IaaS: All You Need to Know Before Implementing Infrastructure as a Service

IaaS is the fastest-growing segment of the cloud computing market, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.3% from 2021 to 2030, according to AlliedMarketResearch. Before choosing this cloud computing service, you need to understand some critical moments. You should know the potential benefits, risks, and costs to decide whether it’s the right solution for your business. We will answer these questions and explain how IaaS works.

What is Infrastructure as a Service?

IaaS is a form of cloud computing that delivers computing resources over the internet. Simply put, it’s a way to rent infrastructure – servers, storage, and networking resources – from a cloud provider. IaaS is often compared to utility services like electricity because you only pay for what you use.

Advantages of IaaS

There are many potential benefits of using IaaS, including:

Scalability: IaaS can scale up or down quickly without making significant upfront investments in hardware.
Flexibility: It allows quick provision and de-provision of resources as needed.
Reduced costs: Using IaaS, you pay only for the resources and time you use.
Increased efficiency: This form of cloud computing allows to avoid underutilization of resources.

Disadvantages of IaaS

Some potential drawbacks of using IaaS include:

Security risks: These include the risk of data breaches and denial of service attacks.
Implementation challenges: moving to an IaaS solution can be challenging because of the need to retrain staff and redesign processes and applications to work in a cloud environment.
Vendor lock-in: When using IaaS, you rely on the cloud provider for the underlying infrastructure. This can lead to vendor lock-in and a lack of control over the environment.

How does it look in real life: a few examples of IaaS usage

Infrastructure as a Service can take many different forms, but all providers offer some combination of computing, storage, and networking resources that you can access over the internet. It is easy to understand in theory but to get a better feel for how IaaS works in real life, let’s look at a few examples of how businesses are using this form of cloud computing today.

A small business is using IaaS for hosting its commercial application in a virtual server operated by a cloud service provider. They pay less than it would cost when using on-premise hardware.

A large enterprise is using IaaS to migrate their on-premise data center to the cloud. They rent several virtual servers from a provider and migrate their data and applications to the servers. The enterprise pays yearly for the compute, storage, and networking resources.

In which cases you can use IaaS

There are many cases when it is advantageous to use IaaS, but here are a few of the most common:

Cloud-based development and testing environments – by using this form of cloud computing, developers can provide the resources they need on demand without having to invest in expensive hardware.
Cloud-based disaster recovery – IaaS can be used to quickly provision resources in the event of a disaster. Businesses can have their applications up and running in the cloud within minutes, ensuring continuity of operations.
Cloud-based web and mobile applications – IaaS provides a scalable and cost-effective platform for deploying web and mobile applications. Businesses can quickly deploy and scale their applications to meet demand.
Cloud-based big data applications – IaaS provides a scalable and cost-effective platform for deploying big data applications. Businesses can fastly process and analyze large data sets to gain insights into their business.

IaaS cloud deployment models

For most users, IaaS is available through service providers, either public or private clouds. There is also a hybrid type, which is more complex than the first two. Here are the key differences between these three types of IaaS deployment models:

Public cloud: This model involves a third-party provider hosting scalable IT resources on demand. Users can reach them through the internet or a private network. Users can access the public cloud without investing in their own infrastructure. Public clouds are cheaper than private ones but may be less secure and less reliable. How does it work: you just go to the provider’s website, sign up for an account and start using the services.

In 2021, the IaaS public cloud services market increased to 41.4%, according to Gather.

Private cloud: This type is owned and operated by a single organization. Users access the private cloud through a private network. Private ones are usually more costly than public ones but offer increased security and reliability. How does it work: your organization needs to invest in the infrastructure and install and configure the cloud services.

Small and medium enterprises prefer using public (43%) instead of more costly private (35%) cloud services.

Hybrid cloud: Organizations use hybrid clouds to extend their on-premise infrastructure to the public cloud. How does it work: you need to connect your on-premise infrastructure to the public cloud, which can be done using a VPN or a direct connection.

