CLOUD COMPUTING

UNIT – 1
SYLLABUS: Systems modelling, Clustering and virtualization: Scalable
Computing over the Internet, Technologies for Network based systems, System
models for Distributed and Cloud Computing, Software environments for
distributed systems and clouds, Performance, Security And Energy Efficiency.
1.1 Scalable Computing Over the Internet

Scalability: Scalability is the capability of a system or network or process to handle

a growing amount of works like database storage, software usage and so on. A
scalable system should be able to handle the ever-increasing data, levels of
computations and should be efficient.
Parallel Computing: Execution of many processes is carried out simultaneously in
this case. Large problems can be divided into smaller ones, solved at the same time
and integrated later.
Distributed Computing: A distributed system is a model in which components
located on connected computers (through a network) interchange/monitor their
actions by passing messages. Distributed computing may refer to systems situated
at different physical locations or different actions being performed on the same
system.
Distributed Computing is centred on data and based on networks.
Data Center is a centralised repository and distribution of data and information

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organised around a particular concept (ex: Telecommunications, Health data,
business data etc.). A typical data center may have a capacity in Petabytes.
Internet Computing: Data centers and super computer sites must be upgraded to

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meet the demands of millions of users who utilize the Internet. High Performance
Computing (HPC), which was a standard for measuring the system performance, is
no longer used. High Throughput Computing (HTC) came into existence with

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1.1.1 The Age of Internet Computing
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emergence of computing clouds. Here, the systems are parallel and distributed.

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1.1.1.1 Platform Evolution:

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Figure 1.1 Evolutionary Trend towards parallel, distributed and cloud

computing

Computer technology has gone through five generations of development, each

spanning at 10 to 20 years. By the start of 1990s, the use of HPC and HTC systems
has sky-rocketed. These use clusters, grids, Internet and clouds.

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The general trend is to control shared web resources and massive data over the
Internet. In the above figure 1.1, we can observe the evolution of HPC and HTC
systems.
HPC contains super computers which are gradually replaced by clusters of inter-
cooperating systems that share the data among them. A cluster is a collection of
homogeneous computers, which are physically connected.
HTC shows the formation of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for distributed file sharing
and apps. A P2P system is built over many client machines and is globally
distributed. This leads to formation of computational grids or data grids.
1.1.1.2. High Performance Computing (HPC): HPC stressed upon the speed
performance. The speed of HPC systems has increased from Gflops to Pflops
(FLOP=> Floating Point Operations Per Second) these days, driven by the
requirements from different fields like science, engineering, medicine and others.
The systems that generally have high speed are super computers, main frames and
other servers.
1.1.1.3. High Throughput Computing: The market-oriented computing is now
going through a strategic change from HPC to HTC paradigm. HTC concentrates
more on high-flux computing. The performance goal has shifted from speed of the
device to the number of tasks completed per unit of time (throughput).
1.1.1.4. Three New computing Paradigms: It can be seen from Figure 1.1 that
SOA (Software Oriented Architecture) has made the web services available for all
tasks. The Internet Clouds have become a major factor to consider for all types of
tasks. Three new paradigms have come into existence:

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(a) Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID): This uses electro-magnetic fields to
automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. These tags contain
electronically stored information.

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(b) Global Positioning System (GPS): It is a global navigation satellite system
that provides the geographical location and time information to a GPS receiver
[5].

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(c) Internet of Things (IoT): It is the internetworking of different physical devices

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(vehicles, buildings etc.) embedded with electronic devices (sensors), software,

network (IoT).

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and network connectivity. Data can be collected and exchanged through this

1.1.1.5. Computing Paradigm Distinctions:

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(a) Centralized Computing: All computer resources like processors, memory and
storage are centralized in one physical system. All of these are shared and
inter-connected and monitored by the OS.
(b) Parallel Computing: All processors are tightly coupled with centralized shared
memory or loosely coupled with distributed memory (parallel processing). Inter
processor communication is achieved by message passing. This methodology is
known as parallel computing.
(c) Distributed Computing: A distributed system consists of multiple
autonomous computers with each device having its own private memory. They
interconnect among themselves by the usage of a computer network. Here
also, information exchange is accomplished by message passing.
(d) Cloud Computing: An Internet Cloud of resources can either be a centralized
or a distributed computing system. The cloud applies parallel or distributed
computing or both. Cloud can be built by using physical or virtual resources
over data centers. CC is also called as utility/ service/concurrent computing.
1.1.1.6. Distributed System Families
In the future, both HPC and HTC will demand multicore processors that can handle
large number of computing threads per core. Both concentrate upon parallel and
distributed computing. The main work lies in the fields of throughput, efficiency,
scalability and reliability.
Main Objectives:
(a) Efficiency: Efficiency is decided by speed, programming and throughput
demands’ achievement.

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 (b) Dependability: This measures the reliability from the chip to the system at
different levels. Main purpose here is to provide good QoS (Quality of Service).
(c) Adaption in the Programming Model: This measures the ability to support
unending number of job requests over massive data sets and virtualized cloud
resources under different models.
(d) Flexibility: It is the ability of distributed systems to run in good health in both
HPC (science/engineering) and HTC (business).
1.1.2 SCALABLE COMPUTING TRENDS AND NEW PARADIGMS
1.1.2.1Degrees of ‘Parallelism’:
(a) Bit-level parallelism (BLP) 8 bit, 16, 32, and 64.
(b) Instruction-level parallelism (ILP): The processor executes multiple
instructions simultaneously. Ex: Pipelining, supercomputing, VLIW (very long
instruction word), and multithreading.
Pipelining: Data processing elements are connected in series where output of
one element is input to the next.
Multithreading: Multithreading is the ability of a CPU or a single core in
a multi-core processor to execute multiple processes or threads concurrently,
supported by the OS.
(c) Data-level Parallelism (DLP): Here, instructions are given like arrays (single
instruction, multiple data SIMD). More hardware support is needed.
(d) Task-level Parallelism (TLP): It is a process of execution where different
threads (functions) are distributed across multiple processors in parallel
computing environments.

