Cloud infrastructure refers to the software and hardware components that support the necessities of a cloud computing service. Such components include storage, servers, networks, management tools, and virtualization software.
In addition, cloud infrastructure also includes a concept of layers that virtualizes and sensibly presents services and resources to users employing application program interfaces as well as API-enabled graphical interfaces.
In cloud computing, a service provider or information technology department hosts these virtualized resources. Such resources will include virtual components and machines like memory, firewalls, network switches, servers, storage, and load balancers.
Cloud Architecture versus Cloud Infrastructure
Cloud architecture is described as the outline for a cloud environment composed of services and components at a great scale, from which a service provider offers a wide range of cloud services. The services are delivered through isolated locations, which come with multiple connected data centers.
Cloud infrastructure, on the other hand, denotes to the physical representation of those elements including operating systems, hardware, and virtual resources that deliver cloud services for storage, compute, networking, and middleware, which are then all integrated.
Public cloud provides the capabilities of these physical resources to ensure that the services can easily be scaled to match varying workloads required by various customers. To do such, separating management and control of the physical resources is essential.
Basically, public cloud services are intended to support numerous customers with unique needs through multi-tenancy. Additionally, their infrastructure and architecture must ensure satisfactory performance, security, and reliability of that infrastructure.
Cloud Infrastructure Components in a Cloud Computing Architecture
In cloud computing architecture, a cloud infrastructure is described as the back-end hardware elements that are found within the most data center but they are on a much larger scale. These elements will include multicore servers, multi-socket, local area network equipment like routers and switches, and persistent storage.
Public cloud service providers offer services based on multi-tenant and shared servers. This cloud model required a massive compute capacity to ensure that it can handle erratic changes in user demand. Also, this type of model must be able to optimally balance service demands across fewer servers.
Consequently, cloud infrastructures include high-density systems that come with shared power. A typical cloud infrastructure would include applications, servers, clients, and other elements. However, unlike the regular data center infrastructures, a cloud infrastructure makes use of locally attached storage, hard disk drives, and solid-state drives, instead of using a shared disk array on a storage area network.
Pros and Cons of Cloud Infrastructure
Using a cloud infrastructure is beneficial for customers compared to managing and procuring an in-house infrastructure.
- Flexibility. Cloud infrastructure offers flexibility, as customers can obtain resources that are easily and quickly accessible and manage these resources to better align with the needs of their businesses.
- Reliability. With a cloud provider’s expansive infrastructure as well as redundancy options through the availability zones, reliability is expected at a scale beyond any single user’s in-house resources. With cloud infrastructure, outages may still occur but very rare. It is important to plan cloud usage based on the workload’s reliability as well as uptime requirements.
- Security. There have been initial issues with the security of public cloud resources. However, those issues have significantly been reduced because cloud providers have constantly upgraded and invested in innovations to improve their abilities to protect their infrastructure from any security threats. Most issues pertaining to the security of cloud workloads can actually be traced to user misconfigurations of services and not on external negative factors.
- Cost. With cloud infrastructure, the upfront capital cost associated with on-site infrastructure is eliminated because it follows a consumption-based model. Businesses using cloud infrastructure make use of a pay-per-usage model that charges only for the infrastructure services that they consume. Charges are applied generally on a monthly, weekly, or hourly basis. In addition, the large expense for on-site infrastructure investments is transformed into a minimal, recurring, and predictable operational expense.
While the advantages of cloud infrastructure services are enticing, it cannot be denied that there also several challenges that must be considered when using this type of service.
- Shared Security. Even if cloud service providers are very attentive when it comes to the security of their cloud infrastructure, it is still complex to oversee that large scale of services and infrastructures. Also, with the shared responsibility model, customers are still responsible for protecting their loads and data by means of having proper access controls, configuration, and monitoring while the providers are responsible for securing only their infrastructures.
- Out-of-Control Costs. Another disadvantage of cloud infrastructure is the occurrence of out-of-control costs. Such types of services would work for those cloud users provided that they closely monitor and allocate the services that you utilize. Inactive resources, overprovisioning, and failure to recognize service needs can all add up quickly to unexpected cloud costs. Cloud users must diligently monitor as well as manage usage of cloud service as they consume complex, granular, and integrated cloud service.
- Visibility and Management. The virtualization layer of cloud infrastructure means that customers do not see the actual physical hardware where their workloads run. While some public cloud providers do provide and offer dedicated hardware as well as bare metal servers, allowing control over an entire server stack and getting higher performance, that service is acquired at a higher cost.
Mphasis 