View Poll Results: Which of the following features are required for something to be "cloud"?

Voters
20. You may not vote on this poll
  • Failover/High availability

    16 80.00%
  • Hourly billing

    3 15.00%
  • No single point of failure

    13 65.00%
  • Hourly billing

    4 20.00%
  • Fully customizable packages

    6 30.00%
  • SAN

    3 15.00%
  • Vertical scaling

    5 25.00%
  • Horizontal scaling

    5 25.00%
  • Load balancing

    8 40.00%
  • Clustering

    10 50.00%
  • Multiple locations [Disaster recovery]

    9 45.00%
  • Hot migration [Moving VMs with no downtime]

    8 40.00%
  • Pay only for resources used

    9 45.00%
Multiple Choice Poll.
Results 1 to 23 of 23
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
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    What is your definition of cloud?

    Let's settle this once and for all. WHT, what do you consider to be cloud hosting?
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  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steven F View Post
    Let's settle this once and for all. WHT, what do you consider to be cloud hosting?
    lol.. this is going to be a fun thread..

    My definition.. scale without limits?? lolz...

    seriously the cloud? just a big donky vps
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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by semoweb View Post
    lol.. this is going to be a fun thread..

    My definition.. scale without limits?? lolz...

    seriously the cloud? just a big donky vps
    What do you mean by a big VPS? I've added a poll, so feel free to vote.
    SiFuQi.net - Affordable Dedicated Servers in Los Angeles, California
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  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    5,597
    Cloud is sort of just a buzzword for clustered computing.

    Did not vote however, as there is not necessarily one single definition or set of requirements.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    May 2002
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Posts
    714
    Cloud is in the eye of the beholder

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    New York, USA
    Posts
    4,019
    Vapor water.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Posts
    13,624
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven F
    Let's settle this once and for all. WHT, what do you consider to be cloud hosting?
    Anything over the internet can be considered CLOUD so in essence,EVERY HOST IS A CLOUD HOST





    Tinyurl is the answer for posting long urls!!!

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
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    Since there's no consistent implementation across all hosts, it really just boils down to a marketing term. Cloud can mean anything from two nodes with zero redundancy all the way to hundreds of nodes with fully redundant everything.
    ...john2k...

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
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    Seattle
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    5,525
    I would argue "none of the above." Cloud is the concept of outsourcing the management of a service away from internally managed code or infrastructure.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
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    Cloud = Hype

    -------------

    Until we stop using processor, motherboard etc... then adding unnecessary jargon is no use.
    Ask for Server IP & Nameservers IP to check if your reseller provider truly provides 100% white-label.

  11. #11
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    May 2006
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    Quote Originally Posted by IRCCo Jeff View Post
    I would argue "none of the above." Cloud is the concept of outsourcing the management of a service away from internally managed code or infrastructure.
    Yep yep...

  12. #12
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    Aug 2001
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    Quote Originally Posted by IRCCo Jeff View Post
    I would argue "none of the above." Cloud is the concept of outsourcing the management of a service away from internally managed code or infrastructure.
    Thats one aspect, then you also have private clouds of course.

    Mostly it is a buzzword and you will find a million definitions but overall I would call it the web-2.0 equivalent of clustering.

  13. #13

    Talking

    So the group I suggested was added haha xD

    Quote Originally Posted by semoweb View Post
    lol.. this is going to be a fun thread..
    Lol, should keep many busy for awhile... xD
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  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by zoid View Post
    Mostly it is a buzzword and you will find a million definitions but overall I would call it the web-2.0 equivalent of clustering.
    We use OnApp Cloud, so apparently it's not only an all purpose buzzword, but a specific brand as well.

    Otherwise, I voted for 'No single point of failure'. "Cloud" has a broad variety of connotations, but that is probably the most important one imho.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    May 2013
    Posts
    38
    Cloud main feature should be 100% uptime, but i wouldn't expect that from any provider .

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
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    you have Hourly billing twice

    you need a check box for all of the above

  17. #17
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    Aug 2001
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    Quote Originally Posted by HN-Laura View Post
    We use OnApp Cloud, so apparently it's not only an all purpose buzzword, but a specific brand as well.
    You will always find companies which incorporate the latest buzzword in their product names.

    Namingwise "cloud" is a nice way to give clustering and its related technologies a broad not too technical description. But the point is, it is nothing new. And this is exactly what companies want to make us believe.

  18. #18

    Here is what WHT says ...

    What is cloud hosting?

    Cloud hosting is a web hosting service delivered from a group of connected servers. The term cloud hosting (also called clustered hosting) is not precisely defined yet. In general, however, a hosting service can be considered cloud hosting when it is delivered from a fully redundant, multi-server system, in which the resources are dynamically scalable and often virtualized.

    In less technical terminology, cloud hosting uses a number of servers all connected together (a cloud), and sites on the servers can use resources from all the servers in that cloud. Processing power, hard drives, and memory are shared. Servers can be easily added or removed as necessary, and if one server is down, sites use resources from other servers instead.

