What Precisely is Cloud Hosting?

What is cloud web hosting in reality? The term 'cloud' seems to be quite trendy in today's information technology, World Wide Web and hosting parlance. Nonetheless, just a few in fact are familiar with what cloud hosting is. Perhaps it is a smart idea to inform yourself about cloud web hosting services. To render a quite lengthy tale succinct, we will first describe to you what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Web Hosting is Not Confined to a Remote Data Storage Solely.

1. Providing a remote disk storage solution, which involves one single file storage appliance for all users, does not transform any particular web hosting distributor into an authentic cloud web hosting vendor.

The cPanel web hosting corporations call the ability to provide remote disk storage services a cloud web hosting service. So far there is nothing bad about the cloud labeling, but... we are talking about hosting solutions, not remote file storage services for personal or corporate purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared hosting service, driven by a one-single-server hosting environment, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud web hosting" service. This is so because the other pieces of the whole hosting platform must be working in precisely the same manner - this does not apply solely to the remote data storage. The remaining services entailed in the entire web hosting procedure also must be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's quite hard. A very small number of web hosting firms can actually accomplish it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, E-mail Addresses, Databases, FTPs, Web Hosting Control Panels, and so on.

Cloud web hosting is not restricted to a remote file storage only. We are discussing a web hosting solution, serving multiple domain names, web portals, email box accounts, and so on, are we not?

To call a web hosting service a "cloud web hosting" one requires a lot more than supplying merely remote data storage mounts (or possibly physical servers). The electronic mail server(s) have to be dedicated only to the email related services. Executing nothing different than these specific tasks. There might be only one or perchance an entire collection of email servers, based on the overall load produced. To have an actual cloud web hosting service, the remote database servers should be operating as one, regardless of their actual amount. Doing nothing different. The same is valid for the clients' CPs, the FTP, and so on.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a real cloud web hosting firm will support numerous datacenter sites on multiple continents.

Here's an example of a Domain Name Server of an authentic cloud web hosting supplier:

dns1.www.wisehostnetwork.com

dns2.www.wisehostnetwork.com

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

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This kind of DNS plainly exhibits that the web hosting platform in use is one-single-server based. Probably it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting platform and holds a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, one single server is responsible for all hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, FTP, CP(s), website files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Distorted Explanation of Cloud Web Hosting.

So, a cloud web hosting solution is not restricted just to a remote data storage solution, as multiple service providers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting providers would have been categorized as cloud hosting ones long ago! They are not classified as such, because they simply provide file web hosting services, not cloud hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform seems indeed quite plain, in comparison with the 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 web hosting platform. There's a lot more to be found in the cloud web hosting platform: the Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the foreseeable future, perchance several new clouds we currently are not informed about will emerge out of the blue.