1

Unit-2 ICC
Cloud Computing Technology
Basics of cloud technology- cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—
including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and
intelligence—over the internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible
resources, and economies of scale.

Cloud computing technology gives users access to storage, files, software, and
servers through their internet-connected devices: computers, smartphones, tablets,
and wearables. Cloud computing providers store and process data in a location that’s
separate from end users.
Essentially, cloud computing means having the ability to store and access data and
programs over the internet instead of on a hard drive. This means businesses of any
size can harness powerful software and IT infrastructure to become bigger, leaner,
and more agile, as well as compete with much larger companies. Unlike with traditional
hardware and software, cloud computing helps businesses stay at the forefront of
technology without having to make large investments in purchasing, maintaining, and
servicing equipment themselves.

There are 6 latest technologies in the cloud computing zone.

• Serverless.
• Containers.
• DevOps.
• Microservices.
• Artificial Intelligence.
• Internet of Things (IoT)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now emerging as a game-changer in cloud computing. AI

offers automatic pattern recognition, trend analysis, and predictive capabilities,
empowering businesses to optimize operations and resource allocation while
enhancing security through threat identification.
 2

An IoT cloud is a massive network that supports IoT devices and applications.
This includes the underlying infrastructure, servers and storage, needed for real-time
operations and processing.
Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and
servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and
databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services
(AWS).
Beside the above Latest Technologies there are following Basic Cloud Computing
Technologies as well.

1. Virtualization

2. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

3. Grid Computing

4. Utility Computing

Virtualization
Virtualization is the process of creating a virtual environment to run multiple
applications and operating systems on the same server. The virtual environment can
be anything, such as a single instance or a combination of many operating systems,
storage devices, network application servers, and other environments.

The concept of Virtualization in cloud computing increases the use of virtual machines.
A virtual machine is a software computer or software program that not only works as
a physical computer but can also function as a physical machine and perform tasks
such as running applications or programs as per the user's demand.

Types of Virtualization

i. Hardware virtualization

ii. Server virtualization

iii. Storage virtualization

iv. Operating system virtualization

v. Data Virtualization
 3

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) allows organizations to access on-
demand cloud-based computing solutions according to the change of business
needs. It can work without or with cloud computing. The advantages of using SOA is
that it is easy to maintain, platform independent, and highly scalable.

Service Provider and Service consumer are the two major roles within SOA.

Applications of Service-Oriented Architecture

There are the following applications of Service-Oriented Architecture -

o It is used in the healthcare industry.

o It is used to create many mobile applications and games.
o In the air force, SOA infrastructure is used to deploy situational awareness
systems.

The service-oriented architecture is shown below:

Fig. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Grid Computing
Grid computing is also known as distributed computing. It is a processor architecture
that combines various different computing resources from multiple locations to
achieve a common goal. In grid computing, the grid is connected by parallel nodes to
 4

form a computer cluster. These computer clusters are in different sizes and can run on
any operating system.

Grid computing contains the following three types of machines -

1. Control Node: It is a group of server which administrates the whole network.

2. Provider: It is a computer which contributes its resources in the network
resource pool.
3. User: It is a computer which uses the resources on the network.

Mainly, grid computing is used in the ATMs, back-end

infrastructures, and marketing research.

Fig. Grid Computing

Utility Computing
Utility computing is the most trending IT service model. It provides on-demand
computing resources (computation, storage, and programming services via API) and
infrastructure based on the pay per use method. It minimizes the associated costs and
maximizes the efficient use of resources. The advantage of utility computing is that it
reduced the IT cost, provides greater flexibility, and easier to manage.

Large organizations such as Google and Amazon established their own utility services
for computing storage and application.
 5

Fig. Utility Computing

Cloud Storage: - Cloud Storage is a mode of computer data storage in which digital
data is stored on servers in off-site locations. The servers are maintained by a third-
party provider who is responsible for hosting, managing, and securing data stored on
its infrastructure.

