What Does Cloud Web Hosting Represent?

What is cloud hosting indeed? The term 'cloud' appears to be very modern in today's IT, Internet and web hosting parlance. Yet, only a few in fact know what cloud hosting is. Maybe it is a sensible idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a very lengthy story short, we will first enlighten you on what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Furnishing a remote data storage service, which involves one file storage device for all clients, does not transform any given hosting firm into an actual cloud hosting accounts provider.

The cPanel web hosting firms call the ability to offer remote disk storage solutions a cloud hosting solution. So far there is nothing bad about the cloud labeling, but... we are talking about website hosting services, not remote disk storage services for personal or corporate needs. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared web hosting service, driven by a one-server hosting platform, precisely like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. This is so because the remaining components of the entire web hosting platform must be operating in exactly the same manner - this does not relate solely to the remote data storage. The other services entailed in the entire hosting process also have to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's really problematical. Very few web hosting firms can actually accomplish it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, E-mail Addresses, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud hosting is not restricted to a remote file storage only. We are discussing a web hosting solution, serving lots of domain names, online portals, email boxes, etc., right?

To name a hosting service a "cloud hosting" one calls for a lot more than delivering just remote file storage mounts (or maybe physical servers). The mail server(s) have to be devoted just to the e-mail related services. Performing nothing else than these concrete tasks. There might be only one single or probably a whole cluster of e-mail servers, based on the overall server load generated. To have a genuine cloud hosting service, the remote database servers should be operating as one, irrespective of their actual number. Doing nothing else. The same is valid for the customers' web hosting Control Panels, the FTP, and so on.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a real cloud hosting supplier will support multiple server farm facility locations on different continents.

Here's an instance of a DNS of a genuine cloud hosting distributor:

dns1.host.easternbytes.com

dns2.host.easternbytes.com

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

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting platform. This sort of Domain Name Server only manifests that the web hosting platform in use is one-server based. Probably it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting platform and holds a 98+ percent market share. In cPanel's case, one physical server handles all web hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, FTP, CP(s), files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Perverted Interpretation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting solution is not limited simply to a remote disk storage service, as lots of web hosting suppliers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting vendors would have been categorized as cloud web hosting ones a long time back! They are not referred to as such, since they simply deliver file web hosting services, not cloud hosting services. The file web hosting platform is really quite plain, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, as it's merely one small fraction of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be discovered in the cloud web hosting platform: the web hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the email cloud and... in the near future, perhaps a bunch of new clouds we presently are not acquainted with will come up unexpectedly.