In this guide, I will walk you through the basic understanding of cloud computing you should be aware of.
Why Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing has become a much-needed and handy tech over the past few years.
Let’s take a suit and tuxedo renting shop as an example to discuss this further.
The core business is renting suits for any kind of event. So the customer just has to rent out the suit they choose and pay for hours they are planning to keep the suit with them.
The customer does not have to worry about the cost of the materials of the suit, sewing fees, ironing, and dry cleaning processes, and other maintenance costs. The customer only uses the suit and pays for the duration he uses it. By using this rental service customer benefits in many ways.
Think that you are planning to start an online business and it has its own web application. In the initial stage, you may buy a computer, server, routers, and other networking devices required to maintain your online web application. So you have to spend on basic IT infrastructure and have to maintain them. Later the business expanded due to high demands and then your capacity of IT infrastructure may not be enough to handle the customer load.
Then you have to invest more in IT infrastructure. The more you expand the hardware and resources, the more you have to maintain. Then think about a worst-case situation like your business suddenly losing some of the customers and now there is no meaning in maintaining and keeping a lot of servers and IT infrastructure. Then all that you spend on the business become such a waste of money. You cannot resell all the unwanted items for the prices you have to buy them. So it will become a great loss.
Usually, businessmen/women may not like to take that kind of risk for their businesses. In that case, here come the cloud computing service solutions at your service.
Because of the high availability, elasticity, scalability, security, adopting options they provide and specialist service, easy options for migrations, and many more benefits, most businesses nowadays very much like to go with cloud computing services.
This will explain more in upcoming sub-topics.
What is Cloud computing?
Before we start digging into cloud computing let’s begin by understanding the technology term “Client-server architecture” because this will be very useful for you to understand more about cloud computing.
Client Server Architecture
Most people nowadays experience client-server architecture in day-to-day life through their smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.
For example, take a hotel reservation online site. You may go to the site and enter your required details such as which dates you are looking to a booking, no of guests you have, etc. Then you will press the search button to make a request from the hotel side to get the relevant details. Then your request went to the hotel side through the website and they will respond with relevant data according to the request you make. Such as the availability of requested dates, the options you have when selecting rooms according to the number of guests, ongoing promotions, etc.
Here your smartphone act as the client. And the hotel-side response made by the server. So in this example, many clients can request information from the above server.
So any user who seeks information is called a client and any provider who provides the relevant information is called a server.
In cloud computing, this server can be a cloud service.
Cloud computing is delivering on-demand computer system resources and technology services like data storage, servers, databases, networking, and software over the Cloud.
Since we are preparing for the AWS Cloud Practioner Exam let’s see how AWS defines cloud computing.
“Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS).”
What is “ On-demand delivery of resources “
Think that you have started a little business and need 2 virtual servers for your business initially. So you start with that amount and then a few months later, you realize that you need more space and want to make 10 virtual servers. Then you run your business smoothly. But suddenly some of your customers left and you cannot afford 10 servers. Then you adjust with 5. So all these scenarios are possible with cloud computing.
You can use any amount of resources at any time.
Before cloud computing, this type of situation was tough to manage. Think that you have to buy all of these physical servers by yourself on behalf of the business. Then it will be an extra cost to purchase these resources, maintain these computer-related resources, and pay bills for consuming energy. Assume that when you don’t need many servers as per the earlier case, you cannot return the servers where you buy them. Therefore you have to either keep them or sell them for the lowest prices.
So on-demand delivery of resources is an excellent advantage for the users of cloud computing services.
What is “ Pay-as-you-go pricing “
You have only to pay for what you exactly use.
For example, think about your water bill. You have to pay for what you consume. And think about a postpaid internet connection. You pay for what you used.
Likewise in cloud computing services, you have to pay exactly what you used.
Cloud providers and their services
- Amazon Web Services
- Google Cloud Platform
- Microsoft Azure
- IBM Cloud
- Alibaba Cloud
Cloud Service models
Depending on the services the provider provides there are a few main models in cloud services.
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Getting only the infrastructure from the cloud.
example: Servers, Networking features, data storage, or any other virtual or dedicated hardware
Since you are only taking the infrastructure you have full control of managing the underlying infrastructure. (patches, upgrade SW)
- Platform as a service (PaaS)
Here cloud providers manage the underlying infrastructure. The cloud provides a platform to implement the service. It makes it easy to focus on the deployment and management of your application.
- Software as a service (SaaS)
Cloud will provide you directly with the application or Software. So you do not have to manage service or infrastructure. Provides complete product that runs and is managed by the service provider. Only have to think about how to use the particular software.
example: Like organizations are using Gmail.
Deployment Methods
There are three main deployment models in the cloud.
Cloud-Based Deployment :
The cloud-based deployment method is used for designing and building a new application, migrating applications to the cloud you already have, or just running some of the parts of an application in the cloud.
Hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure are owned and managed by the cloud provider. Services and infrastructure are shared by multiple customers and work as a virtual private cloud.
On-Premises Deployment (Private cloud)
Resources are deployed using virtualization and resource management tools. Services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.
Hybrid cloud
Combination of the public and private cloud where cloud-based resources are connected to on-premises infrastructure.
Ex: Your application is well-stable on your premises and it is based on legacy technologies. So the application maintained within your on-premises deployment model and other facilities as analytics and data processing could be based on a cloud-based deployment model.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
- Trade Upfront expenses for variable expenses
Before spending on resources without knowing how you are going to use them you can pay only for what you use.
2. Stop spending money to run and maintain data centers
You don’t have to worry about spending money on and maintaining infrastructure. Cloud providers will do these for you and then you only have to focus on your business.
3. Stop guessing capacity
You do not have to guess the capacity prior and pay for more resources or handle your work with fewer resources due to bad guessing of the number of resources you wanted. You can access whatever amount of capacity you needed. (Scaling up and down the capacities.)
4. Benefit from massive economies of scale
Since there are many other users using the cloud you will have to pay the lowest cost for what you use.
5. Increase speed and agility
By reducing the time and cost to make resources available organizations can accelerate their work.
6. Go global in minutes
Easy to deploy your application in minutes around the world. (Making available in multiple regions within a few clicks)
Since AWS is providing so many services free to play with, let’s create an Amazon account for future uses.
- Creating an AWS account
Once you create your AWS account then log in and expand the services to see the available services.
According to the above image, you can see all the available services categorized.
Stay tuned. With the next guides, I will walk you through these services. Hope the guide helps you a bit in your journey.