In can also be defined in other words- The cloud storage is a computer data storage
model in which the data that is digital in format is stored, and hence it is said to be on
the cloud, in logical pools. This physical storage consists of multiple servers which can
be located in the different parts of the country or may be in different parts of the world
depends on many factors. The maintenance of these servers is owned by some private
companies.

The cloud storage services are also responsible for keeping the data available and
accessible 24x7, and it also safeguard the data and run the physical environment. In
order to store user, entity, or application information, individuals and organisations
purchase or lease storage capacity from providers.

The Cloud storage resources, for example a cloud desktop storage, a cloud storage
portal or a Network-based content management system in the cloud. These all can be
easily accessed with the help of a co-located cloud computing service or it can be a
web service application programming interface which in general is known by the name
of API or applications that use the API.
 6

Architecture of Cloud Storage

In terms of interfaces the cloud storage is basically based on highly virtualized
technology which is more like broader cloud computing. It is possible to use cloud
storage services from an off-site provider (Amazon S3) or from an on-site provider
(ViON Capacity Services).

Usually, cloud storage refers to a hosted object storage service, although the concept
has extended to include other forms of data storage, such as block storage, that are
also available as a service.

Some of the examples of cloud storage which can easily be hosted and deployed with
cloud storage characteristics are as follows -, Oracle Cloud Storage, Microsoft
Azure Storage and Amazon S3.

Cloud storage is-

o It consists of several distributed resources, but still functions as one, either in a

cloud architecture of federated or cooperative storage.
o Highly fault-tolerant via redundancy and data distribution.
o Extremely durable through the manufacture of copies of versions.
o Ultimately, it is usually compatible with data replication advantages.
o Companies just need to pay for the storage they actually use, normally an
average of a month's consumption. This does not indicate that cloud storage is
less costly, rather that operating costs are incurred rather than capital expenses.
o Cloud storage companies can cut their energy usage by up to 70 percent,
making them a greener company.
o The provision of storage and data security is inherent in the architecture of
object storage, so the additional infrastructure, effort and expense to
incorporate accessibility and security can be removed depending on the
application.
o Tasks for storage management, such as the procurement of additional storage
space, are offloaded to the service provider 's obligation.
o It provides users with immediate access of wide variety of tools and software
housed in another organisation's infrastructure through a web service interface.
o As there are usually 2 or 3 separate backup servers located in different locations
across the globe, cloud storage may be used as a natural disaster proof backup.
 7

o With the WebDAV protocol, cloud storage can be mapped as a local drive. For
organisations with several office locations, it may act as a central file server.

Data security
Data storage outsourcing increases the surface area of attack.

1. It is processed at more locations after information has been dispersed, raising

the likelihood of unauthorised physical access to the data. For example , in the
case of the disposal of old computers, the reuse of drives, the reallocation of
storage space. The way data is replicated depends on the quality of service a
customer prefers and the service delivered. It will maintain confidentiality when
encryption is in effect. When disposing of data (on a disc), crypto-shredding can
be used.
2. The number of persons who may be compromised (e.g., bribed, or coerced)
with access to the data increases significantly. As for the sharing of multiple
cloud data with multiple users, a large number of keys must be distributed to
users for decryption through secure channels, and users must also store and
manage it securely on their devices. It takes very costly safe storage to store
these keys.
3. It increases the number of networks the data travels over.
4. It is possible for other customers to access the data by sharing storage and
networks with many other users or customers. Sometimes due to wrongdoing,
defective equipment, a malfunction, and sometimes due to criminal purpose.
With encryption technology, the possibility of making data read during
transmission can be mitigated. It is the role of the transit encryption in order
to safeguard the data as it is transferred to and from the cloud service. In-rest
encryption protects the data stored by the service provider. Both forms of
encryption security can be offered by encrypting data in an on-site cloud service
on-ramp scheme.

Longevity
Companies are not permanent and they may modify the services and goods they offer.
Data storage outsourcing to another business requires careful investigation and
nothing is ever assured. When a business ceases to exist or its circumstances change,
contracts set in stone can be worthless. Companies are willing to:

1. Just go bankrupt.
 8

2. Expand their concentration and modify it.

3. Be absorbed by other bigger firms.
4. To be bought by a company based in or moved to a country that refuses
compliance with export restrictions and thus needs a transfer.
5. Suffering from an unrecoverable tragedy.

