Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Cloud Hosting : Opinions about cloud hosting thing

[SergeyS]

Hi everyone.
I have been reading some info about this so called Cloud Hosting.
What i would like to know is:
1)Who do you think it is good for? (i mean for what kind of sites)
2)What are the most obvious issues to you does this type of hosting have?

[UH-Bobby]

It's good for people who need uptime, and they need scalability. However, there's lack of control. It's basically shared hosting in a way, and you loose root access. There's definitely benefits, but also negative aspects. It basically boils down to what the individual person needs or wants.

[MikeDVB]

You should contact a couple of the cloud hosting providers and ask them these questions. Of course they will try to make the sale and talk you into signing up but I'm sure they would be the best source of information.
There are a few cloud providers that browse the forums and I anticipate one of them will chime in on this thread soon.

[Jacob Wall]

Cloud hosting is good for those as mentioned, who need scalability. It also is a way to instantly deploy servers. It also is good for developers who don't need 24/7 uptime. I still think that you should contact the companies that specialize in it.

[smueller]

It also is good for developers who don't need 24/7 uptime.
good if you don't need 24/7 uptime? I think you meant good for developers who do need 24/7 uptime...
Cloud hosting is a pretty general and vague term, there are many variations of it. The basic concept is it's a way to provide scalable, reliable and affordable hosting. Traditional shared or dedicated hosting typically can't provide all 3 of those.

[datums]

If you are talking cloud hosting like amazon aws, well there are many benefits for the client. The ability to easy automate your deployment, quickly scale up or down your site based on traffic / load across a tier. It allows you to save a ton of time and money worrying about the usual datacenter issues you deal with dedicated or colo providers. Let Amazon manage the datacenter (cooling/power/network). It's not the cheapest xen vps out there. AWS's small instance cost $70/month without bandwidth. AWS is adding new feature every few months. They also offer persistent storage (EBS) which allows you to attach up to 10TB storage to an instance. There lastest offering is CloudFront, which is a CDN service.

Im currently participating in vps.net public beta of their cloud system. I think the definite advantage is the huge scalability, within 5 mins you can transform the same server from a single 'node' server and add another 20 nodes to create a super server with no trouble at all.
Obvious applications of this to me would be services that are going to grow over time and even services that need high resources some months and lower resources other months.

[unity100]

important questions :
- who owns the data in the cloud ? supposedly you, but what if a foreign government requests your data from the foreign cloud operator youre hosting on ?
- redundancy ? reliability ? your cloud is as good as the connectivity in between your office's isp and cloud backbone provider and all the connections in between. what if cloud goes down ? bust.
- security ? it is a cloud after all, and inevitably people will find ways to exploit it and reach data other than their own

[RavC]

I think 'cloud computing' is one of those annoyingly vague buzz words that mean different things to different people.
From a user's / customer perspective: cloud computing implies connotations of 'Software as a Service' i.e. the applications you use are served via the Internet, as opposed to traditional infrastructure.
From a application developer / provider perspective: cloud computing can encompass many technologies [which are equally viable without the 'cloud' association], but I don't think any specific case can really be used to define cloud computing (rather it is an implementation of cloud computing).
- Distributed computing (multiple servers, redundancy, CDN)
- Localised scalability (latest trend is to implement this using virtualised servers, traditionally it means clusters & balancers etc)
- Networked storage (obviously related to both above)
In reality the issues are same as normal server hosting, aren't they? IMO 'cloud computing' is customer-centric.

[Kaumil]

1)Who do you think it is good for? (i mean for what kind of sites)
Cloud hosting is for those who are looking for a simple, powerful, reliable and scalable solution for their website/application. There are different types of "clouds", so it really depends. "Cloud hosting" is generally similar to shared hosting in the sense that you would have to work within the framework that's already there (ie, no root access, custom versions of PHP, MySQL, etc).
This is great for those customers who do not poses the skills required to maintain a VPS or dedicated server. A lot of shared hosting customers are often sold up to these platforms as they have "outgrown" shared hosting resulting in frustrated customers do to lack of maintenance or simply reaching the physical limitations of that VPS or dedicated server -- cloud hosting for the most part solves that. Any type of customer can use "cloud hosting", with the utility type billing that's present with such platforms, the customer is charged based on what they use and not what they could use, ultimately, making it cheaper and increasing the liklihood of actually using it (Unlimited disk & Transfer, lol).
It's also good for those who do know what they are doing and are able to work within the framework of a cloud hosting provider. Simply not having to worry about having to maintain infrastructure to handle your web site/application may be just what you or your company needs to focus on your core business.

