Beginners Guide to Cloud Computing
By: Muktha Sai Ajay
Tags: Future, Technology, Cloud Computing, Information Technology, Computer Science

Imagine you would like to train a deep learning model where you have thousands of images, but your system does not have any GPU. It would be hard to train large training models without GPU, so you will generally use google collab to train your model using google’s GPU’s.

Consider your system memory is full, and you have important documents and videos to be stored and should be secured. Google drive can be one solution to store all your files, including documents, images, and videos up to 15GB, and offers security and back-up.

Above mentioned scenarios are some of the applications of Cloud Computing, one of the advantages of using cloud computing is that you only pay for what we use.

What is Cloud?

Cloud computing refers to renting resources like storage space, computation power, and virtual machines. You only pay for what you use. The company that provides these services is known as a cloud provider. Some examples of cloud providers are Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Servies, and Google Cloud Platform.

The cloud’s goal is to provide a smooth process and efficiency for the business, start-ups, and large enterprises. The cloud provides a wide range of services based on the needs of the enterprises.

Types of Cloud Computing

IaaS — Infrastructure as a Service

In this, cloud suppliers provide the user with system capabilities like storage, servers, bandwidth, load balancers, IP addresses, and hardware required to develop or host their applications. They provide us virtual machines where we can work. Instead of buying hardware, with IaaS, you rent it.

Examples of IaaS include DigitalOcean, Amazon EC2, and Google Compute Engine.

Saas — Software as a Service

Most people use this as a daily routine. We get access to the application software. We do not need to worry about setting up the environment, installation issues, the provider will take care of all these.

Examples of Saas include Google Apps, Netflix.

Paas — Platform as a Service

It provides services starting from operation systems, programming environment, database, tests, deploy, manage, and updates all in one place. It generally provides the full life cycle of the application.

Examples of Paas include Windows Azure, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and Heroku.

Credits: Microsoft

Benefits

Most of the enterprises are moving to the cloud to save money on infrastructure and administration costs and most of the new companies are starting from the cloud.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

cost-effective

If we are using cloud infrastructure, we do not need to invest in purchasing hardware, servers, computers, buildings, and security. We do not even need to employ data engineers to manage the flow. Everything is taken care of by the cloud.

scalable

One of the best things in the cloud is decreasing or increasing the workload depending on the incoming traffic to our webpages. If it has high traffic, we can increase the workload by adding some servers. If the traffic suddenly starts showing a declining movement, it is flexible to dispatch the added servers.

We have two options in order to provide flexible services depending on the needs

Vertical Scaling Horizontal Scaling

In Vertical Scaling, we add resources to increase the servers’ performance by adding some memory and Processors.

In Horizontal Scaling, we add servers to provide a smooth process for sites when we have more incoming traffic.

reliable

In case of a disaster or grid failures, the cloud ensures that your data is safe and will not be depleted away. Redundancy is also added in the cloud to ensure that we have another same component to run the same task if one component fails.

global

Cloud has a lot of data centers all around the world. If you want to provide your services to a particular region that is far away from your place, you can make it happen with no downtime and less response time with the cloud’s help.

Thank you for reading my article. I will be happy to hear your opinions. Follow me on Medium to get updated on my latest articles. You can also connect with me on Linkedin and Twitter. Check out my blogs on Machine Learning and Deep Learning.