Accessibility

o Depending on how much a client is willing to invest on WAN bandwidth,

outsourced storage efficiency is likely to be lower than local storage.
o Reliability and accessibility depend on the availability of the wide-area network
and the extent of precautions taken by the service provider. Hardware as well
as different algorithms used should be focused on reliability.
o A multiplicity of data storage is a given.
o Users with unique record-keeping requirements, such as public entities that
must maintain electronic records in compliance with the law, can face cloud
computing and storage complications.

Suggested Solution to Cloud Problems

To prevent such problems, there are many choices available. One choice is to use a
private cloud (there are also services that provide private cloud storage) instead of a
public cloud. Another choice is to ingest data inside our on-site infrastructure in an
encrypted format where the key is kept.

Access is also achieved using on-premise cloud storage gateways. These gateways not
only have options for encrypting and compressing data prior to transfer, but also for
mirroring storage through various cloud storage providers and removing the
possibility of shutdown by a single provider. Gateways also provide the option of
caching data on a recently used on-premise algorithm. Data is cached and fetched in
the most useful form along with data analytics instead of just recently used form.

Why is cloud storage important?

Cloud storage delivers cost-effective, scalable storage. You no longer need to worry
about running out of capacity, maintaining storage area networks (SANs), replacing
failed devices, adding infrastructure to scale up with demand, or operating
underutilized hardware when demand decreases. Cloud storage is elastic, meaning you
scale up and down with demand and pay only for what you use. It is a way for
 9

organizations to save data securely online so that it can be accessed anytime from any
location by those with permission.

Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, cloud storage can deliver the
agility, cost savings, security, and simplicity to focus on your core business growth. For
small businesses, you no longer have to worry about devoting valuable resources to
manage storage yourself, and cloud storage gives you the ability to scale as the
business grows.

For large enterprises with billions of files and petabytes of data, you can rely on the
scalability, durability, and cost savings of cloud storage to create centralized data lakes
to make your data accessible to all who need it.

Cost effectiveness

With cloud storage, there is no hardware to purchase, no storage to provision, and no

extra capital being used for business spikes. You can add or remove storage capacity
on demand, quickly change performance and retention characteristics, and only pay
for storage that you actually use. As data becomes infrequently and rarely accessed,
you can even automatically move it to lower-cost storage, thus creating even more
cost savings. By moving storage workloads from on premises to the cloud, you can
reduce total cost of ownership by removing overprovisioning and the cost of
maintaining storage infrastructure.

Increased agility

With cloud storage, resources are only a click away. You reduce the time to make those
resources available to your organization from weeks to just minutes. This results in a
dramatic increase in agility for your organization. Your staff is largely freed from the
tasks of procurement, installation, administration, and maintenance. And because
cloud storage integrates with a wide range of analytics tools, your staff can now extract
more insights from your data to fuel innovation.

Faster deployment

When development teams are ready to begin, infrastructure should never slow them
down. Cloud storage services allow IT to quickly deliver the exact amount of storage
needed, whenever and wherever it's needed. Your developers can focus on solving
complex application problems instead of having to manage storage systems.

Efficient data management

By using cloud storage lifecycle management policies, you can perform powerful
information management tasks including automated tiering or locking down data in
support of compliance requirements. You can also use cloud storage to create multi-
 10

region or global storage for your distributed teams by using tools such as replication.
You can organize and manage your data in ways that support specific use cases, create
cost efficiencies, enforce security, and meet compliance requirements.

Virtually unlimited scalability

Cloud storage delivers virtually unlimited storage capacity, allowing you to scale up as
much and as quickly as you need. This removes the constraints of on-premises storage
capacity. You can efficiently scale cloud storage up and down as required for analytics,
data lakes, backups, or cloud native applications. Users can access storage from
anywhere, at any time, without worrying about complex storage allocation processes,
or waiting for new hardware.

