In today’s world, cloud seems to be the answer to every question, from storing photographs to renting computing capability. But cloud computing history goes back to the 1950s when mainframes and time sharing were born. In this era, massive computers performed centralized computational operations, and an elite group of companies shared the computational power of these massive computers by paying a hefty price. In the 1960s, the first working prototype for ARPANET was launched, linking four geographically dispersed computers over what is now known as the Internet. In the 1980s and 1990s, more sophisticated machines capable of executing complex computational tasks at faster speeds were born and were cheaper than previous computers. In 1995, pictures of clouds start showing up in network diagrams, denoting anything too complicated for nontechnical people to understand. In the early 2000s, the era of the dot-com bubble, more cost-effective computing capabilities were sought, giving birth to the modern-era term cloud computing.
This chapter covers the following key topics:
What Is Cloud Computing: This section provides an overview of what cloud computing is and what its characteristics are.
Cloud Service Models: This section covers different service models of cloud computing per the NIST 800-145 definition, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
Cloud Deployment Models: This section covers different deployment models of cloud computing per the NIST 800-145 definition, such as public, private, community, and hybrid cloud.
“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz
The “Do I Know This Already?” quiz enables you to assess whether you should read this entire chapter thoroughly or jump to the “Exam Preparation Tasks” section. If you are in doubt about your answers to these questions or your own assessment of your knowledge of the topics, read the entire chapter. Table 5-1 lists the major headings in this chapter and their corresponding “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions. You can find the answers in Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Quizzes.”
Table 5-1 “Do I Know This Already?” Section-to-Question Mapping
Caution
The goal of self-assessment is to gauge your mastery of the topics in this chapter. If you do not know the answer to a question or are only partially sure of the answer, you should mark that question as wrong for purposes of the self-assessment. Giving yourself credit for an answer you correctly guess skews your self-assessment results and might provide you with a false sense of security.