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(e) Job-level Parallelism (JLP): Job level parallelism is the highest level of
parallelism where we concentrate on a lab or computer center to execute as
many jobs as possible in any given time period. To achieve this, we purchase

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more systems so that more jobs are running at any one time, even though any
one user's job will not run faster.

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1.1.2.2. Innovative Applications: It is used in different fields for different
purposes. All applications demand computing economics, web-scale data collection,

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system reliability, and scalable performance. Ex: Distributed transaction processing

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is practiced in the banking industry. Transactions represent 90 percent of the
existing market for reliable banking systems.

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1.1.2.3 The Trend toward Utility Computing: Major computing paradigms and
available services/capabilities are coming together to produce a technology
convergence of cloud/utility computing where both HPC and HTC are utilised to
achieve objectives like reliability and scalability. They also aim to reach autonomic
operations that can be self-organized and support dynamic recovery. Ex:
Interpretation of sensor data, effectors like Google Home and Amazon Echo, smart
home devices etc.

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 Cloud Computing focuses on a business model where a customer receives different
computing resources (storage, service, security etc.) from service providers like
AWS, EMC, Salesforce.com.

1.1.2.4 The Hype Cycle of New Technologies: A new hype (exciting) cycle is

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coming into picture where different important and significant works needed by the
customer are offered as services by CC. Ex: SaaS, IaaS, Security as a Service, DM
as a Service etc. Many others are also along the pipeline.
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1.1.3 The Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems:

1.1.3.1Internet of Things: The IoT [8] refers the networked interconnection of
everyday objects, tools, devices or computers. It can be seen as a wireless network of
sensors that interconnect all things we use in our daily life. RFID and GPS are also used
here. The IoT demands universal addressability of all the objects or things that may be
steady or moving.

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These objects can be interconnected, can exchange data and interact with each other by
the usage of suitable applications (web/mobile). In the IoT era, CC can be used
efficiently and in a secure way to provide different services to the humans, computers
and other objects. Ex: Smart cities, inter-connected networks, self-controlling street
lights/traffic lights etc.
1.1.3.2. Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS): CPS means cyber–physical system where
physical objects and computational processes interact with each other. Ex: Wrest bands
to monitor BP. CPS merges the 3Cs which are computation, communication and control
to provide intelligent feedbacks between the cyber and physical worlds.

1.2. Technologies for Network based Systems

1.2.1. Multi-core CPUs and Multithreading Technologies: Over the last 30 years
the speed of the chips and their capacity to handle variety of jobs has increased at an
exceptional rate. This is crucial to both HPC and HTC system development. The
processor speed is measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second) and the
utilized network bandwidth is measured in Mbps or Gbps.
1.2.1.1. Advances in CPU Processors: The advanced microprocessor chips (by Intel,
NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm etc.) assume a multi-core architecture with dual core, quad
core or more processing cores. They exploit parallelism at different levels. Moore’s law
has proven accurate at these levels. Moore's law is the observation that the number of
transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
1.2.1.2. Multi-core CPU: A multi-core processor is a single computing component with
two or more independent actual processing units (called "cores"), which are units that

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read and execute program instructions. (Ex: add, move data, and branch). The multiple
cores can run multiple instructions at the same time, increasing overall speed for
programs open to parallel computing.

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1.2.1.3. Many-core GPU: (Graphics Processing Unit) Many-core processors are
specialist multi-core processors designed for a high degree of parallel processing,

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containing a large number of simpler, independent processor cores. Many-core
processors are used extensively in embedded computers and high-performance

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computing. (Main frames, super computers).

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1.2.2.GPU Computing: A GPU is a graphics co-processor mounted on a computer’s
graphics card to perform high level graphics tasks in video editing apps. (Ex: Intel Xeon,

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NVIDIA). A modern GPU chip can be built with hundreds of processing cores. These

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days, parallel GPUs or GPU clusters are gaining more attention. Starting as co-processors
attached to the CPU, the GPUs these days possess 128 cores on a single chip (NVIDIA).
Hence they have 1024 threads (128*8) executing tasks concurrently, on a single GPU.
This can be termed as massive parallelism at multicore and multi-threading levels. GPUs
are not restricted to videos only – they can be used in HPC systems to super computers
for handling high level calculations in parallel.
1.2.2.1. GPU Programming Model: Figure 1.7 and 1.8 [2] show the interaction
between a CPU and GPU in performing parallel execution of floating-point operations
concurrently.
Floating-point operations involve floating-point numbers and typically take longer to
execute than simple binary integer operations. A GPU has hundreds of simple cores
organised as multiprocessors. Each core can have one or more threads. The CPU
instructs the GPU to perform massive data processing where the bandwidth must be
matched between main memory and GPU memory.

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 In future, thousand-core GPUs may feature in the field of Eflops/1018 flops
systems.

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1.2.2.3. Power Efficiency of the GPU: The major benefits of GPU over CPU are power
and massive parallelism. Estimation says that 60 Gflops/watt per core is needed to run
an exaflops system. [One exaflops is a thousand petaflops or a quintillion, 1018, floating

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point operations per second]. A GPU chip requires one-tenth less of the power that a
CPU requires. (Ex: CPU: 100, GPU: 90).

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CPU is optimized (use most effectively) for latency (time between request and response)
in caches and memory; GPU is optimized for throughput with explicit (open)
management of on-chip memory.Both power consumption and software are the future
challenges in parallel and distributed systems.

