The infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a model of cloud service that delivers on-demand infrastructure resources, such as compute, storage, networking, and virtualization, to businesses and individuals through the cloud.
This is a very attractive model compared to the traditional way of acquiring computing resources with which to run applications or store data, since it requires a greater investment of time and money. Organizations must purchase equipment through procurement processes that can take months. They must also invest in physical facilities (usually specialized rooms with power and cooling systems). In addition, companies need IT professionals to manage and maintain them after the systems are deployed.
Scale resources when they occur demand peaks either the business grows It's complicated with this model. You risk running out of capacity, or becoming saturated and paying for infrastructure you never use.
2. How does IaaS work?
The infrastructure as a service (IaaS) consists in rent services cloud infrastructure such as individual services from a cloud service provider, including servers, virtual machines, network resources, and storage. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) helps eliminate much of the complexity and cost associated with the construction and maintenance of the physical infrastructure in an on‐premise data center.
The CSP takes care of managing and maintaining the infrastructure, so you can focus on installing, configuring and managing software, as well as keeping your data secure. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers also offer additional services such as detailed billing management, log storage, monitoring, storage resiliency, and security.
you can access pay-per-use IaaS resources, allowing you to pay only for consuming the resources you need. That is, you can easily scale up or down resources, allowing you to pay less when you need to or instantly provision and scale resources to meet new demand.
3. Why use IaaS?
Unlike traditional on-premise environments, cloud security it is a shared responsibility between service providers and their customers.
with the models of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), the CSP protects the resources and other hardware that support the underlying infrastructure, such as compute, storage, patching, and the physical network. As a customer, you will be responsible for protect your data, your applications, your virtual network controls, the operating system and user access.
Although security is often cited as one of the drawbacks of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and cloud computing, in general, the cloud is no more or less secure than on-premises environments. In fact, it offers a more comprehensive protection against threats.
In addition, some trusted cloud providers offer a secure infrastructure by design and powerful cloud security services on their platforms, which often outperform your own. They constantly invest in advanced technologies and highly-skilled experts, bringing you the latest security solutions to protect every layer of computing.
In other words, IaaS security is only as secure as your cloud service provider makes it. For this reason, it is very important that you carefully evaluate providers and fully understand their security capabilities and responsibilities before making a decision.
3.1 Cost savings
One of the key reasons why companies choose IaaS solutions is reduce capital investment and transform it into operating expenses. IaaS offers storage, compute, and networking options that don't require you to buy and maintain large private server rooms that take up a lot of energy and space.
The infrastructure as a service (IaaS) eliminates the cost of setting up and managing a physical data center, making it an option cost-effective way to migrate to the cloud. Resources are used on demand, so you only have to pay for what you use.
Pay-as-you-go subscription models used by IaaS providers help reduce hardware and maintenance costs, and allow IT Focus on core business.
3.2 24-hour availability
Companies need to think about what it takes to support your local IaaS and in the cloud depending on the available talent. If you reach a certain size level you need 24/7 coverage, how many engineers does it take to cover all these systems 365 days a year?
There are organizations that have managed to recruit a team of people for these types of scenarios, but eventually realize that it is difficult to have a life outside of work. Between working hours, the constant stress of something happening and, above all, the excessive responsibility that this implies, ultimately affects innovation, since people cannot be expected to be on call every week and at the same time. .
From our point of view, having system monitoring and direct access to 24/7/365 is essential, that is why this type of IaaS service is implemented in the cloud.
3.3 Time to market
Any organization moving from an on-premises IT infrastructure to a public cloud as a service (IaaS) will spend some time operating within a hybrid model. There's no magic switch you can flip to instantly migrate everything from your data centers to the cloud. But how long can (or should) they coexist?
In short, it is not recommended to use a hybrid infrastructure for an extended period of time. While it is impossible to avoid a hybrid setup during a transition period, most organizations benefit more by fully commit to cloud IaaS (or as much as possible) and by following a plan that can take them gradually over the course of two or three years.
3.4 Scalability on demand
The scalability is one of the biggest benefits of IaaS. This on-demand scalability provides flexibility and greater agility allowing you to quickly scale up or down in response to a business's requirements. IaaS providers typically have very powerful, state-of-the-art storage, server, and networking technology.
one of the biggest IaaS advantages for cloud computing is the ability to Quickly scale up or down resources based on business needs. You can adapt to sudden demand spikes and almost instantly when resources are no longer needed.
Another advantage is that IaaS allows you to acquire world scale and face peak demand for resources. In this way, you can offer IT resources to employees from anywhere in the world with faster, improving the performance of your processes.
4. Things to consider when choosing an IaaS provider
choose a cloud provider It is not an easy task, since there are many options available and analyzing each one of them would be unfeasible. However, choosing the right provider for a business is critical to long-term success. So, to effectively meet expectations and ensure a successful migration to the cloud, you need to have a clear strategy.
