Commissioning Servers

In the traditional approach to deploying servers, you would need to first buy a physical server with the required processing power (number of cores), RAM, and disk space. Once you had the server in hand you would need to install the operating system (if it was not pre-installed). Finally, you would need to connect it to a network via a router and assign it an IP address. If the server was to be exposed to a public network such as the Internet, you would also need to add security, either as installed software, or additional hardware such as a firewall. And you would need to procure the required connectivity to the Internet via an Internet Service Provider.

This is a time-consuming and expensive process and requires people with diverse technical skills to work together to get this done.

Commissioning servers on the cloud, using an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider such as Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, significantly simplifies this process. The IaaS provider takes care of all the steps listed above and uses virtualization technology to offer multiple virtual servers on one physical server. Further, they provide you with a user-friendly and intuitive web application to commission your server.

Using the web application you can select the server hardware configuration, choose the operating system, and even have some technology stacks pre-installed. Then, with the click of a button, you can commission your server and use it as if it was your physical box. All network-related configurations, including security, are taken care of by the IaaS service provider as per your specifications.

The technology is so brilliant that you can have a server up and running in less than 5 minutes.

The additional benefits that using IaaS offers are that you can change your server configuration (number of cores, RAM, or disk space) on the fly using the web application and the changes will be applied to your server immediately. This is known as vertical scaling. For example, an online shopping application may experience a peak in transactions during the holiday season, so server configurations can be ramped up for just those few hours, days, or months.

You can also almost as easily add additional servers to manage the increased workload. This is known as horizontal scaling. When adding additional servers of the same configuration and for the same application, the process can be as simple as making a copy of the original instance, requiring no re-configuration or installation at all.