Best IaaS providers and services to choose from

Many cloud service providers (CSP) of infrastructure as a Service offer a unique set of features and pricing models. You need a whole bunch of services and tools from your provider to support the migration of the entire infrastructure to the cloud. Let’s look at the best CSPs for IaaS and examples of their best services for these purposes.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon EC2 service

AWS is the largest CSP, with 33% of the market share. It has a reputation as a reliable provider with a large community.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is one of the AWS IaaS services that provides secure and resizable compute capacity in the cloud. EC2 has preconfigured templates with which you can create virtual servers using Amazon Machine Images (AMI). It is also flexible: you can choose the power of your computer, the amount of RAM, and storage space.

Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) service

Microsoft Azure is the second-largest CSP with 22% of the market share. It is a great choice for building your own application in the cloud because Azure offers a wide range of services and tools for developers.

Azure Virtual Machines is one of the most popular Azure IaaS services. It allows you to create and manage virtual machines in the cloud and provides on-demand, high-performance computing capacity. Azure VMs can be deployed in minutes and offer various instance types, operating systems, and tools.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Compute Engine (GCE) service

Google Cloud Platform is the third-largest CSP with a 9% market share. It started in April 2008 as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) resource. Since then, it has released many additional services, including those that allow migration of the entire infrastructure to the cloud. Google is praised for its broad partner ecosystem and services for working with big data.

Google Compute Engine is a Google Cloud Infrastructure as a Service product designed to make it easy for developers to launch and manage virtual machines on Google’s infrastructure. GCE offers a variety of instance types, each with different combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity.

Alibaba and Elastic Compute Service (ECS)

Alibaba is the biggest provider in China. It is oriented in the Asian market the most, but is pretty popular in the other markets as well.

ECS offers an artificial intelligence (AI) tool and feature that protects against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Many users praise its free incremental backups feature, which other providers will make you pay for it.

DigitalOcean and DigitalOcean Droplets service

DigitalOcean (DO) is a cloud platform designed for developers, offering simple and powerful tools that make it easy to create, deploy, and scale applications. It has many features such as one-click app installs, managed databases, and more.

DigitalOcean Droplets is an Infrastructure as a Service platform that enables developers to deploy and manage virtual machines in the cloud. Droplets are available in various sizes, each with different CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity combinations.

IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud Private service

IBM is no worse than the providers already described above, although it is not as common among medium-sized businesses as AWS or Azure. This technology giant focuses on cooperation with large enterprises, such as Fortune 500 companies.

IBM Cloud Private enables developers to deploy and manage virtual machines on IBM’s private cloud infrastructure.

The main advantage of this product is security, which is very high considering the possibility of hosting servers in the cloud. Users themselves choose the hardware or software they will use. The service offers a variety of instance types, each with different combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity.

Linode

Linode is a classic example of a provider focused primarily on IaaS, so we will not dwell on any specific service in its case but consider its capabilities as a whole. It allows you to deploy and scale applications using Linux virtual machines. This is a good solution if you want to control their server and manage the infrastructure. It is pretty easy to maintain, thanks to the extensive API library.

Synology Cloud Services and Synology Virtual Machine Manager

Synology Cloud Services is a public cloud service by the Taiwanese corporation Synology Inc. The service offers a wide range of features, including file sharing, security, and more.

Synology Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) enables developers to deploy and manage virtual machines on Synology’s DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system. VMM is monitoring the VM and reacts when something goes wrong. It is not as complex as its competitors and is considered one of the best market hypervisors.

When choosing an IaaS provider, businesses should consider their specific needs and requirements. Factors to consider:

The type of workloads that will be run on the infrastructure.
The level of control and flexibility required.
The price.

It’s important to understand that you can choose a few CSPs. Multi-cloud architectures are also possible and common. 84% of all organizations that use a cloud adopted a multi-cloud strategy.

Summary

IaaS is an excellent option for businesses that want to have more control over their infrastructure and be able to scale it quickly and efficiently as their needs change. Infrastructure as a Service in cloud computing can be used for various workloads, making it a versatile option for businesses of all sizes. However, because companies have to manage their infrastructure, IaaS can be more complex and time-consuming than other cloud computing services.

If you’re considering using IaaS for your business, you would definitely need help choosing a provider (or providers). Our cloud engineers would be happy to provide it for you. They will study your infrastructure and business goals in detail to find the most economical and effective solution. You don’t need to hire separate specialists to work with clouds. Our engineers will cooperate with you within the team extension services or dedicated team model framework. Contact us, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

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