What is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud hosting is when you run your applications or websites in the cloud. Traditionally, organizations hosted applications on purchased, physical servers in on-premises data centers or hired physical or virtual servers from off-site hosting providers. With cloud hosting, you rent a hosting service on demand, by self-service from a cloud provider. That service can be a single, fixed-capacity virtual server, a cloud network of physical and virtual remote servers spanning diverse geographic locations for advanced hosting, or a serverless model with auto scaling that is fully managed by the cloud provider. The cloud hosting model can be much more flexible than traditional hosting models. With serverless cloud hosting, you don't need to know how to configure infrastructure, and you can scale your applications up or down very quickly. With fixed capacity cloud hosting, you provision fixed resources for running your apps or websites. Both types of cloud hosting offer various subscription options.

The cloud hosting model offers two main types of services, each of which works in different ways: virtual cloud hosting and serverless cloud hosting.

Self-managed cloud hosting

Self-managed cloud hosting works because of a technology called virtualization that runs multiple virtual servers on a single physical server. Each virtual machine (VM) can each run independently of other virtual machines on the same physical server. Virtualization can use static, dedicated resources per VM, or minimum resources per VM with a dynamic allocation pool for scalability.

Full virtualization allows you to use different operating systems (OSs), applications, and configurations on each VM, isolated from other VMs to help prevent interference or compatibility issues. Other types of virtualization only permit different versions of the same operating system, or run containers (apps and a small environment) instead of virtual machines.

Cloud hosting providers lease out virtual cloud servers to customers, typically on a rolling monthly subscription. For advanced hosting, the cloud host can allocate multiple virtual machines in various locations to the customer. This dispersed VM configuration is often useful for different geographic locations with high traffic or for regional sensitive data compliance reasons. With this highly flexible system, organizations can quickly deploy new VMs, and change their systems when demand goes up or down.

Cloud hosting uses virtualization to create a highly effective, yet isolated system for each customer. For customers with higher security requirements, cloud hosts offer dedicated servers, where you can run virtual servers on a physical server that is solely dedicated to your business. Shared hosting, where your VM is alongside another business's VM on a server is more common. Cloud hosting customers use the remote virtual servers to access resources, store and manage data, and use services and applications from the cloud hosting provider.

Serverless cloud hosting

Serverless cloud hosting options are event-driven, where you only pay when your websites or applications are in use. Serverless removes the need for customer VM or server management and configuration. In the serverless cloud hosting model, you deploy code or containers on a cloud service, and the cloud hosting provider manages all the server and infrastructure management, including operating system configuration.

Serverless cloud hosting is auto scaling, so when demand peaks and falls, there is no change in the level of service to your clients. Serverless hosting can be a better option when you have variable traffic or lack infrastructure experience managing servers.

There are four main types of cloud hosting architecture, each of which allocates resources differently and requires varying amounts of input from your organization.

Public cloud

Public cloud infrastructure is when a third-party provider manages all underlying hardware, computing resources, maintenance, and availability. You don't need to buy or own any of your own servers. You rent virtualized resources alongside other businesses, which are logically isolated but run on shared hardware.

Private cloud

A private cloud is a cloud computing environment dedicated to a single organization. In a private cloud, all resources, such as CPU and storage, are isolated and under the control of one organization. A private cloud typically runs on dedicated servers and hardware. You can have a private cloud on-premises or with a cloud provider.

Hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud is IT infrastructure that blends both public and private clouds. Hybrid cloud allows you to keep dedicated environments for compliance or latency-sensitive reasons, and combine them with public cloud components to take advantage of the benefits of public cloud infrastructure.

Cloud hosting is a viable model that your organization can use to host websites or applications without high upfront costs. This hosting model comes with many benefits for companies when working with a third party service provider.

Scalability

The flexibility of cloud hosting ensures that you can match your resources to demand. Your cloud hosting provider can provide more or fewer resources when you need them. Unlike owned infrastructure, you don't have to buy new servers and install and maintain them, and instead, you only pay for more resources when you scale. In the serverless model of cloud hosting, you won't pay for cloud services that you don't use when your system is idle.

Availability

Many cloud hosting providers have data centers all over the world, which can reduce latency and increase availability with the right deployment across multiple interconnected servers. Cloud providers use additional failover mechanisms to protect their services. Cloud hosting companies also provide technologies such as load balancers and content delivery networks to ensure customers can provide highly available, low-latency services and applications.

