CLOUD COMPUTING

UNIT-I

Introduction to cloud computing – The Evolution of cloud computing – Hardware Evolution- Internet
Software Evolution – Server Virtualization – Web Services Deliver from the cloud– Communication-
as-a-service–Infrastructure-as-a-service–Monitoring-as-a-service–Platform- as-a-Service - Software-
as-a-service – Building Cloud Network.

Introduction to Cloud Computing:

Cloud computing consists of three distinct types of computing services delivered remotely to
clients via the internet. Clients typically pay a monthly or annual service fee to providers, to gain
access to systems that deliver software as a service, platforms as a service and infrastructure as a
service to subscribers. Clients who subscribe to cloud computing services can reap a variety of
benefits, depending on their particular business needs at a given point in time. The days of large
capital investments in software and IT infrastructure are now a thing of the past for any enterprise that
chooses to adopt the cloud computing model for procurement of IT services. The ability to access
powerful IT resources on an incremental basis is leveling the playing field for small and medium sized
organizations, providing them with the necessary tools and technology to compete in the global
marketplace, without the previously requisite investment in on premise IT resources. Clients who
subscribe to computing services delivered via the ―cloud‖• are able to greatly reduce the IT service
expenditures for their organizations; and gain access to more agile and flexible enterprise level
computing services, in the process.

SAAS (Software as a Service):

SaaS (Software as a Service) provides clients with the ability to use software applications on a
remote basis via an internet web browser. Software as a service is also referred to as ―software on
demand‖.
Clients can access SaaS applications from anywhere via the web because service providers
host applications and their associated data at their location. The primary benefit of SaaS, is a lower
cost of use, since subscriber fees require a much smaller investment than what is typically encountered
under the traditional model of software delivery. Licensing fees, installation costs, maintenance fees
and support fees that are routinely associated with the traditional model of software delivery can be
virtually eliminated by subscribing to the SaaS model of software delivery. Examples of SaaS include:
Google Applications and internet based email applications like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and Gmail.

PAAS (Platform as a Service):

PaaS (Platform as a Service) provides clients with the ability to develop and publish
customized applications in a hosted environment via the web. It represents a new model for software
development that is rapidly increasing in its popularity. An example of PaaS is Salesforce.com. PaaS
provides a framework for agile software development, testing, deployment and maintenance in an
integrated environment. Like SaaS, the primary benefit of PaaS, is a lower cost of use, since subscriber
fees require a much smaller investment than what is typically encountered when implementing
traditional tools for software development, testing and deployment. PaaS providers handle platform
maintenance and system upgrades, resulting in a more efficient and cost effective solution for
enterprise software development.

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IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service):
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) allows clients to remotely use IT hardware and resources on a ―pay-
as-you-go‖• basis. It is also referred to as HaaS (hardware as a service). Major IaaS players include
companies like IBM, Google and Amazon.com. IaaS employs virtualization, a method of creating and
managing infrastructure resources in the ―cloud‖•. IaaS provides small startup firms with a major
advantage, since it allows them to gradually expand their IT infrastructure without the need for large
capital investments in hardware and peripheral systems.

The Evolution of cloud computing:

Cloud computing is a process that entails accessing of services, including, storage, applications and
servers through the Internet, making use of another company's remote services for a fee. This enables a
company to store and access data or programs virtually, i.e. in a cloud, rather than on local hard drives
or servers.
Cloud computing has its roots as far back in 1950s when mainframe computers came into existence.
At that time, several users accessed the central computer via dummy terminals. The only task these
dummy terminals could perform was to enable users access the mainframe computer. The prohibitive
costs of this mainframe device did not make them economically feasible for organizations to buy
them. That was the time when the idea of provision of shared access to a single computer occurred to
the companies to save costs.

 In 1970s, IBM came out with an operating system (OS) named VM. This allowed for
simultaneous operation of more than one OS. Guest Operating Systems could be run on every
VM, with their own memory and other infrastructure, making it possible to share these
resources. This caused the concept of virtualization in computing to gain popularity.
 The 1990s witnessed telecom operators begin offering virtualized private network connections,
whose quality of service was as good as those of point-to-point (dedicated) services at a lesser
cost. This paved way for telecom companies' to offer many users shared access to a single
physical infrastructure.
 The other catalysts were grid computing, which allowed major issues to be addressed via
parallel computing; utility computing facilitated computing resources to be offered as a
metered service and SaaS allowed subscriptions, which were network-based, to applications.
Cloud computing, therefore, owes its emergence to all these factors.
 The three prominent types of cloud computing for businesses are Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS), which requires a company to subscribe to it and access services over the Internet;
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a solution where large cloud computing companies deliver
virtual infrastructure; and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) gives the company the freedom to
make its own custom applications that will be used by all its entire workforce.
Clouds are of four types: public, private, community, and hybrid. Through public cloud, a provider can
offer services, including storage and application, to anybody via the Internet. They can be provided
freely or charged on a pay-per-usage method.

 Public cloud services are easier to install and less expensive, as costs for application, hardware
and bandwidth are borne by the provider. They are scalable, and the users avail only those
services that they use.

