What is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud Hosting provides web hosting and data storage without relying on server equipment. It benefits businesses by keeping their resources and data without spending much on physical servers. It’s the most cost-effective service in building applications and websites. Applications and websites are deployed on a network of connected virtual and physical cloud servers rather than a single server. Let’s get to some details of Cloud Hosting. 

How does Cloud hosting work?

Cloud Hosting allows outsourcing an organization’s storage resources to a service provider that offers its model. The provider manages the data maintenance, setup, and security, while some allowances like customizing hardware and scaling servers online are given to the clients. 

Cloud hosting is made up of many different servers. The architecture provides increased power, reliability, and availability in any website or application hosted on the Cloud. 

The front-end servers receive requests from your website visitors. It fetches the required files and processes scripts to display the site properly. The front-end server gets and stores the data on the data servers. The data for all sites hosted on the Cloud is stored in these data centers. The benefit of separating storage from the processing server is that it allows a more modular build which gives the Cloud availability and reliability. It also has backup servers so that when one server fails, another can step in as a backup, and your website will always be available online for you and your visitors. 

Service Models

Cloud hosting providers offer their services as three standard models as per NIST, which are:

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)- IaaS providers supply users with virtualized hardware resources to install their software environment. Users get to maintain the operating systems and applications software. Cloud providers charge based on the number of resources allocated and consumed. 
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS)- The providers deliver a hosting platform along with the operating system, database, development environment, and web server in this model. Users can develop and run their software on the platform without buying and managing the underlying hardware and software.
3. Software as a Service (SaaS)- SaaS providers provide the infrastructure and platform that runs the application. The user gets access to application software and databases, and it’s easy to maintain and support as we don’t need to install and run the application on our computers.  

Deployment Models

1. Private Cloud- The Cloud infrastructure meant just for a single organization is called the Private Cloud. It requires more engagement to virtualize the business environment and is generally more capital-intensive. 
2. Public Cloud- When the cloud services are provided over the public internet as paid subscriptions or free of charge, they are considered “Public.” The safety and security can only be guaranteed a little as multiple customers share the services.
3. Hybrid Cloud offers the benefit of having public and private environments bound together.

Characteristics of Cloud Hosting

• The most significant characteristic of Cloud Hosting is its low capital requirement. You can spend a little on owning and managing the data centers. You only need to pay for the resources and services you need. 
• Maintenance is much easier as the data is hosted on an external server and your cloud provider’s management team does all the IT maintenance and performance checks. 
• A physical server is virtualized means you don’t have to depend on only one server but a bunch of servers that function together called the Cloud. 
• You get high availability, data protection benefits, and disaster recovery using Cloud.
• Unlike traditional servers with limited bandwidth, Cloud is hosting scales to accommodate traffic spikes.

Security and Privacy

Privacy concerns arise due to Cloud hosting [​​https://onohosting.com/cheap-cloud-web-hosting-india] as the service provider has access to the data in Cloud at any time. They can accidentally or intentionally alter or delete the data. However, the Cloud providers can share the particulars with third parties for law and order purposes. Data Losses and leakages, Hardware Failures, and Insecure Interfaces and APIs cause the most threat to the data. Hackers can gain huge amounts of information just by a single attack on large cloud servers. A private Cloud is much more secure than computer equipment under someone else’s control.  

Despite the privacy and confidentiality concerns, Cloud hosting continues to be a dynamic industry mainly for small businesses to scale, as its relatively inexpensive and simple. 

 Many organizations prefer a hybrid model that mixes computing and storage resources on-premises with computing and storage in a cloud provider’s environment.