Where to host
OS and SW can be hosted
- in private DCs
- at co-location facilities
- on a cloud platform
or on some combination of these.
Most practical choice (especially for new projects) is a public cloud provider, because:
- no capital expenses, low initial operating costs
- no need to install, secure, and manage HW
- on-demand adjustment of storage, bandwidth, and compute capacity
- ready-made solutions for common ancillary needs such as DBs, LBs, queues, monitoring and more
- cheaper and simpler implementation highly available/redundant systems
- these days most admins work in the cloud
Cloud platforms:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - leader, broadest array of services
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - technologically advanced, user friendly
- DigitalOcean - simpler, good for developers
Source: ULSAH 5th (2017), 1.11