Cloud Computing Introduction and 1st Step Towards Amazon Web Services
In this article, I will be mainly focusing on the basic introduction of cloud computing, we will try to understand step by step approach towards cloud computing and this is my first article heading towards the Amazon Web Services which will be future of the IT industries. Many people had asked me is there any pre-requisite to start career in cloud computing or to learn cloud computing. For that, folks and for everyone I wanna make it clear to step towards cloud computing, no any hard and fast pre-requisite is required in terms of programming language. Programming language is something you will be learning at the middle of your cloud computing journey, don’t worry too much on this part. I will walk you through how to learn? Which programming language to learn? Where exactly you need to apply programming languages logic in terms of cloud computing? Everything step by step I will guide you as I told you earlier this is just starting of your journey. Only one thing I expect you all to learn i.e, basics of computer devices and this is must. If I talk about basics of computer devices i mean computer hardware like what is CPU, RAM, ROM,OPERATING SYSTEM(LINUX,WINDOWS), MEMORY, STORAGE(only definition) and i am sure if you are reading this article you know these all things at very basic level because this will help you to relate all the cloud computing resources with your basic understanding of computer devices.
Moving ahead first i will explain you cloud computing at very basic level with some real time example. To understand this term we will break this term and try to understand what its meaning is? Cloud+Computing makes the Cloud computing and Cloud means ‘internet’ and computing means ‘computer’, so at very high level we can say that the computer which is present somewhere, we don’t know where exactly it is and we are accessing that computer with the help of internet. At very basic level we don’t need to know where the computer is really present but as soon as we move forward we will introduce a keyword called “Data center”, this we will understand latter. By term computer i mean the basic components of computer i.e CPU, RAM, ROM, HARD DRIVE etc.
I will give you very basic example, suppose if you are planning to buy a laptop what will be your first step?, You will be searching for the answers of some questions like which company laptop i need to go ahead like HP, DELL, LENOVO or anything. What is my workload, i mean basically why you need laptop Is it for playing games? To make Youtube videos? For learning activities? and many more, based on this you will be planning like if your purpose is to play game definitely you need high processor, if your intention is to make Youtube videos definitely you will be looking for some high GPU’S or Graphic cards or many more. Simply for different different purposes you need different configured systems. After deciding this you go to market and you used to get the system which consists of CPU, RAM, ROM, HARD DISK, Operating System and and all different different components. In this case your computer is with you so you don’t need any internet to access your computer resource, because you have the hardware part of it, But in the case of cloud computing you don’t have the hardware resource, that hardware resource is present somewhere else what is known as Data center. So to access that resource virtually you need internet connection.
Now we have understand the basic difference between the computer what we have in our home and what is present over data center. Now I will walk you through some of the advantages of the computer at cloud over computer at home. Some of them are listed below:
- If you have Computer at home once, it will be very difficult if you want to increase your Hard Drive or increase its memory. I am not saying its not possible it is possible. To make that happen you need to pay more you need to go to market again you need to search for the storage vendor, memory vendor, all together you need to put lots of efforts to make it happen. Now thinking about the Computer at cloud if you want to increase your RAM, ROM, storage or anything you are just away with one click. Its very easy task i can say only the thing is required is the active internet connection, I will walk you through the step by step how to do these over the cloud latter sometime. Now I just want to keep a note that it is very easy task to get resource or to increase or decrease your computer power over the cloud
- Second, suppose you have developed something or you have any products and you want to open your own startup and you want to share your products with the whole world you cant do at your local laptop, I mean whatever you will be deployed at your local laptop, the access of that resource or product will be limited to you only so in that case you need to go with the cloud or any other on-premise vendor. Coming to the deployment part at high level just understand, you are reading this blog or anything like you are accessing Youtube or you are opening the google.com, You are able to do that because these all things are deployed over the cloud on any server, server is nothing but computer at high level.
