What Indeed is Cloud Web Hosting?

What is cloud website hosting really? The term 'cloud' seems to be very modish in today's IT, World Wide Web and web hosting lingo. However, just a few in fact can say what cloud hosting is. Perhaps it is a good idea to educate yourself about cloud website hosting services. To render a quite long tale concise, we will firstly inform you about what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Offering a remote disk storage service, which comprises one data storage appliance for all users, does not transform any specific hosting corporation into a real cloud website hosting provider.

The cPanel hosting companies dub the ability to deliver remote data storage services a cloud website hosting service. Up till now there is nothing bad about the cloud classification, but... we are discussing web hosting services, not remote data storage services for individual or business purposes. There's constantly one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to call a shared web hosting solution, based on a single-server web hosting environment, just like cPanel, a "cloud website hosting" solution. That's because the other fractions of the whole web hosting platform must be functioning in precisely the same way - this does not apply only to the remote data storage. The rest of the services entailed in the entire web hosting procedure also must be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's really tough. Very few hosting vendors can truly attain it.

2. It Includes Domain Names, Electronic Mail Addresses, Databases, FTPs, Hosting CPs, etc.

Cloud website hosting is not limited to a remote file storage only. We are discussing a hosting solution, serving multiple domains, web sites, email box accounts, etc., are we not?

To name a web hosting service a "cloud website hosting" one requires a lot more than delivering plainly remote data storage mounts (or perchance servers). The email server(s) have to be devoted only to the email connected services. Carrying out nothing else than these concrete assignments. There might be only one single or perhaps a whole set of mail servers, depending on the total server load generated. To have a genuine cloud website hosting solution, the remote database servers should be working as one, irrespective of their actual number. Doing nothing different. The same is valid for the customers' web hosting CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a true cloud website hosting plans provider will support multiple data center locations on multiple continents.

Here's an illustration of a Domain Name Server of an actual cloud website hosting distributor:

dns1.060821.com

dns2.060821.com

If such a DNS is supplied by your web hosting plans provider, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud hosting platform in use, but you can definitely be confident when you spot a DNS such as the one beneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

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

Remote File Storage - The Distorted Characterization of Cloud Website Hosting.

So, a cloud website hosting service is not limited just to a remote disk storage solution, as many web hosting suppliers wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting service providers would have been referred to as cloud hosting ones long ago! They are not referred to as such, as they merely deliver file web hosting services, not cloud hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform is indeed quite plain, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, because it's merely one small segment of the entire cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be found in the cloud web hosting platform: the CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the not too distant future, possibly a number of new clouds we presently are not informed about will appear out of nowhere.