What is the Difference Between Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting. Aint they the same thing?

It's based on what the provider offers. Some providers base on the fact that cloud hosting is a cluster of servers, others say that cloud hosting is a scalable VPS. It's more of an idea which can be further developed. Both VPS' and cloud technology are good, it comes down to choice.

Thanks for The infomation. i thought it was something like that just needed clarification thats all. thanks for the help =)

It's based on what the provider offers. Some providers base on the fact that cloud hosting is a cluster of servers, others say that cloud hosting is a scalable VPS. It's more of an idea which can be further developed. Both VPS' and cloud technology are good, it comes down to choice.

I tend to say that Cloud relies more on the "cluster of servers" where you can technically get "100% uptime" due to the high redundancy since your are hosted "in the cloud" and not on only one server.
Scalable VPS is more a concept of simply auto-provisionning on-demand Virtual Machines which, in my opinion gives less redundancy.
Whats attractive to me is actually the redundancy it brings, but its all a matter of choice.
Hope this helps

Many people have knowingly or not distorted the true meaning of "cloud"; some people, for a lack of proper information/knowledge or with intentional deception, even call their Virtuozzo/OpenVZ/Xen/VmWare/etc based VPS setup as "cloud".

While virtualization is key to cloud infrastructure, not all virtualization today can be called as "cloud." I believe the following two are what set cloud apart from mere VPS. These, I call, are the bare minimum of what cloud infrastructure needs to have:
- centralized storage (usually through iSCSI SAN). Which is important for the next point below
- High Availability. In the even the physical node is down, your virtual machine need to be started on another node automatically.

Scalability and auto-provisioning cannot uniquely identity cloud infrastructure since you can have the same with VPS.

Hope that helps.

Many people have knowingly or not distorted the true meaning of "cloud"; some people, for a lack of proper information/knowledge or with intentional deception, even call their Virtuozzo/OpenVZ/Xen/VmWare/etc based VPS setup as "cloud".

While virtualization is key to cloud infrastructure, not all virtualization today can be called as "cloud." I believe the following two are what set cloud apart from mere VPS. These, I call, are the bare minimum of what cloud infrastructure needs to have:
- centralized storage (usually through iSCSI SAN). Which is important for the next point below
- High Availability. In the even the physical node is down, your virtual machine need to be started on another node automatically.

Scalability and auto-provisioning cannot uniquely identity cloud infrastructure since you can have the same with VPS.

Hope that helps.

Fantastic Dave !

Far too many companies will call a local storage VPS model a "cloud" solution simply because of the implementation of a fancy billing portal that allows utility billing.

We offer both solutions, and there is a significant difference between a local storage VPS model (which SHOULD be sold as a VPS) and a Cloud Based solution with centralized storage, fluid and transient instances and inherent self healing capabilities...

We also have both solutions (cloud and VPS). After spending $200K over 2 years to build and test our cloud infrastructure and see other people shamelessly call their openvz/xen VPS nodes "cloud" I can only shake my head.

The confusion over cloud and VPS is so embarassing. Shame on those hosts who contributed further confusion over this. The hosting industry really needs to set a standard on this.

We also have both solutions (cloud and VPS). After spending $200K over 2 years to build and test our cloud infrastructure and see other people shamelessly call their openvz/xen VPS nodes "cloud" I can only shake my head.

The confusion over cloud and VPS is so embarassing. Shame on those hosts who contributed further confusion over this. The hosting industry really needs to set a standard on this.

Though I agree with everything you have said - and yes, it annoys the heck out of me considering the investments companies like ours (yourself and ourselves and others) have made in this technology - end of the day, we will never see "standards" in this industry.. We just need to keep plugging away and slowly educating people.. It is also really powerful to offer both solutions (as you do as well) and demonstrate differentiation between the offerings. Slowly but surely, market education will set in - that is the ultimate goal anyway :)

Cheers Dave

Thanks for the input, Andrew. As usual, you are always cool-headed :)

Cloud hosting is basically concept of cluster servers which includes number of servers. So you did not need to rely upon a single server and their is not chances of any downtime. Whereas the VPS server are setup on the dedicated which are called as nodes. And its rely on the Single server so cloud hosting are the good choice.

Anyone have info on how cloud computing can be set up without it costing an arm and a leg?

Anyone have info on how cloud computing can be set up without it costing an arm and a leg?

