Cloud Computing

Project Report
Imad Boustany
Jean Matar
Hala Nakhle
Mohammad Tekko

Page 1 of 31
 Table of Contents
.................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Cloud Computing.........................................................................................................................................1
1- Definition:...............................................................................................................................................5
2- Cloud History:.........................................................................................................................................6
3- Cloud Architecture..................................................................................................................................7
4- Types of Cloud........................................................................................................................................8
4.1- Private cloud.....................................................................................................................................8
4.1.1- Advantages:..............................................................................................................................8
4.1.2- Disadvantages:..........................................................................................................................8
4.2- Public Cloud......................................................................................................................................8
4.2.1- Advantages:..............................................................................................................................9
4.2.2- Disadvantages:..........................................................................................................................9
4.3- Hybrid Cloud...................................................................................................................................10
4.4- Multi-Cloud / Multi Hybrid-clouds:.................................................................................................11
4.4.1- Advantages:............................................................................................................................11
4.4.2- Challenges:..............................................................................................................................11
4.5- Community Cloud...........................................................................................................................12
4.6- Personal Cloud................................................................................................................................12
5- Cloud Problems:....................................................................................................................................13
6- Service Models......................................................................................................................................15
6.1- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS):...................................................................................................15
...........................................................................................................................................................15
6.1.1- Definition:...............................................................................................................................15
6.1.2- Advantages:............................................................................................................................15
6.2- Platform as a service (PaaS)............................................................................................................16
6.2.1- Definition:...............................................................................................................................16
6.2.2- Advantages:............................................................................................................................17
6.3- Software as a service (SaaS)...........................................................................................................18
6.3.1- Definition:...............................................................................................................................18
6.3.2- Advantages:............................................................................................................................18
7- What are containers?...........................................................................................................................19
7.1- Containers vs. VMs.........................................................................................................................19

Page 2 of 31
 7.2- Benefits of Containers....................................................................................................................20
7.3- Use Cases of Containers.................................................................................................................21
7.4- What is Docker?.............................................................................................................................22
7.5- What is Kubernetes and why do we use it with Docker?................................................................22
8- Key Differences Between AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud...................................................................23
8.1- Availability zones:...........................................................................................................................24
8.2- Market Share:.................................................................................................................................24
8.3- Downtime and recovery:................................................................................................................25
8.4- Pricing:............................................................................................................................................25
8.5- Services:.........................................................................................................................................25
8.5.1- AWS Route:.............................................................................................................................25
8.5.2- AWS Cloud Watch:..................................................................................................................25
8.5.3- Cloud build:.............................................................................................................................26
8.5.4- Cloud Security Scanner:..........................................................................................................26
8.5.5- Network Watcher:..................................................................................................................26
8.5.6- Azure Active Directory:...........................................................................................................27
8.6- Latest Innovations in the cloud:.....................................................................................................27
9- Security in the Cloud:............................................................................................................................28
10- References..........................................................................................................................................30

Table of Figures
Page 3 of 31
Figure 1 - Cloud Computing Definition........................................................................................................5
Figure 2- Microsoft Azure............................................................................................................................5
Figure 3- Google Cloud................................................................................................................................5
Figure 4- Amazon web services...................................................................................................................5
Figure 5- History of the Cloud......................................................................................................................7
Figure 6- Cloud Architecture........................................................................................................................7
Figure 7- Public Cloud VS Private Cloud.......................................................................................................9
Figure 8- Hybrid Cloud...............................................................................................................................11
Figure 9- Multi-Hybrid Cloud.....................................................................................................................12
Figure 10- Personal Cloud..........................................................................................................................13
Figure 11- Cloud Problems........................................................................................................................13
Figure 12- Disadvantages of the Cloud......................................................................................................14
Figure 13- Infrastructure as a Service........................................................................................................15
Figure 14- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)..............................................................................................16
Figure 15- Platform as a Service................................................................................................................16
Figure 16- Platform as a Service (PaaS)......................................................................................................17
Figure 17- Software as a Service................................................................................................................18
Figure 18- Software as a Service (SaaS).....................................................................................................19
Figure 19- Containers VS Virtual Machines................................................................................................20
Figure 20- Virtual Machine VS Docker.......................................................................................................21
Figure 21- Life of an application................................................................................................................22
Figure 22- Scalability of an application......................................................................................................23
Figure 23- AWS VS AZURE VS GOOGLE......................................................................................................23
Figure 24- Market Share Analytics.............................................................................................................24
Figure 25- AWS Services............................................................................................................................25
Figure 26- Google Services........................................................................................................................26
Figure 27- Azure Services...........................................................................................................................26
Figure 28- Google Stadia............................................................................................................................27
Figure 29- Azure N-Series..........................................................................................................................28
Figure 30- Azure DXC Technology..............................................................................................................28
Figure 31- SECaaS Category.......................................................................................................................29
Figure 32- Azure Sentinel Objectives.........................................................................................................30

