Topic 2

Cloud Computing Overview

Main source: Dell EMC

What is Cloud Computing

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 What is Cloud Computing

Cloud computing
A cloud infrastructure is built, operated, and managed by a cloud service
provider, that provides cloud services to the cloud users or consumers
The consumer is an individual or an organization
The provider may be an external provider or internal to the consumer
organization; such as the IT department
Similar to electricity, consumers rent IT resources as services without the
risks and costs associated with owning the resources

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 Traditional IT vs. Cloud Computing

Traditional IT Cloud Computing

IT resources are owned (in addition to infrastructure configuration, IT resources are rented as services
management floor spacing, power and cooling)
IT resources are planned for peak usage Resource consumption is metered
Underutilized resourced High utilization of resources
High capital expenditure leaving little for innovation Reduced capital expenditure
Considerable time needed for acquiring, provisioning and scaling up On-demand and self-service
resources resource provisioning and scalability
Lacks ability to support business agility (long time-to-market) Provides business agility

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 Essential Cloud Computing Characteristics

On-demand self service

“A consumer can unilaterally (independently) provision computing capabilities
(resources), such as virtual machines, networks, and storage, as needed automatically
without requiring human interaction with each service provider.” –NIST
A consumer requests or orders a service from a service catalog in a self-service way
and the request is processed automatically, without human intervention from the cloud
service provider’s side

Broad network access

“Capabilities (resources) are available over the network and accessed through
standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms
(e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).” –NIST
Cloud services are usually accessed from different client platforms using web
services that return the responses

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 Essential Cloud Computing Characteristics
Resource pooling
Virtualization is the key enabling technology for resource pooling and multi-tenancy
It is still possible to build a cloud infrastructure and offer cloud services without the use
of virtualization

Rapid elasticity
It enables adaptation to the variations in workloads—by quickly expanding or
reducing resources—as well as maintaining the required performance level
proportionately

Measured service
A metering system measures the number of units of service usage per consumer and
billing reports are generated based on the price per unit and the number of units
consumed of a service. It also provides information about the current demand to help
the cloud service providers with service and capacity planning

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 Cloud Computing Benefits
Reduced IT costs
Consumers rent only required IT resources based on pay-per-use or
subscription pricing
This eliminates underutilized resources, reduces capital expenditure as
investment is required only for resources needed to access the cloud
services, and reduces the expenses of IT infrastructure configuration,
management, floor spacing, power, and cooling

Flexible scaling
Cloud computing allows consumers to unilaterally and automatically scale IT
resources to meet the workload demand
This is significantly more cost-effective than buying new IT resources that
are only used for a short time or only during specific periods

Business agility
IT resources are quickly provisioned reducing the time required to deploy
new applications, and enabling businesses to reduce time-to-market and
respond more quickly to market changes
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 Cloud Computing Benefits
Simplified infrastructure management
Infrastructure management tasks are reduced to managing only those
resources that are required to access the cloud services

High availability
Unavailability can lead to significant financial losses to organizations and may
also affect their reputations
Redundant infrastructure components enable fault tolerance
Datacenters located in different geographic regions prevent data unavailability
due to regional failures

Business continuity
Having a remote secondary site for disaster recovery involves more capital
expenditure and administrative overheads
Cloud computing offers business continuity solutions such as cloud-based backup
without interruption
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 Cloud Computing Benefits

Flexibility of access
Applications and data reside centrally and can be accessed from anywhere
over a network from any device
This enables Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), which is a recent trend in
computing, whereby employees are allowed to use non-company devices
as business machines

Increased collaboration
Cloud computing enables collaboration between disparate groups of
people by allowing them to share applications and data and access them
simultaneously from any location
This eliminates the need to send files back and forth via email

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 Cloud Service Models

The NIST defines three cloud service models

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

A cloud service model specifies what is provided to the consumers

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 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS enables the consumer to rent infrastructure components such as servers,

storage, and networking (processing, storage, and network resources)
The consumer is able to deploy, configure and run onto the cloud infrastructure
arbitrary software including operating systems and applications
The consumer has control over the software, storage and
possibly limited control of select networking components
The provider pools the underlying IT resources which are
shared by multiple consumers through a multi-tenant model
and pricing can be subscription-based or based on
resource usage (pay-per-use)

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 Platform as a Service (PaaS)