Each cloud service has its advantages and strengths, so we need to make sure that the chosen cloud service provider is aligned with company goals. That is why it is important to define a list of specific needs and expectations in advance. In this way we can go directly to the aspects that really interest us, instead of reviewing a long list of requirements.
Who is it
The first thing is to identify what and who is the cloud provider. We are talking about not letting ourselves be carried away by the common market, by the mass, and making an in-depth analysis of the company in question, its origins, track record in the cloud arena, similar clients, possible conflicts of interest or its investment capacity to continue not only maintaining the service, but also improving it day by day.
Location
The location is a essential point that we must take into account when contracting a cloud service, especially if we plan to move critical loads, confidential or sensitive data and if we are part of a specially regulated sector of activity, such as banking or the Public Administration.
But location is not a key issue only for a legal matter, but we also have to take technical aspects into account. With the rise of more and more connected services, the proximity of our provider's data center to the end point where the service is consumed is essential, especially in tasks that require minimal latencies.
Security
Security has long been the Achilles heel of cloud models. Although those fears are now over, the truth is that we will have to make sure that the provider in question has intrusion detection and prevention systems, qualified personnel to address security issues, firewalls, hardware isolation measures, etc. In addition, controls must be in place to ensure physical security, including controls for access to boxed hardware.
Data centers must have physical security measures that protect equipment and data from adverse events. Not to mention that there has to be a redundant power system and network functionality, as well as a documented plan for disaster recovery and business continuity.
All of this must also be reflected in a legally binding document that clearly establishes the service levels that must be provided to us (SLA).
Specialization
We cannot ignore the fact that not all businesses are the same and, therefore, neither are their cloud service needs. In that sense, we must choose a provider that understands our specific needs and align your technical knowledge with those goals.
In addition, the company must offer us specific mechanisms that facilitate the deployment, management, and upgrade of the contracted products through practical and intuitive interfaces.
Cost
Let's leave for last the aspect that is usually the first on the agendas of companies: the cost. Obviously, the cheapest in equal technical quality is always the best, but we cannot stop reading the fine print.
In this sense, many providers lower their basic prices but hide hidden costs in the event that we supply certain additional resources or significant price increases in the event that we have an unforeseen or initially contracted peak of activity.
At the same time, we must ensure that the provider we trust has a accessible billing team with which to discuss any incident, avoiding those who only deal with these complaints by email or blind forms in the control panel.
5. Examples of IaaS
5.1 Migration using lift-and-shift
This is the fastest and most affordable method to migrate an application or workload to the cloud. Without the need to refactor the underlying architecture, you can increase scale and performance, improve security, and reduce the cost of running an application or workload.
5.2 Development and testing
Your team can quickly set up and tear down development and test environments, reducing time to market for new applications. With IaaS, you can scale development and test environments up and down, making it faster and cheaper.
5.3 Storage, backup and recovery
Your organization avoids the capital outlay for storage and the complexity of managing it, which often requires qualified personnel to manage data and meet a variety of regulatory compliance requirements. IaaS is very helpful in handling the unpredictable demand and ever-increasing need for storage. You can also simplify the planning and management of backup and recovery systems.
5.4 Web applications
IaaS provides all the infrastructure needed to support web applications, such as storage, web and application servers, and network resources. Your organization can quickly deploy web applications on IaaS, as well as scale infrastructure up or down, seamlessly, when application demand demands it.
5.5 High Performance Computing
High-performance computing in super teams or clusters of teams helps solve complex problems involving millions of variables or calculations. Some examples are earthquake simulations, climate and weather predictions, financial modeling, biomechanical studies, and product design evaluations.
6. Differences between infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and SaaS solution
Like other “as a service” models, such as Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service models offer a degree of management. But What are the differences between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS? The key is that each of these models offers a different cloud service: an infrastructure environment, platform tools, and complete applications, respectively.
6.1 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
In the case of infrastructure-as-a-service models, the service provider hosts, maintains and upgrades infrastructure backend, such as compute, storage, networking, and virtualization. You manage everything else, including the operating system, middleware, data, and applications.
- Examples of infrastructure as a service (IaaS): Compute Engine, EC2, Cloud Storage, S3.
6.2 Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Similar to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) models, the service provider delivers and manages the backend infrastructure of the PaaS models. Nevertheless, PaaS models provide all the software features and tools needed to develop applications. You still have to write the code and manage your applications and data, but you don't have to worry about managing and maintaining the software development platform.
- PaaS Examples: Cloud Run, App Engine, Lambda, kubernetes.
6.3 Software as a Service (SaaS)
With the SaaS service models, the service provider provides the entire application stack, i.e., the complete application and the entire infrastructure necessary to send it. As a customer, all you have to do is connect to the application over the Internet. The provider is responsible for everything else.
- Examples of software as a service: Google Workspace, Microsoft 365.
