Introduction
The way of managing IT infrastructure and resources has been changed for the last few years. Cloud computing has redefined this way significantly. Before the invention of cloud computing, organizations had to establish an on-premise infrastructure. The organizations needed to invest lots of money leasing data centers, purchasing computer resources, and maintaining applications. But cloud computing removed all these hassles and saved millions of costs of organizations. This saved cost can be significant for small and middle scale companies.
What is cloud computing?
The term cloud depicts the symbol used to interpret the internet in network diagrams. Cloud computing refers to delivering hosted services over the internet. A cloud can be public or private. A public cloud renders services to anyone over the internet. A private cloud as the name describes, is dedicated to a network or data center that serves a limited number of users provided that they have certain access permission.
Cloud computing is an on-demand availability service that is especially used in data storage and computing power, without direct active user management.
What are the various models in cloud computing?
Cloud computing offers three different models depending upon the services provided by it:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
What is mean by cloud infrastructure?
The cloud infrastructure includes the required hardware and software components required to set up a cloud computing model. You can think of cloud infrastructure as tools required to built a cloud. Cloud infrastructure is required to host the services and applications in the cloud.
Cloud computing infrastructure components
Cloud infrastructure components are integrated with each other providing single architecture that best fits the business needs. The typical infrastructure involves hardware, virtualization, storage, and networking components.
- Hardware
You must be thinking if the cloud provides virtual infrastructure then why hardware is the component of cloud computing? A cloud network setup requires a variety of physical hardware but the hardware is located at different geographical locations.
Like traditional setup, it also requires various networking components like routers, firewalls, switches, backup devices, and servers.
- Virtualization
Servers are connected together through virtualization. It separates IT services and functions from the hardware. A software also referred to as hypervisor is at the top of physical hardware, abstracting the machine’s various resources like memory, storage, and computing power. When all these virtual resources are centrally located in a pool, it is considered as a cloud.
- Storage
It is a highly important component of cloud computing infrastructure. The entire cloud infrastructure is meant for upscaled storage functionality. It allows organizations to store and manage data off-on-site file servers instead of building their own physical data centers. There are third party vendors like Amazon, MS Azure, and Google Cloud Storage that enables managing and maintaining data along with remote backups. Cloud also stores cold data. Data from the cloud can be accessed through querying through applications or by the means of the internet.
- Network
A typical cloud network configuration includes physical wiring, switches, load balancers, and routers. These network components ensure that cloud infrastructure is always up for customers when needed.
Conclusion
Cloud computing infrastructure is required to set up the cloud environment. Avail the benefits of cloud computing with optimized cloud computing infrastructure and step up your business to the next level.
