Cloud Computing

(PECO8013T)
Unit-III
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
By:- Dr. D.R.Patil

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• Introduction to PaaS
• Platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud computing model that provides
customers a complete cloud platform—hardware, software and
infrastructure—for developing, running and managing applications
without the cost, complexity and inflexibility that often comes with
building and maintaining that platform on premises.
• Platform as a service (PaaS) is a complete development and
deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable you
to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated,
cloud-enabled enterprise applications.
• You purchase the resources you need from a cloud service provider
on a pay-as-you-go basis and access them over a secure Internet
connection.
• Introduction to PaaS
• Like IaaS, PaaS includes infrastructure—servers, storage, and
networking—but also middleware, development tools, business
intelligence (BI) services, database management systems, and more.
• PaaS is designed to support the complete web application lifecycle:
building, testing, deploying, managing, and updating.
• PaaS allows you to avoid the expense and complexity of buying and
managing software licenses, the underlying application infrastructure
and middleware, container orchestrators such as Kubernetes, or the
development tools and other resources.
• You manage the applications and services you develop, and the cloud
service provider typically manages everything else.
• Introduction to PaaS
• The PaaS provider hosts everything—servers, networks, storage,
operating system software, databases, development tools—at
their data center.
• Typically customers can pay a fixed fee to provide a specified
amount of resources for a specified number of users, or they can
choose 'pay-as-you-go' pricing to pay only for the resources
they use.
• Either option enables PaaS customers to build, test, deploy run,
update and scale applications more quickly and inexpensively
than if they had had to build out and manage their own on-
premises platform.
• Introduction to PaaS
• Every leading cloud service provider—including Amazon Web
Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure—
has its own PaaS offering.
• Popular PaaS solutions are also available as open source
projects (for example, Apache Stratos, Cloud Foundry) or from
software vendors (for example, Red Hat OpenShift and
Salesforce Heroku).
• Benefits of PaaS
• The most commonly cited benefits of PaaS, compared to an on-
premises platform, include:
• Faster time to market. With PaaS, there’s no need to
purchase and install the hardware and software you use to
build and maintain your application development
platform—and no need for development teams to wait while
you do it. You simply tap into the cloud service provider’s
PaaS to begin provisioning resources and developing
immediately.
• Benefits of PaaS
• The most commonly cited benefits of PaaS, compared to an on-
premises platform, include:
• Affordable access to a wider variety of resources. PaaS
platforms typically offer access to a wider range of choices
up and down the application stack—including operating
systems, middleware, databases and development tools—
than most organizations can practically or affordably
maintain themselves.
• Benefits of PaaS
• More freedom to experiment, with less risk. PaaS also lets you try
or test new operating systems, languages and other tools without
having to make substantial investments in them or in the
infrastructure required to run them.
• Easy, cost-effective scalability. With an on-premises platform,
scaling is always expensive, often wasteful and sometimes inadequate:
• You must purchase more compute, storage and networking
capacity in anticipation of traffic spikes.
• Much of that capacity sits idle during low-traffic periods, and
none of it can be increased in time to accommodate unanticipated
surges.
• With PaaS, you can purchase more capacity and use it
immediately, whenever you need it.
• Benefits of PaaS
• Greater flexibility for development teams. PaaS services provide a
shared software development environment that allows development
and operations teams access to all the tools they need, from any
location with an internet connection.
• Lower costs overall.
• Clearly PaaS reduces costs by enabling an organization to avoid
capital equipment expense associated with building and scaling
an application platform.
• But PaaS can also reduce or eliminate software licensing costs.
• And by handling patches, updates and other administrative tasks,
PaaS can reduce your overall application management costs.
• How PaaS works
• In general, PaaS solutions have three main parts:
• Cloud infrastructure including virtual machines (VMs),
operating system software, storage, networking and
firewalls.
• Software for building, deploying and managing applications.
• A graphic user interface or GUI where development or
