Cloud Computing Architecture and Platforms

There are certain services and models working behind the scene
making cloud computing feasible and accessible to end users.

Cloud Service Delivery Model

A cloud service delivery model represents a specific, pre-packaged
combination of IT resources offered by a cloud provider.
There are three (3) common cloud delivery models, namely;
• Infrastructure-as-a- Service (IaaS)
• Platform-as-a- Service (PaaS)
• Software-as-a- Service (SaaS)
Cloud Deployment Model
There are four (4) common cloud deployment models, namely;
• Private cloud
• Public cloud
• Hybrid cloud
• Community cloud
Private Cloud allows systems and services to be accessible within an organization. The Private Cloud
is operated only within a single organization. However, it may be managed internally by the
organization itself or by third-party
 Benefits of private cloud
Higher security
Higher privacy
More control
Cost and energy efficiency
Improve reliability
Disadvantages of private cloud
Restricted Area of Operation
High Priced: Purchasing new hardware in order to fulfill the
demand is a costly transaction.
Limited Scalability: The private cloud can be scaled only
within capacity of internal hosted resources.
Additional Skills: In order to maintain cloud deployment,
organization requires skilled expertise.
Public Cloud allows systems and services to be easily accessible to general public. The IT
giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft offer cloud services via Internet.
The Public Cloud Model is shown in the diagram below
 Benefits of public cloud
Cost Effective: Since public cloud shares same resources with large number of
customers it turns out inexpensive.
Reliability: The public cloud employs large number of resources from different
locations. If any of the resources fails, public cloud can employ another one.
Flexibility: The public cloud can smoothly integrate with private cloud, which
gives customers a flexible approach.
Location Independence :Public cloud services are delivered through Internet,
ensuring location independence.
Utility Style Costing: Public cloud is also based on pay-per-use model and
resources are accessible whenever customer needs them.
High Scalability: Cloud resources are made available on demand from a pool of
resources, i.e., they can be scaled up or down according the requirement
 Disadvantages of public cloud

Low Security
In public cloud model, data is hosted off-site and resources are shared
publicly, therefore does not ensure higher level of security.
Less Customizable
Hybrid Cloud is a mixture of public and private cloud. Non-critical
activities are performed using public cloud while the critical
activities are performed using private cloud.
 Advantages of Hybrid cloud
• Scalability
It offers features of both the public cloud scalability and the private cloud
scalability.
• Flexibility
It offers secure resources and scalable public resources.
• Cost Efficiency
Public clouds are more cost effective than private ones. Therefore, hybrid clouds
can be cost saving.
• Security
The private cloud in hybrid cloud ensures higher degree of security.
 Disadvantages of hybrid cloud
• Networking Issues
Networking becomes complex due to presence of private and public cloud.
• Security Compliance
It is necessary to ensure that cloud services are compliant with security policies
of the organization.
• Infrastructure Dependency
The hybrid cloud model is dependent on internal IT infrastructure, therefore it is
necessary to ensure redundancy across data centers.
Community Cloud allows system and services to be accessible by group of organizations. It
shares the infrastructure between several organizations from a specific community. It may be
managed internally by organizations or by the third-party
 Benefits of Community cloud
• Cost Effective
Community cloud offers same advantages as that of private cloud at
low cost.
• Sharing Among Organizations
Community cloud provides an infrastructure to share cloud resources
and capabilities among several organizations.
• Security
The community cloud is comparatively more secure than the public
cloud but less secured than the private cloud.
Issues with Community cloud
• Since all data is located at one place, one must be careful in storing
data in community cloud because it might be accessible to others.
• It is also challenging to allocate responsibilities of governance,
security and cost among organizations.
CLOUD SERVICE MODELS
• Infrastructure as a service
• Platform as a service
• Software as a service
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service provides access to fundamental resources such
as physical machines, virtual machines, virtual storage. IaaS businesses
offer services such as pay-as-you-go storage, networking, and
virtualization. IaaS gives users cloud-based alternatives to on-premise
infrastructure, so businesses can avoid investing in expensive on-site
resources.
 Characteristics of IaaS
•Virtual machines with pre-installed software.
•Virtual machines with pre-installed operating systems
such as Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
•On-demand availability of resources.
•Allows to store copies of particular data at different
locations.
•The computing resources can be easily scaled up
and down.
IaaS Examples
• Business Networks
In a business network, a pooled server and networking resources which
use a business will store information and run applications. Increasing
businesses will scale their infrastructure in accordance with growth.
• Cloud Hosting
In cloud hosting the internet sites host on virtual servers that support
upon pool resources from underlying physical servers
• Virtual Data Center
There is a virtualized network of connected servers which will improve
cloud hosting capabilities, enterprise IT infrastructure or integrate
operations.
Advantages of IaaS
• Eliminates capital expense and reduces ongoing cost. IaaS sidesteps
the upfront expense of setting up and managing an onsite datacenter,
making it an economical option for start-ups and businesses testing
new ideas.
• Improves business continuity and disaster recovery. Achieving high
availability, business continuity, and disaster recovery is expensive,
since it requires a significant amount of technology and staff. But with
the right service level agreement (SLA) in place, IaaS can reduce this
cost and access applications and data as usual during a disaster or
outage.
• Innovate rapidly. As soon as you’ve decided to launch a new product or
initiative, the necessary computing infrastructure can be ready in
minutes or hours, rather than the days or weeks—and sometimes
months—it could take to set up internally.
• Respond quicker to shifting business conditions. IaaS enables you to quickly scale
up resources to accommodate spikes in demand for your application— during the
holidays, for example—then scale resources back down again when activity
decreases to save money.
• Focus on your core business. IaaS frees up your team to focus on your
organization’s core business rather than on IT infrastructure.
• Increase stability, reliability, and supportability. With IaaS there’s no need to
maintain and upgrade software and hardware or troubleshoot equipment
problems. With the appropriate agreement in place, the service provider assures
that your infrastructure is reliable and meets SLAs.
• Better security. With the appropriate service agreement, a cloud service provider
can provide security for your applications and data that may be better than what
you can attain in-house. The data stored is secured as the snapshots of the data
are stored in many places, incase a disaster takes place, the data can be retrieved
from other places. Moreover, the data is secure and can access by the allotted
authorities only.
Benefits of IaaS
• Scalability
The Cloud is available for 24 hours and can access from anywhere
which makes it scalable.
• Pay-as-you-go
The Cloud service is economical and the customer charge only for what
they have used. This saves the extra cost and expands the business very
quickly.
Benefits of IaaS
• Save time and cost
The customer is burden-free as the hardware maintenance
and management is done by the company providing service.
Hence, this saves the overall cost and the time too.
• IaaS solutions are highly flexible and highly scalable, and you
can replace it whenever you need without losing money on
your initial investment.
• IaaS helps the workers of the organization to focus on the
business and eliminates the responsibility of Infrastructure
• Flexible and efficient renting of computer hardware
IaaS resources such as virtual machines, storage devices, bandwidth, IP
addresses, monitoring services, firewalls, etc. are made available to the
customers on rent. The payment is based upon the amount of time the
customer retains a resource. Also with administrative access to virtual
machines, the customer can run any software, even a custom operating
system.
• Portability, interoperability with legacy applications
It is possible to maintain legacy between applications and workloads
between IaaS clouds. For example, network applications such as web
server or e-mail server that normally runs on customer-owned server
hardware can also run from VMs in IaaS cloud
Issues with IaaS

