What Indeed is Cloud Web Hosting?

What is cloud web hosting indeed? The term 'cloud' appears to be very fashionable in today's IT, Internet and web hosting terms. However, just a select few in fact are familiar with what cloud hosting is. Probably it is a clever idea to educate yourself about cloud web hosting services. To make a quite long story succinct, we will first tell you what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Web Hosting is Not Confined to a Remote Disk Storage Solely.

1. Supplying a remote disk storage service, which involves one single file storage device for all clients, does not turn any particular hosting company into a real cloud web hosting accounts provider.

The cPanel hosting suppliers name the ability to distribute remote disk storage services a cloud web hosting solution. Up till now there is nothing bad about the cloud terminology, but... we are discussing website hosting solutions, not remote disk storage services for private or business needs. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared web hosting solution, driven by a single-server web hosting environment, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud web hosting" service. This is so because the remaining components of the whole web hosting platform must be operating in precisely the same way - this does not relate only to the remote file storage. The rest of the services involved in the entire hosting process also have to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's quite difficult. A very small number of web hosting corporations can actually do it.

2. It Involves Domains, E-mail Aliases, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Hosting CPs, and so on.

Cloud web hosting is not limited to a remote file storage only. We are talking about a hosting solution, serving countless domains, websites, electronic mail accounts, etc., are we not?

To dub a hosting service a "cloud web hosting" one needs a lot more than supplying merely remote data storage mounts (or perchance physical servers). The mail server(s) must be dedicated solely to the e-mail related services. Carrying out nothing else than these specific tasks. There might be just one single or perhaps an entire cluster of email servers, depending on the total server load produced. To have a true cloud web hosting solution, the remote database servers should be working as one, regardless of their actual number. Performing nothing different. The same goes for the clients' Control Panels, the FTP, etc.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an actual cloud web hosting packages provider will support multiple server farm facility locations on different continents.

Here's an illustration of a Domain Name Server of a real cloud web hosting packages provider:

dns1.internet-gr.biz

dns2.internet-gr.biz

If such a DNS is offered by your web hosting supplier, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud hosting platform in use, but you can absolutely be convinced when you notice a DNS such as the one below:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting service. This kind of DNS only reveals that the web hosting environment in use is one-server based. Maybe it's cPanel. cPanel is a single-server hosting platform and maintains a 98+ percent market share. In cPanel's case, a single physical server takes care of all hosting services (web, electronic mail, DNS, databases, FTP, web hosting Control Panel(s), website files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Twisted Interpretation of Cloud Web Hosting.

So, a cloud web hosting solution is not confined solely to a remote disk storage service, as numerous hosting providers wish it was. Sadly for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting providers would have been referred to as cloud web hosting ones a long time back! They are not referred to as such, since they merely provide file hosting solutions, not cloud hosting solutions. The file hosting platform seems really very simple, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote file storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's only one small component of the entire cloud hosting platform. There's a lot more to be discovered in the cloud web hosting platform: the hosting CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the e-mail cloud and... in the foreseeable future, possibly a couple of new clouds we presently don't know about will spring up unexpectedly.