Top Rated Hosting

One of the primary reasons a company might turn to cloud hosting is the perception that it will save money. With rising energy costs, the demands for faster and more powerful hardware, and the cost of maintaining in-house servers, cloud computing seems like an economical choice. That perception may or may not be reality, and that largely depends on the business.

Over the course of five years, you may spend several thousand dollars on new server hardware and also have to pay for power and bandwidth. Still, you could conceivably end up paying more over the course of five years, even with low fees from a cloud hosting provider. That may make you wonder why so many people are moving to the cloud to save money.

This is why your company’s standing or your individual circumstance can determine whether or not you move to the cloud. For example, if you run a small business or even run a web business all by yourself, it may not be feasible for you to pay thousands of dollars for server space, the hardware itself, and the bandwidth to connect it. That may leave you with the only option of finding some type of co-location or lease deal, and even then you will still have to manage it yourself or pay for managed hosting.

In the above scenario, cloud hosting will not only save you money; it may be your only viable choice when you need a remotely hosted platform that is ready to go, out of the box. If all you need is an un-managed server with only basic support, you would probably not be reading this article. The cloud is ideal for those who either have no desire or cannot afford to maintain big hardware and complex software. For those people, the savings are incalculable.

The Economics of Cloud Hosting

When you decide to run your applications from the cloud, it is important to understand what you are getting. The term “cloud” often conjures up notions of some obscure technological phenomenon that is unique and completely antonymous to web hosting. In reality, however, the two are intrinsically linked. As one IT expert complained, “There is no cloud. It’s just a bunch of servers.”

Cloud deployments can take many forms, and I do not claim to be an expert on any of them. But this introduction to them should hopefully give you an idea about what to expect when you dive into the cloud.

1. Shared Virtual Server – Just like a virtual private server, many cloud providers will offer you a cloud service or platform that is virtualized. This saves them and ultimately you money. In this model, you will generally share resources with other customers. When you hear about the “public cloud”, this is usually what it entails.
2. Dedicated Virtual Server – This model is like the previous one, but the provider will dedicate a certain percentage of system resources to your cloud service or platform.
3. Private Dedicated Server – In this scenario, everything is yours. The entire server is dedicated to your applications. You may still use virtualization, but it is all under your control. This is often called a “private cloud”.

Regardless of which type of deployment you choose, you will still have the support of your cloud service provider. This is essentially what separates it from regular, unmanaged web hosting. Whatever service, software, or platform the provider hosts for you will be fully supported, updated, and maintained for you according to the terms of service.

Cloud Deployment Options for Web Applications

For decades vendor lock-in has been one of the fears that businesses, large and small, have faced. The problem frequently occurs when a company invests a great deal of money in a proprietary software product that only one vendor develops and supports. As long as the company intends to keep using the software and paying for support, it must go through the same vendor.

Problems arise when the company becomes unsatisfied with the vendor or simply wants to switch to another software package with better features or lower cost. Suddenly, your IT people realize that everything, including all of your data, is locked in a proprietary system that the vendor will not reveal to you. Moreover, if that vendor stops supporting the software or even goes out of business, you have no way of recovering your data.

Cloud computing has eliminated many problems related to software vendors, but the problem of vendor lock-in persists. In fact, one could argue that it may even be worse with cloud systems since the vendor keeps all of your data on their servers. There are, however, some practical ways to avoid cloud vendor lock-in.

1. Use an open cloud platform – The strength of the cloud is that the provider offers its data center facilities, IT expertise, maintenance, and tech support. The software itself is not necessarily any better than the alternatives. Therefore, using open software does no damage to the provider but helps the customer.
2. Have a backup plan – Some cloud providers will actually send you physical disks with your data on them, upon your request. Others may even give you access to off-site backups that you control. Keep your options open, and always prepare for the worst.

Ultimately, your business and your data is and always will be yours. Make sure you do not sign it away to anyone else, even a cloud provider you trust. Play smart and keep your investments safe.

