Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Cloud Hosting : cloud computing vs virtual (or VPS) servers

[smichm]

Hey

I'm trying to wrap my head around the difference between cloud computing vs virtual (or VPS) servers - they seem very similar.

Let me know!

Cheers,
Melissa

[KualoJo]

Different definitions of cloud computing, so that's why you're confused. The general cloud concept is of a system that is highly scalable and not dependent on one physical server, so it's redundant from hardware failure.

A VPS will be a virtualised 'slice' of a physical server. It will act much like it was its own server, with allocated RAM, Disk and CPU. However if that physical server fails, then all the virtual servers on it will be offline until it's repaired.

You can find virtual servers on cloud platforms. Difference being that rather than there just being one physical server there will be a grid of servers and an automatic failover process. So if physical server fails, your virtual server can be reprovisioned automatically on alternative hardware.

You also have rackspace cloud sites, which is different as you don't get your private server and operating system - just the ability to host sites on a redundant scalable platform.

Hope that helps.

[UNIXy]

Originally Posted by smichm

Hey

I'm trying to wrap my head around the difference between cloud computing vs virtual (or VPS) servers - they seem very similar.

Cloud computing platforms leverage virtualization for ease of deployment and to be in control of hardware nodes. Although not all cloud implementations use virtualization. Keep in mind that today's cloud does not scale up and is more of a marketing strategy.

Regards

[SSHocker]

Cloud is a marketing term. If I run SQL on separate server, is that a cloud?

I'd like to think it at least means clustered servers specifically set up for individual tasks such as SQL, Mail etc. with each of those servers having fault tolerance, giving practically 100% uptime.

I've seen standard Xen based VPS advertised as cloud hosting.

At this point in time, cloud is such a loose and abused term that I remain seriously underwhelmed.

[nitaish]

I have seen VPS.net offering VPS on a VPS cloud. Does anybody know what technology they use for the VPS cloud? Also, can I use VSphere for a VPS cloud?

[wise]

Originally Posted by nitaish

I have seen VPS.net offering VPS on a VPS cloud. Does anybody know what technology they use for the VPS cloud? Also, can I use VSphere for a VPS cloud?

xen I beleive

[JFSG]

Originally Posted by wise

xen I beleive

Plus some secret sauce?

[wise]

Originally Posted by LaptopFreak

Plus some secret sauce?

a well written API!

[KualoJo]

You can use AppLogic

[Dedicatedone]

A cloud is a pool of resources that allows your server to scale up and down whenever you wish. It also offers the redundancy and reliability with high-availability hosting that virtualization does not offer.

Cloud can also virtualize switches, firewalls, load balancers and other data center hardware that virtualization on its own cannot do.

[issi]

If it was a choice between cloud and vps I would go cloud everytime. I have been using rackspace cloud servers for a while and they are amazing. With cloud servers you get the ability to rapidly deploy servers with hourly pricing which is especially useful for experimenting with software or techniques.