DevOps teams can do all their work throughout the entire
application lifecycle.
• How PaaS works
• Because PaaS delivers all standard development tools through the GUI
online interface, developers can log in from anywhere to collaborate
on projects, test new applications or roll out completed products.
• Applications are designed and developed right in the PaaS using
middleware.
• With streamlined workflows, multiple development and operations
teams can work on the same project simultaneously.
• PaaS providers manage the bulk of your cloud computing services,
such as servers, runtime and virtualization.
• As a PaaS customer, your company maintains management of
applications and data.
• PaaS, IaaS and SaaS
• IaaS: is internet access to 'raw' IT infrastructure—physical
servers, virtual machines, storage, networking and firewalls—
hosted by a cloud provider.
• IaaS eliminates cost and the work of owning, managing and
maintaining on-premises infrastructure.
• With IaaS, the organization provides its own application
platform and applications.
• Any PaaS offering necessarily includes the IaaS resources
required to host it, even if those resources aren't discretely
broken out or referred to as IaaS.
• PaaS, IaaS and SaaS
• SaaS: is application software that you use via the cloud, as if it
were installed on your computer (sometimes, parts of it are
installed on your computer).
• SaaS enables your organization to use an application without
the expense of setting up the infrastructure to run it and the
effort and personnel to maintain it (apply bug fixes and
updates, address outages, and more.)
• Salesforce and Slack are examples of popular SaaS offerings.
• Most web applications are considered SaaS.
• Use cases for PaaS
• By providing an integrated and ready-to-use platform and by
enabling organizations to offload infrastructure management to
the cloud provider and focus on building, deploying and
managing applications, PaaS can ease or advance several IT
initiatives, including:
• API development and management: Because of its built-in
frameworks, PaaS makes it much simpler for teams to
develop, run, manage and secure APIs (application
programming interfaces) for sharing data and functionality
between applications.
• Use cases for PaaS
• Internet of Things (IoT): Out of the box, PaaS can support a
range of programming languages (Java, Python, Swift and
more), tools and application environments used for IoT
application development and real-time processing of data
generated by IoT devices.
• Agile development and DevOps: PaaS can provide fully-
configured environments for automating the software
application lifecycle including integration, delivery, security,
testing and deployment.
• Use cases for PaaS
• Cloud migration and cloud-native development:
• With its ready-to-use tools and integration capabilities, PaaS
can simplify migration of existing applications to the cloud—
particularly via replatforming (moving an application to the
cloud with modifications that take better advantage of cloud
scalability, load balancing and other capabilities) or refactoring
(rearchitecting some or all of an application by using
microservices, containers and other cloud-native technologies).
• Use cases for PaaS
• Hybrid cloud strategy:
• Hybrid cloud integrates public cloud services, private cloud
services and on-premises infrastructure and provides
orchestration, management and application portability across all
three.
• The result is a unified and flexible distributed computing
environment, where an organization can run and scale its
traditional (legacy) or cloud-native workloads on the most
appropriate computing model.
• The right PaaS solution allows developers to build once, then
deploy and manage anywhere in a hybrid cloud environment.
• Common PaaS scenarios
• Organizations typically use PaaS for these scenarios:
• Development framework.
• PaaS provides a framework that developers can build upon to
develop or customize cloud-based applications.
• Similar to the way you create an Excel macro, PaaS lets developers
create applications using built-in software components.
• Cloud features such as scalability, high-availability, and multi-
tenant capability are included, reducing the amount of coding
that developers must do.
• Common PaaS scenarios
• Organizations typically use PaaS for these scenarios:
• Analytics or business intelligence.
• Tools provided as a service with PaaS allow organizations to
analyze and mine their data, finding insights and patterns and
predicting outcomes to improve forecasting, product design
decisions, investment returns, and other business decisions.
• Additional services.
• PaaS providers may offer other services that enhance
applications, such as workflow, directory, security, and
scheduling.
• Advantages of PaaS
• By delivering infrastructure as a service, PaaS offers the same advantages as
IaaS. But its additional features—middleware, development tools, and other
business tools—give you more advantages:
• Cut coding time.
