Private Cloud vs Public Cloud: What is the best solution?

This is it. Private Cloud vs Public Cloud. The time has come for you to decide where to host your workloads, but you don't know what kind of cloud is best for you. Is it a public cloud? Is it a private cloud? Should you go for a dedicated server?

As we mentioned a few times in past articles, there are important differences between these two options, and both might offer good solutions for many problems. One of them is more robust, though.

Whether you are a DAO, a gaming company, an extremely successful e-commerce, or a small business owner, you will finish this article well-informed enough to make the best decision.

Hardware options

The hardware is what makes the magic happen. For an application to run on any device, there must be hardware handling the workload somewhere and that location can either be accessed by many tenants or just a single one.

When you go for the private cloud, you alone get all the power the server has to offer, and you can either choose a server with pre-configured specs or assemble one with the components that best match your specific needs. That goes for processors, memory, storage, and so on.

Whatever your business needs, be it an interaction with a blockchain, running inference on an ML model, or providing almost real-time interactions, you can customize your infrastructure and manage everything from your dashboard, API, or CLI.

Do you need an AMD 9554P CPU? Fine. Maybe something not as powerful, like the AMD 7443P? You're good to go. Why not a GPU server with multiple NVIDIA H100s? Latitude.sh can get you any of them.

Now, when it comes to the public cloud, your control over the underlying hardware is way more limited. Not only are there fewer options for you to choose from, but the server's physical resources are shared with other companies.

Within a multi-tenant server, neighboring applications might use too much bandwidth, or too much of any other resource really, and harm your own workload. Nobody wants that. 

This is an easy win for the private cloud.

Performance predictability

On fully dedicated servers, no tenants are competing for the same resources. A private cloud, therefore, allows consistent, reliable performance for as long as you need.

Think of blockchain authentication, for instance. Verifying identity and securing data in a transaction is crucial. If you have fully dedicated resources, validating smart contracts and writing blocks becomes quicker and more reliable.

The isolation granted by the private cloud is its greatest strength. No other applications will ever disturb your own, and you should know exactly what to expect from the server you have. 

Also, with on-demand dedicated servers, you can allocate resources according to your needs. If you must prioritize some specific applications over others, you just need to set up your servers accordingly.

In line with the first topic mentioned, performance consistency stands out as one of the public cloud’s weakest points, mainly for reasons that the private cloud excels.

If different tenants on the same server are running resource-intensive tasks, such as data science workloads, streaming, or online gaming, it’s easy to see how performance can degrade for everyone involved.

Another important factor to consider is that you might never know what other applications are running on your public cloud environment. Therefore, despite the contingencies set up by the hyperscaler, performance can become unpredictable.

You might simply wake up one day to discover that one of your “noisy neighbors” has taken too many of the server’s resources, causing issues for your applications. This is yet another clear advantage of the private cloud.

Security

If someone was trying to physically harm you, getting close to you would make it easier. Right? That same logic still applies when we talk about networks. The closer you are to others, the riskier it can get.

Of course, in real life, that doesn't mean you should just isolate yourself from the rest of the world, but your workloads, as it must be clear by now, will benefit from absolute privacy.

A private cloud reduces dramatically the risk of unauthorized access or "side-channel" attacks that might occur in multi-tenant cloud environments.

If you choose a reliable dedicated server hosting platform, like Latitude.sh, security measures will be as strict as you can imagine. That includes firewalls, encryption protocols, and everything else you can think of.

When it comes to industries that handle extremely sensitive data, such as healthcare, finance, and even cyber security, the private cloud is the safest option.

It's worth mentioning that the public cloud is not completely devoid of security measures. But they are not combined with the aforementioned isolation that gives the private cloud its name and reliable reputation.

Attacks on a shared environment might not even be originally targeted towards you, but once security has been breached, there is no saying on what might happen.

For this very reason, isolation is the answer. And again, you would benefit much more from a private cloud environment.

Network Configurations

In a public cloud environment, network customization is generally more limited when compared to a private cloud. 

While public cloud providers offer a range of networking features, these tend to be standardized and less flexible, primarily designed to serve a wide variety of users rather than offering deep customization for individual needs.

Tailoring the network according to the specific needs of the infrastructure is one of the greatest strengths of a private cloud. However, it also comes with one of the largest trade-offs as purchasing, maintaining, and configuring networks are a challenge on their own.

Due to that, many DevOps professionals are divided on this matter, with some advocating for the operational efficiency of the public cloud, while others keep emphasizing the performance and security benefits of the private one.

If only there was a place that could leverage the benefits of both, right?

While nothing will beat the level of control and customization that on-prem can provide, that doesn't mean you won't be able to rely on great networking features found in environments hosted at fully dedicated cloud instances.

For example, while public clouds do provide bandwidth allocation, it's often on a pay-as-you-go basis, without the pooled bandwidth advantages seen in top-tier bare metal providers, like Latitude.sh.

This can make it more difficult to optimize resources across multiple servers, especially when managing traffic-intensive applications.

Overage fees in public clouds can also be way more expensive, and there's less transparency in how bandwidth is allocated or monitored in some cases.