Well, the only real affordable way right now is to buy Cloud services from a provider who has set it up.

As Dave mentioned earlier, it is not a small deal to build out a cloud. Especially if you use top shelf hardware and networking - and then want a GUI of some sorts for the users.

Anyone have info on how cloud computing can be set up without it costing an arm and a leg?

You won't need to build your cloud backend yourself, just outsource it to somebody else who can. Go with providers that can offer you IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

Anyone have info on how cloud computing can be set up without it costing an arm and a leg?
http://www.cloudlinux.com

BTW, regarding IaaS, talk to Jeff Hinkle at GNAX. He seems to have a nice infrastructure that you can use to build your cloud.

http://www.cloudlinux.com

This is why this industry is so confused about "Cloud". Just anybody would put "Cloud" with anything else. While CloudLinux may help you build a cloud infrastructure, I don't think it would be major, if any.

I want to add my 5 cents to conversation.
While I would generally agree with definition of Cloud Hosting to be all about "high availability", and due to that usually contain some form of centralized, redundant storage -- there is no industry wide definition.
Some people claim it has to be resilient, some people claim it should be ?infinitely? scalable...
I tried to figure out where 'Cloud' part came from, and the best answer so far that I could find was a 'cloud' representing internet in Visio diagrams.

Igor,

It was nice attending your session at HostingCon. It's unfortunate that I missed the chance to meet you in person during the conference. When I came to your booth, you had disappeared. The next time you came, I must have dissapeared! :D

As much as I admire what you have done (back in the good old PSoft/HSpere days), etymology does not help much here. In fact, it is the big source of confusion we have now. Everybody connected to the "internet" is a cloud infrastructure provider :) The confusion is clear here too, some even think installing CloudLinux will enable them to delivere the cloud infrastructure (using the definition that you yourself generally agreed to, which is the relevant definition in this thread).

Having said this, we have also been considering trying CloudLinux. Any plan to extend the resource protection from Apache to other services (e.g., myslq, etc)?

Dave,

It is unfortunate. I had only couple of hours on the exhibition floor -- and didn't get a chance to speak to many people :(

What I was trying to say is that there is no real definition of Cloud, and for many people VPS hosting is just one instance of cloud hosting. And to be honest -- dedicate servers, and shared hosting can also be considered cloud hosting. I am seeing so many problems plaguing 'cloud providers' -- mostly at software & SAN level, that quite often your generic VPS on a regular server will be more stable & reliable then the one with SAN, redundancy, etc...
Also, there is so many things that are "cloud". Salesforce is a cloud. Azure is a cloud, and Amazon EC2/S3 is a cloud. Facebook is also a cloud.
If you provide any type of infrastructure or service via internet -- you can tag it a 'cloud' service. Before it was ASP, then SaaS, now it is PaaS and IaaS, with common label of being 'cloud'.

And yes -- we are beta testing mysql governor to provide limits for MySQL. Shell & cron jobs can also be limited now.

While Cloud in itself is somewhat of a buzz word.. it does have a more clear definition when you say Cloud Computing.

Even Wikipedia provides pretty straightforward guidelines. VPS is not Cloud as virtualization in itself is not Cloud. Cloud does not require unlimited vertical scaling, but it does require SOME vertical scaling ability. Cloud does not demand "SAN" storage, but it does demand centralized storage and that can be done through local storage if the local storage is pooled into a virtual IP SAN. Cloud is redundant, cloud is high availability. Those are all agreed on facts by ever major cloud player in the industry.

Cloud hosting can ensure the 100% uptime guaranty while the VPS hosting does not.

While Cloud in itself is somewhat of a buzz word.. it does have a more clear definition when you say Cloud Computing.

Even Wikipedia provides pretty straightforward guidelines. VPS is not Cloud as virtualization in itself is not Cloud. Cloud does not require unlimited vertical scaling, but it does require SOME vertical scaling ability. Cloud does not demand "SAN" storage, but it does demand centralized storage and that can be done through local storage if the local storage is pooled into a virtual IP SAN. Cloud is redundant, cloud is high availability. Those are all agreed on facts by ever major cloud player in the industry.
I guess, based on that -- clustered shared hosting over NFS -- is a cloud.
Actually, based on that, a single server shared hosting with failover server with data synced over rsync is also a cloud.
And just in case, here is hardware cloud: http://www.newservers.com/

What every major player agrees on, is that what they provide is a 'Cloud'. I guess you are talking about this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_hosting
Where key features are defined as: Agility, Cost, Device/location independence, multi-tenancy/reliability/scalability.. etc..
Yet, if you read how it is defined -- you will see that it is very vague, and can be applied to lots of services already being provided on internet.

