Today’s business is not limited to a single geographic location; instead, virtual computing has taken a major role for it. As a result, a business can operate now from multiple locations. And whenever we talk about virtual resources, the ever-evolving cloud comes into our minds. Cloud computing has made our lives easy to use and using it, and you can do unparallel access to multiple devices.
Cloud computing is the process of computing services such as storage, networks, servers, and software being delivered as a service over the internet. With the help of virtual resources, it provides us with a seamless experience of applications. All these are backed by a virtual platform which is known as cloud infrastructure.
What is cloud infrastructure?
Cloud infrastructure comprises storage resources, server hardware, networking equipment, and application software, which helps to build cloud-based applications. An organization’s cloud computing model is seamlessly implemented with these hardware and software components. With cloud infrastructure, you can do on-demand access to computing resources and access a hassle-free on-premise IT infrastructure. Cloud infrastructure supports public, private, and hybrid cloud systems and is provided by popular cloud vendors.
How does cloud infrastructure work?
You can access cloud infrastructure as virtual resources on the cloud. Using virtualization cloud infrastructure as a service pool resources and stimulate virtual machines or environments. These environments and resources can be used as per the business demands.
Is Cloud infrastructure the same as cloud architecture?
Multiple software platforms, servers, databases, network devices support cloud computing over the internet. With the help of cloud infrastructure, we build it on cloud architecture.
Cloud architecture is used as the blueprint to use individual technologies collaboratively in a computing environment through cloud infrastructure. It’s considered as the back-end functioning platform for cloud computing. CRM and webmail are common examples of cloud architectures.
On the contrary, cloud infrastructure facilitates cloud architecture by provisioning computing resources that include operating systems, networks, middleware, and other virtual components. Web browsers, graphical user interfaces, and storage devices serve as examples of cloud infrastructure.
Components of cloud infrastructure
Cloud infrastructure helps to build a cloud computing model for businesses. Let’s look at the must-have components of cloud infrastructure which help to deploy business applications.
Hardware
When we say everything in cloud computing is virtual, it may seem irrelevant to have a physical infrastructure for a cloud computing model. But for a seamless working model, hardware components are essential, such as networking equipment, routers, firewalls, and backup devices. These are placed strategically as a backup devices and placed at different geographic locations. The hardware resources help to connect servers and virtualized resources.
Virtualization
Virtualization creates an abstraction between the computing resources and physical infrastructure and allocates them to logical pools over the cloud. As a result, users can access the virtual resources through a simple interface. You can create dynamic resource pools using virtualization through cloud infrastructure that ultimately enhances the self-service of software access and automates infrastructure scaling.
Storage
Cloud storage enables data storage, and we can access that data over the internet. With the help of cloud infrastructure, we can store organizational data and use that virtually anywhere.
Network
Cloud networks comprise physical network resources such as routers, wires, switches, and virtual networking. Multiple sub-networks made this up, which ultimately created virtual local area networks(VLANs).
Types of cloud infrastructure
Cloud infrastructure provides services for all types of cloud platforms. However, there are some basic differences underlying cloud infrastructure usage principles in the following three delivery models.
Private cloud
Usually, a single organization manages and uses private cloud infrastructure. The in-house IT team develops and maintains this private cloud, and it is a more secure architectural model. You will get more control and flexibility in private cloud infrastructure than the other models. However, it can be expensive in the long run.
Public cloud
In this infrastructure, services are facilitated by third-party cloud service vendors that make use of multi-tenant environments. It gets data storage and computing power at a lower cost in this model. In a multi-tenant environment, a single cloud platform is divided and used by multiple tenants or clients. This model has a lower overhead cost and provides unlimited scalability. However, this model has a data security risk.
Hybrid cloud infrastructure
As the name suggests, it is the combination of two different cloud infrastructures. It could combine public and private clouds, two or more public clouds with a private cloud platform, or on-premises resources. The infrastructures operate independently of each other.
The hybrid cloud architecture typically includes an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform. Here the main IaaS platforms could be Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. A private cloud holds the resources, and it could be on-premises or off-premises. Lastly, this architecture management needs a wide area network (WAN) connecting public and private clouds.
