What is the cloud? How does it work?

WHAT IS THE CLOUD? It is a service that works through the internet that allows users to save information of any type: music, videos, in General and to be able to have them hosted on dedicated servers, that is, on computers that always remain on 24 hours a day and 365 days of the year.
This new technological trend is a concept that arose from the need to move to servers on the Internet, dedicated to this purpose, all the applications and documents that the user uses daily for their work, with the aim that the user can have said elements in the moment you need them and from anywhere on the planet, to be able to do your job regardless of the situation you are in.
Let us bear in mind that the so-called Cloud can present diverse and multiple advantages that can be taken advantage of in the coming times, when technology and we as users are prepared for this great leap not only in technology, but also in design.

CHARACTERISTICS: 1: Self-service on demand. The customer can access and manage his resources and services as he needs them, without needing an intermediary for it.

2: Wide access to services. The services are on the network and therefore must be available to be used on different types of devices, be it laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones. We have already made it clear that you should not have any special hardware requirements beyond what a smartphone means.

3: Pool of dynamic resources. As in virtualization solutions, there is a set of storage resources, CPU, memory, etc. These resources do not necessarily have to be the same all the time, but there must be the possibility of modifying them as necessary.

4: Scalability and elasticity. The provisioning of the resources has to be practically transparent for the end users, without the need for downtime as it would happen in a physical server.

5: Measurement of services. Because the services are dynamic, the cost is also dynamic. In this way, it is not necessary to pay for the services that are not used, but on the contrary, the services used during the period are measured and the ballot will be in accordance with that.

HOW DOES THE CLOUD WORK? It helps to think of the cloud system as two separate parts: the front end and the back end. For the system to work, the two parties must be connected to each other via the internet.

On the front end we have the end user's computer or computer network and the program used to access the cloud. In the case of email services, this program will simply be an internet browser, such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Mozilla. However, in other cases it will be necessary to have a specially dedicated application to gain access.

At the back end we have the computers, servers and data storage systems that make up the cloud. Normally, each application has its own server. A central server is in charge of controlling the traffic to make sure that everything works correctly and that the demands of the clients (local computers that access the cloud) are satisfied. This server follows a series of rules called protocols and uses special software called middleware. Middleware allows computers on the network to communicate with each other. To ensure that data is always accessible, cloud computing systems have at least twice the number of devices needed to store it and make copies of the data in different places. Thus, if one of the computers has a problem, it will always be possible to access the copy. This system of data backup is called redundancy.

FREE SERVERS: Google Drive, PCloud, One Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive.

STEPS TO CREATE GOOGLE DRIVE ACCOUNT:

Step 1 Open any browser and, in the search bar, type www.google.com/drive.

Step 2 The Google Drive page will open. There, click on the "Go to Google Drive" button.

Step 3 A login page will open. Click on the "Create Account" option

Step 4. You will see a form to create a new account. Fill in each of the spaces, including the "captcha", where it is verified that one is not a robot, and at the end, accept the terms of service and privacy policies.

Step 5. Click on the "Next Step" button.

Step 6. Now you have a Google account with which you can access Google Drive, in addition to the other services of this company. Click the "Back to Google Documents" button to access Drive. You will have 15 gigabytes of free space. If necessary, you can buy more.