WHAT IS CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE?

According to researchandmarkets, global cloud computing revenue is expected to reach $  519  billion by 2027 and grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.7%. Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) alone is expected to reach $63.8 billion by 2025. Cloud computing is expected to transform the business and technology models of companies in an unprecedented way. However, deploying, operating and managing a data center is very expensive, making it more convenient and cheaper for companies to switch to cloud infrastructure providers for scalable, modern and reliable cloud infrastructure services.

What is Cloud Infrastructure?

Cloud infrastructure refers to hardware and software such as servers, storage, networks, virtualization software, services and management tools to support computing requirements in a cloud computing model.

Cloud infrastructure also includes an abstract layer that is virtualization and resources and services available to users through application programming interfaces – APIs and API-enabled command lines or visual interfaces.

How cloud infrastructure works and its role in cloud computing:

Cloud infrastructure is the foundation for cloud computing. By separating the features and functions of hardware and software, cloud service providers, or the organization’s IT department (in the case of private cloud models), then centrally host virtualized resources and deliver them to users via the internet or private networks. The resources include virtual machines (VMs) and components such as servers, memory, network switches, firewalls, load balancing, and storage. These resources often support extended services and specialized services such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML).

Cloud infrastructure enables a wide variety of applications such as IoT, operating systems, support systems, and others to share infrastructure needs to achieve their ultimate goals.

There are many advantages to using cloud infrastructure for businesses, including the main advantage of being able to access powerful infrastructure systems, superior computing and processing (high computing) at a much lower price according to the needs of each specific time. There are three models of cloud infrastructure deployment: Private Cloud model, Public Cloud model  , Hybrid Cloud model.

Components of cloud infrastructure:

In cloud computing architecture, cloud infrastructure refers to the back-end technology elements that we can see in most enterprise data centers (DC) such as servers, storage devices, network devices but on a much larger scale (compared to a DC of an enterprise). For example, Amazon (AWS), Google (Google Cloud Platform) … are super-class cloud service providers (can provide almost unlimited resources) that we know, they set up customized infrastructure components in an optimal way to meet the individual needs of each customer, even meeting big data and artificial intelligence (AI).

The main components of cloud infrastructure include: Server, Storage and Network:

Server:  Cloud service providers will build a cloud infrastructure to provide servers that share resources with many tenants. Because of the need to calculate to meet the diverse and unpredictable needs of users, these servers often have many sockets (multi socket) and cores (multi core).

Storage:  Unlike traditional data center infrastructures that use disk arrays (storage) shared on a SAN (Storage Area Network) – cloud infrastructures typically include local storage including both SSDs and HDDs. These persistent storage systems are aggregated using a distributed file system (DFS) designed for specific storage scenarios such as object, big data, or block. Separating storage control and management from the physical infrastructure through DFS makes storage scaling much simpler. It also helps cloud service providers increase storage capacity based on user storage volume by gradually adding nodes to the system with the required number and type of local disks, instead of having to prepare a large storage capacity from the beginning as in the traditional model.

Network:  Cloud computing relies on high-bandwidth connections to transmit data. Therefore, cloud infrastructure also includes typical components of a local area network (LAN) such as switches, routers, as well as virtual networks and load balancing to distribute network traffic.

Requirements when building a cloud infrastructure:

Most organizations choose to use the public cloud model. In this case, customers will rent cloud infrastructure from cloud service providers. Cloud service providers will have high expertise to design, build and manage cloud infrastructure to meet the diverse needs of customers. In this model, customers only need to choose a reliable infrastructure provider that best meets their usage requirements. For example, choosing infrastructure with CPU cores (Cores) of what performance, storage on SSD or HDD, Data Center located in which area, how much bandwidth, virtualization technology along with other advanced services for self-coordination and management, security integration, reporting and payment, etc.

In case an organization wants to build its own private cloud infrastructure and take full responsibility for its infrastructure system, from hardware management to application management and running, workload… it needs to fulfill the following requirements:

– It is necessary to design a standardized infrastructure architecture to share IT resources, with the ability to expand and adjust resources according to the level of work requirements (workload); ensure that configuration and management are based on consistent policies;

– Hardware and software must have ‘abstract’ resources such as compute, virtualization and containers, storage and networking;

– Additional management functions such as integration, coordination, security, reporting, etc.

The specific technology layer for a private cloud infrastructure will depend on the choice of provider. Businesses and organizations can choose to use existing hardware and choose software providers or choose providers of both hardware and software.

In addition, businesses can also choose a private cloud infrastructure (off-premises) by using resources from cloud service providers in the following forms:

Hosted Private Cloud – Private Cloud:  A cloud service provider hosts and manages cloud services for a customer on a separate infrastructure of hardware, software, and network.

Managed Private Cloud – Managed private cloud:  As an extension of the above-mentioned hosted private cloud, the service provider will add other management services such as identity management…

Virtual Private Cloud – Private virtual cloud:  Is a form of separate cloud in the public cloud, the workload will be separate from other customers but still run on a multi-tenant server infrastructure. In this form, the organization will have its own network without sharing the network with any customers.

Advantages of cloud infrastructure – Infrastructure cloud

Using cloud infrastructure will bring many advantages to users compared to using their own self-built infrastructure system, in which the biggest advantages are cost and security.

The specific advantages are as follows:

Flexible:  Users (customers) can purchase, quickly access resources and self-manage resources according to their business needs. This is especially valuable when users need to increase the volume of resources to meet immediate work demands.

Reliability:  The unlimited scalability and redundancy options of cloud service providers through data centers located around the world provide much more reliability than a user’s own hosting infrastructure. Failures are rare but do occur, so users should plan their cloud usage based on the reliability and uptime requirements of their workloads.

Cost:  When using cloud infrastructure, users eliminate the upfront costs of using their own on-premise infrastructure. Instead, under the consumption-based model, users pay per use for infrastructure services on an hourly, weekly, or monthly basis. In addition, users will not have to spend a huge initial investment capital to invest in their IT infrastructure as well as the costs to maintain their own system, users only need to spend a smaller, recurring, and predictable operating cost when using cloud services from providers.

Security:  Initial concerns about the security of public private cloud resources are gradually decreasing. Cloud infrastructure providers are constantly investing and improving their capabilities to protect their infrastructure from threats. Most cloud security issues stem from users misconfiguring individual services, not from external malicious actors.

Disadvantages of cloud infrastructure – Infrastructure cloud

Besides the advantages that cloud infrastructure service providers bring, users also need to consider some disadvantages when renting cloud services as follows:

Shared Security:  While cloud providers are vigilant and constantly improving the security of their cloud infrastructure, monitoring the relatively large scale of infrastructure and services is extremely complex. Furthermore, the shared responsibility model means that providers only secure their infrastructure – customers are responsible for protecting their workloads and data through proper configuration, access control, and monitoring.

Visibility and Management:  The virtualization layer of the cloud infrastructure prevents customers from seeing the actual physical hardware their workloads are running on. Cloud providers also offer dedicated hardware and private physical servers, which provide complete control over the physical server segmentation, which is more efficient but also more expensive.

Out of control costs:  The pay-as-you-go model works well for users who allocate and closely monitor the services they use. Overprovisioning, underutilizing resources, and not understanding service dependencies can quickly add up to unwanted cloud infrastructure costs. Users need to constantly monitor and manage their cloud usage as cloud usage becomes more detailed, complex, and multi-service.