What is Cloud Hosting?

What is cloud hosting in reality? The word 'cloud' appears to be quite fashionable in today's IT, Internet and web hosting terms. Still, just a few actually can tell what cloud hosting is. Possibly it is a smart idea to educate yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a very long tale short, we will first notify you about what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Confined to a Remote Data Storage Solely.

1. Supplying a remote data storage service, which comprises one single file storage appliance for all users, does not transform any particular hosting provider into a real cloud hosting solutions provider.

The cPanel hosting suppliers call the ability to furnish remote disk storage services a cloud hosting solution. Up to now there is nothing wrong with the cloud labeling, but... we are talking about web hosting solutions, not remote data storage solutions for individual or business needs. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to call a shared web hosting solution, driven by a one-single-server hosting platform, just like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" solution. This is so because the other pieces of the whole web hosting platform must be functioning in precisely the same way - this does not relate only to the remote file storage. The rest of the services involved in the entire web hosting procedure also have to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's very problematical. A very meager number of web hosting firms can truly do it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, Mailbox Accounts, Databases, FTPs, Hosting CPs, etc.

Cloud hosting is not restricted to a remote file storage exclusively. We are discussing a hosting solution, serving plenty of domains, sites, mailboxes, and so on, right?

To name a hosting service a "cloud hosting" one requires a lot more than furnishing solely remote data storage mounts (or perchance physical servers). The electronic mail server(s) need to be dedicated solely to the e-mail linked services. Carrying out nothing else than these particular tasks. There might be just one or maybe an entire group of e-mail servers, depending on the total server load created. To have a genuine cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, regardless of their real quantity. Executing nothing different. The same goes for the clients' Control Panels, the FTP, and so on.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an authentic cloud hosting corporation will support numerous server farm locations on multiple continents.

Here's an illustration of a DNS of a real cloud hosting provider:

dns1.e-debugger.com

dns2.e-debugger.com

If such a DNS is supplied by your web hosting provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting environment in use, but you can absolutely be confident when you see a Domain Name Server like the one below:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting platform. This type of DNS just indicates that the hosting platform in use is one-single-server based. Perhaps it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting platform and maintains a 98+ percent market share. In cPanel's case, one physical machine tackles all hosting services (web, email, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, CP(s), files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Warped Definition of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting solution is not confined only to a remote disk storage service, as lots of hosting distributors wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting companies would have been classified as cloud hosting ones a long time ago! They are not classified as such, as they simply deliver file hosting services, not cloud hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform appears really quite plain, when compared to the web hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, because it's just one small segment of the entire cloud hosting platform. There's a lot more to be encountered in the cloud web hosting platform: the Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the email cloud and... in the upcoming future, possibly a bunch of new clouds we presently are not aware of will appear unexpectedly.