IaaS Hosting Services

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is a cloud model that lets organizations outsource computing resources and equipment like networking, storage, servers, etc. along with services like CDNs (Cloud Delivery Network) and load balancing. The IaaS hosting services provider owns and maintains the equipment and resources while the client rents the specific resources or services they require. This is usually on a “pay as you go” model. While the provider takes care of storage, virtualization, hard drives, networking, etc., the user is responsible for managing the operating system, data, runtime, applications, etc. Some providers also offer databases, messaging queues, and some other services now.

Many consider this type of service as a commodity product – since all virtual machines are in essence the same, regardless of where they are geographically. While this is true to some extent, there are certain distinguishing features of all cloud providers, especially in specialized and management services, that are vital for administrators. So, most clients prefer to look beyond the offered range of cloud services and pay special attention to management functions, customer support, monitoring tools, identity management, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Some examples of IaaS providers are Amazon AWS, Windows Azure, Google Compute Engine, Rackspace Open Cloud, etc.