1- Definition:
Cloud Computing is a steadily maturing model for providing on-demand IT resources as a service over
the Internet. This new computing paradigm, emerged initially as a solution for hosting large-scale online
applications (e.g. social networking, web search and video gaming), has rapidly revolutionized the IT
industry and enabled new trends of delivering, managing and consuming IT capabilities. With the rapid

Page 4 of 31
evolution of Internet and virtualization technologies and the support of Leader IT companies, the long-
held dream of "Computing as utility" has finally come true and Cloud Computing has become one of the
fastest growing fields in IT.

Figure 1 - Cloud Computing Definition

Nowadays there are a lot of companies that provide Cloud

computing services and we can distinguish 3 leaders that are innovating and changing the game:

Page 5 of 31
Figure 3- Microsoft Azure Figure 4- Google Cloud Figure 2- Amazon web services

2- Cloud History:
1955: According to popular myth, John McCarthy, the computer scientist who coined the term artificial
intelligence', dreamed up the concept of computing time-sharing. In those days computing cost
millions of dollars, so McCarthy came up with the idea of renting time-shared computing resources to
companies who couldn't afford the technology. This is regarded as the beginning of the cloud concept.

1969: J.C.R Licklider developed ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a network that
eventually became the basis of the Internet. Using McCarthy's initial concept, Licklider's vision was "for
everyone on the globe to be interconnected and accessing programs and data at any site, from
anywhere"

1972: IBM developed its mainframe VM/370 or Virtual Machine Facility/370, system in 1972. Using the
Hercules Emulator program, scientists were able to access the VM/370 in multiple virtual machine states
all from a single system.

1980-1989: Throughout the 1980s the home V computer boom and improved communications
technology saw consumers and business users accessing remote resources via 300 bits-per-second
modems. Ethernet was standardized and through MS-DOS, Novell and other companies, resources
housed on servers elsewhere in the world became accessible to all through Bulletin Boards and the like.

1990-1998: The Internet grew exponentially throughout the 90s. As a result, the first instance of the
term 'cloud computing' was used by a group of Compaq Computer engineers. It was in a 1996
presentation entitled 'Internet Solution Division Strategy for Cloud Computing' and was a vision for the
company's future business model.

1999: In 1999 the cloud computing concept began in earnest, with the launch of Salesforce.com.
Salesforce used the now maturing Internet to offer shared sales information for a company, along with
collaboration, storage and reporting through a web-based portal. This paved the way for other
companies to deliver both apps and improved content over the Internet.

2002: Another major milestone in the cloud's history was the launch of Amazon Web Services in 2002.
This service provided a cloud-based suite of resources that ticked every aspect of the cloud definition. It
was easily expanded, offered storage, computation and virtualization.

2006: Expanding on the Web Services model, Amazon launched its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in
2006. EC2 was designed to provide scalable resources in the cloud, with users being able to configure
the service with minimal management.

2006-2012: Google's growth and domination of the Internet saw the company release its Google Apps
cloud-based services in 2006. Later, in 2011, Apple announced its own cloud storage solution, Apple

Page 6 of 31
iCloud and in 2012 Google Drive was launched, bringing together all the cloud definitions under a
single service.

2012-2017: The use of more powerful mobile devices, better networks and faster access to the Internet
has resulted in a huge cloud boom in recent years. It is estimated that at the end of 2016, money spent
on cloud services was in the region of $1.4 trillion and that growth isn't looking to slow down anytime
soon.

Figure 5- History of the Cloud

3- Cloud Architecture

Figure 6- Cloud Architecture

Page 7 of 31
The Front End consists of the client part of the system which represents the users who are accessing the
Cloud Components through an interface or through the application such as web browser or mobile
application over the Internet.

Back End represents the cloud itself. It consists of the resources required to deliver the cloud computing
services such as virtual machines, storage account, network, security mechanism, services etc. Back End
component is under the provider’s control and it’s the primary responsibility of back-end component to
manage the traffic control, provide built-in security mechanism, and protocol.

4- Types of Cloud
In order to fully understand the work mechanism of the cloud, it is necessary to introduce the different
types of deployment. Here are the following common ways to utilize the cloud.

4.1- Private cloud

A private cloud is a form of cloud computing that is used by only one organization, or that ensures that
an organization is completely isolated from others. The company owns or leases its cloud infrastructure,
it manipulates and manages all aspects related to it and architects it to meet the organization’s specific
needs.

