Unit 5: Management of Cloud Services

5.1 Management of Cloud Services

Today’s world is transforming information over the internet and getting things
done by using internet and providing services. Services from an on premise or
traditional datacenter service delivery, to IT services being delivered by cloud
service providers. Service Management must be redesigned and include new
methodologies in how we manage these new cloud services. There is huge
potential both for the service provider and the end user by adopting the processes
in cloud computing in to service management.
Traditional Information Technology Service Management is becoming more
irrelevant in the modern way of delivering services. Cloud use is quickly
streamlining and shifting operational demands. Its increased agility is more cost-
efficient and enables capabilities unavailable in Traditional management. To meet
this shift, we must adapt the service delivery and provide Cloud Service
Management. Understanding this cloud service management in the wider business
context and outcomes will provide synergy, ensure high performance throughout
the delivery, and meet the demands of a transforming business world.

Diagram 5.1 Cloud Services managed by the service provider

Source: https://www.bing.com
The diagram 5.1 shows the different cloud services required to be managed by
service provider.

The core aspect of cloud service management is to approach service management

to achieve outcomes demanded by companies. The modern way of IT requires a
speedy and forceful service in order to meet these demands. We need to provide
solutions that add value for our customers. Cloud Service Management has been
developed to take advantage of the speed, flexibility, and innovative platform the
Cloud provides. We want to exploit this by using automation, self-service, and fast
distribution without disturbance.
Traditional IT focuses on avoiding errors, while in cloud service management we
realize that errors will occur, but rather focus on making their impact as
inconsequential as possible. In order to make full use of the speed, predict and
minimize the impact of mistakes manual interference must be reduced.
In traditional IT there can be a lot of processes that slow down the delivery to the
costumer, in modern IT there is more agility and efficacy and we can exploit this
potential through cloud service management.
Following diagram shows the difference steps in traditional information
technology service management (ITSM) and cloud service management (CSM).

ITSM

CSM

Diagram 5.1 Difference between steps of deployment of services between ITSM and CSM
Source: https://www.ironstoneit.com/blog/cloud-service-management
5.2 What is Cloud Service Management?
Cloud Service Management and respective operations includes all the activities
that service provider does to plan, design, deliver, operate, and control the IT and
cloud services that it offers to customers.
Service management includes the operational aspects of customer’s applications
and services. After an application is pushed to production, it must be managed.
Applications are monitored to ensure availability and performance according to
service level agreements (SLAs) or service level objectives (SLOs).

5.2.1 Reliability, availability and security of services

deployed from the cloud.
Reliability, availability and security are always been a major concern in cloud
computing systems. Availability and reliability of services in cloud computing is
essential for maintaining customer confidence and satisfaction and preventing
revenue losses. The services required by the customers are looked into the
answering the four questions starting with ‘Where?’, ‘Which?’, ‘When?’ and
‘How?’. The desirable result of having a highly available and reliable cloud system
could be gained by answering these questions.
Before cloud era, applications were entirely developed by organizations for their
own use, possibly exploiting components/platforms developed by third parties.
However, with service-oriented architecture (SOA), we moved into a new world
which applications could delegate some of their functionalities to already existing
services developed by third parties.
High Availability (HA) and reliability in cloud computing services are some of the
challenges. The probability that a system is operational in a time interval without
any failures is represented as the system reliability, whereas the availability of a
system at time ‘t’ is referred to as the probability that the system is up and
functional correctly at that instance in time.
In recent years, cloud computing environments have received significant attention
from global business and government agencies for supporting critical mission
systems. However, the lack of reliability and high availability of cloud services is
quickly becoming a major issue.
Research reports express that about $285 million have been lost yearly due to
cloud service failures and offering availability of about 99.91% [Source:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13673-018-0143-8].

5.2.2 Performance and scalability of services,

Performance, Scalability, and High Availability words are frequently used
interchangeably. There are however differences between these three items.
5.2.2.1 Performance

Performance is the throughput of a system under a given workload for a specific

time. For an application this could be:

1. The time it takes for an application to finish a task. For example, running
a query on a database server to fetch all staff records.
2. The response time for an application to act upon a user request. For
example, a user that requests a webpage.
3. A load of a system, measured in the volume of transactions. For example,
a web server that processes 500 requests per second.

In the cloud, we validate performance by measurement and testing scalability.

Here are examples of items you should measure:

 Resource usage:
o CPU load
o Memory usage
o Disk I/O
o Read/write database queries
 Application statistics
o number of requests
o response time

Performance measurement is an ongoing process, it never ends. You can use the
cloud provider‘s tools or external tools.

