SEC-302(c) Cloud Computing

Unit 1 Introduction
1.1 Cloud Computing at a glance
- The vision of cloud computing
- Defining a cloud
- A closer look
- The cloud computing reference model
- Characteristics and benefits
- Challenges ahead
1.2 Historical Developments
- Distributed systems
- Virtualization
- Web 2.0
1.3 Build Cloud Computing Environments
- Computing platforms and technologies
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Google AppEngine
- Microsoft Azure
- Hadoop

======= in detail =======

1.1 Cloud Computing at a glance

- The vision of cloud computing

In 1969, ARPANET which seeded the internet has predicted the future of services
offered by network of computers in the form of cloud computing.

- Defining a cloud
Cloud computing refers to both the applications delivered as services over the
Internet and the hardware and system software in the datacenters that provide
those services.
Figure 1.2
Important concepts:
* Everything as a Service (Xaas)
* utility-oriented approach (“pay-per-use” strategy)
* 3 criteria to discriminate a service
1) The use of Web browser or API = application programming interface (Web service)
2) Zero capital expenditure is necessary to get started
3) pay only for what you use

- A closer look
Cloud Computing Environment
3 clould deployment models are as follows:
1) Public / Internet Clouds
* Third-party, multitenant cloud infrastructure and services
* Available on a subscription basis to all
2) Private / Enterprise Clouds
* A public cloud model within a company’s own datacenter / infrastructure
* for internal and/or partners’ use
3) Hybrid / Inter Clouds
* Mixed use of private and public clouds
* leasing public cloud services when private cloud capacity is insufficient
Figure 1.4

- The cloud computing reference model

* 3 major categories
1) Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
2) Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
3) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
* At the base of the stack, Iaas includes Virtualized servers,
Storage and networking services. Some of the examples are Amazon EC2, S3,
Rightscale, vCloud.
* PaaS is in the middle of the stack and offers Runtime environment for applications
with the help of Development and data processing platforms. E.g. Popular PaaS models
are Windows Azure, Hadoop, Google AppEngine, Aneka.
* At the top of the stack, Saas provides End-user applications, Scientific applications,
Office automation, photo editing, CRM, and social networking applications for wide use.
E.g. Google Documents, Facebook, Flickr, Salesforce
* Notes : Web 2.0 is the common interface to access various levels of cloud computing
reference model stack.
Figure 1.5
 - Characteristics and benefits
Various characteristics of cloud computing are mentioned as below:
• No up-front commitments
• On-demand access
• Nice pricing
• Simplified application acceleration and scalability
• Efficient resource allocation
• Energy efficiency
• Seamless creation and use of third-party services

Both cloud service consumers (CSCs) and cloud service providers(CSPs) are benefited
from the use of Cloud compuring systems and technologies. Main benefits are:
• Increased economical return
Reduced maintenance costs, operational costs, utility costs, capital costs
• Increased agility in defining and structuring software systems
more dynamically and flexibly compose software systems
reduced need for capacity planning
Ease of scalability
• Advantages to End users
Data and its operations are always available from anywhere, at anytime and through
multiple devices at a very limited costs.
Better utilization of shared infrastructure
considerable optimization of resource allocation and energy efficiency
• composing systems and applications with a flexibility
service orientation and on-demand access
aggregating together existing services
concentrating on added value

- Challenges ahead
The cloud community, including IT practitioners, managers, governments, and regulators face
following problems and challanges:
* Practical aspects related to configuration, networking, and sizing of cloud computing systems
* The dynamic provisioning of cloud computing services and resources
* The technical management of large computing infrastructures by CSPs
* The use of virtualization technologies on top of large infrastructures
* The integration of real and virtual infrastructure concerning secuirty and legislation
* Confidentiality, secrecy, and protection of data
* Weak point of the chain: need of decryption of data (encrypted) for processing
* Legal issues due to different legislation about privacy in different countries regarding the
use of computing infrastructure(spreaded across diverse geographical locations)

1.2 Historical Developments

Since the early 1950s, the idea of renting computing services by leveraging large distributed
computing facilities has been evolved and from there on the process of refinement of technology
has created a series of favorable conditions for the realization of cloud computing.
Figure 1.6

Five core distributed computing technologies that have influenced cloud computing are:
distributedsystems, virtualization, Web2.0, serviceorientation, and utilitycomputing.

