MODULE 3

Cloud Computing Architecture

Cloud computing is a utility-oriented and Internet-centric way of delivering IT

services on demand. These services cover the entire computing stack: from
the hardware infrastructure packaged as a set of virtual machines to software
services such as development platforms and distributed applications.

The Cloud Reference Model

Cloud computing supports any IT service that can be consumed as a utility
and delivered through a network, most likely the Internet.

Architecture

Cloud computing architecture includes:

1. IaaS, Infrastructure as a service

2. PaaS, Platform as a service
3. SaaS, Software as a service

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1.IaaS:

1. IaaS stands for infrastructure as a service.

2. Infrastructure as service or IaaS is the basic layer in cloud computing
model.
3. IaaS offers servers, network devices, load balancers, databases, Web
servers etc.
4. The combination of cloud hosting platforms and resources is generally
classified as a Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution
5. The physical infrastructure is managed by the core middleware, the
objectives of which are to provide an appropriate runtime environment
for applications and to best utilize resources.
6. IaaS examples can be categorized in two categories
○ IaaS Management layer
○ IaaS Physical infrastructure
7. Some service providers provide both above categories and some
provide only management layers.
8. Main technology behind IaaS is hardware virtualization.
9. Some examples:
○ Amazon Web Services (AWS)
○ Microsoft Azure
○ Google Compute Engine (GCE)

2. PaaS:

1. PaaS stands for platform as a service.

2. PaaS provides a computing platform with a programming language
execution environment.
3. PaaS offered to the user is a development platform
4. PaaS solutions generally include the infrastructure as well.
5. PurePaaS offers only the user-level middleware.
6. Some examples:
○ Google App Engine
○ Force.com

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3. SaaS:

1. SaaS stands for software as a service.

2. Software as a service (SaaS) allows users to connect to and use
cloud-based apps over the Internet.
3. SaaS is the service with which end users interact directly.
4. Some examples:
○ Gmail
○ Google drive
○ Dropbox
○ WhatsApp

4. User applications:

1. It includes cloud applications through which end users interact.

2. There may be different types of user applications, like scientific,
gaming, social etc.
3. Some of the examples are Gmail, Facebook.com, etc.

5. User-level middleware:

1. It includes a cloud programming environment and tools.

2. There may be different types of programming environments and tools
depending on the user applications.
3. Some of the examples of user level middleware are web 2.0, libraries,
scripting.

6. Core middleware:

1. It includes cloud hosting platforms.

2. It manages the quality of service.
3. Execution management.
4. Accounting, metering etc.
5. Virtual machines are part of core middleware.

7. System infrastructure:

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 1. It includes cloud resources.
2. Storage hardware
3. Servers, databases are part of it.

Infrastructure /Hardware as a service

Figure:Infrastructure as a service

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 ● Three principal layers: the physical infrastructure, the software
management infrastructure, and the user interface.
● At the top layer the user interface provides access to the services
exposed by the software management infrastructure
● A central role is played by the scheduler, which is in charge of
allocating the execution of virtual machine instances. The scheduler
interacts with the other components that perform a variety of tasks:
● The pricing and billing component takes care of the cost of executing
each virtual machine instance and maintains data that will be used to
charge the user.
● The monitoring component tracks the execution of each virtual
machine instance and maintains data required for reporting and
analyzing the performance of the system.
● The reservation component stores the information of all the virtual
machine instances that have been executed or that will be executed in
the future.
● QoS/SLA management component will maintain a repository of all the
service level agreements made with the users; together with the
monitoring component, this component is used to ensure that a given
virtual machine(VM) instance is executed with the desired quality of
service.
● The VM image repository component provides a catalog of virtual
machine images that users can use to create virtual instances. Some
implementations also allow users to upload their specific virtual
machine images.
● The VM pool manager component is responsible for keeping track of all
the live instances.
● A provisioning component interacts with the scheduler to provide a
virtual machine instance that is external to the local physical
infrastructure directly managed by the pool.
● The bottom layer is composed of the physical infrastructure, on top of
which the management layer operates.

Platform as a service

● PaaS stands for platform as a service.

