The document discusses Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing. IaaS provides virtual machines, storage, and other hardware resources to clients over the internet. Choosing IaaS allows organizations to avoid large upfront costs, scale infrastructure easily, and focus IT resources on strategic initiatives rather than maintenance. However, moving to IaaS requires planning for existing infrastructure, ensuring application compatibility, understanding required modifications, evaluating backup plans and costs, and analyzing security risks from insider threats or virtual machine escapes.
2. What is cloud computing
•Cloud computing in short can be defined as “internet-
based computing”, which makes users able to access
software applications whenever they need without
worrying about storage or power. In today’s modern
era, cloud computing has become a very interesting
technology, providing services to its users on demand
over the internet.
3. Service models of cloud computing
• Three service types have been universally accepted, namely;
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): IaaS provides virtual machines,
virtual storage, virtual infrastructure, and other hardware assets as
resources that clients can provision.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS provides virtual machines,
operating systems, applications, services, development frameworks,
transactions, and control structures.
Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS is a complete operating
environment with applications, management, and the user interface.
4. What is IaaS
•Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a service model
that delivers computer infrastructure on an outsourced
basis to support enterprise operations. Typically, IaaS
provides hardware, storage, servers and data center
space or network components; it may also include
software
5. Why choose IaaS?
• IaaS provides small start up firms with a major advantage,
since it allows them to gradually expand their IT
infrastructure without the need for large capital investments
in hardware and peripheral systems. Through the IaaS model,
organizations are basically renting their IT infrastructure from
an expert service provider. There are many reasons for an
organization of any size or type to take the IaaS approach.
The following are some reasons why small organizations
should opt for IaaS
6. Why choose IaaS?
Cost
• With the server, storage and networking hardware off-site at
the provider’s location, there are no capital investments that
need to be made, maintenance costs incurred or wasted office
space used to store the equipment. Additionally, the “pay-as-
you-go” subscription-based model enables an organization to
pay for only what they use.
7. Why choose IaaS?
Scalability
• This subscription model also enables an organization to easily
scale up or down as their needs grow or change. This is
especially valuable for small and mid-sized businesses
(SMBs) that have limited resources when they start out, but
want to make the right technology investments at the
beginning and be able to scale as they grow.
8. Why choose IaaS?
Flexibility
•Every organization is different and has varying
computing requirements as well as ever-changing
needs. IaaS enables an organization to choose the
computing power and storage capacity that is right for
them.
9. Why choose IaaS?
Strategic Focus
• Relying on off-site experts to implement and maintain an
infrastructure allows internal IT resources to focus more on
strategic initiatives, such as finding innovative applications to
more efficiently and effectively manage certain aspects of
their business. This can be extremely valuable for small
businesses with limited resources.
10. Why choose IaaS?
No hardware costs
•Your cloud provider sets up and maintains the
hardware necessary to support the IaaS platform. In
the long run, this will save both time and money for
users.
11. Why choose IaaS?
Remote Access
•All that is needed to access the service is an internet
connection, so it can be accessed from anywhere.
12. Why choose IaaS?
Better security
•Public clouds, or externally hosted private clouds,
benefit from the extra security of servers hosted in
fully secure data centres.
13. What to consider when moving to IaaS?
Plan what to do with existing infrastructure
• Unless you're engaging in a 'lift and shift' operation where an IaaS
provider essentially buys your infrastructure and takes over its
management, you'll need a plan for how to retire or repurpose your
existing infrastructure. This is often a key element of the business case
supporting an IaaS migration, but an easy part of the plan to defer and
endlessly delay as you focus on migration to the new infrastructure,
ultimately eroding the benefits spelled out in your business case.
14. What to consider when moving to IaaS?
What operating systems do you use and are they compatible with cloud?
• When you’re choosing which applications to move to the cloud, you’ll
need to consider their architecture and the software they were initially
built for. Some legacy applications may rely on old and unsupported
operating systems that aren’t compatible with cloud, for example. To
get around this, review carefully, conduct plenty of tests beforehand,
and perhaps opt not to move them at all.
