4.1b - Cloud Characteristics: Professor Messer
Shared resources vs. dedicated resources
Dedicated/internal resources: No resources are shared - an organization builds its own cloud environment/datacenter, then pays for everything up front - no ongoing costs.
External/shared resources: Shared resources with public cloud provider - the underlying cloud infrastructure (datacenter) is owned by a third party. Costs may be metered or up-front.
Metered utilization
Metered utilization: Payment of cloud services based on how much the service is used.
Generally split into three kinds of charges:
Cost to upload (ingress)
Cost to store
Cost to download (egress)
Non-metered: Payment of cloud services independent of usage, typically managed by paying for a specific block/quantity of storage. No ingress/egress costs.
Ingress/egress
Ingress: Refers to data entering a cloud environment - often uncharged by cloud providers.
Egress: Refers to data leaving a cloud environment - often charged by cloud providers.
Elasticity
Rapid elasticity: Cloud computing characteristic - allows platforms to scale up (more instances/capacity) and down (fewer instances) as needed.
This functionality is typically obscured from the end-user.
Availability
High availability: Refers to cloud environments’ high redundancy - cloud systems are always available and can withstand hardware failures without significant downtime.
File synchronization
File synchronization: Refers to information/files being duplicated across multiple cloud locations.
Multitenancy
Multitenancy: Refers multiple customers of a cloud vendor using the same cloud omputing resources.