欢迎来到云上魔法城堡 / Welcome to the Cloud Magic Castle

你有没有过这样的时刻？攒了三个月的零花钱买了一套超酷的乐高城堡，刚搭到一半，弟弟/妹妹跑过来“哗啦”一下全碰倒了；或者攒了一抽屉的奥特曼卡想找小伙伴来家里玩，结果妈妈说家里太小，会吵到邻居，只能作罢。要是有一座漂浮在天空里的魔法城堡就好了——你想怎么搭就怎么搭，想请多少朋友来玩就请多少，城堡还会帮你看着东西不会丢，是不是特别棒？今天我们要聊的「云计算」，就是这座藏在天上的魔法城堡哦。/ Have you ever had moments like this? You saved up your allowance for three months to buy a super cool LEGO castle, and just when you were halfway through building it, your little brother/sister ran over and knocked the whole thing down with a ‘crash’; or you saved a whole drawer of Ultraman cards and wanted to invite your friends over to play, but Mom said the house was too small and would disturb the neighbors, so you had to give up. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a magic castle floating in the sky? You can build it however you want, invite as many friends as you want to play, and the castle will keep an eye on your things so they don’t get lost. That’s amazing, right? What we’re going to talk about today, “cloud computing”, is exactly this magic castle hidden in the sky!

一、以前的“小盒子”和现在的魔法城堡

在云计算出现之前，所有人用电脑、存东西，都只能靠自己的“小盒子”——也就是个人电脑、手机、U盘这些设备。你的照片、游戏、作业、画的画，全部都要存在自己的小盒子里，要是小盒子坏了（比如电脑死机、硬盘摔坏、手机掉水里），里面的所有东西就全没了，就像你把自己攒了半年的卡片、手办、画都放在家里的小柜子里，要是家里不小心着火了，所有宝贝就都烧没了，再也找不回来了。/ Before cloud computing came along, everyone could only rely on their own “little boxes” to use computers and store things—personal computers, mobile phones, USB drives and other devices. All your photos, games, homework, and drawings had to be stored in your own little box. If the little box broke (like the computer crashed, the hard drive was dropped, or the phone fell into water), everything inside would be gone forever. It’s just like if you put all the cards, figurines and paintings you saved for half a year in a small cabinet at home, and if the house accidentally caught fire, all your treasures would be burned and could never be found again.

而且以前你想把你的画给远在另一个城市的好朋友看，得把画打印出来，装在信封里寄过去，要等好几天才能到；要是你想跟好朋友一起玩同一个游戏，得把游戏光盘带过去，装到他的电脑里才能玩，特别麻烦。/ And if you wanted to show your painting to a good friend who lived in another city, you had to print it out, put it in an envelope and mail it, and it would take several days to arrive; if you wanted to play the same game with your friend, you had to bring the game disc over and install it on his computer before you could play, which was very troublesome.

后来有人想：要是我们能建一座超级大的城堡，里面放好多好多的储物柜，每个人都可以在城堡里租一个小柜子存东西，不用自己买柜子，也不用担心自己的柜子坏了，那该多好呀？这就是云计算的由来啦！/ Later someone thought: What if we could build a super big castle with lots of storage cabinets inside, where everyone could rent a small cabinet to store things, without having to buy their own cabinet or worrying about their cabinet breaking? That’s how cloud computing came about!

这座魔法城堡的管理员，就是「云服务商」，比如我们国家常用的阿里云、腾讯云、华为云，还有国外的亚马逊云AWS、谷歌云GCP，他们都是专门负责维护城堡的人，会24小时看着城堡，保证城堡不会出问题，你的东西不会丢。/ The administrators of this magic castle are the “cloud service providers”, such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Huawei Cloud that we often use in China, as well as Amazon AWS and Google GCP abroad. They are all people who specialize in maintaining the castle. They will watch the castle 24 hours a day to make sure the castle will not have problems and your things will not be lost.

<!-- 插图1（纸书印刷用/电子版可点击放大）：漂浮在白云里的魔法城堡，城堡有好多扇不同颜色的小窗户，一个小男孩正抱着一摞漫画书往城堡里走，旁边站着一个穿管家服的叔叔笑着指方向 --> <!-- Illustration 1 (for print book / click to enlarge in digital version): A magic castle floating in white clouds, with many small windows of different colors. A little boy is walking towards the castle holding a stack of comic books, and a butler in a uniform is standing next to him smiling and pointing the way -->

二、云魔法城堡的三大超能力

这座魔法城堡可比你自己家的小柜子厉害多啦，它有三大超能力，能帮你解决好多烦恼： This magic castle is much more powerful than your own small cabinet at home. It has three superpowers that can help you solve a lot of troubles:

超能力1：永远不用操心“东西坏了怎么办”

你自己的小盒子要是坏了，修起来要花好多钱，还要等好久，里面的东西说不定还找不回来；但是在魔法城堡里，管理员会帮你把坏掉的储物柜马上换掉，你根本感觉不到，就像你去游乐园玩，工作人员会马上把坏掉的秋千修好，你下次来还能玩，根本不用你操心。/ If your own little box breaks, it costs a lot of money to repair it, and it takes a long time, and you may not be able to get the things inside back; but in the magic castle, the administrator will replace the broken storage cabinet for you right away, and you won’t feel it at all. It’s just like when you go to an amusement park, the staff will fix the broken swing right away, and you can play it next time you come, without you worrying about it at all.