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● PaaS provides a computing platform with a programming language
execution environment.
● PaaS provides a development and deployment platform for running
applications in the cloud.
● PaaS constitutes the middleware on top of which applications are built.
● Application management is the core functionality of the middleware.
● PaaS provides run time environments for the applications.
● PaaS provides
○ Applications deployment
○ Configuring application components
○ Provisioning and configuring supporting technologies
● For users PaaS interfaces can be in the form of a Web-based interface
or in the form of programming APIs and libraries.
● PaaS solutions generally include the infrastructure as well.
● PurePaaS offers only the user-level middleware.
● PasS classification:
○ PaaS-I: It offers a runtime environment with a Web-hosted
application development platform. Rapid application prototyping.
Example: Force.com
○ PaaS-II: It offers a runtime environment for scaling Web
applications. The runtime could be enhanced by additional
components that provide scaling capabilities.

Example: Google AppEngine ,Appscale

○ PaaS-III: Middleware and programming model for developing

distributed applications in the cloud.

Eg: Microsoft Azure,Manjrasoft Aneka is a middleware product

type.

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Characteristics of PaaS:

1. Runtime framework: The runtime framework executes end-user code

according to the policies set by the user and the provider.
2. Abstraction: PaaS offers a way to deploy and manage applications on
the cloud rather than a virtual machine on top of which the IT
infrastructure is built and configured.
3. Automation: PaaS deploy the applications automatically.
4. Cloud services: Provide services for creation, delivery, monitoring
management, reporting of applications.

SaaS | Software as a service

1. SaaS stands for software as a service.

2. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model that provides
access to applications through the Internet as a Web-based service.
3. SaaS is the service with which end users interact directly.
4. It provides a means to free users from complex hardware and software
management.

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5. In SaaS customers do not need to purchase the software and require
the license.
6. They simply access the application website, enter their credentials and
billing details, and can instantly use the application.
7. Customers can customize their software.
8. Application is available to the customer on demand.
9. SaaS can be considered as a “one-to-many” software delivery model.
10.In SaaS applications are built as per the user needs.
11.Software-as-a-Service applications can serve different needs. CRM,
ERP, and social networking applications are definitely the most popular
ones
12.Some examples:
○ Gmail
○ Google drive
○ Dropbox
○ Facebook
○ Google Documents

Characteristics of SaaS:

1. The product sold to customers is application access.

2. The application is centrally managed.
3. The service delivered is one-to-many.
4. The service delivered is an integrated solution delivered on the
contract, which means provided as promised.

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 TYPES OF CLOUD

● According to the administrative domain, clouds are classified.

● Cloud type identifies the boundaries within which cloud computing services
are implemented.

● There are four different types of cloud:

1. Public clouds - The cloud is open to the wider public.
2. Private clouds - The cloud is implemented within the private premises
of an institution and generally made accessible to the members of the
institution or a subset of them.
3. Hybrid or heterogeneous clouds - The cloud is a combination of the two
previous solutions and most likely identifies a private cloud that has
been augmented with resources or services hosted in a public cloud.
4. Community clouds - The cloud is characterized by a
multi-administrative domain involving different deployment models
(public, private, and hybrid), and it is specifically designed to address
the needs of a specific industry.

Public clouds:

1. The cloud is open to the wider public.

2. In public cloud the services offered are made available to anyone, from
anywhere, and at any time through the Internet.
3. From a structural point of view they are a distributed system.
4. In public clouds one or more data centers are connected together.
5. On these data centers services are implemented.
6. Customer may require his/her credentials or billing details to access the
offered services.
7. Small enterprises prefere public clouds due to its less cost.
8. Public clouds offers renting the infrastructure or subscribing to
application services.
9. Customers can use on demand services.

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 10.Public cloud keeps monitoring of services used by users to provide
billing as per the uses.
11.Public clouds offer any kind of services like,
○ IaaS by Amazon EC2 is a public cloud
○ PaaS by Google App Engine is a public cloud
○ SaaS by SalesForce.com is a public cloud
12.At the same time a large quantity of users can access the public cloud.

