UNIT III

CLOUD ARCHITECTURE, SERVICES AND STORAGE

NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture -Public, Private and Hybrid

Clouds-IaaS-PaaS-SaaS-Architectural Design Challenges-Cloud Storage.

1. NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture

(National Institute of Standards and Technology)
Introduction:
 Any Cloud service, whether it is virtual hardware, development
platform, or application software, relies on a distributed
infrastructure owned by the provider or rented from a third party.
 As it can be noticed from the previous definition, the characterization
of a Cloud is quite general:
 It can be implemented by using a datacenter, a collection of
clusters, or a heterogeneous distributed system composed by
desktop PC, workstations, and servers.
 Commonly, Clouds are built by relying on one or more datacenters.
 In most of the cases, hardware resources are virtualized to provide
isolations of workloads and to exploit, at best, the infrastructure.
 According to the specific service delivered to the end user, different
layers can be stacked up on top of the virtual infrastructure:
 A virtual machine manager, a development platform, or a specific
application middleware.
 As noted in earlier chapters, Cloud-computing paradigm emerged as
a result of convergence of various existing models, technologies and
concepts, which changed the way we deliver and use IT services.
 A broad definition of the phenomenon could then be as follows:
 Cloud computing is a utility-oriented and Internet centric way of
delivering IT services on demand.
 These services cover the entire computing stack: from the
hardware infrastructure packaged as a set of virtual machines to
software services such as development platforms and distributed
applications.

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 This definition captures the most important and fundamental
aspects of Cloud computing. We now discuss a reference model, which
aids categorization of Cloud technologies, applications, and services.

CLOUD REFERENCE MODEL

 Cloud computing supports any IT service that can be consumed as a
utility and it is delivered through the network, most likely the Internet.
 Such characterization includes quite different aspects: infrastructure,
development platforms, application and services.
Architecture
 It is possible to organize all the concrete realizations of Cloud
computing into a layered view covering the entire stack (see Fig.
4.1): from the hardware appliances to software systems.
 Cloud resources are harnessed to offer “computing/horse power”
required for providing services.
 Cloud infrastructure can be in heterogeneous nature as variety of
resources such as clusters & even N/W PCs can be used to build it.
Moreover, database systems & other storage services can also be part
of the infrastructure.

 The physical infrastructure is managed by the core middleware whose

objectives are to provide an appropriate runtime environment for
applications and to utilize resources at best.

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  At the bottom of the stack, virtualization technologies are used to
guarantee runtime environment customization, application isolation,
sandboxing, and quality of service.

 This solution is generally paired with storage and network

virtualization strategies which allow the infrastructure to be
completely virtualized and controlled.
 According to the specific service offered to end users, other
virtualization techniques can be used, for example programming level
virtualization helps creating a portable runtime environment where
applications can be run and controlled.
 This scenario generally implies applications hosted in the Cloud to be
developed with a specific technology or a programming language,
such as Java, .NET, or Python.
 In this case, the user does not have to build its system from the bare
metal.
 Infrastructure management is the key function of core middleware,
which supports capabilities such as negotiation of the quality of service,
admission control, execution management and monitoring, accounting,
and billing.
 The combination of Cloud-hosting platforms and resources is generally
classified as a Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution. We can
organize the different examples of IaaS into two categories:
 Some of them provide both the management layer and the physical
infrastructure; others provide only the management layer (IaaS
(M)).
 In this second case, the management layer is often integrated with
other IaaS solutions providing physical infrastructure and adds
value to them.
 Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions are suitable for designing the
system infrastructure but provide limited services to build
applications.

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  Such service is provided by Cloud programming environments and tools,
which form a new layer for offering to users a development platform
for applications.
 The range of tools include Web based interfaces, command line tools,
and frameworks for concurrent and distributed programming.

 In this scenario, users develop their applications specifically for the

Cloud by using the API exposed at the user-level middleware.
 For this reason, this approach is also known as Platform-as-a-Service
(PaaS), because the service offered to the user is a development platform
rather than an infrastructure.
 PaaS solutions generally include the infrastructure as well, that is
bundled as part of the service provided to users.
 In case of Pure PaaS, only the user-level middleware is offered, and it
has to be complemented with a virtual or physical infrastructure.
 The top layer of the reference model depicted in Fig. 4.1 contains
services delivered at application level.
 These are mostly referred as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In most of
the cases, these are Web based applications that rely on the Cloud to
provide service to end users.
 The horse power of the Cloud provided by IaaS and PaaS solutions
allows independent software vendors to deliver their application
services over the Internet.
 Other applications belonging to this layer are those strongly leveraging
the Internet for their core functionalities that rely on the Cloud to
sustain a larger number of users.
 This is the case of gaming portals and, in general, social networking Web
sites.
 As a vision, any service offered in the Cloud computing style, should be
able to adaptively change and expose an autonomic behavior; in
particular for its availability and performance.
 As a reference model, it is then expected to have an adaptive
management layer in charge of elastically scaling on demand.

