Businesses today are dependent on cloud-saving platforms rather than storing and accessing the data on their computer’s hard drive. Cloud computing platforms use the internet to deliver storage, databases, analytics, software, networking, servers, and intelligence. There are several benefits of cloud computing which is why more and more businesses are shifting towards cloud computing platforms. There are three main cloud computing services categories:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Table of Contents
What is IaaS?
Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS as it is popularly known is a form of cloud computing through which end users can access IT infrastructure via the internet. Through IaaS, you can host infrastructure on private as well as public clouds rather than depending on the traditional on-premises data center. The IaaS is managed completely by the service provider and is available for customers on-demand.
IaaS – How Does it Work?
Traditionally, businesses used to manage and maintain their own data center on-premise. They were responsible for investing in servers, software, storage, various technologies, IT staff who could perform the required functions to maintain and upgrade all their licenses and equipment, etc. They had to ensure that their data centers were set up to handle peak demand, as and when required.
IaaS on the other hand is a cloud computing platform that can be used by businesses of any size to avail services, such as databases, networking, storage, infrastructure, etc., from the cloud-services providers. In an IaaS model, the cloud provider will host all their services on the cloud, thus, allowing businesses to avoid investing their time and money in buying, hosting, and maintaining the equipment, etc. IaaS also provides businesses the option to pay-as-you-go. This means that if your organization’s needs are less, then you need to pay also less. Similarly, if your needs and requirements grow, you can pay for the additional computing technologies and services.
Architecture of IaaS
The IaaS architecture comprises various physical and virtual resources that allow businesses to access and use the technologies, infrastructure, services, software, storage, databases, networking, etc., to run their day-to-day activities and applications.
The main resources of an IaaS architecture include:
- Physical data centers – The IaaS providers will have large physical data centers in various parts of the world to manage all the data. These data centers have powerful machines which help in powering and providing the data and services via the web to the end-users. In the majority of the IaaS models, the physical structure is provided as a service to the end-user without any direct interactions.
- Compute – IaaS is typically a virtualized compute resource wherein the providers are responsible for managing the hypervisor and the end-users can determine their virtual ‘instances’ with the required amounts of storage, compute, and memory. Cloud computing providers also provide additional services, such as auto-scaling and load balancing which are two of the most desired cloud computing features.
- Network – A form of Software Defined Networking, cloud networking provides traditional networking hardware programmatically to the end-user through APIs. Apart from routers and switches, advanced networking use cases also allow the creation of multi-zone regions and virtual private clouds.
- Storage – There are three main cloud storage types, namely, block storage, file storage, and object storage. Though block and file storage are the most common types in traditional data centers, they face multiple challenges when provided via cloud platforms. On the other hand, object storage comes with several advantages, such as it is highly distributed, easy access to data over HTTP, leverage commodity hardware, and more.
Apart from hosting and providing these services, IaaS providers also provide a range of supportive services, like:
- Monitoring
- Detailed billing
- Security
- Clustering
- Load balancing
- Log access
- Backup
- Replication and recovery
Advantages of IaaS
- Reduced expenditure as businesses no longer have to invest in buying, managing, and maintaining their infrastructure. Also, they need to pay only for what they use, irrespective of the time period.
- Compared to traditional on-premise data centers, cloud infrastructure provides better uptime and more recovery options which results in improved business continuity. This is because IaaS providers have redundancy built in each layer, have locations in various parts of the world, offer multiple fault domains, and is handled by operations experts.
- One of the key advantages of IaaS is that it helps in accelerating innovation. It allows businesses to test their new products and ideas quickly, easily, and affordably without taking the additional responsibilities of developing detailed forecasts and investing in new infrastructure.
- Cloud providers allow businesses quick access to the latest technologies as the majority of them deploy new hardware and software, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning frameworks quicker than traditional on-premise data centers.
- Using IaaS, businesses can provide the entire application environment within minutes which generally takes several weeks or months when on-premise infrastructures are used.
- IaaS allows IT departments to better focus and manage their workforce. They can avoid spending at least half of their resources who are responsible for managing and maintaining the on-premise hardware and software.
