Definition of Cloud Website Hosting

What is cloud web hosting actually? The word 'cloud' seems to be very trendy in today's IT, Internet and web hosting terminology. Even so, just a select few actually can say what cloud hosting is. Probably it is a smart idea to educate yourself about cloud web hosting services. To make a very lengthy tale concise, we will firstly tell you what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Supplying a remote disk storage solution, which comprises one data storage appliance for all clients, does not transform any particular hosting provider into an authentic cloud web hosting corporation.

The cPanel hosting firms dub the ability to distribute remote disk storage solutions a cloud web hosting solution. Up till now there is nothing bad about the cloud classification, but... we are discussing hosting solutions, not remote data storage services for individual or corporate needs. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to name a shared hosting service, powered by a single-server web hosting platform, just like cPanel, a "cloud web hosting" solution. This is so because the remaining pieces of the entire web hosting platform must be operating in exactly the same manner - this does not refer solely to the remote data storage. The other services entailed in the whole hosting process also must be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's very difficult. A very small number of hosting distributors can really achieve it.

2. It Includes Domain Names, Emails, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Hosting CPs, etc.

Cloud web hosting is not restricted to a remote data storage solely. We are talking about a hosting service, serving many domain names, web pages, mail aliases, and so on, aren't we?

To call a hosting service a "cloud web hosting" one needs a lot more than furnishing plainly remote file storage mounts (or perhaps physical servers). The electronic mail server(s) have to be devoted only to the e-mail related services. Carrying out nothing different than these specific procedures. There might be only one single or probably a whole pack of email servers, depending on the total server load created. To have an authentic cloud web hosting service, the remote database servers should be working as one, irrespective of their real number. Doing nothing else. The same is valid for the clients' hosting Control Panels, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

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

Here's an instance of a Domain Name Server of a real cloud web hosting supplier:

dns1.3rdcoastdomains.com

dns2.3rdcoastdomains.com

If such a DNS is supplied by your web hosting supplier, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud hosting environment in use, but you can absolutely be sure when you notice a Domain Name Server like the one below:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting service. This type of DNS plainly displays that the hosting platform in use is one-single-server based. Maybe it's cPanel. cPanel is a single-server web hosting solution and maintains a 98+ percent market share. In cPanel's case, one single physical machine handles all hosting services (web, e-mail, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, CP(s), files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Warped Description of Cloud Web Hosting.

So, a cloud web hosting service is not restricted exclusively to a remote disk storage service, as multiple web hosting firms wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file web hosting distributors would have been categorized as cloud hosting ones a long time back! They are not categorized as such, because they simply offer file web hosting solutions, not cloud hosting services. The file hosting platform seems really quite simple, when compared to the hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's just one small fragment of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be found in the cloud hosting platform: the hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the e-mail cloud and... in the near future, possibly several new clouds we presently don't know about will show up out of nowhere.