Why need of Cloud Computing ??

 


Do you recall the result day of your class 10th and 12th?




I believe you do. One thing that caught everyone's attention was the server being down when you accessed the website to check the results.

  • Have you ever wondered why the server experienced downtime? 
  • What was the underlying reason for it?

Before we proceed, it's essential to grasp the concept of servers and requests. A server can be a single laptop/computer/node or a cluster of laptops/computers that offer specific services. In this scenario, the server was responsible for running the CBSE  board website through which you could access your results. And second thing it was publicly accessible from the Internet.
Another important aspect to consider is the concept of a request. A request is like a command that initiates the execution of a program. When you enter your roll number, name, etc., and press the submit button, it counts as one request. This request is sent to the server, prompting it to execute the program and display the output, which in this case, is your result.

Behind the scenes, when a request triggers a program to run, it involves computational work that requires various resources, including CPUs, RAM, and more. As a result, each request consumes a certain amount of these resources. Let's say a single server exhausts all its resources after handling 100 requests. Consequently, when additional requests arrive, the server lacks the necessary resources(CPU/RAM) to execute the program, leading to an output such as "Server is down" or a similar message such as a 404 error.

Let's assume there were approximately 500 computers in the server room. Consequently, the total number of requests it can handle simultaneously is calculated as 500 * 100 = 50000 requests. This means that at a given moment, 50,000 students can access their results. However, it's worth noting that each year, there are around 10 to 20 Lakh students appearing for the 10th or 12th exams.
Consequently, the server's capacity was unable to accommodate such a large number of requests or students simultaneously. Due to this limitation, only a limited number of students can access their results initially. And remaining were facing a server-down issue. However, after a few hours (typically 2 to 6 hours) when the server experiences reduced traffic, other students can view their results as long as the server resources are not exhausted. 

Let's take another example of the 2019 World Cup. 


 
During the 2019 World Cup, when Dhoni came to bat, the customer(or request) count surged to 20 crore on the Hotstar platform.  So how does at that instant moment Hotstar have to increase its servers?



And when Dhoni was out, the customer(or request) count was reduced to 20 lacks, so, how does Hotstar would have scaled down its server capacity?





Here, comes the role of Cloud Computing. Cloud computing plays a crucial role in addressing such challenges by offering an unlimited number of servers. As the number of requests increases, cloud services dynamically scale up(increase) the server resources by increasing the server to meet the demand. As soon as the request decreases, cloud services dynamically scale down the server by decreasing the server. 

Back to the CBSE board example, as the student(or request) increases, the cloud services would have increased the server and therefore all students would have seen their results at the same time.

Similar, to the Hotstar example. As the number of customers increased on the Hotstar platform when Dhoni came to bat, cloud services increased the server, hence it was to serve all the requests at a time and therefore everyone was able to watch the match without any server down issues. Similarly, when Dhoni got out and the customer reduced to 20 lacks, consequently, the server was scaled down to reduce the server.


So, far we have understood that as the request grows, the required number of servers should also increase to accommodate those requests. As the request decreases, consequently, the server should also scaled down.




You can watch a case study of Hotstar sharing about the journey of scaling up servers from 2 Crore to 20 Crore and scaling down servers from 20 Crore to 2 Crore. may be exact figure would be nearby.

Now the next question is who provides these cloud services. The companies that provide cloud services are popularly known as Cloud Service Providers.  The top providers of Cloud  Services are:

  • Amazon Web Services(AWS),
  • Azure by Microsoft
  • Google Cloud Platform(GCP) 

Next, we will proceed with AWS and its services. This is the first part of our AWS series. Next, we will learn about each service of AWS and its services.



That's all. Hope you learned something. Keep Learning and Keep growing. And never forget this Line:-

Learning is a slow Process !!

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