Selecting Server Hardware: Hosted/Cloud vs On-Premise, Virtual vs Dedicated

Probably there are many ways to decide on how to purchase server hardware, but a simple approach is (yet another) triangle of parameters:

• Performance
• Availability
• Cost

The nice picture the two presenters give: you will allow more cost on an important business-critical server to assure performance and availability, as compared to hosting a website with cat pictures.

First you should investigate the minimum and optimal requirements for the application you want to run on the server. Also, you would try to anticipate current and future usage/users on the system. Try to anticipate ahead for 3-5 years. You don't want to just plan for the immediate now, but for the foreseeable future. Furthermore keep in mind that some amount of processor time, memory, storage and network will be already eaten up by Windows itself. Also take a good look at mandatory Windows Server services that are required by your application or service and add them to the list of the required hardware.

The next step then would be to decide if you really going to purchase the hardware yourself to be run on your premises, or if you want to have the server hosted by a hosting provider. If you have a dedicated and skilled server administrator you might consider an on-premise server. If you or your organization lack the skills you might want to outsource the effort of maintenance and risk of security to a hosting provider (aka cloud).

Once you decided to host the servers outside of your company you may then also decide for which offer to go. A dedicated server only hosted for you might again incur high cost, but exceeds in performance and availability. If performance is not of the highest interest you might want to look into virtual hosting, where your server is only a virtual machine running on a shared computer. Other virtual machines on the virtual host might negatively impact your virtual machine, yet might be far more reasonably priced.

Finally the options are vast regarding the actual provider companies. Selecting the right provider should be made again according to your needs and requirements. Faster, better, more is always better is nowadays seldom the right approach of balancing requirements and cost (suitability).

In the end even a server hosting company with a low reputation might suffice for things that are only irregularly needed like testing or training environments. E.g. if you want to just play with a domain controller even a cheap provider might work; if it's not up now you can run tests for personal education later. But for a business critical application you might consider another, more mature, provider.

Sources:
Windows Server Administration Fundamentals: Part 1 at minute 18.

Keywords:
Windows Server 2012 R2, Hardware