Cloud Web is in fact Cloud Powered, and AFFORDABLE!
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Jun
07
By jason 6 comments
Although the puffy blue clouds look nice, and we have cloud names for our PLANS , we are in fact powered by and using Cloud Computing Technology . Cloud has been such a big move for us that we have migrated all of our Web Hosting customers to it, free of charge.
Taken from our cloud technology page:
"Lowest costs, flexible scaling, increased reliability, and the decoupling of management at the operating system and application levels are just a few of the main benefits that Cloud Technology provide us. Single points of failure are eliminated with Cloud Web from not only the software, but hardware levels as well. We can deploy, scale, or migrate entire servers in just a few moments, which is much faster than a traditional Web Hosting environment. No longer are Web Hosting "servers" tied to a physical machine. When you have an account with Cloud Web, your account is instantly and constantly replicated across multiple machines and multiple storage locations. If your website is running on a physical server that crashes, it is instantly restarted on one that available. You may have read about massive cloud failures with other companies, however many of those were due to a single point of failure on the underlying engine. Each one of our private clouds run off of an underlying engine or distribution server which manages the applications running on each cloud and physical server. In Cloud Web, we replicate this engine in real time across multiple physical machines so in the event of a failure, the backup engine is automatically and instantly restarted on another server. Our custom implementation provides the benefits a cloud provides, but environments are also separated into smaller, scalable applications similar to that of a traditional Shared Web Hosting provider."
At first glance, all of this sounds expensive! But, you say "Lowest costs" so how is that so? There are in fact companies out there charging $149/mo as a starting price for this type of service, but we're not. Yes, we're duplicating the environments so that means more servers and more switches. Yes, we're paying a lot of software licensing and support fees. Yes, we're paying more for training and engineering abilities to architect, operate, and maintain our private cloud's. However, Cloud is also providing other benefits as listed above, so other costs have gone down, and we're able to utilize our hardware in a much more efficient manner instead of wasting countless resources. At the end of the day, we're able to offer this service for a price that is truly AFFORDABLE.
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"As a home-based, freelance writer, my website is occupational oxygen. Without it, I'm dead. I'd been through several unsatisfying and downright aggravating hosts before I found Cloud Web. Not only have they saved me lots of money -- $20 a month -- they are, like oxygen, so reliable I take them for granted. I only wish Cloud Web could run my cable, my DSL, my phone and other technological aspects that are constantly intruding into my working hours. Cloud Web's the best."
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How does CloudWeb handle Sudden MAJOR spikes in traffic?
Hi Jason,
I am the webmaster for a dozen or more sites, several of which experience frequent VERY LARGE spikes in traffic that at times knock down the sites. How does CloudWeb handle issues such as this to guarantee that, regardless of traffic, everyone will be able to access the sites during high peak traffic anomalies?
Thanks
Jim
RE: How does CloudWeb handle Sudden MAJOR spikes in traffic?
Jim,
We are in the process of updating the site with new information on our services and scalability. The Cloud Web Sites platform is geared towards a fast and reliable way to launch websites. It is by nature still a shared hosting platform. The Cloud Web Servers platform are fully customizable Linux or Windows servers that scale as well. For high-profile sites and enterprise level hosting we have a Cloud Web Clusters platform. This is a complete custom server cluster with true high availability and near limitless vertical scaling. For example, we're building out a Cloud right now for for a customer which is a high-profile site. We're taking it from 28 servers to 12, adding many layers of redundancy and a true high available infrastructure across the entire platform from the firewalls, networking, load balancing, Linux and Windows web servers, MSSQL and MySQL databases, mail servers, etc. For large infrastructure's this is done at a high level and is by nature more complex than the Cloud Web Sites platform. You would also have complete control over the infrastructure. It is built to spec. We are taking complete stand-alone infrastructure's and turning them into a custom designed Private Cloud Data Center.
More selling points of clouds (clear skies policy?)
I'd love to understand more of your Cloud and why I gain from it. Am I not still reliant on one point of business? Is your private cloud any different from a hosting company that has servers in several different locations? If you were utilising space on other companies computers (Amazon, Google - who knows?) renting space as and when your main software switches our sites back and forth then that would be one thing. I'd still be reliant on your 'main' admin computers for the distribution of the files.
Do I gain by not having my sites located in one place, say, Chicago. Are they in fact in several places, right next to Singapore, UK, Australia thus minimising access times? Perhaps I haven't quite grasped how nameservers/IP addresses and locations of files work!
Are there any green savings here to market?
I'll go off and do more research - so far have found very little!
RE: More selling points of clouds (clear skies policy?)
In Cloud, as well as any hosting environment many things are relative. What I assume you are referring to by your question is something commonly referred to as geo-redundant. That in itself is something that is a different feature, and may or may not be tied into Cloud. I have seen geo-redundancy without Cloud and with it, so this in itself is not a required feature of Cloud according to Wikipedia's definition of Cloud Computing. There are actually very few companies who provide true geo-redundant services that are seamless to the end user in a web hosting or reseller web hosting market. Do companies like Amazon and Google do geo-redundancy for their own websites? Yes but that is a whole other beast. We're talking about very large scale installations that require hundreds if not thousands of servers and it is their own custom application. Afaik, I have never seen a company doing what we do and be truly geo-redundant as well.
Geo-redundancy to be TRULY effective requires a combination of technologies which typically involve load balancing, dynamic ip routing of IP address's, data replication, among other things. Basically if any physical site goes down for whatever reason entirely, then the infrastructure and applications needs to be designed for it and will remain up with absolutely no intervention from the provider. It needs to be instant, and automatic. If it's not, then it's more or less a disaster recovery service.
Having sites in other locations for the purpose of minimizing access times (latency) is also something else entirely.
With our infrastructure you mentioned "main admin computers for the distribution of the files". In this blog post we also mentioned "In Cloud Web, we replicate this engine in real time across multiple physical machines so in the event of a failure, the backup engine is automatically and instantly restarted on another server." So this is also redundant.
Cloud Web is a web hosting service that provides web hosting services, but with the benefits of Cloud. We use common web hosting software such as cPanel.
Yes there are green savings to market as posted above "and we're able to utilize our hardware in a much more efficient manner instead of wasting countless resources". Basically, because cloud is a dynamic environment then we are able to utilize more of a physical servers resources before moving onto the next one. In traditional hosting you always want to leave an adequate amount of free resources for growth and bursting abilities.
Cloud Technology
Hello, and thank you for the comment. If I am understanding your question properly then as stated on the Cloud Technology page we do use a Cloud software platform which is 3tera's (now CA) AppLogic. However, we own the network, hardware, servers, other software environments, contributions and environment though so we are not using another company's infrastructure, it is our own.
If that is not what you meant please let me know and I will clarify.
Whose infrastructure are you operating from?
I'm glad to hear you aren't another provider who just slipped "Cloud" in the name, but could you please tell us whose actual Cloud infrastructure you are leveraging and operating from?
It would be great to know before signing up and I would personally like the transparency. Thanks!