Azure Fundamental – Cloud Computing

We will discuss cloud computing, types of cloud – public, private, and hybrid, cloud model comparison, cloud benefits, and consumption-based model.

1. What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet, enabling faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.

• Compute: Provide the compute power (memory and processor)
• Networking: Connection of computer together of VM.
• Storage: Store of data/information.
• Analytics: Kind of load, like how much memory is required, etc.

2. Types of Cloud

2.1 Public Cloud

• Public cloud solutions are readily available from Azure, and provide infrastructure and services to the public.
• The general public can host their services.
• Public cloud owned by cloud services or hosted provider.
• Provide resources and services to multiple organizations and users.
• Accessed via secure network connection (Internet)
• An example of a Public cloud is Azure.

2.2 Private Cloud

• Private clouds are dedicated to one organization and often have much more specific security control than Public clouds.
• Organizations create a cloud environment in their data center.
• Organizations are responsible for operating the services they provide.
• Does not provide access to users outside of the organization.
• The disadvantage of a Private cloud is the high cost.

2.3 Hybrid Cloud

• Hybrid solutions are a blend of Public and Private Clouds.
• Organizations today adopt the Hybrid model, which comes as a combination of Public and Private.
• Connecting Existing datacenter to Azure datacenter via the Internet with the help of VPN Tunnel.
• For example, the Application is hosted in the Azure data center and the Database is hosted in the Client data center.

3. Cloud Model Comparison – Public vs Private vs Hybrid Cloud

4. Cloud Computing Benefits and Considerations

4.1 Cloud Benefits

• High Availability – Application hosted into one data center and copied existing into another data center. Replicate into two different data centers.
• Scalability – Two types of Scalability: Vertical and Horizontal. Vertical scalability is a scale up/down which increases/decreases compute entity ( RAM & Processor). In Horizontal scalability, if one virtual machine is highly utilized, then traffic will shifted to another virtual machine and managed by the load balancer.
• Elasticity – Only adding the scaling is called elasticity.
• Agility – Fast to deploy virtual machine.
• Disaster Recovery – Replicate the data into another to prevent during disaster time. Easy to recover.
• Consumption-Based model – Pay as per the use.
• Cost optimization – CapEx and OpEx optimization.
• Global reach – Availability of data centers across the globe.
• Security – Secure to access and use the application.

4.2 Cloud Considerations

• Capital Expenditure (CapEx)
  – Capital Expenditure are the initial investment costs made for fixed assets.
  – The up-front spending of money on physical infrastructure.
  – Costs from CapEx have a value that reduces over time.
  – Cloud can be considered as CapEx when large one-time purchases are made for fixed assets like infrastructure for an on-premises data center (vehicles, computer servers, buildings).
• Operational Expenditure (OpEx)
  – Operational Expenditure is the ongoing costs associated with day-to-day operations.
  – The spending and billing of services or products as needed.
  – Expenses are deducted in the same year.
  – Cloud can be considered as OpEx is the funds used to run day-to-day business, like a monthly cloud-based application subscription.

5. Consumption-based model

Azure or any cloud service provider operates on the consumption-based model which means end users only pay for the resources that they use. “Whatever they use it, is what they pay for”.

• Better cost prediction.
• Prices for individual resources and services are provided.
• Billing is based on actual usage.

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