I think now we have understood the basics of cloud computing at very high level. Now we will try to understand the exactly what we need to do to get the computer over cloud. So, to get these computers over cloud we need to first search or select the cloud provider vendors. From vendors we can ask for the resources whatever we need. Don’t get tensed or don’t worry we don’t have to visit vendors personally or we don’t need to pay anything to the people to get the cloud over the computer. Its very easy task. There are many vendors present in the IT market such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Digital ocean or many more. I had listed some of the market leading vendors. You need to select any one vendor among what i had listed all will provide you the same things and all use to come with their own plans like Amazon used to give you 1 years free for some limit amount of compute. Microsoft used to give you something around $13500 amount for free once you choose to go ahead with Microsoft, Google has their some own plans, like that each and every vendors has their own benefits but at high level if you had started to learn cloud computing everything is free for you until u didn’t get expert in this field believe my word.
Amazon provide AWS(Amazon Web Services). Google provides Google cloud platform(GCP), Microsoft provides Azure. So basically these are the places from where you can buy your computer that is present in the cloud. You are free to choose any vendor based on your interest, but i will be using the AWS(Amazon Web Services) for all my demo works or to explain you each and every components or resources of cloud computing and side by side I will be telling you the optional thing how you can use over the Azure as I have both understanding of AWS and Azure.
Now coming to the most important part and this is the best part to dive little deep in the cloud computing concepts. Just wonder who are the people or who is responsible to give you the resources as soon as you had ordered from any vendor. I mean suppose you had choose AWS and now you had created a free account over AWS and now you had ordered the computer also(don’t go in deep like how to order and all just think you had ordered), how you get that resource available to you? This is very important question. There is something called Hypervisor which is responsible to allocate you the storage, memory, RAM, ROM, type of you instance whatever you had ordered, after ordering might you had reordered for changing the configuration you can easily do that over cloud and for that thanks to hypervisor. Again you don’t need to know the detail of hypervisor now how it works how it used to schedule and all. AWS uses XEN hypervisor to accomplish their provisioning. Only you need to keep this thing in your mind as of now.
We have understood basic high level how cloud computing works and who all are the vendors of the cloud.Now we will dive little deep to understand the basic architecture of the cloud computing and this is needed because just think in Information Technology industry we are building a solution for the people and we are making the common people lives more and more easy with the help of these modern technology. Coming to the modern technology if you want to know about data science or machine learning step by steps you can search for more article that is written by me. Parallely, I am writing articles for the Machine learning or Data science interested candidates also, and finally my goal will be how you can make most out of data science or machine learning model on the cloud computing platforms. Now coming to the architecture of the cloud computing.
Cloud computing architecture is divided into two flavors based on provider and based on consumer . Providers are nothing but the vendors who used to provide you the resources and consumers are the people who used to consume the services. First we will look on the basis of providers.
Based on providers Cloud computing is divided into 3 categories first one Public Cloud 2nd one private cloud and 3rd one Hybrid cloud. We will look all these 3 types at very high level
- Public Cloud: A cloud is called a “public cloud” when the services are rendered over a network that is open for public use. Public cloud services may be free, however, security consideration may be substantially different for services (applications, storage, and other resources) that are made available by a service provider for a public audience and when communication is effected over a non-trusted network. AWS, Azure or GCP what we are using these all belongs to public cloud. All the customization or UI part will e same for all the public cloud users.
- Private Cloud: Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third party, and hosted either internally or externally.Undertaking a private cloud project requires significant engagement to virtualize the business environment, and requires the organization to reevaluate decisions about existing resources. Technically speaking there may be little or no difference between public and private cloud architecture, only one thing you need to keep in mind, the data centers of the private cloud is separate from one of the data centers of the public cloud and some times the cloud vendors build the infrastructure as per the demand of the private cloud users. AWS also provides Private cloud the US Government and no one has access to these private cloud networks until u had provided the access by someone.
- Hybrid cloud:Hybrid cloud is a composition of a public cloud and a private environment, such as a private cloud or on-premises resources, that remain distinct entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. We can think it of like the resources are the combination of both public and private cloud. Mainly in bank and hospitals people used to prefer the hybrid cloud structures.
We had successfully covered the difference between public, private and hybrid cloud. At high level we need to understand we have to deal with the public cloud and we will keep public cloud as pillar and will move ahead because as I had mentioned above public cloud is easy to provision. Also we had discussed there is not much difference between public cloud and private cloud only the difference is the configuration of security and all different different organization has their own means of security and you will be knowing this once you are working with any business.
