting is good for cost effective needs like a XY GB server for few hours to days for doing some work or works where return of investment is not favourable. It is really meaningless to pay for a dedicated server for ordinary work. As this article is not intended for the advanced users, we are limiting terminologies.

For the web servers we say suggest to use low end boxes running OpenVZ like VPSDime 6GB RAM OpenVZ instance at $7/month cost. At this moment, Cloud Servers are great for running instances for monitoring,  not-so-serious hosting, cost effective hosting, a practical live backup of Dedicated web server. Because the target is SSH access, good networking speed and very good performance. If your need of server is for 1GB VMWare instance, there is Aruba Cloud at 1GB VMWare instance at 1 Euro/month. Over $50 per cloud server per month is towards meaningless and that is where Cloud Server sucks and there are cheap dedicated servers. We really can not compare Cloud Server with Dedicated or Colocation. It becomes comparing apples with oranges.

Take an example of Question Answer website Quora. They use Amazon cloud because having colocation is meaningless for them. Even dedicated hosting will be costly. It is a startup company and there is no warranty of return of investment. With so huge traffic, cheaper can be only using cloud hosting.

Dedicated Server vs Colocation Hosting Are Comparable

Both Dedicated Server and Colocation Servers are towards dedicated as physical hardware. Colocation is for medium to large companies for control, privacy, security and genuine physical presence and cost effective than renting a data center or having own data center. It is not possible for a company to have everywhere own datacenter. Plus others’ datacenter can work as backup. Unless otherwise specified, Dedicated Server should be enough for normal web hosting to small business works.

With dedicated server, you are taking rent of the server but not purchasing own server. Upfront investment is less compared to Colocation. Host does work for the customer. Customer only need to know about what hardware, software, networking stuffs are needed.

With colocation server, you are taking rent of the place to place your servers. Upfront investment is lower than lease of data center or own data center. Colocation is the best if customer want to buy one to few server buts want a third party to handle its physical safety. There is no need to know about data center cooling and server cooling, security, power generators, etc. It must be noted that in IT, we consider that the lifespan of hardware is of 5 years. After 24×7 running, you can not expect them to beat anymore to run. The hardwares are sent to the colocation provider’s facility and installed. Other services are given on a leased basis by them.

As example, when Dyn DNS was smaller company then colocation was correct option for them. They needed the physical hard disks for backup. Obviously customers can install virtualization software or cloud computing software on their own servers. For that reason we talk about virtualization and small business. As because after 5 years servers will get sucked, we suck their whole blood using cloud computing and virtualization softwares. Some of those companies promote you Cloud Computing as service.