Ex 7: Study of Cloud Computing & Architecture

1. Aim: To study cloud architecture and cloud computing model.

2. Objectives: From this experiment, the student will be able to

• provide an overview of concepts of Cloud Computing .
• To encourage students to indulge into research in Cloud Computing.

3. Outcomes: The learner will be able to

• understand and appreciate cloud architecture.
• analyze the local and global impact of computing on
individuals, organizations, and society.
• recognize the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning.

4. Hardware / Software Required: Ubuntu operating system, Internet

5. Theory:

Cloud computing enables companies to consume compute resources as a utility -- just

like electricity -- rather than having to build and maintain computing infrastructures in-
house. Cloud computing promises several attractive benefits for businesses and end
users.

Three of the main benefits of cloud computing include:

• Self-service provisioning: End users can spin up computing resources for almost any
type of workload on-demand.

• Elasticity: Companies can scale up as computing needs increase and then scale down
again as demands decreases.

Pay per use: Computing resources are measured at a granular level, allowing users to
pay only for the resources and workloads they use.

Cloud computing services can be Private, Public or Hybrid.

Private cloud services are delivered from a business' data center to internal users. This
model offers versatility and convenience, while preserving management, control and
security. Internal customers may or may not be billed for services through IT
chargeback.

In the Public cloud model, a third-party provider delivers the cloud service over the
Internet. Public cloud services are sold on-demand, typically by the minute or the hour.
Customers only pay for the CPU cycles, storage or bandwidth they consume. Leading
public cloud providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure,
IBM/SoftLayer and Google Compute Engine.
Hybrid cloud is a combination of public cloud services and on-premises private cloud
– with orchestration and automation between the two.

Companies can run mission-critical workloads or sensitive applications on the private

cloud while using the public cloud for workloads that must scale on-demand. The goal
of hybrid cloud is to create a unified, automated, scalable environment which takes
advantage of all that a public cloud infrastructure can provide, while still maintaining
control over mission-critical data.

Types of cloud computing:

IT people talk about three different kinds of cloud computing, where different services
are being provided for you. Note that there's a certain amount of vagueness about how
these things are defined and some overlap between them.

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) means you're buying access to raw computing

hardware over the Net, such as servers or storage. Since you buy what you need
and pay-as-you-go, this is often referred to as utility computing. Ordinary web
hosting is a simple example of IaaS: you pay a monthly subscription or a per-
megabyte/gigabyte fee to have a hosting company serve up files for your
website from their servers.

• Software as a Service (SaaS) means you use a complete application running on

someone else's system. Web-based email and Google Documents are perhaps
the best-known examples. Zoho is another well-known SaaS provider offering
a variety of office applications online.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS) means you develop applications using Web-based

tools so they run on systems software and hardware provided by another
company. So, for example, you might develop your own ecommerce website
but have the whole thing, including the shopping cart, checkout, and payment
mechanism running on a merchant's server. Force.com (from salesforce.com)
and the Google App Engine are examples of PaaS.

• Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing

Advantages: The pros of cloud computing are obvious and compelling. If your
business is selling books or repairing shoes, why get involved in the nitty gritty of
buying and maintaining a complex computer system? If you run an insurance office,
do you really want your sales agents wasting time running anti-virus software,
upgrading word-processors, or worrying about hard-drive crashes? Do you really
want them cluttering your expensive computers with their personal emails, illegally
shared MP3 files, and naughty YouTube videos—when you could leave that
responsibility to someone else? Cloud computing allows you to buy in only the
services you want, when you want them, cutting the upfront capital costs of
computers and peripherals. You avoid equipment going out of date and other
 familiar IT problems like ensuring system security and reliability. You can add extra
services (or take them away) at a moment's notice as your business needs change.
It's really quick and easy to add new applications or services to your business
without waiting weeks or months for the new computer (and its software) to arrive.

Disadvantages: Instant convenience comes at a price. Instead of purchasing

computers and software, cloud computing means you buy services, so one-off,
upfront capital costs become ongoing operating costs instead. That might work out
much more expensive in the long-term.

If you're using software as a service (for example, writing a report using an online
word processor or sending emails through webmail), you need a reliable, high-
speed, broadband Internet connection functioning the whole time you're working.
That's something we take for granted in countries such as the United States, but it's
much more of an issue in developing countries or rural areas where broadband is
unavailable.

If you're buying in services, you can buy only what people are providing, so you
may be restricted to off-the-peg solutions rather than ones that precisely meet your
needs. Not only that, but you're completely at the mercy of your suppliers if they
suddenly decide to stop supporting a product you've come to depend on. (Google,
for example, upset many users when it announced in September 2012 that its cloud-
based Google Docs would drop support for old but de facto standard Microsoft
Office file formats such as .DOC, .XLS, and .PPT, giving a mere one week's
notice of the change—although, after public pressure, it later extended the deadline
by three months.) Critics charge that cloud-computing is a return to the bad-old days
of mainframes and proprietary systems, where businesses are locked into
unsuitable, long-term arrangements with big, inflexible companies. Instead of using
"generative" systems (ones that can be added to and extended in exciting ways the
developers never envisaged), you're effectively using "dumb terminals" whose uses
are severely limited by the supplier. Good for convenience and security, perhaps,
but what will you lose in flexibility? And is such a restrained approach good for the
future of the Internet as a whole? (To see why it may not be, take a look at Jonathan
Zittrain's eloquent book The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It.)

6. Conclusion:
Cloud computing enables a convenient and on-demand network access to a wide
range of resources. The different services and also the deployment models allow
flexible service provider interaction with minimal human intervention. It saves
costs but also can lead to risk issues and suspension of resources when in huge
quantity.