Introduction
In the previous module, we discussed the origins and evolution of cloud computing and some of the reasons why organizations are moving workloads to the cloud. We also discussed the different types of clouds -- public, private, and hybrid -- as well as the three primary service models: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. We discussed the public clouds owned by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, and surveyed (albeit at a very high level) some of the IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services available on these companies' platforms. Finally, we considered some of the benefits and risks associated with public clouds and the importance of SLAs and their guarantees of up-time. With this background in mind, it's time to learn how cloud services are provisioned and managed.
We will start by learning about how a software middleware layer enables all the benefits of the cloud. Next, we will look at the different kinds of services that cloud service providers (CSPs) provide that can be leveraged by their customers to accelerate their deployment of complex solutions. We will also look at the processes involved in provisioning these resources and understand that a long series of steps are involved in handling a simple resource request.
For any non-trivial solution, organization of the resources deployed in the cloud can quickly become a crucial task. We will look at some of the considerations involved in choosing how to organize cloud resources and the tools that CSPs make available.
Finally, cloud providers charge for most quantifiable resources that their customers utilize. We must understand the details of the billing and monitoring systems that enables CSPs to profit from their data center.