I nt ernat ional Journal of Engineering and I nform at ion Technology Vol 2 , No.

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Copyright © 2010 waves publishers I SSN 0975 - 5292 ( Pr int )
I JEI T 2010 , 2( 1) , 60 - 63 I SSN 0976- 0 253 ( Online)

CLOUD COMPUTING: A STUDY OF

INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE (IAAS)
Sushil Bhardwaj1, Leena Jain1, Sandeep Jain2
1Assistant Professor, RIMT-Regional Institute of Management & Technology, Mandi Gobindgarh
147 301 (India) sushil_bhardwaj @yahoo.com
1Assistant Professor, RIMT-Regional Institute of Management & Technology, Mandi Gobindgarh
147 301 (India) [email protected]
2M.Tech Student, M.M.University, Mullana (Ambala, India) 133203,[email protected]

Abstract: Cloud computing is an increasingly popular paradigm for accessing computing resources. In practice,
cloud service providers tend to offer services that can be grouped into three categories: software as a service,
platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service. This paper discuss the characteristics and benefits of cloud
computing. It proceeds to discuss the Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). This paper aims to provide a means of
understanding and investigating IaaS. This paper also outlines the responsibilities of IaaS provider and the facilities
to IaaS consumer
Keywords: Cloud Computing, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS.
Introduction no longer have need of, expertise in, or control over the
Cloud computing is a way of referring to the use of technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports
shared computing resources, and it is an alternative to them [3]. consumption and delivery model for IT
having local servers handle applications. Cloud services based on the Internet, and it typically involves
computing groups together large numbers of compute the provision of dynamically scalable and often
servers and other resources and typically offers their virtualized resources as a service over the Internet [4,5]
combined capacity on an on-demand, pay-per-cycle It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access
basis. The end users of a cloud computing network to remote computing sites provided by the Internet [5].
usually have no idea where the servers are physically
located—they just spin up their application and start
working. According to Wang and von Laszewski [1],
Cloud computing can be defined as “A computing Cloud
is a set of network enabled services, providing scalable,
QoS guaranteed, normally personalized, inexpensive
computing platforms on demand, which could be
accessed in a simple and pervasive way”. According to
GuiyiWei et al [2] Cloud computing is a natural
evolution for data and computation centers with
automated systems management, workload balancing,
and virtualization technologies. Cloud-based services
integrate globally distributed resources into seamless
computing platforms. Recently, a great deal of
applications are increasingly focusing on third-party
resources hosted across the Internet and each has Fig. 1. Logical diagram of cloud computing
varying capacity. Fig. 1 show the logical diagram of The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the
cloud computing. Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to
It is a paradigm shift (change in a fundamental represent the telephone network [6], and later to depict
model of events) following the shift from mainframe to the Internet in computer network diagrams as an
client-server. It is a paradigm shift (change in a abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents
fundamental model of events) following the shift from [7]. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common
mainframe to client-server. Details are abstracted from business applications online which are accessed from
the users who no longer have need of, expertise in, or another web service or software like a web browser,
control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" while the software and data are stored on servers.
that supports them[3]. Cloud computing describes a new A technical definition is a computing capability
supplement, Details are abstracted from the users who that provides an abstraction between the computing
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 Sushil Bhardwaj and Et al, I JEI T 2010, 2( 1) , 60-63

resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g.,  Applications (and the tools to develop them)
servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on- that can truly scale out
demand network access to a shared pool of configurable
computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and 2 Architectural layers of Cloud Computing
released with minimal management effort or service
provider interaction." This definition states that clouds Cloud computing is typically divided into three levels of

 on-demand self-service,
have five essential characteristics [8]: service offerings as showed in Fig. 2: Software as a

 broad network access,

Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and

 resource pooling,
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). These levels support

 rapid elasticity, and

virtualization and management of differing levels of the

 measured service.
solution stack.

