Dedicated server or Cloud Hosting?

When hosting a website with huge traffic on the internet

Should I chose a dedicated server, cloud hosting or a VPS?

What factors should I consider when choosing?

I am looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Thanks in advance.

a dedicated server would surely be the best choice.

Chris Worner said:

When hosting a website with huge traffic on the internet

Should I chose a dedicated server, cloud hosting or a VPS?

What factors should I consider when choosing?

I am looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Thanks in advance.

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It depends.

Is this an established site, or a new site?
How much traffic are you receiving?
What is your current resource usage?

Cloud hosting can give you the benefit of being instantly scaleable as well as being redundant.
BUT, you have a to be careful!
A) Too many companies use "Cloud Hosting" as a marketing term, when really it is just a standard shared hosting or VPS.
B) Some companies like Amazon that do have true cloud hosting, can stick you with a very high bill at the end of the month if you have a spike in traffic (resource usage)

With a dedicated server, you have less 'moving parts' and therefore less components that can fail. You also have a set amount of resources, all to yourself, and your completely isolated.

If you have very large fluctuations in traffic, or need to be instantly scaleable to handle massive loads, then cloud hosting can be beneficial. Otherwise, sticking with a dedicated server is usually better in the long run. If your worried about downtime and want redundancy in case of hardware failure, then you can always use 2+ dedicated server behind a loadbalancer.

2U Dedicated server with of 64GB RAM, 2TB Fast hard disk, bandwidth [international and local combination] can fulfil it. Use branded server like Dell, HP, Cisco, or IBM.

I would say dedicated server, only because in my opinion they are better. Are you experienced in cloud servers , or dedicated servers

Cloud hosting should be use only if you need to be quickly scalable. Because in fact, an hosting can be describe as cloud only if it run on a top of baremetal servers, which mean using a system like openstack to manage VPS with dynamic size and network.

Example :

This is true when you go with cheap options. Cloud computing is similar to VM but on high level. but a dedicated server is a solid server!

Chris Worner said:

When hosting a website with huge traffic on the internet

Should I chose a dedicated server, cloud hosting or a VPS?

What factors should I consider when choosing?

I am looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

I would like to recommend you Dedicated servers, if your site facing high traffic on daily basis else go with cloud so that you can increase and decrease the server resources as per traffic expectation on your website, it will help you for cost cutting.

RDO Servers said:

It depends.

Is this an established site, or a new site?
How much traffic are you receiving?
What is your current resource usage?

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Of course it is an established site, to be honest, it was a site of my group who built it 2 years ago and now it is getting around 1800+ visitors/day from Google analytics, sometimes it was overload when traffic increased fast. Where to find current resource usage on my hosting?

sabrinalee said:

2U Dedicated server with of 64GB RAM, 2TB Fast hard disk, bandwidth [international and local combination] can fulfil it. Use branded server like Dell, HP, Cisco, or IBM.

Click to expand...

I saw dedicated server offers but they are very expensive and hard to reach out to some.

Marc A said:

I would say dedicated server, only because in my opinion they are better. Are you experienced in cloud servers , or dedicated servers

Click to expand...

praveenk said:

I would like to recommend you Dedicated servers, if your site facing high traffic on daily basis else go with cloud so that you can increase and decrease the server resources as per traffic expectation on your website, it will help you for cost cutting.

Click to expand...

What do you mean for increasing and decreasing the server resources on the server. Please elaborate this.

I could not know when the traffic increase or decreasing time by time.

It actually depends on your need.
If I may ask:
Is it a new website or existing one?
What volume of traffic is your website generating per month?

If it's a new website and you are just building your traffic, VPS & dedicated is a good start. You can go for cloud hosting when you are are getting massive traffic, for speed and effectiveness.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Note that some people do claim they are offering cloud hosting whereas it's just a shared VPS.This fake cloud hosting is usually cheap, so look out for this.The cloud hosting I recommend is Amazon.

Nice discussion. Any physical server (Dedicated server) comes with certain resource limits. Any genuine Cloud based server would get additional resources assign from a shared pool. However, it depends of the underlying infrastructure and the Cloud computing technology in use.

Typically, if you're not running an ecommerce application with seasonal sales, you wont' need to rapidly scale - which Cloud services are great for. If you're expecting a sudden increase in traffic because of an upcoming event, like being featured on Oprah or on Forbes, then Cloud services would be suitable. If you're going with a dedicated server, then match your resource requirements (current and projected) to the package specs, meaning don't commit to overkill.

Here is the description for you -

Dedicated server-

Dedicated server is your own server which is act as your computer on which you can host the multiple sites, install applications and related services on it. You can built your own security alters and firewall on the dedicated server. You will have your own set of bandwidth, hard-disk and resources. You can rent the disk space, bandwidth, resources on the dedicated server.

You will have the root access of the server as it's your own server.

I would suggest, study the market online. Please go trough the review section of the website and after that proceed further. You can compare all the plans and go with the best suitable plan. Most of the company provide the on query charge for the dedicated server issues so make sure what type of support is available.

Make sure if they are going to setup your server or you need to setup it by your own.

Cloud hosting -

Cloud hosting service will have the on demand resource allocation. There is harder security setup on the cloud hosting service.

Main principle of cloud hosting is divide as per the need. Cloud used to distribute the required resources on multiple servers as used them as per the requirement. There are multiple servers work together. If one server fails then other will start loading the same task without any delay. Cloud is nothing but the one larger storage space and processor.

Here are the some of the advantages of cloud hosting for you -

1. Accessibility - Main advantage of cloud hosting is that the files are accessible anywhere and anytime. You can access the files when you would like to access without matter of place.

2. Backup facility - Cloud hosting service always have the copy of your data on the the server. So in the case of disaster, you will have the copy of data even if the data on the main server get deleted or lost.

3. Low cost solution - You will need to pay just the amount for the storage which you are actually using.

4. Secure service - You don't have to worry about the security. Cloud hosting provider will have the best infrastructure on which you don't need to worry about the security , they have their setup for security.

5. High degree of uptime

VPS -

VPS hosting is best for the low budget and small hosting service. Maintenance cost is also low and VPS are easy to secure.
VPS is your own server with root access. You can host anything on it as it's your server. You can have any applications, software. You will have the bandwidth, resources, inode only for your service, it won't get shared with any other server. You will get dedicated resources for your service on VPS. You can manage the server in your way.

Server will have good up-time and security measures if you will manage it from your end as there won't be interfere of other service. You will have root SSH access too.


As there is huge traffic, you can choose the dedicated server or cloud hosting service.