Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Question 1

What makes a platform “Cloud”?

Answer 1

• On-Demand Self-Service = You can provision capabilities as needed without requiring human interaction
• Broad Network Access = Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms (Access services over any networks, on any devices, using standard protocols and methods)
• Resource Pooling (Economies of scale, cheaper service)= Resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model (how cloud vendors pool the needs of their customers together) (pooling allows for easier scaling, whenever a customer needs it)

There is a sense of location independence… no control or knowledge over the exact location of the resources (We’ve moved away from thinking of hardware as value, to thinking of applications and data and services as the things of value that a business offers)

• Rapid Elasticity = Capabilities (resources) can be elastically provisioned and released to scale rapidly outward and inward with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning ofter appear to be unlimited.
• Measured Service = Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, reported and billed

Question 2

EXAM POWER UP

Answer 2

Evaluate how a service matches with one of these five characteristics
* It will help shape how to design systems
* It will help if an answer of the exam makes sense or not
* A solutions which meets all of these five characteristics is a cloud platform

Question 3

Public vs Private vs Multi vs Hybrid

Answer 3

• Public Cloud = Is a cloud environment that’s available to the public (AWS, Azure and GCP)
• Multi-Cloud = Is using multiple cloud environments (Cloud provider-level resilience) (using more than 1 public cloud)
• Private Cloud On-premises = Is cloud computing which meets the five characteristics but is dedicated to you as a business (Outpost)
• Hybrid Cloud = Is using the private cloud and the public cloud
• Hybrid Enviroment = Refer to the idea of public cloud used together with on-premises infrastructure

Question 4

Infrastructure Stack

Answer 4

Is a collection of things which that application needs all stacked onto each other

• Parts you manage
• Parts managed by the vendor
• Unit of consumption = It’s what you pay for and it’s what you consume, it’s the part of the system where from that point upwards in the infrastructure stack, you are responsible for management

Question 5

On-premises vs DC Hosted

Answer 5

With an on-premises system, which is running in a building that your business owns, they have to manage all parts of the stack, pay for the upkeep and running costs of all of them, and it has to manage the staff costs and risk associated with every part of the stack

When you use data center hosting, you place your equipment inside a building which is owned and managed by a vendor. This means that the facilities is owned and controlled by the vendor

Question 6

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Answer 6

With this model, the provider, manages the facilities, the storage, and networking, the physical server, and the virtualization, and you consume the operating system, you still have to manage anything above the operating system. (EC2)

Why use IaaS?

With IaaS, you generally pay a per second, per minute or per hour fee for the virtual machine. (you only pay for what you consume)

Question 7

Platform as a Platform (PaaS)

Answer 7

This service model is aimed more at developers who have an application they just want to run, and not worry about any of the infrastructure. With PaaS your unit of consumption is the runtime or the runtime enviroment. You give the vendor some data and your application and you put it inside this Runtime enviroment. (Beanstalk)

Question 8

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Answer 8

With SaaS, you consume the application. You have no exposure to anything else, you pay a monthly fee for consuming the application, you get it as a service. (Netflix, Dropbox, Office 365, Google Mail)

Question 9

Important Points…

Answer 9

The infrastructure stack exists in every service and application that you use, that part of the stack is managed by you, part of the stack is managed by the provider and for every model there is part of the stack which you consume (unit of consumption), this is the part that you pay for and generally the part that delineates where the vendor manages and where you manage.