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  A private cloud is referred to as also internal cloud or corporate cloud, and it called so as it
offers a proprietary computing architecture through which hosted services can be provided to a
restricted number of users protected by a firewall. A private cloud is used by businesses that
want to wield more control over their data.
 As far as the community cloud is concerned, it is resources shared by more than one
organization whose cloud needs are similar.
 A combination of two or more clouds is a hybrid cloud. Here, the clouds used are a
combination of private, public, or community.
 Cloud computing is now being adopted by mobile phone users too, although there are
limitations, such as storage capacity, life of battery and restricted processing power.
 Some of the most popular cloud applications globally are Amazon Web Services (AWS),
Google Compute Engine, Rackspace, Salesforce.com, IBM Cloud Managed Services, among
others. Cloud services have made it possible for small and medium businesses (SMBs) to be on
par with large companies.
 Mobile cloud computing is being harnessed by bringing into existence a new infrastructure,
which is made possible by getting together mobile devices and cloud computing. This
infrastructure allows the cloud to execute massive tasks and store huge data, as processing of
data and its storage do not take place within mobile devices, but only beyond them. Mobile
computing is getting a fillip as customers are wanting to use their companies' applications and
websites wherever they are.
 The emergence of 4G, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Wimax), among
others, is also scaling up the connectivity of mobile devices. In addition, new technologies for
mobile, such as, CSS3, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML5) hypervisor for mobile devices,
Web 4.0, etc. will only power the adoption of mobile cloud computing.
 The main benefits of using cloud computing by companies are that they need not buy any
infrastructure, thus lowering their maintenance costs. They can do away with the services used
when their business demands have been met. It also gives firms comfort that they have huge
resources at beck and call if they suddenly acquire a major project.
 On the other hand, transferring their data to cloud makes businesses share their data security
responsibility with the provider of cloud services. This means that the consumer of cloud
services reposes lot of trust on the provider of those services. Cloud consumers control on the
services used is lesser than on on-premise IT resources.

Internet Software Evolution

VPraxis is a tool to support the evolution of Internet applications. It automates the construction of a
software application‘s history together with the histories of used resources. Comparing these histories
enables change impact analysis and eases evolution management.

Nowadays, almost all software applications, regardless of their purpose or domain, run on the Internet.
Applications such as eCommerce, social networks, telecommuting platforms and business to business
market places run on the Internet. Some are so tightly coupled with the internet that without an internet
connection they would not survive.

An application that runs on the internet belongs to a complex ecosystem. It uses and provides
resources that compose the ecosystem. Those resources, which were as simple as pictures or HTML

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documents a few years ago, are now highly complex such as web services or web semantics data.
Moreover, the ecosystem is becoming increasingly dynamic as resources change every day. This
makes classical software development inefficient, where well-structured teams apply traditional
development cycles to build all the software artifacts that compose an application.

Classical software development is inadequate to Internet-speed software development. Traditional

principles such as ―reuse‖ or ―quality‖ have no place in such a context. Quality, which is expressed as
a requirement and validated throughout the development cycle in a traditional development process, is
on the contrary, continuously negotiated with the client and subjectively validated by the users in case
of Internet applications. Reuse is not even an option as software components are deprecated after just a
few months of life on the Internet.

New development approaches have been proposed to face the challenges of Internet application
development. For instance, agile methods propose mechanisms to deal with continuous requirements.
Web frameworks such as Ruby On Rails or Zope integrate new Internet technologies. However, even
if these approaches do help development, there are still few solutions to tackle evolution. This is one
factor contributing to rising maintenance costs.

Mastering the evolution of an Internet application requires being aware of the evolution of the
ecosystem, or at least of the evolution of the resources used by the application. This requires answers
to the following questions: "How to monitor the evolution of all used resources?", "How to measure
the impact of their evolutions?", "How to know when to evolve?" and "How to identify which parts of
an application have to evolve?". The purpose of our research is to answer these questions in order to
automate operations performed during evolution.

Figure 1: An evolving software ecosystem monitored by Praxis histories.

Our approach consists of uniformly capturing the evolution of any application and of any used
resources. We base our approach at a structural level since most of the broken evolutions occur at a
structural level. We propose VPraxis, an operation-based model that unifies both source code and
evolution information. Within this model, the various software artifacts that compose an application or

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that describe a resource are described by a history. A history contains all the actions performed to
create and modify software artifacts.

Having the history of an application together with the histories of the resources it uses allows for
comparison of histories. For example, with the history of an Internet application and the histories of
the web services it uses, we can detect that one of the proposed services has changed and an evolution
of the application is therefore required. We can also analyze the history of another application that
uses the same web service in order to learn how it has evolved.

We are already able to automatically compute histories. When a versioning system is available, a
history can be automatically constructed by analyzing the source code it manages. We have developed
a tool that automatically constructs the history of projects managed by SVN versioning systems. In our
current implementation, we support Java, CSS, HTML and XML artifacts. A history contains all
operations performed to edit these artifacts since the beginning of the project. We can also build a
history of a used resource by browsing its description daily, as a web crawler would do. For instance,
we can build the history of web services by browsing their WSDL descriptions.

We have already performed some comparisons of histories. We have based our analysis on logical
rules. For instance, we have defined a logical rule specifying that any called service has to be
described by the WSDL. We then provide incremental analysis that checks the rule each time the
history of the application or the history of the web service is updated. If the service is no longer
supported, the check of the rule reports that an evolution is needed.

As a synthesis, the goal of our approach is to support the evolution of Internet applications by
monitoring changes performed to the ecosystem. We propose mechanisms to capture the evolution of
software artifacts scoped to a given application. Thanks to our concept of history, we provide reactive
local views of evolution. We use those local views to compute analysis, such as comparison of
histories, in order to automate maintenance operation.

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization is a virtualization technique that involves partitioning a physical server into a
number of small, virtual servers with the help of virtualization software. In server virtualization, each
virtual server runs multiple operating system instances at the same time.

Typical enterprise data centers contain a huge number of servers. Many of these servers sit idle as the
workload is distributed to only some of the servers on the network. This results in a waste of expensive
hardware resources, power, maintenance and cooling requirements. Server virtualization attempts to
increase resource utilization by partitioning physical servers into several multiple virtual servers, each
running its own operating system and applications. Server virtualization makes each virtual server
look and act like a physical server, multiplying the capacity of every single physical machine.

