What Indeed is Cloud Website Hosting?
What is cloud website hosting in reality? The word 'cloud' seems to be very modish in today's information technology, Internet and web hosting jargon. Nevertheless, just a few in fact can say what cloud hosting is. Probably it is a smart idea to educate yourself about cloud website hosting services. To make a quite long story succinct, we will firstly enlighten you on what cloud hosting is not.
1. Cloud Website Hosting is Not Limited to a Remote Disk Storage Only.
1. Furnishing a remote disk storage solution, which involves one single disk storage device for all users, does not transform any given hosting vendor into a real cloud website hosting distributor.
The cPanel web hosting suppliers name the ability to furnish remote file storage solutions a cloud website hosting service. Until now there is nothing wrong with the cloud labeling, but... we are talking about hosting solutions, not remote disk storage solutions for individual or business needs. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared web hosting solution, based on a single-server hosting platform, just like cPanel, a "cloud website hosting" service. That's because the other fractions of the whole web hosting platform must be working in exactly the same manner - this does not apply only to the remote file storage. The other services entailed in the entire hosting process also need to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's really difficult. Very few web hosting firms can truly do it.
2. It Encompasses Domain Names, Mail Aliases, Databases, FTPs, Hosting Control Panels, etc.
Cloud website hosting is not restricted to a remote file storage solely. We are discussing a web hosting service, serving a lot of domain names, web portals, e-mail boxes, and so on, are we not?
To name a hosting service a "cloud website hosting" one needs a lot more than distributing only remote disk storage mounts (or probably physical servers). The electronic mail server(s) have to be devoted exclusively to the mail associated services. Performing nothing else than these specific assignments. There might be only one single or perchance a whole bundle of electronic mail servers, depending on the total load created. To have an actual cloud website hosting service, the remote database servers should be operating as one, regardless of their real amount. Carrying out nothing else. The same goes for the users' hosting Control Panels, the FTP, etc.
3. There are Cloud Domain Name Servers (DNSs) as well.
The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of an authentic cloud website hosting solutions provider will support numerous server farm facility sites on different continents.
Here's an instance of a Domain Name Server of an actual cloud website hosting firm:
dns1.d3webhost.com
dns2.d3webhost.com
If such a Domain Name Server is offered by your hosting services provider, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting platform in use, but you can absolutely be convinced when you spot a DNS such as the one beneath:
dns658.hostgator.com
dns659.hostgator.com
that there isn't any cloud hosting service. This type of Domain Name Server just demonstrates that the hosting environment in use is one-server based. Perhaps it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-server web hosting solution and has a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, one single physical machine handles all web hosting services (web, email, DNS, databases, FTP, web hosting CP(s), files, and so on).
Remote File Storage - The Distorted Characterization of Cloud Website Hosting.
So, a cloud website hosting service is not confined only to a remote disk storage service, as a lot of web hosting distributors wish it was. Unluckily for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting distributors would have been classified as cloud hosting ones a long time ago! They are not categorized as such, as they merely furnish file hosting solutions, not cloud web hosting services. The file web hosting platform appears really very plain, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote disk storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's just one simple component of the whole cloud web 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 FTP cloud, the e-mail cloud and... in the upcoming future, possibly a few new clouds we currently are not acquainted with will appear out of nowhere.
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