Cloud Computing Explained with Food
27 November, 2022
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Contributors
Consider a scenario, you are hungry and you need food. Two options present themself: One, buy the ingredients and make the food at home or Two, conveniently order food from a restaurant. Now the first option is similar when you use your own services for any task at hand, while the other option is like using cloud services.
This is cloud in nutshell — The cloud provides the required resources for you to work without any hassle.
Additionally, you have a limit to the amount of data you can store in a local storage disk. The cloud essentially does not have that limit. You could store hundreds of GBs, TBs or even PBs of data.
Terminologies
Data Centre:
They are like branches of different restaurants scattered all across the globe. It is where your data is stored.
Cloud Service Providers:
They are like the restaurants where you get your food at. There are three main giants:
1.
AWS
2.
Google Cloud
3.
Microsoft Azure
Deployment Models
Like the different ways you can get food (make at home, dine-in, or food delivery service), there are various ways of accessing cloud:
1. Public Cloud:
It is kind of similar to dine-in restaurants, where you fully access the service of the restaurant and don’t want any hassle. All the data files are stored and managed by your cloud service providers that charge for the same.
2. Private Cloud:
It is akin to having a personal chef. The ingredients (Servers) and the kitchen (Infrastructure) are privately owned by you. All the data files are stored and managed by your data centre and your own resources.
3. Hybrid Cloud:
This simply means you’re using a mix of both private and public clouds.
For instance, you can easily put confidential data in the Private cloud whereas non-critical data is shared through the Public cloud. It helps organisations to manage their total resources more effectively.
Types of Cloud
IAAS:
It is when you buy a ready-to-cook meal that you prepare at home. The cloud service provider only gives you the infrastructure (ingredients), you are responsible for choosing the hardware and other resources (from available options).
PAAS:
It is when you order the food and get it delivered to your home. You only worry about the delivery and dining experience at your home. Platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud computing model where a third-party provider delivers hardware and software tools to users over the internet. Usually, these tools are needed for application development
SAAS:
It is when you go to the restaurant, order food and eat: you don’t care about how they make it or what ingredients are used (though maybe you should); you simply order your food and pay for it.
Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management. This is at the cost of limited customization.
Benefits of Cloud
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It’s cheaper: It’s a pay-as-you-use model, meaning you pay only for what you use, similar to a restaurant.
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Security: It is secure, but not fully. Cloud Service Providers usually have tight security around the perimeter (both physical and software) of the data centre to keep hackers at bay. Again there are those rare chances where you might lose data.
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Flexibility: Imagine you suddenly require a few extra TBs of storage urgently. You can just increase the storage size with a few clicks.
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Disaster Recovery: Now suppose the data centre decided to go offline for whatever reason. You wouldn’t even know about it as they keep copies of the same data in other data centers, so that you can have peace of mind (the same can’t be said about restaurants though)
Potential Disadvantages
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Downtime: There are chances that your software may experience some downtime. This can occur due to some technical difficulties your cloud service providers are facing. (Note that these are resolved within a few hours)
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Data Loss: As mentioned earlier there is a low chance of data theft.
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Cost concerns: I did mention that the services are cheaper, but if you leave a server on and forget about it, you can say bye-bye to your credit card.
What is the Future of Cloud Computing?
Increase Storage Capacity
Data is important in the functioning of today’s world. Currently, the world population is a staggering 8 billion, meaning the amount of data to handle is unfathomable and that the cloud is here to stay.
Enhanced Performance of Internet
Modern-day users expect high-quality fast-loading services and applications which are only possible with the support of cloud computing.
Supply-chain woes are here to stay
From gas to air travel to shipping, these issues impact everyone. The cloud presents a chance to build something stable and viable in an uncertain world, offering the potential to outfox a volatile economy.
Even now, a few hours of downtime can lead to huge losses for organisations, something that could’ve been avoided with cloud backing
Security
The data which is stored in the cloud is moderately secure but not fully. The small companies which are providing cloud services may or may not provide proper security to the data.
So in the future, we can prevent cyber-attacks by providing better security. Major cloud providers compete to provide better security measures and ways to prevent cyber attacks.
Considering all of this, the cloud won’t disappear anytime soon. With all the convenience and utilities that these services provide, and with any disadvantages being worked out by the biggest tech giants, it’s fast becoming a must-have skill.
Our daily lives, the software we use and the media we consume all now rely on the cloud. It’s a terrific skill to have in your skillset and not one to be missed. A bit of effort to grasp the basics today can open your skies for tomorrow.
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