IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) provides virtual compute, storage and networking on demand while the cloud provider operates the physical facilities and hardware. The customer normally manages operating systems, identities, applications, data and much of the network configuration; the precise split depends on the service. IaaS removes hardware purchasing from the immediate workflow but does not remove architecture, patching, security, backup or cost governance. Before adoption, teams should evaluate regions, quotas, performance, egress, licensing, logging, recovery and exit procedures. Infrastructure as code, tagging, budgets and least privilege improve control. Availability features must be deliberately configured and tested because placing a virtual machine in a cloud region does not make the workload resilient. Total cost includes operations, data transfer, protection and retained capacity, not only runtime hours.