Server hardware has come a long way since the early days of computing. Modern server components are faster, more energy-efficient, and capable of handling increasingly complex workloads.
View WhitepaperServer hardware has come a long way since the early days of computing. Modern server components are faster, more energy-efficient, and capable of handling increasingly complex workloads. This evolution has opened a world of possibilities for cloud service providers like Zeus Cloud.
Cloud service providers are now able to offer enterprise-grade infrastructure to clients looking for a more ‘premium’ service, which is highly beneficial to clients with large businesses as new modern hardware ensures their systems will run smoothly with great performance, all while remaining efficient.
Thanks to constant improvements in technology and hardware, Zeus Cloud has been able to take advantage of the new technology being developed and have put together powerful enterprise-grade cloud hosting infrastructure that is publicly available at a low cost.
This means that clients and businesses using Zeus Cloud’s infrastructure can get up to 16x faster speeds with Enterprise-grade NVMe Storage directly attached to the node, which is expandable up to 32 drives of 7.81TB of NVMe, meaning a total of 249.92TB in just one storage node.
Having a large quantity of storage in a single node is beneficial to both clients and cloud hosting businesses. Clients and hosting businesses don’t need to worry about provisioning storage and running out or having a large quantity of storage servers to achieve a similar level of storage.
Zeus Cloud’s cloud services are also powered by Dual AMD EPYC 7643 48-Core Processors per blade as well as 1TB of RAM per blade, meaning users get unbelievably powerful processing power and performance. Having a good CPU helps handle processing tasks quickly and efficiently, and having sufficient RAM allows the server to store and access data faster, which results in faster response times for applications and websites hosted on the server.
The advancements made in hardware have also improved other areas of cloud technology, though. Speed and power aren’t the only benefits that have come out of modern technology.
The impact of modern server hardware and technology is vast. It has transformed the cloud computing industry and users in several ways:
Advanced hardware supports efficient virtualisation, enabling businesses to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical server. This helps to maximise resource utilisation and reduce costs. A couple ways that new hardware has improved virtual machines are:
Modern CPUs are equipped with multiple cores, which enable them to handle parallel workloads efficiently. This benefits VMs by allowing multiple VMs to run on a single physical host without significant performance degradation.
Many modern processors include hardware virtualisation extensions, such as Intel® Virtualization Technology and AMD EPYC™ with their HCI and Virtualization, which improve VM performance and security. These extensions allow VMs to run with minimal overhead, reducing the performance gap between VMs and physical machines.
By maximising resource utilisation, reducing costs, and enhancing scalability and disaster recovery capabilities, businesses can leverage this technology to compete with others in the same industry.
Modern servers now typically come equipped with built-in security features on the hardware itself (e.g. RAID and firewalls) which helps to protect data and applications that run on the servers.
This is particularly valuable for businesses that offer cloud storage services or have clients that require high security on their systems, especially if they need to be compliant with privacy and security laws.
The power of AI and machine learning is more accessible than ever, thanks to high-performance servers. For instance, CPUs and GPUs that have recently been developed are being taken advantage of for their incredible processing power that helps accelerate the speed of AI workloads.
In fact, AMD has created their 4th generation of server CPUs called the AMD EPYC™ 9004 series. Their model 9754 has 128 cores, a base speed of 2.25GHZ, and 256MB of L3 Cache. Making it an incredibly powerful central processing unit for servers and data centres.
The reason AI is important in cloud hosting infrastructure is because AI can be used to analyse things like resources, power usage, and network traffic. This makes it useful for:
AI can monitor usage patterns and predict requirements for resources in real-time. This allows cloud hosting providers to automatically allocate and de-allocate computing resources (such as CPU, memory, and storage) based on demand.
AI can also be used in cloud hosting infrastructure for detecting and responding to security threats in a more effective way. It can analyse network traffic for any suspicious activities, identify patterns indicative of cyberattacks, and trigger automated security responses, including blocking malicious traffic or alerting human security teams.
Edge computing relies on powerful servers located closer to end-users or IoT (Internet of Things) devices. The latest hardware enables low-latency processing, making real-time applications feasible.
This is done by distributing computational resources closer to where data is generated and needed. In edge computing, servers equipped with cutting-edge hardware, are strategically placed at the "edge" of the network, near end-users or IoT devices.
Hardware has become a lot more efficient, for instance NVMe storage is much faster and has lower latency than traditional HDDs and SSDs, NVMe also have a reduced level of power consumption which helps save electricity due to them being compact and having no moving parts unlike HDDs.
This means that servers have started to consume less power while delivering a much more superior performance than older hardware, reducing both carbon footprints and operational costs, which ultimately helps businesses save money by optimising their infrastructure.
From the early days of shared hosting with limited resources to the present day where infrastructure homes powerful CPUs and an abundance of RAM, hardware advancements have really changed the way hosting works. Cloud hosting is no longer just a small platform; it has become the backbone of digital innovation, supporting several applications, from e-commerce websites to data-intensive machine learning algorithms, and even some of the world's largest companies' systems.
Now with the introduction of SSDs and NVMe which revolutionised data access speeds, reducing latency and enabling quick access to storage, as well as multi-core CPUs and GPUs, hardware advancements have unlocked the potential for parallel processing and high-performance computing in the cloud, paving the way for complex simulations and data analytics.
As we look to the future, we can only anticipate even more advanced developments to come about and change the way that we use cloud hosting infrastructure. With quantum computing, advanced cooling solutions, and AI-driven infrastructure management being brought to light, it may not be long until cloud hosting is completely redefined.
To find out more about our Cloud Services at Zeus Cloud and the technology we use, check out our pages below:
