What is the Difference between Data Centers and Cloud Computing?

Do you also have confusion between cloud computing and data centers? There is so much difference in the working of the cloud computing and data centers. Misconceptions come as part and parcel with the development of the technology. Since cloud hosting had already become the talk of the town, more and more doubts are arising in the minds of people. But it’s not their fault; this technical jargon can confuse anyone. 

Our data centers and cloud computing refer to the same thing as it seems? Very deep technical knowledge is not mandatory to understand the difference. Therefore here we have discussed all the differences in data centers and cloud computing in terms of their purpose and application. 

Although, both cloud hosting and data centers are very closely related. This can be clearly understood if we will first try to understand the difference-

Data Centers and Cloud Computing Difference

A house that stores all the servers and data for an organization is referred to as the data center for that organization. It does not matter whether the data belongs to any internal process of that organization or related to any of its clients. A data center setup has some pillars on which it works that include the hardware, space, and power systems along with its backup. The confusion arises when big cloud giants offer cloud hosting services by lending rack spaces that are built inside their data centers. Although there are firms who have their own dedicated data center and thus do not have the requirement to hire any third party organization to lend them space in their data centers.

The difference in working of both is that where data centers provide the required space for the data, meanwhile the cloud helps in running the data off-premises. Through strong internet services play an important role in accessing the data remotely and obviously with the help of solid cloud hosting.

Data Centers	Cloud
Requires specialized equipment and knowledge	Required no specialized knowledge in computing
Owner maintains complete control over hardware and software	Platform independent
Highly customized	Not as highly customizable as data centers
Component of cloud	Compound of many data centers
Data centers can be internal or outsourced	Often represents outsourcing as a Risk Transference Strategy

Data Centers vs Cloud Computing

The hardware that consolidated together to make up a data center is taken care of by the cloud hosting provider. The clients can easily manage their applications and their data with the help of virtual infrastructure that runs on the cloud servers. 

One thing needs to be kept in mind when you’re shifting to Cloud from traditional data centers is that you need to go for a professional server disposal from a reputed ITAD company that can manage the task seamlessly. And, one such expert is “Dataknoxâ€, based out of California, which provides efficient IT disposal services to all US based firms.

But there is one big difference between the traditional data centers and cloud data centers which most of them are unaware of. Services like SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS that are hosted over the internet comes under the umbrella of cloud services. The virtual memory served by the cloud is very flexible. It can be very easily increased or decreased and needs no technical expertise. The changes totally depend on your particular requirements like storage, computing, or infrastructure. 

Let’s see what the major differences between them are-

	Traditional Data Centers	Cloud Data Centers
Servers	Co-located dependent Failure	Integrated Fault-tolerant
Resources	Partitioned Performance Interrelated Unified Performance	Unified performance isolated
Management	Separated Manual	Centralized full control with automation
Scheduling	Plan ahead overprovisioning	Flexible scalable
Renting	Per physical machines	Per logical usage
Application/Services	fixes on designated servers	Runs and moves across all VMs

Traditional data centers were also known to be the one wherein more costs were incurred. But today’s prevalent cloud data centers are efficient and are known to run with as low cost as possible. But what were the reasons behind such costs that used to incur with traditional data centers? Due to more heating issues and other hardware/software related issues, they required frequent servicing or part replacements. 

Scalability was also one of the concerns with the traditional data centers. The cloud data centers have blessed with excellent scalability and can be scaled up or down as and when required. This was the sole reason why more maintenance was required in the case of traditional data centers. But no more worries for the maintenance costs as cloud data centers take care of it all. 

Changes in the manner of handling the data centers-

Cloud has transformed the way or the manner in which data centers are handled today. Now when the word data centers come up in the perceptions of our mind have changed. The cloud model has restructured the infrastructure of the data centers starting from the design of the rack spaces to its deployment. Giving up the traditional model brought greater efficiency and shaped the data centers according to the end-user needs. 

This evolution that led to cloud data centers has not happened over-night. It is the result of hard work in the area of development and constantly noting down the shortcomings coming in the way. We are already spoiled by the seamless connectivity and scalability of cloud data centers but constant migration can be seen. 

Many owners still prefer the in-house data center so as to keep their data protected and to manage and upgrade the system as per their own convenience. But cloud hosting providers can be completely trusted. One has a service level agreement that helps in making strong agreements with the hosting provider. Heavy investments are made these days especially when it comes to the security factor. The leading cloud hosting providers assure their clients to be equipped with world-class data security.

Hence, we have come to this conclusion that cloud hosting is the most cost-effective storage solution for any enterprise. To provide exactly what you need cloud hosting vendors have framed plans in the very same way. This has led to reduced infrastructure costs, low latency, and scaling in or out. If this is not enough then one will have to wait for the development of better technology as cloud hosting is the best in today’s date?