Cloud hosting can ensure the 100% uptime guaranty while the VPS hosting does not.

My personal experience with some of the largest cloud hosters, including Amazon and Google as well as 4 other major players shows that none of them can claim 100% uptime guaranty.
While architecture might allow for that -- it is usually software & human issues that cause they system to fail.

Don't get me wrong, I still prefer to keep important servers at vps.net, and not on some dedicated server. I know how long it takes to recover the system once hard drive fails. Yet, with any cloud that I had chance to test in the past 4 years -- I always had some downtime.

I guess, based on that -- clustered shared hosting over NFS -- is a cloud.
Actually, based on that, a single server shared hosting with failover server with data synced over rsync is also a cloud.
And just in case, here is hardware cloud: http://www.newservers.com/

What every major player agrees on, is that what they provide is a 'Cloud'. I guess you are talking about this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_hosting
Where key features are defined as: Agility, Cost, Device/location independence, multi-tenancy/reliability/scalability.. etc..
Yet, if you read how it is defined -- you will see that it is very vague, and can be applied to lots of services already being provided on internet. A single server offers zero scalability. Cloud also in my definition is high availability and seamless scalability.

$5 website with 10GB of disk space and 1GB of transfer can be upgraded to $25 website with 50GB of disk and 10GB of transfer. So, the solution clearly scales.

And clustering/redundancy is not the only way to achieve high availability. Quoting wikipedia article on high availability:
"Paradoxically, adding more components to an overall system design can undermine efforts to achieve high availability. That is because complex systems inherently have more potential failure points and are more difficult to implement correctly. "
Also, if you define 99% as high availability for shared hosting -- that is 3 days of downtime per year -- easy to achieve with single server setup

Anyway -- I agree: Cloud hosting is all about high availability, scalability, agility, ease of deployment, etc...
It is just not about any particular technology used to achieve that.

$5 website with 10GB of disk space and 1GB of transfer can be upgraded to $25 website with 50GB of disk and 10GB of transfer. So, the solution clearly scales.

And clustering/redundancy is not the only way to achieve high availability. Quoting wikipedia article on high availability:
"Paradoxically, adding more components to an overall system design can undermine efforts to achieve high availability. That is because complex systems inherently have more potential failure points and are more difficult to implement correctly. "
Also, if you define 99% as high availability for shared hosting -- that is 3 days of downtime per year -- easy to achieve with single server setup

Anyway -- I agree: Cloud hosting is all about high availability, scalability, agility, ease of deployment, etc...
It is just not about any particular technology used to achieve that.

Hi Igor...

First off, CloudLinux has been outstanding.. For those not using it yet, you should try it. Once the development continues and progresses, the value will just increase - a truly revolutionary product - especially when layered into a Cloud..

Having said this, the key components of a cloud - at least in my humble opinion - are elasticity and redundancy - without those components - you have nothing..

we have been selling clustered hosting forever. We have sold load balanced arrays of servers on NFS, we have sold fail over servers, rsynch'd servers, etc...

What the cloud offers is unique to all of these scenarios - and they should not be confused. There is certainly some discrepency as to what "cloud" means - afterall - it is nothing more then a depiction of a "cloud" to represent the internet..

End of the day though, the "cloud" represents the process and transformation towards utility computing.

There is NO DOUBT that in some instances a local storage VPS model will perform better then a centralized storage, HA scenario. Having said this, you need to be careful. Some things "should" be run on the cloud and some things - at least not yet - "should not" be run on the cloud. What is common right now - at least amongst our customers - is to run web services on the cloud and DB services on local storage VPS nodes - and then cluster the services - This is not to say that the definition of "cloud hosting" is obscure... if its elastic and redundant - at least in my opinion - its a cloud - if its not, then its not..

whats really special though - is running a cloud server - with elastic hardware allocations - and then layering cloudlinux on top of it - and granularly controlling resources within that cloud instance on a per account basis... if you saw the metrics our customers have achieved with such setups - people would be shocked.. absolutely outstanding...

