What is Cloud Computing?

Intro

Ace here again. This is part of my blog series on Azure and Cloud Computing

This is a short discussion about cloud computing, another aspect of Internet service providers offering to help companies reduce costs by practically eliminating hardware.

Service Providers and Services

In the past few years, many online service providers have gained momentum offering datacenter services to allow customers the ability to host services, applications, and operating systems. These service providers provide 24/7 availability and uptime monitoring, backups, disaster recovery, maintain application updates and provide full support.

As long as an employee has internet access, whether at the office or away, they can access these services and applications.

A Cloud Operating System does what a traditional operating system does – manage applications and hardware, but at the scope and scale of cloud computing, meaning the applications and hardware are operated and managed outside of a company’s network.

The foundations of the Cloud OS are Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure, complemented by the full feature set of Microsoft technology solutions, such as SQL Server, System Center, Exchange Server, and Visual Studio. Together, these technologies provide a consistent platform for infrastructure, applications and data that can span your datacenter, service provider datacenters, and the Microsoft public cloud.

Public Clouds

Shared Public Cloud

A Shared Public Cloud provides the benefit of rapid implementation, massive scalability, and low cost of entry because multiple tenants share and absorb the overall costs reducing individual tenant costs.

It is delivered in a shared physical infrastructure where the architecture, customization, and degree of security are designed and managed by the hosting provider according to market-driven specifications.

Public clouds have weaker security due to their shared nature.

Dedicated Private Clouds

Dedicated Private clouds are similar to a Shared Public Cloud, except they are delivered on a dedicated physical infrastructure dedicated to a single organization.

Security, performance, and sometimes customization are better in the Dedicated Public Cloud than in the Shared Public Cloud. Its architecture and service levels are defined by the provider and the cost may be higher than that of the Shared Public Cloud.

Private Cloud

Dedicated Private clouds may be hosted by the organization itself at a co-location service where the organization owns all hardware and software, and provide their own full maintenance procedures including disaster recovery solutions, with the co-location only providing 24/7 power and internet connectivity guarantees, or they may be hosted by a cloud services provider, which provides all hardware and software and ensures that the cloud services are not shared with any other organization.

Private clouds are more than just large-scale hypervisor installation. They can use the Microsoft System Center 2012 management suite, which makes it possible to provide self-service delivery of services and applications.

Self-hosted Private Cloud

A Self-hosted Private Cloud provides the benefit of architectural and operational control utilizing the existing investment in people and equipment, and provides a dedicated on-premise environment that is internally designed, hosted, and managed.

Hosted Private Cloud

A Hosted Private Cloud is a dedicated environment that is internally designed, externally hosted, and externally managed. It blends the benefits of controlling the service and architectural design with the benefits of datacenter outsourcing.

Private Cloud Appliance

A Private Cloud Appliance is a dedicated environment that is purchased from a vendor and designed by that vendor, and are based on provider & market driven features and architectural control. They can be hosted internally or externally, and can be internally or externally managed. A Private Cloud Appliance benefits consumers by combining advantages of a predefined functional architecture, lower deployment risk with the benefits of internal security and control.

What does Windows 2012 R2 and Cloud OS Mean to Organizations?

It means organization can shift to efficiently manage datacenter resources as a whole, including networking, storage and computing. Organizations will be able to deliver and manage powerful apps that boost employee productivity providing faster access across private, hybrid (mixture of private & public clouds) and public clouds.

With Windows Server 2012 and newer, and System Center, an organization owns its own private cloud, and they can provide users a self-service portal to request their own multitier applications including web servers, database servers, and storage components.

Windows Server 2012 and the components of the System Center 2012 suite can be configured so service requests can be processed automatically, without requiring manual deployment of virtual machines and database server software.

Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track

Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track is a joint effort between Microsoft and its hardware partners to deliver pre-configured solutions that reduce the complexity and risk of implementing a private cloud, and provides and delivers flexibility and choice across a range of hardware vendor options technologies in pre-configured solutions.

