In between your two extremes are colocation (no managing buildings, power, cooling, racks, security, optionally network), dedicated servers (no managing/installing servers, disks, warranties) and basic VMs.
We do colocation and we have to deal with HD and ram failures from time to time. Replacement of the hardware part is managed by the provider, but discovery and software requieres our involvment.
I just wonder what happens if a ram or hd failure hits a cloud provider node. Is the architecture on average really able to come over such failures without help and intervention.
I just wonder what happens if a ram or hd failure hits a cloud provider node. Is the architecture on average really able to come over such failures without help and intervention.