Cloud Hosting: the Pros and Cons

We've recently discussed two types of hosting service:

• Dedicated Servers
  You own/rent one or more servers at your hosts data centre for your sole use.
• Shared Servers
  You rent space and processing capacity on a server which may also be used by many other companies and websites.

In general, a dedicated server is normally more flexible and you can configure it as you wish. A shared server may offer fewer options but is easier to manage and considerably less expensive.

Cloud hosting can be a good compromise between the two and brings other benefits. Let's discuss the terminology and concepts before we go any further.

What is the Cloud?

The "cloud" and "cloud computing" are marketing buzzwords for the web. That's it. Rather than buying software and storing data on your PCs hard disk, you use an online application. That typically runs and stores data on a web server while displaying the interface within a web browser. In other words, you're accessing software on-demand and sharing computing resources with others.

Continue reading %Cloud Hosting: the Pros and Cons%

by Craig Buckler via SitePoint