The concept of server virtualization is widely applied in IT infrastructure as a way of minimizing costs
by increasing the utilization of existing resources. Virtualizing servers is often a good solution for
small- to medium-scale applications. This technology is widely used for providing cost-effective web
hosting services.

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Web Services Deliver from the cloud

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that
Symantec has chosen AWS as its strategic infrastructure provider for the vast majority of its cloud
workloads, leveraging AWS‘s infrastructure scale and maturity to deliver cloud security to its global
customers. With AWS‘s breadth and depth of cloud capabilities, Symantec has transformed legacy
applications into cloud-based solutions, and built innovative, cloud-native as well as hybrid offerings.

Symantec‘s relationship with AWS is long-term and bi-directional, with Symantec not only making a
major operational move to AWS, but also tapping the global footprint of the AWS Marketplace to
deliver its security services. The company built a data lake on AWS that collects tens of terabytes of
data every day from 175 million endpoints and more than 57 million attack sensors. Symantec chose
AWS for its scale and comprehensive cloud capabilities, including data services, analytics, machine
learning, and container management. Innovating on AWS has allowed Symantec to deliver new
security software and tools to customers faster, while adhering to strict data protection requirements.

―Our cloud-first approach to engineering requires a highly scalable and reliable infrastructure that
helps our team deliver faster time-to-market and ensure that security remains our top priority,‖ said
Raj Patel, Vice President, Cloud Platform Engineering at Symantec. ―Symantec is committed to
protecting the cloud generation through our leading security products, as well as leveraging the cloud
to deliver our services. AWS‘s experience serving some of the most risk-sensitive enterprise
customers was an important part of the decision to choose AWS as we execute on our enterprise
Integrated Cyber Defense strategy.‖

―Leading ISVs worldwide are moving core business applications to AWS for greater agility and
efficiency, reduce costs, and to leverage the security, reliability, and global infrastructure we offer,‖
said Mike Clayville, Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS. ―By taking advantage of
the benefits of deploying their software on AWS, Symantec has been able to accelerate its pace of
innovation, gain deeper insights through their companywide data lake, and use that knowledge to
make better informed business decisions. We look forward to working with Symantec to deliver
world-class security to global customers.‖

Communications as a Service (CaaS)

Communications as a Service (CaaS) is an outsourced enterprise communications solution that can be

leased from a single vendor. Such communications can include voice over IP (VoIP or Internet
telephony), instant messaging (IM), collaboration and videoconference applications using fixed and
mobile devices. CaaS has evolved along the same lines as Software as a Service (SaaS).

The CaaS vendor is responsible for all hardware and software management and offers guaranteed
Quality of Service (QoS). CaaS allows businesses to selectively deploy communications devices and
modes on a pay-as-you-go, as-needed basis. This approach eliminates the large capital investment and
ongoing overhead for a system whose capacity may often exceed or fall short of current demand.

CaaS offers flexibility and expandability that small and medium-sized business might not otherwise
afford, allowing for the addition of devices, modes or coverage on demand. The network capacity and
feature set can be changed from day to day if necessary so that functionality keeps pace with demand

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and resources are not wasted. There is no risk of the system becoming obsolete and requiring periodic
major upgrades or replacement.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a form of cloud computing that provides virtualized computing
resources over the internet. IaaS is one of the three main categories of cloud computing services,
alongside software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).

IaaS architecture and how it works

In an IaaS model, a cloud provider hosts the infrastructure components traditionally present in an on-
premises data center, including servers, storage and networking hardware, as well as the virtualization
or hypervisor layer.

The IaaS provider also supplies a range of services to accompany those infrastructure components.
These can include detailed billing, monitoring, log access, security, load balancing and clustering, as
well as storage resiliency, such as backup, replication and recovery. These services are increasingly
policy-driven, enabling IaaS users to implement greater levels of automation and orchestration for
important infrastructure tasks. For example, a user can implement policies to drive load balancing to
maintain application availability and performance.

IaaS customers access resources and services through a wide area network (WAN), such as the
internet, and can use the cloud provider's services to install the remaining elements of an application
stack. For example, the user can log in to the IaaS platform to create virtual machines (VMs); install
operating systems in each VM; deploy middleware, such as databases; create storage buckets for
workloads and backups; and install the enterprise workload into that VM. Customers can then use the
provider's services to track costs, monitor performance, balance network traffic, troubleshoot
application issues, manage disaster recovery and more.

Any cloud computing model requires the participation of a provider. The provider is often a third-
party organization that specializes in selling IaaS. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud
Platform (GCP) are examples of independent IaaS providers. A business might also opt to deploy a
private cloud, becoming its own provider of infrastructure services.

IaaS pros and cons

Organizations choose IaaS because it is often easier, faster and more cost-efficient to operate a
workload without having to buy, manage and support the underlying infrastructure. With IaaS, a
business can simply rent or lease that infrastructure from another business.
IaaS is an effective model for workloads that are temporary, experimental or that change
unexpectedly. For example, if a business is developing a new software product, it might be more cost-
effective to host and test the application using an IaaS provider. Once the new software is tested and
refined, the business can remove it from the IaaS environment for a more traditional, in-house
deployment. Conversely, the business could commit that piece of software to a long-term IaaS
deployment, where the costs of a long-term commitment may be less.

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In general, IaaS customers pay on a per use basis, typically by the hour, week or month. Some IaaS
providers also charge customers based on the amount of virtual machine space they use. This pay-as-
you-go model eliminates the capital expense of deploying in-house hardware and software.
When a business cannot use third-party providers, a private cloud built on premises can still offer the
control and scalability of IaaS -- though the cost benefits no longer apply.

