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What is Cloud Computing?
What is Cloud Computing?
Difficulty
Beginner
Duration
34m
Students
66695
Ratings
4.8/5
Description

With a wide range of Cloud courses already available at a deep technical level, this course is aimed as an introduction to those looking at Cloud Computing from the perspective of a beginner who may have no previous experience of the topic at all.

Before implementing or adopting Cloud technology, you will want to have an understanding of what it is exactly and what options you have when thinking about your deployment. This course covers a wide range of Cloud Computing topics areas, providing you with a solid foundation of understanding.

We will start by defining Cloud Computing, then we will explore what this definition means. We will look at the different deployment models such as Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds before digging into what actually makes a Cloud a Cloud. Here we break down the Cloud model by looking at the key concepts and characteristics that make it so appealing to a wide range of organizations and individuals.

This course also looks at the different service models of Cloud Computing, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), providing examples and differences between each.

With all of these different deployment and service options, this course looks at ways other organizations are utilizing the Cloud with some common use cases that you may be familiar with.

Lastly, an overview is given on how typical on-premise data center solutions are reflected within the Cloud. Some people may already be aware of these solutions but are unsure of how certain infrastructure such as networks is architected from a Cloud Computing perspective. As well as networking, we will also look at Storage and compute (server) resources and how these are deployed in comparison to on-premise solutions.

Learning Objectives

The key learning objectives of this course will enable to student to have:

• A clear definition of what Cloud Computing is

• A comprehensive understanding of Cloud Computing

• An understanding of Cloud Computing benefits and key concepts

• An understanding of when and where to use it using the appropriate industry models

Intended Audience

This course is intended for anyone who wants to learn about Cloud Computing, and that may have NO or very little of it knowledge of it currently. It’s for those of you who are looking to learn more about the Cloud to decide if it's something you want to adopt within your business, or those of you that may be seeking a career move and want to learn the foundation of Cloud principles, then this course is certainly for you.

• Beginners to Cloud Computing

• Business Managers

Prerequisites

• A basic understanding of server hardware components

• A basic understanding of what a Data Center is

This Course Includes

• 35 minutes of high-definition video

• 8 lessons

• Links to key documentation by Public Cloud providers

What You'll Learn

Lesson: Introduction - This lesson provides an introduction to the trainer and covers the intended audience. We will also look at what lessons are included in the course and what you will gain as a student from attending the course.

Lesson: What is Cloud Computing? - Following this lesson the student will be able to explain what Cloud Computing is and the underlying technology that its based upon, virtualization. The student will also be aware of the primary resources of the Cloud: Compute, Storage, and Network.

Lesson: Cloud Deployment Models - Following this lesson the student will know the different deployment models available and will be able to give an understanding and distinction between Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds.

Lesson: Key Cloud Concepts -  Following this lesson the student will be able to describe what makes a Cloud a Cloud and what its key characteristics and concepts are.

Lesson: Cloud Service Models - Following this lesson, the student will be able to explain what Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) are and the differences between them.

Lesson: Common use cases of Cloud Computing - Following this lesson the student will have a comprehensive understanding of the different use cases cloud computing can have.

Lesson: How Data Center architecture is reflected in the Cloud - Following this lesson the student will understand how typical on-premise infrastructure is architected differently within the Cloud.

Lesson: Key Points - This lesson will review all of the key points of the previous lesson.

If you have thoughts or suggestions for this course, please contact Cloud Academy at support@cloudacademy.com.

Transcript

The phrase cloud computing has been used heavily within the IT industry for many years now, and more recently it's being used within other sectors such as retail and finance, as it becomes increasingly popular. Many people often refer to the technology simply as the Cloud. Cloud computing is a rapidly growing technology, and the adoption of this is a key strategy for many organizations, and there is a very good reason behind this. It's changing the landscape of how many companies operate on a huge scale, with significant business and technical advantages and benefits that can't be ignored. The growth of cloud computing has been exponential over the past few years, so what is it? Put simply, cloud computing is a remote virtual pool of on-demand shared resources offering to compute, storage, database and network services that can be rapidly deployed at scale. Now there may be a couple of terms within this definition that are new to you, or not too clear, such as virtual or computer. Don't worry, I'm going to break these down over the next couple of slides, after which I shall give you the definition again, and you should be able to fully understand this concept. 

