Cloud Computing for Beginners - Infrastructure as a Service

Define cloud computing as on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable resources, provisioned and released with minimal management, and note virtualization, resource slicing, and private and public clouds.

Compare private clouds in corporate data centers with virtualization to public clouds from providers, emphasizing on-demand resources, pay-as-you-go pricing, and secure multi-tenant with private tenants.

Learn how organizations blend private clouds, on-premise apps, and public cloud services into connected hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, balancing SaaS workloads, on-premise resources, and regional cloud options.

Explore how public clouds provide scalable services through hyperscale data centers worldwide. Pay-as-you-go models and on-demand resources power AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

Explore cloud service models from infrastructure as a service to software as a service, including platform as a service and function as a service, and compare customer responsibility across layers.

Explore software as a service, the simplest cloud model delivering apps over the internet via a browser, with the provider managing backend infrastructure and updates under subscription or pay-per-use pricing.

Explore infrastructure as a service (IaaS) in public clouds, renting virtual resources, paying for usage, and enabling IT administrators to manage virtual infrastructure while leaving physical hardware to providers.

Platform as a service lets developers use out-of-the-box cloud building blocks, with automatic scaling, managed databases, and middleware, so teams focus on the application rather than infrastructure.

Explore function as a service, or serverless computing, the third generation of cloud computing where event-driven functions run in the cloud, with providers handling infrastructure and on-demand resources.

Compare hyperscale cloud providers—AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud—and explore cloud computing concepts, deployment options, and service models. Review core services like EC2, Lambda, App Service, Azure Functions, and Compute Engine.

Explore virtualization fundamentals in cloud computing, tracing first-generation virtual servers to second-generation container-based platforms. Discover how microservices and cloud-native applications relate to virtualization for scalable, flexible deployments.

Examine a physical bare metal rack server and its underutilization when hosting server-side apps like email and file sharing, highlighting resource waste and downtime in data centers.

Virtualization creates multiple virtual resources from physical hardware and uses a hypervisor to manage host and guest machines, enabling isolated, scalable on-demand deployments from VM images.

Explore vertical and horizontal scaling to manage cloud resources and meet performance requirements, weighing scaling up or down versus scaling out or in, with notes on containers and micro-services.

Explore how microservices enable cloud-native apps to scale and deploy independently, and why containers replace virtual machines to reduce overhead in modern architectures.

Discover how containers offer lightweight, isolated environments for microservices by removing guest operating systems and the hypervisor, and learn how container images power rapid deployment of containerized applications.

Explore how container images enable horizontal scaling, rapid deployment, and portable microservices across environments, with orchestration via Kubernetes and choices between IaaS and PaaS.

Get a high-level introduction to infrastructure as a service within cloud computing, covering definition, pricing, use cases, building blocks, and leading providers.

Discover how infrastructure as a service turns private data centers into a scalable cloud-based utility, offering on-demand resources and pay-as-you-go flexibility while enabling public cloud extensions.

Explore how infrastructure as a service builds cloud environments from compute, storage, and networking resources, including virtual machines, disks, networks, and security controls, plus monitoring and ongoing management.

Create a virtual network and deploy virtual machines in Azure to illustrate IaaS service building blocks—compute, storage, networking, and management—with images, disks, and basic security in a pay-as-you-go public cloud.

Explore cloud pricing models for infrastructure as a service, including pay-as-you-go, prepaid capacity reservations with upfront discounts, and spare capacity with on-demand availability.

Discuss security challenges with cloud computing and the need to trust providers. Explain that IaaS offers granular control but requires more responsibility, possible downtime, vendor lock-in, and cost management.

Review cloud computing fundamentals, infrastructure as a service, deployment options private, public, hybrid, multi-cloud, and the evolution of service models, while highlighting virtualization with virtual machines and containers.