Efficiency difference between hosting yourself and paying a host?

[KhakiHat]

So, to start off I could think of one difference at least in reliability.

Say if your ISP was to have drops in service and speed, that would be a factor you can’t control. I can also see the difference in say if you were to have raid setup so that a machine could fail responsibly, whereas a DIY machine likely wouldn’t unless you had the know how.

 

Then onto power consumption of whether or not you are running actual server hardware or just consumer grade and their power consumption differences.

 

Beyond the actual differences in hardware, what are the differences in software and OS?

And example being say if I was to host Minecraft server while running Windows OS, versus hosting a Minecraft server and running a Linux distro, and any other route you could take, etc. Long-term, finding the most efficient way to use your resources for the actual task at hand.

 

Are there fundamental reasons that you should avoid hosting yourself and to choose a host instead? Things people would maybe just not be knowledgable enough to understand or even know existed.

 

I’m very open to discussion.

[Chris Pratt]

Well, if you're speaking of efficiency, cloud wins hand down, as you only pay for the resources you use (mostly at least). You can overbuy in cloud, just like you can overbuy on prem. However, cloud gives you the ability to scale up and down as needed, whereas you're stuck with whatever you buy on prem. Also, Azure for example has their B-series VMs, which are burstable. You pay less for the resources overall, and then build up credits that can be used to burst when necessary. If the workload is intermittent like a website, or the server is only active during certain times of the day, you can save a huge amount of money, while still getting the performance you need when you need it.

[tikker]

37 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

Are there fundamental reasons that you should avoid hosting yourself and to choose a host instead? Things people would maybe just not be knowledgable enough to understand or even know existed.

I would guess most people interested in running a minecraft server aren't interested in becoming a sysadmin in their free time maintaining the machine, OS etc. it runs on, so it makes sense to expedite. So a very compelling reason is the "not my problem" one.

[KhakiHat]

3 hours ago, tikker said:

I would guess most people interested in running a minecraft server aren't interested in becoming a sysadmin in their free time maintaining the machine, OS etc. it runs on, so it makes sense to expedite. So a very compelling reason is the "not my problem" one.

Running a Minecraft server is the only low-key server I could think of at a really small scale XD

 

That would make sense though, I can definitely see that.

[KhakiHat]

3 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

Well, if you're speaking of efficiency, cloud wins hand down, as you only pay for the resources you use (mostly at least). You can overbuy in cloud, just like you can overbuy on prem. However, cloud gives you the ability to scale up and down as needed, whereas you're stuck with whatever you buy on prem. Also, Azure for example has their B-series VMs, which are burstable. You pay less for the resources overall, and then build up credits that can be used to burst when necessary. If the workload is intermittent like a website, or the server is only active during certain times of the day, you can save a huge amount of money, while still getting the performance you need when you need it.

Paying a host definitely seems like a better option then, especially considering the value per dollar ratio.