In two cases out of three, businesses choose cloud providers to optimize costs. Private Cloud and IaaS, two popular cloud models, are similar in some respects, but important differences prevent them from being considered interchangeable. We will tell you when a public cloud is better than a private cloud and vice versa.
The most important thing about IaaS and Private Cloud services
Public clouds, including IaaS, are offered by hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform. But also “infrastructure as a service” can be used at the facilities of many local cloud service providers. In the previous article we have already written about the key features of IaaS, so let’s focus on the characteristics of a private cloud.
Private Cloud can be deployed on the facilities of a customer’s data center, but this term also refers to a service where a third-party provider provides virtual resources to the customer for monopoly use. They are completely – on a physical and software level – isolated from other clients’ resources. To some extent, it resembles Dedicated Infrastructure, but with the latter the client receives servers with all pre installed software, networking and other equipment.
Private clouds are in demand among large businesses, government organizations, and research institutions, which have high requirements for security, data processing speed, and overall IT infrastructure performance.
According to Eurostat, by the end of 2021 the penetration of cloud services in business in the EU reached 41%, most of all in Sweden – 75%. Public clouds are preferred by one and a half times more companies than private clouds.
Differences between Private Cloud and IaaS
The principle of resource allocation. If IaaS can be compared to renting a room for a master class or a coaching session for an hour or two, then Private Cloud is a long-term lease of one or more such rooms with the right to monopolize them whenever and however you want.
Customization. A private cloud can be built according to the individual requirements of the client. In IaaS there is no such possibility – they receive a pool of virtual resources with specific characteristics.
Cost of the service. In the “infrastructure as a service” model, regular payments for a comparable amount of resources are lower than in a private cloud. In addition, the latter has a higher total cost of ownership, also because of the installation fee.
Scaling speed. A public cloud can be scaled up in a few hours or sometimes minutes, while in a private cloud it may take from one day to 2-3 weeks. The fact is that in the Private Cloud, the client receives from the cloud only a prepared service and shell structure, everything else is hardware resources, which must be ordered, delivered and configured.
When Private Cloud is more preferable than IaaS
Below we have described several problems that are solved by choosing a private cloud.
IaaS does not meet the technical requirements for cloud infrastructure. A public cloud does not always fit the needs of a particular project due to limited capabilities. The problem may be the number of cores and the amount of RAM per virtual machine, processor frequency, specific requirements for storage or network resources. All of these limitations do not exist in a private cloud.
IaaS does not meet information security requirements. Private Cloud always has a higher level of privacy and security. “Infrastructure-as-a-Service” is not always suitable for hosting critical data. However, in this matter, a lot is determined by company security policies and the position of the head of security, rather than by real threats (the IaaS model also has a fairly high level of data protection and availability).
In 88% of cases, the human factor, including on the client side, leads to data leaks.
It is important to the client that the workloads are served by equipment with specific characteristics. In IaaS, you can only choose the cloud on the basis of which the IT infrastructure will be deployed, and the quantitative characteristics of resources: the number of processors, the amount of RAM, and others. If a client is planning to run highly specialized software, requiring equipment of a specific vendor, they should choose a Private Cloud.
Full access to the hardware and hypervisor is required. If a customer plans to administer them and get more tools for monitoring and management, the IaaS model will have to be abandoned in favor of a private cloud.
One or more components of the cloud need to be dedicated due to the specifics of the workload. In a public cloud, this is technically impossible, while a private cloud allows you to work separately with dedicated storage (dedicated storage) with monopoly access to the stored data, as well as with a dedicated network switch (dedicated switch).
Global demand for cloud storage is growing: while the market size was $61 billion in 2020, it could reach an impressive $390 billion in 2028!
The customer plans to purchase the equipment in the future. This can only be done by ordering a private cloud, which involves a specific hardware and software set for a specific customer. In the IaaS model, virtual resources allocated to a client are detached from physical hardware.
It is better to let experts choose a suitable cloud model for IT infrastructure deployment. Colobridge experts will provide you with detailed advice and an opportunity to test a public IaaS cloud for free to evaluate its capabilities and make the final decision.
