Cloud computing fundamentals

what is cloud computing, why do we need cloud computing, difference between on-premise and cloud, how does cloud computing work

What is Cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing services or resources over the internet. By using a pay-as-you-go pricing model and pay only for the cloud services that you use. Instead of owning their physical data centers and servers, you can access the delivery of different services. Like storage and databases from a cloud provider.

Why do we need cloud computing?

In the early days of the web, those who wanted to build and deploy a web application need physical hardware or servers. These are used to host that application which is a cumbersome expensive, and time-taking attempt. Companies can rent servers and all the resources had to be deployed in company infrastructure. The company needs to maintain its hardware and all its related processes.

So now with this On-premise architecture, the company handles buying all the servers and servers that are depreciating assets. The company is also responsible for setting the servers up. Like installing the OS and doing all the networking with costly server setup. It can take many months to get all the setup done. The company is also responsible for doing batch upgrades over time. Hence the company needs to hire experienced employees in this domain is pretty costly.

When we are troubled with the issues of on-premise architecture cloud computing comes to our rescue. Currently, there are three giant cloud providers. Such as Microsoft Azure, Google cloud platform, and Amazon web services.

When a service is running in the cloud it means that there has to be some server in the background which is doing the job. There are physical servers and server farms across the globe where your application is running. The only difference is that you are not responsible for buying and maintaining those servers. There is a way to rent computing power and storage from someone else's data center. It treats cloud resources like the resources in your own data center.

When you are done using them you give them back it is only built for what you use. The cloud provider takes care of maintaining the infrastructure within its platform and security. Cloud servers are located in data centers all over the world using cloud computing users. The companies do not have to manage physical servers anymore. You can reap the benefit as you're doing all the server maintenance and scaling on building your application.

Users can access the same resource from any device. Because the storage takes place on the cloud instead of the local device. It is not dependent on a particular device. So even if your phone stops working still you can access your Google photos or Gmail from another device by logging in. There is also data replication in the data centers for higher availability of your data.

Organizations are using the cloud for a wide variety of use cases. Like data backup, disaster recovery, hybrid cloud and, multi-cloud, software testing and development, customer-facing web applications big and data analytics.

For example,

·       Health care organizations are using the cloud to develop more personalized treatments for patients. While avoiding the costs of preserving physical servers.

·       Financial service companies are using the cloud to add efficiency to their operations, power real-time fraud detection, and prevention.

·       Video game creators are using remote servers in data centers to deliver online games via the internet.

Difference between On-premises and cloud:

Scalability: There is a lot of options for scalability in the cloud once you scaled up. It is difficult to scale down and leads to heavy loss relating to infrastructure and maintenance costs. But cloud computing allows you to pay only for how much you use with fast scaling up or down.

Server Storage: On-premise needs a lot of space for servers. But cloud computing solutions are offered by cloud service providers who manage and maintain this server. Saving both money and space.

Data Security: On-premise services offer less data security. But cloud service provides better security which has constant monitoring.

Data Loss: Data recovery with an On-premise setup is very small. In contrast, cloud computing systems have disaster recovery measures to ensure faster data recovery.

Maintenance: On-premises services need extra teams for hardware and software maintenance. But the cloud is maintained by service providers and resource allocation.

How does cloud computing work?

Cloud providers are making it easy for developers across the world. Cloud computing is currently even possible because of a technology called virtualization.

Virtualization allows for the creation of a simulated virtual computer environment. That behaves as if it is a physical computer with its hardware. The term for such a computer is a virtual machine.

Virtual machines on the same host machine are isolated from one another they do not interact with each other. The files and applications from one virtual machine are not visible to the other virtual machine. Even though they are on the same physical machine. Virtualization is breaking down a physical server into n number of virtual machines. Also, it acts like a physical computer with its hardware. Virtualization uses software in the computer's hardware as an abstraction layer. That's called the hypervisor.

The Hypervisor emulates the functions of a real computer. It can run many virtual machines at the same time and also optimize the capacity of the abstracted hardware. So any cloud provider takes this virtualization technique and repeats it on a massive scale in data centers throughout the world.

Some key features of virtual machines:

1.    Isolation virtual machines on the same physical host are sandboxed from one another. So they don't interact with each other.

2.    There is no sharing between virtual machine files. The application on one virtual machine is not visible to other virtual machines on the same physical host.

3.    Each virtual machine can run any compatible OS such as Windows or Linux. Cloud is the delivery of computing services over the internet. These services include servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence. Hence it helps to lower operating costs to managing all the infrastructures and to scale up the business needs.

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