Introduction to Cloud Computing

B.Sc.CSIT
Eighth Semester
• Course Description: This course covers
different concepts of cloud computing
including introduction, architectures, cloud
virtualization, programming models, security,
and platforms and applications of cloud
computing
 Course Objectives:
The main objective of this course is to provide
theoretical as well as practical knowledge of
cloud computing including designing,
implementing and managing the cloud
computing
 Unit 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing
(6 Hrs.)
• Evolution of Cloud Computing,
• Characteristics of Cloud Computing,
• Types of cloud and its Cloud services,
• Benefits and challenges of cloud computing,
• Applications cloud computing,
• Cloud Storage,
• Cloud services requirements,
• cloud and dynamic infrastructure,
• Cloud adoption
 What is Cloud Computing?
• Cloud computing is the on-demand availability
of computer system resources, especially data
storage (cloud storage) and computing power,
without direct active management by the user.
• Large clouds often have functions distributed over
multiple locations, each location being a data
center.
• Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to
achieve coherence and typically using a "pay-as-
you-go" model which can help in reducing capital
expenses but may also lead to unexpected operating
expenses for unaware users
 Contd….
• In one statement, Cloud computing is the delivery
of on-demand IT resources over the internet. The
companies that offer these computing services
are called Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).
• CSPs charge users/organizations based on Cloud
resources used through a variety of billing
models.
• Cloud resources are the resources that are
abstracted from the underlying physical hardware
with the help of a Hypervisor.
Evolution(Explain Yourself)
 Characteristics of Cloud
Computing(Explain Yourself)
Cloud Deployment Models
 Public Cloud
• The entire computing infrastructure is located
on the premises of the CSP that offers Cloud
services over the internet.
• This is the most economical option for those
individuals/organizations that do not wish to
invest in IT infrastructure.
• In a Public Cloud environment, the resources
are shared between multiple users who are also
called ‗Tenants‘ The cost of using Cloud
services is determined through the usage of IT
resources consumed.
 Private Cloud
• Individuals/organizations that choose Private
Cloud gets dedicated infrastructure that is not
shared by any other individual/organization.
The security and control level is highest while
using a private network.
• The costs are born by an
individual/organization and are not shared with
any other individual/organization.
• Management of Private Cloud is taken care of
by the user and the CSP does not provide any
Cloud management services.
 Community Cloud
• A Community Cloud is a Cloud infrastructure
that is shared by users of the same industry or
by those who have common goals.
• This Cloud infrastructure is built after
understanding the computing needs of a
community as there are many factors including
compliances and security policies which need
to be included in the community Cloud
infrastructure.
 Hybrid Cloud
• This Cloud deployment model includes the
characteristics of Public Cloud and Private Cloud.
• Hybrid Cloud allows the sharing of data and
applications between Public and Private Cloud
environments.
• Organizations mainly use Hybrid Cloud when their
On-Premise infrastructure needs more scalability,
so they make use of scalability on Public Cloud to
meet fluctuating business demands.
• Organizations can keep their sensitive data on their
Private Cloud when reaping the power of the Public
Cloud.
 Types of Cloud Services
• Cloud computing has three most common
types of cloud services to offer. Depending on
the needs of users, any type of cloud
computing service is used either individually
or in combination with others.
• The following is a brief introduction to the
three cloud service types, namely, SaaS, PaaS
and IaaS.
 Software as a service (SaaS)
• Users of SaaS rather than fully buy the license of various
software hire the software at regular intervals and use it
through an Internet browser.
• The variety of software provided by SaaS is very broad.
• In this service model, the cloud-based applications are
offered to the customer as a service on request.
• It is a single instance of the service running on remote
computers ―in the cloud‖, owned and operated by others,
and connected to the users‘ computers over the Internet
and typically a web browser.
• Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and
Google are all examples of SaaS, although users are able
to access the services through any Internet-enabled device.
 Platform as a service (PaaS)
• PaaS provides computers platforms for users of
cloud computing.
• It is also the link between the other two services
provided by cloud computing; SaaS and IaaS.
• Some of the facilities that PaaS provides include
hosting, implementation, test and application
development, and application design.
• In addition, cloud service providers that offer PaaS
include a set of features to design, test, implement,
manage, and run applications.
• All these facilities can be used by both individual
and business customers, by subscribing to a single
package with all the features offered.
• The platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model is a level
above the software as a service setup and
provides hardware, network and operating
system so that a customer can design their own
application and software.
• In order to meet the requirements of applications
such as scalability and manageability, a
predefined combination of operating system OS
and application servers from PaaS vendors.
• For example, at any stage of the process to
develop, test and ultimately host their sites, Web
developers can use individual PaaS environments.
 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• IaaS is the third type of computing across the cloud. Just like PaaS and
SaaS, different software and hardware devices deliver on a cloud
platform, while IaaS provides a virtualized platform.