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  SaaS implementations should feature such behavior automatically,
whereas PaaS and IaaS generally provide this functionality as a part of
the API exposed to the users.
 The reference model described in Fig. 4.1 also introduces the
concept of everything as a Service (XaaS).

 This is one of the most important elements of Cloud computing:

Cloud services from different providers can be composed together in
order to provide a completely integrated solution covering all the
computing stack of a system.
 Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers can offer the bare metal in terms
of virtual machines where Platform-as-a-Service solutions are
deployed.
 When there is no need for a PaaS-layer, it is possible to directly
customize the virtual infrastructure with the software stack needed
to run applications.
 This is the case of virtual Web farms: a distributed system composed
by Web servers, database servers, and load balancers on top of which
pre-packaged software is installed to run Web applications.
 This possibility has made Cloud computing an interesting option for
reducing the capital investment in IT of start-ups, which can quickly
commercialize their ideas and grow their infrastructure according to
their revenues.

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  Table 4.1 summarizes the characteristics of the three major
categories used to classify Cloud computing solutions.
 In the following section, we briefly discuss them along with some
references to practical implementations.

Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud

Different types of Clouds/cloud deployment models
Public cloud
 It is built over the Internet (i.e., service provider offers resources,
applications storage to the customers over the internet) and can be
accessed by any user who has paid for the service.
 Public cloud are owned by service providers and are accessible through a
subscription
 Examples: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), IBM’s Blue Cloud,
Sun Cloud, Google AppEngine(GAE) and Windows Azure Services
Platform.
 Delivers a selected set of business processes i.e., The application and
infrastructure services are offered on a price-per-use basis.
 Promotes standardization, preserve capital investment, and offer
application
Advantage
 It offers greater scalability
 Its cost effectiveness helps you save money.
 It offers reliability which means no single point of failure will interrupt
your service.
 Services like SaaS, (Paas), (Iaas) are easily available on Public Cloud
platform as it can be accessed from anywhere through any Internet
enabled devices.
 It is location independent – the services are available wherever the client
is located

Disadvantage
 No control over privacy or security
 Cannot be used for use of sensitive applications

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  Lacks complete flexibility as the platform depends on the platform
provider
 No stringent protocols regarding data management.
Pictorial representation

Private Cloud
 It is built within the domain of an intranet owned by a single
organization.
 This is client owned and managed, and its access is limited to the
owning clients and their partners
 Give local users a flexible and agile private infrastructure to run service
workloads within their administrative domains.
 It is supposed to deliver more efficient and convenient cloud services.
 attempt to achieve customization and offer higher efficiency, resiliency,
security, and privacy
Advantage
 Offers greater Security and Privacy
 Offers more control over system configuration as per the company’s need
 Greater reliability when it comes to performance
 Enhances the quality of service offered by the clients
 Saves money
Disadvantage
 Expensive when compared to public cloud
 Requires IT Expertise
Pictorial representation

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Hybrid Cloud
 Hybrid Cloud is built with both public and private clouds,
 The Research Compute Cloud (RC2) is a private cloud, built by IBM, that
interconnects the computing and IT resources at eight IBM Research
Centres scattered throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
 Provides access to clients, the partner network, and third parties
 Operates in the middle, with many compromises in terms of resource
sharing
Advantage
 It is scalable
 It is cost efficient
 Offers better security
 Offers greater flexibility
Disadvantage
 Infrastructure Dependency
 Possibility of security breach through public cloud
Pictorial representation

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Community Cloud
 Community clouds are a hybrid form of private clouds built and operated
specifically for a targeted group. These communities have similar cloud
requirements and their ultimate goal is to work together to achieve their
business objectives.
Or
 It is a type of cloud hosting in which the setup is mutually shared
between many organisations that belong to a particular community, i.e.
banks and trading firms

Pictorial representation

Types of cloud Overview

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 SERVICES CLASSIFICATION CLOUD COMPUTING [IaaS- PaaS- SaaS]
Categories of cloud computing:
 Everything as a service: Infrastructure, platform, software
Cloud Service Models
 The services provided over the cloud in a pay-as-you-go model to
consumers as subscription-based are categorized into three different
models. They are
1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
3. Software asa Service (SaaS).

