Cloud Computing

IaaS

Fully Administrative - provides only virtualisation, servers, storage and networking.

User decides OS, middleware/framework, application and data

PaaS

offers a development platform and environment for building, testing, and deploying applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.

User decides application and data

SaaS

complete software application for enend product is provided which is all managed by the provider, e.g. Gmail, Google Calendar.

Clustering

A method used in cloud computing to group multiple servers or resources together to improve availability, performance, and scalability of applications.

VPC

a private network hosted within a public cloud environment, providing secure access to cloud resources. 

E.g. instead of a private company building and hosting their own server, they can pay GCP to host the server and get their own VPC.

Grid Computing

A distributed computing architecture that combines resources from multiple locations to reach a common goal, enhancing processing power and efficiency.

Virtualisation

The process of creating virtual versions of physical resources, such as servers or storage, to optimize resource management and enhance scalability in cloud computing.

Virtual Machine vs Container

Container: Small on disk space (MBs). Fast starting in seconds. Can be replicated more easily. More efficient. Can run 1000+ on a physical server. Software level virtualization.

VM: Large on disk space (GBs). Slower starting in minutes. Cannot be replicated easily. Less efficient. Can run 10+ on a physical server. Hardware and software level virtualization.