Companies and institutions have benefited from advances in virtual computing for many years, and cloud native architecture is only becoming more popular; in order to seamlessly carry out complicated tasks, organisations increasingly rely on cloud hosting to run and maintain websites, applications, software, and server infrastructure.
The term itself encompasses a range of distinct cloud technologies available on the market today. For instance, host servers can be physical or virtual, private or public cloud, or even hybrids that combine features of each.
To guarantee high performance while ensuring cost-effectiveness, it’s important to consider the various hosting solutions, and identify which might best-complement your business infrastructure and objectives. With that in mind, this article outlines the key difference between private cloud vs dedicated server hosting.
What is private cloud hosting?
Private cloud hosting, is where a private server is remotely hosted by a third-party service provider, where computing resources are provided through the third-party data centre but remain exclusively available to the client or ‘single-tenant organisation’.
This is in contrast to traditional private cloud, which is a cloud application that belongs solely to the user organisation or customer, and is physically located on-site within an in-house data centre.
What’s the difference between a private hosted cloud and a private cloud?
Private cloud hosting keeps the benefits of private clouds — namely, sole access to resources — but where they differ is that the hosted (sometimes called ‘managed’) cloud is maintained by a third-party according to the needs of the client enterprise.
This third party can install hardware and offer initial maintenance of the cloud software. This is distinct from ‘shared hosting’, whereby many enterprises or organisations share the same architecture and services provided by a third-party host provider.
What is a dedicated server?
Dedicated servers, like private clouds, are purchased or leased exclusively for a user enterprise. It is a private web hosting service, as the server hosts the applications or websites of a single tenant organisation – which has full and unmediated access to server hardware. The resources contained by the server, such as RAM, bandwidth, storage and processor types, are also customisable.
How does a dedicated server work?
A dedicated server is located offsite, and stores all computing resources on its infrastructure and hardware. Unlike virtual or public cloud solutions, the capabilities of a dedicated server are reliant on the specifications of this underlying physical hardware.
As a consequence, their price varies — larger enterprises with high demand for data security or server volume often charge significantly more than their lower-capacity counterparts.
While dedicated servers belong in a single data centre location, these are categorised in a tier-system that accounts for how many redundant systems are in place for power, backup power, and cooling — the foundations of physical computing infrastructure.
The number of redundant systems is directly related to the amount of availability (the probability that the system is operational at a given point). As a result, many experts advise that an enterprise which depends on secure and reliable operating systems should select a minimum tier III server.
What is the difference between private cloud hosting vs dedicated hosting?
The key difference between a cloud server vs dedicated server is that the latter is a physical server and not situated within the cloud; it does not use virtualisation technology. The key distinctions include:
- Level of control: With dedicated hosting, you have complete control over the physical server and associated software. With private cloud hosting, you have control over the virtual elements, by the hardware is managed by a third-party.
- Scalability: Scalability is much more flexible with private cloud hosting vs dedicated servers. While cloud resources can be added or removed with relative ease, scaling a dedicated server requires additional hardware.
- Performance: Dedicated servers excel when it comes to performance, whereas you may experience some level of fluctuation, albeit likely minimal, within a private cloud environment.
- Management: You’re responsible for managing and maintaining your dedicated hosting hardware and software. Meanwhile, with private cloud hosting, your provider will manage the physical infrastructure.
Dedicated servers are typically used by large organisations and businesses that have additional requirements, such as high levels of data security or demand for server capacity. Since they are physical hardware, they require businesses to perform internal IT management, such as patches, upgrades and maintenance.
What are the advantages and drawbacks of private cloud hosting?
We’ve looked at what private cloud hosting is, compared to dedicated servers, but what are some of the reasons to consider a private cloud solution – and the considerations you should make before choosing this solution?
Benefits of private cloud hosting
There are numerous benefits of choosing private cloud hosting vs dedicated servers, from scalability to accessibility.
1. Cost
Managed third-party solutions eliminate the need for enterprises to purchase the relevant hardware and software for their operations. Maintenance of infrastructure, data resources and storage is all carried out by the IT engineers employed by the host organisation.
If data collection, storage and protection are all contained within the cloud infrastructure, the client is only required to purchase the amount of server capacity they use — allowing them to save funds for allocation elsewhere.
2. Scalability
Often, user organisations will be in the fluid stages of business growth. In these cases, they often encounter scenarios where they need to scale up their computing resources to accommodate and maintain an influx of revenue and business operations.
Private cloud hosting brings the benefit of giving the choice of how many servers they want and the quantity of power they need to buy in order to configure their evolving capacity needs, as they do not have the same limits on physical hardware as dedicated servers. For small teams without specialised IT engineers, most managed cloud solutions will also deploy and maintain servers without the need for your involvement.
