What is cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting is when you run your application or website on virtual servers in the cloud. Traditionally, organizations hosted applications on physical servers purchased in on-premises data centers or hired from hosting providers. In cloud hosting, you pay a cloud provider to host your application across a network of physical and virtual servers spanning diverse geographic locations. This method is much more flexible than traditional ones. You access computing resources from an existing resource pool and can scale your applications up or down very quickly. And you don’t have to worry about provisioning the right amount of resources.
What are the benefits of cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting is a flexible method that your organization can use to access resources without a huge upfront cost. This method comes with many benefits for companies that work with a cloud partner.
Scalability
The flexibility of cloud hosting ensures that you always match your resources to demand. Your cloud hosting provider can allocate you more or fewer resources as you need them. You don’t have to buy new servers and install and maintain them upfront, and instead you only pay for more resources when you scale. Similarly, you don’t pay for cloud services that you don’t use when your system is idle.
Availability
Many cloud hosting providers have data centers all over the globe, which reduces latency and increases availability. They have additional failover mechanisms to protect their services. Cloud hosting companies also invest in technology like load balancers and content delivery networks to ensure customers can access highly available services and applications. These companies make sure that your applications are highly available and accessible by users in all geographical regions worldwide.
Cost efficiency
The biggest cost to local hosting is investing in new hardware and its required infrastructure. Even after this upfront cost, you still have to pay for ongoing maintenance, which can be costly. Cloud hosting offers pay-as-you-go systems and eliminates the need for maintenance costs.
Security
Cloud providers heavily invest in robust security systems and offer high-level security for all of their customers. The provider updates and patches their systems, so they’re always up-to-date with the most recent security frameworks. Their attention to security also allows them to offer a range of disaster recovery options. Top cloud hosting service providers include additional data backup and recovery mechanisms you can use as an add-on capability.
Time to market
Organizations that begin to construct their IT infrastructure must wait to set up physical hardware, test it, then deploy their new environments. Using cloud environments, you can integrate new technologies and shorten development cycles. When you use cloud hosting, you can significantly speed up your time to market.
How does cloud hosting work?
Cloud hosting works because of a technology called virtualization that runs multiple virtual servers on a single physical server. Each virtual machine (VM) has a fixed pool of resources—like memory, storage, and CPU—to draw from. They can each run independently to other virtual machines on the same physical server.
As each virtual machine is isolated, you can deploy different applications and servers on them without worrying about interference or compatibility. If one VM experiences a spike in traffic, it can pull more resources from the pool to stabilize performance.
Cloud hosting providers lease out the virtual servers to customers to access as required. Depending on their demand, the cloud host allocates multiple virtual machines and resources to them. With this highly flexible system, organizations can quickly deploy new VMs, allocate more computing power to an existing one, or adapt IT infrastructure as required.
Cloud hosting uses virtualization to create a highly effective and scalable yet isolated system. Cloud hosting customers enlist the remote servers to access resources, store and manage data, and use services and applications from the cloud hosting provider.
What are the types of cloud hosting?
There are four main types of cloud hosting, each of which allocates resources differently and requires varying amounts of input from your organization.
Public cloud
Public cloud infrastructure is when a third-party provider manages all underlying hardware, computing resources, maintenance, and availability. You don’t need to buy or own any of your own servers and can scale as demand requires.
Private cloud
A private cloud is a cloud computing environment that you build and maintain yourself, which your organization then makes use of. All underlying computing resources—like storage, CPU, and memory—are your responsibility. Some companies call a private cloud an internal cloud or corporate cloud.
Hybrid cloud
A hybrid cloud is IT infrastructure that blends both public and private cloud approaches. You can run applications across multiple environments or store data in distinct locations without any decrease in performance. Your hybrid cloud environment consolidates all of your available infrastructure and aligns it with third-party resources.
Managed cloud
A managed cloud is where you work with a third-party public cloud but allow them to manage all operational practices. For example, the third-party provider will manage monitoring, incident detection, security, backups, patching, cost optimization, and incident reaction. When you partner with a managed cloud, you can access their specialized automation, experience, and skills. This approach reduces risk while letting you focus on your core business functionality.
What is the difference between web hosting and cloud hosting?
Web hosting is a general term that refers to a third party that provides resources and server space to another business. You could rent this space to host a website, store data, or run an application. Cloud hosting is a specific type of web hosting that uses cloud technology, virtualization, and remote servers to provide servers to businesses.
While cloud hosting services are a form of web hosting, web hosting doesn’t necessarily involve cloud hosting. Web hosting could use virtual private servers (VPS), dedicated hosting, and shared hosting instead of cloud technologies.
VPS hosting vs. cloud hosting
VPS hosting is where one physical server is virtualized to then host many clients. Each different virtualized environment has access to resources that a client can use. Depending on the provider, VPS hosting may not scale on demand.
On the other hand, cloud hosting uses a range of different cloud servers at once. As they pool their resources together, you can go over your allocated amount and draw more from the pool. Another cloud server will provide the additional resources you need. Cloud hosting solutions are much more flexible than VPS. However, VPS cloud hosting is an option as well. In that, you get a VPS server in the cloud.
Read about virtual private servers »
Dedicated hosting vs. cloud hosting
A dedicated server is a singular physical device in a data center. You buy a dedicated server and become the only one that has access to that server. These servers do not use virtualization and rely on real hardware. You access high security and high performance because you don’t share resources with other users. However, they come with a high cost compared to cloud hosting.
Cloud servers offer a pay-as-you-go billing method that doesn’t require any initial hardware setup processes. You can create an optimal configuration without actually owning the base server you are working with.
Shared hosting vs. cloud hosting
Shared hosting is where many businesses or websites share one server and all its resources. As you share these resources, it will be slower than dedicated or cloud hosting. However, you pay less for shared hosting, which is much more affordable than other types of hosting.
Cloud hosting uses virtualization to give partners their own space. Because you don’t need to share resources with others, it’s a more powerful form of hosting.
How can AWS support your cloud hosting requirements?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers cloud hosting solutions for organizations of all sizes. With AWS, start-ups, small and midsize businesses (SMBs), enterprises, nonprofits, and government organizations can deliver their websites and web applications in low-cost ways. AWS provides a wide range of modern cloud server hosting options for marketing, blogs, landing pages, rich media, websites, ecommerce, and all types of web applications.
Here are some AWS services you can use for cloud hosting today:
- Amazon Lightsail is a streamlined way to launch and manage a web server using AWS. Lightsail includes everything you need to start your website at a low, predictable price.
- AWS Amplify Hosting is a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) and hosting service for static websites and server-side-rendered web applications. It’s scalable and fully managed.
- Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) provides storage options that you can use to upload files.
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. You can use it to host enterprise and other application-heavy websites.
Get started with AWS cloud hosting by creating an account today.