IT management responsibilities
Enterprises‘ infrastructure management responsibilities change, depending on whether they choose an
on-premises, IaaS, PaaS or SaaS deployment.
Despite its flexible, pay-as-you-go model, IaaS billing can be a problem for some businesses. Cloud
billing is extremely granular, and it is broken out to reflect the precise usage of services. It is common
for users to experience sticker shock -- or finding costs to be higher than expected -- when reviewing
the bills for every resource and service involved in an application deployment. Users should monitor
their IaaS environments and bills closely to understand how IaaS is being used, and to avoid being
charged for unauthorized services.
Insight is another common problem for IaaS users. Because IaaS providers own the infrastructure, the
details of their infrastructure configuration and performance are rarely transparent to IaaS users. This
lack of transparency can make systems management and monitoring more difficult for users.
IaaS users are also concerned about service resilience. The workload's availability and performance is
highly dependent on the provider. If an IaaS provider experiences network bottlenecks or any form of
internal or external downtime, the users' workloads will be affected. In addition, because IaaS is a
multi-tenant architecture, the noisy neighbor issue can negatively impact users' workloads.

IaaS vs. SaaS vs. PaaS

IaaS is only one of several cloud computing models, and it is complemented by alternative models that
include PaaS and SaaS.
PaaS builds on the IaaS model because, in addition to the underlying infrastructure components,
providers host, manage and offer operating systems, middleware and other runtimes for cloud users.
While PaaS simplifies workload deployment, it also restricts a business's flexibility to create the
environment that they want.
With SaaS, providers host, manage and offer the entire infrastructure, as well as applications, for
users. A SaaS user does not need to install anything; he or she simply logs in and uses the provider's
application, which runs on the provider's infrastructure. Users have some ability to configure the way
that the application works and which users are authorized to use it, but the SaaS provider is
responsible for everything else.

Major IaaS vendors and products

There are many examples of IaaS vendors and products. AWS offers storage services such as Simple
Storage Services (S3) and Glacier, as well as compute services, including its Elastic Compute Cloud
(EC2). GCP offers storage and compute services through Google Compute Engine (GCE), as does
Microsoft Azure.
These are just a tiny sample of the broad range of services offered by major IaaS providers. Services
can include serverless functions, such as AWS Lambda, Azure Functions or Google Cloud Functions;
database access; big data compute environments; monitoring; logging; and more.
There are also many other smaller, or more niche players in the IaaS marketplace, including
Rackspace Managed Cloud, CenturyLink Cloud, DigitalOcean and more.

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Users will need to carefully consider the services, reliability and costs before choosing a provider --
and be ready to select an alternate provider and to redeploy to the alternate infrastructure if necessary.

Monitoring as a Service:
Monitoring-as-a-Service is an outsourced service to provide security mainly to platforms that
are run on the Internet for conducting business. Maas became highly popular in the last decade. Since
the advent of Cloud hosting, its popularity has increased even more. Safe monitoring involves
protecting a company or other institution / organization from cyber threats, in which a team prepared is
crucial to maintain the confidentiality, integrity and access to IT assets. However, time and resources
constrain the limits of security operations and their effectiveness for the vast majority of companies.
With this, it is vital to continue vigilance on security infrastructure and information.

Many regulations of various industry sectors that require organizations to monitor their environments,
dedicated servers and other information ensure the integrity of these systems. However, conducting an
efficient process of monitoring can be a daunting task because it requires advanced technology, skilled
security experts, and scalable processes, and none of it is cheap to acquire. The security monitoring
services are offered today on Maas in real time, responding immediately to an incident via a secure
infrastructure and protect assets and customer information. The adoption of information technology
security systems within the last two decades, and the ability to be connected to security operations
centers (SOCs) via corporate networks, significantly changed this scenario.

There Are Two important points: (1) The total cost of ownership for traditional SOCs is much larger
than a modern technology of SOC, and (2) Achieve low costs and security operations with a high
efficiency which is equal to a modern architecture such as SOC that use IT to address safety and
security risk.

Protection against Internal and External Threats

Monitoring services and security operations centers can increase the effectiveness of security
infrastructure to customers to actively analyze and alert logs from infrastructure and equipment based
on real-time clock. Times tracking correlate information from multiple security equipment to provide
analysis with data actually needed to eliminate false positives (an event held by an intrusion detection
system and perceived as an attack but actually is not) and respond to real threats against the company.
It is an important theme of the constitution skills and resources to maintain service level. The team
responsible for information security can check the system performance on a recurring basis and update
periodically and provide recommendations for improvements.

Typical services provided by providers of Maas are described as:

Early Detection: Detects and reports when new vulnerabilities appear. Reports are sent to the
responsible person designated by the customer, containing information and detailed descriptions of the
vulnerabilities and affected platforms, as well as information and indications of possible impact of
specific actions to be considered to minimize the effects of the vulnerability if you happen to know it.

Platform, Control and Monitoring Services: Platforms, controls and monitoring services are
implemented as interface and make it possible to know the status of the platform operation monitored
at any time. It is accessed from a web interface, remote access is possible. Each operating element is
monitored and provides a status indicator and its critical impact within an account. Such diagnosis and
determinations can re-establish new parameters. Upon detecting and identifying issues, preventions
can be taken into account to prevent loss of service.

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Intelligent Log Centralization and Analysis: It is a monitoring solution based mainly on correlation
and affinity of log entries. Such analysis helps to establish an online Master of operating performance
and provides a reliable index of threats. Alarms can arise in an event that sets new standards in online
master. These type of sophisticated tools is are used by a team of experts for analysis of threats and
security answers.

Vulnerability Detection and Management: It is an automatic verification and management levels of

information security systems. Periodically, this service performs a series of automated tests in order to
identify the weaknesses of the system that possibly are exposed on the Internet. The service also
performs a follow-up task requested and sends reports to the implementation of a business continuity
plan to increase security levels.

