The explosion of cloud technologies over the last few years is staggering. Things are moving at such a speed that language can't keep up. New terms are constantly being coined and end up being misused.
One such example is the widespread use of the catch-all phrase "cloud data centre". This is often pitted against the adoption of a cloud solution. And where do public clouds and hybrid clouds fit in?
In order to explore these terms, let's go back to basics and investigate the connections between cloud computing and data centres. We hope this article clarifies some of these concepts and, more importantly, helps you determine whether these solutions can help your business.
What is a cloud data centre?
Over time, businesses have gradually but steadily moved away from maintaining their own on-premise data centres. Instead, they have shifted their operations to cloud-based data centres. In today's modern business world, almost every business now has at least a portion of its infrastructure housed in the cloud.
To create a cloud data centre, an organisation relocates its data infrastructure to a remote location. An enterprise may save money by leasing infrastructure maintained by a third-party partner and gaining access to data centre resources through the internet, rather than building and maintaining their own in-house infrastructure.
The cloud provider is accountable for those parts of the infrastructure stack that are under its purview. Its responsibilities include upkeep, upgrades and adherence to service level agreements (SLAs).
How does a cloud data centre work?
A cloud data centre is a facility where a cloud computing provider stores and processes data on behalf of customers. When using cloud computing, customers use a virtual infrastructure hosted on the cloud provider's servers to run their apps and manage their data.
Certain cloud service companies provide customers with their own isolated cloud infrastructure by creating a smaller, more specific cloud only for them. Private clouds are an alternative to the public ones provided by the industry's dominant providers (Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google, etc.).
Simply put, private clouds are the go-to option for businesses that value security and privacy without sacrificing the advantages of cloud computing infrastructure.
Benefits of cloud data centres
There are several advantages to employing cloud services rather than on-premise data centres. For instance, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Services, and Microsoft Azure all provide infrastructure as a service (IaaS), giving consumers web-based access to individual parts of shared servers and storage resources.
With these providers, you just pay for the resources you use – and your cloud service plan can expand or contract on the fly to meet your changing needs. The service provider handles all the day-to-day data centre operations, including the hardware, security, power and cooling.
Pressed for time? Here are the six key benefits you need to know:
1. Scalability
The scalability of a company's resources in an on-premise data centre is limited by the hardware it's invested in. But cloud services are scalable – when extra resources are required, they can be easily deployed.
2. Flexibility
The need to buy, provision or upgrade equipment in an on-premise data centre sucks up resources. With a cloud computing data centre, it's easy to scale up or down in response to fluctuating demand.
3. Cost
The cost of running a data centre in-house is far higher than using a cloud service. When an organisation maintains its own infrastructure, it's responsible for paying for the whole cost of that infrastructure. Sharing resource is an option in the cloud, which also gives cloud service providers the ability to take advantage of economies of scale.
4. Availability
A company has full control over its infrastructure in an on-premise data centre, which may or may not be a positive thing depending on the circumstances. Availability in the cloud is safeguarded by service level agreements, which may give more reliable assurances than a company could provide on its own.
5. Security
When an organisation stores data in the cloud, the cloud service provider is responsible for safeguarding a portion of the business's IT stack and is most likely more experienced at doing so than the organisation itself. Some clients may need enhanced protection for their cloud-based data centres, which may not be supplied by the cloud service provider in their default configuration.
6. Accessibility
A company has full control over its on-premise data centre. By contrast, it has access only to the resources offered by a cloud service.
The future of cloud data centres
We're likely to see an increase in very large data centres – like the one run by Google in Douglas County, Georgia, which takes up a whopping 1.3 million square feet.
More and more private cloud software is being used in business data centres. These centres are starting to attract end customers who are interested in services similar to those offered by commercial cloud vendors.
The idea is to free up IT resources so that users can fulfil their own workloads and resource requests whenever they come up. The emergence of hybrid cloud setups further blurs the distinction between traditional business data centres and cloud computing.
With businesses relying more and more on public cloud services, it's crucial that they can establish a connection between their internal data centres and the cloud.
The direction of travel is towards a flexible environment where businesses can choose to deploy workloads locally, in the cloud, or both.
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