Introduction to Cloud Computing.

‘Cloud’ is a buzz word these days and most of us have heard it many times. But what it really is? Why it is a hot topic in IT world? In this Article I will try to talk about basics of cloud and try to answer the What, Why and How ?

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the on demand delivery of computing services — including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence — over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.

How does cloud computing work?

Rather than owning their own computing infrastructure or data centres, companies can rent access to anything from applications to storage from a cloud service provider.

One benefit of using cloud-computing services is that firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it.

In turn, providers of cloud-computing services can benefit from significant economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide range of customers.

What cloud-computing services are available?

Cloud-computing services cover a vast range of options now, from the basics of storage, networking and processing power, artificial intelligence as well as standard office applications. Pretty much any service that doesn’t require you to be physically close to the computer hardware that you are using can now be delivered via the cloud

Why is it called cloud computing?

The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that’s often used to represent the internet in flowcharts and diagrams.

Why do we need Cloud computing?

To understand the need of cloud computing we need to understand traditional Data Centers.

A traditional Data Center is an infrastructure maintained by individual organisation that consists of a set of hardware, mostly servers, that runs 24/7 to keep your data stored and accessible to your team at any time.

Traditional DC has some challenges like-

1. Huge upfront cost to build infra and purchasing of servers.

2. Maintenance cost.

3. Need to plan future demand.

What are type of Clouds?

1. Public cloud

2. Private cloud

3. Hybrid cloud

Types of cloud is also termed as ‘Deployment models’.

Public Cloud — In simple terms, the public cloud is a vast array of readily available compute resources such as networking, memory, central processing unit (CPU) and storage. These resources are hosted in one of the public cloud vendor’s globally distributed and fully managed data centers and you can rent these resources to build an IT infrastructure. These basic compute resources are coupled with managed services like database servers, applications and security systems. The managed services are there for you to rent if you don’t want the hassle of setting up and managing the whole solution.

Private Cloud — Private clouds are owned and used by single private businesses and organisations. They have traditionally been physically located at the business’s own data centre using its own hardware.

However, a business may employ a third-party provider to host their private cloud on their kit. In that scenario, private cloud does have some similarities to public cloud in that the resources are in a remotely managed data center. However, although these providers will offer administrative services, they will only be able to offer a tiny percentage of the global services of a public cloud.

Hybrid Cloud — A hybrid cloud is the combination of public and private cloud elements connected securely over the internet by virtual private network (VPN) or a dedicated private channel.

For example, you could use the near unlimited storage capacity of the public cloud for storage while data processing could happen on your premises. Or you could extend your computer network in to the cloud to save having to buy in additional permanent hardware.

Multi-cloud — While the big cloud vendors would be very happy to provide all the computing needs of their enterprise customers, increasingly businesses are looking to spread the load across a number of suppliers. That means being able to connect and integrate cloud services from multiple vendors.

Why need different deployment model?

Every organisation require specific type of cloud environment based on ownership, scale, and access, as well as the cloud’s nature and purpose. The location of the servers you’re utilizing and who controls them are defined by a cloud deployment model. It specifies how your cloud infrastructure will look, what you can change, and whether you will be given services or will have to create everything yourself. Relationships between the infrastructure and your users are also defined by cloud deployment types.

Type of Cloud service models.

SaaS (Software as a service) –

Software as a service is a software licensing and distribution model in which your full-application stack is delivered as a cloud service. Your software application and its underlying infrastructure is centrally hosted on your vendor’s cloud service, and is fully maintained and updated by them. The vendor controls the entire computing stack, which you can access through a web browser. Your applications run on the cloud and you can use the vendor’s cloud services by paying a license fee or get it for free with limited access. SaaS does not require any installations or downloads in your existing computing infrastructure. This eliminates the need for installing applications separately on each device you use. Application maintenance and support is handled by the vendor.

Example- Google Workspace, Microsoft 365.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) –

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud service model in which the cloud provider hosts the infrastructure components that provide compute, storage, networking, and virtualization capabilities to the subscriber on an on-demand basis via the internet. IaaS eliminates the need for enterprises to procure, configure, or manage infrastructure themselves.

Example — Google Compute Engine, AWS EC2

PaaS (Platform as a service) –

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a cloud service model that offers users a flexible and scalable cloud platform to develop, deploy, run, and manage apps. It provides the hardware and software resources needed for cloud application development. Developers don’t have to worry about updating the operating system and development tools or maintaining hardware.

Key Terminologies/Concepts

Scalability — As user traffic increase or decrease you need high or low resource (CPU and Memory) requirement to cater the traffic. So you increase/decrease power/size of server/machine it is known as scalability.

If you increase/decrease power of same system then its vertical scaling-up/down. And If you increase/decrease no. of system then its horizontal scaling-up/down.

Elasticity — Ability of system to dynamically scale resources.

Agility — Ability of system to quickly scale resources.

High Availability — Ability of system to be available all the time.

Fault tolerant — Ability of system to be up and running if other related services are down.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

1. Completely eliminate upfront investment to setup traditional Data Center.

CAPEX- Capital expense, OPEX- Operating expense.

2. Pay only for resource that you use.

3. Eliminate need to guess capacity, resource requirement for future.

4. Flexibility — its combination of scalability, Elasticity and Agility.

5. Saves a lot of time which is very important in IT industry.

6. Organisation can go global in minutes as cloud provider have data center all across world.

Cloud Providers

There are many cloud provider

Amazon started AWS in 2006.

Google started GCP in 2009

Microsoft started Azure in 2009

Today we learnt basics of Cloud Computing, In next topic will learn Cloud with provider AWS. Till then stay tuned and have a good day. Every Feedback is appreciated it will help me improve and learn.

“P.S. If you read it till the end, Thank you!…

This article is part of AWS Career Growth Program (AWS-CGP) by Pravin Mishra

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