What In Fact is Cloud Hosting?

What is cloud hosting in fact? The term 'cloud' seems to be very trendy in today's computing, Internet and hosting terms. Nevertheless, just a select few really are aware of what cloud hosting is. Probably it is a good idea to educate yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a quite lengthy tale concise, we will first describe to you what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Restricted to a Remote File Storage Solely.

1. Furnishing a remote data storage solution, which comprises one file storage device for all users, does not turn any given hosting vendor into an actual cloud hosting solutions provider.

The cPanel hosting distributors dub the ability to offer remote disk storage solutions a cloud hosting solution. Up until now there is nothing bad about the cloud labeling, but... we are talking about hosting services, not remote disk storage services for individual or corporate needs. There's constantly one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to name a shared web hosting solution, based on a one-single-server web hosting environment, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. That's because the remaining components of the entire hosting platform must be functioning in exactly the same way - this does not relate only to the remote disk storage. The other services involved in the whole hosting procedure also need to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's really difficult. A very meager number of hosting suppliers can truly attain it.

2. It Includes Domains, E-mailbox Accounts, Databases, FTPs, Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud hosting is not limited to a remote file storage solely. We are discussing a web hosting service, serving countless domains, web sites, email mailbox accounts, etc., right?

To call a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one needs a lot more than supplying plainly remote file storage mounts (or perhaps servers). The mail server(s) have to be devoted only to the e-mail connected services. Performing nothing else than these particular tasks. There might be only one or perhaps an entire array of email servers, depending on the overall load created. To have a real cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be operating as one, regardless of their real quantity. Executing nothing else. The same is valid for the users' CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

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

Here's an example of a DNS of a true cloud hosting corporation:

dns1.faradina.com

dns2.faradina.com

If such a Domain Name Server is offered by your hosting plans provider, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud web hosting environment 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 hosting service. This sort of DNS merely reveals that the hosting environment in use is one-server based. Perchance it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting solution and maintains a market share of more than ninety eight percent. In cPanel's case, one physical server tackles all hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, FTP, web hosting CP(s), web files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Twisted Interpretation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting solution is not limited only to a remote disk storage service, as a lot of hosting distributors wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting vendors would have been classified as cloud web hosting ones a long time ago! They are not categorized as such, because they merely furnish file web hosting services, not cloud hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform looks indeed very simple, when compared to the hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's simply one tiny fraction of the entire cloud hosting platform. There's a lot more to be discovered in the cloud hosting platform: the hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the e-mail cloud and... in the not too distant future, probably a few new clouds we presently don't know about will spring up unexpectedly.