UNIT-3

Cloud Architecture, Service And Storage

NIST Cloud computing reference architecture:-

NIST Cloud Computing reference architecture defines five major performers:

 Cloud Provider
 Cloud Carrier
 Cloud Broker
 Cloud Auditor
 Cloud Consumer
Each performer is an object (a person or an organization) that contributes to a transaction or
method and/or performs tasks in Cloud computing. There are five major actors defined in the
NIST cloud computing reference architecture, which are described below:
1. Cloud Service Providers: A group or object that delivers cloud services to cloud consumers
or end-users. It offers various components of cloud computing. Cloud computing consumers
purchase a growing variety of cloud services from cloud service providers. There are various
categories of cloud-based services mentioned below:
 IaaS Providers: In this model, the cloud service providers offer infrastructure components
that would exist in an on-premises data center. These components consist of servers,
networking, and storage as well as the virtualization layer.
 SaaS Providers: In Software as a Service (SaaS), vendors provide a wide sequence of
business technologies, such as Human resources management (HRM) software, customer
relationship management (CRM) software, all of which the SaaS vendor hosts and provides
services through the internet.
 PaaS Providers: In Platform as a Service (PaaS), vendors offer cloud infrastructure and
services that can access to perform many functions. In PaaS, services and products are
mostly utilized in software development. PaaS providers offer more services than IaaS
providers. PaaS providers provide operating system and middleware along with application
stack, to the underlying infrastructure.

2. Cloud Carrier: The mediator who provides offers connectivity and transport of cloud
services within cloud service providers and cloud consumers. It allows access to the services of
the cloud through Internet networks, telecommunication, and other access devices. Network
and telecom carriers or a transport agent can provide distribution. A consistent level of services
is provided when cloud providers set up Service Level Agreements (SLA) with a cloud carrier.
In general, Carrier may be required to offer dedicated and encrypted connections.
3. Cloud Broker: An organization or a unit that manages the performance, use, and delivery of
cloud services by enhancing specific capability and offers value-added services to cloud
consumers. It combines and integrates various services into one or more new services. They
provide service arbitrage which allows flexibility and opportunistic choices. There are major
three services offered by a cloud broker:
 Service Intermediation.
 Service Aggregation.
 Service Arbitrage.

4. Cloud Auditor: An entity that can conduct independent assessment of cloud services,
security, performance, and information system operations of the cloud implementations. The
services that are provided by Cloud Service Providers (CSP) can be evaluated by service
auditors in terms of privacy impact, security control, and performance, etc. Cloud Auditor can
make an assessment of the security controls in the information system to determine the extent
to which the controls are implemented correctly, operating as planned and constructing the
desired outcome with respect to meeting the security necessities for the system. There are three
major roles of Cloud Auditor which are mentioned below:
 Security Audit.
 Privacy Impact Audit.
 Performance Audit.

5. Cloud Consumer: A cloud consumer is the end-user who browses or utilizes the services
provided by Cloud Service Providers (CSP), sets up service contracts with the cloud provider.
The cloud consumer pays per use of the service provisioned. Measured services utilized by the
consumer. In this, a set of organizations having mutual regulatory constraints performs a
security and risk assessment for each use case of Cloud migrations and deployments.

Cloud consumers use Service-Level Agreement (SLAs) to specify the technical performance
requirements to be fulfilled by a cloud provider. SLAs can cover terms concerning the quality
of service, security, and remedies for performance failures. A cloud provider may also list in
the SLAs a set of limitations or boundaries, and obligations that cloud consumers must accept.
In a mature market environment, a cloud consumer can freely pick a cloud provider with better
pricing and more favourable terms. Typically, a cloud provider’s public pricing policy and
SLAs are non-negotiable, although a cloud consumer who assumes to have substantial usage
might be able to negotiate for better contracts.
Difference between Public Cloud vs Private Cloud vs Hybrid
Cloud:-

Factors Public Cloud Private Cloud Hybrid Cloud

Resources are
It is a combination of
shared among Resources are shared
Resources public and private clouds.
multiple with a single organization
based on the requirement.
customers

Data of multiple Data is stored in the public

Data of a single
organizations is cloud, and provide
Tenancy organization is stored in a
stored in the security in the public
clouds the public cloud
public cloud cloud.

It can include a mix of

public cloud pay-as-you-
go pricing, and private
Pay what you Have a variety of pricing
Pay Model cloud fixed pricing. It has
used models
other pricing models such
as consumption-based,
subscription-based, etc.

