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OPINION
abstraction over hardware, leading us to think that in the
next few years, infrastructure is likely to not even matter.
The first of these paradigm shifts is the virtualisation of
servers. This is where we went from having a single bare
metal server running a few applications, to having a single
server running many virtualised ‘servers’. These servers were
abstracted by virtualising the underlying hardware of the
server. This effectively allowed operators to run multiple
‘servers’ on a single physical server. The benefit, being a
more balanced workload across infrastructure and the ability
to consolidate virtual machines onto fewer physical servers –
meaning less initial investment for IT operators.
The second shift has been in the advent of, and
overwhelming adoption of containers. Containers are similar
to virtualisation, except in that they take the abstraction
to the next level. Instead of just virtualising the hardware
and running full-blown operating systems on each virtual
machines (VMs), containers run on top of the operating
system of a host or node. This means many workloads run
on top of a single operating system. These nodes don’t
have to be on bare metal. They could also be VMs. The idea
is that there is one ‘server’ able to run many containers
with the ability to balance the workload over those servers
becoming more efficient.
The last, most recent shift is functions as a service (FaaS).
Some people call this serverless since it eliminates the need
for someone within the organisation to maintain a server.
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