Cloud Computing Mechanisms

Background
• The establishment of a formal set of mechanisms that act as building blocks for the exploration of cloud
technology architectures.
• These building blocks are grouped into:
1. Infrastructure
2. Specialized services
3. Cloud Management
4. Security
Cloud Infrastructure Mechanisms
• Cloud infrastructure mechanisms are foundational building blocks of cloud environments that establish
primary artifacts to form the basis of fundamental cloud technology architecture.
• In this session we will cover the following:
• Logical Network Perimeter
• Virtual Server
• Cloud Storage Device
• Cloud Usage Monitor
• Resource Replication
• Ready-Made Environment
Logical Network Perimeter
• The isolation of a network environment from the rest of a communications network.
• Establishes a virtual network boundary that can encompass and isolate a group of related cloud-based IT
resources that may be physically distributed.
• This mechanism can be implemented to:
• isolate IT resources in a cloud from non-authorized users
• isolate IT resources in a cloud from non-users
• isolate IT resources in a cloud from cloud consumers
• control the bandwidth that is available to isolated IT resources
Logical network perimeter
• The dashed line notation used to indicate the boundary of a logical
network perimeter.
• Logical network perimeters are typically established via network devices that supply and control the
connectivity of a data center and are commonly deployed as virtualized IT environments that include:
 Virtual Firewall – An IT resource that actively filters network traffic to and from the isolated network while
controlling its interactions with the Internet.
 Virtual Network – Usually acquired through VLANs, this IT resource isolates the network environment within
the data center infrastructure.
Continuation
Virtual Server
• A virtual server is a form of virtualization software that emulates a physical server.
• Virtual servers are used by cloud providers to share the same physical server with multiple cloud consumers
by providing cloud consumers with individual virtual server instances.
• The number of instances a given physical server can share is limited by its capacity.
Virtual Server
• The virtual server represents the most foundational building block of cloud environments.
• Each virtual server can host numerous IT resources, cloud-based solutions, and various other cloud
computing mechanisms.
• The instantiation of virtual servers from image files is a resource allocation process that can be completed
rapidly and on-demand.
• Cloud consumers that install or lease virtual servers can customize their environments independently from
other cloud consumers that may be using virtual servers hosted by the same underlying physical server.
Cloud Storage Device
• The cloud storage device mechanism represents storage devices that are designed specifically for cloud-based
provisioning. Instances of these devices can be virtualized, similar to how physical servers can spawn virtual
server images.
• Cloud storage devices are commonly able to provide fixed-increment capacity allocation in support of the
pay-per-use mechanism.
• Cloud storage devices can be exposed for remote access via cloud storage services.
 A primary concern related to cloud storage is the security, integrity, and confidentiality of data, which
becomes more prone to being compromised when entrusted to external cloud providers and other third
parties.
Cloud Storage Levels
• Cloud storage device mechanisms provide common logical units of data storage, such as:
• Files – Collections of data are grouped into files that are located in folders.
• Blocks – The lowest level of storage and the closest to the hardware, a block is the smallest unit of data that is
still individually accessible.
• Datasets – Sets of data are organized into a table-based, delimited, or record format.
• Objects – Data and its associated metadata are organized as Web-based resources.

 Each of these data storage levels is commonly associated with a certain type of technical interface which
corresponds to a particular type of cloud storage device and cloud storage service used to expose its API.
Cloud Usage Monitor
• The cloud usage monitor mechanism is a lightweight and autonomous software program responsible for
collecting and processing IT resource usage data.
• Depending on the type of usage metrics they are designed to collect and the manner in which usage data
needs to be collected, cloud usage monitors can exist in different formats.
• Monitoring Agent
• Resource Agent
• Polling Agent
Monitoring Agent
• A monitoring agent is an intermediary, event-driven program that exists as a service agent and resides along
existing communication paths to transparently monitor and analyze dataflows.
• This type of cloud usage monitor is commonly used to measure network traffic and message metrics.
 Resource Agent
• A resource agent is a processing module that collects usage data by having event-driven interactions with
specialized resource software.
• This module is used to monitor usage metrics based on predefined, observable events at the resource software
level, such as initiating, suspending, resuming, and vertical scaling.
Polling Agent

• A polling agent is a processing module that collects cloud service usage data by polling IT resources.
• This type of cloud service monitor is commonly used to periodically monitor IT resource status, such as
uptime and downtime.
Resource Replication
• Creation of multiple instances of the same IT resource, typically performed when an IT resource’s availability
and performance need to be enhanced.
• Virtualization technology is used to implement the resource replication mechanism to replicate cloud-based
IT resources.
Ready Made Environment
• The ready-made environment mechanism is a defining component of the PaaS cloud delivery model that
represents a pre-defined, cloud-based platform comprised of a set of already installed IT resources, ready to
be used and customized by a cloud consumer.
• These environments are utilized by cloud consumers to remotely develop and deploy their own services and
applications within a cloud.
• Typical ready-made environments include pre-installed IT resources, such as databases, middleware,
development tools, and governance tools.
Container
• Containerization is an operating system-level virtualization technology used to deploy and run applications
and cloud services without the need to deploy a virtual server for each solution.
• Using containers enables multiple isolated cloud services to run on a single physical server or virtual server
while accessing the same operating system kernel.
• The operating system kernel allows for the existence of multiple isolated user-space instances or multiple
isolated runtimes known as containers, partitions, virtual engines, jails or chroot jails.