What Precisely is Cloud Website Hosting?

What is cloud hosting actually? The word 'cloud' appears to be quite trendy in today's IT, World Wide Web and web hosting jargon. Nonetheless, only a few really can say what cloud hosting is. Maybe it is a fine idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a quite lengthy tale brief, we will first describe to you what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Providing a remote disk storage solution, which involves one single file storage appliance for all customers, does not transform any specific web hosting supplier into an actual cloud hosting vendor.

The cPanel web hosting distributors dub the ability to distribute remote file storage services a cloud hosting solution. So far there is nothing bad about the cloud terminology, but... we are talking about hosting solutions, not remote disk storage solutions for private or corporate purposes. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to name a shared hosting solution, driven by a one-server web hosting platform, just like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" solution. That's because the other constituents of the entire hosting platform must be operating in exactly the same way - this does not relate solely to the remote disk storage. The rest of the services involved in the whole web hosting procedure also need to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's very tough. A very scanty number of web hosting suppliers can actually accomplish it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, Emails, Databases, FTPs, Control Panels, etc.

Cloud hosting is not restricted to a remote disk storage only. We are discussing a hosting solution, serving multiple domains, online portals, mail accounts, and so on, right?

To name a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one calls for a lot more than furnishing merely remote data storage mounts (or maybe physical servers). The e-mail server(s) must be dedicated only to the e-mail related services. Performing nothing different than these concrete tasks. There might be just one or maybe a whole set of mail servers, based on the total load generated. To have an authentic cloud hosting service, the remote database servers should be performing as one, irrespective of their actual quantity. Performing nothing else. The same goes for the clients' Control Panels, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an actual cloud hosting corporation will support numerous data center sites on multiple continents.

Here's an instance of a DNS of a true cloud hosting accounts provider:

dns1.insloop.info

dns2.insloop.info

If such a Domain Name Server is offered by your web hosting solutions provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting environment in use, but you can absolutely be confident when you discern a DNS such as the one underneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting service. This type of Domain Name Server only illustrates that the web hosting platform in use is one-server based. Probably it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-single-server web hosting platform and has a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, one single physical machine deals with all web hosting services (web, electronic mail, DNS, databases, FTP, hosting CP(s), files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Distorted Explanation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not restricted simply to a remote file storage solution, as many web hosting providers wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting providers would have been categorized as cloud hosting ones a long time ago! They are not categorized as such, as they plainly deliver file web hosting services, not cloud web hosting services. The file hosting platform looks really quite simple, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote data storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, as it's just one simple component of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be discovered in the cloud hosting platform: the web hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the foreseeable future, perchance a few new clouds we presently are not aware of will turn up unexpectedly.