Results day
On the morning of results day, a school website gets 50 times its usual visitors for two hours. Then it goes quiet again. If the school bought servers for that peak, they would sit idle for the other 363 days.
There is a better way: use computers that somebody else owns, and pay only for the hours you need.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Cloud | computing services you use over the internet, on computers someone else runs |
| Private cloud | a cloud used by one organisation only |
| Public cloud | a cloud owned by a provider and shared by many customers |
| Provider | the company that owns and runs the cloud |
| Elasticity | growing and shrinking quickly to match demand |
| Portability | being able to move work or data to another place or provider |
| Data centre | a building full of servers |
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By the end of this lesson
Note
I can compare a private cloud with a public cloud and give four benefits of cloud.
Starter
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3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Private and public clouds
A private cloud is for one organisation. It may sit in the organisation's own data centre, or be rented as a separate part of a provider's. Only that organisation uses it.
A public cloud belongs to a provider and is shared by many customers. Each customer's data is kept apart, but the machines are shared. You pay for what you use.
Private cloud compared with public cloud
| Feature | Private cloud | Public cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Who uses it | One organisation | Many customers |
| Control | High: you set the rules | Less: the provider sets many rules |
| Cost | High to start and to run | Low to start, pay as you use |
| Staff needed | Your own skilled team | Much less |
| Growing quickly | Limited by the machines you bought | Very easy |
| Suits | Very sensitive data and strict rules | Websites, apps and most normal work |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
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Have a go
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3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.