Infrastructure as a service: the customer runs and maintains virtual machines including their operating systems, for instance SQL Server hosted on an Azure VM.
Also called infrastructure as a service.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains IaaS in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Agents (classic) API
First-generation Foundry Agent Service API, based on threads, messages and runs. It is deprecated, replaced by conversations and responses, and retires on 31 March 2027.
- Virtual machines
Infrastructure-as-a-service compute giving complete control of the operating system, making it a fit for lift-and-shift moves and for software relying on OS-level pieces like COM.
- SQL Server
The relational database from Microsoft that organisations host and run themselves, in their own data centres or on VMs. Its engine also sits underneath the Azure SQL services and SQL database in Fabric.
Related terms
- OS
Operating system, which you manage yourself on IaaS VMs. PaaS offerings like App Service do not expose it.
- Shared responsibility model
Describes who looks after what in the cloud. Data, accounts and devices are always the customer's job; physical hosts, networks and datacentres are always Microsoft's; the remaining duties move depending on IaaS, PaaS or SaaS.
- SQL Server on Azure VMs
SQL Server delivered as IaaS, giving full control of the operating system, with high availability from failover cluster instances or Always On availability groups.
- Supervisor Services
Operators for Kubernetes, certified by VMware for vSphere, that run on the Supervisor and give DevOps teams IaaS components and partner offerings, such as Velero, MinIO, Harbor or VKS, to use inside their namespaces.