- Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS is about using
an internet service model
to leverage resources traditionally found
in an organization's own data center
such as storage and compute.
An IaaS model means
that a third-party provider hosts hardware
and software servers storage
and other infrastructure components
on behalf of the end user.
You can think of IaaS as traditional time sharing services
as we discussed in a previous video.
These infrastructure services can be used for any purpose
such as hosting and application or data.
While IaaS Clouds provide infrastructure services found
in traditional data centers such as compute and storage,
they can also provide application
and data hosting for existing enterprise workloads
such as applications and databases or both.
IaaS Clouds are the fastest growing type of Cloud
with Amazon Web Services being a major player
with revenues over several billion dollars.
Finally, IaaS Cloud services can be deployed
as private, public or hybrid Clouds.
In addition to AWS, Microsoft Azure
and Google Cloud platform are also IaaS plats.
There are many differences between brands of IaaS Clouds
including the number
and types of IaaS services they provide.
So you need to do your homework
before selecting the right Cloud.
Let's talk about what that means
focusing on the value of IaaS.
The main value of leveraging an IaaS Cloud
is avoiding the expense of buying hardware and software.
This means that we're shifting spending
from CapEx or capital expenditures to OpEx
or operational expenditures.
When leveraging an IaaS Cloud,
you only pay for the services that you use.
IaaS providers may bill by time or volume of data.
IaaS Clouds provide elastic scaling.
This means that IaaS Clouds can scale up or scale back
based on the needs of the application workload.
This also means that we pay more or pay less
depending on what capacity is needed.
Shifting risks to an IaaS public Cloud provider
means that we're relying on the public Cloud provider
to take care of hardware and software
as well as make the initial investment.
They're accepting not only the risk
but also the cost of the risk.
IaaS supports public private
and hybrid Cloud deployment models.
This means that you have the flexibility
to leverage whatever deployment model is a proper fit.