 These models are offered based on various SLAs between providers and
users
 The SLA for cloud computing is addressed in terms of service availability,
performance, and data protection and security
Pictorial representation of three cloud models at different service
levels of the cloud IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS cloud service models at
different service levels
 SaaS is applied at the application end using special interfaces by
users or clients.
 At the PaaS layer, the cloud platform must perform billing services
and handle job queuing, launching, and monitoring services.

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  At the bottom layer of the IaaS services, databases, compute
instances, the file system, and storage must be provisioned to satisfy
user demands.
Pictorial representation

IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS cloud service models at different service levels

IaaS

Infrastructure/Hardware as a Service -IaaS

 Infrastructure and Hardware as a Service solutions are the most
popular and developed market segment of Cloud computing.

 They deliver customizable infrastructure on demand. The available

options within the IaaS-offering umbrella range from single servers to
entire infrastructures including network devices, load balancers,
database and Web servers.

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  The main technology used to deliver and implement these solutions is
hardware virtualization: one or more virtual machines opportunely
configured and interconnected define the distributed system on top of
which applications are installed and deployed.

 Virtual machines also constitute the atomic components that are

deployed and priced according to the specific features of the virtual
hardware: memory, number of processor, and disk storage.

 IaaS/HaaS solutions bring all the benefits of hardware

virtualization: workload partitioning, application isolation, sandboxing,
and hardware tuning.

 From the perspective of the service provider, it allows better

exploitation of the IT infrastructure, and provides a more secure
environment for executing third-party applications.

 From the perspective of the customer, it reduces the administration

and maintenance cost as well as the capital costs allocated to
purchase hardware

 At the same time, users can take advantage of the full customization
offered by virtualization to deploy their infrastructure in the Cloud.

 Besides the basic virtual machine management capabilities,

additional services can be provided and they generally include the
following:
 SLA resource based allocation,
 Workload management,
 Support for infrastructure design through advanced Web
interfaces, and
 Ability to integrate third party IaaS solutions.

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  Figure 4.2 provides an overall view of the components forming an
Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution.

 It is possible to distinguish three principal layers:

 The physical infrastructure,
 The software management infrastructure, and
 The user interface.

 At the top layer, the user interface provides access to the services
exposed by the software management infrastructure. Such interface
is generally based on Web 2.0 technologies: Web services, RESTful APIs,
and mash-ups.

 These technologies allow either applications or final users to access

the services exposed by the underlying infrastructure.

 Web 2.0 applications now allow developing full-featured management

consoles completely hosted in a browser or a Web page.

 Web services and RESTful APIs allow program to interact with the
service without the human intervention, thus providing complete
integration within a software system.

 The core features of an Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution are

implemented in the infrastructure management software layer.

 In particular, the management of the virtual machines is the most

important function performed by this layer.

 A central role is played by the scheduler, which is in-charge of

allocating the execution of virtual machine instances.

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  The scheduler interacts with the other components performing
different tasks:
 The pricing/billing component takes care of the cost of
executing each virtual machine instance and maintains data
that will be used to charge the user.
 The monitoring component tracks the execution of each virtual
machine instance and maintains data required for reporting and
analyzing the performance of the system.
 The reservation component stores the information of all the
virtual machine instances that have been executed, or that will
be executed in the future.

 In case support for QoS-based execution is provided, a QoS/SLA

management component will maintain a repository of all the
service level agreements made with the users, and together with
the monitoring component is used to ensure that a given virtual

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 machine instance is executed with the desired Quality of
Service.
 The VM repository component provides a catalog of virtual
machine images that users can use to create virtual instances.

 A VM pool manager component is responsible of keeping track of

all the live instances.

 Finally, if the system supports the integration of additional

resources belonging to a third party IaaS provider, a
provisioning component interacts with the scheduler in order
to provide a virtual machine instance that is external to the
local physical infrastructure directly managed by the pool.

 The bottom layer is constituted by the physical infrastructure on top

of which the management layer operates.

 As previously discussed, the infrastructure can be of different types,

and the specific infrastructure used depends on the specific use of
the Cloud.

