Cloud computing
Cloud computing allows organization to operate
their IT environment without having to own and manage their own IT
infrastructure. In cloud computing, cloud customer will lease or pay to use
cloud provider IT computing resources such as servers, storage, networks,
application and services over the internet. This eliminates the need of maintaining infrastructure, so organization
can solely focus on their core business operation rather than worrying about infrastructure
components. Overall, cloud computing is the on-demand consumption of IT
services and resources over the network.
Nowadays, many small to large business are leaning towards
cloud computing and migrating their infrastructure to the cloud. Some of the
reason for many businesses to move to the cloud are:
- Cost-efficient (Pay as you go)
- Data Security
- Agility
- Elasticity
- Scalability
- Disaster recovery and Business continuity
- Self-service
- Broad network access
There are three types of cloud computing models.
Private cloud
In this model, computing resources are only used by a single business and there is no sharing of resources with outside organization. The organization can choose to house private cloud in on-premise infrastructure or choose to host in the datacenter provided by a cloud provider.
Public cloud
In this model, cloud infrastructure is owned and managed by cloud provider. The cloud customer will access computing resources such as compute, servers, storage, networks, etc. through the internet. The customer can scale up and down their resource consumption based on their business need.
Hybrid cloud
This model uses mix of public and private cloud to create an optimal IT infrastructure. Hybrid cloud leverages both cloud models where applications and services can operate and migrate seamlessly between public and private platforms. Both public and private cloud elements are in sync in this model.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Cloud provider / hosts are responsible for following in most VPS and IaaS scenario:
- Upkeep network resources, compute resources, storage resources, and data center infrastructure.
- Provides maintenance-free virtualized access to the hardware or infrastructure resources (mentioned above) on a pay-as-you-go basis.
- Creates a continuous virtual environment for cloud consumers.
- Provides easy access and control over individual IaaS components to the cloud consumers.
Benefits of using VPS:
- You will have complete freedom to manage your server and have access to all the resources. You can configure your server using any methods best suitable for your environment.
- Data is isolated and inaccessible to other VPS hosted in same physical server.
- VPS is not dependent of traffic or audience. You have your own resources which are not shared by other VPS servers.
Drawbacks of using VPS:
A VPS are stored in a multi-tenant environment, that
represents too much security risks. Even though, hypervisor prevents VPS from
sharing critical data and its resources, still VPS is vulnerable from outside
attack. Since there are other VPS on the host as well, there is still high
chance of having resource constraint, storage I/O issues as well as network
bandwidth issues at some point.
It is also advised that clients admins / security responsible for managing VPS should only runs trusted software and install appropriate security software.
Virtual Private cloud (VPC)
In cloud computing, a virtual private cloud (VPC) is a
private cloud computing environment which itself resides within a public cloud. VPC is logically seperated sections of a public cloud in order
to provide a virtual private environment. Like public cloud, a VPC virtualizes
compute, storage and network resources and makes them available to multiple
VMs, A virtual private cloud is a logical division in a multi-tenant cloud
environment that leverages advanced network technologies such as encryption, tunneling,
private IP addressing and virtual LANs (VLANs) to provide an isolated cloud
environment.
Virtual private cloud runs in the cloud providers datacenter.
The cloud providers which offer VPC services typically use networking
technologies to define a secure VPC. Virtual networks that can span multiple
physical hosts. he services are provided through a pool of resources that can
span multiple hosts. Hence, there is also an opportunity of scalability.
The VPC provider ensures that each cloud customer’s data are isolated from another customers data by applying various security policies namely allocating unique LAN, using network micro segmentation flow, using VPNs, segmenting subnets, etc.