Infrastructure as a Service IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service is the cloud layer that gives you the raw building blocks — virtual machines, block storage, virtual networks, load balancers — on demand, billed by the hour or by usage. You’re still responsible for the operating system, the runtime, and the application; the cloud provider is responsible for the physical hardware, the hypervisor, and the network underneath.

What IaaS covers

A typical IaaS account includes:

• Compute — virtual machines (AWS EC2, Google Compute Engine, Azure VMs) sized from tiny (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM) to massive (hundreds of cores, terabytes of RAM)
• Storage — block storage attached to VMs, object storage (S3, GCS) for files and backups, archival tiers for cold data
• Networking — virtual networks, load balancers, VPN gateways, private connectivity to on-prem
• Identity and access management (IAM) — fine-grained permissions on every resource

IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS — the spectrum

Layer	You manage	Vendor manages	Example
On-prem	Everything	Nothing	Server in your closet
IaaS	OS, runtime, app	Hardware, hypervisor, network	AWS EC2
PaaS (Platform as a Service)	App + data	Everything else	Heroku, App Engine
SaaS	Just your data	Everything	Google Workspace

As you move down the stack, you give up control and gain operational simplicity. Most modern SMB cloud deployments use a mix — IaaS for custom workloads, PaaS for managed databases, SaaS for productivity and most business apps.

When IaaS is the right answer

• You need full OS control (custom kernel, niche software, regulatory requirements)
• You have a non-cloud-native application you’re migrating (lift-and-shift)
• You need geographic flexibility or hybrid connectivity
• You want to optimize cost via reserved capacity or savings plans

For most SMB workloads we recommend SaaS first, PaaS second, IaaS only when those don’t fit. The operational cost of running IaaS yourself adds up fast — patching, monitoring, backup, scaling — and the cloud provider doesn’t do that work for you at this layer. See the Cloud & AWS service page for our approach.