Chap 2.

Cloud Architecture
2.1 Cloud Delivery Models
2.2 Cloud Deployment Models
Chap 4. Cloud Working Mechanisms
4.1 Cloud Infrastructure Mechanisms
Cloud infrastructure mechanisms are foundational building blocks of cloud environments that
establish primary artifacts to form the basis of fundamental cloud technology architecture.
Beyond a vast array of cloud infrastructure mechanisms, this chapter dives into virtualization,
the most foundational building blocks of cloud environments.
A cloud delivery model represents a specific, pre-packaged combination of IT resources offered
by a cloud provider.
The following cloud infrastructure mechanisms are described:
• Virtual Server
• Hypervisor
• Resource Management System
4.1.1 Virtual Server
A virtual server is a form of virtualization software that emulates a physical server. Virtual
servers are used by cloud providers to share the same physical server with multiple cloud
consumers by providing individual virtual server instances. Each virtual server can host
numerous IT resources, cloud-based solutions, and various other cloud computing mechanisms.
Figure 4.1 shows three virtual servers being hosted by two physical servers. The number of
instances a given physical server can share is limited by its capacity.
 Figure 4.1 The first physical server hosts two virtual servers, while the second physical server
hosts one virtual server.
Virtualization technologies include virtual machine techniques, and virtual networks.
• Virtual machines provide virtualized IT-infrastructures on-demand (such as VMware,
Xen)
• Virtual networks support users with a customized network environment to access cloud
resources (such as VPN)
4.1.2 Hypervisor
The hypervisor mechanism is primarily used to generate and manage virtual server instances
(VMs) of a physical server. Hypervisor software is installed directly on bare-metal servers and
provide a layer of abstraction between the physical hardware and the virtualized environments
running on top of it.
Hypervisor’s working mechanism:
• Abstraction: The hypervisor abstracts the physical hardware resources such as CPU,
memory, storage, and networking, presenting them as virtual resources to the guest
operating systems running on the VMs.
• Isolation: Each VM operates independently of the others, with its own guest operating
system and applications. The hypervisor ensures that each VM is isolated from one
another, providing security and stability.
• Resource Allocation: Hypervisors allocate and manage physical hardware resources
among the VMs. They can dynamically adjust resource allocations based on the needs of
each VM, ensuring efficient utilization of hardware resources.
 • Virtual Hardware: To each VM, the hypervisor presents virtual hardware that appears as
dedicated resources. For example, each VM may have its own virtual CPU cores,
memory, disk space, and network interfaces, even though they are all sharing the
underlying physical hardware.
• Control and Management: Hypervisors provide features for controlling and managing
the VMs, such as starting, stopping, pausing, and migrating VMs between physical hosts.

Figure 4.2. Virtual servers are created via individual hypervisor on individual physical servers.
All three hypervisors are jointly controlled by the same VIM.
4.1.3 Resource Management System
The resource management system mechanism helps coordinate IT resources in response to
management actions performed by both cloud consumers and cloud providers. Core to this
system is the Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM), a software tool that provides a centralized
platform for administering multiple hypervisors across physical servers. The primary purpose of
VIM is to simplify the management and monitoring of virtual servers and their associated
resources, regardless of the underlying hypervisor technology being used.
Resource management systems typically expose APIs that allow cloud providers to build remote
administration system portals that can be customized to selectively offer resource management
controls to external cloud resource administrators acting on behalf of cloud consumer
organizations via usage and administration portals
 Figure 4.3. The cloud consumer’s cloud resource administrator accesses a usage and
administration portal externally to administer a leased IT resource (1). The cloud provider’s
cloud resource administrator uses the native user-interface provided by the VIM to perform
internal resource management tasks (2)

4.2 Specialized Cloud Mechanisms

A typical cloud technology architecture contains numerous moving parts to address distinct
usage requirements of IT resources and solutions. Each mechanism covered in this chapter
fulfills a specific runtime function in supportof one or more cloud characteristics.
The following specialized cloud mechanisms are described in this chapter:
• Automated Scaling Listener
• Load Balancer
• Failover system
All these mechanisms can be considered extensions to cloud infrastructure and can be combined
in numerous ways as part of distinct and custom technology architectures.
4.2.1 Automated Scaling Listener
The automated scaling listener mechanism is a service agent that monitors and tracks
communications between cloud service consumers and cloud services for dynamic scaling
purposes. Workloads can be determined by the volume of cloud consumer-generated requests or
via back-end processing demands triggered by certain types of requests.
Types of responses to workload fluctuation conditions:
 • Auto-scaling: Automatically scale out/in based on parameters previously defined by the
cloud consumer.
• Automatic notification (of the cloud consumer): when workloads exceed current
thresholds or fall below allocated resources.
➔ Cloud consumers can choose to adjust its current IT resource allocation.
4.2.2 Load balancer
A common approach to horizontal scaling is to balance a workload across two or more IT
resources to increase performance and capacity beyond what a single IT resource can provide. A
load balancer is programmed or configured with a set of performance and Quality of Service
(QoS) rules and parameters with the general objectives of optimizing IT resource usage, avoiding
overloads, and maximizing throughput.

Figure 4.4. A load balancer implemented as a service agent transparently distributes incoming
workload request messages across two redundant cloud service implementations, which in turn
maximizes performance for the cloud service consumers.
4.2.3 Failover System
The failover system mechanism is used to increase the reliability and availability of IT resources
by using established clustering technology to provide redundant implementations. A failover
system is configured to automatically switch over to a redundant or standby IT resource instance
whenever the currently active IT resource becomes unavailable. Failover systems come in two
basic configurations:
Active-Active
In an active-active configuration, redundant cloud service implementations of the IT resource
actively serve the workload synchronously (Figure 4.5.1). When a failure is detected, the failed
instance is removed from the load balancing scheduler (Figure 4.5.2).

Figure 4.5.1 Figure 4.5.2

Active-Passive
In an active-passive configuration, one cloud service implementation acts as the active instance,
receiving cloud service requests, while the other acts as the standby instance (Figure 4.6.1).
When a failure is detected, the standby or inactive implementation is activated to take over the
processing from the IT resource that becomes unavailable, and the corresponding workload is
redirected to the instance taking over the operation (Figure 4.7.1).

Figure 4.6.1 Figure 4.6.2