Client
User Machine

 Cloud technology is paid incrementally, saving

Benefits of Cloud Computing Interface Interface
Application

 Organizations can store more data than on private

organizations money. Components Services
Platform
 No longer do IT personnel need to worry about
computer systems.
Compute Network Storage
Infrastructure
 Cloud computing offers much more flexibility
keeping software up to date.
Server
Fig. 2 Cloud Computing Stack [9]
 Employees can access information wherever they
than past computing methods.

2.1 Software as a Service

 No longer having to worry about constant server
are, rather than having to remain at their desks.
This is the idea that someone can offer you a hosted set
updates and other computing issues, government of software (running on a platform and infrastructure)
organizations will be free to concentrate on that you don't own but pay for some element of
utilization - by the user, or some other kind of

innovation.
consumption basis. Here you don't have to do any
Decoupling and separation of the business service
development or programming, but you may need to
from the infrastructure needed to run it
come in and configure the (very flexible, configurable

(virtualization).
and sometimes customizable) software. You don't have
Flexibility to choose multiple vendors that
to purchase anything. You just pay for what you use. A
provide reliable and scalable business services,
SaaS provider typically hosts and manages a given
development environments, and
application in their own data center and makes it
infrastructure that can be leveraged out of the box
available to multiple tenants and users over the Web.
and billed on a metered basis—with no long term
Some SaaS providers run on another cloud provider’s

contracts
PaaS or IaaS service offerings. Oracle CRM on
Elastic nature of the infrastructure to rapidly Demand, Salesforce.com, and Netsuite are some of the
allocate and de-allocate massively scalable well known SaaS examples.

resources to business services on a demand basis.
Cost allocation flexibility for customers wanting 2.2 Platform as a Service

to move CapEx into OpEx This is the idea that someone can provide the hardware
Reduced costs due to operational efficiencies, and (as in IaaS) plus a certain amount of application
more rapid deployment of new business services software - such as integration into a common set of
programming functions or databases as a foundation
Principles of cloud computing upon which you can build your application. Platform as
a Service (PaaS) is an application development and
 deployment platform delivered as a service to

Virtualization and automation
Interchangeable (fungible) resources such as developers over the Web. It facilitates development and
deployment of applications without the cost and
 Management of these resources as a single
servers, storage and network
complexity of buying and managing the underlying
infrastructure, providing all of the facilities required to
 Elastic capacity (scale up or down) to respond
fabric
support the complete life cycle of building and
to business demands delivering web applications and services entirely

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 Sushil Bhardwaj and Et al, I JEI T 2010, 2( 1) , 60-63

available from the Internet. This platform consists of

infrastructure software, and typically includes a
database, middleware and development tools. A
virtualized and clustered grid computing architecture is
often the basis for this infrastructure software. Some
PaaS offerings have a specific programming language
or API. For example, Google AppEngine is a PaaS
offering where developers write in Python or Java.
EngineYard is Ruby on Rails. Sometimes PaaS
providers have proprietary languages like force.com
from Salesforce.com and Coghead, now owned by SAP.

2.3 Infrastructure as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the delivery of Figure 3 – Infrastructure as a Service [10]