Performance requirements change when there are new business requirements or

when you add new features to your application.
 If you use a public cloud, you also need to consider the bandwidth and delay of
your WAN connection to the public cloud.

5.2.2.2 Scalability

Scalability is the ability of a system to handle the increase in demand

without impacting the application’s performance or availability.

When the demand is too high and there are not enough resources, then it
impacts performance. There are two types of scalability:

 Vertical: scale up or down:

o Add or remove resources:
 CPU
 Memory
 Storage
 Horizontal: scale out or in:
o Add or remove systems

For example, we can increase the number of CPU cores and memory in a
web server (vertical) or we can increase the number of web servers
(horizontal).

We can scale up horizontally or vertical to prevent lack of resources

affecting our performance and availability.

5.2.3 Tools and technologies used to manage cloud services

deployment
Modern software teams are increasingly adopting the cloud, choosing to host and
run their applications and infrastructure using cloud providers and platforms
instead of on-premise solutions.
But deploying applications in the cloud can be significantly different than doing so
in your own data center. A number of steps go into deploying an application in the
cloud—from build to package to release—and there can be a lot of overhead in
doing that manually.
Following are top application deployment tools explained, though, no one tool is
perfect for every team.
 AppVeyor
Teams developing applications on Windows and .NET may want to check out
AppVeyor, a CI/CD platform. Open source apps are hosted for free, and enterprise
customers have the option of on-premise installations and unlimited build agents.
AppVeyor has support for GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, and VSTS.
Language support includes: .NET Core, C++, and Ruby
Developer tool and partner integrations include: GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, and
Amazon S3
 AWS CodeDeploy
For Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud customer, AWS CodeDeploy is a
deployment service that helps user to automate application deployments, no matter
whether user is deploying his/her app with a single AWS Lambda function or
across thousands of Amazon EC2 instances. With CodeDeploy, user can manage
your deployments from one place using the AWS Management Console or the
AWS CLI. User can even take advantage of additional tools like Amazon
CloudWatch, which lets user see exactly when and where user has deployed each
application revision.
User can also integrate application deployments with your existing software
delivery toolchain using the AWS CodeDeploy APIs.
Language support: Any
Developer tool and partner integrations include: Atlassian, GitHub, HashiCorp,
and Jenkins
 AWS Fargate
This entry adds a solid offering for any Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
users looking to deploy applications in containers without worrying about server or
cluster management. AWS Fargate abstracts away server configuration and
management, so all you need to do is worry about packaging user applications and
setting the CPU, memory, and other application requirements user desire, and
AWS Fargate will launch the containers for user and it’ll even scale them as
needed. Like CodeDeploy, we can manage our deployments from one place using
the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI.
Language support: Any
Developer tool and partner integrations include: AWS CodePipeline, SUSE,
Mesosphere, and Twistlock
 Bamboo
As a part of the Atlassian world, Bamboo is a build, test, and deploy platform with
key features like built-in git branching workflows and Jira integration both
essential out-of-the-box features for any modern software team. It runs on Amazon
EC2 integrations, so it can easily scale as needed.
Language support: Any
Developer tool and partner integrations include: Docker, Jira, Amazon S3, and
Apache Tomcat
 CircleCI
While CircleCI offers an on-premise solution, this cloud-based service requires no
dedicated server. CircleCI is most often used for either small or open source
projects in which easy and efficient deployment are essential. If user is shipping
applications in containers or to mobile, CircleCI comes with support for Docker
and iOS application builds.
Language support includes: Go, Haskell, Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, and Node.js
Developer tool and partner integrations include: Docker, Sauce Labs, and Jira
 Codeship
When user is into containers, Codeship is a hosted, continuous-delivery service
that may fit your deployment needs. Codeship Pro uses Docker as a containerized
backend for CI/CD, but our apps don’t have to use Docker, just any type of
container. With single-tenant AWS instances, we would get performance
optimization and security created to match your standards.
Codeship offers a variety of powerful setup options. Currently, it’s integrated with
popular source code managers GitHub and Bitbucket as well as other CI add-ons
and tools.
Language support includes: Java, Ruby, Python, and Elixir
Developer tool and partner integrations include: Selenium and PagerDuty
 Google App Engine
As a part of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google App Engine allows user to
build and deploy applications using our favorite language or framework. App
Engine provides a fully managed infrastructure platform, so you need to worry
only about the applications you’re building and not their host configurations.
For security-minded teams, App Engine has its own firewall and provides managed
SSL and TLS certificates on your custom domain at no additional cost. And App
Engine integrates with a number of GCP cloud developer tools.
Language support includes: Node.js, Java, Ruby, C#, Go, Python, and PHP
Developer tool and partner integrations include: Cloud Tools for IntelliJ, Firebase
Test Lab for Android, and Kubernetes

