Is Cloud Hosting Really Worth It

While the invention of cloud computing and storage is greatly beneficial for the hosting industry, it does come with a few disadvantages, even though a lot of them are pretty standard for new technology and will most probably be only temporary.

Any of the existing issues will no doubt be fixed in the following years, but users that wish to switch from the usual cluster, dedicated, VPS or shared hosting do have to take them into consideration now.

Less security. This is the single most important issue. In a cloud hosting setup, all of the servers are connected together and run one central OS, which controls everything, so all of the subsequent virtual servers are easily susceptible to any attacks and hacker intrusions. This has been a serious problem with VPS servers (and still is!), where one breached user account can relatively easily give the attacking hackers access to everything else on the actual physical server, including the ability to control it. As you may have thought, this is extremely undesirable on any machines running VPS servers and having dozens of clients on each one. Now imagine the same problem at a level about 1000 times higher. It would be extremely bad for any business and especially its privacy and security.

Stability problems. Due to cloud hosting being a relatively new technology, stability problems are unavoidable no matter how well have the first versions of the software fared on various synthetic tests, as real life usage always introduces and reveals new potential issues. And, unfortunately for some people, this means that some data will inevitably be lost or corrupted. Even with all of the available backup and restoration systems, cloud servers are still not as safe as the existing tested by time solutions like clusters and dedicated servers.

Less flexibility. This is, of course, a temporary problem (as are all of the other issues on this list), but the existing iterations of cloud hosting technologies are still new and being tested, so they do not actually offer the flexibility they say they do. With time, that will definitely change, until then users will have to deal with the bad upgradeability and migration of their cloud servers, as an example.

Higher costs. In the future, cloud hosting will be much cheaper than the current technologies, but the fact that it is still new and has to be worked on and developed further means that it costs more for the time being. Data centers have to develop or acquire the software that the cloud will run on, re-arrange the physical machines and fix any appearing problems (that will always be there). This will make all of the initial cloud hosting offers a bit more expensive. Initial adopters have to take more risks, pay higher prices and deal with more problems than the users that will come later.

I’ll repeat myself and say that these issues are temporary and will no doubt be fixed in the following years and new generations of equipment and software, but if your business seriously depends on the reliability of the hosting and your current processing power and expenses are at relatively normal levels, you could benefit more from cloud hosting by waiting a few years before making the switch.

Comments

About Author