Cloud Hosting Explained

What is cloud hosting indeed? The word 'cloud' seems to be quite trendy in today's IT, World Wide Web and web hosting terms. Nevertheless, just a few really can tell what cloud hosting is. Maybe it is a sensible idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a very long tale succinct, we will first tell you what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Limited to a Remote File Storage Exclusively.

1. Delivering a remote file storage service, which comprises one single disk storage appliance for all clients, does not turn any specific hosting supplier into an authentic cloud hosting company.

The cPanel web hosting companies call the ability to provide remote disk storage services a cloud hosting service. Up until now there is nothing bad about the cloud designation, but... we are talking about web hosting services, not remote disk storage services for individual or corporate purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to name a shared hosting service, based on a one-server web hosting environment, just like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. This is so because the other components of the entire web hosting platform must be operating in exactly the same way - this does not relate solely to the remote disk storage. The other services involved in the entire hosting procedure also have to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's really difficult. Very few hosting companies can really attain it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, E-mails, Databases, FTPs, Hosting Control Panels, and so on.

Cloud hosting is not restricted to a remote file storage exclusively. We are discussing a hosting service, serving plenty of domains, sites, email addresses, and so on, are we not?

To dub a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one takes a lot more than providing simply remote data storage mounts (or perchance servers). The electronic mail server(s) need to be dedicated just to the electronic mail associated services. Performing nothing else than these concrete procedures. There might be just one or perhaps an entire cluster of e-mail servers, depending on the overall server load created. To have a real cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be operating as one, irrespective of their real amount. Carrying out nothing else. The same is valid for the users' Control Panels, the FTP, and so on.

3. There are Cloud Domain Name Servers (DNSs) as well.

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an actual cloud hosting plans provider will support numerous data center facility sites on different continents.

Here's an illustration of a DNS of a real cloud hosting provider:

dns1.vegashoster.com

dns2.vegashoster.com

If such a Domain Name Server is supplied by your web hosting packages provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be confident when you notice a Domain Name Server such as the one beneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting service. This kind of Domain Name Server merely displays that the hosting environment in use is one-server based. Probably it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting solution and maintains a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, one physical machine tackles all hosting services (web, electronic mail, DNS, databases, FTP, web hosting CP(s), files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Perverted Description of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting solution is not limited just to a remote file storage service, as multiple web hosting service providers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting providers would have been classified as cloud web hosting ones a long time back! They are not categorized as such, because they merely offer file web hosting solutions, not cloud web hosting solutions. The file hosting platform looks indeed very simple, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's merely one small fragment of the whole cloud web hosting platform. There's plenty more to be encountered in the cloud hosting platform: the web hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the foreseeable future, possibly a number of new clouds we currently are not informed about will emerge out of nowhere.