Before fully understanding cloud computing, we must be aware of some existing technology that it's based upon, that being, virtualization, and this is being used in on-premise data centers for a long time. But this virtualization maximizes the power of cloud computing, and without this virtualization, it would just not be possible. So what is virtualization? In essence, it allows the possibility of having multiple virtual machines, VM's, each running essentially a separate operating system and applications, all installed on one physical server. These VM's all run at the same time without being aware of each other's existence while sharing the underlying hardware resources. This sharing of hardware resources is a key element of understanding of virtualization and is achieved through a hypervisor. A hypervisor is a piece of software you use to create the virtualized environment, allowing for multiple VM's to be installed on the same host. When installed, the hypervisor sits logically between the physical server hardware and the virtual machines and creates a shared pool of virtual hardware resources for each of them to access. All VM's installed on the host see the hardware as they normally would. 

However, any request to the hardware goes via the hypervisor, which then handles that access ensuring the hardware resources are shared between all other VM's as needed and as configured. Now there are obvious benefits of virtualization, which include, reduced capital expenditure. As less hardware is required, as you have the ability to provision multiple VM's on a single host. Reduced operating cost, because as there is less hardware, there is less space, power, cooling required within your data center, and the footprint also reduces within your data center as less space is required to house your server hardware. This optimization of resources when in a cloud environment means everyone can benefit from virtualization, from the cloud vendor to the consumer. Now just a quick note before we leave this topic of virtualization. A VM within the public cloud is sometimes referred to as an instance, this term is very vendor specific but it refers to the same object as a virtual machine. When discussing resources within cloud computing, it won't be long before you come across the terms such as compute, storage, database and network resources. Increasingly you may also hear other terms such as machine learning or artificial intelligence. However, for this beginners course, I just want to keep the focus on the core foundation services. 

It's a good idea to have a clear distinction between compute, storage, database, and network. And what each of these refers to, is that it will certainly help you going forward when identifying what services you want to move to the cloud, should you decide to do so. Compute objects provide the brains to process your workload. Including what's required to process a run request from applications and services. As a comparison, if you think of hardware devices with CPU's and RAM, typically servers and how they work in a classic, on-premises environment, compute resources in a cloud, are comparable to these. Storage resources simply allow you to save and store your data. Any resource that allows you to save your data in the cloud, is classed as a storage resource. Again as a comparison, in the typical environment these will be seen as your server hard disks, or your network-attached storage, which provides file-level shed storage over the network, or your high-speed storage area network, your SAN, which is block-level storage accessed over a high-speed network. Database resources allow you to store structured sets of data used by your applications. Again as a comparison, databases are widely used in Data Centers with some common database engine types being SQL Server, Oracle, and MySQL. Within the Cloud, there are a wide variety of database engines available for different use cases. Network resources provide the connectivity allowing all other resources, compute, storage, and database, to communicate with each other. In a typical environment, you would find hardware, such as routers to route traffic between network switches, which provide the backbone of network connectivity allowing the host to talk to one another and firewalls to allow or deny traffic into the environment. 

So now if we go back to our definition of cloud computing given earlier of, cloud computing is a remote virtual pool of on-demand shared resources, offering to compute, storage, database and network services that can be rapidly deployed at scale. You should now have a clearer understanding of what this actually means. The red section refers back to the virtualization and the blue section refers to the typical resource types available within cloud computing that we just discussed. That has now brought me to the end of this lecture, coming up next, I shall be discussing the different cloud deployment models that are typically referred to in cloud computing.

About the Author
Students
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Stuart has been working within the IT industry for two decades covering a huge range of topic areas and technologies, from data center and network infrastructure design, to cloud architecture and implementation.

To date, Stuart has created 150+ courses relating to Cloud reaching over 180,000 students, mostly within the AWS category and with a heavy focus on security and compliance.

Stuart is a member of the AWS Community Builders Program for his contributions towards AWS.

He is AWS certified and accredited in addition to being a published author covering topics across the AWS landscape.

In January 2016 Stuart was awarded ‘Expert of the Year Award 2015’ from Experts Exchange for his knowledge share within cloud services to the community.

Stuart enjoys writing about cloud technologies and you will find many of his articles within our blog pages.