How Dedicated Servers Fit into a Cloud World

dougdenny

How Dedicated Servers Fit into a Cloud World

Cloud computing has dominated the IT conversation in the last few years, crowding out discussions about the benefits of dedicated server solutions within an organization’s infrastructure mix. But the reality is, dedicated infrastructure still provides certain benefits over cloud in several use case scenarios. To dig into those scenarios, next week Rackspace is kicking off a new, free Deep Dive Google Hangout Series, “Exploring Dedicated in a Cloudy World.” We’ll go deep on the value of dedicated for security, compliance, performance and cost control. We’re dedicating an entire month to each topic, supported by weekly interactive sessions presenting dedicated solutions with detailed reference architectures and a Q&A at the end to address your questions. This Deep Dive series builds on last month's popular "Seven Red Boxes" webinar, during which we discussed several products and services across dedicated servers, cloud, storage and applications. We promised to continue that program, and over the next four months, we’ll do just that. The goal of this series is to make our experts easily accessible to you; we want to answer your questions and start a dialogue in a low key environment where you can feel comfortable asking everything from the most basic how to questions to the most complex. January’s focus is security; each session begins at 1 p.m. Central. See session details and add each Google Hangout to your calendar.

  • Jan. 13: Security in Servers and Networking
  • Jan. 20: Security in Virtualization
  • Jan. 27:  Security in Storage

Businesses look to Rackspace expertise to build the right mix of dedicated infrastructure and cloud infrastructure for their use cases. Talking with customers, we’ve encountered many misconceptions about infrastructure and dedicated hosting. Here are the most common questions we get: • Since security is my top concern, I should focus on private cloud options, right?  Our experts encourage customers to build the infrastructure that best fits the needs of their application or use case. Rackspace will then help determine the best security solution to build around that unique architecture. It is often the case, however, that dedicated infrastructure solutions can offer more options and better control to meet security and compliance requirements. • Isn’t a dedicated solution more of a hassle? Dedicated solutions can offer more control and flexibility to meet specific application requirements for security, compliance and performance. In many use cases, dedicated reduces complexity. For example, you have the freedom to make configuration changes and customizations in a single-tenant environment that would be impossible in a shared environment. • Isn’t a dedicated infrastructure more expensive than cloud? By running predictable workloads on a dedicated server and bursting into the cloud during spikes, many of our customers find cost savings. The ability to fully customize an environment that your team doesn’t have to procure, set up or manage yields savings that quickly pay for the service. • Doesn’t dedicated require deep expertise? Not if you have a team of experts to support you through planning, implementation and ongoing maintenance. Rackspace can help you narrow knowledge gaps, teach you how to optimize your infrastructure and even reduce your monthly bill with dedicated solutions. Have more questions? Ask an expert at one of our Deep Dive sessions.