Cloud Hosting what is
The differences between Hosting and Cloud Hosting
This differs from typical Shared Hosting, because web hosting gives you a fixed server or a portion of a single server; on the other hand, cloud computing gives you the benefit of many servers all working together as one. Your particular website or application may only need one small portion of a single server, so there's no need to get a dedicated server. Those servers sit on, consuming power and space even if it isn't needed.
The differences:
Scalability:
Traditional Hosting
- Manual provisioning of extra resources
- Any extra hardware must be paid for up front (ie. the cost of a new server)
- Huge traffics spikes must be planned; or should react to the according plans.
Cloud Hosting
- Extra resources provisioned automatically
- Extra hardware allocation is paid for on a utility basis at the end of the billing period (similar to your electricity bill for example)
- Traffic spikes are handled seemlessly and automatically
Cost:
Traditional Hosting
- Payment up-front (usually on an annual or quarterly basis)
- Generally more expensive, especially for large sites that have large amounts of traffic.
Cloud Hosting
- Payment on a utility basis after resource is used. There is usually a flat monthly fee plus a variable fee depending on the used resources.
- Cheaper and you only pay for what you use. No need to buy extra hardware that will only be used for 5% of the year to cover for traffic spikes.
Redundancy:
Traditional Hosting
- Must be manually architected and managed, thus, requires expertise (load balancing provisioning etc)
Cloud Hosting
- Automatic failover in the cloud, redundant SAN storage as standard
Technology:
Traditional Hosting
- Tried and tested, plenty of knowledge.
Cloud Hosting
- Cutting edge, more advanced, BETA versioning, possible failures.
Framework:
Traditional Hosting
- .NET / PHP / RoR are all possible, but separated physical or virtual servers must be used and they must be configured separately to cater for each.
Cloud Hosting
- Upload a mixture of ASP, PHP and RoR and the cloud will automatically provision the correct environment accordingly to the needs.
Security:
Traditional Hosting
- Data location is known and the access can be configured by the webmaster
- Sensitive data can be stored on a separate physical machine.
- Shared hosting operations are at the mercy of other sites on the same server, for example if a spammer on the same server as you takes up all the resources on that server your resources will be even more limited.
Cloud Hosting
- Actual location of data is unknown (lost in the cloud), the webmaster can therefore no longer control access as directly as in the traditional sense.
- Sensitive data may share the same physical machine as other web sites / users, although the data will be virtually separated.
- Virtual partition of files and the associated environment allied with on-the-fly resource allocation ensures that your web applications are completely separate from other users.
Infrastructure:
Traditional Hosting
- Customers control the infrastructure they require.
Cloud Hosting
- Customers are unable to control the infrastructure and have to rely on the cloud for this.
By: Gerardo Dorantes.