What In Fact is Cloud Web Hosting?

What is cloud website hosting really? The word 'cloud' appears to be very trendy in today's information technology, World Wide Web and web hosting terms. Yet, only a select few really can tell what cloud hosting is. Perhaps it is a sensible idea to inform yourself about cloud website hosting services. To render a very long tale concise, we will firstly acquaint you with what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Providing a remote disk storage solution, which comprises one data storage appliance for all clients, does not convert any particular hosting provider into a real cloud website hosting solutions provider.

The cPanel hosting companies call the ability to offer remote file storage solutions a cloud website hosting service. Up to now there is nothing bad about the cloud classification, but... we are talking about hosting solutions, not remote file storage services for individual or corporate needs. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to dub a shared web hosting solution, driven by a one-server web hosting environment, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud website hosting" solution. This is so because the remaining pieces of the whole web hosting platform must be functioning in exactly the same way - this does not relate only to the remote disk storage. The rest of the services entailed in the entire hosting procedure also have to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's very tough. A very meager number of hosting distributors can really make it.

2. It Includes Domains, Mails, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Control Panels, and so on.

Cloud website hosting is not confined to a remote file storage only. We are discussing a hosting solution, serving many domain names, online portals, e-mail accounts, and so on, are we not?

To call a web hosting service a "cloud website hosting" one demands a lot more than furnishing merely remote file storage mounts (or perhaps physical servers). The mail server(s) must be dedicated only to the electronic mail related services. Performing nothing different than these concrete tasks. There might be only one single or possibly a whole pack of electronic mail servers, depending on the overall server load generated. To have a true cloud website hosting solution, the remote database servers should be operating as one, irrespective of their real quantity. Carrying out nothing else. The same goes for the users' web hosting CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.

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

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

Here's an illustration of a Domain Name Server of a true cloud website hosting plans provider:

dns1.oswaldiny.com

dns2.oswaldiny.com

If such a Domain Name Server is offered by your web hosting packages provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud hosting environment in use, but you can absolutely be sure when you spot a Domain Name Server such as the one below:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting service. This kind of Domain Name Server only demonstrates that the web hosting environment in use is one-single-server based. Maybe it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-single-server hosting solution and holds a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, one single physical server handles all hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, FTP, Control Panel(s), web site files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Distorted Definition of Cloud Website Hosting.

So, a cloud website hosting solution is not restricted exclusively to a remote disk storage service, as many web hosting companies 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 a long time back! They are not classified as such, as they plainly offer file hosting services, not cloud hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform seems indeed very simple, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, because it's just one tiny segment of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be found in the cloud web hosting platform: the hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the mail cloud and... in the foreseeable future, perhaps a number of new clouds we currently don't know about will spring up unexpectedly.