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1.2.3. Memory, Storage and WAN:
(a) Memory Technology: The upper curve in Figure 1.10 shows the growth of DRAM
chip capacity from 16 KB to 64 GB. [SRAM is Static RAM and is 'static' because the
memory does not have to be continuously refreshed like Dynamic RAM. SRAM is
faster but also more expensive and is used inside the CPU. The traditional RAMs in
computers are all DRAMs]. For hard drives, capacity increased from 260 MB to 3 TB
and lately 5 TB (by Seagate). Faster processor speed and higher memory capacity
will result in a wider gap between processors and memory, which is an ever-
existing problem.
(b) Disks and Storage Technology: The rapid growth of flash memory and solid-
state drives (SSD) also has an impact on the future of HPC and HTC systems. An
SSD can handle 300,000 to 1 million write cycles per block, increasing the speed
and performance. Power consumption should also be taken care-of before planning
any increase of capacity.
(c) System-Area Interconnects: The nodes in small clusters are interconnected by
an Ethernet switch or a LAN. As shown in Figure 1.11, a LAN is used to connect
clients to servers. A Storage Area Network (SAN) connects servers to network
storage like disk arrays. Network Attached Storage (NAS) connects clients directly
to disk arrays. All these types of network appear in a large cluster built with
commercial network components (Cisco, Juniper). If not, much data is shared
(overlapped), we can build a small cluster with an Ethernet Switch + copper cables
to link to the end machines (clients/servers).

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(d) WAN: We can also notice the rapid growth of Ethernet bandwidth from 10 Mbps
to 1 Gbps and still increasing. Different bandwidths are needed for local, national, and
international levels of networks. It is also estimated that computers will be used
concurrently in the coming future and higher bandwidth will certainly add more speed
and capacity to aid the cloud/distributed computing.
1.2.4. Virtual Machines and Middleware: A typical computer has a single OS
image at a time. This leads to a rigid architecture that tightly couples apps to a
specific hardware platform i.e., an app working on a system might not work on
another system with another OS (non-portable).
(e) To build large clusters, grids and clouds, we need to increase the capacity of
computing, storage and networking resources in a virtualized manner. A cloud of
limited resources should aggregate all these dynamically to bring out the expected
results.

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(a) Virtual Machines: As seen in Figure 1.12, the host machine is equipped with a
physical hardware. The VM is built with virtual resources managed by a guest OS to
run a specific application (Ex: VMware to run Ubuntu for Hadoop). Between the
VMs and the host platform we need a middleware called VM Monitor (VMM). A
hypervisor (VMM) is a program that allows different operating systems to share a

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single hardware host. This approach is called bare-metal VM because a hypervisor
handles CPU, memory and I/O directly. VM can also be implemented with a dual
mode as shown in Figure 1.12 (d). Here, part of VMM runs under user level and
another part runs under supervisor level.
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(b) VM Primitive operations: A VMM operation provides VM abstraction to the guest
OS. The VMM can also export an abstraction at full virtualization so that a standard

indicated in Figure 1.13.

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OS can run it as it would on physical hardware. Low level VMM operations are

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 The VMs can be multiplexed between hardware machines as shown in 1.13 (a)
 A VM can be suspended and stored in a stable storage as shown in 1.13(b)
 A suspended VM can be resumed on a new hardware platform as shown in 1.13 (c)
 A VM can be migrated from one hardware platform to another as shown in 1.13 (d)

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 Advantages:
 These VM operations can enable a VM to work on any hardware platform.
 They enable flexibility (the quality of bending easily without breaking) in porting
distributed app executions.
 VM approach enhances the utilization of server resources – multiple server
functions can be integrated on the same hardware platform to achieve higher
system efficiency. [VMware claims that server resource utilization has increased
from 5-15% to 60-80%].
 Eliminates server crashes due to VM usage or shows more transparency in the
operations that are being carried out.

(c) Virtual Infrastructures: Virtual Infrastructure connects resources to distributed

applications in such a way that a resource needed by an app is exactly mapped to
it. This decreases the costs and increases efficiency and server response.

1.2.5. Data Center Virtualization for Cloud Computing: Cloud architecture is built
with products like hardware and network devices. Almost all cloud platforms use x86
(Family of Intel 8086 processors). Low-cost terabyte disks and gigabit Ethernet are
used to build data centers. A data center takes into consideration the
performance/price ratio instead of only speed.
(a) Data Center Growth and Cost Breakdown: Large data centers are built with
thousands of servers and smaller ones have hundreds of the same. The cost of
maintaining a data center has increased and much of this money is spent on

cooling also consume much of the allocated finance.

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management and maintenance which did not increase with time. Electricity and

(b) Low Cost Design Philosophy: High-end switches or routers that provide high

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bandwidth networks cost more and do not match the financial design of cloud
computing. For a fixed budget, typical switches and networks are more desirable.

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Similarly, usage of x86 servers is more preferred over expensive mainframes.
Appropriate software ‘layer’ should be able to balance between the available

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resources and the general requirements like network traffic, fault tolerance, and

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expandability. [Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue
operating properly even when one or more of its components have failed].

