Pros and Cons of Dedicated Server vs Cloud VPC ?

[webbouk]

As per the question, what are the pros and cons of a dedicated server vs cloud VPC ?

 

[Korsch]

Ive personally used both, while I find both can meet my needs for what I do my pros and cons are as followed
(ive only used DigitalOcean for cloud)
Dedicated server:
Pros: The entire servers resources
Cons: Expensive, self managed can be tricky if youre new.

Cloud:
Pros: Scaleable, cheaper, Pre installed apps/ easy to spin up droplets
Cons: Blacklisted IP's

Other users will have more but this is what I find between the two as a hobbits, Ive gone the route of the dedicated server though.

 

[TimWilson]

I was actually going to start a thread on this very topic, but this is good.

I had been running a forum on WordPress (don't do that, please ) and with up to 5,000 simultaneous connections, we couldn't function AT ALL without a dedicated server. Cloud was just not gonna get it done. We tried, repeatedly, but found everything we were looking for on a dedicated server, which actually wound up being considerably LESS expensive than cloud, because we'd had to throw so many resources at the cloud installation to try to get it to work. A lot to be said for the right fit!

I came into my current site after they'd already chosen SiteGround (oops), and over Thanksgiving weekend, our traffic went way up, and SG just couldn't keep up, no matter what they threw at it. (Nothing like a DDoS, mind you -- just a lot of folks home for the holidays and looking for a break from family I guess.) It's mostly better, but our site has doubled in traffic in the past 6 months, and I'm not convinced that any cloud server is going to get it done.

It's not an insanely active site -- usually no more than a couple of hundred simultaneous connections, around 20,000 daily users (still going up, though!) -- and pretty typical forum stuff. No locally-served videos or anything, and we're still getting regular WSODs on our most dynamic pages, which are also our most popular pages (new posts, classifieds, etc). I'm just not convinced that any cloud server is going to get us there....but is it just that SiteGround in particular is so thoroughly not up to the task that another cloud host will do just fine?

I'm looking at XenForo's hosting on the cloud side, and considering KnownHost and A2 for managed dedicated servers. XF is least expensive of course, but the others are affordable enough (sub-$200 for the size we're considering) that we'll do it if it's the way to go...which I'm definitely leaning toward.

Thanks for any guidance that any of you wizened masters can offer!

 

[Korsch]

I was actually going to start a thread on this very topic, but this is good.

I had been running a forum on WordPress (don't do that, please ) and with up to 5,000 simultaneous connections, we couldn't function AT ALL without a dedicated server. Cloud was just not gonna get it done. We tried, repeatedly, but found everything we were looking for on a dedicated server, which actually wound up being considerably LESS expensive than cloud, because we'd had to throw so many resources at the cloud installation to try to get it to work. A lot to be said for the right fit!

I came into my current site after they'd already chosen SiteGround (oops), and over Thanksgiving weekend, our traffic went way up, and SG just couldn't keep up, no matter what they threw at it. (Nothing like a DDoS, mind you -- just a lot of folks home for the holidays and looking for a break from family I guess.) It's mostly better, but our site has doubled in traffic in the past 6 months, and I'm not convinced that any cloud server is going to get it done.

It's not an insanely active site -- usually no more than a couple of hundred simultaneous connections, around 20,000 daily users (still going up, though!) -- and pretty typical forum stuff. No locally-served videos or anything, and we're still getting regular WSODs on our most dynamic pages, which are also our most popular pages (new posts, classifieds, etc). I'm just not convinced that any cloud server is going to get us there....but is it just that SiteGround in particular is so thoroughly not up to the task that another cloud host will do just fine?

I'm looking at XenForo's hosting on the cloud side, and considering KnownHost and A2 for managed dedicated servers. XF is least expensive of course, but the others are affordable enough (sub-$200 for the size we're considering) that we'll do it if it's the way to go...which I'm definitely leaning toward.

Thanks for any guidance that any of you wizened masters can offer!

I did find when I scaled up my cloud hosting to what my dedicated server specs were gunna be it was way cheaper to go the dedicated route.

2 TB hard drive
3.7 GHz Intel Xeon
32 Gb ram
100mb/s bandwidth
For $32 a month, if I scaled my digital ocean to specs like this I was looking at 80$ if not more a month. So while they can be expensive they can be cheaper too. I probably won’t be going away from dedicated from now on.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

IONOS has some really good dedicated server deals:

Dedicated Server Hosting | Starting at $70/mo | IONOS

Dedicated Server Hosting » Affordable With High-Performance CPUs ✓ SSD-NVMe Memory ✓ Per-Minute-Billing ✓ Windows or Linux OS ✓

www.ionos.com

We host our sites there, using a midrange dedicated package (AMD CPU).

