Dedicated Servers

Dedicated servers represent a physical computer solely dedicated to a single customer. While
offering complete control and security, dedicated servers come with limitations:

• Unparalleled Control and Security: Dedicated servers provide complete autonomy over
the hardware and software environment. Customers enjoy granular control over system
configurations, security policies, and application deployments. This level of control fosters
robust security measures, ideal for handling sensitive data or applications requiring
stringent security protocols.
• Guaranteed Resource Availability: Dedicated servers eliminate the concerns associated
with resource sharing. The entire processing power, memory, and storage capacity of the
server are exclusively dedicated to the customer’s applications. This ensures predictable
performance and eliminates the possibility of performance degradation due to resource
contention with other users.

Limitations:

• Capacity Planning Challenges: Precisely forecasting application resource requirements can

be a formidable task. Customers face a trade-off: either over-provisioning resources and
incurring unnecessary costs for underutilised servers or encountering performance
 bottlenecks and delays during upgrades. Scaling capacity upwards often necessitates
purchasing entirely new hardware, leading to additional capital expenditures and downtime
during migration.
• Operating System Restrictions: Dedicated servers are tethered to a single operating
system chosen during deployment. This can limit application compatibility and deployment
flexibility, particularly for organisations with diverse software needs.
• Resource Management Overhead: Managing dedicated servers often requires a significant
in-house IT infrastructure and skilled personnel to handle maintenance, security patching,
and performance optimisation. This overhead translates to additional operational costs for
organisations.
• Limited Scalability: Scaling dedicated server environments vertically (adding more
resources to existing hardware) often reaches a physical limit. Horizontal scaling (adding
more servers) necessitates additional management overhead and network configuration
complexities.

Virtual Machines

Virtualisation technology ushered in a new era of resource utilisation with the introduction of
virtual machines (VMs). Virtual machines essentially act as software-based emulations of physical
computers. A single physical server can now host multiple isolated virtual environments, each
capable of running its own operating system and applications. This innovation brought about
several key benefits:

• Cost Efficiency: By consolidating multiple virtual machines onto a single physical server,
organisations could maximise hardware utilisation and optimize their return on investment
in computing infrastructure. Customers only pay for the virtualised resources they utilize,
significantly reducing the costs associated with underutilised dedicated servers.
• Improved Resource Management: Virtualisation provides finer-grained control over
resource allocation. Administrators can dynamically allocate resources such as CPU,
memory, and storage to individual VMs based on their specific needs. This flexibility allows
for efficient resource utilisation and improved application performance.
• Operating System Independence: Virtual machines decouple applications from the
underlying physical hardware. Each VM can operate with its own guest operating system,
enabling organisations to deploy a wider variety of applications on a single server. This
fosters greater flexibility and streamlines application development processes.

Limitations:

• Resource Sharing Challenges: Similar to dedicated servers, resource contention can still
occur within a virtualised environment. When multiple VMs compete for shared resources
on the physical server, performance bottlenecks can emerge. Careful resource management
strategies become crucial to optimize performance and avoid service disruptions.
• Overhead of Guest Operating Systems: Each virtual machine requires its own guest
operating system, which can consume additional resources compared to a single operating
system managing the entire server. While offering benefits in isolation, this can contribute
to some degree of inefficiency.
• Management Complexity: While offering advantages in server utilisation, managing a
virtualised environment introduces additional complexity compared to dedicated servers.
Administrators require expertise in virtualisation tools and techniques to ensure optimal
performance and resource allocation.

Containers

Containers represent a more streamlined and lightweight approach to application deployment

compared to VMs. Unlike VMs, containers share the underlying host operating system kernel,
significantly reducing resource overhead. This approach offers several key advantages:
 • Portability and Consistency: Containers encapsulate an application with all its
dependencies within a single, self-contained unit. This enables seamless portability across
different computing environments, regardless of the underlying operating system. This
consistency simplifies development, testing, and deployment workflows.
• Isolation and Security: While sharing the host kernel, containers leverage namespaces and
control groups to provide a degree of isolation between applications running within the
same containerized environment. This isolation helps prevent resource conflicts and
enhances security by limiting the potential impact of vulnerabilities within one container on
others.
• Scalability and Microservices Architecture: The lightweight and portable nature of
containers makes them ideal for building and deploying microservices architectures.
Microservices architectures decompose applications into smaller, independent services that
can be scaled independently. This facilitates a more agile and responsive development
process.

Limitations:
 • Security Considerations: While offering isolation, container security relies heavily on the
security posture of the underlying host operating system. Breaches in the host system can
potentially compromise containerized applications.
• Limited Control: Since containers share the host kernel, they offer less control over the
underlying system compared to VMs. This can be a limitation for applications requiring fine-
grained control over system resources.
• Storage Considerations: Containerized applications might require additional
considerations for persistent storage needs. While data volumes can be attached to
containers, managing persistent data across deployments necessitates additional planning.

4. Functions: The Serverless Revolution (500 words)

Serverless computing, enabled by functions, represents a paradigm shift in application

development and deployment. Functions are self-contained code units triggered by events such as
HTTP requests, database changes, or scheduled events. In essence, serverless removes the burden
of server management and infrastructure provisioning from developers, allowing them to focus
solely on application logic.
 • On-Demand Scalability: Serverless architecture automatically scales to handle workload
spikes without requiring manual intervention. This eliminates the need for capacity planning
and infrastructure provisioning, simplifying application management.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Customers only pay for the execution time of their code. This model is
particularly advantageous for applications with variable workloads, as costs scale directly
with usage. This eliminates the ongoing costs associated with maintaining idle servers.
• Focus on Code: Serverless abstracts away server management complexities, allowing
developers to concentrate on writing high-quality code and deploying functions quickly.
This fosters increased developer productivity and faster application development cycles.

Limitations:

• Vendor Lock-In: Serverless functions are typically tied to the specific platform where they
are deployed. This can limit portability and introduce vendor lock-in concerns.
• Cold Starts: The first execution of a function might experience a slight delay as the
environment is initialized. This can be a concern for applications requiring strict latency
requirements.
• Limited Control: Serverless functions offer limited control over the underlying
infrastructure and operating system compared to traditional deployment models. This can
be a disadvantage for applicat