[smueller]

Cloud hosting is for those who are looking for a simple, powerful, reliable and scalable solution for their website/application.
Is anybody not looking for all of these features for their website or application?
This is great for those customers who do not poses the skills required to maintain a VPS or dedicated server.
It's also good for those who do know what they are doing and are able to work within the framework of a cloud hosting provider.
Even if you do possess skills to maintain servers, why would you want to if it's taken care of properly? Cloud hosting, at present, is primarily divided into 2 types of solutions: the clustered shared hosting type of solution which is similar to today's shared hosting systems but still affordable when scaling your application. And there's the utility hosting type of solution where you purchase servers (virtual or dedicated) by the hour along with other services (like storage) by the hour. I believe eventually these will merge and you'll end up with a true simple, reliable, affordable, flexible and scalable solution. You give up flexibility with the shared hosting type of solution and you give up simple with the utility hosting type of solution (though not entirely ).

[AquariusStorage]

important questions :
- who owns the data in the cloud ? supposedly you, but what if a foreign government requests your data from the foreign cloud operator youre hosting on ?
- redundancy ? reliability ? your cloud is as good as the connectivity in between your office's isp and cloud backbone provider and all the connections in between. what if cloud goes down ? bust.
- security ? it is a cloud after all, and inevitably people will find ways to exploit it and reach data other than their own
1) - Who owns the data on your dedicated server? That is the problem with all "hosting" in general. Shared, Reseller, Dedicated.. they all share this problem.. not exactly sure where you was going with this.
2) - Ok, and on a normal occasion with a standard shared/reseller provider, your uptime is only as good as a single machine. In a cloud, you have multiple failovers. One system can go down in the cloud, however your data is still in tact. What if the shared host goes down? Once again.. not sure where you was going with this either
3) And finally security... it's still shared web hosting... it's still reseller web hosting... even if it's a dedicated server, it's safety is only then determined if it is kept up to date and hardened/secured. Even then, it's still not definite "oh my server is unhackable". And even if your server is unhackable, what happens if I just walk right into the data center and steal it? Well then your server security is nothing because I have the physical box in my hands. Once again, not sure where you was going with this...
in fact... I don't even get where you was going with any of your points. Cloud hosting is like shared hosting with added redundancy / scalability. Of course in the end it falls down to the network or the cloud going "boom", but seriously, saying a cloud solution is less scaleable / redundant is kind of uniformed if both the single dedicated server & the cloud solution are on the a exact same stable network.
To the OP, if you are really interested in cloud hosting, I'd recommend giving http://www.mosso.com/ a shot and seeing if it is right for you. When I was with mosso (part of rackspace), their "cloud" was a bit slow, however it may have improved since then. Any specific reason a regular VPS/Dedicated server will not work for you? Cloud hosting is great if you have a infinite budget normally, as a "reliable" cloud is normally expensive to maintain, or every provider would probably rather provide cloud hosting.

[dotHostel]

Peering into Future of Cloud Computing
... The second factor driving this research is the way cloud services and their support infrastructures are constructed. Today, they are assembled from vast numbers of PCs, packaged slightly differently, connected by the same networks used to deliver Internet services. Building data centers using standard, off-the-shelf technology was a great choice in the beginning. It let the Internet boom race ahead without the need to develop new types of computers and software systems. But the resulting data centers and software were not designed as integrated systems and are less efficient than they should be. One common analogy is that if one built utility power plants as we build data centers, we would start by going to Home Depot and buying millions of gasoline-powered generators.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/ccf-022409.aspx
Microsoft’s Low-Power Server Prototype
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/02/24/microsofts-low-power-server-prototype/

1) - Who owns the data on your dedicated server? That is the problem with all "hosting" in general. Shared, Reseller, Dedicated.. they all share this problem.. not exactly sure where you was going with this.
2) - Ok, and on a normal occasion with a standard shared/reseller provider, your uptime is only as good as a single machine. In a cloud, you have multiple failovers. One system can go down in the cloud, however your data is still in tact. What if the shared host goes down? Once again.. not sure where you was going with this either
3) And finally security... it's still shared web hosting... it's still reseller web hosting... even if it's a dedicated server, it's safety is only then determined if it is kept up to date and hardened/secured. Even then, it's still not definite "oh my server is unhackable". And even if your server is unhackable, what happens if I just walk right into the data center and steal it? Well then your server security is nothing because I have the physical box in my hands. Once again, not sure where you was going with this...
in fact... I don't even get where you was going with any of your points. Cloud hosting is like shared hosting with added redundancy / scalability. Of course in the end it falls down to the network or the cloud going "boom", but seriously, saying a cloud solution is less scaleable / redundant is kind of uniformed if both the single dedicated server & the cloud solution are on the a exact same stable network.
Agreed! Plus cloud providers will most likely be funded pretty well and that means much better infrastructure.

[Spudstr]

Cloud hosting is good for those as mentioned, who need scalability. It also is a way to instantly deploy servers. It also is good for developers who don't need 24/7 uptime. I still think that you should contact the companies that specialize in it.
The whole purpose of a "cloud" is 24/7 uptime, scalability when you need it. Not the other way around.