For small and medium enterprises, the IT infrastructure within the company must always be “up to date” in order to grow the business, often providing more resources than are currently required. Therefore, a fully functional data center is essential for most companies. However, setting up your own data center and hiring professionals to maintain it requires a lot of cost, and it is difficult to scale and adjust flexibly according to needs. Cloud computing comes into being.

With cloud computing, you can use application services directly on the cloud through the Internet, including storage space, processing power, database and software environment, and so on, without buying hardware servers.

The history of cloud computing

These networked computers, which give users more processing power and storage space, are not a new invention. The first steps towards cloud computing were taken with mainframes in the 1950s. At that time, users could access the mainframe and use its functions from multiple other terminals in the organization, although users needed to time themselves to use the mainframe.

In the decades that followed, the advent of virtualization allowed computer instances to be reconstructed abstractly. This virtual environment was subsequently made available to all network users and was commercially sold to more users in the 1990s. The cloud became more and more popular, and by 2000, many companies were becoming interested in cloud technology.

Most smartphones (or the Internet of Things) are now always connected to the cloud, and cloud computing has not only brought a lot of convenience to companies, but also become a part of daily life for many people. So what is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is a general term for hardware and software services provided over the Internet. It is usually centered on a large data center or server cluster, and gathers resources of multiple computers or servers together to form grid computing to achieve high performance. It covers everything from the cloud storage space provided by remote servers to the infrastructure in the cloud. Combined with virtualization, a single virtual instance can be created for a single user on the network. Although cloud computing includes a lot of things, there are definite rules about whether it can be called cloud computing.

According to the NIST paper, a service must meet the following characteristics to be called cloud computing:

  • ** On-demand self-service: ** Users should always be able to request the resources they need independently without having to contact the service provider.

  • ** Extensive Network access: ** Access cloud computing anywhere, anytime from any network device.

  • ** Multiple users sharing resource pools: ** Pooling multiple computing resources is a basic requirement of cloud computing. This resource pool can dynamically allocate and reallocate resources, such as processing power and storage, to meet the needs of multiple users.

  • ** Rapid redeployment flexibility: ** Resource delivery must be fast and demand-based. Zooming in and out can be done automatically in some cases without the intervention of the customer or service provider.

  • ** Measurable services: ** always monitors cloud service usage to increase transparency for both parties.

Various types of cloud computing

With the increasing number of cloud services, there are various cloud solutions on the market. In addition to the price and support provided, the main differences between these solutions lie in the layers and deployment models provided. The “layer” refers to the level of service, and the deployment model determines the type of service to be provided.

The service level

The “layer” refers to the corresponding specific service level, and generally describes the scope of services through various “as a service” levels. Therefore, they are usually represented using a pyramid model. Infrastructure as a Service has the greatest scope, whereas software as a Service is focused on specific applications.

The specific coverage of these “as a service” is as follows:

  • ** Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) : ** At this level, vendors provide complete hardware solutions: computing power, storage space, and networking. Instances used by users are completely virtual and have resource pools. IaaS can be used as a foundation for other layers or can be offered as a standalone product.

  • ** Platform as a Service (PaaS) : ** Provides a complete cloud environment that is not just hardware. PaaS is primarily for software developers. Service providers provide established development environments in the cloud hosted on hardware. As a result, programmers can save time and money in maintaining such environments.

  • ** Software as a Service (SaaS) : ** provides users with software solutions. SaaS is aimed at the typical end user, who doesn’t have to worry about installing and maintaining software and can rest assured that the hardware is powerful enough.

  • ** Everything as a Service (XaaS) : **XaaS can fall into different levels. Because in addition to the three layers mentioned above, individual providers provide additional services XaaS for special reasons (such as marketing). This is usually done for specific reasons (such as marketing). In fact, XaaS can fall into different levels.

  • HuaaS (People as a Service) : ** is a form of crowdsourcing where a group of people work over the Internet.

Of course, the three service models we see most on a daily basis are Iaas, PaaS, and SaaS.

Deployment model

Deployment models describe the types of services, including the following four:

  • ** Private cloud: ** server is used by only one customer. Private clouds can be local (internal clouds). Even if a server cluster hosting program is used, other customers using the program cannot access the dedicated hardware.

  • ** Public cloud: ** Public cloud is considered as the main form of cloud computing. Its core attribute is shared resource service, that is, everyone shares server resources together. As users, we cannot see who is using server resources and changes.

  • ** Hybrid cloud: ** This model is a hybrid of private and public clouds. This means that users can determine which parts of their operations to make private (for example, security aspects) and which parts to keep public.

  • ** Community clouds: ** Community clouds function like private clouds, except that multiple users share a dedicated hardware instance. However, user pools are not random and are usually grouped together by customers from the same business area or with similar interests. In addition, the community cloud can be managed internally or externally. More resource efficient than running multiple private clouds.

Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing

The emergence of cloud computing provides a solution to the problem of high cost for small and medium enterprises to build their own IT infrastructure. The use and maintenance of the hardware is taken over by the service provider, and enterprises simply need to invest in cheap terminals to access cloud computing services. In addition, a professional server cluster is much more secure than most organizations manage on their own, with dedicated security personnel and server specialists protecting data centers at the physical level. In addition, most cloud computing service providers have mandatory backup of all data, which can effectively avoid potential risks caused by data loss.

As a relatively new service feature, cloud computing also has some disadvantages. For example, depending on the service provider, the level of customizability in terms of configuration may vary widely and may not meet the needs of a particular enterprise. At the same time, the use of cloud services will be overly dependent on providers, once they encounter technical problems, it will directly affect the business operation of enterprises. The use of cloud computing also depends on strong and stable Internet connections, otherwise corporate employees will not be able to work efficiently.

Despite the disadvantages mentioned above, the biggest concern for cloud solutions is data privacy. Although cloud service providers can ensure the security of stored data, data transmission over the Internet always brings security risks.

Cloud computing, after all, is not free, and enterprises must carefully consider the amount of time required to use resource capacity to maximize cost savings. In this respect, and a cloud in the scene, the CDN of core business, to provide cloud storage, cloud, cloud security, traffic marketing, such as cloud services, to help users realize content delivery speed, acceleration, business growth, product research and development, and on-demand billing, WebP, h. 265, rate adaptive speed limits and other cost control related functions, Help businesses save money.

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