FAQ: Revealing cloud computing

What is cloud computing?

Gartner defines cloud computing as "the way the Internet technology is used to provide services to multiple external customers in a large-scale expansion of it-related capabilities". In addition to Gartner's definition, the cloud is a self service interface that allows customers to get resources at any time and get rid of them instantly, and they no longer need tags.

The cloud is not a real technology. Instead, it is an established IT service that maximizes server and virtualization technology, combines many large computing servers and a single server into multiple virtual machines, and will power the method of rapidly increasing horsepower.

How is cloud computing different from practical needs and network computing?

Cloud Actually, the nature is "on demand", including utilities and grid models with previously related properties. Network Computing is a large collection of independent computing resources, the ability to perform large tasks, and utilities to measure IT service consumption, said IBM cloud computing software chief Christoph Clockner. The future of these attributes makes today's cloud the "most exciting example of it delivery," he said.

Carr, fundamentally, cloud computing and public computing swaps are, "the Big Switch" and "does IT matter?" The word "cloud" does not really communicate what cloud computing is, and the "practical" word provides at least one real-world metaphor, he said. "However, the semantics that you have to deal with, I think that network computing, utility computing and cloud computing are all part of the same trend," Carr said.

Carl is not just thinking that the cloud is not the best word to describe the current transition to web-based it delivery models. For companies, a series of cloud computing may best be seen as "online business services," said Frank Gens, an analyst at IDC.

What is a public cloud?

Of course, the public cloud is a service that anyone can take advantage of with Internet connections and credit cards. The public cloud is a shared infrastructure. Forrester analyst James Staten in the April report, explained in economics, "The public cloud is a convenient, multi-tenant-managed virtualization infrastructure through self-service portals." ”

What is a private cloud?

Private cloud attempts to emulate the delivery model of the public cloud provider, but not exclusively for the benefit of enterprise users within the firewall. The private cloud will be highly virtualized, with a lot of string of it infrastructures to one or several easily managed logical resources.

Like the public cloud, the delivery of private cloud services can usually be done through the Web interface with self service and debit attributes. "The private cloud gives you a lot of benefits for cloud computing, but it is privately owned and managed, and access may be limited to your own business or value chain," Crockner said. "Transmission efficiency is high, it is standardized best practice." ”

"Only the largest companies are interested because in the private cloud, the public cloud is not yet scalable and reliable enough to prove that their IT resources are transferred to all cloud providers," Carr said. "It's a big game," said Carl, "If you are General Electric, you have a huge scale of it in your own company." Intelligently doing things for you at this stage may be rebuilding your own internal it cloud architecture, because the public cloud is not reliable on this scale. GE can say "We are shutting down all our data centers migrating to the cloud." ”

Is cloud computing software a service?

You might say that the prologue to cloud computing as a service is a sign that IT services can easily deliver an overall push online. Although SaaS vendors initially did not use the word "cloud" to describe their products, it is now considered that SaaS is one of several subsets of the cloud computing market.

What types of services are provided through the cloud computing model?

Public cloud services fall into three broad categories: Software as a service, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and the well-known SaaS is the composition of the Web-delivered application software. Infrastructure as a service is the remote access server and storage capacity, while the platform as a service is a computing and software platform that allows developers to build and deploy a Web application's managed infrastructure.

How do manufacturers charge these services?

SaaS vendors have already sold software on a need basis to prevent a software license agreement that has long been fixed. Like Amazon's cloud-based infrastructure provider. For example, Amazon's flexible computing cloud charges the ability to use virtual servers per hour. A small Linux server costs 10 cents per hour, while the largest Windows server costs 1.20 dollars per hour.

The same price storage cloud. Nirvanix's cloud storage platform LGB stores a 25 cents per share price starting monthly, with an additional cost per upload and download.