What is cloud server?

1.What is a server? What is a cloud server? It seems that you have heard of physical server and bare metal server?

In the computer age, the modernization of all walks of life is inseparable from informatization, electronization and automation. Electronic equipment with long-term updated software is continuously changing the working mode of all walks of life and significantly improving production efficiency. Almost all of our businesses will generate data that needs to be stored for a long time, such as user account information, graphics, audio and video, parameter records of various transactions, and so on. The user’s data and software are generally stored and run in the user’s computer or mobile phone, while the merchant’s data and software are mostly stored and run in the server in the data center.

Initially, servers were purely physical servers, that is, physical hardware that could be seen and touched. This kind of hardware resources, from the beginning to the long-term use, requires high capital cost and time cost; followed by procurement funds, commissioning man-hours, data center racking, and subsequent maintenance man-hours for long-term operation. Moreover, a complete server resource is far beyond the initial needs of most businesses. Therefore, out of the vision of resource utilization and business isolation, technicians have developed corresponding software, which can divide a server into many shares and allocate resources according to actual usage, so as to meet the fine-grained needs of users and reduce waste. At the same time, the software divides ready-made resources, and the delivery time and cost are shortened to minutes, and based on the software, it can also provide more disaster redundancy functions.

2.How to distinguish the quality of server products and service providers

The quality of server products can be obtained from:

(a. What is the new and old status of the supporting hardware of the product?

It is currently March 2023. If the CPU of your cloud server has been on the market for more than 10 years, please try to avoid it. Intel E5 v3 v4, AMD EPYC generation, and later hardware are more ideal.

(b.What is product support software?

The underlying software of cloud services is very rich, but at the same time it also distinguishes between high-end and low-end positioning. Common virtualization technologies are KVM/VMware/Xen/HyperV/OpenVZ, etc., the most active of which is KVM because it is free and incorporated into the Linux kernel, the next echelon is VMware/HyperV/Xen, and finally OpenVZ. Because OpenVZ is not true virtualization, the experience is not very good, and the price is usually much lower. Please give priority to the underlying software other than OpenVZ.

(c. What is the merchant’s site software?

It is worth noting that for most long-term cloud computing merchants, the software supported by their own business will not be products developed by other companies. In particular, the cloud computing industry itself is a high-tech-intensive business, and the use of software developed by third parties is not a normal and promising way of development. We can see well-known companies whose business systems are independently developed. If you can find ideal prices and products from self-developed merchants for your needs, you should not choose a company whose main software relies on external commercial product support.

SiliCloud does not use third-party commercial business software such as WHMxx; at the same time, part of the management software for technical resources is purely self-developed, and part is deeply optimized based on OpenStack.

Supplement: OpenStack is the most complex and difficult software solution in the cloud computing industry, and it is also the basis for private cloud solutions provided by famous technology service companies such as Ubuntu/Redhat.

(d.What features and product types are offered?

Generally speaking, the richer the product types and the higher the optional specifications of the products, the stronger the strength of the company. For example, does it provide exclusive private Layer 2 network (VPC), load balancer, database, OSS object storage? What are the specifications of the optional cloud servers? What is the maximum size? Is the bandwidth allowed to be used freely according to the nominal network bandwidth?

SiliCloud currently provides users with exclusive private layer 2 network (VPC) products for free, but as of February 2023, products such as domain name/load balancer/database/object storage are still under development, and will soon be able to provide you with more abundant Affordable quality service.

(e.How is the history of the merchant and is the company background formal?

Has the merchant published the official registration information of the enterprise (whether it can be checked by gov domain name query)? Is it a multinational company? How long has the company been in business? Is it licensed by the government? Has it obtained the quality standard certification of a third-party well-known organization?

SiliCloud is currently registered in Hong Kong and Tokyo, and has offices in both places. The R&D headquarters is located in Akihabara, Chiyoda District, Tokyo.

3.What factors determine pricing

The main factors affecting a cloud server are:

(a. Amount of CPU/Memory. The more CPU and memory, the price will obviously increase proportionally.

(b. The city where you are located. Prices vary significantly across continents/countries/cities. Generally speaking, it will be more expensive in Asia, and lower in North America and Europe.

(c. The amount of network resources. Whether it is a fixed bandwidth peak or traffic billing, the more network resources you use, the higher the price.

SiliCloud currently provides cloud services in Tokyo and Los Angeles, and the price is absolutely low among merchants of the same level. We want to be an even better price breaker and continue to bring you a higher level of service at a lower price.