Cloud Website Hosting Clarified

What is cloud website hosting indeed? The term 'cloud' appears to be quite modish in today's information technology, Internet and web hosting terminology. Nevertheless, only a few in fact are familiar with what cloud hosting is. Perhaps it is a smart idea to inform yourself about cloud website hosting services. To make a very lengthy tale short, we will first enlighten you on what cloud hosting is not.

1. Cloud Website Hosting is Not Confined to a Remote Data Storage Only.

1. Providing a remote data storage solution, which involves one single disk storage appliance for all clients, does not turn any given web hosting company into a real cloud website hosting firm.

The cPanel hosting companies call the ability to supply remote disk storage services a cloud website hosting service. Until now there is nothing wrong with the cloud classification, but... we are discussing hosting services, not remote data storage solutions for personal or business needs. There's always one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared hosting service, driven by a single-server web hosting environment, precisely like cPanel, a "cloud website hosting" service. That's because the remaining components of the whole hosting platform must be operating in precisely the same way - this does not relate only to the remote disk storage. The remaining services involved in the whole hosting procedure also need to be remote, isolated and "clouded". And that's quite difficult. A very meager number of hosting providers can really do it.

2. It Encompasses Domains, Mail Addresses, Databases, FTPs, Hosting CPs, etc.

Cloud website hosting is not limited to a remote disk storage only. We are talking about a hosting solution, serving plenty of domains, web portals, e-mailbox accounts, etc., right?

To dub a web hosting service a "cloud website hosting" one calls for a lot more than distributing just remote file storage mounts (or probably physical servers). The email server(s) have to be devoted only to the e-mail linked services. Executing nothing else than these particular tasks. There might be just one single or maybe a whole stack of mail servers, depending on the total load generated. To have an actual cloud website hosting service, the remote database servers should be functioning as one, irrespective of their real number. Performing nothing else. The same goes for the users' CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.

3. There are Cloud Domain Name Servers (DNSs) as well.

The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a genuine cloud website hosting services provider will support numerous server farm locations on different continents.

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

dns1.enetehosting.com

dns2.enetehosting.com

If such a Domain Name Server is offered by your hosting distributor, it's not a guarantee that there is a cloud web hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be certain when you notice a Domain Name Server such as the one beneath:

dns658.hostgator.com

dns659.hostgator.com

that there isn't any cloud hosting service. This kind of Domain Name Server simply shows that the hosting platform in use is one-single-server based. Possibly it's cPanel. cPanel is a single-server web hosting solution and maintains a market share of more than 98 percent. In cPanel's case, one physical server is responsible for all hosting services (web, mail, DNS, databases, FTP, hosting CP(s), files, etc.).

Remote File Storage - The Warped Description of Cloud Website Hosting.

So, a cloud website hosting service is not restricted solely to a remote disk storage service, as lots of hosting companies wish it was. Sadly for them, if that was the case, most of the file web hosting companies would have been classified as cloud web hosting ones a long time back! They are not categorized as such, as they merely offer file hosting services, not cloud web hosting services. The file web hosting platform seems really very plain, in comparison with the web hosting platform. The remote data storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, because it's just one tiny fraction of the entire cloud hosting platform. There's plenty 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 FTP cloud, the mail cloud and... in the upcoming future, probably several brand new clouds we presently don't know about will surface out of nowhere.