• The process of hardware virtualization shows the users only the

abstract computing platform instead of the physical functions.
• Such virtualization results in the creation of a so-called ―virtual
machine monitor‖ or ―hypervisor‖, which is the creation of the third
part of the cloud computing, Interface as a service.

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a basic computing and storage

space provided by a standardized service over the network.
• This model has made the workload easier by consolidating and
providing data center space, storage systems, network devices, servers,
and so on.
• In addition, the customer can develop and install their own operating
systems, software and applications.
 Contd..
• There are a number of advantages of using
cloud computer technology.
• However, any type of cloud service comes with
its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
• In order to make the right decision, it is
imperative that users carefully weigh the pros
and cons.
 Challenges
1. Security
2. Password Security
3. Cost Management
4. Lack of expertise
5. Internet Connectivity
6. Control or Governance
7. Compliance
8. Multiple Cloud Management
9. Creating a private cloud
10. Performance
11. Migration
12. Interoperability and Portability
13. Reliability and High Availability
14. Hybrid-Cloud Complexity
1. SECURITY
• The topmost concern in investing in cloud services
is security issues in cloud computing.
• It is because your data gets stored and processed
by a third-party vendor and you cannot see it.
• Every day or the other, you get informed about
broken authentication, compromised credentials,
account hacking, data breaches, etc. in a particular
organization.
• It makes you a little more skeptical.
4. LACK OF EXPERTISE
• With the increasing workload on cloud technologies and
continuously improving cloud tools, the management has
become difficult.
• There has been a consistent demand for a trained
workforce who can deal with cloud computing tools and
services.
• Hence, firms need to train their IT staff to minimize this
challenge.
5. INTERNET CONNECTIVITY
• The cloud services are dependent on a high-speed internet
connection.
• So the businesses that are relatively small and face
connectivity issues should ideally first invest in a good
internet connection so that no downtime happens.
• It is because internet downtime might incur vast business
losses.
2. PASSWORD SECURITY
• As large numbers of people access your cloud account, it
becomes vulnerable.
• Anybody who knows your password or hacks into your cloud
will be able to access your confidential information.
3. COST MANAGEMENT
• Cloud computing enables you to access application software
over a fast internet connection and lets you save on investing
in costly computer hardware, software, management and
maintenance.
• This makes it affordable.
• But what is challenging and expensive is tuning the
organization‘s needs on the third-party platform.
• Another costly affair is the cost of transferring data to a public
cloud, especially for a small business or project.
 Applications
1. Online Data Storage
• Organizations have a lot of data to store and with time the
size of this data increases.
• This data can be in any format like text, image, audio, or
video. Now, in order to store and maintain this huge amount
of data, organizations are no longer needed to set physical
storage systems.
• They can use Clouds to store their data.
• The whole data of an organization can be categorized into
two types – current data and historical data.
• Data that is used very frequently in order to perform some
day-to-day operations is known as current data.
• On the other hand, data that is not operational but is of value
and needs to be stored is known as historical data.
• So, in order to store these two types of data separately, we
have two storage options available:
• Hot Storage: The data which needs to be
accessed right away or very frequently, is stored
in this storage.
• Cold Storage: The data which does not require
fast access or frequent access is stored in cold
storage.
2. Backup and Recovery
• Cloud service providers offer a lot of options for data recovery.
• They offer various recovery plans at different costs.
• Companies can decide which plan they need based on their requirements.

