Cloud Hosting Unveiled

What is cloud hosting in fact? The word 'cloud' seems to be quite fashionable in today's computing, Internet and web hosting terms. Yet, just a few in fact can say what cloud hosting is. Perchance it is a smart idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a very lengthy tale short, we will first notify you about what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Offering a remote data storage service, which involves one single disk storage appliance for all clients, does not turn any given hosting service provider into a genuine cloud hosting solutions provider.

The cPanel web hosting suppliers call the ability to offer remote disk storage solutions a cloud hosting service. Up to now there is nothing bad about the cloud classification, but... we are talking about web hosting solutions, not remote disk storage solutions for private or corporate purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to dub a shared web hosting service, powered by a one-server web hosting platform, precisely like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" solution. That's because the remaining components of the entire hosting platform must be functioning in exactly the same way - this does not apply only to the remote data storage. The remaining services involved in the whole web hosting procedure also must be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's very tough. A very scanty number of web hosting firms can really do it.

2. It Involves Domains, Electronic Mail Aliases, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Hosting CPs, etc.

Cloud hosting is not confined to a remote disk storage only. We are talking about a hosting service, serving many domain names, web sites, email accounts, etc., are we not?

To name a hosting service a "cloud hosting" one needs a lot more than providing only remote data storage mounts (or maybe physical servers). The mail server(s) need to be devoted exclusively to the mail linked services. Executing nothing different than these particular assignments. There might be only one single or probably an entire group of email servers, determined by the overall server load created. To have an authentic cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, irrespective of their actual amount. Executing nothing else. The same goes for the users' CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.

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

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

Here's an illustration of a DNS of an authentic cloud hosting distributor:

dns1.mindmeldnetwks.com

dns2.mindmeldnetwks.com

If such a DNS is provided by your hosting provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be convinced when you discern a Domain Name Server like the one beneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This type of Domain Name Server plainly reveals that the web hosting platform in use is one-server based. Perchance it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting platform and maintains a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, one server takes care of all web hosting services (web, e-mail, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, hosting CP(s), files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Twisted Interpretation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting solution is not confined simply to a remote data storage solution, as lots of web hosting suppliers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting distributors would have been referred to as cloud hosting ones a long time back! They are not referred to as such, as they merely distribute file web hosting solutions, not cloud hosting services. The file web hosting platform is really quite plain, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's merely one tiny component of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's a lot more to be encountered in the cloud hosting platform: the CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the mail cloud and... in the foreseeable future, perchance a number of brand new clouds we currently are not acquainted with will turn up out of the blue.