The main benefits organizations can attain by running their IT systems in a private cloud environment
are flexibility, guaranteed resource availability, strong security, and regulatory compliance, and in some
cases, cost savings.

4.1.1- Advantages:
 Security. Your data and applications remain behind your firewall and are accessible only to your
enterprise—making private clouds better suited for processing or storing sensitive data.
 Potentially lower Total cost of ownership. Through lower Operation Expense over time.
 Greater control and customization. Fit your servers to your enterprise’s preferences.
 Flexibility. Ability to move non-sensitive data to a public cloud to accommodate sudden bursts
of demand on your private cloud.

4.1.2- Disadvantages:
 Higher costs. Increased initial charges and the need to repay costs of the equipment you
purchase.
 Responsibility. For operating and maintaining your own data center, IT hardware, and enterprise
software—as well as your own security and compliance.
 Less flexibility. In scaling IT resources up or down as your needs change.

4.2- Public Cloud

Page 8 of 31
‘Public’ cloud is defined by Gartner as “a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT-enabled
capabilities are provided as a service to external customers using Internet technologies.” It is generally
offered on a pay-per-use model, as a multi-tenant environment, meaning data for multiple organizations
may reside on the same physical server. While this can create economies of scale and cost savings, this is
not always the case.

The cloud service provider is held responsible for all management and maintenance of the system.
Public clouds can also be deployed faster than on-premises infrastructures and with an almost infinitely
scalable platform. Every employee of a company can uses the same application from any office or
branch using their device of choice as long as they can access the Internet. While security concerns have
been raised over public cloud environments, when implemented correctly, the public cloud can be as
secure as the most effectively managed private cloud implementation if the provider uses proper
security methods, such as intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS).

4.2.1- Advantages:
 Scalability (both up and down). Almost unlimited due to on-demand cloud resources.
 Lower capital expenditure (capex). You don’t need to purchase all your own data center
equipment.
 Reliability. Due to services distributed across multiple data centers.

4.2.2- Disadvantages:
 Less control over data security. You never know where—and under what geographic or other
restrictions—your data is operating.
 Higher operational expenditure (opex). As you scale performance, your cost-per-hour fees rise.

Page 9 of 31
4.3- Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-
party, public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms. By allowing workloads to
move between private and public clouds as computing needs and costs change, hybrid cloud gives
businesses greater flexibility and more data deployment options.

Hybrid cloud is used in different scenarios discussed below:

 Dynamic or frequently changing workloads. Use an easily scalable public cloud for your
dynamic workloads, while leaving less volatile, or more sensitive, workloads to a private cloud or
on-premises data center.
 Separating critical workloads from less-sensitive workloads. You might store sensitive financial
or customer information on your private cloud, and use a public cloud to run the rest of your
enterprise applications.
 Big data processing. It’s Figure 7- Public Cloud VS Private Cloud unlikely that you process big
data continuously at a near-constant volume. Instead,
you could run some of your big data analytics using highly scalable public cloud resources, while
also using a private cloud to ensure data security and keep sensitive big data behind your
firewall.
 Moving to the cloud incrementally, at your own pace. Put some of your workloads on a public
cloud or on a small-scale private cloud. See what works for your enterprise, and continue
expanding your cloud presence as needed—on public clouds, private clouds, or a mixture of the
two.
 Temporary processing capacity needs. A hybrid cloud lets you allocate public cloud resources
for short-term projects, at a lower cost than if you used your own data center’s IT infrastructure.
That way, you don’t overinvest in equipment you’ll need only temporarily.
 Flexibility for the future. No matter how well you plan to meet today’s needs, unless you have a
crystal ball, you won’t know how your needs might change next month or next year. A hybrid
cloud approach lets you match your actual data management requirements to the public cloud,
private cloud, or on-premises resources that are best able to handle them.

Best of both worlds. Unless you have clear-cut needs, fulfilled by only a public cloud solution or only
a private cloud solution, why limit your options? Choose a hybrid cloud approach, and you can tap
the advantages of both worlds simultaneously.

Page 10 of 31
 Figure 8- Hybrid Cloud

4.4- Multi-Cloud / Multi Hybrid-clouds:

Multi-cloud is a form of hybrid cloud, but it's a specialized term used to connote running in multiple
different public cloud environments. 

4.4.1- Advantages:
 Multi-cloud strategy allows an organization to meet specific workload or application
requirements – both technically and commercially – by consuming cloud services from several
cloud providers.
 IT may see geographic benefits to using multiple providers, to address app latency concerns.
 Vendor lock-in concerns and possible cloud provider outages are two issues that pop up
frequently when IT leaders advocate for multi-cloud strategy.

