Infustructure as a surface (IaaS) is a form of cloud computing that provides virtulized computing resources over the internet. IaaS is one of the three main categories of cloud computing services, alongside software as a service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service(PaaS).
IaaS architecture and how it works
In an IaaS model, a cloud provider hosts the infustructure components traditionally present in an on-premises data center, incuding services, storage and networking hardware, as well as the virtualization or hypervisor layer.
The IaaS provider also supplies a range of services to accompany those infrastructure components. These can include detailed billing, log access, security, load, balancing, and clustering, as well as storage reiliency, such as backup, replication and recovery. These services are increasingly policy-driven, enabling IaaS users to implement greater levels of automation and orchestration for important infrastructure tasks.
IaaS customers access resources and services through a wide area network (WAN), such as the internet, and can use the cloud provider's service to install the remaining elements of an application stack. For example, the user can log in to IaaS platform to create a virtual mechine (VMs); Installing operating systems in each VM; deploy middleware, such as databases; create storage buckets for workloads and backups; and install the enterprise workload into that VM. Customers can use the provider's service to track costs monitor platformance, balance network traffic, troubleshoot, application issue, manage disaster recovery and more.