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(c) Convergence of Technologies: CC is enabled by the convergence of technologies

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in four areas:
 Hardware virtualization and multi-core chips
 Utility and grid computing
 SOA, Web 2.0 and Web Service integration
 Autonomic Computing and Data Center Automation

Web 2.0 is the second stage of the development of the Internet, where static pages
transformed into dynamic and the growth of social media.
Data is increasing by leaps and bounds every day, coming from sensors,
simulations, web services, mobile services and so on. Storage, acquisition and
access of this huge amount of data sets requires standard tools that support high
performance, scalable file systems, DBs, algorithms and visualization. With science
becoming data-centric, storage and analysis of the data plays a huge role in the
appropriate usage of the data-intensive technologies.
Cloud Computing is basically focused on the massive data that is flooding the
industry. CC also impacts the e-science where multi-core and parallel computing is
required. To achieve the goals in these fields, one needs to work on workflows,
databases, algorithms and virtualization issues.
Cloud Computing is a transformative approach since it promises more results than
a normal data center. The basic interaction with the information is taken up in a
different approach to obtain a variety of results, by using different types of data to
end up with useful analytical results.
A typical cloud runs on an extremely large cluster of standard PCs. In each cluster
node, multithreading is practised with a large number of cores in many-core GPU
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 clusters. Hence, data science, cloud computing and multi-core computing are
coming together to revolutionize the next generation of computing and take up the
new programming challenges.
1.3. SYSTEM MODELS FOR DISTRIBUTED AND CLOUD COMPUTING: Distributed
and Cloud Computing systems are built over a large number of independent
computer nodes, which are interconnected by SAN, LAN or WAN. Few LAN switches
can easily connect hundreds of machines as a working cluster. A WAN can connect
many local clusters to form large cluster of clusters.
Large systems are highly scalable, and can reach web-scale connectivity either
physically or logically. Table 1.2 below shows massive systems classification as four
groups: clusters, P2P networks, computing grids and Internet clouds over large
data centers. These machines work collectively, cooperatively, or collaboratively at
various levels.

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Clusters are more popular in supercomputing apps. They have laid the foundation
for cloud computing. P2P are mostly used in business apps. Many grids formed in
the previous decade have not been utilized per their potential due to lack of proper
middleware or well-coded apps.

1.3.1. Clusters of Cooperative Computers: A computing cluster consists of inter-

connected standalone computers which work jointly as a single integrated
computing resource. Particularly, this approach yields good results in handling
heavy workloads with large datasets.
(a) The Figure 1.1.5 below shows the architecture of a typical server cluster that has
low latency and high bandwidth network. [Latency is the delay from input into a
system to desired outcome]. For building a large cluster, an interconnection
network can be utilized using Gigabit Ethernet, Myrinet or InfiniBrand switches.

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 Through a hierarchical construction using SAN, LAN or WAN, scalable clusters can
be built with increasing number of nodes. The concerned cluster is connected to
the Internet through a VPN (Virtual Private Network) gateway, which has an IP
address to locate the cluster. Generally, most clusters have loosely connected
nodes, which are autonomous with their own OS.

(b)Single-System Image (SSI): It was indicated that multiple system images

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should be integrated into a single-system image for a cluster. A cluster-OS is more
desired these days, or a middleware to support SSI that includes sharing of CPUs,

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memory, I/O across all the nodes in the cluster. An SSI is an illusion (something

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that doesn’t exist actually) that shows the integrated resources as a single and
powerful resource. SSI can be created by software or hardware. Finally, a cluster is
with multiple system images is only a collection of the resources of independent

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computers that are loosely inter-connected.
(c) HW, SW and MW Support: It should be noted that MPPs (Massively Parallel

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Processing) are clusters exploring high-level parallel processing. The building

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blocks here are the computer nodes (PCs, Symmetric Multi-Processors (SMPs),
work stations or servers), communication software like Parallel Virtual Machine

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(PVM), Message Passing Interface (MPI), and a network interface card in each

Ethernet).
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node. All the nodes are interconnected by high bandwidth network (Ex: Gigabit

To create SSIs, we need special cluster middleware support. Note that both
sequential and parallel apps can run on the cluster but parallel environments give
effective exploitation of the resources. Distributed Shared memory (DSM) makes
all the data to be shared by all the clusters, thus bringing all the resources into
availability of every user. But SSI features are expensive and difficult to achieve;
so users generally prefer loosely coupled machines.
(d)Major Cluster Design Issues: A cluster-wide OSs or a single OS controlling the
cluster virtually is not yet available. This makes the designing and achievement of
SSI difficult and expensive. All the apps should rely upon the middleware to bring
out the coupling between the machines in cluster or between the clusters. But it
should also be noted that the major advantages of clustering are scalable
performance, efficient message passing, high system availability, good fault
tolerance and a cluster-wide job management which react positively to the user
demands.

1.3.2. Grid Computing Infrastructures: Grid computing is designed to allow close

interaction among applications running on distant computers simultaneously.
(a) Computational Grids: A computing grid provides an infrastructure that couples
computers, software/hardware, sensors and others together. The grid can be
constructed across LAN, WAN and other networks on a regional, national or global

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scale. They are also termed as virtual platforms. Computers, workstations, servers
and clusters are used in a grid. Note that PCs, laptops and others can be viewed as
access devices to a grid system. Figure 1.6 below shows an example grid built by
different organisations over multiple systems of different types, with different
operating systems.

(b)Grid Families: Grid technology demands new distributed computing models,

software/middleware support, network protocols, and hardware infrastructures.

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National grid projects are followed by industrial grid platforms by IBM, Microsoft,
HP, Dell-EMC, Cisco, and Oracle. New grid service providers (GSPs) and new grid
applications have emerged rapidly, similar to the growth of Internet and web

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services in the past two decades. Grid systems are classified in essentially two
categories: computational or data grids and P2P grids. Computing or data grids are
built primarily at the national level.

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1.3.3. Peer-to-Peer Network Families: In the basic client-server architecture, the
client machines are connected to a central server for different purposes and these
are essentially P2P networks. The P2P architecture offers a distributed model of

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networked systems. P2P network is client-oriented instead of server-oriented.
(a) P2P Systems: Here, every node act as both a client and a server. Peer machines
are those connected to the Internet; all client machines act autonomously to join

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or leave the P2P system at their choice. No central coordination DB is needed. The
system is self-organising with distributed control.
Basically, the peers are unrelated. Each peer machine joins or leaves the P2P
network at any time. The participating peers form the physical network at any
time. This physical network is not a dedicated interconnection but a simple ad-hoc
network at various Internet domains formed randomly.
(b)Overlay Networks: As shown in Figure 1.17, an overlay network is a virtual
network formed by mapping each physical machine with its ID, through a virtual
mapping.