Cloud infrastructure as a service
There are different types of cloud computing services models, such as SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, and choosing the right one for a business is rather challenging. As most of us know the abbreviations of these three types of major cloud solutions; however, before going into detail, we will explain the terms with a simple analogy.
Infrastructure-as-a-service
IaaS – Infrastructure as a service. You are not the owner of the car. Instead, you lease the car and drive it. If you want an upgrade, choose a different car.
IaaS is a cloud computing service that provides necessary IT infrastructure like servers, networking resources, and storage. We can compare it with a virtual data center. We can use IaaS services for different purposes, like hosting websites. As a client, you can install and use the operating systems and tools of your choice. This service also follows pay as you go model.
What is managed by the vendor in IaaS?
– Servers and storage
– Networking resource
– Datacenter
What does the client manage in IaaS?
– Hosted applications
– Operating system
– Development and management tools
Platform-as-a-service
PaaS – Platform as a service. You hire a car with a driver and ask the driver where to go instead of driving it yourself.
This cloud platform provides a runtime environment for the user to develop, test, and manage applications. Here, developers can deploy all types of applications without any need for related infrastructure like servers, OS, databases, development tools, etc. Heroku and Google app engines are examples of PaaS. In a PaaS model, the vendors provide the complete infrastructure for development. This also follows pay as you go model.
What is managed by the vendor in PaaS?
– Operating system
– Servers and storage
– Development and management tools
– Networking resources
– Datacenter
Software as a service
– SaaS allows you to use cloud-based web applications.
– Email services such as Gmail is an example of cloud-based SaaS services. Office 365 and Google Docs, Salesforce, which is a customer relationship management software are examples of SaaS.
– SaaS services follow a pay-as-you-go, which is a subscription-based pricing model. In this case, the vendor manages all hardware and software. Hence, you don’t need to install or configure anything. It gives you a ready-to-go application as you get your login and password.
What is managed by the vendor in SaaS?
– Hosted applications
– Operating system
– Development and management tools
– Storages and servers
– Datacenter
– Networking resources
Benefits of using cloud infrastructure
Cloud infrastructure is the best implementation of virtualization that brings business applications to our fingertips irrespective of our location. It is estimated that by 2022, over 90 percent of enterprises will rely on a cloud-based infrastructure. Here are some of the advantages that cloud infrastructure offers.
Cost-effectiveness
With cloud infrastructure, you don’t need to build and manage a physical server or data center. As a result, it reduces the operational costs of IT hardware infrastructure and is cost-effective in the long run.
Security
Vendors who provide cloud infrastructure services consider and provide cloud security at a high scale. The environment they serve is highly immune to data vulnerability. Besides, cloud vendors provide backup and disaster recovery services that optimize cloud computing services’ security features.
Scalability
Cloud infrastructure is highly scalable, agile, and flexible. You can access and use cloud infrastructure resources on-demand. This increases business uptime and efficiency. In case of a sudden surge in a website and its applications, access cloud infrastructure also supports that.
Cloud infrastructure challenges
Cloud infrastructure is the basis for building a cloud computing model. Though cloud infrastructure has gained much prominence around the business world, it comes with its own challenges, which we have discussed below:
Complexity
Organizations often need to access data on a real-time basis and in a cheaper version over a single platform. In this scenario, cloud infrastructure often uses a multi-cloud environment that increases the complexity of managing cloud environments. Because organizations work across geographies, time-zones and make use of tools and processes asynchronously.
Vendor reliability
Since the cloud vendors provide cloud infrastructure, it creates a major roadblock related to dependency. The cloud vendor selected at a certain point in time may be the best option for the business. Still, reevaluation comes into the picture over the period and with the ever-changing cloud computing trends. This increases the overturn costs as there may be large-scale data migration that can affect your business.
Connectivity
Like all other cloud components, cloud infrastructure is heavily dependent on internet availability. If the internet connection is lost, all your applications go down for a while, which can cause massive business downtime. This issue can also impact an organization’s data access capabilities.