What Exactly is Cloud Website Hosting?

What is cloud website hosting indeed? The word 'cloud' appears to be very fashionable in today's computing, Internet and hosting terms. Still, just a few in fact can say what cloud hosting is. Perchance it is a sensible idea to inform yourself about cloud website hosting services. To render a quite long tale brief, we will first let you know what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Website Hosting is Not Confined to a Remote Data Storage Exclusively.

1. Delivering a remote file storage solution, which involves one disk storage appliance for all customers, does not transform any particular hosting service provider into an authentic cloud website hosting plans provider.

The cPanel web hosting companies call the ability to furnish remote file storage services a cloud website hosting service. Up until now there is nothing wrong with the cloud terminology, but... we are talking about hosting solutions, not remote data storage services for personal or business purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to dub a shared hosting service, driven by a single-server web hosting platform, just like cPanel, a "cloud website hosting" solution. This is so because the remaining components of the whole web hosting platform must be functioning in precisely the same manner - this does not relate only to the remote disk storage. The remaining services involved in the entire web hosting procedure also have to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's very problematical. A very small number of hosting service providers can actually attain it.

2. It Includes Domain Names, E-mails, Databases, FTPs, Web Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud website hosting is not limited to a remote file storage solely. We are discussing a hosting service, serving multiple domains, sites, e-mails, and so on, right?

To name a web hosting service a "cloud website hosting" one calls for a lot more than delivering only remote data storage mounts (or perchance servers). The mail server(s) must be dedicated only to the e-mail associated services. Executing nothing else than these concrete procedures. There might be just one or maybe an entire pack of email servers, determined by the overall load produced. To have a true cloud website hosting service, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, irrespective of their actual quantity. Performing nothing else. The same is valid for the clients' web hosting CPs, the FTP, etc.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an actual cloud website hosting plans provider will support numerous datacenter facility locations on different continents.

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

dns1.viawebcloud.com

dns2.viawebcloud.com

If such a DNS is provided by your hosting packages provider, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud web hosting platform in use, but you can definitely be confident when you spot a DNS like the one underneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting platform. This type of DNS just indicates that the hosting environment in use is one-single-server based. Perchance it's cPanel. cPanel is a single-server hosting solution and maintains a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, a single physical server is responsible for all hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, FTP, hosting CP(s), web files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Warped Characterization of Cloud Website Hosting.

So, a cloud website hosting service is not limited solely to a remote data storage service, as plenty of web hosting service providers wish it was. Sadly for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting companies would have been referred to as cloud hosting ones a long time ago! They are not referred to as such, since they simply distribute file web hosting services, not cloud web hosting services. The file hosting platform looks really very simple, when compared to the web hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's only one tiny segment of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's a lot more to be encountered in the cloud hosting platform: the hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the not too distant future, perchance a few new clouds we currently don't know about will emerge unexpectedly.