Software such as the operating system, virtualization software and hardware components such as computers, servers and storage respectively forms the infrastructure of a cloud system required to deliver the services.

The infrastructure set up of a cloud differs from that of a traditional physical data center setup in that the files are stored and accessed remotely over a network and is built on a object-based storage platform.

Today, IT managers are looking for cost effective utilization of infrastructure. Virtualization is one technological innovation that has helped cloud computing.

When deciding to go to cloud, an enterprise has to consider securing multi-tenancy, autonomic computing, storage efficiency, scalability and/or chargeback system and integrated data protection.

The company may not want to get involved with the logistical concerns that involve maintaining and supporting a cloud, in which case it may contract a service provider who will administer the cloud for a fee on pay-per-use basis. This model of renting infrastructure services on demand is known as Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The ownership of the equipments remains with the service provider and both parties sign contract that define the terms of usage.

Managing a physical data center in-premise is labor-intensive and costs lot of money. Additionally, it is not energy efficient. Infrastructure can be In-premise, Outsourced or Converged. The decision is taken by the CIO on which model would best serve the needs of his organization. Virtualization provides a layer of abstraction between computing resources, storage and networking hardware and applications running on it. It adds to the complexity of the environment and if not managed well, then opting for a cloud will not yield results. Hence the CIOs need to understand if they would want to use a public cloud and if so, then which of its services should be moved and which should be retained in-house. Yet, the deployment of virtual infrastructure is non-disruptive since the user experience remains largely unchanged/unaffected. It allows administrators to manage a set of pooled resources across the enterprise, allowing the IT managers to be more responsive, dynamic and increases ROI.

What are the components of the public cloud?

Servers: Physical servers act as “host” for numerous Virtual machines. Hypervisors (virtual machines) run those virtual machines allocating resources like CPU, memory dynamically.

Storage: Data archiving, backing up, redundancy to ensure business continuity, data transfer to another cloud all use SAN, NAS (network attached storage) and unified systems.

Network: Switches, routers, connect LANs, WANs. In addition firewall protection and load balancing will be required.

Managing the infrastructure requires orchestrating the server, network, storage, monitoring the performance, configuration management, resource allocation and management and usage metering. Also, disaster recovery mechanisms must be in place.