Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Cloud Hosting : Does Cloud hosting always involve usage-based charging model?

[music0825]

Just want to make my thought clear...

Say if I am using VMware to "partition" my 12-core server to several customers, maybe with a little over-provisioning on CPU and RAM (depending on the sales package), I can't claim I am selling Dedicated Server, right?

But I am selling this package for a fixed monthly fee, am I still selling cloud hosting?

Since I am selling VMware-based VM, I am not selling VPS right?

What should I call this kind of service?

[AirVM_Josh]

Traditionally the term "Dedicated Server" refers to a dedicated physical server.

You can offer cloud hosting at a fixed monthly rate rather than the utility style. The pricing just gives clients added flexibility but it would be at the providers discretion.

If you're concerned if you are a cloud provider or not then come up with a list of requirements you think the industry has defined for "Cloud" and see if you fit into it.

This would be things like: elastic, service oriented, redundancy, etc

The best classification I could give VMware-based sever is "VDS - Virtual Dedicated Server"

[sam9]

Hi,

Definitions are a bit of a grey area.

In general one could say that if you are offering 1. pay as you go pricing 2. on-demand servers 3. ability to increase / decrease computing resources then you may fall in the general definition of cloud hosting.
But as I mentioned, a lot of cloud hosting providers define it, not necessarily the same way.

The bottom line is how this can benefit your customers: 1. PAYG helps 2. On-demand helps 3. ability to upgrade/downgrade does...

From a customer perspective(and from a provider's as well) it is important to get into details of what is meant by cloud.

[peterlouis]

1. You cannot claim dedicated
2. Your description fits the category of VPS
3. Most 'cloud' providers provide the ability to create new instances via api. It doesn't sound like you'll fit this model.

[sam9]

I you were referring to us as a company, we do offer API.

I thought we were doing a discussion of what is defined as cloud hosting in general.