Serverless (Azure & AWS) vs Dedicated Servers

[RossCo_]

Hey guys,

Looking for opinions here, I have always used dedicated servers for Web Applications ( Not Websites )
I have been looking at Azure over the break as they now have a presence in South Africa, but I'll be honest I am not getting on with them when trying to host a PHP/Laravel Web App.

Before I decide to either continue the struggle or pack it up, what is everyone's opinion on the two options for hosting?

I've heard both Azure is cheaper and then I've heard its more expensive.

Looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks.

 

[Kosmik]

Serverless makes huge sense for horizontal scaling, multi-region penetration and redundancy. If your application is tiered correctly, you can scale effortlessly. Our codebase is primarily web services and web applications, do we really need whole dedicated servers ( especially if you hand off your heavy lifting correctly to your database ) over smaller providers? It's additional overhead and cost that can be avoided.

That being said, I've also spoken to folks who are unhappy when they do hit large scale and it would actually be cheaper to have hardware in place but the concept is a sound one.

 

[InvisibleJim]

Lots of options in Azure and lots of pro's and cons depending on your use case. This affects the price too. I've done a few estimates now of deploying traditional applications in Azure in a 24/7 'on prem in the cloud' type scenario and it tends to be +/- 2years break even versus an on prem deployment.

Have you also looked at Azure web apps, Azure Container Services (think they might be deprecating this) and Azure Kubernetes services?

My understanding is that if you are hosting a standard application (Wordpress for instance) but you aren't really developing, then Azure Web Apps is the way to go. AKS is more geared towards a serious application development scenario with CI/CD, Devops and such rather than purely IT Ops.

 

[Traq]

Another thing which needs to be considered is that you should plan to end up using the PaaS offerings. This is where the flexibility is. VM's require more maintenance, and work to secure. A good middle ground for Azure is the Azure Cloud Services offering which is a good middle ground if your application requires access to libraries on Windows.

As long as you don't modify the image(s) then it will follow an Azure mandated upgrade cycle for patches, etc. If you are on the open source side, then you can also use Azure Web Apps with containers, or a Linux base.

 

[EasyUp Web Hosting]

Laravel Vapor is a good option and very easy to deploy to.

I myself make use of either VPS servers (Laravel/Vue Apps) or shared hosting (Laravel App) (obviously my own).

Azure/AWS/GCP are just too expensive for me.

 

[SauRoNZA]

What are you not getting on with exactly?

It should be easier; not harder.

The cost ultimately depends on the unique deployment.

I feel a lot of people see the cloud as simply putting a VM on someone else’s infrastructure instead of their own, which is by and large missing the point.

You should have off as much as you can to the cloud services and use their products instead of just running a VM you need to manage yourself.

Those are where the benefits in cost, scalability and redundancy ultimately lie.

 

[My_King]

Serverless here.

No more hardware warranties.
No power worries.
No aircon worries.
No physical access worries.
No 5 year upgrade worries.

 

[My_King]

Oh and if you require an extra server for something, don`t have to buy and wait. Also if you have an image ready, your server can be online within 10 minutes.