What Indeed is Cloud Hosting?

What is cloud hosting really? The term 'cloud' seems to be very modish in today's information technology, World Wide Web and hosting lingo. Still, only a select few really are informed about what cloud hosting is. Probably it is a fine idea to educate yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a quite lengthy tale concise, we will first describe to you what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Delivering a remote data storage service, which involves one file storage appliance for all users, does not turn any specific web hosting firm into an authentic cloud hosting supplier.

The cPanel web hosting companies name the ability to furnish remote file storage solutions a cloud hosting solution. So far there is nothing wrong with the cloud classification, but... we are discussing website hosting solutions, not remote disk storage services for personal or corporate purposes. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to dub a shared web hosting service, driven by a one-single-server web hosting platform, precisely like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" solution. This is so because the other constituents of the entire web hosting platform must be working in exactly the same manner - this does not relate only to the remote disk storage. The rest of the services entailed in the whole hosting process also have to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's very hard. A very small number of web hosting corporations can actually accomplish it.

2. It Includes Domain Names, Mailboxes, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Web Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud hosting is not limited to a remote disk storage solely. We are discussing a hosting solution, serving numerous domains, websites, electronic mail aliases, and so on, aren't we?

To name a hosting service a "cloud hosting" one calls for a lot more than providing plainly remote data storage mounts (or possibly physical servers). The e-mail server(s) must be devoted just to the e-mail connected services. Performing nothing else than these given tasks. There might be just one or possibly a whole stack of e-mail servers, determined by the overall load produced. To have a true cloud hosting service, the remote database servers should be operating as one, regardless of their real quantity. Doing nothing different. The same is valid for the customers' CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a genuine cloud hosting distributor will support multiple datacenter locations on different continents.

Here's an instance of a Domain Name Server of a genuine cloud hosting firm:

dns1.thebloghost.net

dns2.thebloghost.net

If such a Domain Name Server is provided by your web hosting provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting platform in use, but you can absolutely be confident when you spot a DNS like the one underneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting platform. This type of Domain Name Server only reveals that the hosting platform in use is one-single-server based. Probably it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting solution and holds a market share of more than ninety eight percent. In cPanel's case, one physical machine tackles all hosting services (web, e-mail, DNS, databases, FTP, web hosting Control Panel(s), website files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Warped Explanation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not limited solely to a remote disk storage service, as plenty of hosting providers wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting companies would have been referred to as cloud hosting ones a long time ago! They are not referred to as such, as they merely provide file hosting solutions, not cloud hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform appears indeed quite simple, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, because it's just one simple constituent of the entire cloud web hosting platform. There's plenty more to be encountered in the cloud hosting platform: the CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the FTP cloud, the email cloud and... in the near future, possibly a couple of brand new clouds we presently are not acquainted with will emerge out of nowhere.