Cloud computing primer - What is cloud computing?
What is Cloud Computing?
For people who have "no clue" what is cloud computing, below is a simple example:
Scenario: Imagine its your wedding and many guests are coming from different cities. Questions:
Would you buy a house for them to stay during the wedding?
Would you rent a house with a 6-month or one-year contract for their accommodation arrangements? DEFINITELY NOT!!
Would you rather book some hotel rooms during the wedding? Of course!
The notion or concept or idea of Cloud computing is somewhat similar to this situation.
Scenario: Imagine you want to create a Gift Products website as a business idea. The traffic to your website is extremely high needing 10 server machines during Christmas or Valentines and only 1-2 servers during off-peak gifting seasons.
Questions:
Would you buy 10 dedicated servers and host them in your office though only 1-2 servers are used for many of the days?
Would you rent 10 servers on a hosting domain for 1 year contract and pay money for more than your usage? DEFINITELY NOT!!
This is exactly where you can host your application on cloud servers. You can increase or decrease the number of servers or CPU or RAM for your application or even have single or multiple instances of your critical components running based on usage.
(Remember the hotel booking example above?)
You will end up paying only for your usage and nothing more.
Let us understand some of the "jargons" related to Cloud Computing
What is IAAS?
INFRASTRUCTURE-AS-A-SERVICE - As the acronym says, only the infrastructure is available for you as a business to use. You can have the option to increase or decrease any amount of infrastructure like Servers, CPU, RAM, I/O etc in this model. But the Applications, Data, Runtime, Middleware, OS all have to managed by you. Things like Virtualization, Servers, Storage, Networking etc will be handled by the Cloud provider.
What is PAAS?
PLATFORM-AS-A-SERVICE - Along with the Infrastructure, even the platform (for eg: Microsoft Azure Cloud, Amazon Cloud or some others) is available for you to host your application. In this case you don't have to worry about Operating System, Runtime, Middleware, Networking, Storage etc as it will be managed by the Cloud provider. Only the applications and the data is something you have to manage.
What is SAAS?
SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE - To quote an example: A complete healthcare application is made available for your to configure and start using on a cloud infrastructure with the platform and software and features and hardware and everything. It can be a Travel Application or a Manufacturing system etc.
Who are some primary cloud computing providers or cloud providers?
There are many players in Cloud computing. Some of the important ones are:
IAAS Providers
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Compute Engine, Rackspace Open Cloud, IBM Smartcloud Enterprise, HP Enterprise Converged Infrastructure, Openstack, VMWare, CSC and more
PAAS Providers
AWS (EC2), Force.com (SalesForce), Heroku, EngineYard, DotCloud, Windows Azure (Microsoft), Google App Engine to name a few
SAAS Providers
SalesForce.com, NetSuite, Oracle On Demand, SAP Business (ERP/CRM), Accelops, abiquo, AppDynamics and many more
What is a Public cloud? What is a Private cloud? What is a Hybrid cloud?
For people who have "no clue" what is cloud computing, below is a simple example:
Scenario: Imagine its your wedding and many guests are coming from different cities. Questions:
Would you buy a house for them to stay during the wedding?
Would you rent a house with a 6-month or one-year contract for their accommodation arrangements? DEFINITELY NOT!!
Would you rather book some hotel rooms during the wedding? Of course!
You will end up paying only for your usage and nothing more.
The notion or concept or idea of Cloud computing is somewhat similar to this situation.
Scenario: Imagine you want to create a Gift Products website as a business idea. The traffic to your website is extremely high needing 10 server machines during Christmas or Valentines and only 1-2 servers during off-peak gifting seasons.
Questions:
Would you buy 10 dedicated servers and host them in your office though only 1-2 servers are used for many of the days?
Would you rent 10 servers on a hosting domain for 1 year contract and pay money for more than your usage? DEFINITELY NOT!!
This is exactly where you can host your application on cloud servers. You can increase or decrease the number of servers or CPU or RAM for your application or even have single or multiple instances of your critical components running based on usage.
(Remember the hotel booking example above?)
You will end up paying only for your usage and nothing more.
Let us understand some of the "jargons" related to Cloud Computing
What is IAAS?
INFRASTRUCTURE-AS-A-SERVICE - As the acronym says, only the infrastructure is available for you as a business to use. You can have the option to increase or decrease any amount of infrastructure like Servers, CPU, RAM, I/O etc in this model. But the Applications, Data, Runtime, Middleware, OS all have to managed by you. Things like Virtualization, Servers, Storage, Networking etc will be handled by the Cloud provider.
What is PAAS?
PLATFORM-AS-A-SERVICE - Along with the Infrastructure, even the platform (for eg: Microsoft Azure Cloud, Amazon Cloud or some others) is available for you to host your application. In this case you don't have to worry about Operating System, Runtime, Middleware, Networking, Storage etc as it will be managed by the Cloud provider. Only the applications and the data is something you have to manage.
What is SAAS?
SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE - To quote an example: A complete healthcare application is made available for your to configure and start using on a cloud infrastructure with the platform and software and features and hardware and everything. It can be a Travel Application or a Manufacturing system etc.
Who are some primary cloud computing providers or cloud providers?
There are many players in Cloud computing. Some of the important ones are:
IAAS Providers
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Compute Engine, Rackspace Open Cloud, IBM Smartcloud Enterprise, HP Enterprise Converged Infrastructure, Openstack, VMWare, CSC and more
PAAS Providers
AWS (EC2), Force.com (SalesForce), Heroku, EngineYard, DotCloud, Windows Azure (Microsoft), Google App Engine to name a few
SAAS Providers
SalesForce.com, NetSuite, Oracle On Demand, SAP Business (ERP/CRM), Accelops, abiquo, AppDynamics and many more
What is a Public cloud? What is a Private cloud? What is a Hybrid cloud?
1. Public Cloud is hosted by a cloud provider which can be accessed with proper authorization. Infrastructure is shared between tenants and an internet connection is required.
2. Private Cloud is your own cloud solution hosted within the enterprise. This is very Safe and secure and self managed but can be very expensive due to cost of the hardware and maintenance involved
3. Hybrid is a mix of Public and Private cloud. You can separate your Sensitive application data in your private cloud, and the not sensitive and bigger applications can go to Public cloud. Benefits of both Security and Scaling is possible here.
You can take a look at these diagrams for further reading. Hope these simple diagrams very easily help in understanding Hybrid cloud.
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