Cloud storage and computing are no longer a new concept. Cloud is one of the most recognized term in the industry. During the initial stages, it was offered as a service, which earned a recognition with Web 2.0 startups further taking a toll towards outsourcing the storage administration activity.
With the evolution of the technology to level today where cloud can be offered in two types : The public cloud hosting and the private cloud services. Here we would try and understand the difference between public cloud and private cloud. Also at the end of the information provided here, users would be able to understand the difference based on various factors such as pattern of usability, security, performance insignificance with the costs.
Knowing the difference between Public and Private.
It is pretty easy to differentiate between the private cloud and the public cloud. The location of Clouds deployment should be the primary question. Cloud offering as a service over the Internet is the Public Cloud Hosting solution.
Whereas, a private cloud is the deployment within the Firewall and whose management is taken care by the user enterprise. The location of deployment is the prime differentiating factor between the two.
Usually, the Public cloud is charged on the month to month basis. Users have to pay for the usage per Gb in combination of bandwidth transfer fees.
It is based on an on demand storage scalability and aren’t required to buy a storage hardware. The cloud services offered by a company bears the responsibility of managing the infrastructure and pool of resources into capacity which any user can make a claim.
But the Private cloud is created using software’s operating on a hardware provided by the customer. The storage isn’t ideally shared between anyone except the organization and is entirely controlled and retained by the enterprise.
Scalability being the biggest advantage of cloud, users can make additions of servers to the existing architecture. Also, this architecture is fully-managed by the users. Due to the capability of self management, the architecture even if expanded, adds further to its performance and capacity.
Deciding factors for Public Cloud Vs. Private Cloud dilemma:
Elementary Expense
It is falsely believed that the Private Cloud architecture require a very large investment in the early stages. Whereas, the truth is, private clouds can be built at an affordable budget, also, deploying the architecture is pretty easy. The users can download the software and the private cloud can be operational within an hour.
Public Cloud Hosting are offered at an affordable price of £33 GBP. Since users are not required to buy hardware nor software, the elementary expenditure is trivial assuming that the user applications can do the talking about the needed protocols.
Volume of Data
As stated earlier, the Cloud storage is primarily reputed for its extensive scalability features but most companies start out small. Private cloud can initiate from few TB’s also offering simple scalability out of capacity by simply adding additional nodes or disks.
Whereas, the Public clouds start even smaller. Public clouds makes it simple to back-up a single laptop or deploying an application of some GBs. With the expansion, users can lease more capacity and the cost scales linearly.
Duration of Data Storage
The duration of time for storing user date onto the cloud could mainly affect the Cloud selection. The longer the data stays onto the public cloud the more is the increase in the costs. That means, if you store content that keeps changing on a regular basis, then Public Cloud solutions are the perfect suit for you.
Private clouds are licensed like enterprise. The duration of time for data storage would not affect the cost, hence making it an ideal solution for archives or content repository applications.
Performance Expectations
The deployment of private clouds is within the firewall and is accessible via an Ethernet Local Area Network.
Private clouds are deployed inside the firewall and accessed over the Ethernet LAN at wire speed. Read access in the 100 MB/s range per node is pretty usual. Every addition of nodes offers an performance improvement to this type of cloud. Replication of files to multiple nodes, each capable of serving independent requests.
There is a limitation to Public cloud accessibility since it is accessed via an Internet. And where the internet is involved bandwidth limitations come into picture. Choosing the appropriate bandwidth resources can solve this problem though.
Access Patterns and Locations
Public cloud offerings ideally encompass the replication of data to many geo-locations, usually for an additional charge. If you have a users from all over the world and can benefit from locality of data, the public cloud can at-times be an alternate for a content distribution network.
The deployment of Private clouds is in a single location for Local Area Network. The remotely located users would essentially require to get connected to the Wide Area Network and work with Internet type latencies. Bigger private cloud deployments can include various locations and start to approach the public cloud distribution, although making users to make greater initial investments.
Security and Data Isolation
We can find multiple published opinions and dedicated websites which describe the security of public cloud offerings. But the primarily concern is the control-ability of your data. Public clouds are exactly that, public. Isolation of data is only as strong as the virtualization technologies used to build the cloud and the provider’s firewall.
The ownership, deployment and management of Private clouds is done by in-house administrators. Isolation of data depends on your requirements and security is based on internal processes.
Confidentiality and Destruction of Data
Alike security, confidentiality of data is a factor which needs consideration while choosing cloud storage solutions. The law is defined based on control of the data. Users must go through the terms and conditions laden by the Cloud hosting providers.
Since private clouds are maintained and controlled by you, you have complete control over deletion of the data stored on the cloud.
SLA’s-Service Level Agreements
Private Cloud all-together have a different mechanism for data availability and service of access. Most leverage multiple copies of files on multiple nodes and treat each node as a failure domain. Individual server malfunctions does not get the cloud down nor result in data loss, therefore most SLA agreements are fulfilled. Get assured with a clear understanding of the architecture and its capabilities when selecting and deploying a private cloud.
Public cloud SLA’s are published by the providers and its their sole responsibility. Remediation is ideally a cash payment and while they will help get your data recovered from their last backup files.
In-House Technical Crew
With Public cloud solutions, your are not required buy a hardware nor an in-house team of administrators. Data center infrastructure and related costs are borne by the Cloud providers. This enables you to concentrate on your businesses core competencies.
Since the deployment of Private Cloud is inside the firewall, you would need a crew of system administrators of your own to manage the cloud.
How to choose between a Private Cloud hosting solution and Public Cloud Hosting offering?
That’s no big deal actually. You only need to have a basic understanding of your data and usage. Referring the information above, one can easily choose the best type of Cloud Hosting types for your business.
Read Here: 6 Important Benefits of Private Cloud