In PaaS, the service provided to the consumer includes the infrastructure

components in addition to platform software
The platform software includes operating systems, middleware, database,
programming frameworks, programming languages, and libraries
It enables the consumer to develop, deploy, configure and run applications (possibly
acquired from a third party) onto the cloud infrastructure
The consumer has control over the deployed applications
and possibly configuration of the application-hosting
environment
PaaS pricing is typically based on factors such as the
number of consumers, the types of consumers (developer,
tester, and so on), the time for which the platform is in use,
and the compute, storage, or network resources consumed

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 Software as a Service (SaaS)

In SaaS, the complete stack of infrastructure and software (including applications

and data) is provided as a service to the consumer
It enables the consumer to use the provider’s applications running on the cloud
infrastructure using various client devices
The consumer may have limited control on application configuration settings
Some SaaS applications may require a client interface to
be locally installed such as Customer Relationship
Management (CRM), email, Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP), and office suites
Alternatively, an application version, with a specific
configuration may provide service to multiple consumers by
partitioning their individual sessions and data

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 Everything as a Service (XaaS)

The X in XaaS refers to Anything or Everything

XaaS originated as SaaS, but has often been used as an umbrella term to
encompass SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS
It expanded to cover more services such as Storage as a Service, Desktop as a
Service, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), or any service accessed on
demand over the Internet
Bricks-and-mortar businesses are also transforming through
digital connectivity, e.g., Uber provides Transportation as a
Service
This is just the tip of the iceberg with many more on their way

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 Cloud Service Brokerage (CSB)
An entity that manages the use, performance and delivery of cloud services, and
negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers - NIST

What is a CSB?
The CSB acts as an intermediary between cloud consumers and providers; a
cloud consumer may request cloud services from a CSB, instead of contacting
a cloud provider directly
It helps the consumers through the complexity of cloud service offerings
and may also create value-added cloud services
The NIST states that a CSB provides services in three categories
• service intermediation
• service aggregation
• service arbitrage

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 Cloud Service Brokerage (CSB)

Service intermediation
Enhancing a given service by improving some specific capabilities and
providing value-added services (such as access management, identity
management, performance reporting, and security enhancement)

Service aggregation
Combining multiple cloud services into one or more new services; once
established, remain fixed and do not change often

Service arbitrage
Similar to service aggregation, except that combined services may vary (for
example, may provide multiple e-mail services through a common interface
such that the number and type of e-mail services may vary)

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 Cloud Deployment Models

The NIST defines four cloud deployment models

A cloud deployment model provides a basis for how cloud infrastructure

is built, managed, and accessed; the models present tradeoffs in terms
of control, scale, cost, and availability of resources

Each deployment model may be used for any of the cloud service models

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 Public Cloud

A public cloud is a cloud infrastructure deployed by a provider to offer cloud

services to the general public and/or organizations over the Internet
A provider typically has default service levels for all consumers of the public cloud
Its services may be free, subscription-based or provided on a pay-per-use basis
It provides the benefits of low up-front expenditure on IT resources and enormous
scalability, in addition to all other benefits of cloud computing
However, consumers’ concerns include:
network availability
multi-tenancy security risks
privacy
limited control over the cloud resources,
data, and applications
restrictive default service levels model
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 Private Cloud

A private cloud is a cloud infrastructure for the sole use of a particular organization
It eliminates multi-tenancy security risks, offers a greater
degree of privacy and control over the cloud
infrastructure, resources, data, and applications while
reducing total cost of ownership
There are two variants of private cloud:
The on-premise private cloud is deployed by an
organization in its data center within its own premises
In the off-premise or externally-hosted private
cloud model, the cloud infrastructure is hosted on the
premises of the provider and securely separated from
other cloud tenants by access policies, and
connection is over a secure network
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 Community Cloud

A community cloud is a cloud infrastructure that is set up for the sole use by a
group of organizations with common goals or requirements
A community cloud offers a higher level of control and protection against external
threats than a public cloud, while reducing total cost of ownership
The organizations participating in the community typically share the cost of the
community cloud service, but since the costs are shared by lesser consumers
than in a public cloud, this option may be more expensive
There are two variants of community cloud:
The on-premise community cloud
The off-premise or externally-hosted community cloud

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 Community Cloud

In an on-premise community cloud:

One or more participant organizations provide cloud services that are
consumed by the community
The cloud infrastructure is deployed on the premises of the participant
organization(s) providing the cloud services
The organizations consuming the cloud services connect to the clouds of the
provider organizations over a secure network