 A service provider will most likely use a massive datacenter containing

hundreds or thousands of nodes.

 A Cloud infrastructure developed in house, in a small or medium

enterprise, or within a University department will most likely rely on
a cluster.

 At the bottom of the scale, it is also possible to consider a heterogeneous

environment where different types of resources can be aggregated: PCs,
workstations, and clusters.

 From an architectural point of view, the physical layer also includes

the virtual resources that are rented from external IaaS providers.

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  In case of complete IaaS solutions, all the three levels are offered as
service.

 This is generally the case of public clouds vendors, such as

 Amazon, GoGrid, Joyent, Rightscale, Terremark, Rackspace,
ElasticHosts, and Flexiscale, who own large datacenters and
give access to their computing infrastructures by using an IaaS
approach.

 Other solutions instead cover only the user interface and the
infrastructure software management layers.

 They need to provide credentials to access third party IaaS

providers, or to own a private infrastructure where the management
software is installed.

 This is generally the solutions from VMware, IBM, and Microsoft.

 Enomaly, Elastra, Eucalyptus, OpenNebula and specific IaaS (M)

 In case storage is the main service provided, it is still possible to

distinguish these three layers.

 The role of infrastructure management software is not keeping track

and managing the execution of virtual machines, but to provide
access to large infrastructures and implement storage virtualization
solutions on top of the physical layer.

PaaS
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

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  Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions provide a development and
deployment platform for running applications in the Cloud.
 They constitute the middleware on top of which applications are
built.
 A general overview of the features characterizing the PaaS approach
is given in Fig. 4.3.

 Application management is the core functionality of the middleware.

 PaaS implementations provide applications with a runtime

environment and do not expose any service for managing the
underlying infrastructure.

 They automate the process of deploying applications to the

infrastructure, configuring applications components, and managing
system change based on policies set by the user.

 Developers design their system in terms of applications and are not

concerned with hardware (physical or virtual), operating systems, and
other low-level services.

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  The core middleware is in-charge of managing the resources and
scaling applications on demand or automatically, according to the
commitments made with the users.

 From a user point of view, the core middleware exposes interfaces

that allow programming and deploying applications on the Cloud.

 These can be in the form of a Web-based interface or in the form of

programming APIs and libraries.

 The specific development model decided for applications determines

the interface exposed to the user.

 Some implementations provide a completely Web-based interface

hosted in the Cloud offering different services.

 It is possible to find integrated developed environments based on 4GL

and visual programming concepts, where applications are built by
assembling mash-ups and user defined components, and successively
customized.

 Other implementations of the PaaS model provide a complete object

model for representing an application and provide a programming
language based approach.

 This approach generally offers more flexibility and opportunities but

incurs longer development cycles.

 Developers generally have the full power of programming languages such

as Java, .NET, Python, to provide better scalability and security.

 In this case, the traditional development environments can be used to

design and develop applications, which are then deployed on the Cloud
by using the APIs exposed by the PaaS provider.

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  Platform-as-a-Service solutions can offer a middleware for developing
applications together with the infrastructure, or simply provide
users with the software that is installed on the user’s premises.

 In the first case, the PaaS provider also owns large datacenters where
applications are executed, in the second case—referred in this book as
Pure PaaS—the middleware constitutes the core value of the
offering.

 Table 4.2 provides a classification of the most popular PaaS

implementations.

 It is possible to organize the different solutions into three wide

categories: PaaS-I, PaaS-II, and PaaS-III.

 The first category identifies PaaS implementations which completely

follow the Cloud computing style for application development and
deployment.

 This is the case of Force.com and Long jump. Both of them deliver,
as a platform, the combination of a middleware and infrastructure.

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  In the second class, we can list all those solutions which are focused
on providing a scalable infrastructure for Web application, mostly
Websites.
 In this case, developers generally use the providers APIs, which are
built on top of industrial runtimes, to develop applications.
 GoogleAppEngine is the most popular product in this category.
 AppScale is an open source implementation of Google AppEngine, and
provides an interface compatible middleware that has to be installed
on a physical infrastructure.
 Joyent Smart Platform provides a similar approach to
GoogleAppEngine.
 A different approach is taken by Heroku and Engine Yard that
provide scalability support for Ruby and Ruby on Rails based
Websites.

