This fourth part of our series dedicated to cloud computing is the one that interests us the most as individual users. For various privacy and cost reasons, we may not be willing or able to contract the services of a third party provider. However, using open source solutions and hardware resources that any of us can access, it is possible to create a private cloud.
If you came to this article at the suggestion of our social media bot, I remind you that in the First of all of the series we review the antecedents prior to this methodology, in the second important milestones in Cloud Computing and in the third we describe public clouds.
Another type of cloud. The private cloud
With the name of private cloud we describe a type of cloud computing that offers similar advantages to the public cloud. That is, it includes features such as scalability and automation, the difference is that it is for a single user. By single user we mean an organization with multiple internal users, not just one person.
As we noted above, the ownership of the tools and their location in areas managed by the single user, do not constitute exclusive requirements.
The fact that the defining characteristic of the private cloud ands that it is a single-user environment implies that no tools are needed to manage the way of assigning them to the different clients. Hence the private cloud can be based on resources and infrastructure already present in an organization's data center or in a new and separate infrastructure provided by an external provider.
The private cloud shares common basic elements of infrastructure with public, hybrid and multiple. For example, all clouds need an operating system to function. However, the various types of software - including virtualization and container software - stacked on top of the operating system is what determines how the cloud will function and distinguishes each of the alternatives.
When to choose a private cloud
Although public clouds offer great benefits in terms of costs and the possibility of neglecting maintenance, not everyone is convinced. I remember reading that at one time (I don't know if today) Evernote made the decision to manage its own servers.
Many of the large public cloud providers being US companies, they are subject to the laws of that country. This means that they have to respond to the requirements of the authorities of that country to disclose information about their clients. Also refuse to serve clients in those countries that Washington blacklisted. In my particular case, being the cost of the service in dollars and living in a country that suffers periodic devaluations of its currency, a private cloud is the most convenient option.
In summary, in a private cloud is best for users with dynamic or unpredictable computing needs that require direct control over technology. These are typically organizations that must meet strict internal security or external regulatory requirements.
A well-designed private cloud can provide most of the benefits that customers find from public clouds. such as automatic response to user needs and scalability, as well as the ability to provision and configure virtual machines (VMs) and change or optimize computing resources on demand. Added to this is the possibility of customizing internal control tools to prevent the misuse of IT tools by the organization's staff.
In short, a public cloud.
- You benefit from the increased security of operating within an isolated network
- By not sharing resources, there is an optimized performance of the same.
- An almost absolute level of customization.
Types of private clouds
We can find 3 types of private clouds:
- Virtual: In a virtual private cloud we have a compartmentalized environment within a public cloud that allows an organization to run its workloads in isolation from all other users of the public cloud. Even though the server is shared by other organizations, virtual logic ensures that a user's computing resources are private.
- Hosted: In this case the servers are not shared with other organizations. The service provider sets up the network, maintains the hardware, and updates the software, but the server is contracted by a single organization.
- Managed: We are talking about a hosted environment in which the provider manages all aspects of the cloud for the organization, including the deployment of additional services such as identity management and storage.