Have you considered some of the advantages of virtualization and the cloud? It is difficult nowadays to ignore cloud, however many business owners are still hesitant to make the move for one reason or another. Although there are many potential benefits the public cloud can offer, we understand the hesitations business owners may face when contemplating a switch especially when security and compliance are a factor. Luckily you don’t have to dive right in if you aren’t fully ready.
In this article we will detail 3 types of hosting environments that are a great middle ground between the public cloud and dedicated infrastructure: Virtualized Dedicated Servers, Private Cloud, and Dedicated Cloud. It is easy to get confused between these 3 environments. Although there are similarities among them, the differences are actually quite significant and should play an important role in your decision making. Allow us to detail the specifics of each environment in order to help you decide which may be best for your business.
Virtualized Dedicated Server
At a Glance:
- Dedicated hardware (server) virtualized into multiple virtual machines.
- Virtual machines installed with OS of your choice (Windows or Linux)
- Local storage without the need of a SAN – cost savings
- Dedicated environment can be setup with custom security solutions
- Cost effective solution to run multiple VMs for one monthly price.
- Virtualized with Citrix Xenserver, Microsoft HyperV, or VMware
We’ve discussed this topic in recent blog posts. Virtualization allows you to get more out of your hardware and, in turn, maximize your budget. Often businesses find that each physical server they have is only using a small portion of the total CPU, RAM, and I/O available. With virtualization you are consolidating a number of physical servers onto a more powerful machine capable of handling the increased load. NetSource uses Citrix Xenserver, Microsoft Hyper-V, among other virtualization software products. When you virtualize a single server you are using local storage in a Raid (10, 5, 1) configuration. Raid allows for redundancy at the disk level.
A few reasons why businesses choose virtualization are the ease of managing their equipment and applications, less hardware to deal with, and potential cost savings. Citrix Xenserver and Hyper-V, for example, have advanced management tools that help you monitor and review information quickly across multiple servers. Additionally, deploying new servers can be done with a few clicks of a button, decreasing the time it takes to launch new products.
Since the virtualized server is your own we can create a custom security solution allowing you to meet very specific compliance requirements. You get all the resources on the physical server dedicated to your environment (VMs).
Private Cloud
At a Glance:
- Dedicated close-end system capable of meeting high security standards
- Fully redundant setup using dedicated SAN storage – VMs will failover to 2nd server if needed
- Set up as many VMs as you can depending on your custom hardware
- Add more hardware (servers) to solution as your needs grow – expandable
If you want a fully redundant cloud environment but require higher security, a private cloud may be the perfect solution for your business. A private cloud environment includes 2 or more dedicated servers connected to a dual controller SAN, with a virtualization product (Citrix Xenserver, Hyper-V) running in the environment. As the name suggests, you are the only tenant in this private setup and you are able to use the full resources of the dedicated SAN storage.
These virtualization products allow you to create as many virtual servers as you need, depending on the total resources available, and these VMs can be migrated between physical servers providing you with extensive failover capabilities. Additionally, when it’s time to grow your private cloud’s capabilities you can add additional physical servers to the server pool. This highly redundant and customizable setup is perfect for businesses who want to move to a cloud setup but need higher security standards to meet compliances (ex. HIPAA or PCI).
Dedicated Cloud
At a Glance:
- Your own dedicated server is added to our public cloud
- All of the benefits of a redundant solution for the price of a dedicated server
- You can set up as many VMs as you can run on your dedicated equipment
- You get all the benefits of our public cloud’s security and built in redundancy
- One monthly cost means you have a clear budget for your hosted solution
NetSource offers a third hosting solution that is truly unique: Dedicated Cloud. With Dedicated Cloud you sign up for a dedicated server and NetSource places this server into our public cloud. Your server becomes another server in the cloud but is dedicated to only you. In other words you get the redundancy of the public cloud without leasing multiple servers and a SAN. You also get the security already implemented on the public cloud. This solution is perfect for a business who wants to be on their own physical server in the cloud but doesn’t have the budget to build out their own private cloud setup.
NetSource is here to make your transition to the cloud much easier. Contact us today to learn more about our comprehensive portfolio of hosting solutions.