 The third category consists of all those solutions that provide a Cloud
programming platform for any kind of applications and not only Web
applications.
 Among these, the most popular is Microsoft Windows Azure that
provides a comprehensive framework for building service-oriented
Cloud applications on top of the .NET technology, hosted on
Microsoft’s datacenters.
 Other solutions in the same category, such as Manjrasof Aneka,
Apprenda SaaSGrid, Appistry Cloud IQ Platform, DataSynapse, and
GigaSpaces DataGrid, provide only a middleware with different
services.

 These are only few options available in the Platform-as-a-Service market

segment.
 Sam Charrington, product manager at Appistry.com listed here some
essential characteristics that identify a Platform-as-a-Service solution
 (a) Runtime Framework. (b) Abstraction.
 (c) Automation. (d) Cloud Services.

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 SaaS
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS:
 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model providing
access to applications through the Internet as a Web-based service.

 It provides a means to free users from complex hardware and

software management by offloading such tasks to third parties, who
build applications accessible to multiple users through a Web
browser.

 In this scenario, customers neither need install anything on their

premises nor have to pay considerable upfront costs to purchase the
software and the required licenses.

 The SaaS model is appealing for applications serving a wide range of

users and that can be adapted to specific needs with little further
customization.

 This requirement characterizes Software-as-a-Service as a “one-to-

many” software delivery model where an application is shared
across multiple users.

 This is the case of CRM and ERP applications that constitute

common needs for almost all the enterprises from small, to medium
and large business.
 The acronym “SaaS” was then coined in 2001 by the Software
Information & Industry Association (SIIA) with the following
connotation:
 In the software as a service model, the application, or service,
is deployed from a centralized data center across a network –
Internet, Intranet, LAN, or VPN – providing access and use on a
recurring fee basis. Users “rent”, “subscribe to”, “are assigned”,
or “are granted access to” the applications from a central
provider.

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  Business models vary according to the level to which the
software is streamlined, to lower price and increase efficiency,
or value-added through customization to further improve
digitized business processes.”

 The analysis carried out by SIIA was mainly oriented to cover

Application Service Providers (ASPs) and all their variations, which
capture the concept of software applications consumed as a service in
a broader sense.
 ASPs already had some of the core characteristics of SaaS:
 The product sold to customer is application access.
 The application is centrally managed.
 The service delivered is one-to-many.
 The service delivered is an integrated solution delivered on the
contract, which means provided as promised.

 Initially, ASPs offered hosting solutions for packaged applications,

which were served to multiple customers.

 The benefits delivered at that stage were the following:

 Software cost reduction and total cost of ownership (TCO)
paramount
 Service level improvements
 Rapid implementation
 Stand-alone and configurable applications
 Rudimentary application and data integration
 Subscription and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pricing

 With the advent of Cloud computing, there has been an increasing

acceptance of SaaS as a viable software delivery model.

 This led to transition into SaaS 2.0, which does not introduce a new
technology but transforms the way in which SaaS is used.

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  In particular, SaaS 2.0 is focused on providing a more robust
infrastructure and application platform driven by Service Level
Agreements.

 Rather than being characterized as a more rapid implementation and

deployment environment, SaaS 2.0 will focus on the rapid
achievement of business objectives.

 Software-as-a-Service applications can serve different needs. CRM, ERP,

and social networking applications are definitely the most popular ones.

 SalesForce.com is probably the most successful and popular example of

CRM service. It provides a wide range of services for applications:
customer relationship and human resource management, enterprise
resource planning, and many other features.

 Another important class of popular SaaS applications comprises of

social networking applications such as Facebook and professional
networking such as Linkedin.

 The nature of these applications can be of different types: office

automation components, games, and integration with other existing
services.

 Office automation applications are also an important representative

for SaaS applications:
 Google Documents and Zoho Office are examples of Office
automation applications

 Web-based applications aiming to address all the needs of users for

documents, spreadsheets, and presentations management.

 They offer a Web-based interface for creating, managing, and

modifying documents that can be easily shared among users and
made accessible from anywhere.
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 DESIGN CHALLENGES
1. Cloud interoperability and standards
2. Scalability and fault tolerance
3. Security, trust, and privacy
4. Organizational aspects

1. Cloud interoperability and standards

 Cloud computing is a service-based model for delivering IT
infrastructure and applications like utilities such as power, water, and
electricity.

 To fully realize this goal, introducing standards and allowing

interoperability between solutions offered by different vendors are
objectives of fundamental importance

 Vendor lock-in constitutes one of the major strategic barriers against

the seam- less adoption of cloud computing at all stages

 Vendor lock-in can prevent a customer from switching to another

competitor’s solution.

