The Truth About Cloud Computing
To be honest, the concept of cloud computing might sound rather ethereal. On the contrary, this is quite tangible. In the simplest terms, cloud computing is just a way to deliver IT resources and applications over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. So, you do not have to purchase and maintain your own physical data centers and servers – you can rent such services as computing power, storage, databases, and so forth from a cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP).
You may think about it like you don't have to purchase a power generator to supply electricity to your apartment – you just connect to the electric grid and pay for consumed electricity. The same applies to cloud computing.
Moreover, cloud computing has changed business dramatically and completely reshaped application development process. We usually distinguish three models of cloud services:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): The most flexible and customizable type of cloud computing. Provides you with such services as VMs and networking services.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Offers you a fully-ready environment for developing and running applications without worrying about building and maintaining infrastructure.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): Is the highest level of abstraction where cloud providers deliver fully-managed applications directly to your users. Such applications include CRM tools and email services.
Knowing about these fundamentals is very important in order to explore cloud computing basics.
The Importance of Cloud Computing for Everyone (Especially You)
"Why should I care about it?" you may ask. Well, cloud computing isn't just a buzzword. It's the driving force behind modern digital innovations. There is a huge range of benefits, and these benefits affect you directly as a developer or student.
Firstly, it is extreme scalability. Suppose that you suddenly need more resources because of growing numbers of users. In case with cloud computing, you can easily provision more and after a while scale it down. This is practically impossible in case of on-premises infrastructure.
Also, cloud computing is much cheaper than on-premises alternative due to low upfront costs and the ability to pay only for consumed resources. Thus, thanks to cloud computing, startups can compete with large enterprises.
"According to industry research, organizations leveraging cloud infrastructure consistently report improved agility, faster time-to-market, and enhanced security postures compared to traditional on-premises solutions."
Besides, cloud platforms allow you to deploy your applications to any part of the globe. Moreover, it helps you in disaster recovery, i.e. keeping your application available in case if some part of your infrastructure is out of service. We found out that businesses adopting cloud services became much more adaptable and flexible at Nimmu Technologies.
Core Services: Your Toolkit for Building Anything in the Cloud
In order to dive deep into cloud computing basics, you need to know about core services provided by these platforms. Let's talk about the most important services:
- Compute: This is the heart of your application. You will hear such terms as VMs, Containers, and Serverless Compute.
VMs – Virtual Machines. They are virtual computers running on the hardware of your cloud provider. They provide full flexibility because you can choose whatever OS and configuration you need.
Containers – are packages of your application and its dependencies into one unit. These units are portable and easy to deploy.
Serverless Compute (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, GCP Cloud Functions) – You only write the code and your cloud provider will manage the entire infrastructure for you and execute it only when needed. - Storage: Every application needs some space to keep data in. Cloud Platforms offer you several storage options:
- Object Storage: is a great solution for storing unstructured data such as images, videos, backups, data lakes and so forth. It is very scalable and durable (AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, GCP Cloud Storage).
- Block Storage: acts like a hard drive attached to your VM. Great solution for running your operating systems and databases (AWS EBS, Azure Disk Storage, GCP Persistent Disk).
- File Storage: gives you a possibility to share files between VMs (AWS EFS, Azure Files, GCP Cloud Filestore).
- Databases: You need a way to organize information in your application. That's why cloud providers offer you a fully-managed database services, which means that there is no need to worry about setup, patching and backups:
Relational Databases – (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle). Perfect for storing structured data.
NoSQL Databases – (MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis). Best for storing huge amounts of unstructured or fast-changing data. - Networking: This defines how resources in the cloud will communicate with each other and internet.
In order to understand cloud computing basics, you should get to know about virtual private clouds (VPC), subnets, routing tables, and firewalls, which give you the ability to build a completely isolated network in the cloud.
Understanding of these core services is crucial. According to experts, it will give you an opportunity to design your architecture regardless of the chosen cloud provider.
Introduction to AWS, Azure and GCP
After we talked about cloud computing basics, let's mention the major cloud providers in this field: AWS, Azure, and GCP. Their offerings can be quite confusing because they are very similar to each other but still quite different. However, in fact, they provide similar core services under different names.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a market leader with very wide offering of services and mature community. Thus, you can see everything which is needed there if you are willing to spend some time learning. AWS is used by many startups and established enterprises.
Microsoft Azure is suitable if you want integration with Microsoft services such as Windows Server, Active Directory, and .NET applications. It is one of the strongest contenders in the enterprise segment due to the high-level hybrid cloud capabilities. Azure is good if you have experience with Microsoft products.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is relatively young on the market and offers strong capabilities in data analytics and machine learning and open-source technologies. It is famous for big data, ML capabilities and leadership in Kubernetes. GCP might be great choice if you have interest in these topics.
In general, all three providers are very powerful and constantly evolve. The best platform is very subjective notion. Depending on specific needs of your project or preferences, you can pick any of these platforms.
Choosing a Starting Point: Avoiding Common Mistakes
Now you know all cloud computing basics and you are facing with the important decision: which one should you learn? Here is some pieces of advice:
- Don't Try to Learn Everything at Once. It is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. The cloud is so wide and you cannot learn everything. Concentrate on the core services which we already mentioned: compute (VMs, serverless), object storage and networking basics.
- Pick One Platform and Go Deep into It. Do not try to learn all three platforms at once. Pick one which suits you best (you might want to consider existing cloud stack in your company, your interests, and university course) and focus on it deeply.
- Get Hands-On Experience Immediately. Even though it is useful to read documentation, practical experience is much better. You can do experiments on free tiers of all three cloud providers in order to build a web application, host a static website, and so forth.
- Focus on Fundamentals. Technologies evolve very quickly, but such things as the fundamentals of distributed systems, scalability, and security don't change. Concentrate on understanding of these notions.
- Join Some Community. Participate in forums, local meetups and developer communities. Learning from other people and discussing issues will help you a lot.
It is not shameful to start from the beginning. The journey to cloud computing is long. Do not discourage from complexity of this sphere and continue working and learning regularly. In the end, you will navigate easily these platforms. Opportunities in cloud computing are enormous. Starting with learning cloud computing basics is the right decision for your future.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which cloud platform is easiest for beginners?
Though all three platforms require some effort to start with, many beginners find Google Cloud Platform (GCP) more intuitive in terms of user interface. Nevertheless, AWS has the richest documentation and largest community because of its leading position in the market. This also makes it beginner-friendly.
Do I need to learn all three cloud platforms?
Absolutely not! It is much more effective to concentrate on one platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and to gain a solid understanding of core services. After you have done it, you will be able to pick another platform much easier.
Is cloud computing difficult to learn?
It seems so at first glance due to the size of this sphere and rapid evolution of technologies. However, it is quite accessible if you concentrate on cloud computing basics, core services and gain hands-on experience.