dediserve blog

Virtual Vs Dedicated Servers

This is one debate that will continue to raise its head time and time again over the coming years, as people look for the best solution for their site/application. As Dediserve offers both these options we’d like to think were well placed to offer out thoughts.

At Dediserve we definitely see virtual servers as the most progressive option of the two and the one that will eventually overtake the traditional dedicated server hardware model, there are several reasons for this:

• Data centres are running out of space
• This is driving the cost of data centre space higher as it becomes a premium resource
• The cost of power continues to rise due to instability in the middle east and the threat of “peak oil”
• Cooling factors come into these costs as the more physical machines needed the higher amount of cooling also needed
• Traditional servers far from fully utilized on by most applications/sites leaving alot of waste of resources

Virtualisation negates these issues by fully utlizing existing hardware, driving down the amount of space needed, meaning less cooling and less power. It also
opens up a whole host of additional functionality/redundancy and management features in terms of management of your data.

Being able to easily move your data between machines and across physical locations without any downtime is one of the major benefits, as is having your data spread across multiple nodes which removes the single point of failure that is inherently the biggest benefit virtualisation currently has over a single server unit.

You can argue about having RAID etc set-up on the machine , but that doesnt take away from the fact that if the physical box somehow gets damaged or compromised you lose your data.

With existing hardware now being fully utilized, it also helps drive down the cost of providing that server, Our entry level Virtual Private Server plan costs the same now at €20 per month that a shared hosting plan would have cost only a couple of years ago. This will only continue to decrease in price as nanotechnology drives smaller yet more powerful machines going forward.

What infrastructure platform do people see as being used going forward?

blog comments powered by Disqus