Don’t buy more servers for projects, just use the Cloud
From Part 3 of this series you know that we can keep virtual servers at the ready for disaster recovery, but what about a live server? Or even a development or staging server? Couldn’t you avoid having to buy and maintain hardware by just using Cloud resources for more server capacity?
Yes!
After using the Cloud for pure data storage, using Cloud servers as, well, servers is one of the most popular uses of Cloud resources. Startups to Fortune 500 companies leverage Cloud computing to expand capacity without needing to find room for another physical server (much less having to buy it and maintain it). Disaster recovery and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are logical extensions of using the Cloud to just store data. Need a new server to test and roll out a new web-based application? Roll it out to the Cloud. Need to mirror your production servers for development and testing? Mirror on the Cloud.
Live Cloud servers are just like at-the-ready servers, just live
The process for using IaaS is just the same as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), a capacity for a server is allocated (memory, processors, and storage), but unlike DRaaS, the IaaS server is turned on and is ready to use. IaaS isn’t new, dedicated virtual servers have been available for developers for years, but only recently has technology and competition made is easy and cost-effective to deploy most, or all, of your servers virtually.
Server management made easy
Maintaining servers is a pain. There isn’t a sys admin anywhere who gets up in the morning looking forward to checking, patching, and updating servers and software. Server maintanence is necessary evil. We hate it, but we know that if we don’t keep our servers and apps patched, we’re going to get hacked.
Fine, updating and maintenance sucks. Why are virtual servers better?
Speed and recovery time. Part of the drudgery of dealing with servers is restarting them. Physical servers take longer to reboot and be ready again than virtual servers. Virtual servers are just software. The VM can reboot as fast as the server it runs on will let it.
Cost effective, rapid server expansion
Say you need a new server. You call us we place your order from someone like HP Enterprise and the server is shipped to you. Even if it’s a stock server that is on hand it’s going to take days or weeks for that server to arrive. The server isn’t even set up. It still needs to be connected to power, network, and be setup with updates and applications. With IaaS you call us and ask for a new server, we might have the server up and running before you get off the phone. The server is right there and ready for your applications.
Just bought a server and find out you really needed a more powerful (or less powerful) server? Tough luck. You either need to buy another server to get enough capacity or try to find a use for excess capacity you have but don’t need. IaaS doesn’t have this problem. Need a more powerful server? Fine we’ll just give it more resources and reboot. Virtual servers have virtual components which are just settings. Getting more oomph or scaling back to just what you need is as simple as asking and it’s done.
Infrastructure as a Service lets you have just the right capacity for all your application. You pay for what you use. You tune IaaS to your needs and budget. No delays to get new components or waiting for servers to be set up.
When you need a new server you want it now and need it faster. IaaS gives you servers just when you need them. Simple as that.
What can we build for you today?
Want to take a server for a spin? Let us spin up a server for you to test and you can see how amazing working in the cloud can be.
If you’d like to read the other parts of the series, you can catch up with Part 1: What is the Cloud, Part 2: Data and Backups, and Part 3: Disaster Recovery.