Business continuity

Cloud storage providers store your data in highly secure data centers, protecting your
data and ensuring business continuity. Cloud storage services are designed to handle
concurrent device failure by quickly detecting and repairing any lost redundancy. You
can further protect your data by using versioning and replication tools to more easily
recover from both unintended user actions or application failures.

With cloud storage services, you can:

• Cost-effectively protect data in the cloud without sacrificing performance.

• Scale up your backup resources in minutes as data requirements change.
• Protect backups with a data center and network architecture built for security-
sensitive organizations.

How does cloud storage work?

Cloud storage is delivered by a cloud services provider that owns and operates data
storage capacity by maintaining large datacenters in multiple locations around the
world. 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. Typically,
you connect to the storage cloud either through the internet or through a dedicated
private connection, using a web portal, website, or a mobile app. When customers
purchase cloud storage from a service provider, they turn over most aspects of the
data storage to the vendor, including capacity, security, data availability, storage
servers and computing resources, and network data delivery. Your applications access
cloud storage through traditional storage protocols or directly using an application
programming interface (API). The cloud storage provider might also offer services
designed to help collect, manage, secure, and analyze data at a massive scale.

What are the types of cloud storage?

 11

There are three main cloud storage types: object storage, file storage, and block
storage. Each offers its own advantages and has its own use cases.

Object storage

Organizations have to store a massive and growing amount of unstructured data, such
as photos, videos, machine learning (ML), sensor data, audio files, and other types of
web content, and finding scalable, efficient, and affordable ways to store them can be
a challenge. Object storage is a data storage architecture for large stores of
unstructured data. Objects store data in the format it arrives in and makes it possible
to customize metadata in ways that make the data easier to access and analyze. Instead
of being organized in files or folder hierarchies, objects are kept in secure buckets that
deliver virtually unlimited scalability. It is also less costly to store large data volumes.

Applications developed in the cloud often take advantage of the vast scalability and
metadata characteristics of object storage. Object storage solutions are ideal for
building modern applications from scratch that require scale and flexibility, and can
also be used to import existing data stores for analytics, backup, or archive.

File storage

File-based storage or file storage is widely used among applications and stores data
in a hierarchical folder and file format. This type of storage is often known as a
network-attached storage (NAS) server with common file level protocols of Server
Message Block (SMB) used in Windows instances and Network File System (NFS) found
in Linux.

Block storage

Enterprise applications like databases or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems

often require dedicated, low-latency storage for each host. This is analogous to direct-
attached storage (DAS) or a storage area network (SAN). In this case, you can use a
cloud storage service that stores data in the form of blocks. Each block has its own
unique identifier for quick storage and retrieval.

What cloud storage requirements should you consider?

Ensuring your company’s critical data is safe, secure, and available when needed is
essential. There are several fundamental requirements when considering storing data
in the cloud.

Durability and availability

 12

Cloud storage simplifies and enhances traditional data center practices around data
durability and availability. With cloud storage, data is redundantly stored on multiple
devices across one or more data centers.

Security

With cloud storage, you control where your data is stored, who can access it, and what
resources your organization is consuming at any given moment. Ideally, all data is
encrypted, both at rest and in transit. Permissions and access controls should work just
as well in the cloud as they do for on-premises storage.

What are cloud storage use cases?

Cloud storage has several use cases in application management, data management,
and business continuity. Let’s consider some examples below.

Analytics and data lakes

Traditional on-premises storage solutions can be inconsistent in their cost,

performance, and scalability — especially over time. Analytics demand large-scale,
affordable, highly available, and secure storage pools that are commonly referred to
as data lakes.

Data lakes built on object storage keep information in its native form and include rich
metadata that allows selective extraction and use for analysis. Cloud-based data lakes
can sit at the center of multiple kinds of data warehousing and processing, as well as
big data and analytical engines, to help you accomplish your next project in less time
and with more targeted relevance.

