We have discussed IaaS briefly earlier in “What Defines A Cloud Service?”. Though, we’d only brought you a brief look at Infrastructure as a Service. So what is IaaS specifically? When would someone need it over it’s cloud computing counterparts? How is it any different from PaaS? Let’s dive in and take a look!
What Is IaaS?
IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service. It takes traditional servers, storage arrays, and networking, and converts them to virtual machines that mimic resources. However, virtual machines are created, reconfigured, resized, and removed within moments. This proves to be a key advantage of IaaS and virtual infrastructures.
Now no one needs to invest a large sum of money to purchase, set-up, and maintain systems. Plus, IaaS providers tend to offer a pay as you go system. An unused virtual machine is easily discarded. This means no one needs to continue paying for it when it’s not in use.
How Is Infrastructure Different from Platform?
As we’d discussed before, PaaS is Platform as a Service. It provides the method for programming languages to interact with services. Services include databases, web servers, file storage, and more. It does this without having to deal with lower level requirements like how much space a database needs. Often, PaaS providers also have SaaS offerings.
Remember, there is a lot of overlap between Infrastructure and Platform as services. The easy way to segregate Infrastructure and Platform is hardware and software.
In most cases, IaaS refers to the physical infrastructure associated with the machines in a data center. It refers primarily to the servers, storage arrays, and networks. Platform on the other hand, tends to refer to software solutions on the physical machines. PaaS is the Windows OS or LAMP stack.
Is Infrastructure A Requirement?
IaaS is the backbone of cloud computing and cloud services. It is the foundation of the cloud computing architecture. Basically… when dealing with the cloud, it is ALWAYS required. And more importantly, it is always good to know more about the infrastructure and details of your cloud service provider! You should always make sure to ask some basic questions about where and how the infrastructure is housed and kept secure or YOU could be liable for it.
You can read more about how Hosting Advice describes SkySilk as an IaaS