Continuous System Upgrade and Fortification: A secure posture needs to be in motion with
continuous update and new systems and software applications. New packages, versions and updates
are needed to maintain safety levels. This service is an ongoing effort to inform gaps and install
systems with total security applications.

Intervention and Help Desk Services: A rapid response when a threat is detected is crucial to
mitigate their effects. For this, you need a group of qualified engineers with extensive knowledge in
various technologies and skills to support different applications as well as infrastructure in 24/7 basis.
Maas platforms offer this type of service to their customers by providing a forensic analysis to
determine what the problem is and how much effort it takes to fix it. This service includes assistance
with bug reports, problem management, etc..

Does it Work?
IT infrastructure monitoring should an essential part of the IT Management Policy for an organization
that is reliant on IT infrastructure. Proactive monitoring provides business continuity, quicker disaster
recovery and easier capacity planning for all mission critical applications.
Monitoring as a Service (MaaS) in the Cloud is a concept that combines the benefits of cloud
computing technology and traditional on-premise IT infrastructure monitoring solutions. MaaS is a
new delivery model that is suited for organizations looking to adopt a monitoring framework quickly
with minimal investments.

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Traditional On-Premise Monitoring Framework

On premise monitoring is the traditional deployment model for monitoring private networks
(internal IT infrastructure). This has been a very effective model over the years and works well for
organization that can afford to implement this monitoring framework. On-premise monitoring involves
purchase of software tools and investing in monitoring infrastructure and skilled IT personnel.

On-Premise monitoring provides the following benefits:

In-House Monitoring Infrastructure: Customers can own the in-house infrastructure for monitoring.
This implies more control over the infrastructure with regards to upgrades, maintenance and
management

Higher Levels of Security: Since the monitoring infrastructure is located in-house, customer gets
better security where the monitoring tool does not need to cross firewall domains and connect over the
open internet.

Inherent Connectivity to Internal Assets: Monitoring infrastructure is already a part of the internal
network (LAN and MPLS). Hence connecting to all the infrastructure assets is easy.

Real Time Monitoring Data: On-premise monitoring provides real-time data where alerts are
generated and shown to the customer immediately. The monitoring dashboard and email servers are all
within the customer premise and hence there are no delays.

Customization and Extensions: On-premise monitoring solutions can be heavily customized to meet
the exact needs of a specific customer environment. This could be in the form of monitoring of custom
applications or personalized dashboards and escalation matrices.

When to Use On-Premise Monitoring

On-Premise monitoring is suitable for following situations:

Customer wants to own the monitoring infrastructure: In scenarios where customer is willing to
invest in the monitoring infrastructure, some customers prefer to own the monitoring infrastructure.
On-Premise monitoring is the only option in such cases.

Customer has the expertise and IT personnel: Customers may already have the expertise in setting
up and managing a monitoring framework in-house. If the customer has the IT personnel to manage
the monitoring framework, then on-premise monitoring is a good option.

Customer is sensitive about data: For customers in data sensitive sectors such as Banking, Finance,
Government and Healthcare, access to data is restricted due to regulations such as HIPAA, PCI DSS
and FIPS. In those scenarios, on-premise monitoring is the only option since no data is transferred
outside the organization.

There are many custom applications running: To monitor customized applications, even the
monitoring tool must be customized. It is easy to customize an on-premise monitoring solution as
compared to a hosted monitoring solution.

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The Adoption of Cloud and Software as a Service Delivery Models

Cloud computing has been evolving into different technology areas such as Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). These technology areas are
finding increasing adoption in the marketplace.

A recent report published by IDC has indicated that the Cloud Computing market is expected to cross
$100 billion by end of 2014.

The economic drivers for adoption of Cloud Technologies have been well understood in the market.

Lower Investments: Cloud offerings typically have very low upfront costs. All SaaS product
offerings are charged on a pay per use monthly subscription basis, which implies lower cost of
ownership.

No Infrastructure Costs: Cloud service offerings use cloud based infrastructures such as Amazon or
Rackspace or a private cloud. Hence the customer does not have to bear the cost of the infrastructure
setup with cloud services.

Outsourced Technology Expertise: With cloud offerings, customers get a ready to use product that
can be immediately consumed by the end user. Customer does not need to invest in an in-house IT
team having that particular technology expertise.

Simplified Management: With offerings in the cloud, the service provider deals with on-going
management, maintenance and upgrades of technology. The customer can focus on his core business
needs.

Monitoring as a Service Offering

The monitoring as a service (MaaS) offering provides a monitoring solution based on a monitoring
infrastructure in the cloud. The MaaS vendor invests in the monitoring framework including the
hardware, monitoring software and specialized IT personnel on behalf of the customer. The customer
just needs to pay for the service he wants to use – on a subscription model similar to any SaaS product
offering.

Benefits of Monitoring as a Service (MaaS)

The following are the benefits of a monitoring as a service (MaaS) product:

Ready to Use Monitoring Tool Login: The vendor takes care of setting up the hardware
infrastructure, monitoring tool, configuration and alert settings on behalf of the customer. The
customer gets a ready to use login to the monitoring dashboard that is accessible using an internet
browser. A mobile client is also available for the MaaS dashboard for IT administrators.

Inherently Available 24x7x365: Since MaaS is deployed in the cloud, the monitoring dashboard itself
is available 24x7x365 that can be accessed anytime from anywhere. There are no downtimes
associated with the monitoring tool.

Easy Integration with Business Processes: MaaS can generate alert based on specific business
conditions. MaaS also supports multiple levels of escalation so that different user groups can get
different levels of alerts.

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Cloud Aware and Cloud Ready: Since MaaS is already in the cloud, MaaS works well with other
cloud based products such as PaaS and SaaS. MaaS can monitor Amazon and Rackspace cloud
infrastructure. MaaS can monitor any private cloud deployments that a customer might have.

