What In Fact is Cloud Website Hosting?

What is cloud website hosting indeed? The term 'cloud' appears to be very trendy in today's information technology, Internet and hosting jargon. However, just a select few in fact can tell what cloud hosting is. Perhaps it is a smart idea to inform yourself about cloud website hosting services. To render a quite long tale concise, we will firstly let you know what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Supplying a remote disk storage service, which involves one file storage appliance for all customers, does not transform any particular service provider into an actual cloud website hosting distributor.

The cPanel hosting providers call the ability to distribute remote data storage services a cloud website hosting solution. Until now there is nothing bad about the cloud designation, but... we are talking about hosting services, not remote disk storage solutions for personal 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 hosting platform, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud website hosting" solution. This is so because the other fractions of the entire hosting platform must be operating in exactly the same way - this does not relate solely to the remote disk storage. The other services entailed in the whole web hosting process also need to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's extremely tough. Very few hosting service providers can really accomplish it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, Electronic Mail Addresses, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud website hosting is not restricted to a remote data storage only. We are talking about a web hosting service, serving countless domain names, web pages, email mailboxes, etc., are we not?

To call a hosting service a "cloud website hosting" one requires a lot more than furnishing simply remote data storage mounts (or probably servers). The email server(s) must be dedicated exclusively to the electronic mail related services. Executing nothing different than these specific procedures. There might be just one or probably an entire pack of electronic mail servers, depending on the overall server load produced. To have an authentic cloud website hosting service, the remote database servers should be operating as one, regardless of their actual quantity. Performing nothing else. The same goes for the users' web hosting CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

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

Here's an example of a Domain Name Server of a true cloud website hosting corporation:

dns1.vaporrave.com

dns2.vaporrave.com

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

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This kind of DNS just illustrates that the hosting environment in use is one-server based. Maybe it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server hosting solution and maintains a market share of more than ninety eight percent. In cPanel's case, a single physical machine handles all hosting services (web, email, DNS, databases, FTP, hosting CP(s), files, etc.).

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

So, a cloud website hosting solution is not confined exclusively to a remote file storage service, as lots of web hosting service providers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting service providers would have been classified as cloud hosting ones a long time back! They are not categorized as such, because they plainly provide file web hosting services, not cloud hosting services. The file hosting platform is indeed quite simple, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, because it's merely one tiny fraction of the entire cloud web hosting platform. There's plenty more to be discovered in the cloud hosting platform: the Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the upcoming future, probably a number of new clouds we currently are not informed about will turn up out of the blue.