Choosing Cloud Server provider is not quite easy work. In This Article, We Have Discussed Some of The Established Key Considerations For Choosing Cloud Server (IaaS) Provider For The Webmasters OR Business Entity. All companies (usually hosting provider) claim their service is the best and cost effective on this earth. In reality, on long run there is no long term blogger or business exists who never faced trouble with cloud server (IaaS) provider. We actually never know condition of their real hardware, manpower. We can divide the key points in to Cost, Security, Functionality, Integration, Usability.
We should remember golden advice by Darren Rowse – we should avoid different services from same vendor (unless they are offering extra cost advantage) to avoid vendor lock-in.
In easy words :
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- your domain registration should be from company X,
- your DNS should be from company Y,
- your CDN should be from company Z,
- your SSL certificate should be from company A,
- your server should be from company B.
- your backup server should be from company C.
The above points offers more control over the sellers. If one component sells become odd, you can quickly switch to service from a new company P. If your DNS, domain registration, CDN, Cloud Server (IaaS) is from one company; then it is great as long they are remaining good. It is terrific to easily migrate a live site or servers for other works from company Q to company R. None wants to loss a customer. The way to retain willing to leave customer often become bitter to the customer.
Key Considerations For Choosing Cloud Server (IaaS) Provider
Cost
Everyone has a budget for a purpose. Everyone has a list of requirement too. VPSDime 6GB OpenVZ server at $7/month may be enough to run ordinary website running WordPress, Aruba Cloud’s 1GB server at 1 Euro/month many be enough for reverse proxy, but they may not be designed to handle serious works of big data analysis tools.
Cost not necessarily becomes higher for higher quality. Cost/rent of land/datacenter at bigger cities costs higher. Unless you have reason, you probably can avoid costly data center at San Jose. Factually just lesser big cities of the US (or any such country) will not be just bad. Indeed, indeed it is better to calculate the actual geographical distance the cables are requiring to run to get outside the US (or other country). It is not easy work to know. Easy cheat is noticing average ping time from all over the earth.
Security
Some of the cloud server (IaaS) providers are infamous to harbor so called hackers, script-kiddies. Security is a big concern in the cloud. Bad neighbors are not at all good in IaaS. We probably need to make sure that our cloud server (IaaS) provider is known to be compliant with the laws and regulations. A good provider not necessarily very big, popular to protect against cyber security risks.
Functionality
Next, we need to know what cloud infrastructure the cloud server (IaaS) provider is using. OpenStack, for example has lot of community developed scripts, tweaks. That cloud infrastructure is important for basic compute, storage support as well as support for private and hybrid cloud delivery. Custom or hidden cloud infrastructure vendor lock-in more. On OpenStack it is easy to have whole server backup, develop own plugins for web software such as WordPress. Same goes for VMWare. This part often bargained for cost reduction. Who can not provide widely known cloud infrastructure should charge lesser.
Integration
When choosing a cloud server provider, we should think about how the provider is offering technologies to help us to easily incorporate our workflows. Often, this point is confused with Functionality. Not all the providers who run OpenStack offers the same features or even all the features. This part again is at bargain for cost reduction. Who can not provide all the desired features of known cloud or virtualization software should charge lesser. We may not use OpenStack whole server backup feature at all. But having such option present decreases the headache when we face a disaster.
Interoperability
It is quite important to determine if we can exchange data, connection or use loadbalancer between any number of systems and other cloud service providers. This key feature builds upon how well or hell the services are thought to be integrated with the others. Compromise in flexibility points bad intention of the provider. There should not be restriction to use a server as reverse proxy of own servers from different host. Same goes for loadbalancers. Your server’s IP from different host should not have trouble to the host as you are interested in their loadbalancer as product.
Usability
Usability is important for the administrators. Poor usability will require more man hours to deploy and maintain the IT system, which may cost us more money. A good example is faster loading easy GUI of web host account, offer of java-based console via web host account. You are at risk when your cloud server provider lack a java-based console or slow to respond to request to perform intended jobs you want via java-based console via tickets. Then the individual cloud server instances become like dedicated server without dedicated server like ways to enter the server outside SSH over public internet. It is not quite uncommon to wrongly use restrictive rules in firewall to get own self locked to do SSH. A good provider either will flash the iptables within 15 minutes on request over ticket or will provide a java-based console.
Man power on-demand
It is important to provide Cloud Server (IaaS) option as managed, unmanaged and offer sysadmin service as separately paid hourly service. Not always we need costly managed service, but sometime we need paid sysadmin services of the host.
Conclusion
In mid 2018, there are really lot of small, medium and big cloud server (IaaS) providers. These days it is common to observe that the big players are not exactly great as cloud server (IaaS) provider. Often their cost is too high for offered quality of service.
As for the public websites, we can always use Nginx as reverse proxy to hide the real server provider. If you need a renowned costly brand’s provider for branding purpose (when their services are not up to the mark for cost), you can use their low RAM server as reverse proxy in front. This strategy somewhat put your real servers slightly at secured position. Script kiddies more likely to attack the public IP. It is of utmost importance to watch the reviews, ratings, benchmark by the real users. A single oddly bad complain by a real power user may point towards possible dangers.
