What Indeed is Cloud Web Hosting?

What is cloud web hosting in reality? The word 'cloud' seems to be quite modern in today's IT, World Wide Web and hosting terminology. Yet, only a few actually can tell what cloud hosting is. Maybe it is a clever idea to educate yourself about cloud web hosting services. To render a very long tale concise, we will firstly let you know what cloud hosting is not.

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

1. Providing a remote file storage service, which involves one disk storage device for all users, does not turn any specific service provider into a real cloud web hosting vendor.

The cPanel web hosting providers name the ability to supply remote disk storage services a cloud web hosting service. Up to now there is nothing bad about the cloud classification, but... we are discussing web hosting services, not remote file storage solutions for individual or corporate purposes. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not enough to name a shared web hosting service, based on a single-server hosting platform, exactly like cPanel, a "cloud web hosting" service. That's because the other pieces of the whole web hosting platform must be working in exactly the same way - this does not refer solely to the remote file storage. The other services involved in the whole hosting procedure also must be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's quite difficult. Very few hosting distributors can really achieve it.

2. It Encompasses Domains, Electronic Mail Accounts, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Web Hosting Control Panels, etc.

Cloud web hosting is not limited to a remote disk storage only. We are talking about a web hosting solution, serving lots of domain names, websites, e-mailboxes, and so on, are we not?

To call a hosting service a "cloud web hosting" one needs a lot more than distributing solely remote disk storage mounts (or perhaps servers). The mail server(s) need to be devoted just to the e-mail related services. Executing nothing else than these given tasks. There might be just one or possibly a whole pack of e-mail servers, depending on the total server load created. To have an actual cloud web hosting solution, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, irrespective of their actual amount. Carrying out nothing else. The same goes for the customers' Control Panels, the FTP, and so on.

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

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a real cloud web hosting supplier will support multiple datacenter locations on different continents.

Here's an instance of a DNS of an authentic cloud web hosting solutions provider:

dns1.www.hostddl.com

dns2.www.hostddl.com

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

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This sort of Domain Name Server just shows that the web hosting environment in use is one-single-server based. Possibly it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server hosting solution and maintains a market share of more than ninety eight percent. In cPanel's case, a single physical server takes care of all hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, FTP, hosting CP(s), web files, and so on).

Remote File Storage - The Distorted Characterization of Cloud Web Hosting.

So, a cloud web hosting service is not limited solely to a remote file storage solution, as plenty of hosting service providers wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, most of the file hosting service providers would have been classified as cloud web hosting ones a long time back! They are not categorized as such, since they plainly deliver file web hosting services, not cloud web hosting services. The file web hosting platform appears indeed very plain, when compared to the hosting platform. The remote data storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, as it's merely one small part of the entire cloud web hosting platform. There's a lot more to be discovered in the cloud hosting platform: the CP cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the FTP cloud, the email cloud and... in the near future, perchance a number of brand new clouds we presently don't know about will surface out of nowhere.