In the past, you may have used a hosting service provider with a separate hostname for the MySQL service. A few years back, when SSD drives were not so widely spread, hosting providers used to have a different server with only MySQL running there. This MySQL server would run on SSD drives, dramatically reducing the query execution, thus speeding up your websites in the process.
Today, as SSD drives are much more accessible, you will see hosting providers running the MySQL on the same server as everything else. As all our servers utilize SSD drives, we at HostArmada are using this type of setup. This configuration enables you to use "localhost", or it's IP address representation "127.0.0.1". These settings will work because the MySQL is hosted on the same server, and a local connection can be established.
An alternative to that will be using the hostname of the server itself. For example, if you are using the server with hostname "ger1.armadaservers.com", your MySQL hostname would be "ger1.armadaservers.com". You will typically use this variant only if you are attempting a remote MySQL connection.
