What is cloud web hosting in reality? The word ‘cloud’ seems to be very fashionable in today’s computing, Internet and hosting jargon. Nonetheless, only a few in fact are informed about what cloud hosting is. Perchance it is a smart idea to educate yourself about cloud hosting services. To render a very lengthy tale brief, we will first tell you what cloud hosting is not.
Providing a remote file storage solution, which comprises one single data storage appliance for all users, does not transform any particular hosting vendor into a genuine cloud hosting supplier.
The cPanel web hosting vendors dub the ability to provide remote file storage solutions a cloud hosting solution. So far there is nothing bad about the cloud terminology, but… we are talking about web hosting solutions, not remote data storage services for personal or corporate needs. There’s always one “but”, isn’t there? It’s not enough to dub a shared web hosting service, driven by a one-single-server hosting environment, precisely like cPanel, a “cloud web hosting” solution. That’s because the other parts of the whole web hosting platform must be functioning in precisely the same manner – this does not relate solely to the remote file storage. The other services entailed in the entire hosting process also have to be remote, separated and “clouded”. And that’s extremely difficult. A very meager number of hosting companies can truly attain it.
Cloud hosting is not restricted to a remote file storage solely. We are talking about a hosting solution, serving lots of domain names, web pages, electronic mail addresses, and so on, aren’t we?
To name a web hosting service a “cloud hosting” one requires a lot more than offering merely remote disk storage mounts (or perhaps physical servers). The mail server(s) have to be devoted solely to the email associated services. Performing nothing different than these concrete assignments. There might be just one or perchance an entire pack of mail servers, based on the overall load created. To have a true cloud hosting service, the remote database servers should be performing as one, irrespective of their real number. Executing nothing else. The same is valid for the users’ web hosting Control Panels, the FTP, etc.
The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an actual cloud hosting plans provider will support multiple data center facility sites on different continents.
Here’s an illustration of a DNS of a real cloud hosting services provider:
dns1.lonex.com
dns2.lonex.com
If such a Domain Name Server is supplied by your hosting plans provider, it’s not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be confident when you see a DNS like the one beneath:
dns658.hostgator.com
dns659.hostgator.com
that there isn’t any cloud hosting service. This type of Domain Name Server only displays 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 maintains a market share of more than 98 percent. In cPanel’s case, one single physical machine deals with all web hosting services (web, electronic mail, DNS, databases, FTP, CP(s), web site files, etc.).
So, a cloud hosting service is not confined solely to a remote data storage service, as lots of hosting firms wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting distributors would have been referred to as cloud hosting ones a long time ago! They are not referred to as such, since they plainly distribute file web hosting services, not cloud web hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform is indeed quite plain, when compared to the hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, as it’s just one simple component of the whole cloud web hosting platform. There’s plenty more to be encountered in the cloud hosting platform: the web hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the email cloud and… in the foreseeable future, maybe a few brand new clouds we currently are not acquainted with will show up unexpectedly.