Cost efficiency

The highest cost in local hosting is investing in new hardware and its required infrastructure. After this upfront cost, you still have to pay for ongoing maintenance and management, which can be costly. Cloud hosting offers pay-as-you-go systems and eliminates the need for maintenance and physical systems management costs.

Security

Cloud providers heavily invest in robust security systems and offer high-level security for all their customers. The provider updates and patches their systems, so they're always up-to-date with the most recent security practices. Customers must also consider security on their systems, especially in the case of self-managed cloud hosting, updating operating systems, applications, and libraries themselves. Cloud hosting service providers also provide additional data security with backup and recovery mechanisms you can use as an add-on capability for disaster recovery. Cloud hosting security is a shared responsibility between the cloud service provider and the customer. Serverless and managed services transfer more of the security responsibility to the provider versus self-managed cloud services.

Time to market

Organizations that begin to construct their owned IT infrastructure must wait to set up physical hardware, test it, then deploy applications to their new environments. Using cloud environments, you can integrate new technologies and shorten development cycles. When you use cloud hosting, you can significantly speed up your time to market.

Web hosting is a service that stores your website or web application and makes it easily accessible across different devices, such as desktops, mobiles, and tablets. The web hosting service provider maintains, configures, and runs physical servers that you can rent for your files.

Cloud hosting offers web hosting as a service, with the traditional web hosting service model (dedicated self-managed), a virtualization model (self-managed), or a serverless model (managed). Although cloud hosting offers web hosting services, web hosting doesn't necessarily involve cloud computing.

VPS hosting vs. cloud hosting

VPS hosting is where one physical server in a data center hosts many virtualized servers with dedicated resources, each for different customers. Each different virtualized environment has access to dedicated resources for a single customer. Virtual private servers typically offer fixed resourcing per VM.

Unlike VPS hosting, cloud hosting offers a range of different, flexible architecture models. Although you can choose VPS cloud hosting, you can also add cloud hosting servers or change types, or use serverless cloud hosting. This makes cloud hosting solutions much more flexible than traditional VPS.

Dedicated hosting vs. cloud hosting

Dedicated hosting is where you use a physical, dedicated, single server. You rent a dedicated physical server and become the only customer that has access to that server. These servers might or might not come pre-installed with virtualization. Customers choose dedicated hosting when they must not share any resources with other users. However, dedicated servers come with a high cost. With dedicated hardware, you have full control over the physical infrastructure and can configure your websites and applications (sometimes across multiple servers) to meet your exact needs.

You don't have to choose between dedicated or cloud hosting because most cloud hosting offers dedicated hosting options for customers, for full flexibility in services. The pay-as-you-go billing method for dedicated cloud servers is more financially flexible than purchasing dedicated servers. With this configuration, you can create an optimal environment without owning the base server.

Shared hosting vs. cloud hosting

Shared hosting is where many businesses or websites share one server with one operating system and all its resources, including web server software. Because you share these resources with other customers, it will be slower than other types of hosting. However, you pay less for shared hosting, which is much more affordable than other types of hosting.

Cloud hosting does not offer a shared hosting model, instead using virtualization to give customers their own space. Because you don't need to share resources with others, it's a more powerful form of hosting.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers cloud hosting solutions for organizations of all sizes. With AWS, start-ups, small and midsize businesses (SMBs), enterprises, nonprofits, and government organizations can deliver their websites and applications in the best way to suit their business.

AWS provides a wide range of modern cloud hosting plans for websites, ecommerce, web apps, and all types of applications.

Here are some AWS services you can use for cloud hosting today:

• Amazon EC2 provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. You can use it to host enterprise and other application-heavy websites.
• AWS Lambda is a serverless app hosting service that handles all infrastructure management, enabling faster development, improved computing power performance, enhanced security, and cost efficiency.
• Amazon Lightsail is a streamlined way to launch and manage a web server using AWS. Lightsail includes everything you need to start your website at a low, predictable price.
• Amazon S3 with Amazon CloudFront provides cloud storage options with a content delivery network for highly affordable static website hosting.
• AWS Amplify Hosting is a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) and hosting service for static websites and server-side-rendered web applications. It's scalable and fully managed.

Get started with AWS cloud hosting by creating a free account today.