About Cloud computing: four misconceptions and four guesses about IaaS

Cloud computing is always a foggy topic for ordinary users. This article starts with the most basic concept of popular science, explains four common misconceptions, and the author's four guesses.

Ti Xinhua, former CEO of Grand Cloud, founder of ucloud.cn

IaaS (infrastructure as a service), refers to infrastructure, namely services, consumers through the Internet can be from the perfect computer infrastructure to obtain services. Internet-based services, such as storage and databases, are part of the IaaS. Other types of services on the Internet include platform as a service (Platform as a Service,paas) and software as a service (Software as a Service,saas). PAAs provides full or partial application development that users can access, and SaaS provides complete, direct-use applications, such as managing enterprise resources over the Internet.

Misunderstanding one: IaaS is selling resources

Now a popular view: IaaS is selling resources, the traditional IDC is selling bandwidth and racks, cloud computing plus servers, the most is to take these resources through virtualization technology to split the retail.

In our view, cloud computing is divided into 3 levels:

1. Resource layer: This is the physical basis of the service provided by IaaS, mainly including computing resources, storage resources and network resources, as well as the necessary power resources, IP resources, etc. This layer mainly through the scale of procurement and resource reuse model to make profits, profit is not high.

2, Product layer: This is the core of IaaS, IaaS operators in accordance with the various needs of customers, in the resource layer based on the development of a variety of products. For example, storage products, message products, CDN (content distribution network) products, monitoring products, and each product will be based on the scene and the needs of different, do targeted transformation optimization, the formation of specific types of products. Product layer is the embodiment of the competitiveness of different iaas, these products meet the different needs of users in different angles. These products are the main source of IaaS profits and an important stickiness of IaaS. Like the domestic Aliyun on the cloud server and load balancing, cloud monitoring and other products, Ucloud provides a block device storage udisk, cloud database, such as UDB products.

3, Service layer: On the product layer, IAAS operators will also be based on the needs of users to provide some more value-added services, this part from the commercial point of view does not necessarily make money, but it is the user use of IaaS is an important condition. For example, to provide users with data courier services, in China must include the site record service, as well as security services and so on.

Misconception two: IaaS has no technical content

In a variety of media publicity to the cloud computing myth, that cloud computing omnipotent, the cloud computing technology to look at the high-end, technical content particularly high. And a lot of people who have been engaged in technology, they think that there is no technical content of cloud computing, there are similar OpenStack, Eucalyptus, Cloudstack and many other open source systems can be directly deployed to use,

or a management system based on open source virtualization systems such as KVM and Xen.

Indeed, with the rapid development of cloud computing, a large number of open source cloud computing platforms have emerged, and major companies are actively supporting the development of open source software. But even if the development is as fast as OpenStack, there is no very mature success story, because the technical complexity of IAAS is very high.

1, from the basis of view, IaaS to achieve a multi-tenant, flexible, stable and reliable and safe, must be the pool of resources management, that is, the resources through virtualization technology to form a pool of resources, and then according to the needs of users flexible allocation, while ensuring security and isolation. Previously mentioned resources include computing, storage, and networking, so it's about virtualization of computing, virtualization of storage, and virtualization of the network.

The virtualization of computing is currently mainly through Xen, KVM, VMware and other software implementation, relatively mature, but in the performance optimization, stability, there are still a lot of work needs to be improved.

Storage virtualization currently does not have a more mature open source system, if the file type storage, then mainly according to the GFS idea of coding to achieve the inevitable openstack of Swift, and block device storage is recount, there are nova-volume, domestic Sheng, Ucloud each implement a block device storage. In addition, SDS (software-defined storage) has recently been very popular in the world, and in fact, it has also realized the virtualization of storage.

2, on the virtualization management, is a large-scale scheduling management, how to quickly find the right resources to meet the needs of users, how to monitor the data according to the dynamic adjustment of resources, how to dynamically migrate business, how to prevent avalanches. If it is 10 machines, this can be very easy, if it is 1000 machines, this is a problem, if it is more than 10000 machines, that is a big challenge. And cloud computing, to achieve the ability to solve large-scale, we must solve large-scale scheduling problem. The difficulty and challenge here are quite large.

3, performance and security issues are also the challenge of IaaS, how to ensure that a user's high demand does not affect other users, how to prevent a tenant to invade other tenants, how to protect a user from being attacked does not affect other users, we need more in-depth research here.

More product development, as mentioned above, IaaS in addition to resources, more critical is the product, must be based on the needs of users to develop more to meet the specific needs of products. This involves all aspects of systems, networks, databases, applications, and security, with very high requirements for IAAS development and operational dimensions.

To sum up, the technical threshold of IaaS is relatively high, not without technical content.

Myth Three: IaaS is unsafe.

The industry is questioning the security of cloud computing, especially the Evernote security incident, which has caused more people to worry about the security of IaaS.

With my more than 10 years of experience in security,

1, no absolute security, any system may be invaded;

2, security is relative, the key to see in the IaaS mode and traditional hosting mode, which is more secure. So if a company is large, have a professional security team, such as Tencent, Ali, Baidu and other companies, it is certain that their own deployment will be a lot of security, but if the assumption is a small start-up company, it is impossible to have a very professional security personnel, IaaS service providers can be more professional to provide safety and security.

Misunderstanding four: Public cloud can only serve small and medium-sized enterprises

Because of the pursuit of stability and the protection of the old investment, the majority of the users of the public cloud have started from small enterprises. At present, whether domestic or foreign, small and medium-sized enterprises are the main users of cloud computing.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)