There's a Lot of Power to Be Found in the Cloud
Understanding a powerful new technology
One of the most interesting things about cloud computing is how often it's talked about. While, at the same time, it's just as frequently undefined within the context of that discussion. It's one of those technologies that everyone's heard of but not a lot of people really understand in a practical sense. And this is a shame because it's usually the best match for the needs of anyone looking for a web server. But this brings up the most important point. People need to know exactly why cloud servers are such a great match for their needs. It's often best to begin by looking at a metaphor. After all, the computing world is heavily based on various different metaphors. Files are named that because they're analogous to files within a filing cabinet. A server is named after the fact that it delivers items to a person like a server at a restaurant delivering one's meal. And a cloud server is named such because it acts quite a bit like a cloud in the sky.
Clouds in the sky and in the server room
Clouds in the sky are in many ways more of a pattern than a physical object. It's a collection of water droplets that are attracted to each other to create a larger mass. Water might go out of the cloud or go into it. And the cloud will grow or shrink accordingly. A cloud server acts in a similar way. It's a larger collection of web servers that one signs up for at a cloud server provider. It can have powered added or removed from the larger collection of servers as needed. This is what makes it such a great match for web hosting. The usage of a site can go up or down at any given time. And the cloud server will be able to scale up or down to better match the usage. This means that a cloud server will be able to stand up to usage that would crash a normal server.