Posted by Jerry in Cloud hosting had been creating quite a buzz around these days. You might be hearing the phrase for the first time but the technology is not something new at this time of writing. In fact, you’re already part of the cloud hosting/computing users (without being noticed) as Google naturally is a big promoter of this idea.
Google searches (as well as other Google operations) are operating under a massive computer infrastructure (cloud!) that people tap into from their local computers.
What is cloud hosting?
Generally, website hosted on a cloud hosting operates on a clustered servers where online operations are not limited to a single server. By handling security, load balance and hardware resources virtually, the website has access to the processing power of a number of servers that are distributed in real time.
Benefits of cloud hosting
Cloud hosting benefits the users from various angles. It’s scalability and cost efficient is the commonly known advantages.
As the technology is highly scalable, website expansion can be done without the limitation in server resources. Think about the hassle of migrating your website from a shared server to a dedicated server; think about server crash when your website experienced a sudden surge – with the scalability of cloud hosting, all these problem can be avoided easily.
Cloud hosting companies charge their users based on the quantity of computing power used. It’s like your electricity and water supply bills – it’s pay-per-use. Gone are the days where you need to reserve high server powers in order to avoid website crash, server resources are now used on demand.
Cloud Hosting in plain English
Here’s a video released to help people fully understand what Cloud Computing is all about and I think it’s a good piece of learning material.
Who’s offering Cloud Hosting services?
Mosso and GoGrid are two of the most well-known providers. I have yet to study any one of them Cloud Hosting providers thus I believe Web Hosting Unleashed’s list of upcoming Cloud Hosting providers would be useful for my readers who are looking for shopping advice.
Update Sept 2009
The security issue is always one of the major questions and arguments raised when it comes to cloud hosting. For those with similar concerns, further reading on this article is highly recommended: Cloud Security: Time to Smoke Another One?
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I have a question – one of the big things about conventional hosting is connectivity. In many cases there is a single point of failure as there is only one access point to the host server.
Connectivity is probably as big a reason for websites not being available as problems on the servers themselves.
What effect does cloud hosting have on this risk?
@Nick:
From my understanding, yes, the connectivity risk does remained unsolved with Cloud hosting. Cloud hosting will still suffer certain level of down time due to network latencies or connectivity problems.
The benefit of having cloud hosting is the power to back your website with a highly scalable computer power (which in turn minimize the probability of crashing your server). The problem with network connectivity is not solved in this situation.
As I’m relative new to the technology, I tried search around to verify my understanding but couldn’t get any good explanation. I would appreciate the experienced folks lay their thoughts on the issue.
Hi, interesting article, i am looking for a cloud hosting solution for my site
http://www.Unstoppablehost.com is also a good provider for Cloud Hosting and Services based on Clouds. I think they are the best when is comes to support and scalability.
I just got the cloud hosting from unstoppablehost.com at it was quick start . I like them . thank you for you suggestions inderjeet singh. and jerry for the blog.
Then there are companies providing services on top of cloud hardware, esp. Amazon: RightScale, Engine Yard Solo/Flex and also including Heroku.
well cloud computing is not cheap nor its is easy i stick will old school way
I reall enjoyed the video. It was educational and light hearted and simple to understand. A lot of work went into it. Thanks!
You might want to add also Rackspace Cloud on the providers list
Nice article by the way