How to Choose Between Private Cloud vs Dedicated Hosting

Business organizations running applications like websites, mobile apps, or enterprise software need excellent server infrastructure capable of hosting their resources and performing complex tasks without interruptions or delays.

The market has different kinds of hosting options catering to this that employ physical servers, virtual servers, or hybrid infrastructure setups. 

Choosing the best hosting solution among those can be confusing since they essentially do the same thing, but their technical specifications differ, and one solution may align better with your organization’s business needs.

Comparing the exact differences between private cloud vs dedicated hosting? Not sure which is right for you? This guide explains how to compare private cloud vs dedicated hosting for your organizational needs.

Table of Contents: 

Private cloud hosting makes web applications accessible using cloud resources. It operates via virtualization, unlike traditional hosting providers that take a centralized approach by storing multiple website data on a physical server.

A virtualization software called a hypervisor distributes the data over a network of connected physical and virtual machines (VMs). Since the data is spread across multiple virtual machines, it’s easier to allocate resources and make changes when required. Data is also easier to back up and retrieve.

You can host a private cloud at the organization’s data center, a third-party facility, or a private cloud hosting provider.

For example, Liquid Web offers private cloud hosting through VMware Private Cloud hosting solution. Its key features include:

• VMware vCenter Server: Administer different host servers and virtual machines through a single console application.

• vMotion: Move an existing virtual machine from one virtual server platform to another with minor interruptions to the virtual machine’s processing.

Dedicated hosting is a private web hosting service. You don’t share the server with anyone else. In other words, all server resources belong to a particular client — that’s why it’s also called single-tenant hosting. 

In dedicated hosting, the client has full authority and control over the configuration and setup. The key benefits of dedicated hosting include:

• Multiple Customization Options: In dedicated hosting, you have complete control over the server. Depending on your business goals and needs, you can optimize your hardware components (such as RAM, CPU, and storage options).

• Security: Dedicated servers provide an isolated environment, so in case of an attack, you can lock down your server and quickly prevent access to the data. 

• Access to Multiple OS Choices: With dedicated hosting, users can install various operating systems per their business activities. For instance, you can use Linux or Windows Server OS.

Private cloud and dedicated hosting are similar in that they both perform the same actions. For example, they receive requests, store and return information, and provide access via similar backend tools and software. 

The difference lies in how they perform and fulfill different use cases and requirements.

Let’s compare private cloud vs dedicated hosting in terms of six criteria:

Both dedicated and private cloud hosting are great options for organizations concerned about security. They both offer isolated environments that lessen security risks from noisy neighbors.

The difference ultimately boils down to other factors, such as cost-effectiveness and your IT team’s size and capability. Private cloud hosting is a better option if your IT team is small or doesn’t have specialized cloud engineering skills. Most managed private cloud providers offer deployment and maintenance services while letting you benefit from isolated access and high performance.

Liquid Web’s VMware Private Cloud lets you join resources from two or more physical servers into a single pool of resources that can be distributed through a selected quantity of virtual machines.

By distributing your resources through virtual machines, you separate management access from security controls and add them to the virtual machines, ensuring additional layers of security,

You can expect high performance from both private cloud and dedicated hosting. 

Dedicated servers are recommended to customers looking for solutions that prioritize speed and CPU-intensive workloads. They give customers direct access to the hardware and process data and retrieve information locally, so you don’t experience information lags.

A private cloud server also offers quick and reliable performance due to a dedicated hardware component called a storage area network (SAN).

The SAN is scalable, high-performance storage you can add on when your [storage] needs grow. You may need to customize the SAN to meet performance requirements since there can be a trade-off between local access performance and the SAN’s network performance. 

Dedicated hosting comes with affordable pricing for many large-scale businesses. However, customization upgrades can be expensive. 

Meanwhile, private cloud hosting has steep initial set-up costs, but it pays off in the long term.

Suppose you deploy a private cloud host like VMware in a multi-tenant environment. In that case, it can actually cost less than paying for shared hosting on someone else’s servers since public clouds often have a lot of hidden fees. 

Dedicated servers have excellent performance potential, but their infrastructure’s physical hardware and space limit that potential. In other words, you need more time and resources to add or change its components like processors, RAM, or drives. Many of these upgrades usually require downtime.

On the other hand, you can scale private cloud servers more easily since data storage is distributed over virtual and physical servers. If you need more (or less) storage, you can easily upgrade (or downgrade) resources. And with the technology that powers the private cloud, you can experience little to no downtime as you scale.

You can easily configure dedicated servers with no restrictions from the host since you have direct access to the hardware.

Unless you’re already using VMware and moving virtual machines elsewhere, VMware setup can be quite complex. However, when you sign up for a managed hosting plan from Liquid Web, we handle infrastructure and VM management for you.

There are certain operations where cloud hosting performs better than dedicated hosting and vice versa. 

Choose dedicated hosting when you need help with the following:

• Traditional Applications: Dedicated hosting works great for older, traditional applications and environments. 

• Customized Applications: Since not every business has the same requirements, you need to select a dedicated server hosting service that fulfills your specific needs. For example, if you are a professional photographer who owns a studio, you will need large processors and high-quality hardware. In other words, you will need to choose the type of hardware suitable for high-resolution films, videos, and images.

Meanwhile, private cloud hosting suits:

• Point-of-Sale (POS) Software: If you run an online business, you may need to run several servers simultaneously to ensure your store is online at all times. VMware helps in keeping the POS system online 24/7 through redundant hardware.

• Business-to-Business (B2B) eCommerce Application: If you run an eCommerce application and a database server goes down during queries, VMware will mitigate these issues with its highly available systems. These high availability technologies reduce virtual machine downtime during unplanned outages so you can immediately recover and continue your process. 

• Booking and Client Management Software: VMware may be ideal if you run a booking management service — say entertainment ticketing. A VMware server helps you quickly increase resources to meet demand in these types of businesses.

If you need a solution for eCommerce applications, look no further than private cloud hosting.

There are many private cloud hosting solutions in the market, but VMware is the market leader for several reasons:

VMware is great for testing environments and can run software testing in multiple environments. It helps small and medium businesses (SMBs) streamline business operations by:

• Reducing operating costs and capital.
• Centralizing data center management (using virtualization).
• Offering faster provisioning and deployment, an extensive network of third-party providers, and flexibility for demanding workloads.

vSphere has a fast rollback feature enabled by default that protects the host from losing connection to the server due to network misconfigurations.

VMware lets you add new virtual machines in minimum time. The interface is beginner-friendly, and individuals with basic knowledge can add an operating system in a few steps.

Choosing between private cloud vs dedicated hosting can be confusing since both types can perform similar functions. They differ depending on the intended purpose — different use cases have different scalability, security, performance, configurability, and budget requirements.