• PaaS development tools can cut the time it takes to code new apps with
pre-coded application components built into the platform, such as
workflow, directory services, security features, search, and so on.
• Add development capabilities without adding staff.
• Platform as a Service components can give your development team new
capabilities without your needing to add staff having the required skills.
• Advantages of PaaS
• Develop for multiple platforms—including mobile—more easily. Some service
providers give you development options for multiple platforms, such as
computers, mobile devices, and browsers making cross-platform apps quicker
and easier to develop.
• Use sophisticated tools affordably. A pay-as-you-go model makes it possible for
individuals or organizations to use sophisticated development software and
business intelligence and analytics tools that they could not afford to purchase
outright.
• Support geographically distributed development teams. Because the
development environment is accessed over the Internet, development teams can
work together on projects even when team members are in remote locations.
• Efficiently manage the application lifecycle. PaaS provides all of the
capabilities that you need to support the complete web application lifecycle:
building, testing, deploying, managing, and updating within the same integrated
environment.
 PaaS
• Public solution stacks for web applications
▫ OS, web server, language interpreters,
provisions for automatic scaling, all shielded
from the user
• Each system only has a few supported languages
▫ Automatic deployment and scaling not trivial
• Offers development tools
▫ Libraries for specific services
▫ IDE plugins, deployment tools
• Two types – Instance PaaS, Framework PaaS
 SaaS
• A new form of application delivery
• Global availability – web application, user data
• Multitenancy – users use the same installation
• Licensing – ideally pay per use
▫ When monthly payment, it should be elastic
• Third layer of cloud doesn’t imply use of
underlying layers, but elastic infrastructure is
advisable
▫ <- No control over the number of users
 PaaS properties
• Gives the programmer a solution stack
▫ Web server, database engine, scripting language
• Simple deployment, no worries about servers,
storage, network, scaling, updates, …
• Guarantees multitenancy for better security
• Users isolated by virtualization or OS means
• Accounting and billing of used resources
▫ Different at every vendor
• Development tools
 Comparison with IaaS
• IaaS better for migrating existing applications
▫ More flexible, you install your environment
• PaaS has lower demands on administration
• PaaS will take care of scaling if applications use
correct frameworks, also redundancy and CDN
• -> PaaS better for new applications
• BUT has dangers of vendor lock in if platform
specific functions are used
▫ IaaS instance can be copied to your server.
 Comparison with Webhosting
• Webhosting essentially does the same – offers a
platform for web sites / applications
• Minus scalability, multitenancy, accounting
• Plus personal contact – negotiation, support
• Different languages, cloud focuses on scalability
▫ Hosting: PHP, ASP, some Perl and Python
▫ Cloud: Java, Ruby, PHP (due to demand), Node.js
• Added value – e-mail and domain hosting
▫ vs. development tools and web services in PaaS
 PaaS types
• Instance PaaS
▫ Depends on IaaS layer for multitenancy
 Better security and performance guarantees
▫ Deploys applications to IaaS instances
• Framework PaaS
▫ Uses OS capabilities for multitenancy
 Better resource utilization and accounting granularity
▫ Requires specific frameworks to be used
▫ Can benefit from cloud infrastructure, but is not dependent on
it
• Metadata PaaS
▫ Client configures his service through metadata
 Available systems (selected)
• Instance PaaS
▫ Amazon Elastic Beanstalk
▫ Microsoft Azure
• Framework PaaS
▫ Google App Engine
▫ VMware Cloud Foundry
 Google App Engine
• Since Apr. 2008, commercial in Sep. 2011
• Languages (in order) – Python, Java, Go
• Typical Framework PaaS
▫ Multitenancy by limiting system library functions
 No filesystem writes and network sockets
 Must use specific database and network services
 High vendor lock-in potential (ex. emulation projects)
▫ Quotas needed to support massive multitenancy
 Daily quotas – billing, fair use
 Per minute quotas – spike prevention
 GAE - Quotas
• Basic quota enough for development
▫ 28 h CPU time per day (granularity 15 min)
▫ 1 GB datastore, 5 GB blobstore, 1 GB network traf.
• If billing enabled, minor service quotas raised
▫ $0.08 CPU hour 600 MHz (of what?), larger inst.
▫ $0.12 1 GB net traffic
▫ $0.24 datastore, $0.13 blobstore, $0.1 100k writes
• If exceeded
▫ Main quotas: user gets HTTP 403
▫ Service quotas: OverQuotaError exception
 GAE – Services
• Data storage based on Google File System
▫ Over it BigTable noSQL database engine
 Providing Datastore and Blobstore APIs (GQL lang.)
 For Java JDO and JPA compatibility layers
▫ Problem – not SQL: no indexes, no joins –> very limited