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 If a new peer joins the system, its peer ID is added as a node in the overlay network.
The P2P overlay network distinguishes the logical connectivity among the peers. The
types here are unstructured and structured. Unstructured P2P ON is a random one
and has no fixed route of contact – flooding is used to send queries to all nodes. This
resulted in sudden increase of network traffic and unsure results. On the other hand,
structured ONs follow a pre-determined methodology of connectivity for inserting and
removing nodes from the overlay graph.
(c) P2P Application Families: There exist 4 types of P2P networks: distributed file
sharing, collaborative platform, distributed P2P computing and others. Ex:
BitTorrent, Napster, Skype, Geonome, JXTA, .NET etc.
(d)P2P Computing Challenges: The main problems in P2P computing are those in
hardware, software and network. Many hardware models exist to select from;
incompatibility exists between the software and the operating systems; different
network connections and protocols make it too complex to apply in real-time
applications. Further, data location, scalability, performance, bandwidth etc. are
the other challenges.

P2P performance is further affected by routing efficiency and self-organization

among the peers. Fault tolerance, failure management, load balancing, lack of trust
among the peers (for security, privacy and copyright violations), storage space
availability are the other issues that have to be taken care of. But it should also be
noted that the distributed nature of P2P network increases robustness since the
failure of some peers doesn’t affect the full network – fault tolerance is good.

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Disadvantages here are that since the total system is not centralized, management
of the total network is difficult – anyone can logon and put in any type of data.
Security is less.
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1.3.4. Cloud Computing over Internet: Cloud Computing is defined by IBM as

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follows: A cloud is a pool of virtualized computer resources. A cloud can host a
variety of different workloads that include batch-style backend jobs and interactive
and user-facing applications.

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Since the explosion of data, the trend of computing has changed – the software
apps have to be sent to the concerned data. Previously, the data was transferred to
the software for computation. This is the main reason for promoting cloud
computing.
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A cloud allows workloads to be deployed and scaled out through rapid provisioning
of physical or virtual systems. The cloud supports redundant, self-recovering, and
highly scalable programming models that allow workloads to recover from software
or hardware failures. The cloud system also monitors the resource use in such a
way that allocations can be rebalanced when required.

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(a) Internet Clouds: The idea in Cloud Computing is to move desktop computing to a
service-oriented platform using server clusters and huge DBs at data centers. CC
benefits both users and providers by using its low cost and simple resources
through machine virtualization. Many user applications are satisfied simultaneously
by CC and finally, its design should satisfy the security norms, be trustworthy and
dependable. CC is viewed in two ways: a centralized resource pool or a server
cluster practising distributed computing.
(b) The Cloud Landscape: A distributed computing system is controlled by
companies or organisations. But these traditional systems encounter several
bottlenecks like constant maintenance, poor utilization, and increasing costs and
updates of software or hardware. To get rid of these, CC should be utilized as on-
demand computing.

Cloud Computing offers different types of computing as services:

 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This model provides different
infrastructures like servers, storage, networks and the data center fabric (here,
databases) to the user on demand. A typical user can deploy and run multiple
VMs where guest operating systems can be used for specific applications.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): In this model, the user can install his own apps
onto a virtualized cloud platform. PaaS includes middleware, DBs, development
tools, and some computing languages. It includes both hardware and software.
The provider supplies the API and the software tools (ex: Java, Python, .NET).
The user need not manage the cloud infrastructure which is taken care of by the
provider.

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 Software as a Service (SaaS): It is browser-initiated application software
paid cloud customers. This model is used in business processes, industry

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applications, CRM, ERP, HR and collaborative (joint) applications. Ex: Google
Apps, Twitter, Facebook, Cloudera, Salesforce etc.

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(c) Inter clouds offer four deployment models: private, public, managed and

 Private Cloud: Private cloud is a type of cloud computing that delivers similar

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advantages to public cloud, including scalability and self-service, but through a
proprietary architecture.

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 Public Cloud: A public cloud is one based on the standard cloud computing

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model, in which a service provider makes resources, such as applications and
storage, available to the general public over the Internet.
 Managed Cloud: Managed cloud hosting is a process in which organizations
share and access resources, including databases, hardware and software tools,
across a remote network via multiple servers in another location.
 Hybrid Cloud: A hybrid cloud is an integrated cloud service utilising both
private and public clouds to perform distinct functions within the same
organisation.
1.4. SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS FOR DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS AND
CLOUDS
1.4.1. SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE(SOA): In grids that use
Java/CORBA, an entity is a service or an object. Such architectures build on the
seven OSI layers (APSTNDP) that provide networking abstractions. Above this we
have a base service environment like .NET, Java etc. and a broker network for
CORBA, which enables collaboration between systems on different operating
systems, programming languages and hardware. By using this base, one can build
a higher-level environment reflecting the special features of distributed computing.
The same is reflected in the figure 1.20 below.

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(a) Layered Architecture for Web Services and Grids: The entity interfaces
correspond to the WSDL (web services description language) like XML, Java and
CORBA interface definition language (IDL) in the distributed systems. These
interfaces are linked with high level communication systems like SOAP, RMI and
IIOP. These are based on message-oriented middleware infrastructures like JMS
and Web Sphere MQ.

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At entity levels, for fault tolerance, the features in (Web Services Reliable

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Messaging) WSRM and its framework are same as the levels of OSI model. Entity
communication is supported by higher level services for services, metadata, and
the management of entities, which can be discussed later on. Ex: JNDI, CORBA

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trading service, UDDI, LDAP and ebXML. This enables effective exchange of
information. This also results in higher performance and more throughputs.

