Cloud hosting (or clustered hosting) is simply a case of cloud computing used in web hosting. Basically, it’s a pool of instantly available computing/hosting resources such as RAM memory, CPU and bandwidth pieced together, serving as a whole.
Traditionally, a computer is a computer (or server in web hosting), physically manufactured, deployed and consumed. They may be networked, but inherently their computing capabilities are separated. Each individual computing device is given separate commands that are in no way related at any given time. In essence, they each works alone.
The problem with this scenario is, that if an application evolves and the computation requirements outgrows the capabilities of a single physical computer, you need a better / larger computer or a group of computers. However, a larger computer isn’t always handily available and a load balancer of some sort has to be in place to coordinate the combined power of a group of computers.
Load balancer is good but you still get scalability problems with it because each computing device is treated as a single server logically. To really work around the scalability problem, all servers / computers must be connected together not only physically but also logically, that is, to the outside world and computing consumers, they are one large computing pool with huge amount of computing resources.
In the same sense, cloud hosting is a big pool of hosting servers offering hosting service as a whole. Your cloud hosting provider may have thousands of physical servers laid together as one and your websites will have access to all of them at any given time. This way, traffic spikes will no longer be a problem because the huge redundant hosting capacity guarantees that you get whatever you need within a relatively short period of time. Not a single one of servers is crashed because they confront the requests as one.
You can also easily upgrade or downgrade your hosting plan by the click of a button. The administration program of cloud hosting will automatically allocate necessary resources to you or raise the hosting cap for your websites, in a blink. Therefore you will never have to worry about the growing pains of your websites. They can grow as much as they need when they need it and the cloud hosting system will automatically adjust the hosting capacity for them accordingly.
Cloud Hosting in the Real World
Currently if you want to try out a cloud hosting and get some first hand experience of the instant scalability, I’d recommend RackSpace Cloud which is undoubtedly the leader of the emerging cloud hosting industry. Search Google for ‘rackspace cloud coupon’ or rackspace cloud promo code and you will get some nice discounts. Otherwise you could simply just the coupon code: REF-YY to get $ 25 off the first month hosting bills.
Yang Yang is a senior web professional who built the rackspace cloud review for potential cloud hosting customers to review the cloud hosting service.
