What Indeed is Cloud Hosting?

What is cloud hosting in fact? The word 'cloud' appears to be quite trendy in today's computing, Internet and web hosting terms. Yet, only a select few actually can say what cloud hosting is. Perchance it is a sensible idea to educate yourself about cloud hosting services. To render a quite lengthy story brief, we will first enlighten you on what cloud hosting is not.

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

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

The cPanel web hosting companies name the ability to distribute remote file storage solutions a cloud hosting service. Until now there is nothing bad about the cloud designation, but... we are discussing hosting services, not remote data storage solutions for personal or corporate purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to dub a shared web hosting solution, driven by a one-single-server hosting environment, just like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. This is so because the other components of the entire web hosting platform must be operating in precisely the same way - this does not apply solely to the remote data storage. The other services entailed in the entire web hosting procedure also have to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's really problematical. A very meager number of hosting companies can actually achieve it.

2. It Involves Domain Names, Electronic Mail Addresses, Databases, FTPs, CPs, and so on.

Cloud hosting is not limited to a remote disk storage only. We are talking about a web hosting service, serving plenty of domain names, online portals, mail accounts, and so on, are we not?

To name a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one needs a lot more than furnishing plainly remote data storage mounts (or possibly servers). The e-mail server(s) need to be dedicated just to the mail associated services. Doing nothing else than these particular procedures. There might be only one or maybe an entire cluster of electronic mail servers, determined by the overall server load created. To have a genuine 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 customers' CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a genuine cloud hosting company will support multiple data center facility locations on different continents.

Here's an illustration of a Domain Name Server of a true cloud hosting company:

dns1.zoyahost.com

dns2.zoyahost.com

If such a DNS is furnished by your hosting company, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud hosting platform in use, but you can absolutely be certain when you notice a DNS like the one beneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This type of DNS only reveals that the hosting environment in use is one-single-server based. Probably it's cPanel. cPanel is a single-server web hosting platform and has a 98+ percent market share. In cPanel's case, one single server deals with all hosting services (web, e-mail, DNS, databases, FTP, CP(s), website files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Perverted Characterization of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not restricted solely to a remote disk storage solution, as lots of hosting firms wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, most of the file hosting firms would have been classified as cloud hosting ones long ago! They are not categorized as such, since they simply supply file web hosting services, not cloud hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform is indeed quite simple, when compared to the hosting platform. The remote data storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's simply one tiny constituent of the entire cloud web hosting platform. There's a lot more to be encountered in the cloud web hosting platform: the hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the FTP cloud, the email cloud and... in the upcoming future, possibly a number of brand new clouds we currently are not aware of will surface out of nowhere.