In favour of traditional servers

While every business has different needs, and there is such a big focus on the cloud – everything, it becomes difficult to see that traditional rackmount servers have a place in your business and/or home office.

Physical servers have been popped on the backburner because we all want new technology and we all think that the newer the tech, the better it is. But the truth is that actually, a physical server could be worth much more to you than you might realize. Cloud has a lot going for it, it would be remiss to think otherwise. It is easy and accessible to all, and most of the time has high-grade encryption and other security measures. 

However, let’s take a look at a few places that a physical server blows a cloud option out of the water. 

Expenses

If you add up how much you pay for cloud services on various platforms over the years, you are going to arrive at the conclusion that while $4.99 or even $9.99 feels cheap each month, added all up it is pretty steep. And, once you are locked in and heavily reliant – you limit your options in terms of switching. For your own server, it is a one-time payment, and that is it. You can use it as much as you want, for whatever you want. 

Control

If you own your servers, you can do whatever you want with them. Which is pretty sweet. You can add extra memory, you can swap drives in and out as you like. Everything about the server is yours. If you are using someone else’s or paying a company, you have very little choice about what happens. Depending on the agreement you signed, and how much your subscription is you might be finding emails updating you on changes that you don’t necessarily like. 

Bandwidth

If you find that you are working with video production, and you are eating bandwidth like it is free, then you are going to be sliding into issues with the amount of data you are moving between your server and you. The sheer size is going to make it a pretty slow process. If you compare that with having your own server, which has no limitations, you can see speeds of 10 gigabits per second – which is pretty tasty. 

Mix it up

This is the crucial bit. For most people, it actually pays off to have both physical and cloud servers. Files that need to have free movement that aren’t heavy in terms of file size can be kept in a cloud server. They are being used by other people, so it makes sense. If you have a stack of file and media that only you need access to your server should be in your own office, or at least somewhere useful. If you consider the size of some of your project files, it doesn’t make sense to keep uploading and downloading from a cloud when you can have it in seconds (actually faster) from your own server.