Cloud servers were invented back in the 70s and they have been utilized by big tech companies like Microsoft and Google ever since. Even though cloud adoption wasn’t so popular in the past due to common security concerns, today cloud computing technologies – offered ‘as a service’ have made a big breakthrough thanks to the advanced features of physical servers and their useful technical capabilities. Small and large organizations working in the Financial sector, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Education have already seized the potential of cloud servers by utilizing cloud-hosted services for helping employee productivity and reducing capital & operational costs.
What is a cloud server?
Cloud servers, like physical servers, process information and perform different applications by using hardware infrastructure. The only difference between the two is that cloud ones can be implemented virtually instead of physically. These technologies work by supporting known operating systems and they provide better functionality than traditional server infrastructure. Depending on the type of cloud environment used to deploy applications and how resources are shared on the cloud, there are different types of hardware used by vendors and organizations.
What are the different types of cloud servers?
Public cloud
What people generally refer to as cloud servers are usually public cloud servers . Cloud vendors like we-IT deploy servers and offer managed services like DaaS that are hosted on public cloud infrastructure. When companies migrate their data to the data centers of their providers, they trust that all their information is safe on the servers at all times. All the resources that cloud companies offer to customers should be available on demand. The entire maintenance and management of the infrastructure are also the responsibility of the provider and cloud customers should have zero concerns and difficulties on that front.
Public cloud services are implemented by hosting virtual machines on cloud servers and they are deployed with the use of console applications or interfaces online.
Private cloud
Unlike public cloud servers, private ones usually exist in an organization for their individual use. Private cloud infrastructure helps businesses support their own cloud solutions without having to share resources with other companies. These cloud servers are less common because of how expensive they are to maintain and host on premises. Services like DaaS that are hosted on a private cloud and they are usually delivered to the users by LAN (local area network). Hosted services can be accessed remotely by employees but the proximity of the on-premise infrastructure to the users can be a limitation, in case of employees have to move further away from the server site.
The most common use case for public cloud infrastructure is larger companies that can afford to support this type of infrastructure and make a long-term commitment and investments in cloud computing technologies. Deploying applications from a private cloud allows organizations to retain control over their data and how it’s managed. These servers do not share resources of multiple tenants and cloud security is supposedly higher with this technology.
Dedicated cloud
Dedicated cloud servers – also known as dedicated instances – are physical servers that are dedicated to single users using a public cloud for their managed services. When an organization chooses to use this solution they are usually concerned about the security and the performance of their provisioned services on a multi-tenant cloud. These servers allow companies to customize a layer of virtualization and tackle these issues with a dedicated cloud solution that also reaps the benefits of public servers on demand.
It’s important to understand the basics of deployment and server types when choosing a cloud services provider.
To find out more about our cloud-hosted services and technologies, please fill in the contact form for more information.