15. What to consider when moving to IaaS?
Know how much modification your software will require
• In most IaaS models, the applications you run on the outsourced
infrastructure will likely require some level of modification. In the
simplest cases, this might be limited to extra administrative steps when
deploying new applications; in the more complex cases, this could
require code-level modification to applications to support your IaaS
provider's ability to turn applications on and off and move them
between infrastructure components. There's obviously a cost to these
modifications, so make sure you understand the impact of any tweaks
that your IaaS provider requires.
16. What to consider when moving to IaaS?
Know the vendor's backup plan
• Make sure you understand how your data are protected, and what
redundancies are available should your IaaS provider have an outage.
Some IaaS providers can create entire 'copies' of your infrastructure
and associated applications, while others merely provide some limited
hardware redundancy. For smaller IaaS providers in particular,
understand where they have key points of failure and what scenarios
might knock out significant portions of your infrastructure, as well as
how to mitigate these effects should they occur.
17. Impact on IT staff
• When a company opts for IaaS, the most obvious changes result from
eliminating the need to deal with the hardware. Clients no longer have
to purchase it, install it, move it, configure it, support it, repair it,
upgrade it or refresh it. Similarly, installs and changes for the lowest
levels of the software stack, optionally including the DBMS, are also
managed by the provider, so while expertise to run middleware and
applications on the platform is still needed, some of the more routine
tasks are off-loaded.
18. Things the management should consider
Training Staff
• Adopting the cloud means introducing a completely new environment
to your company, which applies to both technically capable
individuals, and to those working in other departments (such as HR
and Finance). Identify each team that needs to be trained to use the
cloud, and create onboarding procedures in order to make this
transition as easy as possible for everyone. Consider the different
needs, and technical expertise, then tailor each document accordingly.
19. Things the management should consider
Evaluating Cost
• Many companies choose the cloud for its cost efficiency. While it is
generally true that the cloud can offer lower costs, there are various
things you should take into account. This is especially important when
considering the transition period during which you will be paying for
both your on-premises data center and the cloud. Calculate the cost of
all the resources that you plan to provision in the cloud, and make sure
to understand the pricing model for each service you will be using.
While some services do not have convoluted pricing pages, others can
be quite confusing.
20. Things the management should consider
Analyze Risk and Prepare an Exit Strategy
• The benefits of cloud adoption abound, but you also must be aware of
the potential risks and prepare an exit strategy just in case. One
consideration is vendor lock-in, as some of the services your cloud
provider offers might be specific in a way that does not allow you to
get off that technology as simply as you would like. On the other hand,
trying to avoid vendor lock-in at all costs may also hurt you as you
will not be utilizing the benefits that the cloud brings with it. Finding
the balance between the two is paramount. Make sure to present
contingency scenarios of moving back to your data center, or even
migrating to a different public cloud Accompanying each option with
an estimated cost of such a move is crucial.
21. Security Issues
Insider Threats
• Employees of the cloud service provider have direct access to
hardware and networks, and many have access to the hypervisors,
provisioning systems, and authentication infrastructure. Thus, those
privileged insiders are a potential threat.
22. Security Issues
Escaping Virtual Machines, Containers, or Sandboxes
• If a customer is able to escape from a virtual machine, container, or
serverless sandbox, that may permit access to the hypervisor or
operating system running other customers' workloads. Once in a
hypervisor, the attacker can modify code, steal secrets, and install
malware on any instance on the same hardware.
• The risk of such break-outs can be reduced by minimizing the number
of virtualization drivers and other features supported by the hypervisor
23. Conclusion
The promise of cloud computing has long been a new
height of convenience—easily and rapidly provisioned
pay-per-use computing resources, scaling automatically
and instantly to meet changing demands. Emerging at
the convergence of major computing trends such as
virtualization, service-oriented architectures, and
standardization of the Internet, IaaS comes closer than
ever before to fulfilling that that vision.
24. Conclusion
IaaS is being deployed by world-class organizations as
well as aggressive SMBs. The next several years will
see IaaS embraced by companies of all sizes, using all
manner of deployment models, as the overwhelming
economic benefits and flexibility of its elastic metered
services prevail over other IT solutions