Zero Maintenance Overheads: As a MaaS, customer, you don‘t need to invest in a network
operations centre. Neither do you need to invest an in-house team of qualified IT engineers to run the
monitoring desk since the MaaS vendor is doing that on behalf of the customer.

When to Use Monitoring as a Service (MaaS)

Monitoring as a service (MaaS) is an attractive choice for the following scenarios:

Price Sensitive Customers: For small and medium enterprises, MaaS provides cost effective pay per
use pricing model. Customers don‘t need to make any heavy investments neither in capital
expenditures (capex) nor in operating expenditures (opex).

Cloud Based SaaS and PaaS offering Add-On: MaaS provides a better technology fit for monitoring
cloud based SaaS and PaaS offerings. MaaS can be provided as an add-on product offering along with
SaaS and PaaS.

Distributed Infrastructure Assets: In scenarios where the IT infrastructure assets are distributed
across different locations and branch offices, MaaS is a good option since the monitoring
infrastructure is centralized in the cloud and can easily monitor all distributed infrastructure assets.

Mixture of Cloud and On-Premise Infrastructure: MaaS is already in the cloud. Hence in
deployments where customer has a mix of on-premise and cloud infrastructure, MaaS provides good
monitoring options for the hybrid environment.

Multitenant Monitoring Requirements: For vendors offering multi-tenant functionality on their

hosted services, MaaS provides a strong backend framework for monitoring the multi-tenant services
and their availability.

Infrastructure Assets that can be monitored using MaaS

MaaS is capable of monitoring all aspects of IT infrastructure assets.

Servers and Systems Monitoring: Server Monitoring provides insights into the reliability of the
server hardware such as Uptime, CPU, Memory and Storage. Server monitoring is an essential tool in
determining functional and performance failures in the infrastructure assets.

Database Monitoring: Database monitoring on a proactive basis is necessary to ensure that databases
are available for supporting business processes and functions. Database monitoring also provides
performance analysis and trends which in turn can be used for fine tuning the database architecture
and queries, thereby optimizing the database for your business requirements.

Network Monitoring: Network availability and network performance are two critical parameters that
determine the successful utilization of any network – be it a LAN, MAN or WAN network.
Disruptions in the network affect business productivity adversely and can bring regular operations to a
standstill. Network monitoring provides pro-active information about network performance
bottlenecks and source of network disruption.

Storage Monitoring: A reliable storage solution in your network ensures anytime availability of
business critical data. Storage monitoring for SAN, NAS and RAID storage devices ensures that your
storage solution are performing at the highest levels. Storage monitoring reduces downtime of storage
devices and hence improves availability of business data.

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Applications Monitoring: Applications Monitoring provides insight into resource usage, application
availability and critical process usage for different Windows, Linux and other open source operating
systems based applications. Applications Monitoring is essential for mission critical applications that
cannot afford to have even a few minutes of downtime. With Application Monitoring, you can prevent
application failures before they occur and ensure smooth operations.

Cloud Monitoring: Cloud Monitoring for any cloud infrastructure such as Amazon or Rackspace
gives information about resource utilization and performance in the cloud. While cloud infrastructure
is expected to have higher reliability than on-premise infrastructure, quite often resource utilization
and performance metrics are not well understood in the cloud. Cloud monitoring provides insight into
exact resource usage and performance metrics that can be used for optimizing the cloud infrastructure.

Virtual Infrastructure Monitoring: Virtual Infrastructure based on common hypervisors such as

ESX, Xen or Hyper-V provides flexibility to the infrastructure deployment and provides increased
reliability against hardware failures. Monitoring virtual machines and related infrastructure gives
information around resource usage such as memory, processor and storage.

MaaS Offerings from Altnix: Altnix offers comprehensive monitoring as a service (MaaS) product
portfolio for customers across the world. MaaS from Altnix can monitor all infrastructure assets
including Servers, Databases, Operating Systems, Network devices, Applications, and Storage
devices. Altnix MaaS can monitoring cloud infrastructure such as Amazon and Rackspace IaaS
offerings as well as PaaS offerings from other leading providers such as Oracle, Netsuite and
Microsoft.
MaaS from Altnix provides 24x7 monitoring coverage with alerts and escalation workflows that can
be customized for individual customer requirements. Altnix MaaS offerings provides a ready-to-use,
cost efficient monitoring offering that is flexible, scalable and covers majority of infrastructure
deployment.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is the next step down from Software as a Service (SaaS) in the Cloud
Computing Stack. Instead of ready-made applications or services, PaaS provides the platform for
developing such applications and services. Here you find various development tools and such things as
database management systems, enterprise service buses (ESBs), application servers, business
intelligence (BI)/business analytics, and so on that could be used to support the applications and
services developed.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) Advantages

Advantages Unique to Platform as a Service (PaaS)
You or your organization are responsible for the versioning/upgrades of software developed (this is
also a disadvantage).

Advantages Shared With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

 The maintenance and upgrades of tools, database systems, etc. and the underlying infrastucture
is the responsibility of the PaaS Cloud Provider.
 Various pricing models may allow paying only for what you use. This, for example, can allow
an individual or a small organization to use sophisticated development software that they could
not afford if it was installed on an internal, dedicated server.
 Some PaaS Providers provide development options for multiple platforms: mobile, browser,
and so on. If you or your organization want to develop software that can be accessed from
multiple platforms, this might be an easy way to make that happen.

