Cloud computing service model
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a cloud computing service model where a cloud services vendor provides computing resources such as storage, network, servers, and virtualization (which emulates computer hardware). This service frees users from maintaining their own data center,[1] but they must install and maintain the operating system and application software. [2] Iaas provides users high-level APIs to control details of underlying network infrastructure such as backup, data partitioning, scaling, security and physical computing resources. Services can be scaled on-demand by the user. According to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), such infrastructure is the most basic cloud-service model. IaaS can be hosted in a public cloud (where users share hardware, storage, and network devices), a private cloud (users do not share resources), or a hybrid cloud (combination of both).