THE CLOUD
Simply put, the Internet is a vast network that connects computers all over the world. Technically, the Internet is a series of networks.
Some of the computers on the Internet are physical, and some of them are virtual, which means that they are logical sections of the physical computers. The term "cloud" refers to software and services that are on the Internet, on one or more computers.
The Internet is full of clouds - public, private, hybrid, and multi clouds, and they are indistinguishable from "ordinary" Internet access when they are accessed by their names or IP addresses.
Internet Service Providers and data centers of various companies enable individuals to access resources - computers, storage, networking, software, and services - on their clouds.
Some of the computers on the Internet are physical, and some of them are virtual, which means that they are logical sections of the physical computers. The term "cloud" refers to software and services that are on the Internet, on one or more computers.
The Internet is full of clouds - public, private, hybrid, and multi clouds, and they are indistinguishable from "ordinary" Internet access when they are accessed by their names or IP addresses.
Internet Service Providers and data centers of various companies enable individuals to access resources - computers, storage, networking, software, and services - on their clouds.
The Evolution of Computing
For decades, massive data processing occurred in data centers, or silos. Their computers ran monolithic server-side systems that were application based, but that could run several applications on the same computer systems. Applications were deployed into shared production environments, and computing resources may have been shared with other departments within the company.
These server-side systems:
These server-side systems:
- Decided what computing languages could be used. Fewer computing languages were available to applications.
- Shared libraries and other components between applications.
- When updating one component, the monolith updated everything that the one component depended on, and required validation of everything that depended on it.
- Performed cumbersome maintenance, even with modularization.
The Transition to the Cloud
With the advent of cloud technologies, data centers are now sectioned into many virtual machines, or containers, that are accessible by DevOps. Cloud space can now be rented by cloud providers that own the servers. Companies select the necessary computing services so that they can rely on server-less containers. They also invest in microservice application architecture, which is more manageable than the server applications they had started to develop. A microservice application architecture:
The API handles data exchange by using a JSON structure, which enables developers to build low-code or no-code applications for specific purposes.
- Puts every application function into its own service
- Runs it in a container.
- Enables containers to communicate over API's.
- Allows microservices to be computer language-independent
- Application updates iterate at their own cadence on the CI/CD pipeline. Changes do not impact other applications, nor do they impact other portions of the app that is being updated.
The API handles data exchange by using a JSON structure, which enables developers to build low-code or no-code applications for specific purposes.
Up or Out?
An underlying container structure can be scaled up or out as the application requires it.
To scale out to meet demand, containers are replicated to work in parallel. This is similar to a bank that adds more tellers for the lunch rush.
To scale up, containers are swapped for larger ones that contain more memory, storage, or processors, for items like caching or streaming.
To scale out to meet demand, containers are replicated to work in parallel. This is similar to a bank that adds more tellers for the lunch rush.
To scale up, containers are swapped for larger ones that contain more memory, storage, or processors, for items like caching or streaming.
| Cloud Computing |
