Study on Computing in the Cloud

Study on Computing in the Cloud

Felix Deepak Minj (HOD Information Tech. Shekhawati Group of Institution)

Introduction:

In traditional network diagram, the cloud always represented a fairly static view of an intermediary virtual area on the Internet. It basically had no real function other than passing data from one point to the other between servers on the Internet and client where we cloud setup our applications to run

The cloud computing model changes this slightly. Instead of providing just a medium for messages to pass through between clients and severs, it tries to provide a number of services within the Internet "cloud" itself. These services can range from storage, computation, applications and even complete operating systems. All available as a service on the Internet which you can go ahead and use directly. The "Software_as_a_Servic" or SaaS concept is one of the major diving forces of cloud computing along with other concepts such as Web2.0, the web browser and mobile applications.

Objective of the Study:

1. Purpose of the study is to virtualization of the environment.

2. Less expensive in context to server maintenance.

3. According to demand provide the application services and others.

Methodology:

In this paper relevant literature, information and data have been used from the published books, magazines like PCQuest, DeveloperIQ, Computer Today, InformationWeek, relevant web sites etc.

Text:

We can't turn around these days without hearing "Cloud Computing". So what is cloud computing? Is it the same old stuff with a new wrapper? Cloud computing is a development model leveraged by IT to reduce infrastructure costs and/or address capacity/scalability concerns. It is the infrastructure and model of deployment. Cloud computing is about how an application or service is deployed and delivered. Cloud computing is a deployment model leveraging on demand computing to scale and serve applications through a shared resource model.

Are there different types of clouds? Yes, there are. There are public clouds like Amazon and Microsoft, and there are going to be private clouds as well. Because cloud computing is concerned with how applications and infrastructure resources are provisioned and delivered, location is really irrelevant in determining whether an architecture is or is not a cloud.

There is also differentiation between cloud models; some are based heavily in virtualization and we deploy applications by pushing a virtual image of our applications and its environment into the cloud using web services. Other provides platforms upon which we develop the application and which are then packaged up and provisioned on demand through the provider's custom environment.

Scalability is an issue in all kinds of software development and computing. Dose this include cloud computing? Absolutely, there are basically two different kind of scalability such as horizontal and vertical. Horizontal scalability means the application can serve many concurrent users, which is easy and one of the benefits of cloud computing. That's the job of load balancing and application delivery solutions and should be taken care of by the cloud. Then there is vertical scalability, which means that the application continues to perform consistently as load increases, and that is just note something the cloud provides.

What about security when it comes to cloud computing? Secure cording is an absolute requirement for cloud computing, as is a wide variety of application and network layer security in the cloud computing infrastructure. Secure coding practice are the best way to prevent exploits of application logic and unauthorized access while firewalls, web application firewalls, network(IP) and transport layer(TCP) security solutions are all necessary to prevent as many attacks as possible from penetrating the outer rim of the cloud. Secure remote access to applications and services in the cloud, allowing for more sensitive applications to execute in the cloud and be accessed from anywhere while protecting the communication.

Cloud computing offers virtually unlimited, on demand computing resources. Our applications now live in a new platform- a computing cloud. In the cloud, our applications take advantages of the seemingly limitless processor cycles, memory storage, and network bandwidth along with extensive software capabilities. Our applications only pay for what they use. Cloud computing offers a range of application services that from a new platform-an Internet operating system suitable for cost effective, dynamic, and Internet-scale solutions. An Internet operating system offers the scale and services required to meet the requirements of a dynamic, global, software application.

In an infrastructure cloud environment, the situation is radically different. Our data and processing power can get moved at win from location to location, possibly with varying levels of physical access controls. The underlying virtualization system of some infrastructure cloud providers may not yet be capable of providing strong assurances that virtual machines sharing a hyper visior are in fact separated and immune from attack. Cloud providers-in particular, the infrastructure variety-tend to be opaque computing services offering little visibility into their underlying architectures and technologies.

Cloud computing is the natural evolution of the application service provider (ASP) from the late nineties and software as a service (SaaS) strategies from more recent year. Vendors that provide cloud computing services supply the data centers required to host virtualized environments for their customers. Business no longer need the same capital expenditure to up and running and they can buy additional cloud computing resources on demand to meet the requirements of increased server load or peak periods in their business.

Getting into the cloud:

Currently we can create cloud applications through two major implementations:

1- Amazon

2- Google

Amazon:

Amazon has a number of cloud offering. The Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is an offering that allows users to request "virtual machines" in the cloud. Once the request is met, the user can "provision" these virtual cloud servers to run any software they want. This is completely dynamic in the sense that the user has control over how many virtual instances he wants to provision and run at a particular point in time. The servers can run anything from OpenSolaris, Linux to Windows Server 2003.

Other services that Amazon has include S3 (Simple storage service)- a service that lets users or applications use unlimited storage for their files and SimpleDB a distributed database system that can be used in conjunction with S3 and EC2. All of these services are available through programming models to enable end users the ability to use them in their own applications as well.

Google:

Google provides two different sets of services in the cloud computing world. the first is the famous Google Apps- a combination of services that users can use as part of their own domain to enable common functionality. The different parts of the Google network- Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Sites and Docs- are combined into a packaged offering that users can subscribe to in an enterprise. This enables users to have their organization's data stored up in Google's "cloud" and make it accessible almost anywhere.

The other service that Google offers is the App engine. This is an online application frame work where users can host their own applications. However, the Google App Engine only supports a limited version of python as their programming frame work. It also has a database like construct with an SQL like language to be able to use to program applications.

Conclusion:

There are many other companies in this playing field as well-IBM, HP, Sales Force-to name just a few, who are heavily investing in this model of computing. Since cloud computing reduces the infrastructure requirements and budgets that an enterprise needs to host their applications or data, this model seems to be getting more popular. One doesn't need to worry about purchasing and provisioning hardware and software integrating it into the network and other headaches. Simply request the service or update we want and it gets done for us transparently. Cloud computing can help us or at least manage our infrastructure costs better and allow availability of our application and data over the Internet. However, one must be able to ensure that data is available anytime one needs it and having good software and a seamless connectivity to the service is essential in this regard.

References and Bibliography:

1. InformationWeek Published from United Business Media

2. Dr. Dobb's Published from United Business Media

3. PCQuest, Published from Mumbai

4. DeveloperIQ, Published from New Delhi

5. Computer Today, Published from New Delhi