Cloud Hosting Explained

What is cloud hosting actually? The word 'cloud' appears to be quite modish in today's computing, World Wide Web and hosting terminology. Nonetheless, just a few actually can tell what cloud hosting is. Maybe it is a fine idea to educate yourself about cloud hosting services. To render a quite lengthy tale concise, we will first let you in on what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Limited to a Remote Data Storage Solely.

1. Delivering a remote file storage service, which comprises one file storage appliance for all users, does not convert any given service provider into a genuine cloud hosting services provider.

The cPanel web hosting firms dub the ability to supply remote file storage services a cloud hosting service. Up to now there is nothing wrong with the cloud terminology, but... we are discussing website hosting solutions, not remote disk storage solutions for individual or business purposes. There's constantly one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared web hosting service, driven by a one-single-server web hosting environment, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. That's because the other constituents of the entire hosting platform must be functioning in exactly the same manner - this does not relate solely to the remote disk storage. The other services involved in the whole web hosting procedure also have to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's quite difficult. A very meager number of web hosting vendors can actually do it.

2. It Encompasses Domains, Mail Addresses, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Web Hosting Control Panels, and so on.

Cloud hosting is not limited to a remote data storage only. We are discussing a web hosting solution, serving countless domains, web pages, electronic mail addresses, and so on, aren't we?

To dub a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one calls for a lot more than supplying just remote disk storage mounts (or possibly physical servers). The electronic mail server(s) need to be devoted solely to the e-mail associated services. Performing nothing different than these particular tasks. There might be just one or perhaps an entire set of mail servers, depending on the overall load generated. To have a real cloud hosting service, the remote database servers should be working as one, regardless of their actual quantity. Doing nothing different. The same goes for the users' hosting Control Panels, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.

3. There are Cloud Domain Servers (DNSs) too.

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an actual cloud hosting company will support numerous datacenter locations on different continents.

Here's an example of a DNS of an authentic cloud hosting company:

dns1.uphost.us

dns2.uphost.us

If such a DNS is supplied by your hosting vendor, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud hosting platform in use, but you can definitely be certain when you discern a Domain Name Server like the one underneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This type of Domain Name Server plainly exhibits that the web hosting platform in use is one-server based. Maybe it's cPanel. cPanel is a single-server web hosting platform and maintains a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, a single physical server tackles all web hosting services (web, electronic mail, DNS, databases, FTP, web hosting Control Panel(s), web files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Distorted Characterization of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting solution is not confined only to a remote file storage service, as lots of web hosting companies wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting providers would have been referred to as cloud web hosting ones long ago! They are not referred to as such, since they plainly offer file hosting solutions, not cloud hosting services. The file web hosting platform seems indeed very simple, when compared to the hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's merely one tiny fraction of the whole cloud web hosting platform. There's plenty more to be encountered in the cloud hosting platform: the hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the mail cloud and... in the near future, perchance a couple of new clouds we currently don't know about will spring up unexpectedly.