The “cloud” became a very popular marketing word. However, the word “Cloud” has no technological meaning. The real technological name for cloud hosting should be high availability failover hosting. It means that there should be two independent channels to convey the packets from the web servers and to the internet and if one of those channels fails, the backup channel would take over. An ideal cloud hosting infrastructure should feature 2 web servers, 2 switches, 2 firewalls. However, this infrastructure is expensive and sometimes, web hosting companies don’t invest to get a fully redundant infrastructure with two independent channels. Sometimes they only use two switches, two networks adapters, one web server and a backup storage.
Every network infrastructure from every web hosting companies is different. The web hosting company should publish some details about their infrastructure for the customers to understand the said company’s cloud hosting offer.
A cloud hosting plan with no details could be a regular VPS server that was marketed as a cloud server. The cloud hosting infrastructure is more complicated than a VPS or a dedicated server infrastructure.
Data mirroring & failover
Usually, the data is copied to one or several locations. If a hardware device falters, another device with a copy of your data takes over to deliver your content.
Scaling
Normally, in a cloud hosting, it is possible to increase and reduce resources (CPU, RAM, Storage) in real time depending on your needs.
Cloud hosting means fully managed
The web hosting company is responsible for applying security patches, updates, replacing faulty devices and maintaining the whole infrastructure
The cloud hosting should be called high availability failover hosting and it would be more meaningful.
Ideas for a cloud hosting offer:
I would suggest subscribing to the BlueHost cloud hosting offer since the BlueHost cloud hosting infrastructure features the requirements for high availability as described in this article. Click the link below > hosting > cloud hosting.
Visit the BlueHOST web hosting company