4.4.2- Challenges:
 Choosing the right vendor for the right service, and the orchestrator that will manage inter
system communications. “Not all clouds or cloud providers are created equal. So, challenges
arise from having to deal with different management portals and processes”
 Doing the initial migration as it is critical for safe and stable operations.

Page 11 of 31
 Figure 9- Multi-Hybrid Cloud

4.5- Community Cloud

A community cloud allows multiple independent entities to acquire cost benefits in a shared non-public
cloud. It is a component in public cloud, deployed on certain range of area and formed as a community.
This model has enormous potential for companies or organizations that are subject to identical
regulatory, compliance, or legal restriction (Winkler, 2011). Community clouds are usually built in the
place where users have similar requirements, offering unified services. For example, in university towns,
the users are teachers, students, and staff from all kinds of universities, research facilities, and service
agencies. The services include cloud hosts, cloud servers, cloud storage, and a cloud datacenter.

4.6- Personal Cloud

A personal cloud is a form of cloud storage for home users to store data. Although mainly designed for
sharing photos, videos and documents, personal clouds often also provide streaming options for
multimedia. A personal cloud works much like a private cloud but with more control.

The primary type of home cloud is a NAS Device Cloud: A network-attached storage (NAS) device is a
computer connected to a network that provides only file-based data storage services to other devices
on the network. Although it may technically be possible to run other software on a NAS device, it is not
designed to be a general-purpose server. Cloud NAS is remote storage that is accessed over the Internet
as if it were local. (Synology, Qnap…)

Page 12 of 31
for example: Synology NAS allows DSM users to connect to their Synology NAS in the most intuitive,
painless, and flexible way possible and protects their important data in a dedicated data center, offering
a large variety of additional services like WordPress, PhpMyAdmin, VPN Server, Mail server…) allowing
users to host services from their home.

Figure 10- Personal Cloud

5- Cloud Problems:
The cloud may sound like the ideal solution to any company or individual’s technology needs. With the
responsibility of entire company fortunes and user’s private data, cloud providers do their best to limit
problems but they do appear from time to time.

Some of these problems:

Downtime: Downtime is considered as one of the biggest potential

downsides of using Cloud Computing. The cloud providers may
sometimes face technical outages that can happen due to various
reasons, such as loss of power, low Internet connectivity, data centers
going out of service for maintenance, etc. This can lead to a
temporary downtime in the cloud service.
Figure 11- Cloud Problems
Network connectivity dependency: Cloud Computing is entirely
dependent on the Internet. This direct tie-up with the Internet means
that a company needs to have reliable and consistent Internet service as well as a fast connection and
bandwidth to reap the benefits of Cloud Computing.

Vendor lock-in: When in need to migrate from one cloud platform to another, a company might face
some serious challenges because of the differences between vendor platforms. Hosting and running the
applications of the current cloud platform on some other platform may cause support issues,

Page 13 of 31
configuration complexities, and additional expenses. The company data might also be left vulnerable to
security attacks due to compromises that might have been made during migrations.

Limited control: Cloud customers may face limited control over their deployments. Cloud services run
on remote servers that are completely owned and managed by service providers, which makes it hard
for the companies to have the level of control that they would want over their back-end infrastructure.

Contract woes: although the situation is getting better, you, as a company or user, are at the mercy of
the cloud provider’s terms and conditions. If you need cloud access 99% of the time but the provider
only offers 80%, then you’re stuck with the contract or you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Government access: naturally, the government will require a warrant but some cloud providers can’t do
anything when issued. Microsoft, for example, has moved some services to different jurisdictions to
avoid U.S government intervention.

Vulnerability to attacks: Storing data in the cloud may pose serious challenges of information theft since
in the cloud every data of a company is online. Security breach is something that even the best
organizations have suffered from and it’s a potential risk in the cloud as well. Although advanced
security measures are deployed on the cloud, still storing confidential data in the cloud can be a risky
affair.

Figure 12- Disadvantages of the Cloud

Page 14 of 31
6- Service Models
Cloud computing is providing developers and IT departments with the ability to focus on what matters
most and avoid undifferentiated work like procurement, maintenance, and capacity planning. As cloud
computing has grown in popularity, several different models and deployment strategies have emerged
to help meet specific needs of different users. Each type of cloud service, and deployment method,
provides you with different levels of control, flexibility, and management. Understanding the differences
between Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service can help you decide
what set of services is right for your needs.

