What Is Public Cloud and How Does AWS Work?

TL;DR

Public cloud lets anyone with a provider account request virtual machines and other resources without buying or maintaining physical servers and data centers. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud manage the underlying infrastructure, while private clouds remain within an organization and are maintained by its own teams. Virtualization improves efficiency by dividing physical servers into multiple virtual servers.

Transcript

hello everyone my name is Abhishek and welcome back to my channel today's episode 1 of AWS Zero to Hero series and in this video I am going to introduce you to the world of AWS and public Cloud so this is going to be a really interesting video as we are going to learn a lot of Basics foundational knowledge about public cloud and AWS so please watch... Read More

Key Insights

• Physical data centers are facilities where organizations store servers, connect equipment, configure networks, maintain appropriate temperatures, and prepare computing resources for application deployment. Building this environment requires hardware purchases as well as employees who can manage, maintain, and continually upgrade the servers.
• Traditional server deployment is inefficient when one application uses only a small fraction of a physical machine’s capacity. The example describes an application using one CPU and one gigabyte of memory on a server equipped with 100 CPUs and 100 gigabytes of memory, leaving most resources unused.
• Virtualization is a method for creating multiple virtual servers on top of an actual physical server. It allows separate applications to run on different virtual machines while sharing the capacity of the same underlying hardware, reducing the need to purchase one physical server for every application.
• Cloud computing provides resources without requiring users to know precisely where the supporting physical servers are located. A developer can request virtual machines, receive their IP addresses, and deploy applications while administrators or cloud providers handle the underlying infrastructure and its physical location.
• A private cloud is a cloud environment maintained and managed within an organization’s boundaries. Its computing instances are intended for that organization rather than being offered to unrelated organizations, and internal system administrators or infrastructure teams manage the platform and physical resources.
• A public cloud is an environment where providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google operate data centers and supply virtual resources to customers with accounts. Customers can request resources in available geographic locations without purchasing, installing, or directly maintaining the physical machines.
• Public cloud adoption is attractive to startups and mid-scale organizations because they can pay for and use computing resources without first creating data centers, buying servers, installing environmental controls, or assembling specialized infrastructure teams. This removes much of the operational setup described for private infrastructure.
• Sensitive organizations can choose private cloud infrastructure when they do not want to use a public cloud. The transcript identifies banking and other sensitive-information companies as examples and mentions OpenStack, VMware, and Xen as platforms used to create private cloud environments on organization-owned servers.

Questions & Answers

Q: What is public cloud computing?

Public cloud computing is a model in which providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, or Google build and manage data centers, physical servers, and the surrounding infrastructure. Anyone with an account can request virtual resources, such as a virtual machine, and may choose an available location. Customers use the resources without needing to know or manage the precise physical server supporting them.

Q: What is the difference between public and private cloud?

A private cloud is maintained and managed by an organization for use within its own boundaries. The organization buys or controls the servers, operates the data center, and manages the cloud platform. A public cloud is operated by an external provider that creates resources for account holders from many organizations, removing the customer’s responsibility for maintaining the underlying physical infrastructure.

Q: How does virtualization reduce wasted server capacity?

Virtualization creates multiple virtual servers on top of one physical server. Instead of assigning an entire high-capacity physical machine to a single application that uses very little CPU and memory, an organization can place separate applications on multiple virtual machines sharing that hardware. This improves resource use and reduces the need to buy an additional physical server for every application.

Q: Why did organizations traditionally build data centers?

Organizations traditionally bought servers to deploy their applications and stored those machines in data centers. A data center provided the location and supporting environment needed to connect server equipment, establish networks, manage wiring, and maintain suitable temperatures. The organization also needed employees with the skills to configure, maintain, monitor, and upgrade this infrastructure as its collection of servers expanded.

Q: Why are public cloud platforms popular with startups?

Public cloud platforms are useful to startups because building private infrastructure requires servers, a data center, supporting equipment, temperature-control systems, and employees who can manage everything. A startup can instead create an account with a public cloud provider, pay for the resources it uses, and request virtual machines without first constructing and operating the complete physical environment.

Q: How are virtual machines delivered through the cloud?

A developer or other user requests one or more virtual machines from administrators or a public cloud provider. The requested machines are created through virtualization, and the user can receive IP addresses for accessing them and deploying applications. The user may select a broad location, such as the United States or India, without needing to know the exact physical server hosting each machine.

Q: Why might an organization choose a private cloud?

An organization might choose a private cloud when it handles sensitive information and does not want to use a public cloud environment. In that model, it buys servers, establishes its own data center, and uses platforms such as OpenStack, VMware, or Xen to create virtual resources. Its own teams remain responsible for maintaining and managing the cloud platform and supporting infrastructure.

Q: How do you create an AWS account for this course?

The lesson identifies creating an AWS account as the final agenda item because the same account will be used in later classes for practical exercises. However, the supplied transcript ends during the explanation of public and private cloud and does not provide the actual account-registration procedure. Therefore, no grounded sequence of AWS account creation steps can be extracted from the provided material.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Traditional application hosting required organizations to buy physical servers, place them in data centers, connect the necessary equipment, establish networks, control environmental conditions, and employ people to maintain everything. This approach was costly and inefficient when an application consumed only a small portion of a server’s available CPU and memory resources.

• Virtualization addresses wasted capacity by creating multiple virtual servers on one physical server. Each virtual server can host an application, allowing organizations to consolidate workloads instead of purchasing a separate physical machine for every application. Developers can receive virtual machines and IP addresses without needing to know the precise location of the underlying hardware.

• A private cloud is operated within an organization, while a public cloud is maintained by providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, or Google and is available to account holders. Public cloud reduces the need to build data centers and manage hardware. The supplied transcript introduces AWS account creation but does not include the actual registration steps.