hardware (server, storage and network), and associated
software (operating systems virtualization technology, IaaS provides an environment for running user built
file system), as a service. It is an evolution of traditional virtualized systems in the cloud. Figure 3 illustrates how
hosting that does not require any long term commitment a virtual machine is built for an IaaS environment,
and allows users to provision resources on demand. uploaded to the environment, configured, and then
Unlike PaaS services, the IaaS provider does very little deployed within the environment. Using this technique
management other than keep the data center operational virtual machines are created on premise and loaded with
and users must deploy and manage the software services all the software that will eventually run in the cloud.
themselves just the way they would in their own data This includes custom built software as well as licensed
center. Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud software. After the virtual machine is built it is uploaded
(EC2) and Secure Storage Service (S3) are examples of to the IaaS vendor’s hosting environment where it can
IaaS offerings. be configured to use the IaaS vendor’s raw
storage. Once configured, the virtual machine can be
3 Understanding Infrastructures as a Service (IaaS) deployed and started via some form of automation
which automatically finds available hardware to run the
Infrastructure as a Service is a form of hosting. It virtual machine. Once the virtual machine is started the
includes network access, routing services and storage. IaaS vendor can ensure that the running virtual machine
The IaaS provider will generally provide the hardware continues to look healthy as a whole. The computers
and administrative services needed to store applications needed to run the application and the raw storage that is
and a platform for running applications. Scaling of needed by the application are owned and supported by
bandwidth, memory and storage are generally included, the IaaS vendor. It is the responsibility of the customer
and vendors compete on the performance and pricing to monitor all the custom built software and licensed
offered on their dynamic services. The service provider software to insure that they are operating properly. IaaS
owns the equipment and is responsible for housing, is an option that is very flexible and is the best choice
running and maintaining it. IaaS can be purchased with for moving applications to the cloud when there is no
either a contract or on a pay-as-you-go basis. However, time to rework the application’s code for a cloud
most buyers consider the key benefit of IaaS to be the environment.
flexibility of the pricing, since you should only need to
pay for the resources that your application delivery 3.1 IaaS provider and Consumer
requires.
Characteristics and components of IaaS include: The key roles in a cloud environment include the
service consumer and the service provider. The cloud
 service consumer needs a secure anytime anywhere

Utility computing service and billing model.
access to low cost services that are flexible and easy to

Automation of administrative tasks.
use. The biggest hurdle to adoption of cloud has to do

Dynamic scaling.
with consumers discomfort in the following areas:

Desktop virtualization.
security of service and the underlying data, service

Policy-based services.
availability and reliability, service management to
Internet connectivity.
ensure service level agreements, ensuring control over
access and policies, and the appropriate administration
to facilitate flexible pricing structures [11]. The service
provider actually runs the service that the service

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 Sushil Bhardwaj and Et al, I JEI T 2010, 2( 1) , 60-63

consumer wants and was designed and developed by the Table 1: IaaS Summary
service creator. The cloud services creator needs tools Offering Compute power, storage, and networking
infrastructure. Some IaaS vendors may also
and capabilities to offer differentiated services, offer
provide Cloud Services.
incentives to ensure that consumers keep coming back
Unit of Virtual Machine Image
to use the services, and the ability to change services deployment
on-demand to stay competitive and address threats. The Pricing Compute usage per hour, data transfer in/out
service provider needs their IT resources integrated so structure per GB, IO requests per million, storage per
their usage is optimized, the ability to add/remove GB, data transfer in/out to storage per GB,
data storage requests per thousand. All charges
resources on demand, a non-disruptive way to save per billing period.
money, and the means to charge for usage. Customer Software owner that would like an application
hosted in the internet for their end users.

 Enable users to access applications from anywhere

3.2 Consumer’s view on IaaS Examples Amazon, GoGrid, and Rackspace.

 A modular system, which is flexible, scalable, References

 Resilient and always available

virtualized and automated.

 Enable to put applications and data on platform

[1] L. Wang, G. Laszewski, M. Kunze and J. Tao,
“Cloud computing: a perspective study”, J New

 Own the hardware & nuances about provisioning &

provisioning & maintenance by provider Generation Computing, 2010, pp 1-11.
[2] G. Wei, V. Athanasios, Y. Zheng and N. Xiong,
maintaining the OS & hygiene facts like space and “A game-theoretic method of fair resource
power etc allocation for cloud computing services,” J.

 Provide virtual infrastructure (server, storage and

3.3 Provider’s view on IaaS Supercomputing, 2009, DOI 10.1007/s11227-009-
0318-1.

 Responsible for provisioning of space, power &

Network virtualization). [3] Distinguishing cloud Computing from utility
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 Deploy web based applications to easily provision

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[4] Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Be As

 Responsible to provide load balancing services.

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(http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?=id=707508)
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computing really means". InfoWorld.
 Service level agreements with customers on
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-
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 In a dense, shared, and pooled environment, the
“availability of infrastructure services”
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[6] “Cloud Computing: Clash of the clouds". The
 Account Management & Provisioning.
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