Operated Third-party Can be a combination of

Specific organization
by service provider both

It has scalability and

Scalability It has more flexibility by allowing
It has predictability and
and scalability and organizations to use a
consistency
Flexibility flexibility, combination of public and
private cloud services.

Can be more expensive,

Expensive less expensive More expensive but it can also be less
expensive , depending on
Factors Public Cloud Private Cloud Hybrid Cloud

the specific needs and

requirements of the
organization.

The general
Restricted to a specific Can be a combination of
Availability public (over the
organization both.
internet)

Architectural Design challenges:-

Security and Privacy

Security and Privacy of information is the biggest challenge to cloud computing. Security and
privacy issues can be overcome by employing encryption, security hardware and security
applications.

Portability

This is another challenge to cloud computing that applications should easily be migrated from
one cloud provider to another. There must not be vendor lock-in. However, it is not yet made
possible because each of the cloud provider uses different standard languages for their platforms.

Interoperability

It means the application on one platform should be able to incorporate services from the other
platforms. It is made possible via web services, but developing such web services is very
complex.
Computing Performance

Data intensive applications on cloud require high network bandwidth, which results in high cost.
Low bandwidth does not meet the desired computing performance of cloud application.

Reliability and Availability

It is necessary for cloud systems to be reliable and robust because most of the businesses are now
becoming dependent on services provided by third-party.

Cloud Storage
In Cloud Computing, Cloud storage is a virtual locker where we can remotely stash any data.
When we upload a file to a cloud-based server like Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud that file
gets copied over the Internet into a data server that is cloud-based actual physical space where
companies store files on multiple hard drives. Most companies have hundreds of these servers
known as ‘server farms’ spanning across multiple locations. So, if our data gets somehow lost
we will not lose our data because it will be backed up by another location. This is known as
redundancy which keeps our data safe from being lost.

Features of Cloud Storage System:

The key features of cloud computing are as follows.
 It has a greater availability of resources.
 Easy maintenance is one of the key benefits of using Cloud computing.
 Cloud computing has a Large Network Access.
 It has an automatic system.
 Security is one of the major components and using cloud computing you can secure all over
the networks.

Advantages of Cloud Storage

 Scalability – Capacity and storage can be expanded and performance can be enhanced.
 Flexibility – Data can be manipulated and scaled according to the rules.
 Simpler Data Migrations – As it can add and remove new and old data when required and
eliminates disruptive data migrations.
 Recovery -In the event of a hard drive failure or other hardware malfunction, you can
access your files on the cloud.

Disadvantages of Cloud Storage

 Data centers require electricity and proper internet facility to operate their work, failing
which system will not work properly.
 Support for cloud storage isn’t the best, especially if you are using a free version of a cloud
provider.
 When you use a cloud provider, your data is no longer on your physical storage.
 Cloud-based storage is dependent on having an internet connection. If you are on a slow
network you may have issues accessing your storage.

Storage as a service:-
Instead of storing data on-premises, organizations that use STaaS will typically utilize a public
cloud for storage and backup needs. Public cloud storage may also use different storage methods
for STaaS. These storage methods include backup and restore, disaster recovery, block storage,
SSD storage, object storage and bulk data transfer. Backup and restore refers to the backing up of
data to the cloud, which provides protection in case of data loss. Disaster recovery may refer to
protecting and replicating data from virtual machines (VMs).

Block storage enables customers to provision block storage volumes for lower-latency I/O. SSD
storage is another storage type that is typically used for intensive read/write and I/O operations.
Object storage systems are used in data analytics, disaster recovery and cloud applications and
tend to have high latency. Cold storage is used to create and configure stored data quickly. Bulk
data transfers will use disks and other hardware to transfer data.

Advantages of STaaS
Key advantages to STaaS in the enterprise include the following:
Storage costs. Personnel, hardware and physical storage space expenses are reduced.
Disaster recovery. Having multiple copies of data stored in different locations can better enable
disaster recovery measures.
Scalability. With most public cloud services, users only pay for the resources that they use.
Syncing. Files can be automatically synced across multiple devices.
Security. Security can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, as security methods may
change per vendor. Data tends to be encrypted during transmission and while at rest.

