4.1 - Cloud Characteristics

Question 1

Shared resources

Answer 1

• Internal cloud
  – No resources are shared
  – Build your own cloud
  – Pay for everything up front
  – No ongoing costs
• External cloud
  – Share resources with a public cloud
  – Underlying infrastructure owned by a third-party
  – Cost may be metered or up-front

Question 2

Metered and non-metered

Answer 2

• Metered cloud services
  – You pay for what you use
  – Cost to upload
  – Cost to store
  – Cost to download
• Non-metered
  – You pay for a block of storage
  – No cost to upload
  – No cost to download

Question 3

Cloud computing characteristics

Answer 3

• Rapid elasticity
  – Scale up and scale down as needed
  – Seamless to everyone
  – The cloud enables instant resource provisioning
• High availability
  – Systems are always available
  – Redundancy provides availability
• File synchronization
  – Information can be duplicated across cloud locations

Question 4

Desktop as a Service

Answer 4

• Basic application usage
  – Applications actually run on a remote server
  – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI),
  Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
  – Local device is a keyboard, mouse, and screen.
• Minimal operating system on the client
  – No huge memory or CPU needs
• Network connectivity
  – Big network requirement
  – Everything happens across the wire