Cloud Computing Concepts

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Means that the service is provided by the cloud. So, infrastructure

provided by the cloud.

The different components of the infrastructure are hosted components,

low level or resources and little to no on premises hardware, this would
mainly be done by paying a monthly fee.

Low-Level Resource

 Uses virtual machines the located where the cloud service is based
but the end user can configure VM that is the same as the hardware
I would use.
 You can use Virtual Networks with this
 Virtual appliances such as load balancers and firewalls. All the
physical hardware will be with the cloud provider

Supplementary Services

As this is a subscription service you will get.

 Detailed Billing: giving a breakdown of the things that you have

used and to what capacity
 Monitoring by the cloud provider and they will maintain the
hardware
 Log Access they can see who is using what
 They will have a high level of security to ensure that there service
are not interrupted
 Load Balancing
 High Availability

Storage Resiliency

 Backup, when using hardware from the cloud they should be

multiple back ups of the data to avoid loss of data.
 Replication – You can replicate data so that multiple sites can have
the same data and this is a form or security for data back up

Advantage of IaaS

 No Procurement you do not need to purchase any hardware you just

need to purchase the subscription service.
 You do not need to manage the hardware that you are using such as
the servers.
  No Support required as the hardware is managed by the provider it
will be up to them to troubleshoot any hardware issues.
 Flexibitly are scability are there because you are using the providers
hardware.

Disadvantages of IaaS

 Lack of Transparency as you do not have full control over what level
are hardware is being used you may be able to select certain things
but you can not know what all of the hardware being used is
 Bill Granularity may not be detailed enough
 Multi-Tenant Architecture are not the only client and you may have a
set up that may make you share the same server or VM as someone
else, there may be an option to check if you can use an individual
hardware that only you have access to.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Provider can host applications and software can be accessed on demand.

Clients can access the applications over the internet.

There are service level agreements and this is a guarantee that they will
be a certain level of service regardless of number of users.

No Local Licenses required so that each individual machine doesn’t have

an individual license it will be all in the SaaS

Typical SaaS

 Client Relationship Management

 Financial Management
 Human Resources Management
 Collaboration Management
 Project Management

Advantages of SaaS

 Flexibility and Scalability you can access whatever application you

need
 Pay as you go billing pay for what you use
 Less In House Management all updates for the application will be
done by the provider
 High Accessibility as long as they have access to the internet
Disadvantages of SaaS

 Dependence on the third party as you need to have internet access

to be able to use these applications
 Data Security
 Billing Issues sometimes can be difficult to track what services
 Changes to services

Platform as a Service

Combines both Software and Hardware Services.

Development Environment it give you a platform in which to set up

services

Servers, Networking and OS on VM

Applications and services will still be needed

Significant Local Investment if you was to create this all in house PaaS
help to elevate these costs

Cloud Model Types

Public Cloud: Means the resources of the cloud service are publicly shared.
There are multiple tenants, resources are accessed over the internet.

Private Cloud: Privately shared resources, information is still accessible to

others, you control which users have access to resources. Accessed over
the internet or private network. Private cloud is implemented and
maintained internally, access will be for internal users of your company.

Hybrid Cloud: is a mix between Private and Public Cloud, supplements

existing resources. How this would be done is if your company has a
Private cloud infrastructure and there is expansion that you current
infrastructure can not handle, you can then use a public cloud
infrastructure.

Community Cloud: This is used by businesses communities for businesses

that have similar needs, it is a privately managed cloud but is between
multiple different organisations.

Shared Resources and File Synchronisation

Shared Resources: any resource in any cloud environment can be shared

but it comes down to who the information is shared with, this can be
internally or externally, it doesn’t have to be one or the other.
Internal resource will only allow things such as documents to be accessed
by internal users of your organisation.

External resources can be accessed by application and services from

outside of the organisation they can still be accessed by internal users,
this could be things such as media content. You can use permissions to
control who has access to the content for external and internal users.

Synchronisation: Documents stored in the cloud, users may want to work

with them on their local device, but when they changes are made then
when connected to the cloud the changes that have been made on a local
device updates so there is not multiple versions of the documents

Rapid Elasticity

Dynamic Provisioning

Feature of cloud service provider, used in web applications, databases and

storage services.

This the ability for information to be updated rapidly. Eliminates the need
to estimate resource usage.

It uses Scalable resource provisioning, resources are automatically

adjusted.

Configuration will be required this will be done by setting thresholds so

once they are crossed it will then allocate more resources and vice versa.
Seamless process once this has ben configured. Resources with cloud
providers are effectively limitless.

This allows more responsive services.

Application and services become more flexible, this can also come at an
additional cost.

High Availability

Continuous Operation Without failure, this is implementing Redundancy,

amount of time a service is available, amount of time a system takes to
respond.

 Factors needed is Percentage of Uptime.

 Recovery time
 Maintenance

Factors that can affect availability

Single point of Failure: if this single component were to fail it would take
down the entire system.
Failover this is when one component assumes the role of another
component when the other component fails, you then need Failure
detection this is mechanism that allows the secondary component to know
when the initial component has failed so it knows when to get active, this
should be done automatically as this could take a while to be detected if
done manually.

Clusters: This is groups of computers that have the same services so that
if the main server fails then there is other machines that can have copies
of the information.

Load Balancing: allows you automatically redistribute resource to other

servers, all client request come to the load balancer and then the load
balancer distributes the request as evenly as possible, if there is only one
load balancer this could become a Single point of failure. Having too many
can cause there to be multiple points of failure.

Resiliency: This is a systems ability to recover. It is a balancing act as the

more components you have the less likely for the entire system to fail but
this then reduces the ability for the system to recover and it will do it
slower.

The uptime that is usually quoted from service providers will be 99.999%
this only allows less than 5 hours per year for downtime, this would
include things like maintenance.

Models: Active-active Deployment or Active-Standby Deployment.

If you at least 2 server both are actively responding to requests, if 1

server goes down then the other server needs to be capable of handling
100% workload.

Active-Standby: This has one server managing 100% workload and the
other server stays on standby until the other server goes down

Measure and Metered Services

Measured Services: Checks how much o

Virtual Desktops

 Server-Based Virtual Machines

 Accessed through remote connection: you connect directly to the
VM on the server
 You can still interact with a local Device
 Accessible by a broad variety of devices
Virtualisation Software on the server that hosts these VM, the VM are
running on the server and they can make as many desktops as needed. If
there are multiple Virtual desktops this is infrastructure (VDI), you can set
this up as cloud base service and this is Desktop as a service, this is
control by the client remotely.

VDI Types

Dedicated (Persistent) or Statelass (Non-persistent)

Dedicated: is that the user will make a connection to the VD and this will
be allocated to that user so, Stateless is where VD will be configured the
same and when clients log in they will be connected to any desktop in
that pool.

Advantages of Virtual Desktops

 Data resides on the server or the cloud

 Enhanced security
 Ideal for applications testing
 Issues or problems are contained
 compatibility with legacy systems