Every few years a new technology comes along, drives new efficiencies and reduces costs. While this is welcomed by user organizations, there is a flip side to the happy story. One among them is cloud computing………
There are many types of public cloud computing
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
- Platform as a service (PaaS)
- Software as a service (SaaS)
- Storage as a service (STaaS)
- Security as a service (SECaaS)
- Data as a service (DaaS)
- Test environment as a service (TEaaS)
- Desktop as a service (DaaS)
- API as a service (APIaaS)
Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network. At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of converged infrastructure and shared services.
History
The origin of the term cloud computing is obscure, but it appears to derive from the practice of using drawings of stylized clouds to denote networks in diagrams of computing and communications systems. The word cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the standardized use of a cloud-like shape to denote a network on telephony schematics and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. The cloud symbol was used to represent the Internet as early as 1994.
In the 1990s, telecommunications companies who previously offered primarily dedicated point-to-point data circuits began offering virtual private network (VPN) services with comparable quality of service but at a much lower cost. By switching traffic to balance utilization as they saw fit, they were able to utilize their overall network bandwidth more effectively. The cloud symbol was used to denote the demarcation point between that which was the responsibility of the provider and that which was the responsibility of the users. Cloud computing extends this boundary to cover servers as well as the network infrastructure.
In early 2008, Eucalyptus became the first open-source, AWS API-compatible platform for deploying private clouds. In early 2008, OpenNebula, enhanced in the RESERVOIR European Commission-funded project, became the first open-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds, and for the federation of clouds. In the same year, efforts were focused on providing quality of service guarantees (as required by real-time interactive applications) to cloud-based infrastructures, in the framework of the IRMOS European Commission-funded project, resulting to a real-time cloud environment.
On March 1, 2011, IBM announced the Smarter Computing framework to support Smarter Planet. Among the various components of the Smarter Computing foundation, cloud computing is a critical piece.
In 2012, Dr. Biju John and Dr. Souheil Khaddaj describe the cloud as a virtualized, semantic source of information: "Cloud computing is a universal collection of data which extends over the internet in the form of resources (such as information hardware, various platforms, services etc.) and forms individual units within the virtualization environment.
What Is Cloud Computing?
Personal cloud computing means having every piece of data you need for every aspect of your life at your fingertips and ready for use. Data must be mobile, transferable, and instantly accessible. The key to enabling the portable and interactive you is the ability to synch up your data among your devices, as well as access to shared data. Shared data is the data we access online in any number of places, such as social networks, banks, blogs, newsrooms, paid communities, etc.
Ultimately, your personal cloud—which includes everything from your address book and music collection to your reports and documents for work—will connect to the public cloud and other personal clouds. Everything connects. That means every place on the Internet you interact with, as well as every person you interact with can be connected.
USES OF CLOUD COMPUTING
Some of the user benefits of cloud computing are:
1. Users only pay for the services that they consume.
2. Since several people will be using a single computing resource, software licensing will be simplified.
3. Users need not worry about upgrading and maintaining the software. This will be handled by the cloud service provider.
4. Users need not purchase expensive PCs with huge, monolithic operating systems. They will only need to implement a simple PC – perhaps just a “net-book” PC running the new Google OS – to access the powerful applications running in the cloud. These simple inexpensive PCs are known as “thin clients.”
5. Extremely low power thin clients may be used to access cloud resources, thus saving on power consumption.
6. Thin clients need not have advanced software, so there will be fewer dead PCs in our landfills.
7. Users may enjoy ubiquitous access to their applications, whether they’re in a hotel bar or sitting at home in front of the TV.
TYPES OF CLOUD COMPUTING
Public cloud
Public cloud applications, storage, and other resources are made available to the general public by a service provider. These services are free or offered on a pay-per-use model. Generally, public cloud service providers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft and Google own and operate the infrastructure and offer access only via Internet (direct connectivity is not offered).
Community cloud
Community cloud shares infrastructure between several organizations from a specific community with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.), whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. The costs are spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a private cloud), so only some of the cost savings potential of cloud computing are realized.hybrid cloud
Hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models.
By utilizing "hybrid cloud" architecture, companies and individuals are able to obtain degrees of fault tolerance combined with locally immediate usability without dependency on internet connectivity. Hybrid cloud architecture requires both on-premises resources and off-site (remote) server-based cloud infrastructure.
Hybrid clouds lack the flexibility, security and certainty of in-house applications. Hybrid cloud provides the flexibility of in house applications with the fault tolerance and scalability of cloud based services.
Private cloud
Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. Undertaking a private cloud project requires a significant level and degree of engagement to virtualize the business environment, and it will require the organization to reevaluate decisions about existing resources. When it is done right, it can have a positive impact on a business, but every one of the steps in the project raises security issues that must be addressed in order to avoid serious vulnerabilities.They have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and manage them" and thus do not benefit from less hands-on management, essentially "[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept".
CLOUD ENGINEERING-SAVE HUMANITY!!!
Experiments should be carried out into creating artificial clouds to fight global warming, scientists have argued. Clouds generated by special ships at sea would reflect solar heat back into space, so serving to cool the planet. In fact that's exactly what is happening, so - assuming for the moment that global warming is a real and terrible menace
In essence the idea would be to exploit the already-known phenomenon of "ship clouds", where vessels underway at sea find a long trail of cloud forming behind them. At the moment this is generally a case of water droplets coalescing around particulates emitted from the ship's exhaust funnel, but this would be impractical and polluting on a scale that could affect the global climate.
Rather, the idea being touted here is to use special vessels which would spout huge amounts of sea salt particles - generated from the ocean - into the air as they went along. Water droplets should then form around the particles, creating long-lived clouds that wouldn't have any polluting qualities
CLOUD COMPUTING SECURITY
As cloud computing is achieving increased popularity, concerns are being voiced about the security issues introduced through adoption of this new model. The effectiveness and efficiency of traditional protection mechanisms are being reconsidered as the characteristics of this innovative deployment model can differ widely from those of traditional architectures. An alternative perspective on the topic of cloud security is that this is but another, although quite broad, case of "applied security" and that similar security principles that apply in shared multi-user mainframe security models apply with cloud security.The relative security of cloud computing services is a contentious issue that may be delaying its adoption. Physical control of the Private Cloud equipment is more secure than having the equipment off site and under someone else’s control. Physical control and the ability to visually inspect the data links and access ports is required in order to ensure data links are not compromised. Issues barring the adoption of cloud computing are due in large part to the private and public sectors' unease surrounding the external management of security-based services. It is the very nature of cloud computing-based services, private or public, that promote external management of provided services.
Cloud Computing Architecture
· The Cloud Computing Architecture of a cloud solution is the structure of the system, which comprises of on-premise and cloud resources, services, middleware, and software components, their geo-location, their externally visible properties and the relationships between them.
- Cloud architecture typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over a loose coupling mechanism such as a messaging queue. Elastic provisioning implies intelligence in the use of tight or loose coupling of cloud resources, services, middleware, and software components.
- In the area of cloud computing, protection depends on having the right architecture for the right application. Organizations must understand the individual requirements of their applications, and if already using a cloud platform, understand the corresponding cloud architecture.
- A cloud computing architecture consists of a front end and a back end. They connect to each other through a network, usually the Internet. The front end is the side the computer user, or client, sees. The back end is the “cloud” section of the system.
- Advantages of Cloud computing Architecture:
- reduced administration effort
- contract flexibility (pay as you go)
- availability and elasticity
Cloud computing's the future
The view of cloud computing remains mixed as the technology brings benefits and risks in equal measures
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