Table of Contents
Introduction
Cloud computing delivers computing resources, including storage, processing power, databases, networks, analytics, artificial intelligence, and software applications, over the Internet (the cloud). By outsourcing these resources, firms can access the computing assets they need, when they need them, and without having to purchase and maintain physical IT infrastructure on-premises. It provides flexible resources that foster innovation and economies of scale. For many companies, immigration to the cloud is directly related to IT and data modernization.
Characteristics of Cloud Computing
Before the advent of cloud computing, organizations purchased and maintained on-premises IT infrastructure. Although cost savings drove much of the initial shift to the cloud, many organizations find that public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructures offer numerous benefits.
Cloud computing helps simplify and speed up the development process for agile and DevOps teams.
The Following is a Lean of Characteristics that Define Cloud Computing.
Self-service on-demand
Cloud computing providers offer APIs that users access to command new resources or scale existing resources when needed. Teams can easily automate the provisioning of their infrastructure with infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform and Ansible.
The physical location of the hardware is a major concern in delivering the optimal end-user experience. Cloud computing has a great advantage by offering globally distributed physical hardware, allowing organizations to strategically provision location-oriented hardware.
Resource pooling
Computing resources are dynamically partitioned and allocated based on demand in a cloud infrastructure platform. Because physical machines on a cloud host are dynamically provisioned and shared across multiple tenants, cloud hardware is thoroughly optimized for maximum usage.
quick elasticity
Cloud infrastructures can dynamically grow and shrink, allowing users to request that their computing resources automatically scale with traffic demands. Elasticity can occur on individual machines, where resource allocation grows to maximize available resources, or on multiple devices, where an application automatically scales to machines across multiple networks.
service measurement
Cloud infrastructure providers provide detailed usage metrics to report usage costs. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) includes hourly or daily usage for each service category. Cloud service providers typically take a metered and delivered “pay as you go” billing model, charging customers based on the number of computing resources they have used.
Types of Cloud Deployments
There are three main types of cloud deployments. Each has unique benefits, and organizations often benefit from using more than one.
Public Cloud
Public clouds offer computing resources (servers, storage, applications, etc.) over the Internet from a cloud service provider, such as AWS and Microsoft Azure. Cloud service providers own and operate all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure.
Private Cloud
A private cloud is made up of computing resources unique to an organization. Physically, it can be located in an organization’s internal data center or hosted by a cloud service provider. A private cloud offers a more advanced level of security and privacy than the public one by providing specialized resources to companies.
Private cloud customers get the core benefits of a public cloud, such as self-service, scalability, and elasticity, but with the help of additional control and customization. In addition, private clouds can have a higher level of security and privacy because they are hosted on private networks that are not accessible to public traffic.
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid clouds are a combination of private and public clouds (for example, IBM Hybrid Cloud, powered by Red Hat) connected with technology that enables data and applications to work together. Discreet services and applications can be kept secure in the private cloud, while publicly accessible web servers and customer-facing endpoints can reside in the public cloud. Most popular third-party cloud service providers offer a hybrid cloud model, allowing users to combine private and public clouds to suit their needs. In this way, companies have greater flexibility to implement the specific infrastructure requirements of their application.
Cloud Computing Services
The dynamic properties of cloud computing lay the foundation for new higher-level services. These services help not only complement but also often provide the necessary services for agile and DevOps teams.
Infrastructure as a Service
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a basic cloud service layer that allows organizations to rent IT infrastructure (server, storage, networks, operating systems, etc.) from a cloud service provider. Additionally, IaaS will enable users to reserve and provision the resources they need from raw physical server stores. It also allows them to reserve preconfigured machines for specialized tasks like load balancers, databases, email servers, and spread queues.
DevOps teams can use Iaas as a virtual platform to build a DevOps toolchain, including various third-party tools.
Platform as a service
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is an IaaS-based cloud infrastructure that provides resources for building user-level tools and applications. In addition, it provides the underlying infrastructure that includes computing, network, and storage assets, as well as development tools, database management organizations, and middleware.
Peas uses IaaS to allocate resources to power a language-based technology stack automatically. Popular language technology stacks are Ruby On Rails, Java Spring MVC, MEAN, and JAM. PaaS customers can upload an artefact of their application code automatically deployed to the PaaS infrastructure. It is a powerful new workflow that allows teams to focus entirely on their specific business application code without worrying about hosting and infrastructure issues. PaaS automatically manages the scaling and monitoring of the infrastructure to increase or decrease resources with studied traffic loads.
software as a service
Software as a Service (SaaS) offers software uses over the Internet, on-demand, and usually on a subscription basis. Cloud service providers host and achieve the application while taking care of software updates and security patches. Some examples of SaaS are CRM systems, webmail applications, productivity tools like Jira and Confluence, analytics tools, monitoring tools, chat applications, and much extra.
function as a service
Function as a Service (FaaS) is a cloud computing deal that provides a platform for customers to develop, run, and manage applications. It reduces the need for developers to build and maintain the infrastructure required to create and release an application. Cloud service providers offer cloud resources, execute a block of code, return the result, and then destroy the resources that have been used.
Advantages of Cloud Computing
The unique properties of cloud infrastructures provide some novel technical and business benefits. These are the key benefits of cloud computing for agile teams.
Cost reduction
Teams using cloud resources don’t have to purchase their hardware assets. Beyond hardware costs, cloud service providers go to great lengths to maximize and optimize hardware usage. In this way, hardware and computing resources become products, while cloud service providers compete to offer the best results.
Greater scalability
Since cloud computing is elastic through default, organizations can scale resources on demand. Cloud computing offers automatic scaling capabilities to computers. Cloud applications can automatically scale down and scale back their infrastructure resources in response to spikes in traffic.
Improved performance
Cloud computing offers the best and latest computing resources. Users can access the latest machines with powerful multi-core CPUs designed for heavy-duty parallel processing tasks. In addition, leading cloud service providers offer state-of-the-art GPU and TPU hardware machines for intense graphics, matrix, and AI processing tasks. These cloud service providers are constantly updated with the latest processor technology.
Major cloud computing providers take globally distributed hardware locations that ensure high-performance connections depending on the location of the physical contact. In addition, cloud service providers offer global content delivery networks that cache user requests and content by location.
Higher execution speed
Teams using cloud infrastructures can run faster and also, deliver value to their customers faster. Agile software teams can use cloud infrastructure to rapidly test new virtual machines to test and confirm unique ideas and automate the testing and deployment phases of the pipeline.
Reinforced Security
Private cloud hosting offers an isolated infrastructure with firewalls that reinforce security. In addition, cloud service providers offer many security mechanisms. And technologies to help build secure applications. User access control is a major security issue, and most cloud service providers offer tools to limit granular user access.
Continuous Integration and Delivery
Continuous integration and also, non-stop delivery (CI/CD) is a key practice for DevOps professionals to help increase the speed of teams and speed time to market. Cloud-based CI/CD, like Bitbucket Pipelines, enables teams to build automatically, test. And also, deploy code without worrying about managing or maintaining the CI infrastructure. Bitbucket Pipelines trusts Docker containers to provide isolation and reproducibility of the publication pipeline. Teams can run commands similar to those on a local machine but with all the benefits of a new, reproducible configuration for every build.