The concept of cloud computing

Source: Internet
Author: User

Some time ago, I was asked what was cloud computing, and I explained it with some of my own ideas and some of the concepts I had accumulated, but I didn't feel very thorough about myself.
Today, we specifically looked for some relevant information, summarized as follows:

The concept of cloud computing:
Professor Liu Peng Two definitions of the length of cloud computing.
The long definition is: "cloud computing is a business computing model. It distributes computational tasks across a large pool of computer-based resources, enabling various applications to acquire computational power, storage space, and information services as needed. ”
The short definition is: "cloud computing is an inexpensive, dynamically scalable computing service that is available on demand through the network." ”

At least 100 explanations can be found for what is cloud computing. What is now widely accepted is the definition given by Professor Liu Peng, deputy director of China cloud computing expert Advisory Committee: "Cloud Computing is a scalable, inexpensive, distributed computing power over a network." ”

Technically, the relationship between big data and cloud computing is as inseparable as the positive and negative side of a coin. Big data must not be processed with a single computer, and a distributed computing architecture is necessary. It is characterized by the massive data mining, but it must rely on the cloud computing distributed processing, distributed database, cloud storage and virtualization technology.

Cloud computing is a business computing model that distributes computational tasks across a large pool of computer-based resources, enabling users to gain compute power, storage space, and information services on demand.

This resource pool is called the "cloud". The cloud is a virtual computing resource that can be self-maintained and managed, typically a cluster of large servers, including compute servers, storage servers, and broadband resources. Cloud computing centralizes computing resources and automates management with specialized software, without the need for human involvement. Users can dynamically request some resources, support the operation of a variety of applications, no need to worry about cumbersome details, can focus more on their own business, to improve efficiency, reduce costs and technological innovation. The core concept of cloud computing is the resource pool, which is very similar to the concept of a grid computing pool (Computing pools), which was proposed in 2002. The grid computing pool makes the compute and storage resources virtual into a collection that can be arbitrarily combined, the scale of the pool can be dynamically expanded, and the processing power assigned to the user can be recycled dynamically. This model can greatly improve the utilization of resources and improve the service quality of the platform.

It is called "the cloud" because it has the characteristics of the cloud in some aspects: The cloud is generally large, the scale of the cloud can be dynamically scaled, its boundary is blurred, the cloud is erratic in the air, it cannot and does not need to determine its exact location, but it does exist somewhere. It is called "the Cloud", but also because one of the fathers of cloud computing, Amazon has a new name, "Elastic Computing Cloud" (Elastic Computing Cloud), and has achieved commercial success.

This model has been likened to the mode of switching from a single generator power supply mode to a centralized power supply in a power plant. It means that computing power can also be used as a commodity to circulate, like gas, water and electricity, easy access and low cost. The biggest difference is that it is transmitted over the Internet.

Cloud computing is the development of parallel Computing (Parallel Computing), distributed Computing (distributed Computing) and Grid computing (grid Computing), or a commercial implementation of these computational science concepts. Cloud computing is virtualization (virtualization), Utility Computing (Utility Computing), infrastructure as a service IaaS (Infrastructure as a service), platform as a services PAAs (Platform as a Service) and the evolution and leap of software as a hybrid of SaaS (software as a services) concepts.

From the current research situation, cloud computing has the following characteristics.

(1) ultra-large scale. "Cloud" has a considerable scale, Google Cloud computing already has more than 1 million servers, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo, and other companies "cloud" has hundreds of thousands of servers. "Cloud" can give users unprecedented computing power.

(2) Virtualization. Cloud computing enables users to access services in any location, using a variety of terminals. The requested resource is from the cloud, not a fixed physical entity. Apps run somewhere in the cloud, but in practice users don't need to know where the app is running, they need a laptop or a PDA, and they can get a variety of powerful services through a network service.

(3) High reliability. "Cloud" uses the data multi-copy fault tolerance, compute node isomorphism and other measures to ensure the high reliability of services, the use of cloud computing than the use of local computers more reliable.

(4) versatility. Cloud computing is not specific to the application, under the "cloud" support can construct a variety of applications, the same piece of "cloud" can simultaneously support different applications to run.

(5) High scalability. The scale of the cloud can be scaled dynamically to meet the needs of applications and user size growth.

(6) on-demand service. "Cloud" is a huge pool of resources that users buy on demand, billed like tap water, electricity, and gas.

(7) Extremely inexpensive. The "cloud" of special fault-tolerant measures makes it possible to use extremely inexpensive nodes to form the cloud; Cloud "automates management and reduces data center management costs significantly;" The commonality and versatility of the cloud makes the utilization of resources significantly increased; Cloud "facilities can be built in power-rich areas, thus significantly reducing energy costs. So the "cloud" has an unprecedented performance-to-price ratio. As a result, users can fully enjoy the low cost advantage of the "cloud" and, when needed, spend $ hundreds of a day to complete data processing tasks that previously required $ tens of thousands of and a few months of time to complete.

This article from "Zhengerniu" blog, declined reprint!

The concept of cloud computing

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