Cloud Computing and Azure
When talking about cloud computing, there are three major categories. It’s important to understand them because they are used in conversation, documentation, and training.
Today, we’ll be learning what all the fuss about cloud is about.
IaaS versus PaaS versus SaaS
Each of these has its own benefits, as well as variances, and it is necessary to understand the differences among SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS to know how to best choose one
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service is the most flexible category of cloud services.
As the name itself suggests, IaaS allocates virtualized computing resources to the user through the internet.
Simply Speaking, when you set up a technology business (no matter its size) or build a personal project, you need certain infrastructure which IaaS provides you with.
It provides resources that are especially belonging to virtualized hardware which is also known as the computing infrastructure. The offerings in an IaaS environment include network connections, virtual server space, load balancers and IP addresses.
Instead of buying hardware, with IaaS, you rent it. It’s an instant computing infrastructure, provisioned and managed over the internet
Platform as a service (PaaS)
Like IaaS, PaaS includes infrastructure — servers, storage and networking — but also middleware, development tools, business intelligence (BI) services, database management systems and more. PaaS is designed to support the complete web application lifecycle: building, testing, deploying, managing and updating.
The kinds of application PaaS provides you with :
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- Windows Azure
- Heroku
- Google App Engine
PaaS is commonly used in the following scenarios:
- Development framework.
- Analytics or business intelligence.
Software as a service (SaaS)
SaaS is software that is centrally hosted and managed for the end customer. It is usually based on an architecture where one version of the application is used for all customers, and licensed through a monthly or annual subscription. Office 365, Skype, and Dynamics CRM Online are perfect examples of SaaS software.
SaaS product is an internet software that all users have access to. Many of your favorite internet platforms are SaaS — Google Apps, DropBox, or Canva.
Summary of Cloud Services
One thing to understand is that these categories are layers on top of each other. For example, PaaS adds a layer on top of IaaS by providing a level of abstraction. The abstraction has the benefit of hiding the details that you may not care about, so that you can get to coding quicker.
One aspect of the abstraction is that you have less control over the underlying hardware. The following illustration shows a list of resources that you manage and that your service provider manages in each cloud service category.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, basically, is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers.
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. It provides over 100 services that enable you to do everything from running your existing applications on virtual machines to exploring new software paradigms such as intelligent bots and mixed reality.
Here are just a few kinds of services you’ll find on Azure:
- Compute services such as VMs and containers that can run your applications
- Database services that provide both relational and NoSQL choices
- Identity services that help you authenticate and protect your users
- Networking services that connect your datacenter to the cloud, provide high availability or host your DNS domain
- Storage solutions that can accommodate massive amounts of both structured and unstructured data
- AI and machine-learning services can analyze data, text, images, comprehend speech, and make predictions using data — changing the world of agriculture, healthcare, and much more.
Sources:
https://www.bmc.com/blogs/saas-vs-paas-vs-iaas-whats-the-difference-and-how-to-choose/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/