5.3 Cloud Economics

Cloud economics is a branch of knowledge concerned with the principles, costs
and benefits of cloud computing.
5.3.1 Cloud computing infrastructures available for implementing cloud based
services.
Cloud Infrastructure services can help in designing, implementing, and integrating
existing core compute, network, storage, and security services. Service providers
helps in modernizing data centers and networks through automation and software-
defined capabilities, making them current and sustainable for cloud use.
Following are the factors which are considered as an economical solution to
migrate our traditional infrastructure to cloud based infrastructure.
 Creating an infrastructure that an handle big data:

Due to modern digital technology, customers can transform the work, play, and
govern their activities over internet. Game-changing business outcomes are
made possible because new digital technologies, like IP-based sensors, Internet
of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics had access to the big
data systems they needed to operate.

 Reducing Costs and simplifying management:

 A modern technology infrastructure is the core enabler to the next generation of
the business. Today’s Customers are taking a new approach by running their
technology infrastructure as if it were a standalone business, a supportive,
governing agency.

Service providers provides organization with access in a secure, simple, and

reliable manner so that business units can consume whatever technology
services they need at the time they need them, and only pay for services that
they use, when they use them. It helps organizations to achieve a cloud
infrastructure that’s architected for the future. It may be public, hybrid, or
multi-cloud.

 Consolidating infrastructure and enabling state-of-the-art monitoring:

Many enterprises are not considering the implications to their networks when
moving to the cloud. It seems to be an afterthought and that leads to missed
opportunities. Working with network carriers alone isn’t enough. Transitioning
from a legacy network to a cloud-enabled infrastructure often means there’s
opportunity for consolidation.

 IoT and edge computing: Managing data from mobile devices and sensors:

Edge computing and the integration of it between private and public cloud from
a network and security perspective is mission-critical if organizations are going
to take advantage of insights that sensor data can provide to the business. Better
agility is just one of the key reasons for pushing some processing closer to the
devices that are the source of the data and that’s where edge processing and
computing come into a play.

 Security and directory services: Building a resilient and secure architecture:

Protecting an organization and its customers from a cyberattack is top of mind

for every executive, but inside threats such as compliance breaches or policy
missteps can be equally damaging. The business’ infrastructure needs to be
resilient and secure to effectively manage the internal and external risks that are
both known and unknown.
 People-centered operations: Supporting ongoing workloads effectively:
To support IT operations in cloud, cloud providers design and build architecture
and engineering solutions that help manage and monitor private, public, and
hybrid cloud environments.

Creating a cloud center of excellence helps minimize infrastructure costs with

centralized vendor contracts and allows for standardization and governance for
the organization that lessens friction.

5.3.2 Economics of choosing a Cloud platform for an organization, based on

application requirements
Cloud computing technology is seems to be very economical solution to the
consumers and therefore consumers are shifting to a cloud technology. However, it
is actually a significant shift in the business and economic models for provisioning
and consuming information technology that can lead to a significant cost savings.
This cost savings can only be realized through the use of significant pooling of
these “configurable computing resources. Resource pooling is the ability of a cloud
to serve multiple customers using a multi‐tenant model with different physical and
virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to demand.
Cloud computing economics depends on four customer population metrics:
1. Number of Unique Customer Sets (n)
2. Customer Set Duty Cycles (λ, f)
3. Relative Duty Cycle Displacement (t)
4. Customer Set Load (L)

These metrics drive the cloud provider’s ability to use the minimum amount of
physical IT resources to service a maximum level of IT resource demand. Properly
balancing these factors across a well characterized user group can lead to
approximately 30‐percent savings in IT resources, and enables the near real‐time
modification of the underlying physical infrastructure required for the delivery of
the desired illusion of infinite resources synonymous with a cloud computing
user’s experience.