▫ Datastore – Master-Slave or High Replication

• Google Accounts, HTTP fetch, e-mail send,
XMPP, Memcache, image manip. and others
• Client libraries for all APIs in Eclipse plugin
 GAE – Limitations
• No state information between HTTP requests
▫ All sessions etc. in datastore
▫ Good for instance unloading and scalability
• Event style programming, 30 s per request
▫ Last year: Single-threaded instances default
 Can be overriden with <threadsafe> in config
▫ Task queues (60s tasks) and backend instances
• Specific programming style
▫ Practically impossible to deploy existing apps.
▫ Vendor lock-in
 Amazon Elastic Beanstalk
• Since beginning of 2011, still Beta
• Initially only Java, extended by
▫ PHP and Python, Ruby, .NET
• Amazon – major IaaS provider -> Instance PaaS
• Other PaaSs on Amazon: Heroku, AppFog, ..
• Multitenancy by virtualization
▫ Each user gets his own VM instances
▫ Some services shared, some need more instances
▫ Minimal limitations – can migrate to IaaS
 Beanstalk – Pricing
• Free – only a management tool for other services
▫ Prepares images with solution stacks, w/upgrades
• Deploys images on EC2 instances:
▫ m1.small – $0.085 (1,7 GB RAM, 1 ECU)
▫ t1.micro – $0.02 (613 MB, 10% of 2 ECU)
• Uses Elastic Load Balancer:
▫ $0.025 / 1 hour, $0.008 / 1 GB
• Applications and logs are on S3:
▫ $0.14 / 1 GB and month
• Uses Elastic Autoscaler, which needs CloudWatch
▫ $3.5 per instance and month
• Data transfers outbound from cloud
▫ $0.12 / 1 GB basic price, degressive for larger volumes
 Beanstalk – Services
• The service itself has no database, Amazon has:
• Database VM instances
▫ per hour licensing for IBM DB2 and Informix, Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase,
Postgres Plus, normal instance price for free DBs
• RDS – automatically managed MySQL and Oracle
▫ does updates, backups, scaling, HA between av. zones
▫ Paid per hour, $0.11, 2x in hot-standby, $0.1 / 1 GB
• Non-relational databases with variable row format & sharding
▫ SimpleDB - $0.25 / 1 GB, $0.14 / machine hour (shared)
 Max size 10 GB, automatic indexing, website use, 1 GB & 25 h free
▫ DynamoDB - $1 / 1 GB, $0.01 for 50 kB/s (granularity 1h)
 On SSD storage, guaranteed IOPS, for data mining
• Other services: MapReduce, ElastiCache, Route 53, e―mail sending,
Simple Queue Service, Simple Notification Service
 Beanstalk – Limitations
• Minimal.
▫ Applications are deployed to standard application
servers (currently Apache Tomcat)
▫ Standard relational databases available
▫ Can disable the service and continue as IaaS only
• Local storage is ephemeral, design for scalability
• High price ~ $40 for minimal conf. + database
• Eclipse plugin provided, API and CLI tools
 Microsoft Azure
• Since Oct. 2008, commercial in Feb. 2010
• Languages: ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, Java
• Internally Instance PaaS, VM Role only recently
▫ Web Role – runs IIS server on W2k8 and Hyper-V
 Application is a web server root directory
▫ Worker Role – no IIS
 Application is a package with EXE file
 For services outside IIS, ie. Java, Node.js
▫ VM Role – runs your VHD images of W2k8
 Essentially IaaS
 Azure – Pricing
• Instance PaaS – accounting by instance hours
• 5 instance types, prices exactly as Amazon + Win
▫ Small: 1 CPU, 1,75 GB RAM, 230 GB disk, $0.12
▫ ExtraSmall, 768GB RAM, 20 GB disk, $0.04
• Possible to buy discount packages
▫ Like Amazon’s Reserved Instances
• Interesting SLA – 99.95% only if you have 2 inst.
▫ Automatic updates need reboot :-P
 Azure – Services
• noSQL storage
▫ Tables – variable row format, max. 255 attributes, manual
sharding - “partition key”
▫ Blobs – for storing large objects
 Block blobs: 4 MB blocks, addressable individually or as a
whole, max. size 200 GB, may use CDN
 Page blobs: 512 B pages, sparse writes, snapshots
 Azure Drives: page blobs containing VHD images
 Queues: 8 kB XML messages for IPC
▫ Counted together at $0.14 / 1 GB and $0.01 / 10k I/Os
• SQL Azure – modified MS SQL Server with clustering
▫ Un-cloudlike flat fees, minimum $5 for max. 100 MB
• AppFabric – Access Control, SOA bus; Connect (VPN), Market (apps
and datasets), Caching, MPI
 Azure – Limitations
• MS technologies.
▫ Windows command line, T-SQL language, Caching is
not memcached, MPI is not OpenMPI
▫ Some may view it as an advantage
• A cloud classic – local storage is ephemeral
• No e-mail sending service
• Deployment requires writing an XML descriptor
▫ Also needed for scaling – no built-in automation
• Prices higher than Amazon – need 2 instances
• Plugins for MS Visual Studio and Eclipse
 Cloud Foundry
• Since beginning of 2011, still beta
• The only open source PaaS to date
• Update – RedHat OpenShift now also available
▫ There will be multiple providers, private clouds
• Supports Spring for Java, Ruby on Rails (and Sinatra), node.js,
Grails and Scala on Lift
▫ Typical Framework PaaS
 Unlike Google, uses standard frameworks
▫ More added by companies and community
 PHP, Django on Python, Erlang
• Three versions: cloudfoundry.com, private, micro (in a VMware
Player image)
 Cloudfoundry.com
• Public version is free in beta
• AppFog has a commercial public cloud already
• Limits:
▫ 2 GB total memory per user
 Apps can have from 64 MB to 2 GB per instance
▫ Maximum 20 applications
▫ 128 MB data in MySQL
▫ 16 MB Redis, 240 MB MongoDB
• Which sums up the services, except RabbitMQ
▫ More may be added later
 CloudFoundry – Structure
• Droplet Execution
Agent
• Router
• Cloud Controller
• Health Manager
• NATS message bus
 Cloud Foundry – Limitations
• Not significant if programmer adheres to framework’s
design patterns
▫ For Java – contains Tomcat application server
• Low Security – only standard UNIX user/group
▫ A local exploit will compromise the DEA, exposing other
users’ apps and data
▫ Nimbula IaaS – launches a whole CF for each user
▫ ActiveState Stackato – a derivative using LXC
 (Iron Foundry – a derivative running .NET)

