What Exactly is Cloud Hosting?

What is cloud hosting in fact? The word 'cloud' seems to be quite modish in today's computing, World Wide Web and hosting terminology. Even so, just a select few really can say what cloud hosting is. Probably it is a sensible idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To render a very lengthy story concise, we will firstly tell you what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Confined to a Remote Disk Storage Only.

1. Offering a remote disk storage service, which comprises one file storage appliance for all customers, does not convert any particular web hosting corporation into an actual cloud hosting plans provider.

The cPanel hosting distributors call the ability to supply remote disk storage services a cloud hosting solution. Up until now there is nothing wrong with the cloud designation, but... we are discussing website hosting services, not remote disk storage solutions for personal or business purposes. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to name a shared web hosting service, driven by a one-single-server web hosting platform, precisely like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" solution. This is so because the remaining fractions of the entire hosting platform must be functioning in precisely the same way - this does not relate solely to the remote file storage. The remaining services entailed in the whole hosting process also need to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's quite tough. A very meager number of web hosting suppliers can truly achieve it.

2. It Encompasses Domain Names, Email Box Accounts, Databases, FTPs, Web Hosting CPs, etc.

Cloud hosting is not confined to a remote file storage solely. We are talking about a hosting solution, serving numerous domains, online portals, electronic mail addresses, etc., aren't we?

To dub a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one requires a lot more than offering plainly remote disk storage mounts (or possibly physical servers). The electronic mail server(s) have to be devoted only to the e-mail connected services. Doing nothing different than these particular assignments. There might be just one or possibly a whole set of mail servers, based on the overall load generated. To have an actual cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, regardless of their real quantity. Performing nothing else. The same goes for the customers' web hosting Control Panels, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.

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

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

Here's an example of a Domain Name Server of an authentic cloud hosting distributor:

dns1.epacket.net

dns2.epacket.net

If such a Domain Name Server is offered by your hosting plans provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be certain 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 kind of Domain Name Server merely indicates that the web hosting platform in use is one-server based. Possibly it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server hosting platform and has a market share of more than 98 percent. In cPanel's case, one physical machine copes with all hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, FTP, hosting Control Panel(s), website files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Twisted Interpretation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting solution is not restricted only to a remote disk storage solution, as many web hosting companies wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file web hosting service providers would have been referred to as cloud hosting ones long ago! They are not classified as such, since they simply furnish file web hosting solutions, not cloud web hosting solutions. The file hosting platform looks really quite simple, when compared to the hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, as it's only one small constituent 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 mail cloud and... in the near future, maybe a number of brand new clouds we currently are not aware of will appear out of the blue.