A private cloud is a cloud computing environment dedicated to a single organization. It provides many of the benefits of cloud computing, such as scalability, elasticity, and self-service, while also offering the security and control of on-premises IT infrastructure. In a private cloud, all resources are isolated and in the control of one organization, making it also known as the internal or corporate cloud. Private clouds can be hosted on-premises in the customers data center, on an independent cloud providers infrastructure, or built on rented infrastructure housed in an offsite data center.

There are different types of private clouds, including:

• On-premises private cloud: This is a private cloud that an organization can deploy on its own resources in an internal data center. The organization must purchase the resources, maintain and upgrade them, and ensure security.

• Managed private cloud: This is a single-tenant environment fully managed by a third party. For example, the IT infrastructure for an organization could be purchased and maintained by a third-party organization in its data center. The third party provides maintenance, upgrades, support, and remote management of the private cloud resources.

• Virtual private cloud: This is a private cloud that an organization can deploy within a public cloud infrastructure. It is a secure, isolated environment where private cloud users can run code, host websites, store data, and perform other tasks that require a traditional data center.

Private cloud architecture is the aggregation of resources in a data center into a single pool of resources. Through virtualization of the hardware components, organizations increase the efficiency and utilization of their private cloud infrastructure. Private cloud solutions come from leading software companies such as VMware, Microsoft, and others, while enterprise-grade open source solutions are available from Red Hat, OpenStack, and others.

Advantages of private clouds include customization, more control, increased security, enhanced compliance, and the ability to meet access-control or retention requirements. However, private clouds require the same staffing, management, and maintenance expenses as traditional data center ownership.