One of the main reasons why businesses have been moving to the cloud servers has been its low costs. Dedicated servers cost more than the cloud servers. Though the hardware costs are more for the cloud servers the hardware is utilized by more users, unlike the dedicated server hardware which is reserved only for one user. The burden of costs is split in the cloud while it is shouldered by one user in the dedicated machines.
Dedicated servers comprise comprehensive resources like RAM, CPU, hard drive, and many more which together are hosted in redundantly equipped data centers. These machines are leased out to one customer. Cloud servers on the other hand are all virtual components that are housed on physical machines that split up the usage of memory and processing power.
Consider the storage in both the servers. Dedicated machines come installed with hard drives or solid-state drives (SSDs) that are capable of moving large volumes of data very quickly. The connections are not shared by any other server and meant only for one server. The cloud servers have separate individual storage. The cloud servers use disks that are stored in large storage pools called SAN (storage area network).
SAN is more expensive. The memory and processing power of the cloud server is connected to the storage via the internet or a network connection that has multiple servers. This makes it slower as the distance is more resulting in an increase in latency and performance depends on the numbers of users sharing the bandwidth. Since the physical disks on the SAN are used by more than one server, the response time that it takes also increases. Features in dedicated servers suit businesses with better performance and productivity.