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 Community Cloud

In an externally-hosted community cloud:

The cloud infrastructure is hosted on the premises of an external provider
The cloud infrastructure may be shared by multiple tenants but separated from
other cloud tenants by access policies
The participant organizations connect to the externally-hosted community
cloud over a secure network
Unlike an on-premise community cloud, the
participant organizations can save on the up-
front costs of IT resources, and may have
access to a larger pool of resources

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 Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud is composed of two or more individual clouds, each of which can
be one of the previous five variants, and so hybrid clouds differ in terms of
parameters such as performance, cost, security, and so on
The component clouds are combined through technologies that enable data
and application portability
It may change over time as component clouds join and leave

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 Multi-Cloud

Some application workloads run better on one cloud platform while other
workloads achieve higher performance and lower cost on another platform
By adopting a multi-cloud strategy, organizations choose services from different
cloud service providers to create the best possible solution for their business
Other advantages include:
reducing the risk of vendor lock-in
helps organizations meet compliance,
regulations and governance policies such as
requiring organizations data to reside in
particular locations

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 Cloud Reference Architecture

The cloud reference architecture is an abstract model that characterizes

and standardizes the components and functions of a cloud computing
environment

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 Application

An application is a program or set of programs designed to perform a group of

coordinated tasks or functions for the benefit of the user
Application is broadly classified into traditional and modern applications
Traditional applications are
typically monolithic causing long
development and update cycles and
pose difficultly to maintain, thus
lacking the agility to support the
digital business
The cloud infrastructure in the
reference architecture provides a
better platform to develop and
deploy modern/cloud-native
applications
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 Cloud Service

Cloud service is a means of delivering IT resources to the consumers

without having any liabilities such as risk and cost associated with owning
the resources
Service components include:
The service catalog presents the
information about all the IT
resources offered as services
The self-service portal displays
the service catalog to the
consumers and provides interface
to access and manage the rented
service instances

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 Orchestration

The key function of orchestration is to provide workflows for executing automated

tasks to accomplish a desired outcome (workflow refers to a series of inter-related
tasks that perform a business operation)
An orchestration workflow is defined for each service in the service catalog and
triggered when this service is selected from the catalog
Based on this workflow, the
orchestration software interacts with
the components across the cloud
infrastructure to invoke needed
provisioning tasks

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 Physical Infrastructure

The physical infrastructure includes resources such as compute systems, storage

systems, and networking devices along with operating systems, system software,
protocols, and tools that enable the physical resources to perform their functions
It executes the requests generated by the virtual and software-defined
infrastructure, such as:
executing programs on
compute systems
storing data on the storage
devices
creating backup copies of data
performing compute-to-
compute communication

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 Virtual Infrastructure
Virtualization is the process of abstracting physical resources, such as compute,
storage, and network, and creating virtual resources from them
Virtualization software aggregates computing resources (such as processing
power, memory, storage, and network bandwidth) into resource pools from which
it creates virtual resources
Benefits of virtualization include:
enabling resource consolidation and
multitenancy
flexible resource provisioning and
rapid elasticity
improved resource utilization and
increased return-on-investment (ROI)
reduced space and energy
requirements and simplified
infrastructure management
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 Software-defined Infrastructure

The software-defined infrastructure component is deployed either on the virtual or

on the physical infrastructure (or partially on each)
In the software-defined approach, all infrastructure components are virtualized
and aggregated into pools to abstract underlying resources from applications
It centralizes and automates the management and delivery of heterogeneous
resources based on policies
It enables IaaS
The key architectural
components include:
software-defined compute
software-defined storage (SDS)
software-defined network (SDN)

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 Security

Cloud computing has transformed the business at an unprecedented rate but at

the same time it has created new security challenges
Cloud computing security is a set of practices and policies designed to protect the
applications, data, software, and infrastructure associated with cloud computing
The power of cloud security can be harnessed with Governance, Risk and
Compliance (GRC) framework

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 Business Continuity

Continuous availability of services is a must for service providers to deliver

services to customers in accordance with service level agreements (SLAs)
Business continuity (BC) is a set of processes that includes all activities that a
service provider must perform to mitigate the impact of service outage
It supports all the components of cloud reference architecture to provide
uninterrupted services to the consumers
BC includes:
proactive measures, such as risk
assessment, building resilient IT
infrastructure and application,
backup and replication
reactive countermeasures, such
as disaster recovery in the event
of a service failure
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Service Management

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Questions?