• The cloud provider gives the option for data redundancy, i.e, a copy of
data is stored at different places.
• It can be a different server or data center or even a different geographic
location.
• The reason for this redundant storage option is to provide safety against
data and to provide flexibility in accessing the data.
• Suppose, at the primary location data becomes inaccessible somehow, then
it can be easily accessed from other storage locations.
• Some data redundancy options available are:
– Locally redundant storage (LRS)
– Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
– Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
– Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)
3. Testing and Development
• After the development of a product, testing plays a major
role in finalizing it for deployment.
• Before the final delivery, a product needs to be tested
properly.
• It must be tested on different machines with different
infrastructures because the end-user of that product can be
anywhere.
• It also must be tested for load balancing. Load balancing-
How the performance of a product affects when a large
number of users use it simultaneously.
• To accomplish such tasks testing requires different IT
resources and different computer infrastructures.
• Now, A cloud can provide these testing features at one
place.
• Organizations can easily test the performance of their
product on the cloud against a large number of users.
4. Cloud Computing in Medical Fields
• In the medical field also, cloud computing is doing
wonders.
• It is used to store data of patients and helps to
access it over the internet without any need of the
physical computer set up to trace the previous
records, or even doesn‘t need the paperwork.
• In case of emergencies, the patient‘s data can be
accessed remotely from anywhere rather than
waiting till they get access to information from the
hospital computer.
5. Big Data analysis
• Big Data analysis involves dealing with huge
amounts of data having sizes from terabytes to
zettabytes (known as big data).
• Now for any traditional database management
system, it is very difficult to maintain this amount of
data.
• Cloud Computing allows us to store large data sets
that include structured, and unstructured data, from
different sources, and in different sizes from
terabytes to zettabytes.
• Not only the storage, it also provides us various tools
in order to do the analysis on this big data.
• Because the main purpose of storing big data is to
derive something out of it.
• The flexibility of the cloud makes it a good choice
for big data analytics.
• Organizations will have a major financial
advantage by using the cloud because it is much
cheaper than the traditional large-scale big data
resources.
• Now they do not need to maintain large data
centers.
• Moreover, the cloud also makes data integration
from different resources much easier for
organizations.
6. Entertainment Applications
• Today we get a lot of entertainment content on the
internet, let it be Netflix web series episodes, online
games, or youtube videos.
• This data is widely used by users from almost all parts
of the world. It is also very necessary to provide a
great customer experience.
• So that this content is available on-demand.
• For this, the entertainment companies reach their
customers through a multi-cloud strategy.
• With the help of the cloud, the entertainment industry
is reaching new heights.
Cloud Storage
• Cloud storage is a cloud computing model that
stores data on the Internet through a cloud
computing provider who manages and operates
data storage as a service.
• It‘s delivered on demand with just-in-time
capacity and costs, and eliminates buying and
managing your own data storage infrastructure.
• This gives you agility, global scale and durability,
with ―anytime, anywhere‖ data access.
• Cloud storage is purchased from a third party
cloud vendor who owns and operates data storage
capacity and delivers it over the Internet in a pay-
as-you-go model.
• These cloud storage vendors manage capacity,
security and durability to make data accessible to
your applications all around the world.

• Applications access cloud storage through

traditional storage protocols or directly via an API.
• Many vendors offer complementary services
designed to help collect, manage, secure and
analyze data at massive scale.
 Benefits of cloud storage
1. Total Cost of Ownership.
• With cloud storage, there is no hardware to purchase, storage to
provision, or capital being used for "someday" scenarios. You can
add or remove capacity on demand, quickly change performance
and retention characteristics, and only pay for storage that you
actually use.
• Less frequently accessed data can even be automatically moved to
lower cost tiers in accordance with auditable rules, driving
economies of scale.

2. Time to Deployment.
• When development teams are ready to execute, infrastructure should
never slow them down.
• Cloud storage allows IT to quickly deliver the exact amount of
storage needed, right when it's needed.
• This allows IT to focus on solving complex application problems
instead of having to manage storage systems.
3. Information Management.
• Centralizing storage in the cloud creates a
tremendous leverage point for new use cases.