Now we will be looking the concepts on the basis of consumers. On the basis of consumers cloud service has been mainly divided into 3 types i.e Infrastructure as a service(iaas), Platform as a service(Paas) and Software as a service(Saas). To make you understand these 3 terms we will be taking one very common example and I urge you to look at the intuition of the below example and after that we will be relating it to the saas,pass and iaas in terms of cloud
Suppose you want to eat pizza, basically you have 3 options to eat pizza. 1st one you will buy utensils and buy all ingredients and cook pizza at your home. 2nd one you might visit your friends or relative home who has the pizza utensils set up, only you need to buy ingredients and you will cook pizza and 3rd option you will just order pizza online. So 3 ways are there:
- In first way definitely you need to pay more as you need to spend money on buying utensils, you need to invest money on buying ingredients and 3rd one your effort to make pizza.
- In second way, you have to pay some less amount as you are spending money to go to your friends or relatives home, who has pizza utensils setup and you need to spend in buying ingredients.
- In 3rd way only you need to have active internet connections you will be ordering the pizza and you will be getting that at your doorstep.
For people like me and you 3rd option is the best option, but think about the people who want to open pizza shop and also wants to eat pizza for them might the 2nd and 1st option will be better one. So I am trying to say based on the requirements of people they will be going for different different options. Similarly the case with cloud consumers I mean the cloud customers. Every people has their own requirement and based on their requirement they used to go for iaas, paas and saas. Now coming back to pizza example In 1st case we are managing everything right from the buying of utensils, ingredients and making pizza so this is a kind of IAAS(Infrastructure as a service). In 2nd case we are just buying ingredients and making pizza so this is a kind of (Paas) platform as a service and the 3rd one nothing is managed by me, this you think it of Software as a service(saas). Dont worry now i will give you the cloud definition of saas, paas and iaas below
- SaaS:The software-as-a-service (SaaS) service-model involves the cloud provider installing and maintaining software in the cloud and users running the software from cloud over the Internet (or Intranet). The users’ client machines require no installation of any application-specific software since cloud applications run in the cloud. Have you ever used MS office, MS word or MS excel at internet if not i highly recommend to use it now., because this is the example of saas. You dont need to do and installation or any configuration to use MS office over internet. Only you will need Microsoft account.
- PaaS:Platform as a service is cloud computing service which provides the users with application platforms and databases as a service. This is equivalent to middleware in the traditional (non-cloud computing) delivery of application platforms and databases. In this you will managing Applications and Data i mean only you have to focus on development of your application and rest part like managing network, storage and severs will be taken care by your cloud provider. Amazon Lambda is the very good example in this case of delivery. This is the future architecture of the Information Technology market as the compute will be completely serverless in this case. I will be covering this section in detail in my future Articles in depth.
- IaaS: Infrastructure as a service is taking the physical hardware and going completely virtual (e.g. all servers, networks, storage, and system management all existing in the cloud). This is the equivalent to infrastructure and hardware in the traditional (non-cloud computing) method running in the cloud. You need to pay per month or you need to have early provisioning of this delivery method. Amazon EC2 is the best example for this scenario. Again I will be discussing EC2 in depth in my coming articles. As of now you can think it of like getting virtual servers from your cloud provider and configuring each and every bit from the operating system level. This is also widely used in industry.
For more details I am attaching one pic which will explain Paas, Iaas and Saas at very high level
We have seen the basics of cloud computing along with the complete architecture of the types of cloud based on providers and consumers. If you have any interest in Machine learning, deep learning, data science or python I highly recommend to check my another blog i am attaching the link below. I am planning to give understanding of cloud computing and how we can use this technology in data science world right from the step 1. So please follow me along this journey I am sure it will be very helpful and it will be resulting in knowledge development from the basic to high level. In next blog I will be trying to cover about the web services because we need to understand what is web service first to step towards Amazon Web Services(AWS). And most important if you have any doubts related to this post feel free to post it in comment box below I will be very happy to help or explain you in detail about your doubts.
