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Common cloud hosting terms

Cloud hosting terms 

Below is a list of cloud hosting terms which we hope will clarify commonly used cloud terminology.
 
  • Cloud
    • The term cloud references a large number of virtualized servers that together provide resilient, self-healing, highly-available resources (RAM and CPU) for virtual machines to run on. The cloud is a dynamic resource with regard to disk, memory and CPU allocation. Your server may frequently move about the cloud as resource load changes or as you grow your virtual machine. The cloud is simply the physical platform (a pool of resources) where your virtual machines are running.
  • SAN (Storage Area Network)
    • Storage device (multi-terabyte in size) used to store cloud server data separately from the physical hypervisor server.
  • Hypervisor
    • A hypervisor is the server platform where your virtual machine runs. It is the hardware that provides the virtualization engine for your virtual machine and provides access to the SAN storage device as well as the CPU and RAM pools for your virtual machine.
  • Self-healing
    • The term self-healing refers to the way the cloud maintains high virtual server uptime by providing protection against physical hardware failures. In the traditional dedicated server hosting model, your services (web site and email) run on a single piece of server hardware. This single hardware platform is also a single point of failure because all computing hardware eventually fails. If a component in your dedicated server fails, your services also fail, ie., your revenue generating website and precious email cannot be delivered.
    • In cloud hosting, your virtual server enjoys vastly better uptime. The logic running the cloud allows your virtual machine to be moved automatically and unattended any time a hardware failure is detected to any physical server within the cloud with minimal downtime. In the event of a hypervisor failure, your virtual machine will encounter a simple reboot and automatically comes back online once it has been relocated. Your downtime is reduced to minutes rather than hours when using a cloud hosting platform.
  • Self-provisioning
    • This term simply means that you, the user, can completely build, rebuild, delete and upgrade your server at any time without intervention from your hosting provider. You are in full control over your server(s) whenever you need to be. No more ordering a server and then waiting for it to be configured by a technician. Set resources, push the submit button and in 2 minutes, your server is up and running.