Next generation: Virtual Private Cloud hosting

FAQs

Explore the answers to common questions and discover how Virtual Private Cloud hosting helps organisations operate securely, efficiently and with confidence.

• Why a Virtual Private Cloud?

  A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is your own dedicated cloud within the DCS platform. It offers the scalability and flexibility of a public cloud infrastructure, but with the isolation and control of a private environment.

  Your compute, storage, and network resources are reserved for your organisation alone, providing predictable performance and enabling rapid scaling as your requirements grow.

• Can I use my own licences?

  Depending on the software you use and any vendor restrictions, you can use your own licensing on the VPC.

• Do you charge fees for egress or ingress?

  No. We're committed to transparent, predictable pricing, and there are no egress or data transfer charges for our VPC.

  You can choose from a range of commercially flexible billing options to match your operational and budgetary needs.

• Does Disaster Recovery form part of the service?

  Our platform is geo-redundant and designed to deliver 99.99% availability.

  We always recommend that your business implement additional data protection strategies, such as off-site replication, to ensure data is protected against accidental deletion, cyber threats, and ransomware.

  This is not included as standard, but our CloudCover Recover can be easily added to provide full disaster recovery capabilities.

• What does Virtual Private Cloud mean?

  A Virtual Private Cloud, or VPC, is an isolated, secure cloud platform used by a single tenant, within a larger, multi-tenant infrastructure.

  This configuration allows each tenant to use discrete resources (RAM, CPU, storage, etc.) allocated from the total pool within the wider infrastructure.

  Rapid scaling of resources (like a public cloud) is possible without new hardware, and because resources are ring-fenced for that specific tenant, it does not introduce contention issues.

• Is data backup included with the VPC?

  Data backup is not included with the VPC as standard but we strongly recommend our customers have a solution in place.

  Our CloudCover Vault solution is a comprehensive, cost-effective cloud backup solution that can be added to your VPC solution to provide robust protection for your data.

• What is a Virtual Private Cloud data network?

  A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) data network is a secure, logically isolated network dedicated to a specific tenant within the VPC.

  These virtual dedicated networks work no differently than normal network infrastructure and contain IPs, routing, firewalls and security etc., but each is isolated for use and configuration by an individual tenant.

• Virtual Private Cloud vs Private Cloud

  A Virtual Private Cloud is a multi-tenant cloud infrastructure in which tenants have dedicated, isolated environments and discrete resources drawn from the pool available across the platform.

  A Private Cloud is a stand-alone infrastructure where all hardware is dedicated to a single tenant.

  We provide both types of platforms at DCS depending on our customers' requirements, challenges and the outcomes they need their IT infrastructure to support.

• What is the difference between a Virtual Private Cloud and a public cloud like AWS or Azure?

  Public clouds like AWS and Azure are large, multi-tenant platforms with usage-based billing, and geographically dispersed locations across the globe, with usage-based billing. The DCS VPC is a UK-based multi-tenant platform that gives you a secure, isolated, single-tenant environment with dedicated resources, transparent fixed pricing and no data ingress or egress charges, backed by a named UK support team.

• Is the VPC a cost-effective alternative to public cloud?

  Yes. With the VPC you pay only for the resources you need, with no data egress or ingress charges and a range of flexible commercial models. This helps to remove unpredictable usage spikes that can make public cloud bills harder to forecast. Many businesses move workloads onto the VPC if they require a solution with a predictable cloud spend.

• What is secure cloud hosting, and how does the VPC deliver it?

  Secure cloud hosting means your platform is architected to be secure by design. The VPC uses zero-trust, secure-by-design architecture, a fully logically isolated network, and ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials aligned processes in its management, so your compliance and security position is strong from day one.

• Is the VPC good for IT infrastructure hosting as our business grows?

  Yes. The VPC is managed infrastructure hosting that flexes as businesses grow. You add deep cloud expertise and support to your team without having to hire new team members, scale cloud resources on demand, and keep costs predictable, so your team spends less time managing infrastructure and more on growth.

• How quickly can I scale resources on the VPC?

  Quickly. Because resources are drawn from a larger pool (one of the benefits of multi-tenant infrastructure), you can scale CPU, RAM and storage without waiting for new hardware, with up to 64 vCPU and 1 TB RAM available per tenant. Clear pricing and straightforward billing mean you can expand to meet demand and pivot fast when priorities change.

• What uptime and availability does the VPC offer?

  The platform is geo-redundant by design, and workloads can be spread across our UK data centres to deliver 99.99% availability. That protects you at the platform level against infrastructure failure. Guarding against accidental deletion, a bad change or ransomware is a separate task, handled by adding backup or replication to protect your platform.

• Can I run a hybrid or multi-cloud setup on the VPC?

  Yes. The VPC is built for hybrid transformation. You can run virtual machines on the VPC, with containers and PaaS side by side in the public cloud, rebalance workloads, delay a public cloud migration or bring systems back, all on a stable, managed core. It gives you a flexible middle ground rather than an all-or-nothing choice.

• What does a managed Virtual Private Cloud include?

  A managed VPC means we take care of the platform so you do not have to. That covers infrastructure design, scaling and periodic hardware refresh to keep the technology evergreen. Responsive support from our UK engineer-led service desk to available to all customers with our flexible support tiers.

• What workloads can I run on a Virtual Private Cloud?

  Almost any. The VPC runs virtual machines, supporting everything from line-of-business applications to development environments and customer-facing systems. Each platform is tailored to your specific workloads, performance goals and compliance needs.

• Can I add backup and disaster recovery to the VPC later?

  Yes. However, we strongly recommend having a backup in place and to strongly consider disaster recovery based on your business requirements. Backup and DR are not included as standard, but both bolt on cleanly. CloudCover Vault adds secure cloud backup, and CloudCover Recover adds full disaster recovery and replication. You start with the core platform and layer on the protection you need.

• Is the VPC hosted in the UK?

  Yes. The VPC runs on enterprise-grade hardware in our Tier 3, ISO 27001-certified UK data centres. Your data stays in the UK, supporting data sovereignty and the compliance requirements common across regulated sectors.