A Practical Guide to Cloud Infrastructure for Startups

Companies around the world are accelerating their digital transformation and adopting new strategies at a rapid pace. The cloud is the catalyst for this change. As a catalyst for increased agility, productivity, and security, companies can now aim higher and reach further with a well-managed cloud infrastructure.

The term “cloud infrastructure” is used to describe components that are necessary for cloud computing. It refers to the back-end stack of hardware and software components, such as server hardware, storage, networking equipment, and virtualization software, that form the underlying layer of the cloud deployment model for infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), containers as a service (CaaS), and software as a service (SaaS).

By using cloud infrastructure, your startup doesn’t have to spend loads of money on purchasing and maintaining equipment. Cloud infrastructure can positively affect your startup’s future efficiency and scalability, prevent many human errors, and speed up the overall decision-making process.

Below we share a practical guide to cloud infrastructure for startups that can ensure business continuity and success.

How Does It Work?

As a service, cloud infrastructure is delivered by separating resources from physical hardware and pooling them into the cloud through an abstraction technology like virtualization which allows multiple virtual environments to be created from a single physical system.

The cloud infrastructure model utilizes virtualization to pool resources and provide virtual machines or new environments so users can access what they need whenever they need it.

What’s Included in Cloud Infrastructure?

Cloud infrastructure is built of several essential components, each integrated into a single architecture backing business operations. A typical solution consists of four types of components: hardware, virtualization, storage, and networking.

Cloud infrastructure can depict a complete cloud computing system, as soon as all the various pieces, as well as the individual technologies, are joined together.

Hardware

Even though we, as users, only connect the virtual components for the clouds to work, physical equipment is still necessary to act as a base. This hardware includes essential network equipment such as switches, firewalls, load balancers, routers, backup devices, storage arrays, and servers.

One thing that is worth mentioning when setting up the cloud infrastructure for your startup is that you should take care of the data center uplink, aggregation, and other basic deployments by using high-quality switches. Consider purchasing used Arista switches, for example, as the most cost-effective network option for your most demanding workloads, as they offer availability, agility, automation, analytics, and security.

Clouds work from the combination of different types of hardware that may not be physically similar. By using virtualization technology, they act as if they were one because they take care of acquiring and distributing the resources that each user needs.

Virtualization

Through virtualization techniques, a tool called a hypervisor pulls the resources from the various servers and combines them in a way that the user has a similar experience to what someone would have if working with a certain combination of hardware and operating system on a physical device.

Storage

Data can be stored across multiple disks in a storage array within a single data center. Storage management assures that data is properly backed up, that any outdated backups are regularly removed, as well as that data is indexed for retrieval in case a storage component breaks down.

Storage space from hardware systems can be abstracted through visualization so that users access it as cloud storage.

Aside from storage management, you can implement data replication for proper storage, backup, and recovery. Cloud server replication pertains to the process of copying data from a server to cloud servers in real time. Cloud servers act as secondary servers, bringing many business benefits, such as improved data storage, management, and governance.

But not all cloud server replication systems are the same. Hence, it’s critically important to compare several vendors’ offers, particularly the capabilities, features, customer support, and pricing, to make a more informed decision.

Network

The physical network is made up of actual wires, switches, routers, and other types of equipment. Virtual networks are then being built on top of such physical resources.

A common cloud network configuration consists of multiple subnets, each with different visibility levels. The cloud allows virtual local area networks (VLANs) to be created and accordingly assigns static and/or dynamic addresses for all network resources. The boundaries of virtual networks don’t necessarily coincide with the boundaries of physical ones.

Benefits of Cloud Infrastructure

A robust cloud infrastructure brings significant benefits for startups. One of the leading benefits is the access that a startup can get to the industry’s leading technologies and software solutions.

Here’s an in-depth detail of cloud infrastructure benefits:

• Enhanced Security: Because of enhanced security, cloud infrastructure protects the digital assets of startup businesses. Cloud security is deployed in cloud environments, safeguarding business data against malware, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, unauthorized users, and cyber criminals. A critical element of cloud security focuses on protecting customers’ sensitive information to gain their trust, which is very important for startup businesses.
• Easier Collaboration: With cloud infrastructure, all digital assets are centralized. Hence, all teams and authorized members can access the same data for easier collaboration. Team members, especially in remote and hybrid teams, can share files securely and work more efficiently to finish more tasks with great results.
• Easier Business Scalability: Cloud infrastructure can handle and store big data without hampering other business operations. You can serve more customers and meet their demands and requirements, paving the way for your startup company’s growth.

Overall, the cloud is ideal for startup businesses. Once a cloud infrastructure is set up, your startup can use automatic software updates with enhanced security and new features. It is ideal for easier collaboration and remote work, ensures flexibility and easier scalability, allows for better automation, and supports massive data and analytics.

Final Thoughts

To get a robust and stable cloud infrastructure that will support your startup in the long run, you should first learn how cloud infrastructure works and what essential components it is made up of. That being said, you’ll quickly come to understand why cloud computing’s popularity has rapidly increased, including increased cost-efficiency, scalability, and accessibility. Startups can easily capitalize on all these to make their business a great success.