Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a type of cloud computing model that allocates virtualized computing resources to the user through the internet. IaaS is one of the main components of cloud computing along with software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). IaaS is completely provisioned and managed over the internet.
The IaaS technology helps the users to avoid the cost and complexity of purchasing and managing their own physical servers. Every resource of IaaS is offered as an individual service component and the users only have to use the particular one they need. The cloud service provider manages the IaaS infrastructure while the users can concentrate on installing, configuring and managing their software.
As the cloud buyers rent a space in the virtual data center of the IaaS provider, they get the access to the virtual data center through the internet. IaaS provides the raw materials and basic infrastructure for IT and ensures affordability as the users only have to pay or the resources they use. The cloud service providers enable the users to rent the virtual servers and storage while forming networks in order to tie them all together. While renting from a cloud IaaS provider, users are essentially renting hardware along with the provisioning software that automates it.
Just like all the cloud computing services, IaaS provides the users the access to computing resources in a virtualized environment. This is done through a public connection usually through the internet. IaaS provides the users the access to the virtualized environment for establishing their own IT platforms.
IaaS provides resources that are especially belonging to virtualized hardware which is also known as the computing infrastructure. The offerings in an IaaS environment include network connections, virtual server space, load balancers and IP addresses.
In physical terms, the cloud service provider extracts the pool of hardware resource from a group of servers and networks that are usually spread across various data centers and the cloud service provider is responsible for managing all the resources.
IaaS provider also offers relative services to the users for supporting the infrastructure components that include monitoring, detailed billing, security, load balancing, clustering along with storage services like data backup, replication and recovery. IaaS technology is focused at enabling the users to implement higher levels of automation for the crucial infrastructure tasks.
