Cloud Web Hosting Unmasked

What is cloud hosting in reality? The term 'cloud' seems to be very modern in today's IT, World Wide Web and hosting parlance. In spite of that, only a few in fact know what cloud hosting is. Probably it is a sensible idea to inform yourself about cloud hosting services. To make a very lengthy tale concise, we will firstly acquaint you with what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Providing a remote data storage solution, which comprises one single file storage device for all users, does not convert any given hosting vendor into an actual cloud hosting company.

The cPanel hosting distributors name the ability to provide remote data storage services a cloud hosting solution. So far there is nothing bad about the cloud labeling, but... we are talking about web hosting solutions, not remote disk storage services for individual or corporate purposes. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to call a shared web hosting solution, driven by a one-single-server hosting environment, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" service. That's because the remaining parts of the whole hosting platform must be operating in exactly the same manner - this does not apply solely to the remote data storage. The rest of the services entailed in the entire web hosting procedure also have to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's really problematical. Very few web hosting service providers can really accomplish it.

2. It Entails Domain Names, E-mailbox Accounts, Databases, FTPs, Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud hosting is not confined to a remote disk storage only. We are discussing a web hosting solution, serving numerous domains, web portals, mailbox aliases, etc., aren't we?

To call a hosting service a "cloud hosting" one demands a lot more than providing only remote file storage mounts (or maybe servers). The electronic mail server(s) need to be dedicated solely to the email linked services. Carrying out nothing different than these specific procedures. There might be just one single or perhaps a whole group of mail servers, determined by the total load produced. To have a real cloud hosting service, the remote database servers should be operating as one, regardless of their actual quantity. Performing nothing different. The same goes for the customers' hosting CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a true cloud hosting distributor will support multiple server farm sites on multiple continents.

Here's an instance of a DNS of an actual cloud hosting company:

dns1.clarionhosting.com

dns2.clarionhosting.com

If such a Domain Name Server is provided by your web hosting company, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be sure when you observe a DNS such as the one beneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting service. This sort of Domain Name Server just indicates that the hosting environment in use is one-server based. Maybe it's cPanel. cPanel is a single-server web hosting platform and has a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, a single server is responsible for all hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, hosting CP(s), website files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Perverted Interpretation of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not limited solely to a remote disk storage service, as plenty of web hosting providers wish it was. Sadly for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file web hosting suppliers would have been categorized as cloud hosting ones a long time back! They are not categorized as such, as they merely supply file web hosting services, not cloud hosting solutions. The file hosting platform seems really quite simple, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, as it's simply one small part of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be found in the cloud hosting platform: the hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the email cloud and... in the upcoming future, perhaps several new clouds we presently don't know about will show up out of the blue.