Cloud Hosting has got a lot of popularity over the past few years. The main concept of Cloud Hosting is that the resources required for maintaining your website are spread across a cluster of servers that work together, termed as “the cloud”. This greatly reduces chances of any downtimes in case of a server malfunction. Be that as it may, when you are on the hunt to find the ideal Cloud Hosting Provider, it is necessary to have the selection criteria in place.
There are many factors that can define success or failure of Cloud Hosting for your website, but we will cover certain essentials with this post. So, let’s get right into it!
Storage Architecture Implemented: The main advantage of Cloud Hosting is reliability. The fact that hardware failure or single point corruption does not jeopardise your website uptime heavily depends on the kind of Storage Architecture. When you are auditing Cloud Hosting Providers, you should definitely check with their storage architecture. One good example of this is a Cloud Hosting Provider by the name of ResellerClub. They use Ceph Storage, which gives 3N level of redundancy. In computing, Ceph is completely distributed without a single point of failure and is scalable to the exabyte level. Ceph replicates data and makes it fault-tolerant, without the need for any specific hardware support. This makes the system both self-healing and self-managing.
Ease of CPU and RAM Scalability: Another benefit of Cloud Hosting is that its design makes it inherently easier to add more processing power and storage to your hosting plan. Since everything is distributed over the cloud, adding resources should be easy. However, certain Cloud Hosting Providers do not give the flexibility to add CPU and RAM that easily. If your website is growing and if you expect the traffic to peak, you need to have the ability to scale up your CPU cores and RAM easily. In your search for Cloud Hosting Providers, check if they provide instantaneous scalability of CPU and RAM and to what extent. That should reduce the amount of planning you need to do and cut down costs on unnecessary resources to be added even before you need them.
Speed and Caching: Nobody likes a slow website. Another high expectation you should have from your Cloud Hosting provider is what support and tools they provide to improve speed. Speed from a hosting perspective depends on 2 things; network infrastructure and caching techniques. Make sure that you do not settle for basic caching for Cloud based Hosting. There are Cloud Hosting Providers in the industry that deploy specialized caching for Cloud Hosting such as Varnish Caching. In fact, Varnish Caching is used by high-profile, high-traffic websites including Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Hindu, and even social media platforms like Facebook, and Twitter. If you visit these sites and you think they are pretty fast, then Varnish Caching definitely has a role to play in it.
How Good is the Data Centre? A lot depends on the data centre. In fact, if the data centre is not up to the mark then the Cloud Hosting Provider’s whole credibility is a question mark. When you are evaluating Cloud Hosting Providers, you should definitely look into the details of their Data Centre. Check if the data centre is stable, scalable and secure. Essentially all of your data is going to reside in the data centre, so check what kind of infrastructure and networking hardware is deployed. Verify if proper HVAC architecture is in place. All these aspects will determine the kind of uptime you can expect for your website. Do not settle for a guaranteed uptime of anything less than 99%.
Support: The way Cloud Hosting Providers stand up for you in difficult times should be the ultimate test. At one point in life each and everyone of us have had at least once been on a customer care or support call. And if you do not get what you want, it definitely gets annoying. When your entire website’s continuity depends on a support team, it is definitely something to pay keen attention to. Verify if the support staff is tech qualified and certified. Check turnaround times of calls, emails and support tickets. See if chat support is available and most definitely look for 3rd party reviews of the support team of the Cloud Hosting Providers you are evaluating.
All and all, selecting a Cloud Hosting Provider should be done with utmost care and after evaluating all the above points which go above and beyond the basic performance configurations of the Cloud Hosting Plans. Hope this helps and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
