Have you checked the price for a system capable of using two redundant 10Gbps links lately? It’s cheap. You could put gear like this in your closet at home and not feel particularly silly about it, especially if you are willing to buy still-current used enterprise gear.
For that matter, have you checked the price, in qty 1, of a server that will absolutely destroy anything reasonable from a major cloud vendor in terms of IOPS to stick behind that switch or router? Even if you believe the numbers on the website of a major server vendor and forget to ask for a discount, it’s still quite reasonable in comparison to a major cloud.
Yeah, tends to be. But it's more efficient for multiple customers who don't need the hardware full-time to share it. Someone could set that up without all the expensive HA guarantees and other stuff a regular cloud provides. Maybe was too niche in the past, but now with the AI boom...
For that matter, have you checked the price, in qty 1, of a server that will absolutely destroy anything reasonable from a major cloud vendor in terms of IOPS to stick behind that switch or router? Even if you believe the numbers on the website of a major server vendor and forget to ask for a discount, it’s still quite reasonable in comparison to a major cloud.