Funny thing about the never-ending discussions of cloud, virtualization, and containers out here in pundit-land… Most writers blithely ignore the one truth that all of us need to be reminded of on occasion.
Your cloud is built on hardware.
Yes indeed, I did say that out loud. Talk about fifteen layers of server/network virtualization all you like, SDX your way into the 22nd century, but never forget that someone somewhere is racking and stacking to make it happen.
Why does that matter? Well for a lot of reasons, though they can be broken into the usual categories – public and private. On-premises and off.
Virtualization, cloud, and containers share one simple premise – make it easier for folks to get machines that do what they need, when they need it. Which is cool, but easier (and/or cheaper) always results in more. And more means that underlying hardware has to grow. It also means the complexity of the infrastructure grows.