Infrastructure Concepts
External
Internal
Overview
In a cloud environment, infrastructure, as viewed by the user, is no longer represented by hardware, but by virtual constructs like servers, subnets and block devices. The hardware still exists, but infrastructure elements accessible to users "float" across it, can be manipulated by the infrastructure platform APIs and can be created, duplicated, changed and destroyed at will. They are referred to as infrastructure resources. Infrastructure resources can be instantiated, changed and destroyed by infrastructure as code to provide the infrastructure foundation for application runtimes and applications.
Infrastructure Platform
Infrastructure Resources
A cloud infrastructure platform abstracts infrastructure resources (compute, network, storage) from physical hardware. Infrastructure resources are assembled to provide application runtime instances.
Infrastructure Services
Infrastructure Stack
- Stack integration point.
Environment
Cloud
NIST definition: https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/nist-cloud-computing-program-nccp
Containers
Cluster
Cluster as code.
Server
Serverless Execution Environment
Application
Application Runtime
An application runtime is assembled from infrastructure resources. The runtime instance may include servers, clusters and serverless execution environments.
Configuration Drift
Organizatorium
- Integration points