subject: Primary features of cloud web hosting services [print this page] Primary features of cloud web hosting services
Though Cloud hosting and services are new as compared to the other services, yet, the cloud buzz is all over the internet world today. Until today, there are 3 basic but primary features that distinguish them from the other web hosting services. They are :
Modal resources on demand
Elasticity or Scalability
Independent infrastructure control
To help understand the crucial difference between the traditional web hosting services and the cloud offered by hosts, conventionally, the host would ask you to pay a certain price for the computing resources i.e. the storage, RAM, CPU etc. on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annully or annual billing cycle. The client would still have to make the payment even if he does not use the allocated resources no matter if they've used it or not.
This was the case until the cloud was introduced. The basic intention behind the concept of Cloud was to charge customers on a "Pay per Use" basis. The counter is checked on the number of Mb's used. This is the most important advantage of cloud as they need to pay for only those resources that they've used.
Apart from that, cloud infrastructure offers the user with the capability of adjusting the usage limits according to their choice and predictions. Hence, elasticity with cloud is another aspect thats attracting webmasters to try their hands on this service. The configuration tasks, troubleshooting, expanding the infrastructure and other aspects are taken care by the cloud hosting providers, hence users are not required to invest in the costly hardware.
The cloud can further be classified into two categories : Public Cloud and Private Cloud. The basic difference between them is the location. If a cluster of servers is set-up in the web hosts facility and that the hardware and resources are provided by the host, it is termed as a Public Cloud infrastructure. Whereas, if the cloud servers are set-up in the clients site, the hardware resources, maintenance, cloud management etc is taken care by the client, then this is termed as the Private Cloud Infrastructure.