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(b)Web Services and Tools: Loose Coupling and support of heterogeneous
implementations make services (SaaS, IaaS etc.) more attractive than distributed

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objects. It should be realised that the above figure corresponds to two choices of

systems.
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service architecture: web services or (Representational State Transfer) REST

In web services, the aim is to specify all aspects of the offered service and its
environment. This idea is carried out by using SOAP. Consequently, the
environment becomes a universal distributed OS with fully distributed capability
carried out by SOAP messages. But it should be noted that this approach has had
mixed results since the protocol can’t be agreed upon easily and even if so, it is
hard to implement.

In the REST approach, simplicity is stressed upon, and difficult problems are
delegated to the apps. In a web services language, REST has minimal information
in the header and the message body carries the needed information. REST
architectures are more useful in rapid technology environments. Above the
communication and management layers, we can compose new entities or
distributed programs by grouping several entities together.

Java and CORBA use RPC methodology through RMI. In grids, sensors represent
entities that output data as messages; grids and clouds represent collection of
services that have multiple message-based inputs and outputs.

(c) The Evolution of SOA: Software Oriented Architecture applies to building grids,
clouds, their combinations and even inter-clouds and systems of systems. The data
collections is done through the sensors like ZigBee device, Bluetooth device, Wi-Fi
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 access point, a PC, a mobile phone and others. All these devices interact among
each other or with grids, clouds and databases at distant places.

Raw Data Data Information Knowledge Wisdom Decisions

(d)Grids Vs Clouds: Grid systems apply static resources, while a cloud stresses upon
elastic resources. Differences between grid and cloud exist only in dynamic
resource allocation based on virtualization and autonomic computing. A ‘grid of
clouds’ can also be built and can do a better job than a pure cloud because it can
support resource allocation. Grid of clouds, cloud of grids, cloud of clouds and inter-
clouds are also possible.

1.4.2. TRENDS TOWARD DISTRIBUTED OPERATING SYSTEMS:

a) Distributed Operating Systems: To promote resource sharing and fast
communication, it is best to have a distributed operating system that can manage the
resources efficiently. In distributed systems or more generally, a network needs an
operating system itself since it deals with many heterogeneous platforms. But such an
OS offers low transparency to the users. It should be noted that middleware can also
be used to generate resource sharing but only till we attain a certain level. The third
approach is to develop a truly distributed OS to achieve highest efficiency and
maximum transparency. Comparison can be seen in Table 1.6.

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b) Amoeba vs DCE: Distributed Computing Environment is a middleware-based
system for DCEs. Amoeba was developed by academicians in Holland. But it should
be noticed that DCE, Amoeba and MOSIX2 are all research prototypes used only in
academia.

c) MOSIX2 vs Linux Clusters: MOSIX is a distributed OS, which runs with a

virtualization layer in the Linux environment. This layer provides a single-system
image to user apps. MOSIX supports both sequential and parallel apps and the
resources are discovered and migrated among the Linux nodes. (MOSIX uses Linux
Kernel). A MOSIX enabled grid can extend indefinitely as long as interoperation the
clusters exists.

d) Transparency in programming environments that handle user data, OS,

and hardware plays a key role in the success of clouds. This concept is divided into
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 4 levels as seen below: Data, app, OS, and hardware. Users will be able to choose
the OS they like as well as the app they like – this is the main concept behind
Software as a Service (SaaS).

1.4.3. Parallel and Distributed Programming Models:

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a) Message-Passing Interface (MPI): MPI is a library of sub-programs that can
be called from C or FORTRAN to write parallel programs running on a distributed

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system. The goal here is to represent clusters, grid systems, and P2P systems with
upgraded web services and other utility apps. Distributed programming can also be

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supported by Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM).
b) MapReduce: it is a web programming model for scalable data processing on

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large data clusters. It is applied mainly in web-scale search and cloud computing

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apps. The user specifies a Map function to generate a set of intermediate key/value
pairs. Then the user applies a Reduce function to merge all intermediate values

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with the same (intermediate) key. MapReduce is highly scalable to explore high

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degrees of parallelism at different job levels and can handle terabytes of data on
thousands of client machines. Many MapReduce programs can be executed
simultaneously. Ex: Google’s clusters.
c)Hadoop Library: Hadoop enables users to write and run apps over vast
amounts of distributed data. Users can easily scale Hadoop to store and process
Petabytes of data in the web space. The package is economical (open source),
efficient (high level of parallelism) and is reliable (keeps multiple data copies).

c)Open Grid Services Architecture: OGSA is driven by large-scale distributed

computing apps. These apps must provide take into account high degree of
resource and data sharing. The key features here are: distributed executed
environment, public key infrastructure (PKI) services, trust management and
security problems in grid computing.

Globus is a middleware library that implements OGSA standards for resource

discovery, allocation and security enforcement.
1.5 PERFORMANCE, SECURITY, AND ENERGY EFFICEINCY
1.5.1 PERFOEMANCE METRICS AND SCALABILITY ANALYSIS:
a)Performance Metrics: In a distributed system, system throughput is measured
in MIPS, Tflops (Tera Floating point Operations per Second) or Transactions per
Second (TPS). Other measures also exist: job response and network latency. An
interconnection network with low latency and high bandwidth is preferred. The key
factors to be considered for performance are OS boot time, compile time, I/O data
rate, and the runtime support system used.
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b) Dimensions of Scalability: System scaling can increase or decrease resources
depending on different practical factors.
 Size Scalability: This target higher performance or more functionality by
increasing the machine size (cache, processors, memory etc.). We can
determine the size scalability by counting the number of processors installed.
That is more processors => more ‘size’.
 Software Scalability: Upgrades in OS/compilers, adding mathematical
libraries, installing new apps, and using more user-friendly environments are
the factors considered in determining software scalability.
 Application Scalability: This refers to matching problem size scalability
(increasing data) with machine size scalability (effectively use the resources to
obtain the best result possible).
 Technology Scalability: Here, systems that can adapt to changes in different
aspects of technology like component or network are considered. Three
aspects play an important role here: time, space and heterogeneity. Time is
concerned with processors, motherboard, power supply packaging and cooling.
All these have to be upgraded between 3 to 5 years. Space is related to
packaging and energy concerns. Heterogeneity refers to the use of hardware
components or software packages from different vendors; this affects
scalability the most.
c)Scalability versus OS Image Count: In Figure 1.23, scalable performance is
estimated against the multiplicity of OS images in distributed systems. scalable
performance means we can ever increase the speed of the system by adding more

