What Actually is Cloud Website Hosting?

What is cloud hosting actually? The term 'cloud' appears to be quite trendy in today's IT, World Wide Web and web hosting parlance. Nonetheless, just a select few in fact can say what cloud hosting is. Perchance it is a good idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To render a quite long tale succinct, we will firstly inform you about what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Restricted to a Remote Disk Storage Only.

1. Offering a remote file storage service, which comprises one single disk storage device for all users, does not turn any specific hosting vendor into an actual cloud hosting corporation.

The cPanel hosting companies dub the ability to deliver remote data storage solutions a cloud hosting solution. Until now there is nothing wrong with the cloud terminology, but... we are discussing website hosting services, not remote file storage solutions for individual or business needs. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared web hosting solution, based on a single-server web hosting environment, precisely like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. That's because the remaining fractions of the entire web hosting platform must be working in precisely the same way - this does not relate only to the remote data storage. The rest of the services involved in the whole web hosting process also must be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's quite tough. A very scanty number of hosting service providers can actually achieve it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, Mailboxes, Databases, FTPs, Hosting Control Panels, and so on.

Cloud hosting is not confined to a remote data storage exclusively. We are talking about a hosting service, serving countless domains, web portals, electronic mail addresses, etc., aren't we?

To dub a hosting service a "cloud hosting" one needs a lot more than providing just remote file storage mounts (or perhaps servers). The mail server(s) have to be dedicated only to the email associated services. Executing nothing different than these concrete assignments. There might be just one or perhaps a whole collection of email servers, determined by the overall server load generated. To have a genuine cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be working as one, regardless of their real amount. Performing nothing different. The same goes for the users' Control Panels, the FTP, etc.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a true cloud hosting corporation will support multiple datacenter sites on multiple continents.

Here's an example of a Domain Name Server of an authentic cloud hosting provider:

dns1.humeinternet.com

dns2.humeinternet.com

If such a Domain Name Server is furnished by your web hosting plans provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud hosting environment in use, but you can absolutely be confident when you see a Domain Name Server such as the one underneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This sort of Domain Name Server simply indicates that the hosting environment in use is one-server based. Perhaps it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-single-server web hosting solution and maintains a market share of more than 98 percent. In cPanel's case, one single physical machine deals with all web hosting services (web, electronic mail, DNS, databases, FTP, Control Panel(s), web site files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Twisted Interpretation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not confined exclusively to a remote file storage solution, as numerous hosting providers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting distributors would have been referred to as cloud hosting ones a long time ago! They are not classified as such, as they merely supply file web hosting solutions, not cloud web hosting services. The file hosting platform seems really quite plain, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote data storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, as it's merely one tiny constituent of the entire cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be found in the cloud hosting platform: the CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the not too distant future, perhaps a couple of new clouds we currently don't know about will appear out of the blue.