A virtual area network (VLAN) can span any network within a data center, or it can span many physical locations and data centers.
Many cloud providers choose to conduct a SOC 2 audit and make the report available to cloud clients and potential cloud customers as a means to convey security confidence without having to expose their systems or sensitive information to the public.
Volume storage functions as a virtual hard drive connected to a virtual machine. The volume is viewed by the operating system in the same way that a typical drive on a physical server would be.
The concept of shares in a cloud environment is used to limit and regulate client requests for resource allocations that the system may not yet be capable of allowing. Work is shared by prioritizing hosts in a cloud environment using a weighting mechanism established by the cloud provider. When periods of high utilization and allocation occur, the system automatically scores each host based on its share value to determine which hosts have access to the few remaining resources. The higher the value of a given host, the more resources it will be permitted to use.
VPNs are widely used to get access to trust zones. Access may be regulated and tracked using a VPN, and authorized individuals can only gain access through encrypted channels. It also protects and encrypts communications.
The firmware that runs the actual initiation and booting of a piece of hardware is referred to as the BIOS. If it is compromised, an attacker could get access to hosted systems and change configuration settings, exposing or disabling various security features.
Rapid elasticity enables a cloud environment to automatically add or withdraw resources from a system or application based on its current needs. Whereas a typical data center approach would need standby hardware and significant effort to add resources in response to load increases, a cloud environment may easily and quickly grow to meet resource demands, as long as the application is appropriately developed.
