It isn't. You could ask for network-attached CPUs or RAM. You'd be the only one, though, so in practice only network-attached storage makes sense business-wise.

It isn't. You could ask for network-attached CPUs or RAM. You'd be the only one, though, so in practice only network-attached storage makes sense business-wise. It also makes sense if you need to provision larger-than-usual amounts like tens of TB - these are usually hard to come by in a single server, but quite mundane for storage appliances.