In this article, we will take an introduction to cloud computing concepts. This is a great way to learn more about cloud computing technology and gain a solid understanding of the basics you need to know to succeed in an increasingly virtualized cloud-based world.
Many cloud platforms offer free open source toolkits built specifically for cloud computing. APIs allow you to manage resource pools such as compute, storage, and networking on off-the-shelf hardware.
These APIs are usually handled in a RESTful manner, so you can use HTTP commands familiar with various API calls. Now let’s take a closer look at the introduction to cloud computing.
Comparison between Cloud Computing vs Virtualization
First, let’s take a look at the similarities and differences between cloud computing and virtualization. In the stone age of tower computers in data centers, we had a similar workflow. The user requests access to a new application.
The administrator then provides a physical server, which is part of the hardware, to support this application. This user is now also a developer and may need a separate development environment to work good. We’ll go ahead and prepare another server.
You may need to consider disaster recovery and backup options. That’s right – guess another server! This results in small server scaling making it difficult to maintain. In the process, unsightly tower computers will complicate your data center. It was ineffective, but I had no other choice, so this is the case.
As this process continued, it eventually moved into what people call the blade environment. So what is a blade? Well, if you are familiar with live music or musicians, you are probably familiar with the idea of rack mounting processing equipment.
The same concept applies to data center computing. What we did was attach a traditional tower computer to a rectangular shape that could be rack mounted. Each server blade usually occupies one or two rack spaces and provides a more integrated solution for delivering processing power to end users.
At this point, when the developers needed a new playground, we deployed a build environment on one of our rackmount servers to meet those needs. You can also create a disaster recovery script on the following available server blades. This provided much higher server density and availability. At this point, you can place 20 servers in a rack. It was great, but I haven’t started virtualization yet.
Virtualization overview
Moving on, I had to make better use of blade-based computing racks. Previously, one operating system was installed on each available server to run all the required applications.
Everything changed with the advent of the hypervisor. When a hypervisor starts up, it becomes software running right on top of the bare metal. On top of the hypervisor, you can run an almost endless number of virtual servers or virtual machines to support anything imaginable. Of course, a hypervisor is something like VMWare, Xen, KVM, or Hyper-V.
The hypervisor layer allowed us to virtualize the entire system and provide end users with a pool of computing resources. This is where users request specific resources from DevOps or IT professionals. Previously, you had to deploy physical servers to support this request.
In some cases, IT will not be able to use it right away, so users will have to wait. It wasn’t perfect. Once the hypervisor is installed, DevOps personnel can log into the virtualization platform and “launch” a new server instance.
Like a magical “Poof!” Here it is – a brand new Ubuntu server system. Want another copy for testing or disaster recovery? No problems. Install and run more servers in seconds. You may need Windows Server for testing check.
Want to test your extension? sure. Start another instance and configure load balancing. At this point, we saw that the in-house hypervisor reduced the time to market for users, reduced their dependence on physical hardware, and made things easier overall. This is virtualization. However, virtualization is much more advanced than that.
Cloud overview
However the cloud means different many things to the end, clouds can be divided into three properties, and Let’s take a look at some of these cloud-related properties.
- On demand: nature of the cloud means that it can provide services almost instantaneously to user or endpoint requests. We hope you will receive your feedback within 2 business days without submitting a support ticket. On Demand means now, and that’s what most of the major cloud providers offer.
- Flexible: when you say flexible, you mean that the resources needed to support your service should grow and shrink easily. Of course, we know that Amazon Web Services uses the term flexible to describe exactly these features of cloud products.
- Self service: cloud services are usually self-service. This means that anyone who is connected to the network can enter their personal account or admin panel in order to freely distribute resources without any interference from third parties. There is no need for physical deployment and there is no need to painstakingly build infrastructure. Select a service from the catalog of offers and click “Go”.
Service offerings
This gave me the idea of offering as a service. You can think of these characteristics when talking about services in a cloud computing environment.
- Used to describe the control layer of the computational stack.
- Basic services are abstracted.
- End users don’t need to worry about lower levels.
- It is more focused on providing an independent level of service.
Infrastructure of service
This diagram provides an overview of what is included in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). From the existing IT service stack that we looked at earlier, we could see that the IT department has complete control over the entire infrastructure, from application to application.
End users were not included in the hierarchy. IaaS takes that model and abstracts some of the lower-level layers, so you don’t even need to think about it. It is simply stated that they are, can and will work for you. Cloud offerings allow end users to focus on the top tier that matters most to them.
Infrastructure as a service is the most used type of cloud computing. Major providers of this type of service include Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Google Cloud Platform, vCloud Air, and IBM Softlayer.
You can see that the diagrams for IaaS and OnPrem are slightly different. Lower layers such as virtualization, servers, storage and networking have been abstracted by the IaaS provider. You cannot link to this layer hosting controlled by the service provider.
The provider layer over the service is now where the consumer works. It is the consumer who cannot provide the operating system they want to use, the necessary middleware, a specific runtime such as Java or PHP, the data store, and ultimately the application layer.
This gives the end user tremendous possibilities. Consider this. IaaS services like AWS Amazon Web Services range from large-scale applications that host modest websites like Mom and Pop WordPress blogs, which generate literally millions of dollars in annual revenue.
Everything in the cloud! Small start-ups don’t have to go out and buy physical servers, operating systems, networking equipment, or even office space! Pure metal is no longer a requirement, it has been abstracted.
AUTHOR BIO
On my daily job, I am a software engineer, programmer & computer technician. My passion is assembling PC hardware, studying Operating System and all things related to computers technology. I also love to make short films for YouTube as a producer. More at about me…
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