I don’t know if you are like me. When you first entered the industry, you were always confused about the concepts of physical servers (dedicated servers), VPS servers (virtual private servers), cloud servers, virtual hosts, and bare metal servers. To be honest, I was a little confused when I first started. Later Server rack cabinet, as my understanding continued to deepen, I gradually became clear about the differences between these servers, and learned how to choose a server. Today, I will share with you all the knowledge I have about servers! I hope it will be helpful to you in identifying and purchasing servers in the future.

Now that the above concepts have been mentioned, let’s start by distinguishing these servers!

1. Physical server:

Also called independent server or traditional server. As the name suggests, a physical server is a tangible server that is visible and tangible and placed in the computer room.rack 42u It can be understood as an independent and complete computer with high computing power, high performance, high security, high stability, and high controllability. It has hard disk, memory, and CPU, and can allocate and implement various network function services by itself, integrating various software and hardware resources into one.

Suitable for large websites and applications. The advantages are stable performance, high security, and more controllable; the disadvantages are that it requires professional server operation and maintenance personnel to manage,server rack server is expensive, has weak flexibility, and has large expansion restrictions. The price is high.

2.VPS server:

Also called a virtual private server. The VPS server uses virtual technology to divide the physical server into several independent spaces. Each independent space is a virtual private server, that is, a VPS server. Because it is a product that is virtualized from a physical server, it is not as stable as a physical server, the computing speed is slower, and the performance is not high. It is suitable for customers who do not have high configuration requirements.

Perfect for websites and apps on a budget. The main advantage is the price. The price is much cheaper than physical servers, not much more expensive than virtual hosts, and easier to manage. The disadvantage is that it is not as good as cloud servers in terms of expansion, storage, and stability. This is why most companies choose cloud servers. Server reasons.

3. Cloud server:

Also called cloud host, or ECS for short. Virtualize multiple independent server-like parts on a clustered server. Cloud servers are not individual physical servers. They are connected through network technology to form a supercomputer with independent broadband and IP. Cloud servers have the characteristics of high security and reliability, easy deployment, high scalability (instant expansion, on-demand expansion), and high cost performance. Because it is a cluster of multiple servers, cloud servers also have the advantages of exclusive hardware, exclusive resources, and risk sharing. Cloud servers are also fault-tolerant and can recover quickly from failures. Both the operating system and software environment can be backed up, and there is no need to reconfigure the software environment after recovery.

Suitable for small and medium-sized websites and applications. Advantages: More flexible than physical servers, elastic scaling management, prices can be set in real time on demand, avoiding waste of network resources and reducing operating costs; Disadvantages: In terms of security performance, users lack control over cloud servers, so due to enterprise data For security reasons, it is recommended to choose a large manufacturer.

4. Virtual host:

Also called virtual server or shared hosting. It is built by installing panels such as CPanel and Plesk on a single host or host group, such as a physical server, VPS server or cloud server. The virtual host market is quite confusing. It is best to use cloud servers (Alibaba Cloud is recommended). Physical servers are also available, but VPS is generally not recommended as a virtual host server. If we use renting a house as a metaphor for the difference between VPS and virtual hosting, then VPS is equivalent to renting the entire property, while virtual hosting is shared renting. But the whole rent is a rough house, and the shared house is a furnished house.

Suitable for non-Java projects and website applications with small traffic and memory. The advantage is that it is cheap, and it reduces a lot of operating costs compared with physical servers; the disadvantage is that stability and security are very weak, and the website's performance is insufficient when dealing with large-traffic access, and there are very large restrictions on speed and traffic.

5. Bare metal server:

Similar to a dedicated physical server on the cloud, it has high-performance computing capabilities on the basis of elasticity and flexibility. The computing performance is no different from traditional physical machines, and it has the characteristics of safe physical isolation. It is equivalent to the "abnormal version" of traditional physical servers. Bare metal servers are super platforms that combine the stable performance of physical servers with the highly elastic resources of cloud servers. It not only has ultra-high computing performance, but also meets users' requirements for core application scenarios and server stability. For example, Alibaba Cloud's elastic bare metal server - Shenlong has such characteristics.

It is suitable for Web websites, heavyweight database applications such as medium and large enterprises, and high-performance websites and applications such as games and finance that have very strict requirements on data security, performance configuration, and security supervision. It combines the stability of physical servers and the highly elastic advantages of cloud server resources, with higher performance and more flexibility; the disadvantage is that the price is relatively high.