Cloud deployment models represent a specific type of cloud environment, primarily distinguished by size, access, and ownership.
Cloud computing is more than just a technology. It is an approach to building IT services that can be used to harness the power of servers, virtualization, and cloud migration into large computing pools and divide the power of a single server into multiple virtual machines.
There are mainly four common deployment models having their advantages and disadvantages that are used for implementing or deploying cloud technology.
Types of Cloud Computing Deployment Models
These deployment models help us to understand the nature of the organization and how business companies are willing to implement cloud to reduce their expenditures and increasing the overall profit. The four deployment models are:
- Public cloud
- Private cloud
- Hybrid cloud
- Community cloud
Public Clouds
As the name suggests public clouds are provided by an authorized service provider for general public under a utility based pay-per-use consumption model. This is the most basic type of deployment model in which the services of cloud i.e SaaS, PaaS and SaaS are delivered over a network that is open for public usage.
The public cloud resources are hosted on the service provider premises and the service provider renders services and infrastructure to its clients. The customers who are accessing the resources have no control over the location of the infrastructure.
If we take a technical viewpoint on public and private clouds, there is a slight difference or no difference between the structural design of two but the level of security of both can vary.
Public cloud deployment model represents true cloud hosting. You must be using google drive for saving your photos and documents. It can be considered as a public cloud. The service is provided by the vendor free of charge and on the basis of pay-per-use license policy.
Public cloud deployment models are best suited for business requirements where there is a requirement to manage load spikes, applications and utilizing interim infrastructure for developing and testing applications.
Popular examples of public clouds are Amazon AWS EC2, Cloud Suite, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace.
Private Clouds
Private clouds are built, operated and managed by organizations for internal use only and to support the business equipment exclusively. This deployment model does not bring much in terms of cost efficiency but it is comparable to buying, managing and building your own infrastructure.
For securing your database, private clouds can be considered best as all those within your company/organization have authority to access the private cloud which is secured using a firewall and network level security.
During the initial adaptation, many organization faces common problems and challenges installing the private cloud. There are many private cloud providers which will help you installing of your individual private cloud and all security issues will be solved by technicians.
Security issues are addressed through secure VPN (Virtual Private Network) or by physical location within the client firewall system.
On-premises private clouds are used for some of the mission-control applications where downtime can be a serious problem. The availability of these type of applications can be crucial.
Most of the private organizations worldwide are adopting this model to use the benefits of cloud computing such as agility, cost-reduction, and flexibility.
What are Virtual Private Clouds?
Virtual private clouds are a derivative of private cloud deployment model but the former is characterized by an isolated and secure segment of resources created as an overlay on top of public cloud infrastructure using advanced virtualization techniques.
Examples of virtual private clouds are Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, OpSource Cloud, and Skytap Virtual Lab.
Community Clouds
Community cloud deployment models are those in which the infrastructure is shared by several organizations with the same compliance considerations and by several organizations that have shared concerns (Eg. security, privacy policies, mission, and requirements).
Community clouds are managed by third-party organizations and can exist as on premise or off premise. Examples of community clouds include OpenCircus, HP, Intel, Yahoo etc.
Community clouds are less costlier than compared to private cloud and is mostly shared by larger groups. Many virtual government departments require access to same data such as hospitals, electrical systems, roads etc., can use community clouds to manage the same data and applications.
The only business objective of community clouds is to achieve the overall objective of accessing data by the companies which are authorized within the same community. The cloud can be managed internally or externally by the third party. Joint ventures and tenders use community cloud for mapping, implementing and managing the similar projects.
Hybrid Clouds
When it comes to extracting all from cloud deployment models, hybrid clouds are best. Hybrid clouds are a composition of two or more clouds (public, community or public) that remain unique entities but are successfully bound together by standardized or proprietary technology enabling data and application portability.
In hybrid clouds, private, public or hybrid clouds are bound together but in reality, they remain single entities. A hybrid cloud can cross isolation and overcome boundaries by the cloud service provider.
The resources are managed or provided either in-house or by external providers and hybrid clouds are the adaptation of two platforms in which the workload exchanges between private cloud and public cloud as per need and demand of resources.
Those resources that are non-critical like development and test workloads can be used to house in the public clouds which mostly belong to the third party. Those workloads that are crucial and critical for your business, they can be hosted on private clouds.
You can take an example of an e-commerce site whose main concern the overall cost of hosting with the moderate security of data. For that, they will be choosing public cloud and on another hand, if any business that has more focus on security and demand for unique presence, in this case, hybrid cloud is the most effective business strategy.
Cloud bursting is when the company is facing demand spikes and additional resources are required by the application. This type of problem is easily solved using hybrid cloud systems.
There are many applications of hybrid clouds and organizations use this cloud computing deployment model for processing big data. Hybrid clouds enable many features of cloud such as scalability, flexibility, and security of data.
The conclusion can be simple if any organization is looking for facing some challenges and problems like interface incompatibility, connectivity issues at the network level and other capital expenditures, hybrid cloud can be the most appropriate option.
Features of Cloud Computing Deployment Models
The advantages and disadvantages of public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud help us to better understand which cloud models will be best for your company. We will be discussing all the features of these three types of cloud and compare the pros of cloud computing deployment models.
Features of Public Clouds
- Easy to use
- Cheap
- Cost effective and uses pay-per-use model
- Third party integration and management
- Flexible
- Less secure
- Unreliable
Features of Private Clouds
- Highly secure
- Organization Specific
- More reliable and controllable
- Highly customizable
- Costly
- Requires expertise knowledge
Features of Hybrid Clouds
- Cost-effective
- Scalable
- Flexible
- Popular
Conclusion
The potential of cloud computing is limitless. To be the best among your competitors, it is very important to select the right cloud computing deployment model which will be beneficial for your company. Once the cloud hosting is selected, you have to work on milestones and with completing your every milestone, you are closer to your business goals.
Well, any cloud deployment model you select, all the four have their advantages and disadvantages. But selecting the best for your organization will be definitely helping your business to succeed. Ultimately, hybrid clouds look to be the promising solution for future.