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  If you have events such as high seasonal sales activity, then the elasticity of the Cloud with
PaaS might provide an opportunity.
 The PaaS Cloud Provider may provide better security than your existing software (security—or
inadequate security—can also be a disadvantage). Better security may come in part because it
is critical for the PaaS Cloud Provider and is part of their main business. In-house security, on
the other hand, is not usually an individual's or a organization's main business and, therefore,
may not be as good as that offered by the PaaS Cloud Provider.
 No need to manage the introduction of new releases of the development or underlying
software. This is handled by the PaaS Cloud Provider.
 No need to provision servers. This is handled by the PaaS Cloud Provider.
 No need to manage the underlying data center. This is handled by the PaaS Cloud Provider.
 Usually, there is no need to manage backups. This is handled by the PaaS Cloud Provider.
 If the PaaS Cloud Provider supports failover should the software (for example, the database
management software) or the data center become unavailable, that failover is a concern of the
PaaS Cloud Provider and you do not need to plan for it.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) Disadvantages

Disadvantages Unique to Platform as a Service (PaaS)

You or your organization are responsible for the versioning/upgrades of software developed (this is
also an advantage).

Disadvantages Shared With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

 When it is mandatory that the underlying hardware be of a specific type or the underlying
software be modified to support the deployed application.
 There may be legal reasons that preclude the use of off-premise or out-of-counry data storage.
 Security features of the PaaS Cloud Provider may not adequate for your needs.
 If you have a need for high-speed interaction between your internal software or software in
another Cloud and the PaaS Cloud Provider, relying on an Internet connection may not provide
the speed that you need.

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 Platform as a Service (PaaS) Variations

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a Service, often simply referred to as PaaS, is a category of cloud computing that provides
a platform and environment to allow developers to build applications and services over the internet.
PaaS services are hosted in the cloud and accessed by users simply via their web browser.

Software developers, web developers and businesses can all benefit from PaaS:

 Software developers can take advantage of a PaaS solution to build an application which they
are planning to offer over the internet or software to be sold out of the box

 Web developers can use individual PaaS environments at every stage of the process to develop,
test and host their websites

 Businesses can develop their own internal software, particularly to create distinct ring-fenced
development and testing environments.

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CREATION OF SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS

PaaS is regularly used be developers, from conception to the creation of applications, through to
testing and deployment
Pay-Per-Use: Generally paid for on a subscription basis and clients only pay for what they use.
Sharing of underlying infrastructure results in economies of scale
Choice of features: Customers can choose the features they require while discarding others. They can
therefore choose a service to suit their needs
Management and support: Infrastructure and applications are managed for customers and support is
available
Automatic upgrades: Services are constantly updated, with existing features upgraded and additional
ones added
BENEFITS TO APPLICATION DEVELOPERS

Don’t have to invest in physical infrastructure: Being able to ‗rent‘ virtual infrastructure has both
cost benefits and practical benefits. They don‘t need to purchase hardware themselves or employ the
expertise to manage it
Makes development possible for ‘non-experts’: With some paas offerings anyone can develop an
application, simply through their web browser utilizing one-click functionality
Flexibility: Customers have control over the tools that are installed within their platforms and can
create a platform that suits their specific requirements
Adaptability: Features can be changed if circumstances dictate that they should
Teams in various locations can work together: Using the internet, developers spread across several
locations can work together on the same application build
Security: Security is provided, including data security and backup and recovery.

FEATURES THAT CAN BE INCLUDED

One of the main benefits of Platform as a Service is the flexibility that it offers. Users are able to
choose which features they require, therefore avoiding paying for features they don't require.
The following are amongst the features that are available from a typical PaaS offering:
 Operating system
 Server-side scripting environment
 Database management system
 Server software
 Support
 Storage
 Network access
 Tools for design and development
 Hosting

Software as a service:
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. SaaS is one of three main
categories of cloud computing, alongside infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service
(PaaS). SaaS removes the need for organizations to install and run applications on their own

Cloud computing 17
computers or in their own data centers. This eliminates the expense of hardware acquisition,
provisioning and maintenance, as well as software licensing, installation and support.
Other benefits of the SaaS model include:

Flexible payments: Rather than purchasing software to install, or additional hardware to support it,
customers subscribe to a SaaS offering. Generally, they pay for this service on a monthly basis using
a pay-as-you-go model. Transitioning costs to a recurring operating expense allows many businesses
to exercise better and more predictable budgeting. Users can also terminate SaaS offerings at any time
to stop those recurring costs.

Scalable usage: Cloud services like SaaS offer high scalability, which gives customers the option to
access more, or fewer, services or features on-demand.

Automatic updates: Rather than purchasing new software, customers can rely on a SaaS provider to
automatically perform updates and patch management. This further reduces the burden on in-house IT
staff.

Accessibility and persistence: Since SaaS applications are delivered over the Internet, users can
access them from any Internet-enabled device and location.

But SaaS also poses some potential disadvantages. Businesses must rely on outside vendors to provide
the software, keep that software up and running, track and report accurate billing and facilitate a
secure environment for the business' data. Providers that experience service disruptions, impose
unwanted changes to service offerings, experience a security breach or any other issue can have a
profound effect on the customers' ability to use those SaaS offerings. As a result, users should
understand their SaaS provider's service-level agreement, and make sure it is enforced.
SaaS is closely related to the ASP (application service provider) and on demand computing software
delivery models. The hosted application management model of SaaS is similar to ASP: the provider
hosts the customer‘s software and delivers it to approved end users over the internet. In the software
on demand SaaS model, the provider gives customers network-based access to a single copy of an
application that the provider created specifically for SaaS distribution. The application‘s source code is
the same for all customers and when new features are functionalities are rolled out, they are rolled out
to all customers. Depending upon the service level agreement (SLA), the customer‘s data for each
model may be stored locally, in the cloud or both locally and in the cloud.
Organizations can integrate SaaS applications with other software using application programming
interfaces (APIs). For example, a business can write its own software tools and use the SaaS provider's
APIs to integrate those tools with the SaaS offering.
There are SaaS applications for fundamental business technologies, such as email, sales management,
customer relationship management (CRM), financial management, human resource management,
billing and collaboration. Leading SaaS providers include Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, Intuit and
Microsoft.
Building Cloud Network:
Cloud networking (and Cloud based networking) is a term describing the access of networking
resources from a centralized third-party provider using Wide Area Networking (WAN) or Internet-
based access technologies. Cloud networking is related the concept of cloud computing, in which
centralized computing resources are shared for customers or clients. In cloud networking,
the network can be shared as well as the computing resources. It has spurred a trend of pushing more

Cloud computing 18
network management functions into the cloud, so that fewer customer devices are needed to manage
the network.

