IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
IaaS is when you rent the raw computer hardware in someone else's data center. You get a virtual machine with nothing on it and you set up everything yourself — OS, software, configs, all of it. It's like renting an empty lot and building your own house. Powerful but you're responsible for everything.
Real Talk
Infrastructure as a Service provides virtualized computing resources over the internet — virtual machines, storage, and networking — on a pay-per-use basis. The provider manages physical hardware; the customer manages OS, middleware, runtime, and applications. AWS EC2, GCP Compute Engine, and Azure VMs are IaaS examples.
When You'll Hear This
"We use IaaS because we need full control over our server configuration." / "IaaS gives you more power than PaaS but requires more DevOps expertise."
Related Terms
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing means using computers that live in someone else's giant warehouse instead of your own machine.
EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
EC2 is AWS's way of renting you a virtual computer in the cloud. You pick how powerful it is, what OS it runs, and pay by the hour.
On-Premise
On-premise (or 'on-prem') means your servers physically live in YOUR building — not in Amazon's warehouse.
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
PaaS is when someone else handles the boring server stuff (OS, security patches, networking) and you just throw your code at it.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
SaaS is software you use through a browser without installing anything — you just pay a subscription and the company handles everything.
Self-Hosted
Self-hosted means you run the software on your own servers instead of using someone else's managed cloud version.