> I suspect they're not getting a dedicated server from Amazon.

If it's literally called a dedicated server, why would you suspect otherwise?

Source: I worked in the core EC2 dataplane for a couple years. PEs and leadership there would not be happy with misleading customers. We constantly thought of the customer experience there.

I think you misread the comment you responded to.

It didn’t mean ”I suspect that what they are getting from Amazon isn’t a dedicated server”.

Rather it meant ”I suspect that they’re getting a dedicated server from somewhere else that isn’t Amazon”.

The original comment was talking about a dedicated machine for personal projects with a fixed cost of $40/month.

Ah, this makes sense. Thanks for clarifying!

Generally you get a "dedicated host" from AWS, not a "dedicated server" so that was kind of my first tip off. There's a very big difference; the only usecase I'd really consider for dedicated hosts is security related and, frankly, they're far more expensive than any colo box. Dedicated Hosts are also far more restrictive than what you get at a colo DC. Second, even if AWS offered to let you have full control of a rack box you'd have to be economically out of your mind with AWS' network costs compared to a colo DC.

You still have network performance limitations + the security aspects to run by yourself (as in: not getting your data drive encrypted by a ransomware)

I probably wasn't explicit enough with "cloud" but I mean running your own isolated workloads with at minimum virtual machines and virtual isolated storage (block or otherwise). From a topological perspective my home DC resembles most major clouds other than the fact that there are not two sites.