• Changing providers is very complicated

• Possible privacy issues due to the provider's server locations
• Security: The enterprise does not have any control over cloud security
in an IaaS environment
• Lack of flexibility
• Technical problems
• Over Dependency
• Upgrade & Maintenance
• Virtualization Services & User-Privacy
Issues with IaaS
• Compatibility with legacy security vulnerabilities
Because IaaS offers the customer to run legacy software in provider's
infrastructure, it exposes customers to all of the security vulnerabilities of
such legacy software.
• Virtual Machine sprawl
The VM can become out-of-date with respect to security updates because
IaaS allows the customer to operate the virtual machines in running,
suspended and off state. However, the provider can automatically update
such VMs, but this mechanism is hard and complex.
• Robustness of VM-level isolation
IaaS offers an isolated environment to individual customers through
hypervisor. Hypervisor is a software layer that includes hardware support
for virtualization to split a physical computer into multiple virtual machines.
• Data erase practices
The customer uses virtual machines that in turn use the common disk resources
provided by the cloud provider. When the customer releases the resource, the
cloud provider must ensure that next customer to rent the resource does not
observe data residue from previous customer.
• Platform-as-a-Service offers the runtime environment for applications. It also
offers development and deployment tools required to develop applications.
PaaS has a feature of point-and-click tools that enables non-developers to
create web applications.
• PaaS is primarily used by developers who are building software or
applications.
• A PaaS solution provides the platform for developers to create unique,
customizable software
Characteristics of PaaS

