Cloud Hosting Definition

What is cloud hosting really? The word 'cloud' appears to be very trendy in today's computing, Internet and hosting jargon. However, only a few actually are familiar with what cloud hosting is. Perhaps it is a fine idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a very lengthy story succinct, we will firstly let you know what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Confined to a Remote Disk Storage Exclusively.

1. Providing a remote data storage service, which involves one disk storage appliance for all customers, does not turn any specific web hosting service provider into a genuine cloud hosting company.

The cPanel hosting corporations dub the ability to distribute remote disk storage services a cloud hosting solution. So far there is nothing bad about the cloud terminology, but... we are discussing web hosting services, not remote file storage services for individual or business purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to call a shared web hosting solution, based on a one-server web hosting environment, just like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. This is so because the other pieces of the entire hosting platform must be working in exactly the same manner - this does not refer solely to the remote disk storage. The remaining services involved in the entire hosting process also have to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's quite tough. A very meager number of hosting vendors can truly make it.

2. It Involves Domain Names, Electronic Mails, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Hosting Control Panels, and so on.

Cloud hosting is not limited to a remote file storage solely. We are talking about a web hosting service, serving countless domain names, websites, mail addresses, and so on, right?

To dub a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one calls for a lot more than distributing plainly remote disk storage mounts (or maybe servers). The electronic mail server(s) need to be dedicated only to the e-mail connected services. Carrying out nothing different than these given assignments. There might be only one single or perhaps a whole bundle of electronic mail servers, depending on the total server load created. To have an actual cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, regardless of their real amount. Carrying out nothing else. The same goes for the clients' web hosting CPs, the FTP, etc.

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

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

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

dns1.bluegrapehost.com

dns2.bluegrapehost.com

If such a DNS is furnished by your web hosting solutions provider, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud web hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be sure when you discern a Domain Name Server like the one beneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting service. This sort of DNS only illustrates that the web hosting platform in use is one-server based. Possibly it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-single-server web hosting solution and maintains a market share of more than ninety eight percent. In cPanel's case, a single physical server deals with all hosting services (web, e-mail, DNS, databases, FTP, CP(s), web files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Warped Interpretation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not restricted simply to a remote disk storage service, as lots of web hosting distributors wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, most of the file service providers would have been referred to as cloud web hosting ones long ago! They are not referred to as such, because they simply provide file hosting solutions, not cloud hosting services. The file hosting platform looks indeed quite simple, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's simply one simple fraction of the entire cloud hosting platform. There's a lot more to be discovered in the cloud web hosting platform: the hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the mail cloud and... in the near future, possibly a bunch of brand new clouds we currently don't know about will show up unexpectedly.