 

[TimWilson]

I did find when I scaled up my cloud hosting to what my dedicated server specs were gunna be it was way cheaper to go the dedicated route.

Exactly! So who are you using for dedicated?

IONOS has some really good dedicated server deals:

Thanks! Not at all on my radar, so I'll check 'em out!

 

[briansol]

Using cloud as a lift-and-shift for your dedicated server is the wrong approach.

If you want to use cloud, you should embrace the native utilities where possible to gain the best bang for the buck. building a 32 gb server like your dedicated box would be is super expensive. What you need/want to do instead is to split up horizontally and split tasks to dedicated instance types that perform that type of workload.

I've priced it out years ago and it's not cheaper until your somewhere in the 500-700 a month dedicated cost bracket.

I ended up with a hybrid approach where i have a cheap 2gb vps but i put every workflow i could on aws (s3 for data, email, etc)

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Exactly! So who are you using for dedicated?




Thanks! Not at all on my radar, so I'll check 'em out!

That's what I'm currently using as my main server, if you want to check the performance of my sites.

 

[Korsch]

Exactly! So who are you using for dedicated?




Thanks! Not at all on my radar, so I'll check 'em out!

I went with oneprovider iirc they essentially resell OVH servers. I pay yearly and it’s about 350 and change.

 

[duderuud]

If you are located in the EU, Hetzner is unbeatable regarding dedicated servers.

Like this one

 

[webbouk]

I've seen several referrals to US and EU based servers - is there an upside or downside if you use a server from a different region?

I'm based in the UK, hosted (currently) in the UK, with a site predominantly used by people in the UK.

 

[spk100]

I had to move away from shared/cloud to a dedicated. Cloud costs were crazy. Shared kept crashing. Eventually Dedicated was the only option.. It's been 4 years now. I am with Hivelocity.

 

[duderuud]

I've seen several referrals to US and EU based servers - is there an upside or downside if you use a server from a different region?

I'm based in the UK, hosted (currently) in the UK, with a site predominantly used by people in the UK.

You want you server as close as possible to the majority of your visitors.

For example, if the majority of your users are in the UK, it's best to have your server in the UK too. Next best thing is in the EU like Holland or Germany.

If your visitors are from all around the world, I would suggest using a CDN like Cloudflare.
@digitalpoint has a very good add-on for Cloudflare:

[DigitalPoint] App for Cloudflare®

May 20, 2022

Configure and manage your Cloudflare account from within XenForo.

• digitalpoint
• Add-ons [2.x]

 

[TPerry]

If you are located in the EU, Hetzner is unbeatable regarding dedicated servers.

yeah, really wish they would get some US based offerings. I've been more than happy with the VPS I've got from them.

 

[Black Tiger]

We got several servers used for our shared hosting from Hetzner in Germany and Finland.
Sometimes you can make great deals on their server auction.

They have some cloud service in the USA already so I wouldn't wonder if there will be a datacenter from them within a few years too.

 

[D.O.A.]

20,000 unique IP users per day viewing 400tb of video attachments entirely based on one VPS with 2 vcores (3.2ghz each), nvme drives and 8gb ram (with elasticsearch enabled) is enough, no control panels just putty for 360,000+ members.







I spend more on latte's per month than hosting. You don't have to waste a cent on extra crap you don't need if you configure the box properly, from php to MySQL, and all the in between. One server to rule them all, since 2008.

 

[andybond]

I've seen several referrals to US and EU based servers - is there an upside or downside if you use a server from a different region?

I'm based in the UK, hosted (currently) in the UK, with a site predominantly used by people in the UK.

allhost.io are excellent value for money in the UK. I have one of their rizen platform servers with a centminmod stack and use cloudflare.

Its rapid!

 

[Suzanne O]

If you're using a cloud host, the staff do all the upgrades for you.

If you self host you have to do everything including paying for the connection to everything else.

 

[Slavik]

IONOS has some really good dedicated server deals:

Last time I used IONOS they refused to provide anything other than software raid, which meant when a drive died the rebuild took days rather than hours and a massive performance hit that left the site unusable.

Just buyer beware unless something has changed.

 

[TPerry]

Last time I used IONOS they refused to provide anything other than software raid, which meant when a drive died the rebuild took days rather than hours and a massive performance hit that left the site unusable.

And this is one reason that with ANY dedicated server that I have used I chose to use hardware RAID instead of software. There is a reason that it adds to the cost... and that reason is the efficiency of hardware vs software RAID comparison. Those that are not actually aware of the difference shoot themselves in the foot regularly. In the long run... software raid is not worth the savings.