has been the buzzword of tons of discussions among techies these days. For some people this may be a new term to know but for other people who are little more technology curious, this is a term which is doing the rounds of latest web technologies on the internet.

To understand the principle of , one can just think of a puzzle where there is a group of persons and each of them knows a unique part of a story. Once they sit together, they can tell the complete story to someone or every one, but if anyone is absent, the story cannot be completed. Something similar to it is the internet technology what is known as “”.

Cloud hostng means to host the information and data over muliple interconnected machines (computers), and using this in a collaborative manner whenever required. This means, that there are multiple computers available, interconnected to each other for either way communication, data is partially stored on each of them, and whenever required, they contribute to the data pool with the partial data with them to give the data pool a complete shape. This is another innovative manner of information storing, sharing, and reconstructing.

Traditional Hosting Techniques

Before anyone can understand and appreciate the modern hosting technique of , one needs to be aware of the traditional manners of hosting so that a true appreciation to this modern innovation can be offered. Data hosting is not as new concept as the and in fact it has a fairly long history too. There have been traditional hosting mechanisms like home server hosting, shared server hosting, virtual private hosting, and dedicated server hosting etc. Let us have a brief look on them.

Home server
Home server is usually a single computing machine placed in a private residence which can be used to host one or more web sites from a usually consumer grade broadband connection. Home server can be machines built for specific application purposes or more commonly old PCs. Some ISPs actively attempt to block home servers by disallowing incoming requests to TCP port 80 of the user’s connection and by refusing to provide static IP addresses. A common way to attain a reliable DNS hostname is by creating an account with a dynamic DNS service. A dynamic DNS service will automatically change the IP address that a URL points to when the IP address changes.

Shared Hosing Service
In the shared hosting service the web or data or the application is hosted with many other applications on a commonly shared server. Typically, all the applications or web sites may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU.

Virtual Private Server or the Virtually Dedicated Server
Virtual private server is another innovative manner of web hosting in which virtualization technology is employed in order to allow multiple logical servers to run on a single physical server. This is also known as Dedicated virtualisation, or Private Cloud.

Dedicated virtualisation, or Private Cloud is built on dedicated servers running hypervisor software e.g. VMware, Xen or Hyper-V. The hypervisor software provides a very light weight Operating System specifically to enable virtualisation, allowing the service provider to create multiple virtual servers on one physical server. This means that a single physical server virtually acts like if multiple servers are installed for use. Each existing virtual server behaves in entirely independent way from the others. It also works in the same way as a standard stand alone physical server. This allows much higher utilisation of the available CPU resources. Private Cloud combines resource and budget optimisation with rapid scaling up or down, together with the higher security, and improved reliability of a Managed Hosting Solution.

Dedicated hosting service
Dedicated Hosting Service is also called managed hosting service. In this type of hosting service, the service provider owns and manages the machine and lease out the full control to the client. Management of the server includes continous monitoring of server and ensuring unintrrupted, effective, and efficient working of the server. This can further include the backup services, installation of security patches and various levels of technical support. Managed Hosting offers its clients the peace of mind of hosting on dedicated infrastructure where the client owns the entire control over the server in high security data centres. The client enjoys technical support 24 X 7 X 365 by a dedicated team of expert technicians and also account managers in many cases. The main benefits of Managed Hosting include converting capex to opex where the client takes the infrastructure on lease and need not to purchase and set up the entire hardware and software. On the same side, the service provider provides the client with a dedicated team of support technicians at its service 24 hours a day and the client need not to hire its team for these tasks. The service provider also offers the security of data, with multiple redundant connections to the Internet to ensure continuous service of the applicaions hosted on its servers.

Colocation web hosting service
Colocation web hosting service is quie similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server. In this service, the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little or even zero support directly for the machines of their clients. They may decide to provide only the electrical power, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo servers, the client would have his own administrator, who would visit the data center on site and do any needful hardware upgrades or changes. Co-location facilities hence provide just the Internet connection, uninterrupted power supply and climate control, but let the client do his own system administration.

Thereafter came another innovation, “The ” in which the user can increase its infrastructure without actual ownership to it. is a new type of hosting platform that allows customers powerful, scalable and reliable hosting based on clustered load-balanced servers and utility billing. Removing single-point of failures and allowing customers to pay for only what they use versus what they could use.

in detail

The Cloud
The term