Definition of Cloud Hosting

What is cloud hosting indeed? The word 'cloud' appears to be very modern in today's IT, Internet and web hosting terms. Even so, only a select few actually know what cloud hosting is. Maybe it is a clever idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a very lengthy story concise, we will first let you know what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Furnishing a remote disk storage solution, which involves one disk storage device for all clients, does not turn any specific hosting company into a genuine cloud hosting services provider.

The cPanel web hosting vendors name the ability to furnish remote disk storage solutions a cloud hosting solution. Up to now there is nothing wrong with the cloud classification, but... we are discussing hosting services, not remote file storage services for individual or corporate needs. There's constantly one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to name a shared hosting solution, based on a one-single-server web hosting environment, just like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. This is so because the other fractions of the whole hosting platform must be operating in exactly the same way - this does not relate only to the remote file storage. The remaining services involved in the whole hosting procedure also must be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's extremely problematical. A very small number of web hosting distributors can really achieve it.

2. It Involves Domains, E-mails, Databases, FTPs, Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud hosting is not limited to a remote file storage solely. We are talking about a web hosting service, serving multiple domain names, web pages, electronic mails, etc., right?

To name a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one calls for a lot more than supplying just remote disk storage mounts (or probably physical servers). The mail server(s) must be devoted just to the e-mail connected services. Doing nothing else than these given procedures. There might be only one single or perchance an entire group of mail servers, based on the total load generated. To have a true cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, irrespective of their actual number. Performing nothing else. The same is valid for the clients' hosting Control Panels, the FTP, etc.

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

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

Here's an example of a DNS of a genuine cloud hosting solutions provider:

dns1.pixalogy.net

dns2.pixalogy.net

If such a Domain Name Server is furnished by your web hosting supplier, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud web hosting platform in use, but you can definitely be sure when you discern a DNS like the one below:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

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

Remote File Storage - The Warped Description of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not confined simply to a remote disk storage service, as multiple hosting service providers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting service providers would have been categorized as cloud hosting ones long ago! They are not referred to as such, since they plainly provide file web hosting services, not cloud hosting services. The file hosting platform seems really very simple, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, because it's simply one small segment of the entire cloud web hosting platform. There's plenty more to be discovered in the cloud web hosting platform: the web hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the e-mail cloud and... in the foreseeable future, maybe a number of new clouds we presently are not aware of will come up out of nowhere.