Proper cloud deployment can provide significant savings, better IT services and a
higher level of reliability.
 1. Lower Costs – Since cloud computing pools all of the computing
resources that can be distributed to applications as needed, thus
optimizing the use of the sum of the computing resources, it delivers
better efficiency and utilization of the entire shared infrastructure.
This also leads to lower costs for power and facilities due to the
smaller footprint.
2. Capital Expenditure Free Computing – A public cloud delivers a
better cash flow by eliminating the capital expense associated with
building and updating the server infrastructure.
3. Deploy Projects Faster, Foster Innovation – Because servers can be
brought up & repurposed in a matter of minutes, the time to deploy a
new application drops dramatically with cloud computing. Rather than
installing and networking a new hardware server, the new server can
be dialed up and imaged in through a self‐serve control console. Or
better yet, with a private cloud, your service provider can dial up a
new server with a single call or support ticket. This mechanism also
allows you to foster innovation by allowing you to try new
configuration quickly and easily without waiting and paying for each
new configuration.
4. Scale as Needed – As your applications grow, you can add storage,
RAM and CPU capacity as needed. This means you can buy “just
enough” and scale as the application demands grow. In the end, the
consumer is only paying for what they use and the level of service
they request; similar to phone service.
5. Lower Maintenance Costs – Because cloud computing uses less
physical resources, there is less hardware to power and maintain. With
an outsourced cloud, you don’t need to keep server, storage, network,
and virtualization experts on staff full time.
6. Resiliency and Redundancy – You can get automatic failover between
hardware platforms and disaster recovery services to bring up your
server set in a separate data center should your primary data center
experience an outage.

5.4 Summary.
Today’s world is transforming information over the internet and getting things
done by using internet and providing services. Services from an on premise or
traditional datacenter service delivery, to IT services being delivered by cloud
service providers. Service Management must be redesigned and include new
methodologies in how we manage these new cloud services. There is huge
potential both for the service provider and the end user by adopting the processes
in cloud computing in to service management.
Cloud Service Management and respective operations includes all the activities
that service provider does to plan, design, deliver, operate, and control the IT and
cloud services that it offers to customers.
Reliability, availability and security are always been a major concern in cloud
computing systems. Availability and reliability of services in cloud computing is
essential for maintaining customer confidence and satisfaction and preventing
revenue losses. The services required by the customers are looked into the
answering the four questions starting with ‘Where?’, ‘Which?’, ‘When?’ and
‘How?’. The desirable result of having a highly available and reliable cloud system
could be gained by answering these questions. Performance, Scalability, and High
Availability words are frequently used interchangeably.

5.5 References.

5.5.1 Books
 Cloud Computing: Principles and Pardigms by Rajkumar Buyya, James
Broberg and Andrzej M.Gos cinski, Wiley, 2011.
 Distributed & Cloud computing, Kai Hwang, Geoffrey C.Fox, jack
Elsevierm,2012
 Cloud Computing implementation, management and security by John W.
Rittenhouse, James E Ransome, CRC Press, Taylor & Francis group,2010
 Cloud computing a practical approach by Anthony T. Velte, Toby J. Velte
Robert Elsenpeter, Tata Mc Graw Hill edition, 2010.
 Cloud Application Architecture by George Reese, Oreilly publishers
 Cloud computing and SOA convergence in your enterprise, by David
Linthicum, Addison- Wesley
 Cloud Services for Dummies, by Judith Hurwitz, Marcia Kaufman, and Dr.
Fern Halper, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

5.5.2 Websites
 https://www.javatpoint.com/introduction-to-cloud-computing
  https://www.explainthatstuff.com/cloud-computing-introduction.html
 https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-cloud-computing-everything-you-
need-to-know-about-the-cloud/
 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/a-general-introduction-
to-cloud-computing
 https://www.salesforcetutorial.com/introduction-to-cloud-computing/
 https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/overview/what-is-cloud-computing/
 https://networklessons.com/cisco/evolving-technologies/cloud-performance-
scalability-and-high-availability#Scalability
 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13673-018-0143-8
 https://blog.newrelic.com/engineering/cloud-application-deployment-tools/
 https://www2.deloitte.com

5.6 Exercise.

Q.1 What are the common services managed by the cloud service provider?
Q.2. Differentiate between steps of deployment of services between ITSM
and CSM
Q.3.What is cloud service management?
Q.4. Write a note on performance and scalability of services
Q.5. What are the Tools and technologies used to manage cloud services
deployment?
Q.6. Write a note on cloud economics.
Q.7. What are the factors which are considered as an economical solution to
migrate our traditional infrastructure to cloud based infrastructure.
Q.8. what are customer population metrics for cloud economics
Q.9. Explain how cloud deployment can save cost.
Q.10. Explain how Google App Engine is used to deploy application.