 This can occur either because the customer wants to find a more
suitable solution for customer needs or because the vendor is no
longer able to provide the required service.

 The presence of standards that are actually implemented and

adopted in the cloud computing community could give room for
interoperability and then lessen the risks resulting from vendor
lock-in.

 First steps toward a standardization process have been made, and a few
organizations, such as the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum
(CCIF) have done it.

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2. Scalability and fault tolerance
 The ability to scale on demand constitutes one of the most attractive
features of cloud computing.

 Clouds allow scaling beyond the limits of the existing in-house IT

resources, whether they are infrastructure (compute and storage) or
applications services.

 To implement such a capability, the cloud middleware has to be

designed with the principle of scalability along different dimensions
in mind. For example, performance, size, and load.

 The cloud middleware manages a huge number of resource and users,

which rely on the cloud without bearing considerable administrative
and maintenance costs.

 Handling failure is the fundamental and more important than providing

an extremely efficient and optimized system.

 Hence, the challenge in this case is designing highly scalable and fault-
tolerant systems that are easy to manage and at the same time provide
competitive performance.

3. Security, trust, and privacy

 Security, trust, and privacy issues are major obstacles for massive
adoption of cloud computing.

 The traditional cryptographic technologies are used to prevent data

tampering and access to sensitive information. The massive use of
virtualization technologies exposes the existing system to new threats.

 Sensitive information can be stored within a cloud storage facility

using the most advanced technology in cryptography to protect
data.
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 When data are processed in memory it must necessarily be
decrypted by the legitimate (valid) application.

 There is a lack of control over the environment in which an

application is executed. The lack of control over their own data and
the level of privacy we want to have for our data poses severe
problems for the trust.

4. Organizational aspects
 Storage, compute power, network infrastructure, and applications
are delivered as metered services over the Internet. This introduces a
billing model within typical enterprise IT departments.

 The following questions have to be considered in IT department:

 What is the new role of the IT department in an enterprise that

completely or significantly relies on the cloud?
 How will the compliance department perform its activity when
there is a considerable lack of control over application
workflows?
 What are the implications (political, legal, etc.) for
organizations that lose control over some aspects of their
services?
 What will be the perception of the end users of such services?

 From an organizational point of view, the lack of control over the

management of data is the major security threats.

 One of the major advantages of moving IT infrastructure and services

to the cloud is to reduce or completely remove the costs related to
maintenance and support.

 Existing IT staff is required to have a different kind of competency

and fewer skills, thus reducing their value.

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 CLOUD STORAGE
Cloud storage
 Cloud storage is a service model in which data is maintained,
managed, backed up remotely and made available to users over a
network (typically the Internet).

 Users generally pay for their cloud data storage on a per-

consumption, monthly rate.

 Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data
is stored in logical pools. The physical storage spans multiple servers
(sometimes in multiple locations), and the physical environment is typically
owned and managed by a hosting company.

 Cloud storage providers are responsible for keeping the data available and
accessible, and the physical environment protected and running.

 Cloud storage is based on highly virtualized infrastructure and is like

broader cloud computing in terms of accessible interfaces, near-instant
elasticity and scalability, multi-tenancy, and metered resources.

 Cloud storage services can be utilized from

 An off-premises service (Amazon S3) or
 Deployed on-premises (ViON Capacity Services).

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Advantages
 Backup servers located in different places around the globe.
 Cloud storage can be mapped as a local drive with the WebDAV
protocol.

 It can function as a central file server for organizations with

multiple office locations. Companies need only pay for the storage.
 Businesses using cloud storage can cut their energy consumption
by up to 70% making them a more green business.

 Organizations decision criteria is based on

 Cost savings  Security

 Continuity of operations(COOP)  Records retention laws
 Disaster Recovery(DR)
 Regulations
 Policies
 Depending on the decision criteria organizations can choose
between
 off-premises
 on-premises cloud storage options
 Mixture of the two options (PII, HIPAA, SARBOX, IA/CND)
 Storage availability and data protection is fundamental to object
storage architecture, so depending on the application, the
additional technology, and effort and cost to add availability and
protection can be eliminated.

 Storage maintenance tasks, such as purchasing additional storage

capacity, are offloaded to the responsibility of a service provider.

 Cloud storage provides users with immediate access to a broad

range of resources and applications hosted in the infrastructure of
another organization via a web service interface.

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