•PaaS offers browser based development environment. It allows the

developer to create database and edit the application code either via
Application Programming Interface or point-and-click tools.
•PaaS provides built-in security, scalability, and web service
interfaces.
•PaaS provides built-in tools for defining workflow, approval
processes, and business rules.
•It is easy to integrate PaaS with other applications on the same
platform.
•PaaS also provides web services interfaces that allow us to connect
the applications outside the platform.
Benefits of PaaS
• Lower administrative overhead
Customer need not bother about the administration because it is the
responsibility of cloud provider.
• Lower total cost of ownership
Customer need not purchase expensive hardware, servers, power, and
data storage.
• Scalable solutions
It is very easy to scale the resources up or down automatically, based
on their demand.
• More current system software
It is the responsibility of the cloud provider to maintain software
versions and patch installations.
ISSUES WITH PAAS
• Lack of portability between PaaS clouds
Although standard languages are used, yet the implementations of
platform services may vary. For example, file, queue, or hash table
interfaces of one platform may differ from another, making it difficult to
transfer the workloads from one platform to another.
• Event based processor scheduling
The PaaS applications are event-oriented which poses resource
constraints on applications, i.e., they have to answer a request in a
given interval of time.
• Security engineering of PaaS applications
Since PaaS applications are dependent on network, they must explicitly
use cryptography and manage security exposures.
• Stand-alone development environments
The stand-alone PaaS works as an independent entity for a specific function. It
does not include licensing or technical dependencies on specific SaaS
applications.
• Application delivery-only environments
The application delivery PaaS includes on-demand scaling and application
security.
• Open platform as a service
Open PaaS offers an open source software that helps a PaaS provider to run
applications.
• Add-on development facilities
The add-on PaaS allows to customize the existing SaaS platform
Software-as–a-Service (SaaS) model provide software application as a service to
the end users. It refers to a software that is deployed on a host service and is
accessible via Internet.
Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a third-
party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over
the Internet. Several SaaS applications are;
• Billing and invoicing system
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications
• Help desk applications
• Human Resource (HR) solutions
 Characteristics of SaaS
SaaS makes the software available over the Internet.
The software applications are maintained by the vendor.
The license to the software may be subscription based or usage based, and
it is billed on recurring basis.
SaaS applications are cost-effective since they do not require any
maintenance at end-user side.
They are available on demand.
They are automatically upgraded and updated.
SaaS offers shared data model. Therefore, multiple users can share single
instance of infrastructure. It is not required to hard code the functionality
for individual users.
All users run the same version of the software.
Benefits of SaaS
• Lower up-front Cost: SaaS can provide notable savings for several
different reasons. Firstly, it eliminates the upfront cost of
purchase/installation, as well on-going costs like maintenance and
upgrades. Instead of spending large amounts of money on hardware
installations, SaaS applications can be easily downloaded and
maintained
• Universally acceptable from/on any platform
• Modest software tools
The SaaS application deployment requires a little or no client side
software installation.
Benefits of SaaS Cont’d
Time-Saving: For many SaaS applications, installation is as simple as having
an internet connection and acquiring a log-in. Furthermore, maintenance
responsibilities are shifted from your IT department to the vendor itself. This
eliminates extra work hours and downtime that might have been necessary
to upgrade conventional software. Finally, SaaS apps tend to have a smaller
learning curve which means quicker adoption across your workforce.

 Scalability & Accessibility: SaaS is a pay-as-you-go model which provides

fantastic flexibility and options. Because the software is hosted externally by
a vendor, changing your usage plan is easy and can be done without
advance notice. Additionally, web-based use allows subscribers to access
the software easily from any location with internet capabilities.
• Compatibility:  With SaaS, subscribers can simply log-on to already
upgraded services. However, with the conventional software
installation method, updates can require enormous amounts of time
and money. Even worse, version discrepancies between members of
your workforce can lead to compatibility issues and wasted time..
Benefits of SaaS Cont’d
• Efficient use of software licenses
The customer can have single license for multiple computers running at different
locations which reduces the licensing cost. Also, there is no requirement for
license servers because the software runs in the provider's infrastructure.
• Centralized management and data
The cloud provider stores data centrally. However, the cloud providers may store
data in a decentralized manner for the sake of redundancy and reliability.
• Platform responsibilities managed by providers
All platform responsibilities such as backups, system maintenance, security,
hardware refresh, power management, etc. are performed by the cloud provider.
The customer does not need to bother about them
Benefits of SaaS Cont’d
• Multitenant solutions
Multitenant solutions allow multiple users to share single instance of
different resources in virtual isolation. Customers can customize their
application without affecting the core functionality.
 Issues with SaaS
• Browser based risks
If the customer visits malicious website and browser becomes infected, the
subsequent access to SaaS application might compromise the customer's
data. To avoid such risks, the customer can use multiple browsers and
dedicate a specific browser to access SaaS applications or can use virtual
desktop while accessing the SaaS applications.
• Network dependence
The SaaS application can be delivered only when network is continuously
available. Also network should be reliable but the network reliability cannot
be guaranteed either by cloud provider or by the customer.
• Internet performance may dictate overall performance
• Loss of control
Connectivity requirements. Since SaaS software is web-hosted, you
can't use these applications without an Internet connection
• Lack of portability between SaaS clouds
Transferring workloads from one SaaS cloud to another is not so easy
because work flow, business logics, user interfaces, support scripts can
be provider-specific