What Precisely is Cloud Hosting?

What is cloud hosting indeed? The term 'cloud' seems to be quite modern in today's IT, World Wide Web and hosting lingo. Still, only a few in fact can tell what cloud hosting is. Perchance it is a sensible idea to educate yourself about cloud hosting services. To render a quite long tale brief, we will firstly let you know what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Hosting is Not Limited to a Remote File Storage Solely.

1. Providing a remote disk storage solution, which comprises one data storage tool for all users, does not convert any given web hosting company into an actual cloud hosting corporation.

The cPanel hosting distributors call the ability to distribute remote data storage solutions a cloud hosting service. Up till now there is nothing wrong with the cloud designation, but... we are talking about website hosting solutions, not remote data storage services for individual or corporate needs. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to call a shared hosting solution, based on a one-single-server web hosting platform, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud hosting" solution. This is so because the other constituents of the whole web hosting platform must be functioning in precisely the same way - this does not apply only to the remote data storage. The rest of the services entailed in the whole web hosting process also must be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's extremely difficult. Very few web hosting vendors can actually do it.

2. It Encompasses Domain Names, Mailbox Accounts, Databases, FTPs, Hosting CPs, etc.

Cloud hosting is not confined to a remote file storage only. We are discussing a hosting solution, serving a lot of domain names, sites, mails, etc., right?

To dub a web hosting service a "cloud hosting" one requires a lot more than delivering simply remote disk storage mounts (or perchance servers). The email server(s) need to be devoted just to the mail linked services. Executing nothing different than these specific tasks. There might be only one or perhaps a whole assortment of email servers, based on the total load generated. To have an actual cloud hosting service, the remote database servers should be operating as one, irrespective of their actual quantity. Executing nothing else. The same is valid for the users' web hosting CPs, the FTP, and so on.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a true cloud hosting solutions provider will support multiple data center facility sites on different continents.

Here's an illustration of a Domain Name Server of an actual cloud hosting corporation:

dns1.au.f7en.biz

dns2.au.f7en.biz

If such a DNS is provided by your hosting packages provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting platform in use, but you can absolutely be sure when you observe a Domain Name Server such as the one underneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud web hosting platform. This type of DNS only manifests that the web hosting platform in use is one-server based. Possibly it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-single-server web hosting platform and holds a 98+ percent market share. In cPanel's case, one single server handles all web hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, hosting CP(s), files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Warped Definition of Cloud Hosting.

So, a cloud hosting service is not limited exclusively to a remote file storage service, as lots of hosting companies wish it was. Sadly for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file web hosting firms would have been classified as cloud web hosting ones long ago! They are not referred to as such, since they simply distribute file web hosting solutions, not cloud web hosting solutions. The file hosting platform is really very plain, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote data storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's only one tiny constituent of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be discovered in the cloud web hosting platform: the CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the near future, maybe a couple of brand new clouds we currently are not informed about will show up unexpectedly.