Defining The Cloud

Technologists tend to provide an overly-complicated answer to the question “what is the cloud?”. In the context of cloud hosting there is no physical object which you can point to and label as the cloud. It’s more of an electronic structure where data is stored over many different computers and served up via a network connection, typically the Internet.

When you get into cloud hosting these server farms behave as one large storage space and processor. The actual website data(such as HTML/CSS files, images, etc.) is spread out over a cluster of hard drives connected together, much like one virtual disk with tremendous capacity. Server clusters can provide a cloud setup with literally unlimited machines to run through. You could also build a cloud space with just 5-10, so the methodology is scalable to boot.

The Cloud Vs. The Internet

Is there really a difference between these terms? The short answer is yes, but not by much. Reference to the cloud is usually a reference to one small piece of the whole Internet. But if you take into consideration that the Internet behaves as one macroscopic cloud system you start to see the idea more clearly.

In truth the infrastructure we’re building today may be the underlying framework for our Internet of the future. Bandwidth speeds are only increasing while the price of data storage and transfer is dropping rapidly. The price of electricity is still enough to deter your average Joe from setting up his own personal cloud network, but for how long?

The Internet and cloud hosting have both grown out of a necessity for connectivity between humans. It’s a desire to simplify the most confusing aspects of our daily lives. I can imagine a future where the entire world population controls data flow to and from the cloud, a global Internet hierarchy. We will be free to connect and share data, stories, ideas, and most importantly communication!

Division Of Computing Power
You may be wondering how the combination of multiple server environments will scale as any cloud system grows in size. The distribution of power and storage capacity is often controlled by a backend software OS/system.

The server admin would be able to log into the backend via terminal and check CPU load of all the machines, along with other vital system information. This process is called virtualization which provides a layer of abstraction between the software and hardware components. Cloud server administrators can easily optimize the cluster for storage efficiency, optimal energy usage, data backups and more.

In the long run it’s also a much cheaper solution than virtual or physical server plans. And since not every customer needs a server setup you can take on additional charges as a Content Delivery Network(CDN). Customers only pay for the bandwidth they use to deliver images, streaming music, and other large media files. Utility computing as this is referenced gained a lot of popularity from