Definitions:
Public cloud is a public, hyperscale, multi-tenant platform where computing services can be reserved or rented on demand. These resources are available globally over the internet and allow customers to provision and scale services instantly without the time and CAPEX associated with purchasing dedicated infrastructure. The major providers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
A private cloud: a cloud computing environment in which all hardware and software resources are dedicated exclusively to, and accessible only by, a single customer.” Not that it’s not elastic and scalable. For example you could run scalable K8s on private cloud.
A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is an option that offers the best of both cloud models. VPC’s function like a private cloud that run on public or shared infrastructure. How does this work? The VPC isolates one user’s resources from another’s using an individualized, private IP subnet, and are connected by virtualized networks including Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) or encrypted channels. Hexagon Smart Cloud is a private cloud environment.
A hybrid cloud connects public cloud, private cloud and on-premises infrastructure to create a single, flexible, IT infrastructure. This provides the ability for SaaS applications to integrate with on-premise applications through secure API’s. Examples of hybrid cloud technologies include AWS Outposts or gateway technologies provided by several vendors.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud software distribution model where an application is centrally hosted and licensed to users on a subscription basis. This provides advantages where clients do not need to worry about maintaining application servers, network resources, security, as well as ensuring that applications are always up to date with the latest software version.
On-premise Virtual Machines (VM’s) or physical servers are traditional application servers that are maintained by a client in their own data center.
Kubernetes is an open source, server-less architecture platform that enables the operation of containerized services application framework for cloud-hosted applications. Kubernetes containers are an evolution from server virtualization (VM’s) and provides additional benefits, such as increased portability, horizontal scalability, resource isolation, and ease of deployments.
VMWare vSphere is VMWare’s server virtualization platform which provides tools for managing VM’s within an enterprise data center, which includes virtualizing CPU’s, storage, and networking resources.
VMWare Tanzu runs on VMWare vSphere and provides services for managing Kubernetes container-based applications.
A Message Bus, or queue, is messaging infrastructure to allow different systems to communicate with each other through shared an messaging scheme. A message bus is often used when implementing integration patterns that require asynchronous communication, such as publish/subscribe. Popular message buses include Active MQ, RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, etc.
OAuth is the industry-standard protocol for authorization and identity for API’s. Instead of using basic authentication with a username and password, OAuth utilizes an authorization server which provides secure tokens based on an API key and secret. Each application that wants to use the API’s must be registered which allows the service provider to control access in a fine-grained manner. OAuth is used by all the major cloud vendors as a means to secure access to their API’s.
A No-SQL Database is a non-relational database technology that is optimized specifically for applications that require large data volumes, low latency and flexible data models, which is achieved by relaxing the data consistency restrictions of a relational database. No-SQL databases are often used in cloud computing environments where server resources can be scaled horizontally using distributed clusters which provides a more flexible and high-performing architecture.
The ELK Stack Is an acronym for three open source technologies – Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana – which provides services for collecting data, search, and data analysis for large data volumes generated by diverse sources. The ELK Stack can be deployed on many cloud providers, such as AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure.