Ch-1 Introduction cloud computing

Cloud Computing tutorial provides basic and advanced concepts of Cloud Computing. Our Cloud Computing
tutorial is designed for beginners and professionals.
Cloud computing is a virtualization-based technology that allows us to create, configure, and customize
applications via an internet connection. The cloud technology includes a development platform, hard disk,
software application, and database.

What is Cloud Computing

The term cloud refers to a network or the internet. It is a technology that uses remote servers on the
internet to store, manage, and access data online rather than local drives. The data can be anything such
as files, images, documents, audio, video, and more.
There are the following operations that we can do using cloud computing:

o Developing new applications and services

o Storage, back up, and recovery of data
o Hosting blogs and websites
o Delivery of software on demand
o Analysis of data
o Streaming videos and audios

Why Cloud Computing?

Small as well as large IT companies, follow the traditional methods to provide the IT infrastructure. That
means for any IT company, we need a Server Room that is the basic need of IT companies.
In that server room, there should be a database server, mail server, networking, firewalls, routers,
modem, switches, QPS (Query Per Second means how much queries or load will be handled by the server),
configurable system, high net speed, and the maintenance engineers.
To establish such IT infrastructure, we need to spend lots of
money. To overcome all these problems and to reduce the IT infrastructure cost, Cloud Computing comes
into existence.

Characteristics of Cloud Computing

The characteristics of cloud computing are given below:
1) Agility
The cloud works in a distributed computing environment. It shares resources among users and works
very fast.

2) High availability and reliability

The availability of servers is high and more reliable because the chances of infrastructure failure are
minimum.

3) High Scalability
Cloud offers "on-demand" provisioning of resources on a large scale, without having engineers for
peak loads.

4) Multi-Sharing
With the help of cloud computing, multiple users and applications can work more efficiently with
cost reductions by sharing common infrastructure.

5) Device and Location Independence

Cloud computing enables the users to access systems using a web browser regardless of their location or
what device they use e.g. PC, mobile phone, etc. As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a
third-party) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from anywhere.

6) Maintenance
Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, since they do not need to be installed on each
user's computer and can be accessed from different places. So, it reduces the cost also.

7) Low Cost
By using cloud computing, the cost will be reduced because to take the services of cloud computing, IT
company need not to set its own infrastructure and pay-as-per usage of resources.
8) Services in the pay-per-use mode
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are provided to the users so that they can access
services on the cloud by using these APIs and pay the charges as per the usage of services.

Prerequisite
Before learning cloud computing, you must have the basic knowledge of computer fundamentals.

Audience
Our cloud computing is designed to help beginners and professionals.

Problem
We assure that you will not find any difficulty while learning our cloud computing tutorial. But if there is
any mistake in this tutorial, kindly post the problem or error in the contact form.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

Advantages of Cloud Computing
As we all know that Cloud computing is trending technology. Almost every company switched their services
on the cloud to rise the company growth.
Here, we are going to discuss some important advantages of Cloud Computing -

1) Back-up and restore data

Once the data is stored in the cloud, it is easier to get back-up and restore that data using the cloud.

2) Improved collaboration
Cloud applications improve collaboration by allowing groups of people to quickly and easily share
information in the cloud via shared storage.

3) Excellent accessibility
Cloud allows us to quickly and easily access store information anywhere, anytime in the whole world, using
an internet connection. An internet cloud infrastructure increases organization productivity and efficiency
by ensuring that our data is always accessible.

4) Low maintenance cost

Cloud computing reduces both hardware and software maintenance costs for organizations.

5) Mobility
Cloud computing allows us to easily access all cloud data via mobile.

6) IServices in the pay-per-use model

Cloud computing offers Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to the users for access services on the
cloud and pays the charges as per the usage of service.

7) Unlimited storage capacity

Cloud offers us a huge amount of storing capacity for storing our important data such as documents,
images, audio, video, etc. in one place.

8) Data security
Data security is one of the biggest advantages of cloud computing. Cloud offers many advanced features
related to security and ensures that data is securely stored and handled.

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

A list of the disadvantage of cloud computing is given below -
1) Internet Connectivity
As you know, in cloud computing, every data (image, audio, video, etc.) is stored on the cloud, and we
access these data through the cloud by using the internet connection. If you do not have good internet
connectivity, you cannot access these data. However, we have no any other way to access data from the
cloud.
2) Vendor lock-in
Vendor lock-in is the biggest disadvantage of cloud computing. Organizations may face problems when
transferring their services from one vendor to another. As different vendors provide different platforms,
that can cause difficulty moving from one cloud to another .

3) Limited Control
As we know, cloud infrastructure is completely owned, managed, and monitored by the service provider, so
the cloud users have less control over the function and execution of services within a cloud infrastructure.

4) Security
Although cloud service providers implement the best security standards to store important information.
But, before adopting cloud technology, you should be aware that you will be sending all your organization's
sensitive information to a third party, i.e., a cloud computing service provider. While sending the data on
the cloud, there may be a chance that your organization's information is hacked by Hackers.

History of Cloud Computing

Before emerging the cloud computing, there was Client/Server computing which is basically a centralized
storage in which all the software applications, all the data and all the controls are resided on the server
side.
If a single user wants to access specific data or run a program, he/she need to connect to the server and
then gain appropriate access, and then he/she can do his/her business.
Then after, distributed computing came into picture, where all the computers are networked together and
share their resources when needed.
On the basis of above computing, there was emerged of cloud computing concepts that later implemented.
At around in 1961, John MacCharty suggested in a speech at MIT that computing can be sold like a utility,
just like a water or electricity. It was a brilliant idea, but like all brilliant ideas, it was ahead if its time, as
for the next few decades, despite interest in the model, the technology simply was not ready for it.
But of course time has passed and the technology caught that idea and after few years we mentioned that:
In 1999, Salesforce.com started delivering of applications to users using a simple website. The
applications were delivered to enterprises over the Internet, and this way the dream of computing sold as
utility were true.
In 2002, Amazon started Amazon Web Services, providing services like storage, computation and even
human intelligence. However, only starting with the launch of the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006 a truly
commercial service open to everybody existed.
In 2009, Google Apps also started to provide cloud computing enterprise applications.
Of course, all the big players are present in the cloud computing evolution, some were earlier, some were
later. In 2009, Microsoft launched Windows Azure, and companies like Oracle and HP have all joined the
game. This proves that today, cloud computing has become mainstream.

Layers of cloud computing

Software as a Service | SaaS
SaaS is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a cloud service provider and
made available to customers over internet. SaaS is also known as "On-Demand Software".
In SaaS, software and associated data are centrally hosted on the cloud server. SaaS is accessed by users
using a thin client via a web browser.

Advantages of SaaS cloud computing layer

1) SaaS is easy to buy
SaaS pricing is based on a monthly fee or annual fee, SaaS allows organizations to access business
functionality at a low cost which is less than licensed applications.
Unlike traditional software which is sold as a licensed based with an up-front cost (and often an optional
ongoing support fee), SaaS providers generally pricing the applications using a subscription fee, most
commonly a monthly or annually fee.

2) Less hardware required for SaaS

The software is hosted remotely, so organizations don't need to invest in additional hardware.

3) Low Maintenance required for SaaS

Software as a service removes the necessity of installation, set-up, and often daily unkeep and
maintenance for organizations. Initial set-up cost for SaaS is typically less than the enterprise software.
SaaS vendors actually pricing their applications based on some usage parameters, such as number of users
using the application. So SaaS does easy to monitor and automatic updates .

4) No special software or hardware versions required

All users will have the same version of software and typically access it through the web browser. SaaS
reduces IT support costs by outsourcing hardware and software maintenance and support to the IaaS
provider.

Disadvantages of SaaS cloud computing layer

1) Security
Actually data is stored in cloud, so security may be an issue for some users. However, cloud computing is
not more secure than in-house deployment. Learn more cloud security.

2) Latency issue
Because the data and application are stored in cloud at a variable distance from the end user, so there is a
possibility that there may be more latency while interacting with the application than a local deployment.
So, SaaS model is not suitable for applications whose demand response times are in milliseconds.

3) Total Dependency on Internet

Without internet connection, most SaaS applications are not usable.

4) Switching between SaaS vendors is difficult

Switching SaaS vendors involves the difficult and slow task of transferring the very large data files over the
Internet and then converting and importing them into another SaaS also.

Infrastructure as a Service | IaaS

IaaS is one of the layers of cloud computing platform wherein the customer organization outsources its IT
infrastructure such as servers, networking, processing, storage, virtual machines and other resources.
Customers access these resources over internet i.e. cloud computing platform, on a pay-per-use model.
Iaas, earlier called Hardware as a Service (HaaS), is a cloud computing platform based model.
In traditional hosting services, IT infrastructure was rented out for a specific periods of time, with pre-
determined hardware configuration. The client paid for the configuration and time, regardless of the actual
use. With the help of IaaS cloud computing platform layer, clients can dynamically scale the configuration
to meet changing requires, and are billed only for the services actually used.
IaaS cloud computing platform layer eliminates the need for every organization to maintain the IT
infrastructure.
IaaS is offered in three models: public, private, and hybrid cloud. Private cloud implies that the
infrastructure resides at the customer-premise. In case of public cloud, it is located at the cloud computing
platform vendor's data center; and hybrid cloud is a combination of two with customer choosing the best of
both worlds.

Advantages of IaaS cloud computing layer

1) You can dynamically choose a CPU, memory and storage configuration as per your needs.
2) You easily access the vast computing power available on IaaS cloud platform.
3) You can eliminate the need of investment in rarely used IT hardware.
4) IT infra will be handled by the IaaS cloud computing platform vendors.

Disadvantages of IaaS cloud computing layer

There is a risk of IaaS cloud computing platform vendor by gaining the access to the organization?s data. But it
can be avoided by opting for private cloud.
2) IaaS cloud computing platform model is dependent on internet availability.
3) It is also dependent on the availability of virtualization services.
4) IaaS cloud computing platform can limit the user privacy and customization options.
Some pinpoint about IaaS cloud computing layer
IaaS cloud computing platform cannot replace traditional hosting method but it provides more than that and each
resources which are used are predictable as per the usage.

IaaS cloud computing platform may not eliminate the need for an in-house IT department. It will be needed to
monitor or control the IaaS setup. IT salary expenditure might not reduce significantly, but other IT expenses can
be reduced.

Breakdowns at the IaaS cloud computing platform vendor's end can bring your business to at the halt stage.
Assess the IaaS cloud computing platform vendor's stability and finances. Make sure that SLAs (i.e. Service
Level Agreement) provide backups for data, hardware, network and application failures. Image portability and
third-party support is a plus point.

The IaaS cloud computing platform vendor can get access to your sensitive data. So, engage with the credible
companies or organizations. Study their security policies and precautions.
Top vendors who are providing IaaS cloud computing platform
IaaS Vendor Iaas Solution Details
Amazon Web Elastic, Elastic Compute The cloud computing platform pioneer, Amazon
Services Cloud (EC2) MapReduce, offers auto scaling, cloud monitoring, and load
Route 53, Virtual Private balancing features as part of its portfolio.
Cloud, etc.
Netmagic Netmagic IaaS Cloud Netmagic runs from data centers in Mumbai,
Solutions Chennai, and Bangalore, and a virtual data center
in the United States. Plans are underway to
extend services to West Asia.
Rackspace Cloud servers, cloud files, The cloud computing platform vendor focuses
cloud sites, etc. primarily on enterprise-level hosting services.
Reliance Reliance Internet Data RIDC supports both traditional hosting and cloud
Communications Center services, with data centers in Mumbai, Bangalore,
Hyderabad, and Chennai. The cloud services
offered by RIDC include IaaS and SaaS.
Sify Technologies Sify IaaS Sify's cloud computing platform is powered by
HP's converged infrastructure. The vendor offers
all three types of cloud services: IaaS, PaaS, and
SaaS.
Tata InstaCompute InstaCompute is Tata Communications' IaaS
Communications offering. InstaCompute data centers are located in
Hyderabad and Singapore, with operations in both
countries.

Platform as a Service | PaaS

PaaS cloud computing platform is a developer programming platform which is created for the
programmer to develop, test, run and manage the applications.
A developer is able to write the application as well as deploy it directly into this layer easily.
PaaS extend and abstract the IaaS layer by removing the hassle of managing the individual virtual
machine.
In PaaS cloud computing platform, back end scalability is handled by the cloud service provider and the
end user does not have to worry about to manage the infrastructure.
All the infrastructure to run the applications will be over the internet .

Advantages of PaaS cloud computing layer

1) Simplified Development
Developers can focus on development and innovation without worrying about the infrastructure.

2) Lower risk
No requirements of up-front investment in hardware and software. Developers only need a PC and an
internet connection to start building applications.
3) Prebuilt business functionality
Some PaaS vendors also provide already defined business functionality so that users can avoid building
everything from very scratch and hence can directly start the projects only.

4) Instant community
PaaS vendors frequently provides online communities where developer can get the ideas, share
experiences and seek advice from others.

5) Scalability
Applications deployed can scale from one to thousands of users without any changes to the applications.

Disadvantages of PaaS cloud computing layer

1) Vendor lock-in
One have to write the applications according to the platform provided by PaaS vendor so migration of an
application to another PaaS vendor would be a problem.

2) Data Privacy
Corporate data, whether it can be critical or not, will be private so if it is not located within the walls of the
company there can be a risk in terms of privacy of data.

3) Integration with the rest of the systems applications

It may happen that some applications are local and some are in cloud. So there will be chances of
increased complexity when we want to use data which in the cloud with the local data.

Top vendors who are providing PaaS cloud computing platform

1. Google Apps Engine (GAE)
2. SalesFroce.com
3. Windows Azure
4. AppFog
5. Openshift
6. Cloud Foundary from VMware
7.
Types of cloud computing
Public Cloud
Public Cloud provides a shared platform that is accessible to the general public through an Internet
connection.

Public cloud operated on the pay-as-per-use model and administrated by the third party, i.e., Cloud
service provider.

In the Public cloud, the same storage is being used by multiple users at the same time.

Public cloud is owned, managed, and operated by businesses, universities, government organizations, or
a combination of them.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Microsoft Azure, IBM's Blue Cloud, Sun Cloud, and Google Cloud are
examples of the public cloud.

Advantages of Public Cloud

There are the following advantages of public cloud -
1) Low Cost
Public cloud has a lower cost than private, or hybrid cloud, as it shares the same resources with a large
number of consumers.

2) Location Independent
Public cloud is location independent because its services are offered through the internet.
3) Save Time
In Public cloud, the cloud service provider is responsible for the manage and maintain data centers in which
data is stored, so the cloud user can save their time to establish connectivity, deploying new products,
release product updates, configure, and assemble servers.

4) Quickly and easily set up

Organizations can easily buy public cloud on the internet and deployed and configured it remotely through
the cloud service provider within a few hours.

5) Business Agility
Public cloud provides an ability to elastically re-size computer resources based on the organization's
requirements.

6) Scalability and reliability

Public cloud offers scalable (easy to add and remove) and reliable (24*7 available) services to the users at
an affordable cost.
Disadvantages of Public Cloud
1) Low Security
Public Cloud is less secure because resources are shared publicly.

Performance
In the public cloud, performance depends upon the speed of internet connectivity.

2) Less customizable
Public cloud is less customizable than the private cloud.

Private Cloud
Private cloud is also known as an internal cloud or corporate cloud.

Private cloud provides computing services to a private internal network (within the
organization) and selected users instead of the general public.

Private cloud provides a high level of security and privacy to data through firewalls and internal hosting.

It also ensures that operational and sensitive data are not accessible to third-party providers.

PHP Data Centers, Microsoft, Elastra-private cloud, and Ubuntu are the example of a private cloud.

Advantages of Private cloud

There are the following advantages of Private Cloud –

1) More Control
Private clouds have more control over their resources and hardware than public clouds because it is only
accessed by selected users.

2) Security & privacy

Security & privacy are one of the big advantages of cloud computing. Private cloud improved the security
level as compared to the public cloud.