6.1- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS):

Figure 13- Infrastructure as a Service

6.1.1- Definition:
IaaS stands for "infrastructure as a service." It refers to cloud-based infrastructure resources
that are delivered to organizations via virtualization technology that help organizations build
and manage their servers, network, operating systems, and data storage. IaaS customers can
control their own data infrastructure without having to physically manage it on-site. Instead,
they can access and store data on servers via a dashboard or API (application programming
interface).
6.1.2- Advantages:
 Extensibility: Resources are available as soon as the customer needs them, so there is no
delay in expanding capacity or wasting unused capacity.
 No investment in material: The underlying physical hardware supporting an IaaS service is
installed and maintained by the cloud provider. In fact, this will save time and money for
the customer.
 Price model based on usage: The service is available on demand and the customer only
pays for the resources he actually uses.
 Independence of the location: It is possible to access the service from any location as long
as it has an Internet connection and the security of the Cloud allows it.
 Physical security of data center sites: The services accessed by the cloud hosted externally
with the cloud provider benefit from the physical security of the servers hosted in a data
center.
 No single point of failure: In the event of a server or network switch failure, the service is
unaffected by the multitude of hardware resources and redundancy configurations. For

Page 15 of 31
 many services, if an entire data center were to be offline, the IaaS service would continue
to work without problems.

Examples: Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, Google Compute Engine, Amazon elastic container
service, Azure Kubernetes Service, Google Kubernetes engine.

6.2- Platform as a service (PaaS)

6.2.1- Definition: Figure 15- Platform as a Service

PaaS stand for “platform as a service.” It refers to cloud-based platform services that provide developers
with a framework they can use to build custom applications upon. In this way, PaaS isn't delivering
software over the internet, but it is providing an online platform that's accessible to different developers
to  create  software delivered over the internet. PaaS products let developers build custom applications
online without having to deal with data serving, storage, and management.

6.2.2- Advantages:

 No need to invest in a physical infrastructure: Customers only have to rent the resources they
need, rather than investing in a fixed capacity they will not use, creating waste. This allows them
to focus on developing their applications.
 Support for different programming languages: PaaS cloud services usually support multiple
programming languages, giving developers an opportunity to deliver various projects, from
startup to enterprise solutions, on the same platform.
 Customers have control over the tools installed on their platforms and are free to create a
platform that meets their specific requirements. They can choose the necessary features.
 Adaptability: It is possible to modify the functionalities according to the circumstances.
 Easy collaboration for remote and distributed teams: PaaS gives enormous collaboration
capabilities to remote and distributed teams. Outsourcing and freelancing are common today,
and many software development teams are comprised of specialists who live in different parts
of the world. PaaS services allow them to access the same software architecture from anywhere
and at any time.
 Security: The PaaS service also includes security, including data security, backup and recovery.

Page 16 of 31
 Examples: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Google App Engine

6.3- Software as a service (SaaS)

Figure 17- Software as a Service

6.3.1- Definition:
SaaS stands for software as a service. It refers to cloud-based software that is hosted online by a
company and is available for purchase on the subscription basis and is delivered via the internet. SaaS
products are among the most commonly-used cloud computing services used by companies to build and
grow their businesses. SaaS is easy to use and manage, and it's highly scalable, as it doesn't need to be
downloaded and installed on individual devices in order to deploy it to an entire team or company. This
is particularly helpful for distributed global teams of people who don't work in close physical proximity.

6.3.2- Advantages:
 No additional equipment costs: The processing power needed to run the applications is
provided by the cloud provider.
 No installation fees: Applications are ready to use as soon as the user has subscribed to the
subscription.
 Pay-as-you-go: If the user only needs the software for a limited period, he only pays for this
period and generally, it is possible to terminate subscriptions at any time.
 Scalable use: For example, if a user needs more storage or additional services, he or she can
access them on demand without having to install new software or hardware.
 Automatic software updates: When a new update is available, the user can access it directly
online, often for free. No new software is needed, as often happens with other types of
applications, and updates are usually automatically deployed by the cloud provider.

Page 17 of 31
  Inter-compatibility between equipment’s: SaaS applications can be accessed from any device
that has an Internet connection, which is ideal for those who use many devices, such as phones
and tablets with internet access, and those who do not always use the same computer.
 App Personalization: It is possible to customize some software, which means that they can be
modified to match the needs and brand of a particular customer.

Figure 18- Software as a Service (SaaS)

Examples: Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365.

7- What are containers?

Containers are an executable unit of software in which application code is packaged, along with its
libraries and dependencies, in common ways so that it can be run anywhere, whether it be on desktop
or the cloud. To do this, containers take advantage of a form of operating system virtualization in which
features of the OS are leveraged to both isolate processes and control the amount of CPU, memory, and
disk that those processes have access to. Containers are small, fast, and portable because unlike a
virtual machine, containers do not need include a guest OS in every instance and can, instead, simply
leverage the features and resources of the host OS. Containers first appeared decades ago with versions
like FreeBSD Jails and AIX Workload Partitions, but most modern developers remember 2013 as the start
of the modern container era with the introduction of Docker.

