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The differences between Hosting and Cloud Hosting

Submitted by CloudHosting on Thu, 05/02/2009 - 17:15.

Comparison between hosting in the cloud and traditional web hostingThis article, aimed at those who may not completely understand the cloud hosting concept, highlights the difference between traditional hosting (on a shared server for example) and cloud hosting.

The differences:

Traditional Hosting Cloud Hosting
Scalability
- Manual provisioning of extra resources - Extra resources provisioned automatically
- Any extra hardware must be paid for up front (ie. the cost of a new server) - Extra hardware allocation is paid for on a utility basis at the end of the billing period (similar to your electricity bill for example)
- Huge traffics spikes must be planned for or reacted to accordingly - Traffic spikes are handled seemlessly and automatically
Cost
- Payment up-front (usually on an annual or quarterly basis) - Payment on a utility basis after resource is used. There is usually a flat monthly fee plus variable fee depending on the resources used.
- Generally more expensive, especially for larger sites that have large amounts of traffic - Cheaper and you only pay for what you use. No need to buy extra hardware that will only be used for 5% of the year to cover for traffics spikes.
Redundancy
- Must be manually architected and managed thus requires expertise (load balancing provisioning etc) - Automatic failover in the cloud, redundant SAN storage as standard
Technology
- Tried and tested, plenty of knowledge. - Cutting edge, more advanced, BETA versioning, possible failures.
Framework
- .NET / PHP / RoR are all possible, but separate physical or virtual servers must be used and configured separately to cater for each. - Upload a mixture of ASP, PHP and RoR and the cloud will automatically provision the correct environment accordingly.
Security
- Data location is known and access can be configured by the webmaster - Actual location of data is unknown (lost in the cloud), the webmaster can therefore no longer control access as directly as in the traditional sense.
- Sensitive data can be stored on a separate physical machine. - Sensitive data may share the same physical machine as other web sites / users, although the data will be virtually separated.
- Shared hosting operations are at the mercy of other sites on the same server, for example if a spammer on the same server as you takes up all the resources on that server. - Virtual partition of files and the associated environment allied with on-the-fly resource allocation ensures that your web applications are completely separate from other users.
Infrastructure
- Customers control the infrastructure they require. - Customers are unable to control the infrastructure and rely on the cloud for this.
Contract
- Usually a one year minimum contract applies to shared hosting plans, payment up front. - Free of long-term contracts. Most cloud vendors let you come and go as you please, e.g. the minimum order through FlexiScale's cloud is one hour with no sign-up fee. Ideal for prototyping.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
- Very common, especially for the pricier packages e.g. VPS or dedicated servers. Compensation if SLA is broken. - Most cloud vendors today do not provide availability assurances. Service-level agreements (SLAs) are mostly non-existent.
Geographic Locality
- Obviously you know where your datacentre is geographically - Little geographic locality. With the exception of Akamai and Layered Technologies, no cloud vendors will place your app in a specific geography. In fact, most don't have geographic coverage. Amazon EC2 does, but won't tell you where your app is located, nor can you request a specific geography today.