In recent years, cloud computing services have been developed and deployed that allow customers to utilize computing resources without a need to make capital expenditures to acquire/own such computing resources. Typically, a cloud computing service provider configures one or more computers and/or computer systems to provide cloud services. The computers have at least one processor, memory and network ports to provide access to the one or more computers and/or computer systems. These cloud computer systems may include any number of processors, storage and/or network access devices (e.g., network interface card(s) (NICs)) to allow any number of customers access to cloud service(s) provided by the computer systems. Services may include, but are not limited to, numerical processing, commercial transaction processing and/or web hosting.
In some examples, the cloud computing service provider configures the computer systems with one or more virtual machines (VMs) to service one or more customers' computing needs. Generally speaking, VMs are virtual instances of an operating system that execute on underlying hardware resources in a time-sliced manner. A VM user is provided with computing services, such as an operating system user interface, storage space and/or applications (e.g., database query engines, numerical processing applications, graphical processing applications, web server applications, etc.) that are logically separated from any other instantiated VMs operating on the underlying hardware resources managed by the cloud computing service provider.