Andrew,

I agree with you, as well as I agree with all other definitions of cloud that were listed so far. What I was trying to say -- there is no clear definition, nor I think there will be.
It is like ASP becoming SaaS, becoming IaaS and PaaS... just names used to sell very wide array of functionality. Cloud is just one of those names. And different people put different meanings and accents into it.

And don't get me wrong -- I am sure lots of people doing cloud well, and will be doing it better and better.
I think that in 5 years no one will be buying dedicated servers -- everyone will want only 'cloud'.
Hence for me basic VPS service is one, very limited form of cloud. Shared hosting is another. Salesforce is the third...
Though the things you are doing, as well as guys at vps.net or softlayer are more 'cloudy'

Andrew,

I agree with you, as well as I agree with all other definitions of cloud that were listed so far. What I was trying to say -- there is no clear definition, nor I think there will be.
It is like ASP becoming SaaS, becoming IaaS and PaaS... just names used to sell very wide array of functionality. Cloud is just one of those names. And different people put different meanings and accents into it.

And don't get me wrong -- I am sure lots of people doing cloud well, and will be doing it better and better.
I think that in 5 years no one will be buying dedicated servers -- everyone will want only 'cloud'.
Hence for me basic VPS service is one, very limited form of cloud. Shared hosting is another. Salesforce is the third...
Though the things you are doing, as well as guys at vps.net or softlayer are more 'cloudy'

That is the key statement there. I started a thread (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=954950) a few weeks ago basically for the sole purpose of discussing that very thing.

Bottom line was, a provider could provision a "Dedicated Cloud Server" for a client so they would not have the pitfalls of knowing what hardware and resources they were getting, sharing IO with someone else, etc. But yet it had the benefits of Cloud where a standard Dedicated server does not. Really it's a no brainer if the fit is there in the hardware environments.

If I were a consumer that needed a Dedicated server, this is what I would be looking for.

Please visit this post:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=965919

more 'cloudy'

LOL - more "cloudy" - I will we reusing that at some point :)

That is the key statement there. I started a thread (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=954950) a few weeks ago basically for the sole purpose of discussing that very thing.

Bottom line was, a provider could provision a "Dedicated Cloud Server" for a client so they would not have the pitfalls of knowing what hardware and resources they were getting, sharing IO with someone else, etc. But yet it had the benefits of Cloud where a standard Dedicated server does not. Really it's a no brainer if the fit is there in the hardware environments.

If I were a consumer that needed a Dedicated server, this is what I would be looking for.


It is honestly all about ones requirements. Traditional dedicated servers are not dead - and will likely never be dead - but, their usage and utilization changes now and moving forward.

For example, we do not even sell dedicated servers with less then 8 cores and 12 GB RAM. I mean, whats the point - a consumer is ALWAYS better off in a VPS (real VPS like Xen or VMWare) or Cloud vs a lower end dedicated server.

Having said this, many larger customers have large enough requirements where they do not need or want to share physical nodes with other clients at all (for whatever reason). In these instances, customers will buy their own master VPS nodes and consolidate all of their own legacy hardware onto 1-2 big physical nodes. Another common thing these days is for bigger companies to build their own clouds (Basically IaaS) - so, they will lease the hardware and technology from a Cloud provider and have their own private cloud set up for their requirements.

Lastly, many companies still require a mix of technologies to service their requirements. Cloud Servers for HA Web and Mail services for example - and then a beefy local storage VM or even dedicated server for DB requirements. Often times, customers with very large file storage requirements are still better off building beefy dedicated servers vs paying for all of that Storage on expensive, enterprise grade SANs used to backbone clouds, etc, etc..

End of the day, the trend is certainly moving to virtualization. Cloud or local storage VM doesnt really matter - they each offer unique benefits and capabilities - and again, often times, you will see customers utilizing a combination of both - right tool for the right job sort of mentality. The dedicated server market is shifting more towards specialized solutions or towards companies which require the capacity and infrastructure to build out large virtual farms...

Good points about storage and I agree. While most of our cases locally pooled storage is working great, I'm in the middle of a large install for a VPDC that is using a large amount of enterprise SSD drives in a separate cloud for storage/DB access. Upwards of $80K on that one. :eek2:

Cloud is an elaborate marketing term for pooled resources and clustering.

I tend to think of VPS as a consumer product and cloud as an enterprise product. Like others have said VPS's can essentially just be a linux box running a few servers on local storage. It's a long way from a VMware solution on SAN storage which is what I'd call a cloud platform.