I hate terminology. I especially hate terminology when people gets things confused and use it improperly. My latest annoyance is the confusion and miscommunication of the terms Cloud Computing and VPS (Virtual Private Server).
The problem is that some hosting providers use the term cloud computing synonymously with VPS, and as a result the public now thinks they are one in the same. People call me sometimes asking if I do Cloud services, and I know they are talking about VPS, but they have been convinced that Cloud services is what they need. They mainly do this because Cloud Computing sounds better then VPS, and much of the mass media lately has started to emphasize “The Cloud” as a viable product for everyone.
What is VPS?
VPS is virtualization, the concept of running multiple server OS’s inside a single physical server. If you have a small hosting environment, VPS is ideal. Your VPS will sit on a single server with 10-15 other VPS’s that belong to other customers. You and those other customers all share the resources of a single server. VPS is not Cloud, because everything resides on a single physical machine, that machine always provides your VPS with CPU cycles, RAM, and storage.
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing has been around for years. True cloud computing is the concept of a large pool of servers that work together to provide CPU cycles for computation. End-users send computational work into the cloud, the cloud processes it very quickly, and then it returns the computed result. From a fiscal standpoint, you only pay for the brief amount of time the cloud needed to work on your computations.
Cloud computing is obviously not VPS. The majority of VPS is used to host data. Data hosting has absolutely no need or application to Cloud computing since hosting is inherently very light on CPU processing.