Virtual Machine, Containers, and Function are three services of cloud computing. These three computing services, although having similarities, still have subtle differences as applying in different scenarios. Therefore, it is crucial to differentiate their usage purpose to meet the business need. This article would focus on these three services: IaaS, CaaS, and FaaS. Before introducing these services, let’s understand the concept of VM and how the cloud service helps customers get the best effectivity in business needs.
Virtual Machine (VM)
Traditionally, when a company using on-premise IT infrastructure plans to run a web service, they need to purchase physical hardware with capital intensive including staff wages, power, data center building, etc. Unlike cloud service providers offering instant service for customers, the company needs to spend money and time on the fixed scheduled process of establishing equipment and installing software in servers.
Fortunately, cloud service providers offer customers instant service. Customers can easily configure a virtual machine by merely clicking a button. They need not spend a lot of time and money in the early stage. Moreover, clients can test their service on VM before releasing products. Cloud service providers offer virtual machines to their customers, called “Infrastructure-as-a-service” (IaaS).
What is IaaS?
In short, IaaS means that cloud service providers, such as AWS, Google, Azure, and Alibaba, maintain their data center buildings, which offer customers to run virtual machines with economical rental prices.
The following are the virtual machine’s services of each cloud platform :
- AWS–EC2
- Google–Compute Engine
- Azure –Azure VM
- Alibaba –ECS
In terms of pricing and performance, there is almost no difference between these four cloud platforms.
What is CaaS?
CaaS is an acronym for Container as a Service. It is expanding the practice of virtualization techniques. Containers, essentially so-called microservices, uses fewer resources than VMs to achieve specific purposes and reduce idle resources to save money and resources.
When it comes to the pioneer in containerization, it must be Kubernetes (K8S), developed by Google. Kubernetes (K8S) is a well-known open resource containerization platform. It provides the most comprehensive cloud-native experience for containerization. With the wide tread of Kubernetes, most cloud platforms have developed their containerization services as well. Such a container service or alternative container services offers customers seamlessly connecting with other cloud services
The following are the container services of each cloud providers :
- AWS–ECS
- Google–Google Kubernetes Engine
- Azure–Azure Container
- Alibaba–ACK
What is FaaS?
FaaS is an acronym for Function as a Service, which is also known as Serverless.
FaaS lets customers run code without managing servers. What customers need to do is to upload codes. FaaS would automatically trigger a series of events such as setting up instances, building environments, etc.
The following are the serverless services of each cloud providers :
- AWS—AWS Lambda
- Google—Cloud Function
- Azure—Azure Function
- Alibaba—Alibaba Cloud Function
Higher Cloud
There are still a lot of cloud computing concepts that could be discussed. However, it is hard to discuss all in an article! If you want to learn more about cloud computing, HigherCloud is your best choice. Our expert team has solved clients’ cloud issues for many years in cloud architecture design, network, information security, etc. We’re on a mission to help you have a better user experience.
We’ve been committed to providing customers the best cloud solution plans targeting AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba. Let HigherCloud help you eliminate unnecessary workload. We enable you to focus on the project itself and get more excellent value in your business. We love hearing from you. Feel free to contact us!