AWS 101 : What is a cloud computing☁️😕? Can you explain it an easy way ?

Hello guys, Cloud is the latest buzz that has been capturing our technical discussion from a long time. Yet many of us are not exactly aware about it and how it affects us. For many of us the understanding of the term “Cloud” typically means a an online storage service. Is that it ???

Worry not. I’m here to tell you all about Cloud and AWS that is there to know. By the end of this multipart series you will be well versed to understand all about cloud and its working and specially AWS (Don’t worry we will discuss what is AWS).

We will be having bite sized articles, so that we have little pieces of information that we can digest easily.

We will see today:

1. What is Cloud ?
2. Some Cloud providers.
3. Types of Clouds
4. Cloud Deployment Models

So lets begin….

“Every kid coming out of Harvard, every kid coming out of school now thinks he can be the next Mark Zuckerberg, and with these new technologies like cloud computing, he actually has a shot.”

~ Marc Andreessen, Co-founder of Netscape, Board Member of Facebook

So what is a cloud ?

Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe data centers available to many users over the Internet. ~Wikipedia

Confused ??? Lets make it a bit simple to understand.

Lets say you have to build an infrastructure for your company you would need a lot of resources. Build servers that do data storage, computing etc. But that is a costly option for a company just starting. Isn’t it ? Also you are not sure on the exact resource requirements. You may end up buying resource more or less than required.

So we have cloud providers like Amazon, Google, IBM etc. that provide you all these resources with just a fractional cost. Also it comes with “Pay-As-You-Go” model, which reduces your overall cost to get up and running.

Pay-as-you-go pricing model is when, the more you use the more you pay. For businesses who need to scale up and down depending on demand, this Cloud Computing pricing model gives them the flexibility to do so with ease.

What are some of the Cloud Providers ?

There are many cloud providers in the market. The most famous is Amazon’s AWS followed by Google’s GCP and Microsoft’s Azure. Each one of them provides usually similar services the only difference is they may provide services for some specialized use cases as well.

Types of Cloud

There are four types of cloud:
1. Public cloud
2. Private cloud
3. Hybrid cloud
4. Community cloud

• Public Cloud — Whole computing infrastructure is located on the premises of a cloud computing company that offers the cloud service.
• Private Cloud — Hosting all your computing infrastructure yourself and is not shared. The security and control level is highest while using a private network.
• Hybrid Cloud — using both private and public clouds, depending on their purpose. You host your most important applications on your own servers to keep them more secure and secondary applications elsewhere.
• Community Cloud — A community cloud is shared between organizations with a common goal or that fit into a specific community (professional community, geographic community, etc.).

Cloud Deployment Models

Cloud computing services basically fall into 3categories: Which are

Iaas(Infrastructure as a service), PaaS(Platform as a service), SaaS(Software as a service (SaaS))

1. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS): It is the most basic category of cloud computing services one can opt for. It allows you to rent IT infrastructure for example a server or a VM from a cloud provider on a Pay-as-you-go basis. Example : Rackspace, Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE) etc.
2. Platform as a service (PaaS) : It refers to the supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering and managing software applications. It is primarily designed to quickly create web or mobile apps, so you need not to worry about setting and managing the infrastructure of servers, storage, network and databases needed for development. Example: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku etc.
3. Software as a service (SaaS): It is a method for delivering software applications over the Internet as per the demand and on a subscription basis. So SaaS helps you host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure and handle any maintenance (software upgrades and security patching). Example: Google Apps, Dropbox, GotoMeetings etc.

Phewww!!! That was too much information. Well this is all for the introduction to cloud.

In the next post we will see dig into a bit more on what are the cloud services provided by Amazon and will learn more about each.

Till then stay connected. Keep Learning Keep Growing.