Shared cloud hosting
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The term isn't very different from cloud hosting as far as it refers to an IT hosting service delivered from a system of servers. The term shared cloud hosting (also shared cloud) is still to be precisely defined. However, a cloud hosting service could be considered as "shared cloud" if it is delivered from a system and is powered by a software platform which does not create isolated virtual instances. In a shared cloud, all data resides in a shared storage system or network (shared pool). Cloud accounts (name based or IP based virtual hosting) share the computing resources of all servers part of the system.
All other general requirements typical for any cloud computing infrastructure — redundancy, scalability, flexibility, work in a network environment — apply.
An infrastructure which is aimed to deliver a shared cloud hosting service should feature load-balancing of the name based and IP based virtual hosting accounts. Unlike clouds which create virtual instances (VPS, VMs, etc.), the shared cloud accounts take advantage from load-balancing, and all the services — HTTP, Web, FTP, DB — run across all servers connected to the system.
A shared cloud hosting represents the model of shared hosting, where all virtual hosting accounts share the resources of one stand-alone server on the cloud, in a multi-server environment.
Advantages
- It is less expensive than clouds of virtual instances. Providers could allocate a certain amount of resources and charge a fixed monthly fee as in shared hosting. Customers pay when they need more resources.
- It provides scalability. Account holders can scale up or down resources at any time.
- Cloud accounts are deployed instantly.
- It is standardized. All users work in the same software environment.
- Customers do not deal with management of virtual instances and are not required to pay for software licenses.
- The system can handle traffic spikes.
- It provides standard hosting environment for open source applications.
Disadvantages
- There is no root access to cloud accounts.
- Any specific software applications could be used only if the providers add them to the system.
- Users are not granted dedicated resources the way the have any in a virtual instance.
- Any technical issues on the system usually result in interruptions or restrictions of the services allocated to the virtual hosting accounts.
See also
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