In the web hosting field, cloud architecture describes employing different servers for every single service that's a part of the web hosting service. In other words, your files, databases and emails will not run on the very same machine, but on separate ones. Such a setup results in higher uptime and improved overall performance because only one kind of system processes will run on the server, so the system resources will be utilized as good as possible. A number of hosting service providers these days advertise their cloud services, but what they provide is not real cloud architecture for the simple reason that the web hosting control panels they use are not designed to operate with anything different from an individual server. When everything is run on one machine, a problem with a single service may take the whole server offline. In this light, if you are searching for cloud hosting, you should check if the service you'll receive is truly a cloud one or whether this is a marketing trick.