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Infrastructure as a Service

What do you mean by Infrastructure as a Service?
Infrastructure as a Service is the pillar on which a cloud computing architecture is built with the advancement of technologies in communications, computing, and storage devices.

What are the components involve in Infrastructure in cloud computing?
The components involve in Infrastructure in cloud computing are:
o Servers (both physical and virtual)
o Storage systems by means of NAS and SAN
o Network segmentation using different network blocks and VLANs
o Communication network (including routers, switches, firewalls, load balancer, etc.)
o High Speed Internet connectivity
o Platform virtualization environment
o Service-level agreements
o Utility computing billing
o Security by means of hardware or VM based firewall and intrusion detection & prevention system
o Hardware load balancer
o DNS, DHCP and other management and support services
o Power, cooling and disaster recovery system

How the device access will be in Infrastructure as a Service?
End users use a multitude of thick or thin client devices and web interfaces to access the cloud services.
Traditionally both software and data reside on a user's computer (thick client). In ideal scenario of a cloud computing model, no data and software is installed on a user's access device.
We have replaced the term computers with access devices as there are endless possibilities of accessing internet from heterogeneous devices. These heterogeneous devices may just have the bare minimum to run an operating system and a web browser.

What is the role of data center in Infrastructure as a Service?
The cloud data center should possess servers, storage, networking equipment and connections, load balancers, firewall and many others.
Many cloud service providers prefer to have distributed servers in different locations for redundancy, high availability, flexibility and security.
This ensures seamless delivery of service to end users in case of one data center being non-operational due to some disasters or accidents.