What is Cloud Web Hosting?

What is cloud hosting indeed? The word 'cloud' seems to be very modish in today's IT, World Wide Web and web hosting jargon. In spite of that, just a few in fact can say what cloud hosting is. Perhaps it is a clever idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To render a quite long tale short, we will first enlighten you on what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Providing a remote file storage service, which involves one single disk storage appliance for all users, does not convert any specific web hosting service provider into an actual cloud hosting provider.

The cPanel web hosting distributors call the ability to furnish remote data storage solutions a cloud hosting service. Up to now there is nothing wrong with the cloud classification, but... we are talking about website hosting solutions, not remote data storage services for private or corporate purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared hosting solution, based on a one-server hosting environment, just like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. This is so because the remaining fractions of the entire web hosting platform must be operating in precisely the same manner - this does not apply only to the remote data storage. The rest of the services entailed in the entire web hosting process also need to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's really problematical. A very scanty number of web hosting service providers can actually do it.

2. It Includes Domains, Email Mailboxes, Databases, FTPs, Web Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud hosting is not restricted to a remote data storage exclusively. We are discussing a hosting service, serving plenty of domains, web sites, electronic mail accounts, etc., are we not?

To call a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one calls for a lot more than delivering plainly remote file storage mounts (or possibly servers). The mail server(s) need to be dedicated only to the e-mail related services. Carrying out nothing different than these particular tasks. There might be just one single or perhaps an entire stack of mail servers, depending on the overall server load created. To have an authentic cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be performing as one, irrespective of their real quantity. Carrying out nothing different. The same is valid for the users' hosting CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.

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

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

Here's an illustration of a Domain Name Server of an actual cloud hosting solutions provider:

dns1.hostdiversity.com

dns2.hostdiversity.com

If such a Domain Name Server is provided by your web hosting vendor, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be convinced when you notice a DNS such as the one below:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting service. This type of DNS merely indicates that the web hosting platform in use is one-single-server based. Possibly it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting solution and has a market share of more than ninety eight percent. In cPanel's case, a single physical server tackles all hosting services (web, e-mail, DNS, databases, FTP, hosting Control Panel(s), files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Twisted Characterization of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not limited only to a remote data storage solution, as a lot of hosting providers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting corporations would have been referred to as cloud web hosting ones long ago! They are not referred to as such, as they simply offer file web hosting services, not cloud hosting services. The file hosting platform seems indeed quite plain, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's just one simple component of the whole cloud web hosting platform. There's a lot more to be encountered in the cloud hosting platform: the hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the FTP cloud, the email cloud and... in the near future, maybe several new clouds we currently are not aware of will appear out of nowhere.