7.1- Containers vs. VMs

The easiest way to understand a container is to understand how it differs from a traditional virtual
machine (VM). In traditional virtualization—whether it be on-premises or in the cloud—a hypervisor is

Page 18 of 31
leveraged to virtualize physical hardware. Each VM then contains a guest OS, a virtual copy of the
hardware that the OS requires to run, along with an application and its associated libraries and
dependencies.

Instead of virtualizing the underlying hardware, containers virtualize the operating system (typically
Linux) so each individual container contains only the application and its libraries and dependencies. The
absence of the guest OS is why containers are so lightweight and, thus, fast and portable.

Figure 19- Containers VS Virtual Machines

7.2- Benefits of Containers

The primary advantage of containers, especially compared to a VM, is providing a level of abstraction
that makes them lightweight and portable.

Lightweight: Containers share the machine OS kernel, eliminating the need for a full OS instance per
application and making container files small and easy on resources. Their smaller size, especially
compared to virtual machines, means they can spin up quickly and better support cloud-
native applications that scale horizontally.  

Portable and platform independent: Containers carry all their dependencies with them, meaning that
software can be written once and then run without needing to be re-configured across laptops, cloud,
and on-premises computing environments.

Page 19 of 31
Supports modern development and architecture: Due to a combination of their deployment
portability/consistency across platforms and their small size, containers are an ideal fit for modern
development and application patterns—such as DevOps, server less, and micro services—that are built
are regular code deployments in small increments.

Improves utilization: Like VMs before them, containers enable developers and operators to improve
CPU and memory utilization of physical machines. Where containers go even further is that because
they also enable micro service architectures, application components can be deployed and scaled more
granularly, an attractive alternative to having to scale up an entire monolithic application because a
single component is struggling with load.

7.3- Use Cases of Containers

Containers are becoming increasingly prominent, especially in cloud environments. Many organizations
are even considering containers as a replacement of VMs as the general-purpose compute platform for
their applications and workloads. But within that very broad scope, there are key use cases where
containers are especially relevant.

Micro services: Containers are small and lightweight, which makes them a good match for micro service
architectures where applications are constructed of many, loosely coupled and independently
deployable smaller services.

DevOps: The combination of micro services as an architecture and containers as a platform is a common
foundation for many teams that embrace DevOps as the way they build, ship and run software.

Hybrid, multi-cloud: Because containers can run consistently anywhere, across laptop, on-premises and
cloud environments, they are an ideal underlying architecture for hybrid cloud and multi-cloud scenarios
where organizations find themselves operating across a mix of multiple public clouds in combination
with their own data center.

Application modernizing and migration: One of the most common approaches to modernizing
applications starts by containerizing them so that they can be migrated to the cloud. 

Page 20 of 31
7.4- What is Docker?

Docker is currently the most popular container platform. Docker appeared on the market at the right
time, and was open source from the beginning, which likely led to its current market domination. 30% of
enterprises currently use Docker in their AWS environment and that number continues to grow. When
most people talk about Docker, they are talking about Docker Engine, the runtime that allows you to
build and run containers.

While Docker provided an open standard for packaging and distributing containerized applications,
there arose a new problem. How would all of these containers be coordinated and scheduled? How do
you seamlessly upgrade an application without any interruption of service? How do you monitor the
health of an application, know when something goes wrong and seamlessly restart it? 

Figure 20- Virtual Machine VS Docker

Page 21 of 31
 Figure 21- Life of an application

Solutions for orchestrating containers soon emerged. Kubernetes and Docker Swarm are some of the
more popular options for providing an abstraction to make a cluster of machines behave like one big
machine, which is vital in a large-scale environment.

7.5- What is Kubernetes and why do we use it with Docker?

Kubernetes is the container orchestrator that was developed at Google which has been donated to the
CNCF and is now open source. It has the advantage of leveraging Google’s years of expertise in container
management. It is a comprehensive system for automating deployment, scheduling and scaling of
containerized applications, and supports many containerization tools such as Docker.

Kubernetes, at its basic level, is a system for running and coordinating containerized applications across
a cluster of machines. It is a platform designed to completely manage the life cycle of containerized
applications and services using methods that provide predictability, scalability, and high availability.

Page 22 of 31
As a Kubernetes user, you can define how your applications should run and the ways they should be
able to interact with other applications or the outside world. You can scale your services up or down,
perform graceful rolling updates, and switch traffic between different versions of your applications to
test features or rollback problematic deployments. Kubernetes provides interfaces and composable
platform primitives that allow you to define and manage your applications with high degrees of
flexibility, power, and reliability.