3. Accessibility
Cloud computing enables any staff member in an organisation access from anywhere at a time of their choosing, through the shared resource. The rise of remote working, and in turn the increase in productivity across numerous enterprises, has in large part been enabled by this increased availability of data which is only possible through cloud hosting solutions.
Considerations to make before investing in private cloud hosting
Of course, it’s also important to be aware of any potential drawbacks of choosing private cloud!
Data security
Although private cloud hosting is solely accessible by a single tenant organisation, it still runs on a multi-tenant platform. A consequence of this is the potential for a compromise on security, as the responsibility for maintaining the safety of data is outsourced in some part to a third party.
For larger organisations who require HIPAA or PCI compliance, authorities often mandate that an internal private cloud be used, as the client user retains full responsibility to meet these regulations — for example, through a high security firewall.
Control
Since the cloud service provider owns the cloud infrastructure, the client organisation has less power over the systems. While the user can manage data and services that operate through the cloud hosting solution, they are unable to manage firmware, the server shell, or in fact gain any access to hardware at all.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of dedicated servers?
Below, we’ve identified the benefits and drawbacks of choosing a dedicated server vs private cloud hosting, to help you decide whether this solution is best for your business.
Benefits of dedicated servers
As above, there are a number of reasons to choose a dedicated server vs private cloud hosting, including customisability and control.
1. Performance
Dedicated servers are often recommended to those enterprises who require high speed and intensive computer processing, as they are the most powerful single-server hosting options.
Customers can directly access hardware, process data, and receive information from a local server, and therefore operations are less vulnerable to lags. Dedicated hosting also enables user organisations to work more efficiently and reliably since they do not rely on the internet to provide data access through virtualisation.
2. Customisable
With dedicated hosting, the single tenant organisation exercises full control over the server. This enables them to optimise components like storage, CPU and RAM, as well as supporting the choice of custom software and operating system (OS).
Users are able to install a range of OS as per their business needs, from Red Hat Linux to macOS Sierra or Windows 10.
3. Security
Larger companies and organisations that deal with highly sensitive data, such as government institutions or financial companies, often choose to protect this through strict security measures enabled by dedicated servers.
This not only cuts out the need for uptime, but it avoids the involvement of third parties which makes the information more vulnerable to a data breach.
Considerations to make before investing in dedicated servers
Again, it’s crucial to be aware of any considerations you’ll need to make before investing in dedicated hosting solutions.
Cost
Although dedicated servers feature an abundance of inexpensive disk space, cheap bandwidth and SQL storage, the cost-effectiveness of this flexibility is outweighed by the initial capital expenditure — which can be steep.
As we alluded to earlier, for larger organisations – particularly in governmental or financial sectors – the demands of utmost data security and capacity come at the cost of high investments.
Management
Since a dedicated server is purchased by the client organisation, it requires self-management from either an internal or external IT team.
This can create problems in terms of reliability, as if the server undergoes recovery, an individual engineer or IT professional must be on site to fix it. Consequently, client users need to invest time in preparing for availability issues like this.
Private cloud vs dedicated hosting: final thoughts
Both private cloud hosting and dedicated hosting services are used by a wide range of enterprises of varying sizes and requirements, for front and back-end solutions.
To summarise in a sentence, private cloud hosting provides greater scalability and provider-managed infrastructure, but you do sacrifice some level of control, while dedicated hosting offers total autonomy but is typically less flexible when it comes to scaling resources.
While dedicated hosting requires a steeper initial investment in the physical hardware, this may be a necessary capital expenditure — particularly if your organisation needs the highest possible security provisions. However, hosted environments may eliminate the costs of labour from a client’s IT department if their organisation is small, and do not require the top-end CPU power that dedicated servers provide.
Learn more about adopting a hybrid cloud model
Hopefully you now feel confident choosing a dedicated server or cloud service, including understanding the benefits and drawbacks of each. But, there is a third option! As an alternative, best-of-both-worlds solution, enterprises are increasingly-seeing the benefits of both solutions, and are consequently turning to hybrid cloud systems.
Redcentric has the knowledge and capability for a number of software and hardware solutions that suit our customers’ needs. We develop, implement, and manage cloud systems, and update our customers regularly to enabling them to stay ahead in the evolving landscape of cloud computing and data technology.
If this is of interest, get in touch today to have a chat with one of our experienced cloud consultants and find out how we can develop a path for your business. Or, for a greater idea of our expertise, discover even more useful articles over on our cloud blog.