- During peak workloads, a business’s requirements can change. IaaS allows businesses to easily scale up so that their requirements are met on time.
Disadvantages of IaaS
- Businesses do not have any security control. They need to thoroughly review the service level agreement provided by the cloud provider and understand the security coverage.
- Some IaaS providers do not upgrade their hardware and software on time which affects the flexibility of the businesses using their cloud computing services.
- Any downtime with IaaS can affect the business’ access to their applications.
- When a business opts for IaaS services, they are completely dependent on third-party providers for their own data.
- If the servers and storage devices are set up in smaller data centers, businesses might face bandwidth issues which can impact the organization’s effectiveness. s
Factors to consider while choosing your IaaS provider
The IaaS platform is growing by leaps and bounds with several vendors making their presence felt in this emerging domain. Hence, it is crucial that you keep certain factors in mind while choosing your preferred IaaS provider.
- Flexibility
- Affordability
- Security
- Control
- Reliability
- Service Level Agreements
- Multitenant Systems
IaaS use cases
Businesses can use IaaS for a wide range of services. The virtual resources provided via the cloud can be used to tailor different types of use cases. Some of the common IaaS use cases include:
- Test and development – IaaS allows DevOps to quickly set up test and deployment environments, thus, enabling them to launch new applications faster.
- Hosting websites – Compared to traditional web hosting services, IaaS provides businesses more affordable options to host customer-facing websites.
- Storage, backup, and recovery – Businesses need to spend a lot of time and money when it comes to on-premise storage and backup of data. By shifting to IaaS platform, businesses can reduce their cost and also enjoy better storage, backup, and recovery services.
- Web applications – IaaS provides the necessary infrastructure, such as networking, storage, and servers required to host web apps. This allows easy deployment and scaling of the cloud infrastructure. IaaS also supports mobile apps.
- High-performance computing – With IaaS’s pay-as-you-go model, businesses can easily afford High-Performance Computing (HPC) and data-intensive projects, such as product design, financial modeling, scientific computations, etc.
Prominent IaaS vendors and products
Some of the major IaaS vendors include:
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers storage and compute services, like Simple Storage Service (S3), Glacier, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) uses its Google Compute Engine to provide storage and compute services.
Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines provides cloud virtualization for a wide range of cloud computing services.
Apart from these major providers, there are several lesser-known IaaS players as well, such as:
- Alibaba Elastic Compute Service
- Alibaba Cloud elastic High-Performance Computing (E-HPC)
- Alibaba Elastic GPU Service (EGS)
- CenturyLink Cloud
- DigitalOcean Droplets
- IBM Cloud Private
- IBM Cloud Virtual Servers
Things to consider while implementing IaaS
When it comes to the implementation of an IaaS product, you need to consider several factors. Before you lock in the technical requirements and providers, you need to define your IaaS infrastructure and use cases. Below are some of the major technical and storage requirements that you need to consider:
- Networking – Ensure that you can easily and efficiently access the provisioned infrastructure for effective cloud deployments.
- Storage – Thoroughly understand the storage types, storage performance levels, provisioning, required space, object storage, etc.
- Compute – Consider the suggestions of the various memory, CPU, server, and VM options.
- Security – Data security is one of the most crucial things to consider before you go ahead and implement IaaS. Factors, such as secure workloads, certifications, compliance and regulation, data encryption, etc., should be thoroughly evaluated.
Apart from these, you also need to consider the disaster recovery options, server size, the throughput of the network, and general manageability of the IaaS platform that you wish to implement.
H2 IaaS pricing
Typically, businesses using IaaS platforms pay for the services as per their usage. Over a period of time, different pricing models have emerged, such as:
- Subscriptions and reserved instances
- Monthly billing
- By the hour/second
- Transient/spot
Conclusion
Irrespective of the business size, shifting to an IaaS platform can successfully help businesses to become more efficient and provide exemplary products and services to their customers. Compared to traditional on-premise data centers, IaaS offers more advantages and benefits, such as more uptime, better storage, backup and recovery options, redundancy built in each layer, easy scalability options, and more. The support and reliability provided by IaaS platforms are truly unmatched!
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