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servers of processors, or by enlarging memory size and so on. The OS image is
counted by the no. of independent OS images observed in a cluster, grid, P2P
network or the cloud.

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An SMP (Symmetric multiprocessor) server has a single system image or a single
node in a large cluster. NUMA (non-uniform memory access) machines are SMP
machines with distributed and shared memory. NUMA machine can run with
multiple OS and can scale a hundred of processors.
d) Amdahl’s Law: Consider the execution of a given program on a uniprocessor
workstation with a total execution time of T minutes. Say the program is running in
parallel with other servers on a cluster of many processing nodes. Assume that a
fraction α of the code must be executed sequentially (sequential bottleneck).
Hence, (1-α) of the code can be compiled for parallel execution by n processors.
The total execution time of the program is calculated by αT + (1-α) T/n where the
first term is for sequential execution time on a single processor and the second
term is for parallel execution time on n parallel nodes.

Amdahl’s Law states that the speedup factor of using n-processor system over the
use of a single processor is given by:

Speedup S= T/[αT + (1-α) T/n] = 1/[ α + (1-α)/n] ---- (1.1)

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The maximum speedup of n can be obtained only if α is reduced to zero or the
code can be parallelized with α = 0.

As the cluster becomes large (that is n ∞), S approaches 1/α, which is the
threshold on the speedup of S. Note that the threshold is independent of n. The
sequential bottleneck is the portion of the code that cannot be parallelized. Ex: The
maximum speed achieved is 4, if α=0.25 or 1-α=0.75, even if a user uses
hundreds of processors. This law deduces that we should make the sequential
bottleneck as small as possible.
e)Problem with fixed workload: In Amdahl’s law, same amount of workload
was assumed for both sequential and parallel execution of the program with a fixed
problem size or dataset. This was called fixed-workload speedup by other
scientists. To execute this fixed-workload on n processors, parallel processing leads
to a system efficiency E which is given by:
E = S/n = 1/[α n + 1-α] ---- (1.2)
Generally, the system efficiency is low, especially when the cluster size is large. To
execute a program on cluster with n=256 nodes, and α=0.25, efficiency E =
1/[0.25x256 + 0.75] = 1.5%, which is very low. This is because only a few
processors, say 4, are kept busy whereas the others are kept idle.
f) Gustafson’s Law: To obtain higher efficiency when using a large cluster,
scaling the problem size to match the cluster’s capability should be considered. The
speedup law proposed by Gustafson is also referred to as scaled-workload
speedup.

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Let W be the workload in a given program. When using an n-processor system, the
user scales the workload to W’= αW + (1-α)nW. Note that only the portion of the
workload that can be parallelized is scaled n times in the second term. This scaled

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workload W’ is the sequential execution time on a single processor. The parallel
execution time W’ on n processors is defined by a scaled-workload speedup as:
S’ = W’/W = [αW + (1-α) nW]/W = α+ (1-α) n ---- (1.3)

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This speedup is known as Gustafson’s law. By fixing the parallel execution time at
level W, we can obtain the following efficiency:
E’ = S’/n = α/n+ (1-α) ---- (1.4)

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Taking previous workload values into consideration, efficiency can be improved for
a 256-node cluster to E’ = 0.25/256 + (1-0.25) = 0.751. For a fixed workload

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Amdahl’s law must be used and for scaled problems users should apply Gustafson’s
law.
1.5.2. Fault Tolerance and System Availability:
a)System Availability: High availability (HA) is needed in all clusters, grids, P2P
networks and cloud systems. A system is highly available if it has a long mean time
to failure (MTTF) and a short mean time to repair (MTTR).

b)System Availability = MTTF/(MTTF + MTTR) ---- (1.5)

System availability depends on many factors like hardware, software and network
components. Any failure that will lead to the failure of the total system is known as
a single point of failure. It is the general goal of any manufacturer or user to bring
out a system with no single point of failure. For achieving this goal, the factors that
need to be considered are: adding hardware redundancy, increasing component
reliability and designing testability. In the Figure 1.24 below, the effects of system
availability are estimated by scaling the system size in terms of no. of process
cores in the system.

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As a distributed system increases in size, availability decreases due to a higher
chance of failure and difficulty in isolating the features. Both SMP and MPP are
likely to fail under centralized resources with one OS. NUMA machines are a bit
better here since they use multiple OS.
1.5.3 Network Threats and Data Integrity:
a) Threats to Systems and Networks:
The Figure 1.25 presents a summary of various attack types and the damaged
caused by them to the users. Information leaks lead to a loss of confidentiality.
Loss of data integrity can be caused by user alteration, Trojan horses, service
spoofing attacks, and Denial of Service (DoS) – this lead of loss of Internet
connections and system operations. Users need to protect clusters, grids, clouds
and P2P systems from malicious intrusions that may destroy hosts, network and

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storage resources. Internet anomalies found generally in routers, gateways and
distributed hosts may hinder (hold back) the usage and acceptance of these public
resources.

