Introduction to Cloud Computing (Episode 1)

Objectives

• Understand what cloud computing is and its benefits
• Learn important vocabulary:
  • High availability
  • Scalability
  • Elasticity
  • Agility
  • Fault tolerance
  • Disaster recovery

What is Cloud Computing?

• Cloud computing: A delivery model for various services (e.g., storage, computing resources, networking, analytics) over the internet.
• Services include:
  • Storage services: Storing unstructured or structured data in files and databases, along with tools to migrate data to the cloud.
  • Computing resources: Examples include Windows virtual machines, Linux VMs, web containers, etc.
  • Networking: Securely connecting components.
  • Analytics: Reviewing performance and telemetry data.
• Cloud facilitates the creation of applications (e.g., web, AI, machine learning, reporting).
• Essential characteristics:
  • Delivered over the internet
  • Scalability, elasticity, agility, fault tolerance, disaster recovery

Key Terms

Scalability

• Ability to scale up (increase size/power of resources, e.g., CPU, memory) and scale down (decrease size/power).
• Vertical scaling: Scaling up or down within the same resource.
• Horizontal scaling: Scaling out (adding) or in (removing) resources.

Elasticity

• System's ability to scale dynamically based on the workload.
• Automatic scaling: Allocating and deallocating resources automatically.

Agility

• Ability to react quickly by provisioning resources rapidly.
• Cloud vs. on-premises:
  • Cloud: Resource provisioning within seconds or minutes.
  • On-premises: Normally takes days, weeks, or months.

Fault Tolerance

• System's ability to remain operational despite component failures.
• Localized failures do not disrupt services due to built-in fault tolerance.

Disaster Recovery

• Ability to recover from significant events (e.g., natural disasters, human errors).
• Involves:
  • Creating two copies of the application in different regions.
  • Setting up replication and DNS routing between them.

High Availability

• Measures system uptime versus downtime.
• High availability = System capable of running with minimal downtime.
  • Four nines (99.99%) availability: ~52 minutes of downtime per year.
  • Depends on the criticality of the system.
• Many services offer high availability by default.

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