Disadvantages of STaaS
Common disadvantages of STaaS include the following:
 Security. Users may end up transferring business-sensitive or mission-critical data to the
cloud, which makes it important to choose a service provider that's reliable.
 Potential storage costs. If bandwidth limitations are exceeded, these could be expensive.
 Potential downtimes. Vendors may go through periods of downtime where the service is not
available, which can be trouble for mission-critical data.
 Limited customization. Since the cloud infrastructure is owned and managed by the service
provider, it is less customizable.
 Potential for vendor lock-in. It may be difficult to migrate from one service to another.

Popular storage-as-a-service vendors :- Examples of STaaS vendors include Dell

EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), NetApp and IBM. Dell EMC provides Isilon NAS
storage, EMC Unity hybrid-flash storage and other storage options. HPE has an equally large, if
not larger, presence in storage systems compared to Dell EMC.
Other public cloud vendors with cloud storage services include the following:
 Amazon Web Services (AWS)
 Microsoft Azure
 Google Cloud
 Oracle cloud
 Box
 Arcserve

Cloud Storage Providers:-

Cloud storage providers manage capacity, security, and durability to make data accessible to
your applications over the internet in a pay-as-you-go model.

o 6 Best Cloud Storage Providers for Personal Use

o 1. NordLocker
o 2. Sync
o 3. Icedrive
o 4. Google Drive
o 5. OneDrive
o 6. pCloud

o Top 5 Best Cloud Storage Providers for Business Use

o 1. Dropbox
o 2. IDrive
o 3. Koofr
o 4. Box
o 5. Zoolz

o 5 Best Free Cloud Storage Providers

o 1. MEGA
o 2. Degoo
o 3. iCloud
o 4. Internxt
o 5. MediaFire
 AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service):-

S3 is short for Amazon Simple Storage Service or Amazon S3. It is a cloud service provided
by AWS for secure, highly-available and redundant data storage. It is used by customers of all
sizes and industries for a number of use cases, including:

 Backup and restore

 Disaster recovery
 Archive
 Internet applications
 Data lakes
 Big data analytics
 Hybrid cloud storage
 Cloud-native application data storage

A web console, S3 Management Console, provides easy-to-use management features for

organizing data and configuring finely-tuned access controls. Standardized protocols can also
be used to upload and access Amazon S3.

Amazon S3’s storage units are objects that are organized into buckets. Buckets are used to
organize files, like a folder. An infinite amount of data can be stored in buckets. There is no
limit on the number of objects that can be uploaded and each object can contain up to 5 TB of
data.

Buckets can be managed with the S3 Management Console, using the AWS SDK or with the
Amazon S3 REST API. The HTTP GET interface and the BitTorrent protocol can be also be
used to download objects. Items in a bucket can also be served as a BitTorrent feed to reduce
bandwidth costs for downloads.

Features of Amazon S3

 Durability: AWS claims Amazon S3 to have a 99.999999999% of durability (11 9’s). This
means the possibility of losing your data stored on S3 is one in a billion.
 Availability: AWS ensures that the up-time of AWS S3 is 99.99% for standard access.
 Note that availability is related to being able to access data and durability is
related to losing data altogether.
 Server-Side-Encryption (SSE): AWS S3 supports three types of SSE models:
 SSE-S3: AWS S3 manages encryption keys.
 SSE-C: The customer manages encryption keys.
 SSE-KMS: The AWS Key Management Service (KMS) manages the encryption
keys.
 File Size support: AWS S3 can hold files of size ranging from 0 bytes to 5 terabytes. A
5TB limit on file size should not be a blocker for most of the applications in the world.
 Infinite storage space: Theoretically AWS S3 is supposed to have infinite storage space.
This makes S3 infinitely scalable for all kinds of use cases.
 Pay as you use: The users are charged according to the S3 storage they hold.

AWS S3 Benefits:-

Some of the benefits of AWS S3 are:

 Durability: S3 provides 99.999999999 percent durability.

 Low cost: S3 lets you store data in a range of “storage classes.” These classes are based on the
frequency and immediacy you require in accessing files.

 Scalability: S3 charges you only for what resources you actually use, and there are no hidden
fees or overage charges. You can scale your storage resources to easily meet your
organization’s ever-changing demands.

 Availability: S3 offers 99.99 percent availability of objects

 Security: S3 offers an impressive range of access management tools and encryption features
that provide top-notch security.
 Flexibility: S3 is ideal for a wide range of uses like data storage, data backup, software
delivery, data archiving, disaster recovery, website hosting, mobile applications, IoT devices,
and much more.
 Simple data transfer: You don’t have to be an IT genius to execute data transfers on S3. The
service revolves around simplicity and ease of use.