One of the newest technologies utilized in the web hosting industry, cloud hosting can be very beneficial for its users. You might be aware that Google has been using this type of computer infrastructure for quite some time. But what exactly is it and how does it work?

A website hosted on cloud hosting uses a group of clustered servers to enhance its features. The “cloud” is the connected servers that allow a website to process with the power of many servers and utilize the all resources of the server group in real time. The website is enabled to handle security, load balance and hardware in a virtual manner. In cloud hosting, the group of servers shares processing speed, power, memory and hard drives, and all servers can be easily interchanged. For example, if one of the servers crashes, it can quickly be removed and a new one can be added without any gaps in service.

Cloud hosting can also be quite cost efficient. In the past, when a customer had dedicated or shared hosting, part of the fee included paying for extra server space and power. In cloud hosting, the customer only pays for the power and space he or she uses. These hosting companies charge like electricity and water companies – pay for what you use. What you’re billed for is really the compute cycles, which measure processing time. This type of billing is much different than traditional web hosting methods.

In addition to helping a customer save money on monthly billing, cloud hosting permits a customer to quickly add or subtract the amount of necessary resources without needing to go to a new server. This is very beneficial for customers with new or growing businesses, as it allows the web hosting to be flexible and expandable. Also, because cloud hosting utilizes many different servers and can be more powerful, customers often have better uptime and avoid the losses of a crashed site.

Cloud hosting also allows the website to have a wide variety of technologies together, which can’t be done with traditional hosting methods. In regular hosting, a customer can’t have .PHP and .ASP files together, but because there are several servers working together, each server can support the different codes. This type of hosting also saves the customer time and money with software and hardware downloads, because instead of having to add them to one server, they can be downloaded from other servers in the cluster that already have them.

Cloud hosting is still only beginning to be used, so find out the latest news about it before you choose to switch.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 3:33 am and is filed under Hosting Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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