Cloud Website Hosting Uncovered

What is cloud web hosting really? The word 'cloud' seems to be very fashionable in today's information technology, Internet and hosting phraseology. Nonetheless, only a few actually know what cloud hosting is. Probably it is a good idea to inform yourself about cloud web hosting services. To make a quite lengthy tale succinct, we will first describe to you what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Web Hosting is Not Limited to a Remote Disk Storage Exclusively.

1. Offering a remote file storage service, which comprises one file storage tool for all users, does not convert any given hosting distributor into a genuine cloud web hosting accounts provider.

The cPanel hosting vendors call the ability to furnish remote file storage services a cloud web hosting solution. Until now there is nothing bad about the cloud terminology, but... we are talking about website hosting services, not remote file storage services for private or business purposes. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to call a shared web hosting solution, based on a one-single-server hosting environment, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud web hosting" service. This is so because the remaining parts of the entire hosting platform must be working in precisely the same manner - this does not refer only to the remote data storage. The other services entailed in the whole hosting process also have to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's really difficult. A very small number of web hosting providers can really accomplish it.

2. It Involves Domain Names, Mailbox Accounts, Databases, FTPs, Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud web hosting is not restricted to a remote disk storage exclusively. We are talking about a hosting service, serving plenty of domains, web sites, emails, and so on, right?

To dub a web hosting service a "cloud web hosting" one needs a lot more than providing only remote disk storage mounts (or possibly physical servers). The email server(s) need to be dedicated just to the e-mail related services. Doing nothing different than these particular tasks. There might be only one single or maybe a whole assortment of electronic mail servers, depending on the total load produced. To have a real cloud web hosting service, the remote database servers should be performing as one, irrespective of their real quantity. Executing nothing different. The same is valid for the users' hosting CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, etc.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an actual cloud web hosting solutions provider will support numerous data center locations on multiple continents.

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

dns1.hamiltonhosting.net

dns2.hamiltonhosting.net

If such a Domain Name Server is offered by your hosting plans provider, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud web hosting platform in use, but you can definitely be convinced when you see a Domain Name Server such as the one beneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting service. This type of DNS plainly displays that the hosting environment in use is one-server based. Maybe it's cPanel. cPanel is a single-server web hosting platform and holds a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, one single server handles all hosting services (web, email, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, CP(s), web site files, and so on).

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

So, a cloud web hosting service is not confined exclusively to a remote data storage solution, as plenty of web hosting providers wish it was. Sadly for them, if that was the case, most of the file hosting vendors would have been referred to as cloud hosting ones a long time ago! They are not categorized as such, because they merely provide file hosting services, not cloud web hosting solutions. The file hosting platform looks indeed very plain, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud hosting platform. It cannot be, as it's just one simple segment of the whole cloud web hosting platform. There's a lot more to be discovered in the cloud web hosting platform: the web hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the Domain Name Server cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the e-mail cloud and... in the not too distant future, possibly several new clouds we currently don't know about will appear out of the blue.