Figure 22- Scalability of an application

Page 23 of 31
8- Key Differences Between AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud

The most defining cloud battle of the present time is AWS vs Azure vs Google. Choosing one public cloud
from AWS, Azure or Google is the most difficult task for the one who wants to enter and grow in the
cloud world.

8.1- Availability zones:

Availability zones are the isolated locations with data center regions from which public cloud services
originate and operate and the regions and geographic locations in the data centers of public cloud
service providers reside. Cloud administrators also choose to replicate the data among different
availability zones to decrease latency and to secure resources. AWS has 55 availability zones with 8 more
zones on the way. Microsoft Azure has 44 availability zones with 12 more on the way. Google has 18
availability zones with 3 more on the way. Probably, AWS will be the most popular and dominant public
cloud provider in the world.
Figure 23- AWS VS AZURE VS GOOGLE
8.2- Market Share:

AWS is leading with around 30 percent of public cloud share in its name. Microsoft Azure is on the
second place, owning around 16 percent of the worldwide market share. Google, on the third place,
owns up to 10 percent of the market share worldwide. Even though both Microsoft Azure and GCP are

lagging behind AWS, when it comes to market shares, they have shown tremendous growth rate. The
following graph shows that, as of 2019, GCP has shown a growth rate of 83 percent while Microsoft
Azure is at the second place with 75 percent of growth rate and AWS, at the third place, with 41 percent
of growth rate.

Page 24 of 31
 Figure 24- Market Share Analytics

8.3- Downtime and recovery:

For AWS and Azure, it is a strategy which allows site recovery by orchestrating and automating the
replication process of virtual machines between regions. GCP doesn’t have any disaster recovery service.

8.4- Pricing:

AWS charges its users per hour. It uses pay as you go model. Azure and Google cloud charges its
customers as per minute.

8.5- Services:

AWS providers offer more than 200 services, azure offers plus than 100 services and google offers plus
than 60 services. Let’s talk about the primary services like networking, management tools, development
tools and security:

Page 25 of 31
 Figure 25- AWS Services
8.5.1- AWS Route: Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable
cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service. It is designed to give developers and businesses an
extremely reliable and cost-effective way to route end users to Internet applications.

8.5.2- AWS Cloud Watch: Amazon Cloud Watch is a monitoring and observability service built for
DevOps engineers, developers, site reliability engineers (SREs), and IT managers. Cloud Watch provides
you with data and actionable insights to monitor your applications, respond to system-wide
performance changes, optimize resource utilization, and get a unified view of operational health. Cloud
Watch collects monitoring and operational data in the form of logs, metrics, and events, providing you
with a unified view of AWS resources, applications, and services that run on AWS and on-premises
servers.

Figure 26- Google Services

8.5.3- Cloud build: Cloud Build is a service that executes your builds on Google Cloud Platform
infrastructure. Cloud Build can import source code from Google Cloud Storage, Cloud Source
Repositories, GitHub, or Bit bucket, execute a build to your specifications, and produce artifacts such as
Docker containers or Java archives.

Page 26 of 31
8.5.4- Cloud Security Scanner: Web Security Scanner identifies security vulnerabilities in your App
Engine, Compute Engine, and Google Kubernetes Engine web applications. It crawls your application,
following all links within the scope of your starting URLs, and attempts to exercise as many user inputs
and event handlers as possible.

Figure 27- Azure Services

8.5.5- Network Watcher: Azure Network Watcher provides tools to
monitor, diagnose, view metrics, and enable or disable logs for resources in
an Azure virtual network. Network Watcher is designed to monitor and repair the network health of IaaS
(Infrastructure-as-a-Service) products which includes Virtual Machines, Virtual Networks, Application
Gateways, Load balancers, etc. Note: It is not intended for and will not work for PaaS monitoring or Web
analytics.

8.5.6- Azure Active Directory: Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft's cloud-based identity and
access management service, which helps your employees sign in and access resources in: External
resources, such as Microsoft Office 365, the Azure portal, and thousands of other SaaS applications

8.6- Latest Innovations in the cloud:

Google stadia: is a cloud gaming service operated by Google. It is said to be capable of streaming video
games up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second with support for high-dynamic-range, to players via
the company's numerous data centers across the globe, provided they are using a sufficiently high-
speed Internet connection. It is accessible through the Google Chrome web browser on desktop
computers, or through smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, digital media players, and Chromecast.
Launched November 19,
2019.