• Scaling is manual, local storage ephemeral

• Eclipse plugin available, “vmc” CLI tool
• What is Cloud Management?
• Cloud management is the organized management of cloud
computing products and services that operate in the cloud.
• It refers to the processes, strategies, policies, and technology used
to help control and maintain public and private cloud, hybrid
cloud, or multicloud environments.
• Today, you are likely operating partially or entirely in the cloud.
• As such, your organization needs a way to evaluate, monitor, and
manage cloud computing resources, infrastructure, and services
in the most efficient way possible.
• What is Cloud Management?
• Keeping your cloud environments running smoothly requires
many underlying tasks, from provisioning and orchestration of
resources to automating cloud consumption and deployment, to
lifecycle management of resources, cost optimization,
performance monitoring, and security.
• Cloud management defined
• Cloud management is the process of maintaining control and
oversight of cloud computing infrastructure, resources, and
services in public, private, or hybrid cloud environments.
• With cloud management tools and technologies, IT administrators
achieve control, visibility, and scalability while also being able to
adapt rapidly to change.
• Challenges of managing a cloud environment
• As reliance on cloud computing continues to increase, many organizations
are finding it difficult to manage increasingly complex architectures and
gain the oversight needed to successfully implement their cloud strategies.
• To fully realize the potential of cloud services and solutions, it’s also
essential to understand the challenges with managing cloud environments
you may encounter as you migrate to the cloud.
• Interoperability
• Today’s modern IT environments are increasingly spread out across a
mix of on-premises, public and private cloud, hybrid, or even multi
cloud environments.
• Teams must be able to consolidate the management of numerous,
heterogeneous systems in a simple way.
• Challenges of managing a cloud environment
• Cloud sprawl
• Self-service can boost productivity and development speed, but it
can also become unmanageable.
• You can start to lose track of cloud resources, leaving them to
multiply and increase throughout your organization without
oversight or control.
• Cloud sprawl can cause costs to skyrocket, create security risks,
and complicate management down the line.
• Challenges of managing a cloud environment
• Cost assessment
• While cloud environments enable true cost management,
estimating cloud costs to pinpoint waste can still pose many
challenges.
• Calculating the cost of a single service might require gathering
details across accounts, regions, and other cloud-based tools and
services.
• This can be complicated further if there are any overlapping
resources that must be paid by an individual business unit within
your organization.
• Challenges of managing a cloud environment
• Security and privacy
• Cloud security remains a top priority for all organizations and
cloud service providers, including how to manage access, protect
data, and how to secure cloud environments against internal and
external threats.
• Many companies struggle to balance effective use of resources for
the highest performance with strong policy and risk mitigation.
• Ultimately, cloud computing resources and services are not useful
without cloud management features to control your
infrastructure, applications, and data.
• Cloud management features
• Cloud management tools and technologies enable strategies and
processes that let you effectively oversee cloud-based assets and
applications, facilitate automation workflows, and make informed
decisions so your cloud costs and usage are cost-effective.
• Here are some common cloud management features:
• Automation
• Application management can be repetitive, especially if you have
a large environment.
• Cloud management enables programmatic management of
resources, providing automated capacity management,
continuous integration, and orchestration to reduce operational
burden.
• Cloud management features
• Compliance and governance
• Moving to the cloud can mean relinquishing a certain amount of
control over your underlying infrastructure and applications, but
you’ll still need to have oversight over access and be able to
maintain compliance.
• Cloud management enables you to ensure cloud users and
configurations align with regulatory requirements and
organizational policies by alerting you to issues so you can
address them quickly.
• Cloud management features
• Security
• Since cloud security is a shared responsibility with your cloud
service provider, cloud management plays a very active role in
protecting your data, applications, and services in cloud
environments.
• Leading cloud management tools offer machine-learning
capabilities for robust threat intelligence and detection and help
streamline security monitoring and processes.
• Cloud management features
• Monitoring and logging
• Cloud management enables cloud observability with monitoring
and logging of events that occur to help you inspect and
understand what’s going on across your environments.
• Being able to aggregate, analyze, and correlate log files can help
you to identify errors, automate incident management, and
optimize performance.
• Cloud management features
• Performance and cost reporting
• Cloud computing costs can quickly balloon past your budget if
you’re not paying close attention from the start.
• Cloud management provides cost management, reporting, and
forecasting to help you gain an accurate picture of what and when
resources are being used.
• This can allow you to allocate resources more effectively,
understand if you’re using what you pay for, and eliminate
unnecessary costs.
• How does cloud management work?
• Cloud management tools provide a way to manage the
deployment and operation of your cloud applications and services
