What is cloud hosting?

Picture this: many individual servers are interconnected and can easily exchange computing power. Can you see it? That’s what the term “cloud” stands for. Unlike traditional hosting, that is based on a single server, the processing power of the cloud is essentially unlimited. When you’re using cloud hosting, your website, documents and applications can utilize the power of a cluster of servers. That gives you as a user numerous advantages.

What are the advantages of cloud hosting?

First is that you can easily scale (increase/decrease resources without moving site to another server) whenever you need it, new servers can also be deployed instantly.

Second is that you pay only for what you actually consume – usually, for the computing resources (CPU, RAM, disk space) you use. Hardware and data center maintenance are the responsibility of hosting company, not yours.

Third is that it balances loads between servers, making the solution more reliable as it no longer depends on a single server.

Fourth is that traffic spikes are no longer a problem, the computing capacity of the cloud is practically unlimited.

Just like traditional hosting, cloud hosting requires hardware, software and infrastructure. However, the costs and efforts for their deployment are borne by hosting provider. You only choose the cloud with the hardware and software that you need.

How does it work?

As we said at the beginning, many servers are joined to create a “cloud”. The computing power and load is shared between servers within the cloud, making the whole system more productive and flexible.

Resource allocation (processor, memory and disk storage) for each hosting account is controlled by “hypervisor” – special software that is installed on each physical server to allow it to host multiple operating systems. The most common hypervisors are VMware, Xen and Hyper-V.

To help the user manage his hosting account, providers usually install a control panel – special shell where you can monitor statisticss, billing account information, add domains and distribute computing capacities between your sites and applications. Depending on the type of control panel, it can either control some features of virtual machines (VMs) or just display general information and account statistics.

Types of cloud hosting

There are two general types of cloud hosting: public and private.

With a public cloud you share resources with other users among multiple virtual servers. This solution is quite similar to traditional shared web hosting.

With a private cloud you get the opportunity to manage your own cluster of servers, which is more flexible. This solution is close to traditional dedicated servers or co-location solutions. The difference is that you don’t need to pay for hardware, operating system and infrastructure, which helps to achieve significant cost reduction.

How to define whether cloud hosting is good for my business?

Even though we are in the business of providing cloud hosting consulting, it does not mean that we recommend all our clients to switch to the Cloud. If you have one simple website (for example, a blog) and have no plans to expand it, then there’s no need for you to change anything – traditional shared hosting would be absolutely sufficient for you.

Considering a cloud hosting solution makes sense for companies with complex requirements, who need flexibility in acquiring more computing resources. In any case, moving to the Cloud might become a costly procedure, so you need thorough evaluation of requirements and future plans before making the final decision.

What are the disadvantages of cloud hosting?

You may have heard about the security concerns related with the cloud. They mostly refer not to the technology itself, but rather to the people factor and reputation of the hosting provider. If you have plans to store secure data in the cloud, the question of trust to hosting provider becomes crucial.

Let’s take e-commerce websites as an example. To have the ability to safely process credit card transactions, hosting provider should ensure compliance with PA-DSS, pass security clearance tests and have proper data encryption. Not all businesses know about such specific requirements, and because of that their choice may drive to conclusion that “cloud is insecure”.

Another issue is that you should develop your own backup and recovery policy to make sure your mission critical applications and data can easily be restored in case of a disaster. The Amazon outages in 2011 prove that it makes sense. Even the leader in cloud hosting cannot guarantee that a default automatic backup is good enough for all sites and applications

Who uses cloud hosting

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft were among the first to apply cloud hosting. Their example shows that the new technology can be both safe and cost-effective. The only caveat is that the cloud should be managed properly.