Web Hosting Reviews & Ratings

September 07, 2010

How Does Cloud Hosting Work?

Cloud hosting has quickly become one of the more popular types of web hosting in the last couple of  years, as more companies are realizing the benefits of having an infinitely expandable server environment. However, many people still do not know exactly how cloud hosting works and how it can be beneficial to their online business. If you have been looking for answers to these questions then you may want to consider the following information.

What is a Cloud Hosting Plan?

A cloud hosting plan is a type of web hosting that utilize a network of servers, used in conjunction with each other to form a massive pool of server resources that can be allocated freely to various partitions throughout the network. By having access to more than one web server at any given point in time you are not limited to the confines of a conventional hosting plan. For this reason many business are using  a single cloud hosting plan to host their entire network of sites simultaneously. The seemingly infinite expandability of cloud hosting allows for a new type of billing structure that is not seen in any other hosting type.

The Cloud Computing Concept

Cloud hosting operates on the concept of cloud computing, which basically combines the capabilities of multiple computers or server to create a massive centralized computing system. Using this concept, which was originally developed for corporate networking, hosting providers have been able to offer a revolutionary new hosting service known as cloud hosting. Cloud computing has changed the face of the virtual hosting industry by providing unlimited capabilities on hosting providers, resellers and plan holders.

VPS hosting plans have been the primary beneficiary of the cloud hosting plan, primarily because the concept itself is a spin off of conventional virtual hosting. The only difference between conventional VPS hosting and the new cloud computing concept is the usage of several web servers rather than just one. In conventional VPS hosting a single web server is used to host hundreds of web sites, making it similar to shared hosting, except with a more flexible allocation of sever resources.

Convenient Costs

Unlike other hosting plans, cloud hosting is not billed strictly on a monthly basis, as the customer only has to pay for the resources they've used during the billing period. Each plan comes with a set amount of resources that are allocated to the plan holder. When these resource limits are exceeded then a unique billing cycle begins in which every GB of data and bandwidth used is charged at a set rate.

Using this billing concept hosting companies have been able to offer a hosting solution that can be expanded instantly, without the need for a plan upgrade. This allows webmasters to focus more on developing their sites and pushing as much traffic as possible to them, rather than worrying about whether or not their hosting plan will be able to handle the surge in traffic and site data.

Tags: vps,  cloud computing,  server resources,  network of servers,  cloud hosting plan,  cloud,  popular web hosting,  cloud hosting