across public cloud, hybrid cloud, or multicloud environments.
• A good cloud management platform will also help you track and
monitor usage and performance for each part of your cloud
infrastructure, enabling you to make informed decisions about
the best way to run workloads.
• Traditionally, cloud management tools and software are deployed
as virtual machines with their own database and server.
• Servers use APIs to communicate with resources interacting
within your cloud environments.
• How does cloud management work?
• You can capture activity in cloud-based applications, performance
data, and other events, which can be analyzed and consolidated
into a unified dashboard that can be accessed through a web
interface.
• Similar to your cloud resources, administrators can access cloud
management tools from anywhere they are as long as they have a
secure connection.
• Most cloud service providers offer cloud management as services
in their own platforms, with reporting capabilities across cloud
applications to collect performance and usage data, generate
insights, and send alerts.
• What is the role of cloud management and why is it important?
• Cloud management is essential when it comes to managing
hundreds, sometimes thousands, of different applications and
servers in the cloud.
• Doing everything manually is not just inefficient—it’s impossible.
• The move to modern IT environments has enabled organizations
to scale their applications and innovate faster, but it has also
introduced considerable complexity.
• With cloud management, you can improve overall IT
performance, improve security, and ensure your costs stay under
control.
• Here are some of the primary cloud management benefits:
• What is the role of cloud management and why is it important?
• It’s Faster time to value
• Cloud management cuts down on the amount of time you spend
on routine tasks and maintenance.
• Self-service access for automated provisioning and deployments
helps support agile development across the full application
lifecycle to speed up delivery and reduce errors.
• Visibility across environments
• Stay ahead of cloud sprawl by keeping track of what resources you
have, how they’re being used, and who has access with cloud
management.
• It can also help you identify the optimal balance for your
workloads and make the most of your cloud capacity.
• What is the role of cloud management and why is it important?
• Centralized management
• Cloud management tools allow you to integrate applications, operating
systems, storage, cloud security tools, and more.
• The result is consistent and unified management over resource
allocation, compliance, security, and cost management across multiple
clouds and environments.
• Improved compliance & security
• Cloud management can help you adhere to cloud policies, guidelines,
and regulatory requirements.
• Administrators can also streamline security processes, automatically
monitoring usage and configurations across environments to identify
violations and other emerging incidents quickly.
• What is the role of cloud management and why is it important?
• Optimized cloud spend
• It’s not always easy to track or predict cloud spend.
• Cloud management solutions provide detailed reports with
chargeback and showback to help you better understand usage,
allocate resources more effectively, and accurately forecast spend.
• Environmental sustainability
• Cloud management can help you to drive and enforce strategies to
help reduce wasted resources and lower the energy consumption
of your cloud infrastructure.
• Cloud management strategies
• Effectively managing public, private, hybrid, or multicloud
environments isn’t just about the technologies and tools but also a
strong cloud management strategy. Creating a solid strategy will vary
between organizations—you’ll need to find the best processes,
technologies, and skill sets that best match your business needs.
• A strong cloud management strategy should:
• Enable consistent control across environments, allowing you to
deploy and integrate services where they are best suited.
• Allow for agile change management while allowing you to
continuously monitor, and analyze capacity, usage, costs, and
security.
• Cloud management strategies
• Create security and compliance guardrails that deliver security
control and automated policy enforcement without stifling
velocity.
• Continuously review cloud resources and services, from costs to
changes to users to violations, to spot issues before they become
future problems and update business rules and processes
accordingly.
• Case Study – Google App Engine
• Google App Engine (often referred to as GAE or simply App Engine, and also
used by the acronym GAE/J) is a platform as a service (PaaS) cloud
computing platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-
managed data centers.
• Applications are sandboxed and run across multiple servers.
• App Engine offers automatic scaling for web applications—as the number of
requests increases for an application, App Engine automatically allocates
more resources for the web application to handle the additional demand.
• Google App Engine is free up to a certain level of consumed resources.
• Fees are charged for additional storage, bandwidth, or instance hours
required by the application.
• It was first released as a preview version in April 2008, and came out of
preview in September 2011.
• Runtimes and frameworks
• Currently, the supported programming languages are Python,
Java (and, by extension, other JVM languages such as Groovy,
JRuby, Scala, Clojure, Jython and PHP via a special version of
Quercus), and Go.
• Google has said that it plans to support more languages in the
future, and that the Google App Engine has been written to be
language independent.
• Reliability and Support
• All billed High-Replication Datastore App Engine applications
have a 99.95% uptime SLA.
• Portability Concerns

