Advent One explains “Infrastructure as a Service”.
IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service, at its core, provides the necessary resources to an organisation to meet its infrastructure needs. It is a form of cloud computing that introduces the concept of pay-as-you-go to IT. Many organisations opt for cloud services to meet their demands in terms of storage, network, and compute, but these services require a considerably high, up-front capital. Therefore, a need for a more flexible service has been created which is fulfilled by IaaS. This actually isn’t a new idea, it was first introduced in 2010, so IaaS is actually one of the foundational services provided in the Cloud.
IaaS allows you to scale or shrink the size of your IT services as per your requirements. So that you essentially pay only for the services that you actually use and not for a large comprehensive package which can result in unconsumed and so, wasted resources. This means that your resource consumption will define the amount of money that you need to pay. As an added bonus, it equips you with a level of control that allows more precision over the resources.
How They Work
To reap the benefits of IaaS, you are equipped with certain APIs and a dashboard where you can access the server and different services like storage and compute. A holistic view of the architecture of Infrastructure as-a-service includes 3 components – storage, network, and compute. IaaS service providers have several physical and virtualised resources in their possession that are available to the end-users to run their applications or support their workload. Let’s delve into each of these categories to understand how IaaS is executed.
1. Storage
One aspect of the storage requirement for an organisation is the need for physical storage. IaaS service providers have a massive number of data centers available to the end-users. These data centers are a form of physical storage and are managed all over the world. The user is not allowed to interact with these physical machines directly, but these storages are available as a service to them.
To ensure that you experience optimum performance regardless of the size of the cluster, modern IaaS services provide object storage (such as NetApp’s StorageGRID). These can be accessed over HTTP resulting in better scalability.
2. Networking
IaaS service allows you to leverage a software-defined network. This means that without actually buying and installing network hardware components such as routers and switches, you can include their services in your organisation through API integration available on the Cloud. Taking this a notch higher, you can also develop multi-zone regions and virtual private networks (VPNs). VPNs allow you to create an isolated place inside your Cloud where private applications can be executed without sacrificing speed or scalability of the whole network.
3. Compute
The most common barrier in developing excellence in software today, is the constantly evolving resource requirements. You may get the latest equipment, but it won’t be long before it becomes outdated and you require the new latest resource which is often too expensive. IaaS providers have these latest resources available which can be utilised by users through a virtual machine on the Cloud. With the availability of both CPU and GPU, you can design your own virtual system with in-built capabilities to handle your increasing performance and scalability needs.
IaaS via a Hybrid or Multi-cloud
A multi-cloud infrastructure includes the use of multiple public clouds whereas a hybrid cloud infrastructure is comprised of both public and private clouds utilised and managed by a company. A simpler explanation stressing on the importance of IaaS services via a hybrid or multi-cloud will be that the use of such services allows you to get the best of all providers. Advent One work with you to make this happen (provide a link here to a tool or downloadable?)
For instance, a multi-cloud service provider can equip you with networking services from AWS and outstanding database services from Azure. On the other hand, a hybrid setup will expose you to the best-in-class features of public as well as private cloud providers.
Cloud Connected IaaS with NetApp and Equinix
Advent One in partnership with Equinix and NetApp provide cloud connected IaaS using NetApp Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure (HCI) and NetApp Cloud Exchange (ECX). Reliability and security are critical to your hybrid-cloud environment and Advent One ensure these needs are delivered at a competitive price point.
Advent One’s IaaS and managed cloud offerings are monitored and orchestrated from a central customer portal, where Advent One use technologies such as Red Hat Ansible Tower to control the provisioning, configuration management and day two operations of the environment.
The storage of data on different Clouds for their individual benefits, has become very useful for many organisations. Therefore, the use of a multi-cloud infrastructure or a hybrid infrastructure becomes an obvious choice in the current scenario. These services will ensure that your organisation is capable of providing efficient and preeminent services with definite control over the data and infrastructure requirements.
Advent One specialises in Hybrid Cloud, Managed IT Services and Cybersecurity, and works with organisations to modernise their business for the digital world. Contact us here to find out if IaaS is right for your business.