Cloud Service Terms

Subscriptions, Identity & Virtualization
Lesson 1 · Foundations

Subscriptions, Identity & Virtualization

The billing model, the access model, and the technology underneath it all — plus how resources actually get deployed once you're ready to use them.

1.11

Subscription Services

Recurring, periodic billing with no long-term contract required — access starts as soon as the subscription is set up, and can typically be cancelled any time. Longer commitments are usually the cheaper option per period.

PRICE PER MONTH
$12.50
BILLED
Every month
COST OVER 12 MONTHS
$150
Example: Microsoft 365 style pricing — month-to-month costs more per month than committing to a year up front.
1.12

Identity Management

Also known as Identity and Access Management (IAM) — the process of establishing identities and controlling what they can reach. Tap each link in the chain.

User
Account
Rights & Restrictions
Access Control
User — the identity being managed. Users are often organized into groups so administrators can manage access at scale rather than one person at a time.
1.13

Virtualization Review

Virtualization frees operating systems, services, and applications from physical hardware — the cloud doesn't exist without it. Toggle between the two main approaches to see how they stack differently.

Virtual networking extends the same idea to infrastructure — administrators can create virtual subnets, routers, switches, and even entire virtual clouds within the cloud.

VM templates offer standardized, pre-approved configurations — the right compute, storage, OS, apps, and security settings already chosen. A developer picks a template instead of configuring a VM from scratch, cutting down on confusion, misconfiguration, and costly mistakes. CSPs use templates the same way to offer flexible, standardized options to customers.

1.14

Deploy Cloud Resources

Provisioning kicks off the deployment process, allocating resources before anything else gets configured.

1Provision resources
2Configure server
3Configure service
4Configure user & network
5Validate deployment

Once running, resources can grow or shrink automatically as demand changes. Try increasing demand below and see the difference between scaling up and scaling out.

Scale up: one server given more RAM and compute power to handle the load.

Administrators also combine compute, storage, and network into single manageable units.

Converged: compute, storage, and network stay as separate parts you manage individually — three pieces, three sets of decisions.

Confirms a deployed app or service actually meets its required service levels — often through regression or functionality testing. Automate it where possible, for both consistency and efficiency.

§ 1.11–1.14 · Subscriptions, Identity & Virtualization