If you are looking for an affordable and reliable UK Web Hosting solution then a shared cloud hosting plan will provide you with a platform on which you can host virtual machines with which you can expect to receive up to 100% guaranteed uptime. With the shared cloud you will be provided with your own dedicated hosting environment in the form of the virtual machines that you create, but your VMs will be distributed across a cloud of clustered servers that will be shared with many other virtual machines. The benefit of choosing a shared cloud hosting service that you will be provided with full support by your web hosting company so that you can call on them for assistance with the setup and configuration of your virtual machines whenever necessary; however, you should be provided with access to a web based control panel through which you can manage the array of resources that form the backbone of your VMs as well as the state of the machines themselves so that you can start, stop or reboot them without the need to login to them directly. eUK Shared Cloud Hosting operates in much the same way that a standard VPS hosting service does with the only difference being in the architecture of the platform that supports the virtual machines; however, as a current VPS hosting customer you may wish to consider the additional benefits that the cloud can offer such as improved reliability because of the clustered nature of the hosting nodes and a level of scalability that isn’t possible to achieve with VPS servers that are hosted on a single-node configuration. The scalability of cloud hosting, particularly shared cloud hosting, has given businesses an opportunity to migrate their services from dedicated servers to low-cost cloud hosting solutions so that they are able to save money in the long run.

What features define a shared cloud hosting service?

The following features help to define shared cloud web hosting services over other forms of cloud hosting that may be offered:

• Virtual machine – the main framework of any shared cloud hosting platform is the virtual machine because virtual machines in the cloud provide businesses with an option that allows them to consolidate more expensive forms of hosting such as dedicated servers or their own on-site servers into cheaper virtual machines without having to compromise on a majority of the resources offered nor the quality of the service – virtual machines themselves can offer businesses the following cloud benefits: a dedicated hosting environment provides system administrators with their own web hosting environment in which they can install the applications that they see as being critical to their needs, whilst also being able to implement any configuration changes that could help to boost the performance of their VMs; the virtual machine also represents a highly scalable option so that shared cloud customers can increase on the existing resources of their virtual machines without the need to upgrade to the next hosting plan, introducing an element of affordability because of the tailor-made nature of a majority of shared cloud VMs
• Auto-scaling – a majority of shared cloud hosting services provide an auto-scaling feature that will automatically increase the resources that your virtual machines have access to when they are being placed under high loads, a feature that will remove the need to be constantly checking the status of your virtual machines – when you are starting a new website it can be hard to predict the number of visitors that you are going to be receiving and therefore this makes it impossible to predict the loads that are going to be placed on your virtual machines, but by enabling auto-scaling when your server is placed under loads that it’s existing resource allocations are unable to cope with, additional resources will automatically be allocated from the cloud’s resource pool to ensure that the VM doesn’t crash – even though this will cost you extra for the additional resources allocated, the resources will automatically be scaled back once the load reduces so that you are only ever paying for resources that your website is actually using
• Instant provisioning – if you require an extra virtual machine for any purpose, you can use your web-based control panel to create a new virtual machine in the cloud that utilizes the resources that you choose, this VM will then be instantly setup and configured so that you can have access to it to allow you to begin with the setup process – it is a similar story for existing virtual machines for which you may be required to order additional resources to cope with a predicted increase in demand as any additional resources that you order will be automatically assigned to your virtual machines to be used immediately.

What are the benefits to me of choosing a shared cloud solution?

For businesses or individuals, a shared cloud solution can provide you with the following benefits:

• Low-cost cloud solution – a shared cloud hosting solution provides you with a low-cost way in which you are able to tap into the benefits of and make the most of cloud web hosting – as a business you will find that the ability to consolidate your existing dedicated server or on-site servers into virtual machines will provide you with a massive saving each month and if you ever require extra dedicated environments, these are very easy to deploy and configure when compared to the process that you would have to go through to setup a new physical server
• Budgetary control – as you can tailor your cloud virtual machines to match your own specific requirements, it is easy for you to control the amount that you are spending on your virtual machines each month and if you are a small business that needs to practice budgetary control then this will provide you with a good opportunity to save money – there are some cloud solutions available that will allow you to set a cap on the amount that you spend on resources each month as a way of ensuring that you don’t exceed your budget in any way.