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Home / Glossary / IaaS
Glossary · Cloud

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service

In plain language

Renting the raw building blocks of computing, such as servers and storage, from a cloud company.

The metaphor

Like renting an empty warehouse: you get the space and utilities, and you bring and manage everything inside.

Going deeper

How it works

  • The provider supplies the hardware and network.
  • You install and maintain the operating system and software.
  • You pay for what you use.
  • Suits companies with their own IT staff.
In practice
  • A developer rents a server in the cloud.
  • A firm moves its old file server to a rented virtual one.
  • A business runs backups to rented storage.

A question owners ask

Is it right for a small office?

Usually a ready-made service like Microsoft 365 is easier than renting raw servers.

Related terms
APIApplication Programming InterfaceCloud storageCSPCloud Service ProviderGoogle WorkspaceHAHigh AvailabilityIaCInfrastructure as CodeIdPIdentity ProviderMaaSMonitoring as a Service

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