A Cloud Server is a ‘virtualised’ server, sometimes referred to as a ‘virtual machine’ or ‘VM’ for short. It is a fully-featured server which can, for the most part, be used in the same way a physical server can. Multiple Cloud Servers share the same physical hardware, but each one is completely self-contained, and provided with the specified level of resources ie. CPU performance, RAM and disk space.
Bytemark’s Cloud Servers can be provisioned instantly from the Bytemark Panel. These are flexible, fixed-price servers which start at £10 per month and each have an IPv4 and IPv6 address as standard. You can configure our Cloud Servers with any of the following:
- 1 to 180GB RAM.
- 1 to 16 CPU cores.
- 1 to 8 individual discs:
- Fast “SSD” storage in 10GB increments.
- Cheaper “Archive” storage in 100GB increments.
- Extra IPv4 addresses.
Our Cloud Servers used to be called ‘BigV’ (which is still our programmers’ codename for the project).
Differences from Dedicated Servers
You can run the same OS software on Cloud or Dedicated Servers; Linux & Windows will work exactly the same.
Cloud Servers can be provisioned instantly, whereas Dedicated Servers have a 2–5 day lead time; Premium Dedicated and Storage Monster Servers can take longer. Cloud Servers are better for a fast start, or where you’re happy to pay for more capacity when you need it.
Cloud Servers can share hardware with other customers, so might perform less consistently than Dedicated Servers.
The minimum commitment for a Cloud Server is one day, whereas it is one month for Dedicated Servers and 12 months for Premium Dedicated and Storage Monster Servers.
Differences from other providers
In short: we designed our Cloud Servers to stay running; you are not obligated to over-provision for reasonable uptimes or to avoid data loss.
Behind the scenes, we sometimes move your servers between different pieces of hardware (sometimes called ‘live migration’). This allows us to perform upgrades and fixes to both software and hardware as needed, without interrupting our customers’ services.
Most server providers (who don’t do live migrations) tie your server to a piece of hardware. When that hardware fails, these providers may require you to rebuild your server from backups, or wait for hardware to be re-provisioned. Our Cloud Servers can usually be rebooted on new hardware when a failure is detected, shortening down time.
We also use custom-designed network storage allowing you to add more storage whenever you need, as well as for us to live migrate that storage in case of trouble.