What is Cloud Hosting?

What is cloud hosting indeed? The word 'cloud' appears to be quite fashionable in today's IT, World Wide Web and hosting terms. Even so, just a few in fact are aware of what cloud hosting is. Maybe it is a good idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To render a very lengthy tale succinct, we will firstly notify you about what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Providing a remote file storage solution, which involves one file storage device for all clients, does not transform any given provider into a genuine cloud hosting vendor.

The cPanel hosting vendors call the ability to distribute remote disk storage services a cloud hosting service. Up till now there is nothing wrong with the cloud classification, but... we are discussing web hosting services, not remote data storage services for individual or corporate purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to name a shared hosting service, powered by a one-single-server web hosting environment, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. This is so because the remaining fractions of the entire web hosting platform must be working in exactly the same manner - this does not refer solely to the remote file storage. The other services entailed in the whole hosting procedure also must be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's very tough. Very few hosting companies can truly accomplish it.

2. It Involves Domain Names, E-mail Aliases, Databases, FTPs, Control Panels, etc.

Cloud hosting is not confined to a remote disk storage only. We are discussing a hosting service, serving countless domains, online portals, mailboxes, etc., right?

To dub a hosting service a "cloud hosting" one demands a lot more than delivering simply remote data storage mounts (or perhaps physical servers). The electronic mail server(s) have to be devoted just to the email associated services. Doing nothing different than these particular tasks. There might be only one single or probably a whole assortment of mail servers, based on the total load produced. To have an authentic cloud hosting service, the remote database servers should be operating as one, regardless of their real quantity. Performing nothing else. The same goes for the clients' web hosting Control Panels, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

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

Here's an instance of a Domain Name Server of a real cloud hosting provider:

dns1.wardhost.com

dns2.wardhost.com

If such a DNS is provided by your web hosting vendor, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud web hosting platform in use, but you can absolutely be certain when you notice a Domain Name Server like the one underneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting platform. This kind of DNS plainly illustrates that the hosting platform in use is one-server based. Perhaps it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-single-server hosting platform and holds a 98+ percent market share. In cPanel's case, a single server is responsible for all web hosting services (web, email, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, Control Panel(s), web files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Distorted Interpretation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not limited exclusively to a remote data storage service, as many web hosting vendors wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, most of the file hosting suppliers would have been classified as cloud web hosting ones a long time back! They are not classified as such, since they merely supply file hosting solutions, not cloud hosting solutions. The file hosting platform appears really very plain, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote data storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, because it's just one tiny fragment of the entire cloud hosting platform. There's a lot more to be discovered in the cloud web hosting platform: the web hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the e-mail cloud and... in the near future, perchance a couple of new clouds we currently are not familiar with will surface unexpectedly.