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b) Security Responsibilities: The main responsibilities include confidentiality,
integrity and availability for most Internet service providers and cloud users. In the
order of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, the providers increase/transfer security control to
the users. IN brief, the SaaS model relies on the cloud provider for all the security
features. On the other hand, IaaS wants the users to take control of all security
functions, but their availability is still decided by the providers. Finally, the PaaS
model divides the security aspects in this way: data integrity and availability is with
the provider while confidentiality and privacy control is the burden of the users.
c) Copyright Protection: Collusive (secret agreement) piracy is the main source
of copyright violation within the boundary of a P2P network. Clients may illegally
share their software, allotted only to them, with others thus triggering piracy. One
can develop a proactive (control the situation before damage happens) content
poisoning scheme to stop colluders (conspirers) and pirates, detect them and stop
them to proceed in their illegal work.
d)System Defence Technologies: There exist three generations of network
defence. In the first generation, tools were designed to prevent intrusions. These
tools established themselves as access control policies, cryptographic systems etc.
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but an intruder can always slip into the system since there existed a weak link
every time. The second generation detected intrusions in a timely manner to
enforce remedies. Ex: Firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), public key
infrastructure (PKI) services (banking, e-commerce), reputation systems etc. The
third generation provides more intelligent responses to intrusions.
e) Data Protection Infrastructure: Security infrastructure is required to protect
web and cloud services. At the user level, one needs to perform trust negotiation
and reputation aggregation over all users. At the app end, we need to establish
security precautions and intrusion detection systems to restrain virus, worm,
malware, and DDoS attacks. Piracy and copyright violations should also be
detected and contained.
1.5.4. Energy Efficiency in Distributed Computing: The primary goals in
parallel and distributed computing systems are HP and HT and also performance
reliability (fault tolerance and security). New challenges encountered in this area
(distributed power management-DPM) these days include energy efficiency,
workload and resource outsourcing. In the forth-coming topics, the energy
consumption issues in servers and HPC systems are discussed.
Energy consumption in parallel and distributed computing raises different issues
like monetary (financial), environmental and system performance issues. The
megawatts of power needed for PFlops has to be within the budget control and the
distributed usage of resources has to be planned accordingly. The rising of
temperature due to more usage of the resources (cooling) is also to be addressed.
a) Energy Consumption of Unused Servers: To run a data center, a company

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has to spend huge amount of money for hardware, software, operational support
and energy every year. Hence, the firm should plan accordingly to make maximum
utilization of the available resources and yet the financial and cooling issues should

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not cross their limits. For all the finance spent on a data center, it should also not
lie down idle and should be utilized or leased for useful work.

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Idle servers can save a lot of money and energy; so the first step in IT
departments is to identify the unused or underused servers and plan to utilize their
resources in a suitable manner.

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b) Reducing Energy in Active Servers: In addition to identifying
unused/underused servers for energy savings, we should also apply necessary

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techniques to decrease energy consumption in active distributed systems. These

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techniques should not hinder the performance of the concerned system. Power
management issues in distributed computing can be classified into four layers, as
seen in Figure 1.26.

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c) Application Layer: Most apps in different areas like science, engineering,
business, financial etc. try to increase the system’s speed or quality. By introducing
energy-conscious applications, one should try to design the usage and consumption
in a planned manner such that the apps manage to use the new multi-level and
multi-domain energy management methodologies without reducing the
performance. For this goal, we need to identify a relationship between the
performance and energy consumption areas (correlation). Note that these two
factors (compute and storage) are surely correlated and affect completion time.
d) Middleware layer: The middleware layer is a connection between application
layer and resource layer. This layer provides resource broker, communication
service, task analyzer & scheduler, security access, reliability control, and
information service capabilities. It is also responsible for energy-efficient
techniques in task scheduling. In distributed computing system, a balance has to
be brought out between efficient resource usage and the available energy.
e) Resource Layer: This layer consists of different resources including the
computing nodes and storage units. Since this layer interacts with hardware
devices and the operating systems, it is responsible for controlling all distributed
resources. Several methods exist for efficient power management of hardware and
OS and majority of them are concerned with the processors.
Dynamic power management (DPM) and dynamic voltage frequency scaling
(DVFS) are the two popular methods being used recently. In DPM, hardware
devices can switch from idle modes to lower power modes. In DVFS, energy
savings are obtained based on the fact that power consumption in CMOS

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(Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) circuits have a direct relationship
with frequency and the square of the voltage supply. [P = 0.5 CV2f] Execution
time and power consumption can be controlled by switching among different
voltages and frequencies.
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f) Network Layer: The main responsibilities of the network layer in distributed

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computing are routing and transferring packets, and enabling network services to
the resource layer. Energy consumption and performance are to measured,

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predicted and balanced in a systematic manner so as to bring out energy-efficient

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networks. Two challenges exist here:
 The models should represent the networks systematically and should possess a

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full understanding of interactions among time, space and energy.

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 New and energy-efficient algorithms have to be developed to rope in the
advantages to the maximum scale and defend against the attacks.

Data centers are becoming more important in distributed computing since the data
is ever-increasing with the advent of social media. They are now another core
infrastructure like power grid and transportation systems.
g) DVFS Method for Energy Efficiency: This method enables the exploitation of
idle time (slack time) encountered by an inter-task relationship. The slack time
associated with a task is utilized to the task in a lower voltage frequency. The
relationship between energy and voltage frequency in CMOS circuits is calculated
by:
2
E  C fv teff

(v  vt ) 2 ---- (1.6)
f K
v
where v, Ceff, K and vt are the voltage, circuit switching capacity, a technology
dependent factor and threshold voltage; t is the execution time of the task under
clock frequency f. By reducing v and f, the energy consumption of the device can
also be reduced.

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