What is "The Cloud" as Fast As Possible

so what is the cloud the cloud is a colloquial term used to describe a service that utilizes the concept of cloud computing I mean that's basically it do you still have a reason for being here okay no I'm sorry I'm ready right so we're gonna focus on the public cloud or cloud services that are available for pretty much anyone to use through the internet a couple examples of this include Dropbox which is cloud storage and on live which is cloud gaming but first the origin of the term cloud my theory is that it exists because it's easier to draw a cloud on a network diagram than to draw this which is a visual representation from pr1 of the way many nodes are connected to each other on the Internet no but seriously there are a number of reasons but the main one is that in the same way that a normal cloud is a dense cluster of water molecules that appears as a single object from a distance a computing cloud is a dense cluster of computers working together in such a way that to a normal observer they all appear to be one giant computing resource so in short that's the cloud stuff that appears to be running on your PC your phone or any other computing device even a basic one like a Chromebook but is actually running over the Internet on an array of computers that are sharing resources with each other so let's make cloud storage our first example you start out for free with two gigs of storage you can access anywhere so there's no upfront cost then when you need more resources drop boxes cheapest paid account gets you 100 gigs of storage you can't actually buy a 100 gig hard drive these days let alone a 2 gig one but that's where the shared resources come in you are renting some of a hard drive some bandwidth cost for the data center and some of the power cost for the PC it's sitting in and that's how the cloud works but what about a DIY solution I could buy 2 cheapo hard drives for the same as one year of that hundred gig account plug it into my SATA ports throw them in raid 1 set up an FTP server forward the appropriate ports on my router and then I'd have 500 gigs of reliable storage I can access anywhere that actually belongs to me and I don't to pay for it monthly well yes I could so cloud storage is stupid then well no hold on maybe not first of all I had to pay all my money upfront instead of spreading it out and scaling as my needs change and if you weren't sure what I was talking about for a moment there with raids and FTPS you're not alone most people don't know how to do that stuff and even the ones that do often can't be arsed the convenience of having zero hassle sink folders and solid mobile support to quickly do things like backup photos on my phone is very appealing on top of that with cloud services you won't be limited by the slow speeds or bandwidth caps if applicable of your home connection and you'll get data protection that is much more robust than raid 1 with copies of your files spread across the globe so that even a natural disaster that wipes out an entire data center wouldn't theoretically cause you to lose anything my next example is an emerging technology cloud gaming instead of buying a gaming PC up front with a powerful graphics card a casual gamer could just get a basic plan for most of the time then increase it temporarily to get more horsepower when a hot game comes out for example he or she wouldn't need to worry about updating drivers are waiting for game installs even because the applications themselves could run from the cloud this running software that's not even installed on your PC concept is actually a third excellent example of cloud computing by the way sounds great right well latency is gonna be a major obstacle for cloud gaming for a long time but how about other stuff like video editing you could use this concept to sit at your laptop and leverage processing power in a server farm somewhere that's orders of magnitude faster than what you have available to you if it's something that you only use on a project-by-project basis it could be much more economical than investing heavily in hardware for yourself pretty cool way my last example is both my sponsor for today's fast as possible and another example of the ease-of-use reliability low upfront cost and nearly unlimited performance scalability that comes from sharing resources in the cloud Squarespace comms browser-based interface allows you to use their design suite to build a great brand and beautiful functional website and it's all in the cloud their tools include a logo designer and template based website design tool that allows you to create an awesome blog portfolio fully functional website and more the templates look great on desktop or mobile browsers and because the web hosting is cloud-based you can scale your plan as needed to adapt to your changing needs in terms of storage space power and bandwidth finally again because it's cloud-based you can access the tools from anywhere and the changes you make to your site will be live in seconds if all of that sounds like an easier way to manage a website check out squarespace.com slash tech quickie and use offer code text and now the usual thing guys like this video and share it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it so we can improve for next time and leave a comment if you want to see another fast as possible that focuses more on the advantages of the private cloud or advantages of keeping your data to yourself versus the public cloud things like the potential cost savings and improved privacy that can be achieved with a DIY solution like BitTorrent sync or even the way you can use something like a WD my cloud network hard drive to achieve some of these goals anyway guys don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes of fast as possible and I'll see you again next time

Channel: Techquickie

Views: 404,294

Keywords: Cloud Computing (Industry), the cloud, explained

Id: dsKIpLKo8AE

Length: 5min 47sec (347 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2014