Page 27 of 31
 Figure 28- Google Stadia

EMP for Windows Server: EMP is a new program that helps customers
migrate your legacy applications from Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2008 R2 to newer, supported
versions on AWS, without any refactoring. The EMP technology decouples the applications from the
underlying OS, enabling AWS Partners or AWS Professional Services to migrate your critical applications
to a newer, supported version of Windows Server on AWS.   Launched on Dec 1, 2019

AWS Single Sign-on: Customers can now connect Azure Active Directory to AWS Single Sign-on (SSO)
once, manage permissions to AWS centrally in AWS SSO, and enable users to sign in using Azure AD to
access assigned AWS accounts and applications. This makes it easier for administrators to grant access
to their existing users and groups, and provides users the convenience of the sign-in experience they
know from Office 365 with single-click access to assigned AWS accounts.  

Bring your own IP: Google announced major new networking functionality. Support for Bring Your Own
IP (BYOIP) allows you to accelerate your cloud migration by carrying over your existing IP addresses to
Google’s network infrastructure across all our 20 regions—Google is the first cloud provider to make this
feature globally available.

Azure, N-series:  to further boost the performance of our world-class cloud infrastructure, Microsoft
announced the N-series, a new family of Azure Virtual Machines with GPU capabilities. GPUs are ideal
for compute and graphics-intensive workloads, helping
customers to fuel innovation through scenarios like
remote visualization, high performance computing and
analytics. Available in preview within the next few
months, the N-series will feature the NVIDIA Tesla
Accelerated Computing Platform as well as NVIDIA
GRID 2.0 technology, providing the highest-end
graphics support available in the cloud today. Figure 29- Azure N-Series

Expanding the Azure Data Box offering: Azure Data Box, a secure, easy to manage appliance to help
organizations overcome data transfer barriers that can block productivity and slow innovation. The Data
Box Disk is an SSD-disk based option to move data, no matter where it resides, into Azure with ease. It’s
especially well-suited for data transfer from multiple remote branches or offices. Customers can order
up to five 8TB drives, totaling 40TB, for a recurring or one-time data migration.

Page 28 of 31
Azure- DXC Technology: DXC Technology’s Healthcare Cloud enables clients to securely and quickly
embrace the benefits of an intelligent cloud platform — reducing complexity and risk, while allowing
approved parties to securely access applications and data 24x7. The platform helps shift next-generation
healthcare from reactive treatment to proactive care and wellness models that leverage precision
medicine techniques. DXC Healthcare Cloud facilitates innovation and integrates care services from
multiple organizations through a next-generation infrastructure platform based on Microsoft Azure. It
also delivers the tools and processes to support regulatory requirements while enabling secure and
compliant cross- organizational data sharing.

Figure 30- Azure DXC Technology

9- Security in the Cloud:

Cloud security is vital, for both business and personal users. Everyone wants to know that their
information is safe and secure and businesses have legal obligations to keep. Security is an essential
element of any cloud service and you should always check that your service provider can provide the
correct levels of security for your industry.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is an organization that is dedicated to defining and raising awareness
of secure cloud computing. In doing so, the CSA has defined the following categories of SECaaS tools and
created a series of technical and implementation guidance documents to help businesses implement
and understand SECaaS. These categories include:

Page 29 of 31
 Figure 31- SECaaS Category

Following this guidance, cloud providers have implemented the necessary tools to manage cloud
security. One of the latest and advanced security solutions is Azure Sentinel.

Microsoft Azure Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and
security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution. Azure Sentinel delivers intelligent security
analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection,
threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response.

Azure Sentinel is your birds-eye view across the enterprise alleviating the stress of increasingly
sophisticated attacks, increasing volumes of alerts, and longer solution time frames.

 Collect data at cloud scale across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-
premises and in multiple clouds.
 Detect previously undetected threats, and minimize false positives using Microsoft's analytics
and un-paralleled threat intelligence.
 Investigate threats with artificial intelligence, and hunt for suspicious activities at scale, tapping
into years of cybersecurity work at Microsoft.
 Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks.

Page 30 of 31
 Figure 32- Azure Sentinel Objectives

10- References

https://cloud.google.com/gcp/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/cloud-services/

https://aws.amazon.com/types-of-cloud-computing/

https://www.trianz.com/insights/revolution-that-is-cloud-computing

https://www.petri.com/what-is-azure-arc

https://www.dxc.technology/healthcare/offerings/139495/145884-dxc_healthcare_cloud

https://argonsys.com/microsoft-cloud/library/improve-security-with-azure-sentinel-a-cloud-native-
siem-and-soar-solution/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/07/19/azure-cloud-innovations-key-highlights-from-msinspire2019/

Page 31 of 31