Cloud: Difference between revisions

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The "cloud" is a simple way of saying "somebody else's computer(s)". In years past, you simply ran your applications on your own hardware and infrastructure, connected or isolated by the networking layer. Then it was popular to centralize computing infrastructure into specialized facilities called "data centers" for economies of scale when it came to '''power''', '''cooling''', '''security''', '''bandwidth''', etc. Eventually, [[virtualization]] technologies made networking and all the other core infrastructure elements (including hardware, or 'bare metal') controllable in software so that enterprises no longer wanted to manage their own racks, servers, switches and so on in their access controlled 'cages'. The server room turned into a rented service called "the cloud". When you consider that the term includes just about every aspect of computing, there are thousands of companies and technologies that make up the cloud.

The "[[wp:Cloud computing|cloud]]" is a simple way of saying "somebody else's computer(s)". In years past, you simply ran your applications on your own hardware and infrastructure, connected or isolated by the networking layer. Then it was popular to centralize computing infrastructure into specialized facilities called "data centers" for economies of scale when it came to '''power''', '''cooling''', '''security''', '''bandwidth''', etc. Eventually, [[virtualization]] technologies made networking and all the other core infrastructure elements (including hardware, or 'bare metal') controllable in software so that enterprises no longer wanted to manage their own racks, servers, switches and so on in their access controlled 'cages'. The server room turned into a rented service called "the cloud". When you consider that the term includes just about every aspect of computing, there are thousands of companies and technologies that make up the cloud.

There are so many [[Virtualization]] technologies. One key demarcation is the difference between a "Virtual Machine" and a "Container". A virtual machine comes as close as possible to running independent hardware while still virtualizing the environment. This means you can run a separate kernel from the host. Meanwhile, a container is achieved by using process isolation in the Linux kernel<ref>https://linuxcontainers.org/</ref>. So while a container is less flexible, it is also more lightweight.

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	The "cloud" is a simple way of saying "somebody else's computer(s)". In years past, you simply ran your applications on your own hardware and infrastructure, connected or isolated by the networking layer. Then it was popular to centralize computing infrastructure into specialized facilities called "data centers" for economies of scale when it came to '''power''', '''cooling''', '''security''', '''bandwidth''', etc. Eventually, [[virtualization]] technologies made networking and all the other core infrastructure elements (including hardware, or 'bare metal') controllable in software so that enterprises no longer wanted to manage their own racks, servers, switches and so on in their access controlled 'cages'. The server room turned into a rented service called "the cloud". When you consider that the term includes just about every aspect of computing, there are thousands of companies and technologies that make up the cloud.		The "[[wp:Cloud computing\|cloud]]" is a simple way of saying "somebody else's computer(s)". In years past, you simply ran your applications on your own hardware and infrastructure, connected or isolated by the networking layer. Then it was popular to centralize computing infrastructure into specialized facilities called "data centers" for economies of scale when it came to '''power''', '''cooling''', '''security''', '''bandwidth''', etc. Eventually, [[virtualization]] technologies made networking and all the other core infrastructure elements (including hardware, or 'bare metal') controllable in software so that enterprises no longer wanted to manage their own racks, servers, switches and so on in their access controlled 'cages'. The server room turned into a rented service called "the cloud". When you consider that the term includes just about every aspect of computing, there are thousands of companies and technologies that make up the cloud.

	There are so many [[Virtualization]] technologies. One key demarcation is the difference between a "Virtual Machine" and a "Container". A virtual machine comes as close as possible to running independent hardware while still virtualizing the environment. This means you can run a separate kernel from the host. Meanwhile, a container is achieved by using process isolation in the Linux kernel<ref>https://linuxcontainers.org/</ref>. So while a container is less flexible, it is also more lightweight.		There are so many [[Virtualization]] technologies. One key demarcation is the difference between a "Virtual Machine" and a "Container". A virtual machine comes as close as possible to running independent hardware while still virtualizing the environment. This means you can run a separate kernel from the host. Meanwhile, a container is achieved by using process isolation in the Linux kernel<ref>https://linuxcontainers.org/</ref>. So while a container is less flexible, it is also more lightweight.