The idea of shared cloud hosting has been introduced to provide small businesses with an affordable yet highly reliable web hosting service by giving them their own dedicated virtual machines in the cloud that are tailored to fit their requirements exactly. Although you are going to be hosted in a cloud with other users when choosing shared cloud hosting, the clustered nature of the cloud and all of the servers that form the basis of a reliable cloud service will help to ensure that your virtual machines perform as you would expect them to so that you can expect 100% guaranteed uptime if you manage your own VMs professionally.

With eUK Cloud Hosting virtual machine you will have the flexibility to develop a web hosting service around your own requirements because any good web hosting provider will allow you to specify the resources that you need from a virtual machine in a shared cloud as opposed to offering pre-defined web hosting plans; such an arrangement benefits all sides because it means customers will be getting good value for money by only paying for what they need, whilst this allows web hosting companies to be sure that they never have spare capacity going to waste. Scalability is also built into the shared cloud, with the option to have the resources of your virtual machines automatically scaled when the demand placed on them increases as to ensure that your virtual machines don’t fail simply because the demand outstripped resource availability; you can often set a cap on the amount that is billed to your account using this method, but most services will also scale back any added resources once demand has dropped to ensure that you aren’t going to be billed for resources that are no longer necessary for the operation and functionality of your website.

What are the benefits of the shared cloud?

An eUK cloud hosting plan can provide you small businesses with the following benefits

• Pricing – shared cloud hosting has been designed to provide small businesses with an affordable route in the cloud web hosting game by providing them with an environment in which they can setup virtual machines that fit their budgets – unit prices for resources in a shared cloud environment are very cheap which allows customers to get the best value for money, guaranteeing that they can put together a virtual machine that is powerful enough to serve their website using the required applications and services without having exceeding their budget – if you require additional resources for your virtual machine(s) at a later date then these can be ordered in individual units as per your needs so that you only have to pay for what you need as opposed to having to upgrade your entire web hosting plan which could leave you paying for resources that aren’t going to be of any use to you – for businesses that need to keep to their budget there is also the option to add credit to your account as you wish so that you can credit your monthly budget for spending as you wish, allowing you to monitor the amount that you pay for cloud web hosting, alternatively you can opt for traditional billing methods whilst having a cap in place on your account to make sure that if you have auto-scaling enabled for example, this doesn’t push you over budget
• Reliability – a majority of shared cloud web hosting plans will be provided with a 100% uptime guarantee meaning that there will not be any unscheduled downtime in a monthly period and even if there is any scheduled maintenance to be performed, this will be done in a way that doesn’t impact on the performance of the cloud or the uptime of the individual virtual machines – if you are going to be running your business’s website of a shared cloud virtual machine then you will grow to appreciate the uptime rate that you are provided with because in most cases downtime will result in lost business and this isn’t going to benefit any parties – in order for the uptime rate to be attainable it is also down to you to manage your virtual machines properly so that there are no internal software issues that could be a cause for concern
• Scalability – in an age where more and more people are using the internet for different purposes and start-ups are popping up all the time, it can be impossible to predict the level of traffic that your website is going to receive, especially at the beginning – the shared cloud has scalability built in at the core because virtual machines can be automatically scaled which means that additional resources can be called upon for when the VM is experiencing high demand, ensuring that the VM won’t crash because of a lack of resources – the resources of the VM will then be scaled back once demand has dropped to reinforce the idea that you only ever pay for what you require.

How does shared cloud hosting differ from private cloud hosting?

With the shared cloud you will be hosted across a cluster of servers that will be shared with many other virtual machines; however, just because you are sharing the hosting nodes it doesn’t mean that you will receive a poor service as each virtual machine is its own dedicated hosting environment meaning that a majority of issues will be kept isolated in the environment of each VM. Shared cloud hosting plans are designed to be affordable and usable by even the most inexperienced of users.

With a private cloud solution a business will be given its own cluster of cloud servers that it can use how it wishes. Unlike a shared cloud, there will be no-one else using the cloud meaning that you can setup as many virtual machines as necessary. A private cloud solution is more suitable for businesses looking to migrate their dedicated and on-site servers into a single solution to save money and to improve the management of individual services; this is reflected in the cost of the private cloud.

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