3) Improved performance
Private cloud offers better performance with improved speed and space capacity.

Disadvantages of Private Cloud

1) High cost
The cost is higher than a public cloud because set up and maintain hardware resources are costly.

2) Restricted area of operations

As we know, private cloud is accessible within the organization, so the area of operations is limited.
3) Limited scalability
Private clouds are scaled only within the capacity of internal hosted resources.

4) Skilled people
Skilled people are required to manage and operate cloud services.

Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud is a combination of public and private clouds.
Hybrid cloud = public cloud + private cloud

The main aim to combine these cloud (Public and Private) is to create a unified, automated, and well-
managed computing environment.

In the Hybrid cloud, non-critical activities are performed by the public cloud and critical activities are
performed by the private cloud.

Mainly, a hybrid cloud is used in finance, healthcare, and Universities.

The best hybrid cloud provider companies are Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, and NetApp.

Advantages of Hybrid Cloud

There are the following advantages of Hybrid Cloud –

1) Flexible and secure

It provides flexible resources because of the public cloud and secure resources because of the private
cloud.

2) Cost effective
Hybrid cloud costs less than the private cloud. It helps organizations to save costs for both infrastructure
and application support.

3) Cost effective
It offers the features of both the public as well as the private cloud. A hybrid cloud is capable of adapting to
the demands that each company needs for space, memory, and system.

Security
Hybrid cloud is secure because critical activities are performed by the private cloud.
Risk Management
Hybrid cloud provides an excellent way for companies to manage the risk.

Disadvantages of Hybrid Cloud

1) Networking issues
In the Hybrid Cloud, networking becomes complex because of the private and the public cloud.

2) Infrastructure Compatibility
Infrastructure compatibility is the major issue in a hybrid cloud. With dual-levels of infrastructure, a private
cloud controls the company, and a public cloud does not, so there is a possibility that they are running in separate
stacks.

Reliability
The reliability of the services depends on cloud service providers.

Features of Cloud Computing

Following are the characteristics of Cloud Computing:
1. Resources Pooling
It means that the Cloud provider pulled the computing resources to provide services to multiple
customers with the help of a multi-tenant model. There are different physical and virtual resources
assigned and reassigned which depends on the demand of the customer. The customer generally has no
control or information over the location of the provided resources but is able to specify location at a higher
level of abstraction

2. On-Demand Self-Service
It is one of the important and valuable features of Cloud Computing as the user can continuously monitor
the server uptime, capabilities, and allotted network storage. With this feature, the user can also monitor
the computing capabilities.

3. Easy Maintenance
The servers are easily maintained and the downtime is very low and even in some cases, there is no
downtime. Cloud Computing comes up with an update every time by gradually making it better. The
updates are more compatible with the devices and perform faster than older ones along with the bugs
which are fixed.

4. Large Network Access

The user can access the data of the cloud or upload the data to the cloud from anywhere just with the help
of a device and an internet connection. These capabilities are available all over the network and accessed
with the help of internet.

5. Availability
The capabilities of the Cloud can be modified as per the use and can be extended a lot. It analyzes the
storage usage and allows the user to buy extra Cloud storage if needed for a very small amount .

6. Automatic System
Cloud computing automatically analyzes the data needed and supports a metering capability at some level
of services. We can monitor, control, and report the usage. It will provide transparency for the host as well
as the customer.

7.Economical
It is the one-time investment as the company (host) has to buy the storage and a small part of it can be
provided to the many companies which save the host from monthly or yearly costs. Only the amount which
is spent is on the basic maintenance and a few more expenses which are very less .

8. Security
Cloud Security, is one of the best features of cloud computing. It creates a snapshot of the data stored so
that the data may not get lost even if one of the servers gets damaged. The data is stored within the
storage devices, which cannot be hacked and utilized by any other person. The storage service is quick and
reliable.

9. Pay as you go
In cloud computing, the user has to pay only for the service or the space they have utilized. There is no
hidden or extra charge which is to be paid. The service is economical and most of the time some space is
allotted for free.

10. Measured Service

Cloud Computing resources used to monitor and the company uses it for recording. This resource utilization
is analyzed by supporting charge-per-use capabilities. This means that the resource usages which can be
either virtual server instances that are running in the cloud are getting monitored measured and reported
by the service provider. The model pay as you go is variable based on actual consumption of the
manufacturing organization.

Cloud computing benefits

Here's a list of key benefits an enterprise can expect to achieve when adopting cloud infrastructure.
1. Efficiency / cost reduction
By using cloud infrastructure, you don't have to spend huge amounts of money on purchasing and
maintaing equipment. This drastically reduces capex costs. You don’t have to invest in hardware, facilities,
utilities, or building out a large data center to grow your business. You do not even need large IT teams to
handle your cloud data center operations, as you can enjoy the expertise of your cloud provider’s staff.
2. Data security
One of the major concerns of every business, regardless of size and industry, is the security of its data.
Data breaches and other cybercrimes can devastate a company's revenue, customer loyalty and brand
positioning.Cloud offers many advanced security features that guarantee that data is securely stored and
handled.Cloud storage providers implement baseline protections for their platforms and the data they
process, such authentication, access control, and encryption. From there, most enterprises supplement
these protections with added security measures of their own to bolster cloud data protection and tighten
access to sensitive information in the cloud.

3. Scalability
Different companies have different IT needs -- a large enterprise of 1000+ employees won't have the same
IT requirements as a start-up.Using cloud is a great solution because it enables enterprise to efficiently --
and quickly -- scale up/down their IT departments, according to business demands.

4. Mobility
Cloud computing allows mobile access to corporate data via smartphones and devices, which is a great way
to ensure that no one is ever left out of the loop. Staff with busy schedules, or who live a long way away
from the corporate office, can use this feature to keep instantly up-to-date with clients and coworkers.

5. Disaster recovery
Data loss is a major concern for all organizations, along with data security. Storing your data in the cloud
guarantees that data is always available, even if your equipment like laptops or PCs, is damaged. Cloud-
based services provide quick data recovery for all kinds of emergency scenarios -- from natural disasters to
power outages.Cloud infrastructure can also help you with loss prevention. If you rely on traditional on-
premises approach, all your data will be stored locally, on office computers. Despite your best efforts,
computers can malfunction from various reasons -- from malware and viruses, to age-related hardware
deterioration, to simple user error.But, if you upload your data to the cloud, it remains accesible for any
computer with an internet connection, even if something happens to your work computer.

6.Control
Having control over sensitive data is vital to any company. You never know what can happen if a document
gets into the wrong hands, even if it’s just the hands of an untrained employee.Cloud enables you
complete visibility and control over your data. You can easily decide which users have what level of access
to what data. This gives you control, but it also streamlines work since staff will easily know what
documents are assigned to them. It will also increase and ease collaboration. Since one version of the
document can be worked on by different people, and there's no need to have copies of the same document
in circulation.

7. Competitive edge
Not every company will migrate to the cloud, at least not yet. However, organizations which adopt cloud
find that many benefits that cloud offers positively impacts their business .Cloud adoption increases every
year, since companies realize that it offers them access to world-class enterprise technology. And, if you
implement a cloud solution now, you'll be ahead of your competitors.

Disadvantage of cloud computing

A list of the disadvantage of cloud computing is given below -

1) Internet Connectivity
As you know, in cloud computing, every data (image, audio, video, etc.) is stored on the cloud, and we
access these data through the cloud by using the internet connection. If you do not have good internet
connectivity, you cannot access these data. However, we have no any other way to access data from the
cloud.

2) Vendor lock-in
Vendor lock-in is the biggest disadvantage of cloud computing. Organizations may face problems when
transferring their services from one vendor to another. As different vendors provide different platforms,
that can cause difficulty moving from one cloud to another.

3) Limited Control
As we know, cloud infrastructure is completely owned, managed, and monitored by the service provider, so
the cloud users have less control over the function and execution of services within a cloud infrastructure.
4) Security
Although cloud service providers implement the best security standards to store important information.
But, before adopting cloud technology, you should be aware that you will be sending all your organization's
sensitive information to a third party, i.e., a cloud computing service provider. While sending the data on
the cloud, there may be a chance that your organization's information is hacked by Hackers.

Cloud infrastructure and management

Cloud infrastructure consists of servers, storage devices, network, cloud management software,
deployment software, and platform virtualization.

Hypervisor
Hypervisor is a firmware or low-level program that acts as a Virtual Machine Manager. It allows to
share the single physical instance of cloud resources between several tenants.

Management Software
It helps to maintain and configure the infrastructure.

Deployment Software
It helps to deploy and integrate the application on the cloud.

Network
It is the key component of cloud infrastructure. It allows to connect cloud services over the Internet. It is
also possible to deliver network as a utility over the Internet, which means, the customer can customize
the network route and protocol.

Server
The server helps to compute the resource sharing and offers other services such as resource allocation
and de-allocation, monitoring the resources, providing security etc.

Storage
Cloud keeps multiple replicas of storage. If one of the storage resources fails, then it can be extracted from
another one, which makes cloud computing more reliable.

Infrastructural Constraints
Fundamental constraints that cloud infrastructure should implement are shown in the following diagram:
Transparency
Virtualization is the key to share resources in cloud environment. But it is not possible to
satisfy the demand with single resource or server. Therefore, there must be transparency in resources,
load balancing and application, so that we can scale them on demand.

Scalability
Scaling up an application delivery solution is not that easy as scaling up an application because it
involves configuration overhead or even re-architecting the network. So, application delivery solution is
need to be scalable which will require the virtual infrastructure such that resource can be provisioned
and de-provisioned easily.

Intelligent Monitoring
To achieve transparency and scalability, application solution delivery will need to be capable of
intelligent monitoring.

Security
The mega data center in the cloud should be securely architected. Also the control node, an entry point
in mega data center, also needs to be secure.
Cloud Computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Infrastructure-as-a-Service provides access to fundamental resources such as physical machines,
virtual machines, virtual storage, etc. Apart from these resources, the IaaS also offers:

• Virtual machine disk storage

• Virtual local area network (VLANs)
• Load balancers
• IP addresses
• Software bundles
All of the above resources are made available to end user via server virtualization. Moreover, these
resources are accessed by the customers as if they own them.
Benefits

IaaS allows the cloud provider to freely locate the infrastructure over the Internet in a cost-effective
manner. Some of the key benefits of IaaS are listed below:
• Full control of the computing resources through administrative access to VMs.
• Flexible and efficient renting of computer hardware.
• Portability, interoperability with legacy applications .

Full control over computing resources through administrative access to VMs

IaaS allows the customer to access computing resources through administrative access to virtual
machines in the following manner:
• Customer issues administrative command to cloud provider to run the virtual machine or to save
data on cloud server.
• Customer issues administrative command to virtual machines they owned to start web server or to
install new applications.

Flexible and efficient renting of computer hardware

IaaS resources such as virtual machines, storage devices, bandwidth, IP addresses, monitoring services,
firewalls, etc. are made available to the customers on rent. The payment is based upon the amount of
time the customer retains a resource. Also with administrative access to virtual machines, the customer
can run any software, even a custom operating system.

Portability, interoperability with legacy applications

It is possible to maintain legacy between applications and workloads between IaaS clouds. For example,
network applications such as web server or e-mail server that normally runs on customer-owned server
hardware can also run from VMs in IaaS cloud.

Issues

IaaS shares issues with PaaS and SaaS, such as Network dependence and browser based risks. It also has
some specific issues, which are mentioned in the following diagram:

Compatibility with legacy security vulnerabilities

Because IaaS offers the customer to run legacy software in provider's infrastructure, it exposes customers
to all of the security vulnerabilities of such legacy software.
Virtual Machine sprawl
The VM can become out-of-date with respect to security updates because IaaS allows the customer to
operate the virtual machines in running, suspended and off state. However, the provider can automatically
update such VMs, but this mechanism is hard and complex.

Robustness of VM-level isolation

IaaS offers an isolated environment to individual customers through hypervisor. Hypervisor is a software
layer that includes hardware support for virtualization to split a physical computer into multiple virtual
machines.

Data erase practices

The customer uses virtual machines that in turn use the common disk resources provided by the cloud
provider. When the customer releases the resource, the cloud provider must ensure that next customer to
rent the resource does not observe data residue from previous customer.

Characteristics

Here are the characteristics of IaaS service model:

• Virtual machines with pre-installed software.
• Virtual machines with pre-installed operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
• On-demand availability of resources.
• Allows to store copies of particular data at different locations.
• The computing resources can be easily scaled up and down.

Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform-as-a-Service offers the runtime environment for applications. It also offers development and
deployment tools required to develop applications. PaaS has a feature of point-and-click tools that
enables non-developers to create web applications.
App Engine of Google and Force.com are examples of PaaS offering vendors. Developer may log on to
these websites and use the built-in API to create web-based applications.
But the disadvantage of using PaaS is that, the developer locks-in with a particular vendor. For example,
an application written in Python against API of Google, and using App Engine of Google is likely to work
only in that environment.
The following diagram shows how PaaS offers an API and development tools to the developers and how it
helps the end user to access business applications.
Benefits
Following are the benefits of PaaS model:

Lower administrative overhead

Customer need not bother about the administration because it is the responsibility of cloud provider.

Lower total cost of ownership

Customer need not purchase expensive hardware, servers, power, and data storage.

Scalable solutions
It is very easy to scale the resources up or down automatically, based on their demand.

More current system software

It is the responsibility of the cloud provider to maintain software versions and patch installations.

Issues

Like SaaS, PaaS also places significant burdens on customer's browsers to maintain reliable and secure
connections to the provider’s systems. Therefore, PaaS shares many of the issues of SaaS. However,
there are some specific issues associated with PaaS as shown in the following diagram:

Lack of portability between PaaS clouds

Although standard languages are used, yet the implementations of platform services may vary. For
example, file, queue, or hash table interfaces of one platform may differ from another, making it difficult
to transfer the workloads from one platform to another.

Event based processor scheduling

The PaaS applications are event-oriented which poses resource constraints on applications, i.e., they have
to answer a request in a given interval of time.
Security engineering of PaaS applications
Since PaaS applications are dependent on network, they must explicitly use cryptography and manage
security exposures.

Characteristics

Here are the characteristics of PaaS service model:

• PaaS offers browser based development environment. It allows the developer to create
database and edit the application code either via Application Programming Interface or point-and-
click tools.
• PaaS provides built-in security, scalability, and web service interfaces.
• PaaS provides built-in tools for defining workflow, approval processes, and business rules.
• It is easy to integrate PaaS with other applications on the same platform.
• PaaS also provides web services interfaces that allow us to connect the applications outside the
platform.

PaaS Types

Based on the functions, PaaS can be classified into four types as shown in the following diagram:

Stand-alone development environments

The stand-alone PaaS works as an independent entity for a specific function. It does not include licensing
or technical dependencies on specific SaaS applications.

Application delivery-only environments

The application delivery PaaS includes on-demand scaling and application security.

Open platform as a service

Open PaaS offers an open source software that helps a PaaS provider to run applications.

Add-on development facilities

The add-on PaaS allows to customize the existing SaaS platform.

Challenges and Risk

Cloud computing, an emergent technology, has placed many challenges in different aspects of data and
information handling. Some of these are shown in the following diagram:
Security and Privacy
Security and Privacy of information is the biggest challenge to cloud computing. Security and privacy issues
can be overcome by employing encryption, security hardware and security applications.

Portability
This is another challenge to cloud computing that applications should easily be migrated from one cloud
provider to another. There must not be vendor lock-in. However, it is not yet made possible because each
of the cloud provider uses different standard languages for their platforms.

Interoperability
It means the application on one platform should be able to incorporate services from the other platforms. It
is made possible via web services, but developing such web services is very complex.

Computing Performance
Data intensive applications on cloud requires high network bandwidth, which results in high cost. Low
bandwidth does not meet the desired computing performance of cloud application.

Reliability and Availability

It is necessary for cloud systems to be reliable and robust because most of the businesses are now
becoming dependent on services provided by third-party.