Now taking virtualization a step further.
You as a small, medium business don't have the buying capacity of a huge company such as Walmart or
Target.
Large companies spending large amounts of money can negotiate prices that small, medium businesses
cannot.
And that's not only true for retailing, it's also true for servers.
Companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google can buy hardware a lot cheaper than small, medium businesses
or enterprises can.
In the past, Amazon was buying so much hardware, but not utilizing it all the time, but buying it
in preparation for the demand that they would have for sales at Amazon.com that they started selling
time on their hardware.
And this is where cloud computing started.
Amazon allow you to leverage their physical infrastructure to run virtual machines.
Amazon isn't your only choice today.
We also have Microsoft Azure as well as Google Cloud.
But all of these work on a similar premise you can run.
Servers on their infrastructure at prices that are much lower than you could buy.
In other words, if you wanted to run a small virtual machine.
You can actually run it for free on Amazon today, or you can run it at such a low price that it makes
more sense to run your infrastructure in the cloud rather than trying to buy hardware and maintain that
hardware.
If you're buying servers, you need to provide power, cooling and other resources to maintain those
servers.
So why not just run your servers in the cloud?
Amazon already have that infrastructure in place.
So do Microsoft and Google.
They are paying so much less than you for hardware such as CPUs and disk space that it makes more sense
for you to just leverage their hardware.
That's what companies such as Dropbox and many others do they have in the past or currently run on top
of Amazon.
So in other words, when you store files in Dropbox, those files are stored on Amazon storage and are
processed by Amazon servers.
Dropbox has recently changed that, but a lot of startups like Dropbox use Amazon to provide the infrastructure
to their businesses.
And the whole idea here is cost.
You can spin up virtual machines very quickly and you can pay for the demand.
So in other words, if there's a spike in traffic, you simply pay for the extra resources that you're
using.
You don't have to try and buy physical servers, get them shipped, physically, install them, rack
them, power them and so forth.
You can on the fly use the resources available in the cloud.
So in this example, I'll sign into Amazon.
And what I can do here as an example is launch a virtual machine, which they say will take less than
a minute.
So I could call this test.
One, two, three.
I can decide which operating system I want to use.
So as an example, I'll select Ubuntu.
Click next.
I'm going to go for a PT to micro server.
So I can see the amount of CPU, RAM and storage that the server has.
Notice this is going to run free.
Click next.
I need to download a key page to access that server.
But notice I can not create the instance, and it's as simple as that for me to create a server and
then I can connect to that server remotely and manage it.
Notice I didn't have to purchase any hardware.
I didn't have to wait for the hardware to be shipped.
I didn't have to rack the server.
I didn't have to power up the server.
I didn't have to configure a network.
I didn't have to configure storage.
I didn't have to install an operating system.
I didn't have to install applications.
Those are all immediately available to me in a matter of minutes.
It's as simple as that to start up a.
The virtual machine on Amazon.
So notice in this example, I've got a virtual machine running called Test one, two, three.
It's currently initializing, but I've also got other servers running on Amazon.
I can manage these servers remotely so I can shut them down.
I can power them up.
So as an example here I've got a USA one live labs dot com.
So this server USA one Live Labs three is actually running on an Amazon server.
I'm now told that to my test 1 to 3 server is completed and in a moment I'll be able to connect to that
server.
But in this example, I had my live labs server previously configured and as an example.
I could log in to that live lab server, and in this example I can connect to a remote lab.
Which is a physical switch running locally here in the UK.
But I'm actually connecting to this physical switch.
Via my Amazon virtual machine running in the USA.
Rather than me trying to set up a physical server like I did here, and I would have to install the
physical server, powered up and so forth.
Then I would install the host operating system, which in this case is ESXi, and then I have to install
my guest operating system and install the applications on that.
I can simply spin up a server on Amazon and connect to it remotely.
The server is once again running in the USA.
I'm based in the UK, but that's the advantage of cloud computing.
It doesn't necessarily matter where that server is based, it's somewhere in the cloud.
I don't know physically where that server is located.
It's somewhere in the Midwest of the USA.
I'm in the UK, but I can simply connect to it like I would connect to any other server on the internet.
Once again, that's the power of cloud computing and the cloud.
It's very quick and easy to spin up devices and leverage the infrastructure of cloud providers such
as Amazon, Microsoft, Azure and Google.