• By using cloud storage lifecycle management

policies, you can perform powerful information
management tasks including automated tiering or
locking down data in support of compliance
requirements.
 Cloud Storage Requirements
1. Durability.
Data should be redundantly stored, ideally across multiple
facilities and multiple devices in each facility. Natural
disasters, human error, or mechanical faults should not
result in data loss.
2. Availability.
All data should be available when needed, but there is a
difference between production data and archives. The
ideal cloud storage will deliver the right balance of
retrieval times and cost.
3. Security.
All data is ideally encrypted, both at rest and in transit.
Permissions and access controls should work just as well
in the cloud as they do for on premises storage.
 Cloud Services Requirements
• Efficiency / cost reduction
• Data security
• Scalability
• Mobility
• Disaster recovery
• Control
• Market reach
• Automatic Software Updates
1. Efficiency / cost reduction
• By using cloud infrastructure, you don‘t have to
spend huge amounts of money on purchasing and
maintaining equipment.
2. Data security
• Cloud offers many advanced security features
that guarantee that data is securely stored and
handled.
• Cloud storage providers implement baseline
protections for their platforms and the data they
process, such authentication, access control, and
encryption.
5. Disaster recovery
• Data loss is a major concern for all organizations,
along with data security.
• Storing your data in the cloud guarantees that data is
always available, even if your equipment like laptops
or PCs, is damaged.
• Cloud-based services provide quick data recovery for
all kinds of emergency scenarios.
6. Control
• Cloud enables you complete visibility and control
over your data.
• You can easily decide which users have what level of
access to what data.
3. Scalability
• Different companies have different IT needs — a
large enterprise of 1000+ employees won‘t have the
same IT requirements as a start-up.
• Using cloud is a great solution because it enables
enterprise to efficiently — and quickly — scale
up/down according to business demands.
4. Mobility
• Cloud computing allows mobile access to corporate
data via smart phones and devices, which is a great
way to ensure that no one is ever left out of the loop.
• Staff with busy schedules, or who live a long way
away from the corporate office, can use this feature to
keep instantly up-to-date with clients and coworkers.
7. Market reach
• Developing in the cloud enables users to get their
applications to market quickly.

8. Automatic Software Updates

• Cloud-based applications automatically refresh
and update themselves.
Cloud and dynamic infrastructure
1. Service management
• This type of special facility or a functionality is provided to
the cloud IT services by the cloud service providers. This
facility includes visibility, automation and control to
delivering the first class IT services.
• 2. Asset-Management
In this the assets or the property which is involved in
providing the cloud services are getting managed.
• 3. Virtualization and consolidation
Consolidation is an effort to reduce the cost of a technology
by improving its operating efficiency and effectiveness.
It means migrating from large number of resources to fewer
one, which is done by virtualization technology.
4. Information Infrastructure
It helps the business organizations to achieve the following :
Information compliance, availability of resources retention and
security objectives.
5. Energy-Efficiency
Here the IT infrastructure or organization sustainable. It means it is
not likely to damage or effect any other thing.
6. Security
• This cloud infrastructure is responsible for the risk management.
Risk management Refers to the risks involved in the services
which are being provided by the cloud-service providers.
7. Resilience
• This infrastructure provides the feature of resilience means the
services are resilient.
• It means the infrastructure is safe from all sides.
• The IT operations will not be easily get affected.
 Cloud Adoption
• Cloud Adoption is a strategic move by
organizations of reducing cost, mitigating risk
and achieving scalability of data base
capabilities.
• Cloud adoption may be up to various degrees
in an organization, depending on the depth of
adoption.
• In fact the depth of adoption yields insight
into the maturity of best practices, enterprise-
ready cloud services availability.
• Organizations that go ahead with the strategic
decision of adopting cloud based technologies
have to identify potential security thefts and
controls, required to keep the data and
applications in the cloud secured.
• Hence there is a need for compliance assessment
during cloud adoption.
• The following measures are taken for compliance
assessment to ensure security and accountability
of data and applications in the cloud services:
• Matching the security requirements of the organization
with the security capabilities of the cloud service
provider
• Analyzing the security policies of the cloud service
provider along with history of transparency and
security related practices
• Proper understanding of the technical aspects of data
and traffic flow
• Proper understanding and documentation of the roles
and responsibilities of the cloud service provider
• Understanding of the certifications and compliances
that can be leveraged from the cloud service provider