Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud infrastructure is a cloud computing component that includes hardware, compute resources, storage and network resources. It is consisted of many components, each playing its own role. The basic components of cloud infrastructure are the same whether organizations use private, public, community cloud or a combination. A similar concept with cloud infrastructure is cloud architecture. Cloud architecture is how individual components, such as hardware, virtual resources, network resources, operating systems (OS), middleware/platform, automation, management, containers, etc. are integrated to create cloud computing environments. While cloud infrastructure is the tools or components organizations require to build a cloud environment, cloud architecture is the blueprint or the glue that enables organizations how they will build the actual cloud.

Cloud infrastructure is mainly comprised of the following components:

• Physical infrastructure: This component includes data center location, physical access controls, physical access monitoring, power systems, fire protection and suppression systems, leakage prevention systems, asset monitoring and tracking mechanisms, and cooling systems.
• Networking infrastructures: It includes router and routing information, filtering, address allocation, and bandwidth allocation.
• Compute resources: It includes compute (CPU), virtualization (VM), containerization and processing (RAM) components
• Storage resources: This component include Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SS), Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), Logical Unit Number (LUN) and Storage Area Network (SAN).
• Virtualization technologies: The process of creating software instances of actual hardware such as VMs, hypervisor and SDN.
• Management plane: The interface and set of functions that supports and enables control of a cloud environment and the hosts within it.