Cloud hosting may be a relatively new term in the computing world but it is actually just one, and in fact the newest, of the four main types of hosting websites. The other 3 are the dedicated server, shared hosting and virtual private server. People who are knowledgeable in the industry would say that cloud hosting is the one that won’t let you down. And literally, yes, cloud hosting specializes in effectively handling high volume of website traffic thus, allowing a website to get going even when demand soars.
Technically, this particular feature of cloud computing is called “sites scalability”. It refers to the capability of a system to cope and perform under an increased or expanding workload. This means that a system that is scaled will be able to maintain or even increase its level of performance when a higher computing power is needed due to heightened workload.
Think of a website that gains a high level of success and gets visited by millions of users all over the world. Popular websites experience an increasing number of visitors each day and for these websites to keep going and not frustrate the users by slowing down, they should be hosted in a scalable web hosting platform. And cloud computing handles this issue pretty well as it offers a nearly unlimited ability to handle high volume of traffic.
We may be curious and ask how the cloud hosting technology works. Well, using the layman’s language, it operates using a team of multiple connected servers working together (formed like clouds) to host a group of websites as opposed to the traditional hosting service that uses and relies upon a single server. And because the website can have access to multiple servers under the cloud web hosting platform, it now gains virtually unlimited processing power so that when the traffic becomes heavy, the website can scale up almost instantly using the other servers available in the cloud. On the other hand, when the demand lowers the website can also instantly scale down in the cloud according to what is required. And what differentiates cloud hosting from the rest of the systems is the manner the hosting service is paid. While you pay a fixed rate for the other hosting services whether you use them or not, in cloud hosting you are billed according to actual usage just like the utilities such as electric and water billings work.
Cloud computing as described in Wikipedia.org is a service that does not necessitate knowledge among the end users as to the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services just like how people consume electric power without understanding how the electricity grid and its component devices work. We may not know it, but we have been enjoying the benefits of cloud computing as Google searches are operating under a cloud of massive computer infrastructure that we access from our personal computers.
It will suffice to say that we can leave the technical aspects of cloud computing to the hands of the experts in the industry and continue to enjoy the benefits of the technology by being assured that our favorite websites are accessible and working 24/7. Cloud hosting has indeed the capability to never let a website down.