For more information on Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track, and the implementation deployment guide:

Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track Information New and Improved, by Thomas W Shinder, MSFT, 7/27/2012
http://blogs.technet.com/b/privatecloud/archive/2012/07/27/microsoft-private-cloud-fast-track-information-new-and-improved.aspx

For a complete list of Reference Architecture for Private Cloud Documents:

Reference Architecture for Private Cloud
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3819.reference-architecture-for-private-cloud.aspx

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Summary

Stay tuned for more on Azure and Cloud Computing

Published 10/15/2016

Ace Fekay
MVP, MCT, MCSE 2012, MCITP EA & MCTS Windows 2008/R2, Exchange 2013, 2010 EA & 2007, MCSE & MCSA 2003/2000, MCSA Messaging 2003
Microsoft Certified Trainer
Microsoft MVP – Directory Services

Complete List of Technical Blogs: http://www.delawarecountycomputerconsulting.com/technicalblogs.php

This posting is provided AS-IS with no warranties or guarantees and confers no rights.

October 16, 2016

What is SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS?

Intro

Ace here again. With Azure gaining traction, and the whole “Cloud”computing buzzwords becoming a staple to every day life, I thought to bring some sunlight through and explain some of the offerings.

SaaS: Software as a Service

Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers business processes and applications, such as Sharepoint, CRM, collaboration, and e-mail, as standardized capabilities for a usage-based cost at an agreed, business-relevant SLA (service level agreement).

SaaS provides significant efficiencies in cost and delivery with minimal customization that represents a shift of operational risks from the consumer to the hosting provider. All infrastructure and IT operational functions are abstracted away from the consumer reducing consumer resource overhead.

The end user is the consumer, and benefits the most with SaaS with increased application uptime and performance.

PaaS: Platform as a Service

The most complex of the three, cloud platform services or “Platform as a Service,” (PaaS) delivers computational resources with an efficient and agile approach to operate scale-out applications in a predictable and cost-effective manner, through a platform, such as Windows Server 2012.

With PaaS, the application owner is the consumer. PaaS delivers application execution services, such as application runtime, storage, and integration, for applications written for a pre-specified development framework the consumer can build upon to develop, customize, and test applications. Deployment of applications is quick, simple, and cost-effective, eliminating the need to purchase underlying layers of hardware and operating systems.

PaaS is highly scalable. Consumers need not worry about platform upgrades or downtime due to maintenance.

Service levels and operational risks are shared because the consumer (customer) takes responsibility for the stability, architectural compliance, and overall operations of the application while the provider delivers the platform capability (including the network infrastructure and operational functions) at a predictable service level and cost.

One comparison between SaaS vs. PaaS is with PaaS, vendors still manage runtime, middleware, O/S, virtualization, hardware (servers & storage), and networking, but users manage applications and data. With SaaS, the users only control the software, not the platform the software is running on.

IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service

Cloud infrastructure services, known as “Infrastructure as a Service,” (IaaS), deliver computer infrastructure (such as a platform virtualization environment), storage, and networking.

IaaS abstracts hardware (server, storage, and network infrastructure) into a pool of computing, storage, and connectivity capabilities that are delivered as services for a usage-based (metered) cost. Its goal is to provide a flexible, standard, and virtualized operating environment that can become a foundation for PaaS and SaaS.

IaaS is usually seen to provide virtual server standardization by the hosting provider. The hosting provider manages virtualization and provides service level agreements (SLA) that cover the performance and availability of the virtualized infrastructure.

The consumer takes responsibility for configuration, operations, maintenance, updates, upgrades and support of the guest Operating System (OS), software, and Database (DB). Compute capabilities (such as performance, bandwidth, and storage access) are also standardized.

IaaS is an advanced state of IT maturity that has a high degree of automation, integrated-service management, and efficient use of resources.

The consumer can be the application owner and/or the IT department, and also provide middleware, application and operating system updates, upgrades and support. The benefit to the consumer is they can install any required platforms.

Click here for additional information

What does Windows 2012 R2 and Cloud OS Mean to Organizations?

With Windows Server 2012 and System Center, an organization owns its own private cloud, and they can provide users a self-service portal to request their own multitier applications including web servers, database servers, and storage components.