Backup and disaster recovery

Backup and disaster recovery are critical for data protection and accessibility, but
keeping up with increasing capacity requirements can be a constant challenge. Cloud
storage brings low cost, high durability, and extreme scale to data backup and recovery
solutions. Embedded data management policies can automatically migrate data to
lower-cost storage based on frequency or timing settings, and archival vaults can be
created to help comply with legal or regulatory requirements. These benefits allow for
tremendous scale possibilities within industries such as financial services, healthcare
and life sciences, and media and entertainment that produce high volumes of
unstructured data with long-term retention needs.

Software test and development

 13

Software test and development environments often require separate, independent,

and duplicate storage environments to be built out, managed, and decommissioned.
In addition to the time required, the up-front capital costs required can be extensive.

Many of the largest and most valuable companies in the world create applications in
record time by using the flexibility, performance, and low cost of cloud storage. Even
the simplest static websites can be improved at low cost. IT professionals and
developers are turning to pay-as-you-go storage options that remove management
and scale headaches.

Cloud data migration

The availability, durability, and low cloud storage costs can be very compelling. On the
other hand, IT personnel working with storage, backup, networking, security, and
compliance administrators might have concerns about the realities of transferring
large amounts of data to the cloud. For some, getting data into the cloud can be a
challenge. Hybrid, edge, and data movement services meet you where you are in the
physical world to help ease your data transfer to the cloud.

Compliance

Storing sensitive data in the cloud can raise concerns about regulation and compliance,
especially if this data is currently stored in compliant storage systems. Cloud data
compliance controls are designed to ensure that you can deploy and enforce
comprehensive compliance controls on your data, helping you satisfy compliance
requirements for virtually every regulatory agency around the globe. Often through a
shared responsibility model, cloud vendors allow customers to manage risk effectively
and efficiently in the IT environment, and provide assurance of effective risk
management through compliance with established, widely recognized frameworks
and programs.

Cloud-native application storage

Cloud-native applications use technologies like containerization and serverless to

meet customer expectations in a fast-paced and flexible manner. These applications
are typically made of small, loosely coupled, independent components called
microservices that communicate internally by sharing data or state. Cloud storage
services provide data management for such applications and provide solutions to
ongoing data storage challenges in the cloud environment.

Archive

Enterprises today face significant challenges with exponential data growth. Machine
learning (ML) and analytics give data more uses than ever before. Regulatory
compliance requires long retention periods. Customers need to replace on-premises
 14

tape and disk archive infrastructure with solutions that provide enhanced data
durability, immediate retrieval times, better security and compliance, and greater data
accessibility for advanced analytics and business intelligence.

Hybrid cloud storage

Many organizations want to take advantage of the benefits of cloud storage, but have
applications running on premises that require low-latency access to their data, or need
rapid data transfer to the cloud. Hybrid cloud storage architectures connect your on-
premises applications and systems to cloud storage to help you reduce costs, minimize
management burden, and innovate with your data.

Database storage

Because block storage has high performance and is readily updatable, many
organizations use it for transactional databases. With its limited metadata, block
storage is able to deliver the ultra-low latency required for high-performance
workloads and latency sensitive applications like databases.

Block storage allows developers to set up a robust, scalable, and highly efficient
transactional database. As each block is a self-contained unit, the database performs
optimally, even when the stored data grows.

ML and IoT

With cloud storage, you can process, store, and analyze data close to your applications
and then copy data to the cloud for further analysis. With cloud storage, you can store
data efficiently and cost-effectively while supporting ML, artificial intelligence (AI), and
advanced analytics to gain insights and innovate for your business.

Why is it called cloud storage?

• The name comes from the fact that the data gets stored on servers - in the
cloud. So, it's safe to assume that the cloud is a slang term used by tech industry
people to describe the servers and networking infrastructures that allow users
to store and access data through the internet.

Where is cloud storage?

• They are not floating around in cyberspace. Cloud space exists on individual
servers found at data centres and server farms around the world. Data centre
and collocation providers offer server space for cloud computing.

The benefits of cloud storage-

• Accessibility and redundancy. ...
 15

• Data security. ...

• Ability to collaborate on documents and files. ...
• Scalability. ...
• Cost and resource savings. ...
• Compliance with legislation and regulations for storing data. ...
• Archives and backup data.