How to Avoid Cloud Vendor Lock-in

Your decision to use cloud hosting for your business or other organization is not the end of the decision-making process. In many ways, it is a beginning. The next phases of the process involves deciding the type of cloud computing services you want and choosing the right provider for your needs. Public cloud providers may offer similar or even identical services, but they are not all equal. In order to determine which one is the best at what you need it to do, you should evaluate the provider’s cloud performance

You have probably heard the stories of cloud services having major outtages, but realistically, this could happen to  any hosting company or to any private data center. Factors you can actually evaluate, however, are:

• the length of time it takes a provider to resolve technical problems
• the quality and security of the data centers
• the connection speed and reliability of its websites (performance benchmarking and network reliability)
• service comparisons with other cloud providers
• usability tests

Many cloud providers will not disclose detailed hardware information or infrastructure details about their data centers. With the right testing tools, however, you can evaluate them without knowing the specifics. There are many third-party services that evaluate cloud providers, and you can also find plenty of online reviews from businesses similar to yours.

If the providers you evaluate are willing to let you use a trial of their cloud software, you can run your own usability tests to get a better idea about which services are more user friendly for yourself and/or your  employees.

Evaluating cloud services can sometimes be difficult without actively subscribing to each one. But with a little digging and possibly some outside help, you should be able to come to a sound conclusion.

Evaluating Public Cloud Performance

Cloud computing and other cloud-related words are the talk of the IT world right now. Businesses frequently flirt with the concept, but some shy away from the cloud when they consider the perceived security weaknesses. According to a CSO survey, business executives are reluctant to jump into the cloud because they feel as though they do not understand cloud security.

The basic assumption about cloud computing is that it inherently invites the same security problems that any form of web hosting would, while also leaving you at the mercy and whims of the cloud service provider. Both are true. With cloud computing, your platform and/or services are hosted, and your service provider ultimately controls the strength of the system’s security. Because of that reality, the security strength you enjoy differs from one service provider to another.

Cloud computing has attracted millions of users in consumer and enterprise markets, which means that people all over the world use the cloud every day at work and at home. Despite its ubiquity, the cloud is still relatively unregulated, leaving it up to the service provider to determine the quality and safety of the available services. This has prompted some policy makers to call for worldwide cloud security regulations, something that would require government consensus and service provider compliance.

Ultimately, it is up to you to determine if a cloud service provider has secure data centers, servers, and software. That requires investigation of the services and research about the technology the providers use. Just as you would research the security of commercial software, so too must you evaluate cloud software based on similar standards.

How Secure Is Cloud Hosting?

One of the features of many cloud services gives you is the ability to run web-based applications that are hosted remotely on the provider’s servers. Normally, to use these apps, you would open a web browser and point it to the service provider’s website. Such is the case with Google Apps, Zoho Office, and Microsoft Office 365. Alternatively, you can configure services like these to use your own domain name to make them seem more integrated into your website.

Your DNS settings may vary, but the method for changing them is pretty much the same. For your web public-facing frontend, you would use CNAME to setup an alias domain. In most cases, this will be a subdomain of your website. For example, if my domain is tavisonline.com, my cloud office applications might be offered at office.tavisonline.com. In the CNAME configuration, it would look like this:

office.tavisonline.com.	CNAME	office.cloudprovider.name

Any users that point their browser to the domain you have configured will reach your cloud applications. You can do the same thing for cloud-based mail services. For example, if you want email sent to your domain to be transfered to mailboxes hosted by your cloud service provider, your DNS MX records would need to look something like this:

10	mailsvc.cloudprovider.name

The number at the beginning is the priority, and destinations listed at the highest priority (lowest number) will be used first. In this way, you can still use your local mail server at a lower priority if you need it.

Whether or not your cloud provider offers domain services depends on the arrangement you have with them, and prices may vary. If you are unsure if you can use your own domain, you should contact them for clarification. DNS configurations will vary, so you should consult their documentation before making any changes.

How to Configure Your DNS to Use Cloud Apps

VMWare has been providing the IT world with virtualization solutions for several years, but it is not surprising that the company has now branched out into cloud computing. Through this natural progression, VMWare developed Cloud Foundry, a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) that puts it in direct competition with Microsoft Windows Azure, Red Hat OpenShift, and other such PaaS solutions.

