In this article we will go over the benefits of choosing a Dedicated Server today vs a Cloud Server.
In our example we will be comparing the newly released AMD-based server by IONOS:
Dedicated Server: AR8-64 NVMe – $100/Month
Cloud Server: Cloud Server XXL – $100/Month
| Name | CPU Cores/Threads | Ram | Storage | Price |
| AR8-64 NVMe | 8c16t | 64GB | 960GB | $100 |
| Cloud Server XXL | 8c8t | 16GB | 160GB | $100 |
Even on paper the Dedicated Server blows the Cloud Server out of the water. Lets continue to look at the overall performance of each.
Performance
AR8-64 NVMe:
Drive Performance:
CPU Performance:
Network Performance:
Web Hosting Performance:
Apache:
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1843412 $>
Server Software: Apache/2.4.37
Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /
Document Length: 4006 bytes
Concurrency Level: 500
Time taken for tests: 0.216 seconds
Complete requests: 5000
Failed requests: 0
Non-2xx responses: 5000
Total transferred: 21990000 bytes
HTML transferred: 20030000 bytes
Requests per second: 23155.22 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 21.593 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.043 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 99449.88 [Kbytes/sec] received
Nginx:
Server Software: nginx/1.14.1
Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /
Document Length: 4057 bytes
Concurrency Level: 500
Time taken for tests: 0.076 seconds
Complete requests: 5000
Failed requests: 0
Total transferred: 21455000 bytes
HTML transferred: 20285000 bytes
Requests per second: 65799.00 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 7.599 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.015 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 275726.07 [Kbytes/sec] received
Cloud Server XXL:
Drive Performance:
CPU Performance:
Network Performance:
Web Hosting Performance:
Apache:
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1843412 $>
Server Software: Apache/2.4.37
Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /
Document Length: 4006 bytes
Concurrency Level: 500
Time taken for tests: 0.459 seconds
Complete requests: 5000
Failed requests: 0
Non-2xx responses: 5000
Total transferred: 21990000 bytes
HTML transferred: 20030000 bytes
Requests per second: 10894.88 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 45.893 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.092 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 46792.68 [Kbytes/sec] received
Nginx:
Server Software: nginx/1.14.1
Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /
Document Length: 4057 bytes
Concurrency Level: 500
Time taken for tests: 0.272 seconds
Complete requests: 5000
Failed requests: 0
Total transferred: 21455000 bytes
HTML transferred: 20285000 bytes
Requests per second: 18373.23 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 27.213 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 0.054 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 76991.74 [Kbytes/sec] received
Summary
| Name | Drive Test | CPU Test | Network Test | Apache Test | Nginx Test |
| AR8-64 NVMe | 6147MBs/905MBs | 4768/403 | 948mbps/931mbps | 23155 Req/sec | 65799 Req/sec |
| Cloud Server XXL | 640MBs/507MBs | 1708/223 | 402Mbps/400Mbps | 10894 Req/sec | 18373 Req/sec |
Conclusion
As you can see in the table above the performance of the equally priced Dedicated Server is much better than the Cloud Server. No matter the metric you are looking at a 2.5x-5x improvement with the Dedicated Server.
Unless you plan on growing your Server’s storage beyond 1TB in the distant future there is little reason to consider the Cloud Server at the current prices available for Dedicated Servers.
Whether you are just hosting a basic website or more advanced applications the Dedicated Server offers you a much faster and smoother experience.
