Posted by Jerry in "Cloud Hosting" has 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, a cloud-hosted website is opearting on multiple connected servers. Instead of limited to a single server like what we have in traditional hosting services (dedicated/shared hosting), the website now has the access to multiple servers. Virtually, the processing power is unlimited as you can always add a new server and scale up.
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.
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 (load balancing, hardware upgrades, etc), website expansion can be done with minimum limitations. 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 – all these problem can be avoided easily by switching to cloud hosting.
Cost is another huge plus if you need a lot of processing power. Cloud hosting companies charge their users based on the quantity of computing power consumed. It’s like your electricity and water supply bills – it’s pay-per-use thus gone are the days where you need to reserve massive server powers to avoid website crash from sudden traffic surge.
Major disadvantage with cloud hosting: Security
Questions like these arise when it comes to cloud hosting:
- I am sharing the same physical hardware with other users, is my data safe?
- Where is my data located at? (You no longer control the physical location of your data in cloud hosting)
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 (article dated Aug 31, 2009) is highly recommended: Cloud Security: Time to Smoke Another One? Also, check out this interview with George Reese (Author of “Cloud Application Architectures”) where he discusses cloud security and the challenges it poses for new adopters.
List of Cloud Hosting Services
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Cloud.bg Cloud.bg was officially launched on Jan 20, 2010. The cloud hosting provider is one of the first that supports cPanel/WHM on the cloud. |
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VPS Net VPS.NET launched their cloud hosting product in 2009. Scale your server up to 9GB of RAM. Full root access. cPanel compatible. 100 templates to install. |
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Cloud Computing ReliaCloud is part of a well established cloud computing company that delivers highly reliable, secure cloud hosting services. |
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SiteCloud Supported by Amazon EC2 Elastic Cloud, SiteCloud is one of the few that provides cPanel/WHM cloud hosting in affordable prices ($5.95/mo!). |
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RackSpace One of the pioneers in cloud technology. Also started Mosso.com in year 2005 and now both companies are well-known names in cloud hosting industry. |
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NetDepot A new company based in Atlanta, Georgia; offers both dedicated and cloud hosting services at very competitive prices. |
Cloud Hosting: New Players and Pricing Examples
Updated on April 2010
This post has been published for some times and the topic (cloud computing and hosting) was widely covered in main stream media for the past one year. It’s no surprise to see that the industry is crowded with more competitors these days. Beside the common big names like RakeSpace, Amazon, and GoGrid, we are now seeing FlexiScale, GridLayer, Cloud.bg, and NetDepot… and so on.
In fact cloud computing/hosting has grown from being a business concept to one of the fastest growing segments in the IT industry. From what I learned, many startup tech companies nowadays do not build their datacenters anymore, they simply go ‘cloud’.
In case you are unsure about how cloud hosting users are charged, here’s a quick example. Listed table below is the pricing data of NetDepot (in three different packages).
| Cloud Servers | Cloud Storage | Virtual Private Data Center |
|
Server grade hardware using Intel Nehalem chipset |
Cloud-based solution for data storing, sharing, and management |
Two or more cloud servers put together in a resource pool within vCenter |
| 500 GB Cloud Storage/1Virtual Machine | Instantly scalable and reliable file-level backup service | 100% Uptime Guarantee |
| VMware vSphere Platform | HP StorageWorks | - |
| $200/mo | $0.50 per GB/mo | $400/mo up |
Updated on July 2010: Affordable Cloud Hosting Services
It’s surprising to see how fast cloud-related hosting prices are falling recently. SiteCloud, a new hosting provider, was recently established and you can now get hosted on cloud at just $5.95/mo!
From outside, the SiteCloud’s hosting package looks just the same like any normal shared hosting services – unlimited storage, bandwidth, addon domain, email accounts… etc in a very affordable price. However, things are pretty different at the back: SiteCloud’s service is backed by Amazon’s Elastic Cloud and all users are guaranteed with 1,000 compute cycles. To learn more, visit SiteCloud online – http://www.sitecloud.com or follow them on Twitter.
With cPanel/WHM getting into the picture and lower price tags, I expect to see more individual webmasters/bloggers going with cloud in near future. But will year 2010 finally marked as the year cloud hosting gone main stream? I can’t be 100% sure.
Side Note: How to get listed here?
* Cloud hosting providers: Please contact me at jerry@webhostingsecretrevealed.com if you wish to get listed here.
[...] * Ref: What is cloud hosting? [...]
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
If they cloud is under DDOS attack, does that means all the websites in that cloud will get affected?
[...] were lots of hype in cloud hosting recently, will it be part of Eleven2 service in foreseeable [...]
Hello guys,
http://www.cloud.bg/en is good one
i`m from Bulgaria and I use this service…PERFECT price for unlimited resources.
And i thing cloud computing is the future – save a lot money and increase productivity
Thanks
[...] Understand Cloud Hosting – "Cloud Hosting" has been quite a buzz these days, but do you know what it means? [...]
One additional to add to your list is ReliaCloud (www.reliacloud.com). There similiar to other public cloud offerings but with a few extra features geared at the SMB market.
I just plain cpanel user, moving to cloud hosting (VPS) is bits upgrade for me. Thanks for this post, help me a lot.
is it usually refer to as Software as a service?
Cloud hosting can be IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service and they can also be PaaS – Platform as a Service.
Software as a Service is not directly related to cloud (but can be), since its just a way to present software to end users.
SaaS and Cloud is indeed the future of HSP and Telco’s. Cloud automation and virtualization solution surely need to be escalated to facilitate technology adoption and maximizing ROI.
I have noticed a lot of company’s offering cloud hosting. By cloud hosting they mean that they are taking one server with 16GB of Ram and allowing the client to scale up to 8 server with 2GB Ram each.
If you don’t do your research you may get stuck with a enterprise level server setup like a cloud located at 1 datacentre. Are the listed cloud providers above legitimate cloud providers?
[...] industry is obsessed of the words "Clouds", "Cloud computing" and "Cloud hosting". But very few discuss standards that companies use to provide Cloud hosting [...]
[...] competitive advantage presented by cloud hosting and platform as a service vendors to large scale national and international businesses has been [...]
Do you think with all the innovations in cloud hosting that security issues will begin to go away?
Cloud hosting security is a huge issue that has been a major concern to many people. I know hosting companies are doing everything they can to eliminate this problem.
This is the best article on cloud hosting I’ve ever read. Thanks for putting this together.
Thank you for your needed post. I also follow it