In terms of IP management, public cloud providers often assign dynamic IP addresses, and while they may offer elastic IPs, the flexibility to bring your IPv4 or IPv6 prefixes is generally limited. 

Security measures like DDoS mitigation are available, but are often tiered as premium services, and may not be as seamlessly integrated or unmetered as in private cloud setups.

Monitoring and management tools in public cloud environments tend to be broad and generalized, making it harder to get a detailed, granular view of network usage or quickly respond to traffic spikes or overage situations.

Ultimately, public clouds offer a standardized, scalable solution, but with less focus on deep network customization and granular control when compared to a private cloud.

In contrast, Latitude.sh's servers come with free ingress, plus a monthly bandwidth allocation of 20 TB of free egress traffic per server—with bandwidth quotas pooled across servers deployed in the same region. 

This allows for easier management and ensures that resources are optimized across the entire infrastructure. Any overage beyond the quota is charged at just $0.01 per GB, making it very cost-effective.

High-availability DDoS mitigation is available with unmetered protection, supported by global scrubbing centers designed to handle even the most sophisticated attacks.

With the ability to add extra IP addresses across projects and securely create private networks within the same region, businesses can seamlessly scale their infrastructure and adjust to accommodate specific networking requirements.

A detailed overview of bandwidth usage, along with automated email notifications when nearing the quota limit, helps streamline monitoring. 

Combined with a global, carrier-grade network, this ensures smooth traffic flow and quick access to millions of users worldwide, whether through redundant ISPs, large IXs, or on-demand peering to other clouds and data centers.

Storage

When it comes to storage, private cloud solutions like those offered by Latitude.sh provide a level of performance and reliability that surpasses many public cloud options. 

With both filesystem storage and servers with multiple drives available, businesses can efficiently manage and store data, ensuring high performance and robust security. 

Unlike typical public cloud storage, which often separates high-performance and archival storage tiers, Latitude.sh provides pure NVMe storage through the latest-generation drives.

This means data remains on high-speed NVMe disks, giving you millisecond-level read and write speeds, regardless of how frequently it's accessed.

In public cloud setups, less frequently used data is often shifted to slower, cheaper storage, which can add latency when retrieval is needed. 

With Latitude.sh, you can customize storage even at the server level, with multiple RAID options available when deploying servers with multiple disks.

This transparency allows businesses to budget more predictably without worrying about unexpected costs associated with data movement.

Private cloud storage also offers fault tolerance, with data being replicated across multiple servers and racks to ensure redundancy. 

In case of hardware failure, your data remains available, eliminating downtime or loss of critical information.

Public cloud services often provide redundancy, but at an additional cost, or require users to configure redundancy settings themselves, making it not so seamless and often more expensive to maintain.

Operating System and Software Flexibility

Operating system options are of the utmost importance for enterprises that require a specific OS to properly run their applications. And, as you might have guessed, the options vary a lot between public and private clouds.

When deploying your servers at Latitude.sh, you have access to a diverse range of operating systems, including Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Red Hat, Rocky, Windows, and more.

This selection provides exceptional flexibility, allowing you to choose the OS that best fits your specific application needs, whether you require the open-source advantages of Linux distributions or the enterprise features of Red Hat and Windows. 

This flexibility enables tailored configurations, seamless integration with existing systems, and support for specialized workloads.

In contrast, public cloud providers often offer a more limited set of operating systems and may impose restrictions on custom configurations, with no custom options available whatsoever.

While they typically support major OS options like Ubuntu and Windows, the choice can be narrower, and customization might be constrained by the provider’s predefined templates and settings. 

Additionally, public clouds may prioritize general solutions over specialized needs, leading to potential compatibility issues or additional costs for custom setups. 

This limited flexibility can restrict how effectively you can optimize your environment compared to the extensive options available in a private cloud.

Data Governance and Compliance

All your data will always be stored somewhere. Maybe it is all in the same place, maybe it's not. 

The point is: if it must be somewhere, you would preferably know exactly where. After all, in some cases, the data must meet specific criteria within a geographic boundary for it to be considered legal. 

In the case of a private cloud, it is easier to keep track of where your data is stored and even implement custom security policies or whatever else you might need to change in this case. 

Also, the private cloud allows you to fully control who can access your data, how it is managed, and how it is shared. You won't ever be surprised about anything. 

When you compare it to the public cloud, there is a disadvantage: your data might end up being stored somewhere you didn't want to.

This makes it way harder to keep your data in line with whatever regulatory requirements must be met to ensure the compliance of your operation. 

And the winner is?

Even though a public cloud might have its benefits when you are still an embryo reaching out for full development, the private cloud is the safest and most professional way to handle your workloads.

In a business, you want predictability and consistency. There's no place for hoping, only knowing. If you go with a private cloud, you're safe to focus on what you do best. Let us worry about the rest. 

When it comes to your data, isolation is security and power. Forget about sharing your resources, not knowing what to expect or when things are going down.

This is the best way to make sure your end user will always have the best possible experience while saving you all the headaches of purchasing and maintaining hardware on-prem.

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