Of course "cloud" is just a metaphor not a place.

Not all public database servers run on virtual machines. Some are still physical machines and those often run database engines faster because there is no VMWare or VirtualBox overhead.

Furthermore you can control the specification of a physical machine better than you can a virtual machine.

There are still companies that offer to host "colocated" physical servers for you. Costs range from $75 to $400+ per month, plus setup fees.

I am a big fan of Amazon EC2 but the monthly fee can get expensive when you dial up those high I/O servers.

What I would love to see is a benchmark for Firebird SQL i/o that a person could run on a potential server candidate to get some accurate sense of how it will perform. I had a look at http://osdb.sourceforge.net/ and it seemed a great idea, maybe abandoned in 2002?, with no serious Firebird support. But maybe with the expertise here, something could be done ?? I'm sure others have thought about this more... especially what plays into bottlenecks. #CPUs? #threads? Windows vs Linux? #databases? #connections? It would be nice to have some sense of what hardware to maximize for certain requirements, eg. db size versus traffic.

-Ann Lynnworth
HREF Tools Corp.
www.href.com
www.codenewsfast.com

PS. Yes, HREF Tools offers colo servers.