Wireless LAN Leads the Charge

The Wireless LAN market was one of the first to start using a more distributed, cloud-based approach
to building private networks using WAN and Wireless LAN connections. Companies
including Aerohive Networks, Meraki, and Pareto Networks popularized the use of cloud networking
techniques to create large, distributed Wireless LANs that could be centrally managed in the cloud.
Meraki was acquired by Cisco and Pareto was acquired by Aerohive Networks.

Cisco

Improved Internet access and more reliable WAN bandwidth has made it easier to push more
networking management functions into the cloud. This has been one of the drivers of cloud computing
services as well as enterprise cloud software. This, in turn, has spurred demand for cloud networking
as well, as customers look for easier ways to access to build networks using a cloud-based service.
A standard cloud networking product provides centralized management, visibility, and control of the
network. This could include the management of distributed Wireless access routers or branch-office
devices using centralized management in the cloud. The goal is to create and manage secure private
networks by leveraging WAN connections and a centralized management function that can reside in a
data center. Connectivity, security, management and control are pushed to the cloud and delivered as a
service.
Cloud networking is a form of Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology, in which groups of
networking switches and access devices can deployed over the wide area as shared, virtual resources.
Other terms that describe this shift include Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) and Cloud WAN.
Some of the startups pursuing new technology for optimizing connectivity using SD-WAN
include Cloudgenix, Pertino, VeloCloud, and Viptela. A summary of the technology trend and all of
the companies pursuing this trend are included in a recent premium report from the Rayno Report,
titled, ―Future of Cloud WAN.‖
Software-Defined WAN
The basic concept of cloud networking, in which fewer management devices are installed in the
branch offices or client premises and more routing and management functions are pushed to the cloud,
is now being pursued for a wider range of networking products, which include branch office routers,
WAN optimization software, and firewalls.

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The use of cloud based networking to manage and deploy network functions across the WAN is also
being described as Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) or Cloud WAN. The trend is broadening, as a
wider array of network functions can be deployed using the cloud. The main goal is to free up services
from being attached to specific hardware so that services can be deployed more quickly using software
over a networking connection.

Building a dedicated cloud infrastructure, there are several key requirements are needed to achieve it.
Also, it is important to go for the best hosting providers for this since we have to invest a good amount
of resources in it.

Steps for Building a Cloud Computing Infrastructure –

#1: First you should decide which technology will be the basis for your on-demand application
infrastructure

The decision related to which virtualization technology will be the organizational standard is already
made. But decide before you start if it has not made. There are cons and pros to both a homogeneous
and heterogeneous virtualization infrastructure and the decision will impact the ability to monitor and
manage infrastructure later. So make this decision first.

#2: Determine what delivery infrastructure you will be used to abstract the application
infrastructure

Cloud infrastructure‘s the on-demand capabilities are first designed to do two things: make efficient
use of resources and ensure scalability. Some method of load balancing/application delivery will be
necessary to accomplish the former.
To abstract the applications, this layer of the architecture will helpful and will provide a consistent
means of access to users, shielding them from the high rate of change which occurs in the
infrastructure.
The delivery infrastructure or load balancer will need to be included in the provisioning process and to
provide visibility into application capacity, performance as well as resource management.
Many solutions are there to match your choice but select one solution in which you will integrate the
system into the architecture. Also, you need to verify the solution that whether it is capable of
providing the visibility you will need into performance metrics or not. So, decide what metrics and
thresholds you‘ll use to trigger provisioning processes and ensure that the infrastructure can support it.

Cloud computing 20
#3: Prepare the network infrastructure

Prepare the network to deal with an on-demand application infrastructure. Application delivery: must
be configured correctly for the application being deployed, Hardware: network, storage. The network
must be configured to deal with such change without requiring human intervention and must be able to
handle applications which migrate from hardware to hardware. For this, the network will require
constant optimization to adapt to changing traffic patterns.

#4: Provide visibility and automation of management tasks

Remember, visibility is a key to an on-demand infrastructure. An associated management systems and

the infrastructure must know what is running, when and where to evaluate available resources. Find
how you will collect the data and from where. Decide which system is authoritative for each metric
and verify to feed that information in real-time to the automation system.

#5: Integrate all the moving parts, such that the infrastructure and realizes the benefits of
automation, abstraction and resource sharing

The last one is the most difficult part and requires the previous steps be completed. The integration,
automation of all the pieces of the infrastructure like storage, network, and application enable the
infrastructure to act on-demand. The realization of cost-reduction benefits will be marginalized
without automation. The integration step automates workflow. Automation requires constant
monitoring across the application infrastructure from the network layer to the applications executing in
the environment.

Final Words

Toward a cloud infrastructure, Virtualization is the first step. It is important to re-evaluate the
suitability of each critical layer of the architecture for inclusion in the new infrastructure model. An
investment will require for building cloud infrastructure, if not in solutions or hardware then in time
and effort. Automation, reconfiguration, and integration will require significant IT resources to
accomplish. Now, we are sure that you are able to build a cloud infrastructure with the help of i2k2
Networks.

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