Infrastructure as a Service Overview
Infrastructure as a Service Overview
Infrastructure as a Service Overview
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides many potential benefits to organizations. The benefits include enormous cost savings, cash flow, and scalability. Cloud Computing and IaaS have their pitfalls and limitations as well. Choosing the wrong vendor can have a major negative impact on business operations.
Before discussing the potentials and limitations for specific business models, a thorough review of the promise of the cloud based IaaS services is needed. NIST defines cloud based IaaS as an on-demand, measured service that provides broad network access with true resource pooling and rapid elasticity to handle demand.
Cloud On-demand self service
As an on-demand self service, cloud computing allows services to be provisioned, deployed, and accessed through a self service model. The self service interface for provisioning of servers, load balancing, and software and data base support is an integral part of business requirements. The interface or dashboard of a successful IaaS provider must be available at all times with system and resource reliability that can provide the required necessary access. Integrated reporting (dashboard view of services in use or rendered) is a feature that is needed in day-to-day management of deployed services. Based upon our experience, the difficulty lies in the confusion of IaaS vendors that view self-service as no-service. In reality, a mission critical infrastructure which operates business applications requires high level of service and support from the IaaS provider. If a provider cannot provide the proper level of support, its cloud offering is a failure.
Broad Network
Providing access to a broad network is vital to the success of any application regardless if it is deployed in adedicated hosting environment or in the cloud. With advent of social media and mobile applications, only one network provider or geographic location is not sufficient for running applications which needlow latency in order to interact and function. Regardless of where the end user is located, a broadaccess to the cloud and multiple vendors for connectivity and geographical distribution of cloud basedservices will be hindered if network latency becomes an issue.
Network latency for reaching social media sites as well as latency for connecting with the end user has become a major concern with a number of providers we evaluated in our selection process. Additionally, having a single provider or single path to the cloud by the IaaS provider can have serious negative consequences in the event of network outage and downtime. Proper cloud vendor selection requires consideration of the IaaS location, the geographic distribution of the server farms, the path the majority of users will take to reach the servers and the location of third party social media or mobile sites.
Cloud Elasticity
Elasticity is the ability to deploy additional resources in the cloud as demand dictates. This is one of the most important considerations in choosing the right vendor. Many traditional hosting and managed service providers have simply re-labeled traditional server deployments as IaaS. What they provide, in fact, are dedicated server farms and a graphic dashboard to lure prospects. They market the same server that would cost a few hundred dollars per month and simply rebrand it as a cloud based solution demanding multiples in price. The challenge with elasticity is increased signifigantly with windows based operating systems. We will discuss these limitations in future articles. A major criteria we used to consider various service providers was to inspect each solution a vendor is offering and how they enabled setting of threshholds in the cloud for deploying additional instances of the VM without having to provision each VM resource from scratch.
Cloud Resource Pooling
Resource pooling of server farms is an important consideration of cloud vendors. It is not simply the cost of the server that the organization uses but the costs associated with power, server operating systems, database, load balancing solutions, etc. The savings will simply not materialize if each cloud client is running dedicated resources at times when the servers are not in use. Simply moving a server farm and calling it a cloud does not bring cost savings. An organization is only as efficient as the pooling of resources at peak demand times and cost savings in turning off resources when they are not in use.
Cloud Measured Billing
Measured billing is paying for what resource the end organization uses. Measured billing is irrelevant if a cloud provider cannot provide resource pooling, elasticity and on-demand service. Most organizations that we reviewed had purchased third party software in order to handle billing and utilization of resources. In our evaluation process we look at measured utility billing in conjunction with cloud elasticity and resource pooling rather than just stand alone consideration. Measured billing should be considered across all the services that IaaS vendor is providing and not just for the server usage.
What is next?
In future articles we will discuss in greater detail the types of organizations and business models that see dramatic benefits and are considered ideal for cloud IaaS and how they benefit from them.
Quality SEO Services in Delhi Service Options for Converting VHS to DVD Translation Service And Communication System Is Helpful For High Tech Life VoIP Service- Save Your Money During the Call The General Contractors Brooklyn at your Service Cheap Offers Duirng Carnival Cruise Cheep Services During Carnival Cruise Lodging In Carnival Cruise High Quality Email Lists to Build and Maintain a Good Customer Base Free Wowgreen Super Stain Remover For All First Time Customers, Get Yours Today! quality and quantity assurance and certification services in the solid mineral industry in nigeria Find Out Best Service For Air Duct Cleaning Tulsa Job Responsibilities of Service Delivery Managers Learning The 3 Keys To Spectacular Customer Service! The Ultimate Best Web Hosting Service Provider