• Developers worry that the applications will not be portable from App Engine and fear

being locked into the technology.

• In response, there are a number of projects to create open-source back-ends for the

various proprietary/closed APIs of app engine, especially the datastore.

• Although these projects are at various levels of maturity, none of them is at the point

where installing and running an App Engine app is as simple as it is on Google’s

service. AppScale and TyphoonAE are two of the open source efforts.

• AppScale can run Python, Java, and Go GAE applications on EC2 and other cloud

vendors.

• TyphoonAE can run python App Engine applications on any cloud that support linux

machines.

• Web2py web framework offers migration between SQL Databases and Google App

Engine, however it doesn’t support several App Engine-specific features such as

transactions and namespaces.

• Differences with other application hosting

• Compared to other scalable hosting services such as Amazon EC2,

App Engine provides more infrastructure to make it easy to write

scalable applications, but can only run a limited range of

applications designed for that infrastructure.

• App Engine’s infrastructure removes many of the system

administration and development challenges of building

applications to scale to hundreds of requests per second and

beyond.

• Google handles deploying code to a cluster, monitoring, failover,

and launching application instances as necessary.

• Differences with other application hosting

• While other services let users install and configure nearly

any *NIX compatible software, App Engine requires

developers to use only its supported languages, APIs, and

frameworks.

• Current APIs allow storing and retrieving data from a

BigTable non-relational database; making HTTP requests;

sending e-mail; manipulating images; and caching.

• Existing web applications that require a relational database

will not run on App Engine without modification.