The provisioning and consumption of resources in public cloud platforms
Before we dive into cost control in the provisioning of resources, we need to understand how resource provisioning works in the public cloud. There are lots of different ways to do this, but for this chapter, we will stick with the native provisioning tools that Azure, AWS, and GCP provide.
There are basically two types of provisioning:
- Self-provisioning
- Dynamic
Typically, we start with self-provisioning through the portal or web interface of a cloud provider. The customer chooses the resources that are needed in the portal. After confirmation that these resources may be deployed in the cloud environment, the resources are spun up and made available for usage by the provider.
The resources are billed by hour or minute unless there is a contract for reserved instances. Reserved instances are contracted for a longer period—1, 3, or 5 years. The customer is guaranteed availability...