Cloud based technologies are booming in the overall IT industry since the past few years. Not much is different in the hosting industry either. Ever since hosting companies started utilizing Cloud technology for more reliable and scalable hosting known as Cloud Hosting, it has gradually become one of the most preferred hosting types for all kinds of websites. But if you still haven’t been able to wrap your head around what Cloud Hosting is, then this guide is perfect for you! Let’s get started!
What is Cloud Hosting?
In Cloud Hosting, hundreds of individual servers work together which makes the whole system look like a single highly powerful server. You are not dependent on only one server and even if any server fails, the others will back-up its data and processes to avoid any kind of website downtime. Cloud Hosting offers nearly unlimited ability to handle high traffic or unexpected traffic spikes. You may get a better understanding from the diagram below:
How Cloud Hosting Works?
Cloud Hosting works on the principle of division of computing power. The distribution of power and storage capacity is often controlled by a backend software OS/system. With the help of virtualization, the cumulative capacity of the server resources is put together and virtually assigned to various tasks and the Cloud Hosting Administrator can then manage the load as per the requirements. One major benefit that this leads to is higher reliability and website uptime as there is no single point of failure.
Advantages of Cloud Hosting:
- High Reliability: The fact that there is no single point of failure makes Cloud Hosting highly reliable. Anytime there is a server failure, other servers in the Cloud will make up for the lost resource and ensure all applications are fully functional.
- High Scalability: Cloud Hosting is based on a resource pool. You can very easily add or remove resources from this pool. If in case your website or application receives a traffic spike, and you are in a dire need of additional hosting resources, this can be done instantaneously at a click of a button.
- Lower Cost: Cloud Hosting distributes all the resources needed to run your website or application over a series of servers. The overall cost of all network infrastructure is divided and thus making it less expensive compared to hosting types like VPS Hosting and Dedicated Hosting.
What kind of sites should go for Cloud Hosting?
Cloud Hosting is perfect for websites that have high traffic and can experience traffic spikes at any point of time. Such websites may need to scale up hosting resources at any point, making Cloud Hosting perfect. Even news and information based sites such as Wikipedia or New York Times etc. are good candidates for Cloud hosting.
Well there you have it. This should break down Cloud Hosting in a simple manner for you and put you in a position to understand if it is worthwhile for your website. If you have any follow up questions or thoughts, please post them in the comments section below!