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I'm new to server setup and have read a bit about the basics of a business server. What I've read is about having physical server rooms with Tower/Rack/Blade servers. My question is, is a physical server room necessary to host a server for a business, or can a virtual machine (that is setup correctly) take the place of a physical server room?

EDIT:

I'm new to SF, how can I edit my question to not be downvoted?

Also, in particular I'm curious if I'm using GCE or AWS can I virtualize an EC2 or GCE instance or must I use multiple instances.

I'm not looking for an answer about capacity, but more possibility. Can one GCE instance run many virtualized servers or must I use many GCE instances?

Vasseurth
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  • possible duplicate of [Can you help me with my capacity planning?](http://serverfault.com/questions/384686/can-you-help-me-with-my-capacity-planning) – kasperd Jul 17 '15 at 21:18
  • *"I'm new to SF, how can I edit my question to not be downvoted?"* : In addition to the two ([1](http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/3608/how-can-i-ask-better-questions-on-server-fault) & [2](http://serverfault.com/help/how-to-ask)) main resources regarding asking questions, your question at first glance sounds a bit naive: *"can a virtual machine take the place of a physical server room?"* a virtual server still needs a physical server, although typically virtual servers allow consolidation, so you need fewer hardware servers, but those still require housing, network kit, back-ups etc... – HBruijn Jul 18 '15 at 18:07

2 Answers2

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Erm...yeah, probably 95% of all 'business servers' run in VMs, physical servers have their place and of course VMs run on top of physical servers but yes, yes they're every bit as capable as you need and have been the default option for the vast majority of servers for literally years.

Chopper3
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Regarding your original question, there are a couple of separate basic concepts thar you're blending together, which in jargon sound quite different and not very well suited for the ServerFault Q&A format.

The first consideration is to have your IT equipment on premises or not. That in itself already quite a broad topic, the answer depends on the availability, cost and quality of internet connections and the amount of compute and communications capacity you need and your business needs and budgets. Those requirements might dictate on premises or to move the bulk of your IT off-site or leave you a choice.

If you do decide for on-premises, again the amount compute capacity you need will dictate certain requirements. A single server designed for small business (might host a couple of VM's) can easily fit under a desk. But servers typically run 24*7, are loud, require a fair bit of power and subsequently cooling capacity to deal with the heat they generate and are much heavier than the typical office area is designed to sustain. So most servers get moved away from the office floor away from the staff to their own room designed for a different need, similar to other technical area's in buildings (for the HVAC system, elevators, power distribution etc.).

Virtual servers still require hardware.

So you may still need a server room.

If you decide you can take your compute capacity off-site your options much more diverse, you can rent data center space but still operate your own hardware, VM's etc in a co-location facility, rent rather than buy the hardware as in a dedicated server, move away from discrete physical server units of capacity and rent scalable capacity in the form of VM's instead. (Platform As A Service)

Or rather than servers rent/subscribe to services. Don't run an mail server, just order the number of mailboxes you need, etc.

HBruijn
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