# Cloud Concepts

### What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.

![Amazon is the biggest cloud provider.](/files/DnIJPIFrnjcQl0JgPPha)

### Evolution of cloud hosting

1. **Dedicated server :** \
   -> **One physical** machine dedicated to a **single business.**\
   -> Runs a single web-app/Site\ <mark style="color:blue;">=></mark> **Very expensive**, High maintenance, High Security.\ <mark style="color:green;">**USED IN PARTICULAR CASES.**</mark>
2. **Virtual Private Server (VPS) :**\
   -> **One physical machine** dedicated to a **single business.**\
   -> The physical machine is virtualized into sub-machines.\
   -> Runs multiple web-apps/sites.\ <mark style="color:blue;">=></mark> Better Utilization and isolation of Resources
3. **Shared Hosting :**\
   -> **One physical machine**, shared by **hundred of businesses**\ <mark style="color:blue;">-></mark> Relies on most tenants under-utilizing their resources.\ <mark style="color:red;">N.B : you won't have a sub-machine but you will get a folder with permissions that you could use</mark>\ <mark style="color:blue;">=></mark> Very cheap, Limited functionality, Poor Isolation.
4. **Cloud Hosting :**  \
   -> Multiple physical machines that act as one system.\
   -> The system is abstracted into multiple cloud services\ <mark style="color:blue;">=></mark> Flexible, scalable, secure, cost-effective, High Configurability.

### What is Amazon :&#x20;

An American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Seattle, Washington.\
-> As the Gartner Magic Quadrant for cloud stated, Amazon is the CSP in general as is the first to come up with this technology .

{% hint style="info" %}
Gartner Magic Quadrant for cloud is a series of market research reports published by IT consulting firm Gartner that rely on proprietary qualitative data analysis methods  to demonstrate market trends, such as direction maturity and participants.
{% endhint %}

What is a cloud Service Provider (CSP) :&#x20;

A cloud Service Provider (CSP) is a company which  :&#x20;

* provides multiple cloud services e.g. tens..to hundreds of services
* Those Cloud Services can be chained together to create cloud architectures.\
  here is an example of chained services to build an web application <img src="/files/buQjLXibqtodj6OMXsDg" alt="" data-size="original">
* Those Cloud Services are accessible via single Unified API e.g. AWS API
* Those Cloud Services utilized metered billing based on usage e.g. per second, per hour..
* Those Cloud Services have rich monitoring built in e.g. AWS CloudTrail => Every action is tracked and you have access to that.
* Those Cloud Services have Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering => Have networking compute, storage databases.. thing like that.&#x20;
* Those Cloud Services offers automation via Infrastructure as Code (IaC) => write code to set everything up and so..&#x20;

\=> If a company offers multiple cloud service under a single UI but do not meet most of or all of these requirements, it would be referred to as a Cloud Platform e.g. Twilio, HashiCorp, DataBricks..

### Landscape of CSPs :&#x20;

![](/files/cD4WnBS4nEk0yvOtzcPH)

### Common Cloud Services :&#x20;

A CSP can have hundreds of cloud services that are grouped into various type of services, the four most common types of cloud services (the 4 core) for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) would be :&#x20;

![](/files/wRgvtkvt2C7N0FQikJAe)

### AWS technology overview :&#x20;

![](/files/OX5jH4jJSlq3ZImxTLro)


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