One unique feature that distinguishes Cloud Foundry from VMWare’s other products is that it is open source, released under an Apache License 2.0. This gives developers and system administrations the maximum amount of flexibility to develop on a cloud platform.

VMWare is currently offering three products: CloudFoundry.com, a service that gives you immediate access to the cloud platform, CloudFoundry.org, a community site where you can download the open source software for your own deployment, and Micro CloudFoundry, a stand-alone version for your PC or MAC that allows you to locally configure your platform and then later export those settings to a working system.

Red Hat is the leading provider of Linux server solutions, namely Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The overwhelming majority of web hosting providers offer RHEL servers or servers that run CentOS, a RHEL derivative.

Red Hat’s OpenShift platform as a service provides a development platform that supports a wide range of languages and tools, such as Perl, Java, PHP, Ruby, and Python. OpenShift offers three deployment services: Express, Flex, and Power. With each, it is easy to deploy your own applications to the cloud. Red Hat OpenShift has not yet been released to the open source community, but Red Hat plans to do so.

PaaS takes the cloud to its next evolutionary step, moving beyond the restrictions on customization of SaaS (software as a service) into an open development environment where users can create their own worlds in the cloud.

Open Platform as a Service (PaaS) Solutions

The Benefits of a Cloud Application Platform

The traditional model for business applications are either locally-installed software on individual machines or local client software that accesses server-installed applications. In both instances, the user machine is required to have specific software installed to make the applications run. To run applications completely in the cloud is an old concept with a new name, but it is gaining popularity.

Most cloud applications run inside web browsers. That means the user does not need anything extraordinary installed, and any device with a browser can have access to all the business applications the user needs to work. Browser-based applications have been around for quite a while, but web technology has advanced significantly in the past ten years, greatly increasing the ability of developers to deliver web apps that feel like desktop apps.

The current cloud technology requires the user to work and also save data in the cloud, but this will eventually change, as HTML5 will also give users the option for local storage. This makes it easier for users to pick up right where they left off, even after closing the browser window accidentally.

In the case of public clouds, the application remains in the hands of the provider. The user does not have to worry about maintenance, upgrades, or any backend issues. It also means that the provider has total control and may use proprietary data storage or other methods that might make it difficult to migrate to another system.

In a private cloud, the business has an exclusive server (either remote or local) that hosts its web applications. The provider may still have ultimate control over the applications, but this is not a necessary requirement. Some businesses may prefer this, especially if the provider allows for more customization.

Running Your Applications in the Cloud

You have undoubtedly heard about cloud hosting or cloud computing, but you may not quite understand some of the terminology people involved with it use.  Some of the terms are not very well defined, but this quick guide should give you some basic understanding.

1. Software as a Service (SaaS) – This term primarily refers to the purchasing method for cloud services.  Rather than paying traditional vendor license fees, the customer pays a subscription fee or a consumption fee for as long as the service is used. Ownership of the software remains in the hands of the provider.
2. Cloud Platform – With a cloud platform, the service provider only lays the foundation: an operating system, server applications, and a development environment.  The customer then installs or develops the necessary applications.
3. Private Cloud – This is where the lines between the cloud and regular web hosting start to blur.  A private cloud is a dedicated server that the customer uses exclusively.  The platform and applications, however, are still maintained by the cloud provider.  Some even extend this term to dedicated servers owned and operated by the customer, which seems to defeat the purpose of using the term “cloud”.
4. Hybrid Cloud – In some situations, the customer may need both a local server running specific applications and a cloud service that hosts additional applications, files, or databases.  In such a situation, the two are often configured for interoperability.
5. Internal Cloud - When an organization hosts its own cloud server for the internal use of its departments, it is called an internal cloud.
6. Consumption-based model – Users pay only for the amount of services they consume.  For example, for cloud storage, they may pay for bandwidth on a per-gigabyte basis.
7. Subscription-based model – Users pay a monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, or annual subscription fee for services.  Like traditional licenses, the fees may vary according to the number of users.

As you can tell from the above terminology, there is really no reason to be mystified by the cloud.  Although the name sounds like something otherworldly, it is actually quite simple.  As a wise man once said, “There is no cloud.  It’s just a bunch of servers.”

A Quick Guide to Cloud Terminology