What is cloud hosting, how does it work?
Cloud hosting is the provision of online virtual servers that can be created, modified, and deleted as needed. Cloud servers are allocated resources such as CPU cores and memory by the physical server on which they are hosted, and can be configured with the operating system and associated software chosen by each developer. Cloud hosting such as servinga’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution can be used to host websites, send and store emails, and provide web-based applications and other services.
“The cloud” is a common term that refers to servers that are connected to the Internet and can be used publicly. A cloud-based service can take many forms, including web hosting, file hosting and sharing, and software distribution. The term cloud is also used to refer to cloud computing, where multiple servers are connected together to share the workload of a task. Instead of running a complex process on a single powerful computer, cloud computing distributes the task among many smaller computers.
Cloud hosting environments are divided into two main areas: the virtual servers, which can host apps and websites or store data, and the physical hosts that manage the virtual servers. This virtualization is behind the features and benefits of cloud hosting: the relationship between host and virtual server provides flexibility and scalability not available with other hosting methods.
A common form of cloud hosting is the use of a virtual private server (VPS). A VPS is a virtual server that behaves like a real computer with its own operating system. Virtual servers share the resources assigned to them by the host, but their software is well insulated, so operations on one VPS do not affect the others.
How are virtual servers deployed in cloud hosting?
The virtual servers are provided and managed by a so-called hypervisor, a special software on the physical hosts. Each virtual server has an operating system that is installed by the hypervisor and is available to the user to add software. The available resources of the physical server are allocated by the hypervisor to the virtual servers. The hypervisor is responsible for allocating memory, CPU cores, and a network connection to a virtual server when one starts.
For many practical purposes, a virtual server is identical to a dedicated physical server, although performance may be slower in some cases because the virtual servers share the physical hardware resources on the same host. A constant task of the hypervisor is to schedule processes between the virtual and physical CPU cores, as multiple virtual servers can use the same physical cores. The term “hypervisor” is often used as a synonym for the physical hosts on which the hypervisors (and their virtual servers) are installed.
The Benefits of Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting offers a number of benefits that can give you maximum flexibility and improve the productivity of your business.
Performance: Cloud server customers are limited to the processor speed and cloud node type offered by their hosting provider. While additional cores can be provisioned for a cloud tenant, constraints can occur based on occupancy and resources allocated on the node. This can limit large hosts within a cloud environment. However, if cores are available on the server, they can be deployed immediately and performance degradation is avoided. With our managed cloud solution, we at servinga ensure that you always have the maximum performance available.
Improved business agility and cost control: With colod hosting through servinga, you and your company are not tied to long hosting contracts and do not have to install and maintain expensive infrastructure on-site. With our cloud-based infrastructure, you can add and remove servers very quickly as needed. You can deploy new servers as needed when you need them. If you no longer need them, they no longer have to pay for the infrastructure. Cloud hosting enables just-in-time computing. Additional resources are immediately available as needed.
Reduced downtime due to high fault tolerance: The biggest problem with using a dedicated server is that your business will be offline if a dedicated server experiences a hardware failure. To compensate for this, organizations often use costly load-balanced clusters. Your advantage of servinga’s managed cloud: If the hardware on which your cloud infrastructure is hosted fails, this leads to virtually no downtime due to automatic recovery on other hardware.
Future-proof hardware: Cloud computing is based on a virtualized computing environment. Multiple virtual server instances run on dedicated hardware nodes. The actual server you are using is abstracted from the hardware and runs under it regardless of the hardware configuration. With servinga’s cloud-based solution, as soon as new hardware is available, the virtual server instances can be migrated from their existing hardware to the new hardware “as-is and intact” without the time-consuming and costly migration problems that a dedicated server migration can cause. It only takes a few clicks and your server is on the latest hardware and ready to take advantage of this new performance right away.
Flexible costs: Companies want to pay for what they use when they use it. This is one of the main differences between managed cloud hosting at servinga and the operation of a dedicated server. With servinga, you only pay for the services and resources you actually use.
Data protection: Your data is priceless. Therefore, the security and protection of your data is our highest priority. We operate all servers for our managed cloud hosting in Frankfurt am Main in a highly available and multiple redundant environment in compliance with the strict German and European data protection guidelines.
Every organization has its own business needs, and each application has specific workload requirements. Cloud hosting is extremely reliable because it draws its resources from several different servers – if one server fails, the other servers fill the gap. In addition, cloud hosting is flexible and scalable, so it can grow with your business. If you need more resources, just add them. The value proposition for cloud hosting is proven by studies showing that most dedicated servers use only a fraction of the actual physical resources over a longer period of time.