    How cloud hosting works

    A cloud hosting service is usually delivered from a load-balanced cluster server platform, while the data is stored in a SAN (Storage Area Network).

    Cloud hosting providers measure compute cycles, an indicator which measures how much processing time applications require. This enables cloud hosting to be provided and billed as a part of a different service model than that used by other web hosting services. Clients pay for actual resources needed.

    Advantages of cloud hosting

    • You pay for only the resources you need.
    • It provides good scalability. You can easily increase or decrease resources without moving sites to other servers.
    • Servers can be deployed instantly.
    • It provides better uptime than other types of web hosting.
    • Traffic spikes aren't a problem; the cloud can handle them.
    • If the servers are in different datacenters, datacenter problems can be less of a concern.
    • Different technologies can be used together that can't be used together without cloud hosting. For example, .php and .asp files can work on the same site, even in the same folder, drawing on technologies within the cloud.
    • You don't need to install hardware or software. Instead, you connect with a cloud that has the hardware or software you need.


    Disadvantages of cloud hosting

    Lack of root access means less control.
    Sites using cloud hosting can still have downtime if the connections between servers aren't working.
    As a relatively new service, it doesn't have a long track record.
    It isn't widely offered or used.

    Source: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/wiki/Cloud_hosting

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  19. #19
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
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    London
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    At some stage these 'what is cloud' discussions will hopefully go away.

    Quote Originally Posted by Steven F View Post
    Let's settle this once and for all. WHT, what do you consider to be cloud hosting?
    What's cloud anyway? Salesforce? Gmail? AWS? Linode? Softlayer? ... Or all of the above?
    Point is that there's probably no good definition out there, and the term does not exactly help us as an industry. Moving around in the SaaS/PaaS/IaaS/etc jungle does not make it easier.

    The guys from Peer1 defined cloud as everything *on demand* - be it dedicated, virtual or saas based offerings. I actually think that makes sense, as it's really the only common denominator I can think of.

    You can't really use the billing/pay for what you use methodology as a requirement, as most clouds these days are actually 'private' and hence typically not tied to a billing model.

    The right cloud offering should not be limited to virtual servers but spread across dedicated bare metal, 'smart' servers, virtual servers, CDN, object storage, databases etc etc.

    We (at OnApp) feel that the job here is to build abstraction layers between the infrastructure and the workloads, and it's not about cloud at all actually - it's about the placement of workloads, and about being able to make clever decisions on where workloads are best served.

    Workloads do not care about cloud … they just want to work...


    D
    Ditlev Bredahl. CEO,
    OnApp.com + Cloud.net & CDN.net

  20. #20

    Quote Originally Posted by zoid View Post
    You will always find companies which incorporate the latest buzzword in their product names.

    Namingwise "cloud" is a nice way to give clustering and its related technologies a broad not too technical description. But the point is, it is nothing new. And this is exactly what companies want to make us believe.
    I am writing from a marketing perspective. Namingwise I am admittedly not very knowledgeable on the history of Mr. Clustering's dreadful replacement by Mr. Cloud, the imposter!

    Nevertheless I would add that WHT has quite a few forums and subforums dedicated to "cloud" hosting. Brand incorporation aside, clearly this suggests that people are taking it a bit more seriously than a "buzzword", no?

    Also, is it true that OnApp brings "nothing new" to the clustering table? Nothing new under the sun (under the clouds?) I suppose...

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Posts
    92
    Quote Originally Posted by The Dude View Post
    Anything over the internet can be considered CLOUD so in essence,EVERY HOST IS A CLOUD HOST




    I agree on this. Anything you access via Internet is considered CLOUD.
    Ronard Libao
    GMO Cloud America Inc.
    http://us.gmocloud.com/blog/

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    London
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    Quote Originally Posted by HN-Laura View Post
    I am writing from a marketing perspective. Namingwise I am admittedly not very knowledgeable on the history of Mr. Clustering's dreadful replacement by Mr. Cloud, the imposter!

    Nevertheless I would add that WHT has quite a few forums and subforums dedicated to "cloud" hosting. Brand incorporation aside, clearly this suggests that people are taking it a bit more seriously than a "buzzword", no?

    Also, is it true that OnApp brings "nothing new" to the clustering table? Nothing new under the sun (under the clouds?) I suppose...
    *totally off-topic*
    Can I just say, that I LOVE Hostnun.net - I am not sure how you guys came up with it, but it's nothing short of amazing!



    D
    Ditlev Bredahl. CEO,
    OnApp.com + Cloud.net & CDN.net

  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by eming View Post
    *totally off-topic*
    Can I just say, that I LOVE Hostnun.net - I am not sure how you guys came up with it, but it's nothing short of amazing!



    D
    Lol at the Sister Login link under Prayer & Testimony in footer - love it
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