- Distributed systems
As per renowned author Tanenbaum, "A distributed system is a collection of independent computers
that appears to its users as a single coherent system."
This is particularly true in the case of cloud computing, in which clouds hide the complex
architecture they rely on and provide a single interface to users.
Distributed systems often exhibit other properties such as heterogeneity, openness, scalability,
transparency, concurrency, continuous availability, and independent failures.
Three major milestones have led to cloudcomputing :
mainframe computing (1950s)
most attractive feature was the ability to be highly reliable computers that were
“always on” and capable of tolerating failures transparently.
Batch processing was the main application of mainframes.
cluster computing (1980s)
a low-cost alternative to the use of mainframes and super computers
the standard technology for parallel and high-performance computing
the attractive feature was the computational power (could be easily extended if
required) of cheap commodity machines over expensive super computers
grid computing (1990s)
as an evolution of cluster computing
a new approach to access large computational power, huge storage facilities,
and a variety of services
a computing grid was a dynamic aggregation of heterogeneous computing nodes
its scale was nation wide or even worldwide.
 Cloud computing is often considered the successor of grid computing. In reality, it embodies
aspects of all these three major technologies.

- Virtualization
another core technology for cloud computing
a collection of solutions allowing the abstraction of the fundamental elements for computing
like hard-ware, run time environments, storage, networking etc.
a fundamental element true for solutions that provide IT infrastructure on demand
confers (grants) required degree of customization and control for users and, at the same time,
sustainable for CSPs.
essentially a technology that allows creation of different computing environments that
simulate the interface expected by a guest.
Technologies : hardware virtualization
(the most common example having virtual machine instances),
storage virtualization,
network virtualization.
used to replicate runtime environment for programs.
Applications are executed by virtual machines instead of O.S.
allows isolating the execution of applications with a finer control on their resources
offers a higher level of abstraction of hardwares
used to provide a platform for scaling applications on demand
(e.g. GoogleAppEngine, WindowsAzure etc.)
Attractive feature : isolated and customizable environments with minor impact on performance
provides on demand virtualization services to a multitude of users across the globe.

- Web 2.0
the primary interface through which cloud computing delivers its services
a set of technologies and services that facilitate interactive information sharing,
collaboration, user-centered design, and application composition
a rich platform for application development
a new way for developers to create applications and deliver services through internet
provides new experience for users of these applications and services
brings interactivity and flexibility into Webpages same as found in desktop applications
its capabilities are obtained by integrating a collection of standards and technologies like
XML, AJAX(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), Web Services, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) etc.
In this technologies...
users become providers of content,
new opportunities and markets are found for the web through expanding internet
accessibility of web services from variety of devices like mobile phones, car dashboards,
TV sets, and others.
requirement of an increased dynamism for applications
Web 2.0 applications are extremely dynamic....
Light weight deployment and programming models are very important for effective support
Loose coupling is another fundamental property that provides added value.
easier to follow the interests of users synthesizing new serviecs with existing one..
providing media accessibility and affordability to long list of users
Examples of Web2.0 applications are GoogleDocuments, GoogleMaps, Flickr, Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, de.li.cious, Blogger, and Wikipedia.
community Websites like harness the collective intelligence of the community

1.3 Build Cloud Computing Environments

The Environment includes....
the development of applications and systems for solutions
the creation of frameworks, platforms, and infrastructures for services.
- Computing platforms and technologies
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
offers comprehensive cloud IaaS services
mostly known for its compute and storage-on-demand services
e.g. EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
- customizable virtual hardware configurations (GPU, Cluster Instance etc.)
- deployed by 1) AWS console 2) Web Services API
S3 (Simple Storage Service)
- delivers persistant storage-on-demand
- stores user templates (specific running instance as an image)
- organized into buckets (containers of obejects having rich attributes)
- store objects of any size, accessible from anywhere
other services:
- networking support
- caching systems,
- DNS
- database(relational and not) support

- Google AppEngine
 a scalable runtime environment mostly devoted to executing Web applications
the large computing infrastructure of Google is used to scale dynamically as per varing demand
provides a secure execution environment
provides a collection of services
(e.g. in-memory caching, scalable data store, job queues, messaging, cron tasks etc.)
used to simplify the development of scalable and high-performance Web applications
AppEngine SDK helps to build and test applications on Developer machine and when completed,
it can be easily migrated to AppEngine with setting the quotas for generated costs and
make the application available to the world.
Currentyly suppported languages : Java, Python, Go

- Microsoft Azure
a cloud operating system and a platform for developing cloud applications
provides a scalable runtime environment for Web applications and distributed applications
concept of roles (a distribution unit for applications and embody the application’s logic)
web role (to host a web application)
worker role (generic container of applications and workload processing)
virtual machine role (virtual environment for fully customized computing stack)
additional services
- support for storage (relational data and blobs)
- networking
- caching
- content delivery etc..
- Hadoop (Apache)
an open-source framework suitable for processing large data sets on commodity hardware
an implementation of MapReduce (an application programming model) by Google
operation map transforms and synthesizes the input data provided by the user
operation reduce aggregates the output obtained by the map operations
provides the runtime environment with considerable efforts into transforming the project
into an enterprise-ready cloud computing platform for data processing.
an integral part of the Yahoo! cloud infrastructure
Yahoo! manages the largest Hadoopcluster in the world, also available to academic institutions

***** * *****