Dedicated Server vs Cloud (Amazon)

The only difference you'll have on a "cloud server/instance" is that a true cloud is a self healing infrastructure. The delivery of the product is no different. Most nodes that are clustered for a cloud environment are lower in specs that the typical dedicated server. In some cases you could notice a performance decrease due to this & the use of SAN storage as the r/w is a bit slower than local storage.

Every company defines the word "cloud" differently. Some use a true cloud infrastructure and others just use it as a marketing term.

I have noticed over the past few years, that companies like Amazon are having more & more outages however.

I would rather have a dedicated server with a cluster setup than having all my information stored in the same pot as others

I think it all comes down to cost.

A "cloud" service is nothing more than a bunch of really low-cost hardware strung together in a way that makes it, essentially, one gigantic, fault-tolerant, system. This gigantic system then has its bandwidth, processing power, and, in some cases, RAM sold out at varying degrees.

In my experience, Cloud hosting is preferential for the middle-ground enterprise, to help them transition to the large enterprise. Small businesses get whacked with what is essentially a really high cost for running a server, while a large business tends to have enough money to roll their own fault tolerant system, and thus save money by sourcing the work internally, rather than externally.

I run a server out of a colocation in a Chicago datacenter for around $300/mo. With that I get 1U of rack space, 2 amps of power, and a 100Mbit connection (no cap). The server itself is pretty beefy, costing around $4000 to build, but it has 28 cores (with hyper-threading), enough RAM to carry me through 2015, and more hard drive space than I know what to do with.

The primary advantage I have with a dedicated server is that I'm free to run a bunch of experiments, bitcoin, tor, or game servers without having to penny-pinch. It's all there, all paid for, in one (largish) flat fee.

My community loves it, since it lets us to a lot of things we couldn't do with shared hosting. Mumble server? Check. Team Fortress 2? Check. IRC? Check.

I've looked into cloud services, and for the prices, I estimate I'd be spending, roughly $1000 per month for the same capabilities. Of course, here's the catch: if I were only running Apache and MySQL I'd probably be saving money, mostly thanks to the reduced workload.

This is assuming I never used the server for other purposes - like hosting my own files to transfer to other devices, or for remote access at a later time. A few large uploads and my budget would be blown out of the water.

So, it really depends on what your application is. In either case, a "cloud" service, from the customers standpoint, generally presents itself as a standard dedicated service - you just have the option of instantly creating virtual servers when you need more capacity.

Really, it all comes down to cost. Can you afford $4k to put down on a server? Will your CPU time and bandwidth cost you more per month than if you had your own colo?

Math sucks, doesn't it?

28 cores is pretty beefy lol. But you are right, it all comes down really to what kind of budget you are working with.

Recently I attended a seminar regarding windows server 2013. In which I got to know about that thing. Kattare Hosting: Knowledge Base

From what i read, by spreading your static files across the cloud, you can gain substantially on your page loads. This should be a huge plus (along with the fault-tolerance, scalability factor). Although maintaining consistency should become a challenge. What do you guys think?

note: I dont have any experience in cloud environment.

Sorry, my previous comment might be a bit ambiguous. By 'page load' , i meant the loading time not the traffic/hits.

And as LordKat points out, sync between traffic data also becomes an issue when it comes to cloud environment.

There are many services that you can choose from, But you need to look at how the service can help you business.

Despite being called "programming talk", This really isn't the best forum for infrastructure questions due to the marketing nature of forum at large

I'm a senior developer at a small tech startup and we compromise between in-house dedicated, managed dedicated, and EC2 instances. Like others have said, it really depends on what you're doing. Do consider the value of the flexibility to scale instances up or down on demand.

Consider using both
Think of your dedicated infrastructure as your base line of resources: always available to accept requests and do work. However, if your service experiences a large spike in traffic your cloud-based infrastructure can respond to the increase in requests automatically and scale back down when it's done.

Dedicated vs EC2
Which cloud computing platform should I choose?

But there is a catch
This also means that your web application must be built with horizontal growth in mind, but you'll be able to mitigate any significant traffic event with this strategy. You might even save money since you can always scale down when you're done, whereas your dedicated servers will persist even during off-peak times.

Most importantly, don't let the tools get in the way of actually making something. If you find yourself getting stuck asking too many questions and not doing anything, flip a coin, choose one, and go =]

Some resources on building to scale:
How can I design a scalable web application using PHP?
Planning Scalable Web Application Development