Private clouds:

1. The cloud is implemented within the private premises of an institution

and generally made accessible to the members of the institution or a
subset of them.
2. When customers' privacy is important private clouds are preferable
over public clouds.
3. In private cloud sensitive information is kept in house.
4. Private cloud provides customer information protection better than
public clouds.
5. Private clouds can be implemented on more heterogeneous hardware.
6. Private clouds can provide in-house solutions for cloud computing, but
if compared to public clouds they exhibit more limited capability to
scale elastically on demand.
7. the key advantages of using a private cloud computing infrastructure:

• Customer information protection.

• Infrastructure ensuring service level agreements(SLAs).

• Compliance with standard procedures and operations.

Hybrid clouds

● Public clouds are large software and hardware infrastructures that

have a capability that is huge enough to serve the needs of multiple
users, but they suffer from security threats and administrative pitfalls.

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 ● Private clouds are the perfect solution when it is necessary to keep the
processing of information within an enterprise’s premises or it is
necessary to use the existing hardware and software infrastructure.
One of the major drawbacks of private deployments is the inability to
scale on demand and to efficiently address peak loads.
● Hybrid clouds are the combinations of private clouds and public
clouds.
● When advantages of public clouds and private clouds are taken
together that's known as hybrid clouds.
● Hybrid cloud allowed the services to be taken from public clouds when
needed and keep the sensitive information within private clouds.
● Hybrid clouds use cloudbusting, in which services are taken when
required and released when not in use.
● Dynamic provisioning refers to the ability to acquire on demand virtual
machines in order to increase the capability of the resulting distributed
system and then release them. Dynamic provisioning is most commonly
implemented in PaaS solutions that support hybrid clouds.
● It is a heterogeneous distributed system resulting from a private cloud
that integrates additional services or resources from one or more
public clouds. For this reason they are also called heterogeneous
clouds.

Community clouds

● Community clouds are distributed systems created by integrating the

services of different clouds to address the specific needs of an industry,
a community, or a business sector.
● Sectors for community clouds are as follows:
○ Media industry
○ Healthcare industry
○ Energy and other core industries
○ Public sector
○ Scientific research
● Community clouds can provide a shared environment where services
can facilitate business-to-business collaboration.
● Benefits of the community clouds:

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 ○ Openness
○ Community
○ Graceful failures
○ Convenience and control
○ Environmental sustainability
● Openness: By removing the dependency on cloud vendors, community
clouds are open systems in which fair competition between different
solutions can happen.
● Scalable: Scalable because the system can grow simply by expanding
its user base.
● Graceful failures: Since there is no single provider or vendor in control
of the infrastructure, there is no single point of failure.
● Convenience and control: The cloud is shared and owned by the
community, which makes all the decisions through a collective
democratic process.
● Environmental sustainability: Hybrid clouds tend to be more organic by
growing and shrinking in a symbiotic relationship to support the
demand of the community, which in turn sustains it.

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 Economics of the cloud

➔ Cloud computing allows:

• Reducing the capital costs associated to the IT infrastructure
• Eliminating the depreciation or lifetime costs associated with IT capital
assets
• Replacing software licensing with subscriptions
• Cutting the maintenance and administrative costs of IT resources
➔ In terms of the pricing models introduced by cloud computing, we can
distinguish three different strategies that are adopted by the providers:
• Tiered pricing.- In this model, cloud services are offered in several
tiers, each of which offers a fixed computing specification and SLA at a
specific price per unit of time. This model is used by Amazon for pricing
the EC2 service
• Per-unit pricing-This model is more suitable for cases where the
principal source of revenue for the cloud provider is determined in terms
of units of specific services, such as data transfer and memory
allocation.

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 example:GoGrid
• Subscription-based pricing- This is the model used mostly by SaaS
providers in which users pay a periodic subscription fee for use of the
software or the specific component services that are integrated in their
applications.
➔ “ pay-as-you-go model” makes possible the conversion of IT capital
costs into operational costs, since the cost of buying hardware turns
into a cost for leasing it and the cost generated by the purchase of
software turns into a subscription fee paid for using it.

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