How Cloud Hosting Works

What is cloud hosting actually? The word 'cloud' seems to be quite fashionable in today's IT, World Wide Web and web hosting jargon. Even so, just a select few in fact are aware of what cloud hosting is. Perchance it is a smart idea to educate yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a very lengthy story succinct, we will firstly acquaint you with what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Restricted to a Remote Disk Storage Exclusively.

1. Providing a remote disk storage solution, which involves one file storage appliance for all users, does not transform any given hosting company into an actual cloud hosting supplier.

The cPanel hosting firms name the ability to distribute remote file storage solutions a cloud hosting service. Up until now there is nothing bad about the cloud terminology, but... we are discussing hosting services, not remote disk storage solutions for personal or business needs. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to dub a shared hosting solution, driven by a one-server hosting environment, precisely like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" solution. This is so because the other parts of the entire hosting platform must be working in exactly the same way - this does not relate solely to the remote file storage. The other services entailed in the entire hosting procedure also must be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's really problematical. Very few web hosting companies can actually achieve it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, Electronic Mail Aliases, Databases, FTPs, Hosting CPs, and so on.

Cloud hosting is not restricted to a remote disk storage solely. We are talking about a hosting service, serving many domain names, online portals, mail addresses, etc., are we not?

To call a hosting service a "cloud hosting" one needs a lot more than distributing solely remote disk storage mounts (or perhaps servers). The electronic mail server(s) must be dedicated only to the electronic mail associated services. Doing nothing different than these specific tasks. There might be just one or perhaps a whole set of e-mail servers, based on the total load generated. To have an authentic cloud hosting solution, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, regardless of their actual quantity. Carrying out nothing else. The same goes for the users' web hosting Control Panels, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an actual cloud hosting vendor will support numerous data center sites on different continents.

Here's an instance of a DNS of a real cloud hosting vendor:

dns1.iemss.com.my

dns2.iemss.com.my

If such a DNS is furnished by your web hosting services provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting environment in use, but you can absolutely be convinced when you spot a Domain Name Server like the one below:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This sort of Domain Name Server merely demonstrates that the web hosting environment in use is one-single-server based. Maybe it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server hosting platform and maintains a market share of more than ninety eight percent. In cPanel's case, one physical server is responsible for all web hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, CP(s), files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Warped Explanation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting solution is not confined exclusively to a remote disk storage service, as multiple web hosting vendors wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting companies would have been referred to as cloud web hosting ones long ago! They are not categorized as such, since they simply distribute file hosting solutions, not cloud hosting services. The file hosting platform is indeed very simple, when compared to the web hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's merely one tiny constituent of the whole cloud web hosting platform. There's plenty more to be found in the cloud hosting platform: the web hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the mail cloud and... in the upcoming future, maybe a number of brand new clouds we currently are not acquainted with will come up unexpectedly.