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The Cloud
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Cloud Servers
What is it?
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Technical
How does it work?
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Differences
Compared to
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Users
Who should use it?
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Uses
What's it used for?
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Benefits
What will it
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do for you?
What are cloud servers?
Cloud servers offer server resources over the Internet. We provide this service from a network of physical servers - known as a cloud. These cloud servers take from a pool of processing power, memory and storage to give customers dedicated resources they can adapt to their needs.
Take a look at our Cloud Servers.
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How do cloud servers work?
We divide a cluster of physical servers into cloud servers with virtualisation software.
We run multiple cloud servers on physical servers in our cloud thanks to Microsoft Hyper-V virtualisation software. In fact, we won the Microsoft Hyper V Cloud Partner award in 2011 for our work helping businesses move to the Cloud.
Cloud servers run separate operating systems and applications from each other. As a result, users can choose the operating systems they want to run on their cloud servers. Customers that use our cloud servers manage them through a web interface or API.
Find out more about our Cloud Servers.
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How is cloud server hosting different from
dedicated-server hosting?Cloud hosting is different from dedicated-server hosting because cloud hosting customers don't get specific hardware. Consequently, they're not limited by the capacity of that hardware. With cloud servers, customers have access to a pool of processing power, memory and storage. They can expand their cloud servers quickly by allocating more resources to them. However, cloud servers are similar to dedicated servers in the sense that they give customers a dedicated, rather than shared, resource.
Find out more about dedicated servers.
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Who should use cloud servers?
Businesses from any sector that want to:
- Run anything from websites to business applications efficiently
- Reduce their spending on IT
- Free up internal IT resources and space
- Increase data security or reduce IT risk
What can you use cloud servers for?
- Running websites, including web shops and ecommerce sites
- Developing business applications
- Consolidating servers
- Testing and developing applications
- Providing extra computing resource for intensive applications
- Storing data
What are the benefits of cloud servers?
Reduced IT costs
Businesses that use cloud hosting avoid the high upfront costs of new hardware and the subsequent costs of refreshing that hardware. Instead, they get a predictable monthly/annual cost based on the resources they've used. In addition, cloud hosting customers aren't responsible for the cost of the data centre, power, cooling, connectivity and maintenance associated with on-premise IT because hosting companies take care of these costs.
Improved performance
Cloud hosting customers don't have to worry about hardware renewals and refreshes because we ensure they always have the latest hardware, which gives them high levels of performance. In addition, dynamic server-load balancing distributes workloads across physical machines to give customers the best performance from their cloud servers.
Increased business agility
Cloud hosting customers can easily alter the capacity of their servers to meet the changing needs of their businesses. For instance, businesses with websites on cloud servers can schedule upgrades to cope with peaks in traffic. This ensures sites don't go down or suffer from poor performance when they're busy.
Improved business continuity
Cloud hosting can reduce the amount of downtime customers experience. It ensures their systems are always up and running. If hardware fails, they don't have to wait for repairs because their cloud servers fail over instantly. This means they automatically switch from failed components to working components in that cloud and their servers operate without losing data or server availability.
Reduced carbon footprint
Businesses can reduce their carbon footprint by moving their IT to the Cloud. Instead of supporting a room of underutilised servers, cloud hosting customers get the capacity they need on cloud servers. This means they consume less energy and have a smaller carbon footprint. Cloud hosts can offer this thanks to virtualisation technology, which allows them to use more of their servers' capacity. According to analysts Gartner, virtualisation can reduce the energy consumed by servers by 82 per cent. All Fasthosts data centres are supplied by energy produced from renewable sources.
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