管理员还会把你在城堡里存的所有东西，都备份好几份，放在城堡的不同角落里。就算一个角落被雷劈了（比如机房停电、服务器坏了），还有其他角落存着你的东西，你一点都不会丢，就像你把存的钱放在好几个不同的存钱罐里，就算一个存钱罐摔碎了，其他存钱罐里还有你的钱，一点都不会损失。/ The administrator will also back up all the things you store in the castle and put them in different corners of the castle. Even if one corner is struck by lightning (such as a power outage in the computer room or a server failure), your things are still stored in other corners, and you won’t lose anything. It’s just like if you put your savings in several different piggy banks, even if one piggy bank is broken, you still have your money in the other piggy banks, and you won’t lose anything.

💡 电子版侧边栏小知识：全球的云城堡管理员都会轮班24小时值守，就算遇到地震、洪水这些自然灾害，他们也有备用的城堡，你的宝贝安全得很！ 💡 Digital version sidebar trivia: Cloud castle administrators all over the world work in shifts 24 hours a day. Even if they encounter natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, they have backup castles, so your treasures are very safe!

超能力2：想变大就变大，想变小就变小

你自己的小盒子容量是固定的，比如你的手机内存是128G，存满了之后你就得删掉一些东西才能存新的；但是在魔法城堡里，你的房间大小是随你变的！过年的时候亲戚都来你家玩，你需要放好多好多的动画片、游戏，你只要跟管理员说“我今天要多放20部动画片、10个游戏”，管理员马上就能把你的房间变大；等亲戚走了，你说“我不需要那么大的房间了”，管理员马上就能把房间缩小，特别方便。/ The capacity of your own little box is fixed. For example, if your phone has 128G of memory, once it is full, you have to delete some things before you can store new ones; but in the magic castle, the size of your room changes as you want! During the Spring Festival, when all your relatives come to your house to play, you need to store a lot of cartoons and games. You just need to tell the administrator “I want to store 20 more cartoons and 10 games today”, and the administrator will make your room bigger right away; when the relatives leave, you say “I don’t need such a big room anymore”, and the administrator will make the room smaller right away, which is very convenient.

这个超能力叫「弹性伸缩」，是云最厉害的本领之一。比如你建了一个自己的小游戏网站，平时只有你和班上的3个好朋友玩，只需要一个10平米的小房间就够了；要是你的游戏被老师发到家长群里，一下子有1000个小朋友来玩，你只要跟管理员说“我需要1000平米的大厅”，管理员马上就能给你准备好；等过了几天没人玩了，你再把房间缩小回10平米就行，不用一开始就买个1000平米的大房间空着浪费钱。/ This superpower is called “elastic scaling”, which is one of the most powerful abilities of the cloud. For example, if you build your own small game website, and only you and 3 good friends in your class play it, you only need a 10-square-meter small room; if your game is sent to the parent group by the teacher, and 1000 children come to play all of a sudden, you just need to tell the administrator “I need a 1000-square-meter hall”, and the administrator will prepare it for you right away; when no one plays it after a few days, you can shrink the room back to 10 square meters, without having to buy a 1000-square-meter big room and waste money at the beginning.

超能力3：随时可以请全世界的朋友来玩

你在魔法城堡里的小房间，就像有一个魔法传送门，只要管理员给你一把“钥匙”（就是你的账号密码），不管你的朋友住在哪个城市，甚至哪个国家，只要拿着钥匙，就能直接进你的小房间玩，不用跑到你家来，也不用寄快递，点一下就能看到你存的画、玩你做的游戏，就像你们俩同时站在一个房间里一样。/ The small room you have in the magic castle is like having a magic portal. As long as the administrator gives you a “key” (that is, your account password), no matter which city or even which country your friend lives in, as long as he has the key, he can directly enter your small room to play, without running to your house or mailing a courier. He can see the paintings you store and play the games you made with just one click, just like you two are standing in the same room at the same time.

<!-- 插图2（纸书印刷用/电子版可交互）：左边是一个小男孩在城堡的小房间里放自己的画，右边是一个小女孩在另一个城市拿着手机，屏幕上显示的就是小男孩的画，两个人中间有个魔法传送门的特效 --> <!-- Illustration 2 (for print book / interactive in digital version): On the left is a little boy putting his paintings in a small room in the castle