A beginners guide into ‘Cloud’: Episode 1

Intro:

In the 21st century, ‘Cloud’ is talked about on a regular basis, but this might not be the cloud you are thinking of. Living in the United Kingdom, you would be forgiven if you are thinking of the clouds in the sky, since it is most likely overcast, and grey, nearly every day.

However, this introductory series is about the other cloud that you may or may not know is part of our daily life. This is a mini series about Cloud, targeted at those new to the ecosystem. In the first article of this series we simply aim to help you understand what a cloud is and also share some examples of how you might interact with the “cloud”.

There are some keywords that will appear regularly in this article; data, data centre, clients, devices, servers & internet. Perhaps we could end this article by putting all these buzz words into one sentence to define cloud? Let’s see.

First intro into cloud storage:

When you were studying before the days of computers, you would make notes on pen and paper, and those notes would need to be stored somewhere safely.

With the advancement of technology and introduction of computers, you now might make notes on a computer; may it be using an application such as Google Docs; this time you can either (1) save the notes directly onto your laptop or (2) onto a Google drive folder.

So what does this mean? In both scenarios, you are storing that file & data onto a computer. One is a computer you own and can directly access, one is stored on a Google owned computer. Most likely, that Google owned computer is somewhere in the cloud @ a Google data centre. This is a simple example of how most of us interact with the “cloud” everyday.

What is the difference between you saving a document onto your computer and saving a file into Google Drive?

• When you are accessing your Google Drive documents, once you are signed in and want to open the document, you are interacting with Google (a google server) saying, ‘Hey- I need to open this document, please can you open it for me”
• Google (their server) processes your request, and then looks for the file you want to open in their computers, or most likely data centres and retrieves the files for you to use.
• When Google is processing your request, they are communicating across their cloud infrastructure to retrieve the information requested from where the files are stored. A server is a piece of computer hardware or software that provides functionality for other programs or devices in the client-server model. Multiple servers pool together to form a cloud network.

This interaction between the user and their devices (Client) and the cloud (Servers) is also referred to as the client-server model.

• Client-server model is a distributed application structure that partitions tasks or workloads between the providers of a resource or service, called servers (e.g. Google who own the application and in their case the servers), and service requesters, called clients (us, the users).
• Often clients and servers communicate over a computer network on separate hardware, but both client and server may reside in the same system. A server host runs one or more server programs, which share their resources with clients. A client usually does not share any of its resources, but it requests content or service from a server.
• Clients, therefore, initiate communication sessions with servers, which await incoming requests. Examples of computer applications that use the client-server model are traditional web based applications and more exciting things like video streaming services.

Thinking a bit bigger:

Generally, network-aware applications we use on our devices, phones, laptops or even watches retrieve data from the cloud — if they have access to the internet. For all we know, our data & information could be stored in data centres all over the world and is constantly being retrieved to our devices.

There is a lot more to talk about, such as how our smart devices process our data and make decisions based on the data provided, what sort of cloud environment exists and how does one go about learning more and choosing the best cloud provider for themselves?

When you think of the cloud, think of a data centre with lots of computers that are plugged into the internet that are storing and processing data 24/7. Upon a request via a server through the internet, data can then be retrieved and sent to the device that the individual sent the request from.

In conclusion, clients send data from their devices to servers through the internet and these servers which are most commonly stored in data centres communicate back to clients through the internet.