A Quick Explainer: What is Cloud Hosting?
In recent years, cloud hosting has grown in popularity. You've probably discovered this page while exploring your hosting options. And you must have already encountered the term cloud hosting before.
So what is cloud hosting? It's true that this concept has been used across many areas of technology. But how is it used in the hosting arena?
Stay on this page to learn more about cloud hosting. We'll explain in brief how it works and why you should consider using it to host your own website.
What is meant by cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting is more like configuring virtual servers. It's not an actual tangible thing.
In simplest terms, it's a type of web hosting that uses multiple different servers. Think of it as a network infrastructure that uses the software. This software divides a single physical server into multiple virtual servers.
Instead of a single server, a website uses resources from a distributed pool. So if one server fails, another one kicks in. This keeps everything running.
How does it work?
From the illustration above, we can visualize the cloud as a web of different interconnected gadgets. The more gadgets are hooked up to the network, the more resources are added to the overall cloud.
The resources needed for a website to function are distributed across multiple servers. This network of servers is simply the cloud server. These resources are then tapped as needed.
When you use cloud hosting, you get a part of cloud cluster. It's different from the traditional web hosting. In a traditional web hosting, you only get a certain amount of space from a single server.
More of this will be explained in the next section.
What is the difference between web hosting and cloud hosting?
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To understand cloud hosting further, let's compare its architecture to that of regular web hosting.
Regular web hosting:
- Most shared hosts use a centralized approach
- One dedicated server holds multiple websites
- If this server goes down, so does every account in it
Cloud hosting:
- A server in the cloud solves this problem through its distributed approach
- Each website is distributed across multiple locations
- There will be no downtime in case one of the servers in the cloud experiences a problem
In summary, a regular single server hosting contains all the website's files. With a cloud infrastructure, on the other hand, this site's files can be taken from different multiple virtual server environments.
What are the benefits of cloud hosting?
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The following are the top benefits of cloud hosting:
Reliable
Does your website exist only on one machine in data centers somewhere? When that machine goes offline, then your site also goes offline. This is why shared hosting is very reliable.
So picture this: a site is shared between an array of interconnected machines storing all the same information. When one of them goes offline, the slack is picked up by another cloud server. The site remains online.
Think of how much the downtime can impact your site. On Prime Day in 2018, Amazon's own server caused their site to be offline for 13 minutes. This is said to have cost them a hundred million dollars in sales.
Scalable and flexible
As for other styles of hosting, you pay a monthly rate. This is regardless of whether or not you use all of the server resources. You pay for only what you use with cloud hosting.
There will be much more in the way of system resources than you ever need to use. You will have a vast amount of processing power sitting in reserve. That's thanks to the underlying infrastructure of your cloud server set-up.
Additionally, scaling your server resources is much easier. With cloud servers, you can have access to an intuitive site management dashboard. This lets you view your site's performance in real-time.
Versatile
Another benefit of cloud hosting is its versatility. Cloud hosting can be individualized to your specific needs.
Does your site use a relatively small front end? Does it access a massive database? Do you need to host large files for download from an otherwise small site?
Whatever your specific needs are, they can be accommodated perfectly on the cloud.
Redundant server environment
Does your site live on a single server? If something happens to this server, your site will remain offline until this server is fixed.
When you use cloud, you can benefit from a redundant server environment. If your site goes offline, a site backup will then take over your existing site within seconds.
High uptime and availability
Are you using any kind of traditional hosting for your site? If so, then that means your site's uptime depends upon the physical server environment. Your site goes offline when it goes offline.
Cloud hosting offers high uptime. Your site will be using the resources of multiple servers. In case any of them goes offline pr experiences technical issues, you can be transferred to another working server.
Quick server setup process
It's so quick and easy to deploy a cloud hosting server. As for traditional web servers, it may take some time. This can be inconvenient as you'll be stuck waiting for the server to be ready.
With cloud hosting, the setup process can be done in record time.
Safe from hardware issues
With physical servers, hacking, hardware failure, or system overload can be a common occurrence. You're safe from any hardware issues with cloud hosting. This is because your site is isolated.
Cloud servers feature extensive security measures. You can rest assured that your data is safe.
Faster website performance
Enjoy blazing fast speeds with cloud servers. You can increase your site's capacity and put much less strain on a single server's resources. In addition to that, cloud hosting enables easier load balancing between multiple server environments.
We hope that this article gave you a better understanding of what is cloud hosting. Now that you know the technology behind it, why not use it for your own website? Feel free to contact us if you have any more questions.
