Instructor: In this lesson,
we're going to talk about cloud storage services.
Now there's lots of different varieties
of cloud storage services out there.
But I really want to focus on three main parts of it
that you should be aware of for your exam.
These are cloud storage applications, file synchronization
and content delivery networks.
Now, the first one we're going to talk about
is cloud storage applications.
And you've probably used these already in your own life.
If you've ever used Dropbox
or OneDrive or Google Drive or iCloud from Apple,
these are all examples of cloud storage applications.
Essentially, they're going to give you some amount of space
on a cloud-based server
for you to put your files
and they will store those for you
with some level of either free or paid storage,
depending on what plan you've signed up for.
For example, if you go over to dropbox.com right now,
you can sign up for a free storage account with them
and get two gigabytes of storage.
Now, these days, two gigabytes of storage
is not really that much.
So what they're hoping
is that you're going to upgrade to their two terabyte plan,
which will give you lots of storage in their cloud
for about $10 per month.
But if you can stay under the two gigabyte limit,
you can get it for free without having to pay for anything.
Now, in addition to getting free cloud storage in their app,
you also can go to their website
and be able to access your files through their web browser
or through an app on your computer or on your phone.
Now, another great thing about these
is the ability to do what's known as file synchronization.
A lot of these cloud storage apps
have the ability to synchronize from your different devices
and be able to send data to and from
all of your different connected devices
using that single account.
For example, I personally use Google Drive
as my cloud storage app of choice.
This allows me to be able to put my files
on a folder in my hard drive.
And when I do that,
they are automatically synced into the Google Cloud
in their drive location.
Now I can access it from my phone, my tablet,
my laptop, my desktop
or any other computer I want
because it's sitting on their cloud file storage,
but I can access that same file
on any of my different devices
because of the file synchronization that's occurred.
Now, the last thing you need to be aware of
when it comes to cloud file storage
is this concept of a CDN or content delivery network.
Now a CDN is essentially different servers
located all around the world,
so that wherever the user is going from,
it finds the closest server
and this helps minimize the delay
or the download time to be able to get those files.
So when I upload a video file to my Google Drive,
it doesn't just sit in one of Google's data centers
on one of their servers,
but instead they actually take those files
and they copy it to different locations around the world,
based on how often I'm using those files
and a CDN is essentially different servers
located all over the world that work in tandem
to give you the best user experience.
So as you're watching this video,
you're actually not getting it directly from my servers,
you're getting it from a content delivery network.
And the reason for that is my servers
would be located near my office
or in the data center I chose from my cloud service provider
as my primary node.
That might be on the east coast of the US.
And if you're watching this video from Europe
or Asia or Africa,
it can actually take a really long time
to go from your workstation over to our servers
which is located in the Amazon east region,
which is either in Ohio or Virginia
over in the United States.
So instead, we have a primary server there
where we upload the files
and then they get replicated out to our CDN
or content delivery network,
which has a bunch of edge servers located in Asia,
in Africa, in Europe in South America,
and on both sides of the United States,
the east coast and the west coast.
This means no matter where you are in the world,
you should get a better experience
when trying to stream these videos
than having to go directly to my servers
located in the eastern part of the United States.
And that's the idea of a CDN,
it's all about performance.
Our goal here is to get the edge
as close as possible to our end user,
so they have a minimized downtime
and less latency when they're trying to load
different media or resources from our website
by going through the CDN internet exchange points
instead of going back to our individual server.
And that is one of the ways
that we actually share our files around the world
through file synchronization as well
to make sure all those CDNs have the latest version
and are all using the same version of that file
as we go to publish it.