IaaS architecture

In an IaaS service model, a cloud provider hosts the infrastructure components that are traditionally present in an on-premises data center. This includes servers, storage and networking hardware, as well as the virtualization or hypervisor layer. IaaS providers also supply a range of services to accompany those infrastructure components. These can include the following:

• detailed billing;
• monitoring;
• log access;
• security;
• load balancing;
• clustering; and
• storage resiliency, such as backup, replication and recovery.

These services are increasingly policy-driven, enabling IaaS users to implement greater levels of automation and orchestration for important infrastructure tasks. For example, a user can implement policies to drive load balancing to maintain application availability and performance.