Key Concepts of Cloud Computing - Coursework Example

Cloud Computing due: Introduction Cloud computing refers to a modern technology ofdelivering hosted services over the internet. It enables companies to make use of compute resources as a utility rather than building and maintaining the computing infrastructures in-house. The improvement in processing and storage technologies based on the Internet has resulted in cheap and affordable computing resources. In addition, the computing resources have become a more advanced and user-friendly. The technology has made it possible to adopt cloud computing, which is considered a recent technology in computing. In cloud computing resources such as CPU are regarded as general facilities that can be hired out by respective consumers via the Internet depending on the demand. Cloud computing makes use of some of the traditional means of technology (Zhang, Cheng & Boutaba, 2010). The technological means include the infrastructure providers whose role has been to manage cloud platforms and also lease the resources in accordance with the usage that is based on a pricing model. The other category of the traditional role is that of service providers who are tasked with renting one or more resources by various providers of infrastructure who serve the end consumers. The introduction of this technology in the market has revolutionized the (IT) marketing the recent past. Well-established firms like Microsoft have been working on the development of more vibrant and cheaper cloud services. Organizations are also busy seeking better strategies to gain from the cloud technology. The technology has provided many attractive aspects explaining why many business owners are going for it (Zhang, Cheng & Boutaba, 2010). However, despite the many benefits that have been brought about by cloud computing, there are various challenges of cloud computing that will be addressed in this paper. This paper will highlight the state-of-the-art implementations of cloud computing as well as challenges in research associated with it. Highlight of cloud computing The term cloud has been used in various aspects such as in the description of huge networks ATM networks as used in the past. However, according to the CEO of Google, cloud is a word describing a model of providing services over the Internet, and it was in 2006 that the term cloud gained popularity. Cloud computing has become a popular term in the marketing industry and is used in a number of areas for the representation of different ideas. There is no standard meaning of cloud computing, that has raised market hypes and a fair amount of confusion. This explains the increased work on standardization of the definition of cloud computing. The definition given in this paper is the one provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST gave the definition of cloud computing as a model that enables a convenient, and an on-demand network access. The network access is availed to a number of configurable computing resources that can be dynamically changed and released with minimal management effort or for service provider interaction. The configurable computing resources include networks, servers, applications, storage, and services (Zhang, Cheng & Boutaba, 2010). Cloud computing is a relatively old technology, representing a new model of operations and combining a number of technologies already in use so as to run businesses in a unique way. Some of the technologies in use today regarding cloud computation has been there in the past. These are terms such as virtualization pricing based on utility. Cloud computation employs the technologies already in use to meet the requirements of technology and economy of the current demand in IT (Zhang, Cheng & Boutaba, 2010). Benefits of cloud computing for businesses Cloud computing has in the recent years become one of the most desired technologies by many business owners. Some of its attractive features include the following: 1. It involves no up-front investment. The technology uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model. There means the service provider does not have to invest in the infrastructure for him or her to start gaining from cloud computing. It works in a simple way of provision of hiring facilities from the cloud in accordance with the needs (Armbrust et.al 2009). 2. Cloud computing also involves lowered operational costs. The cloud resources in a computing industry can be assigned and re-assigned how clients demand the resource. This means a provider of a service does not have to provide resources per load. This assures the provider of large savings since the resources can be leased out to minimize the operational costs when the demand for the service is not high (Armbrust et.al 2009). 3. Cloud computing is also highly scalable. The infrastructure providers put together a lot of facilities derived from data centers and make their access easy. A provider of the service can ensure a way of handling rapid increase in demands for the service. This model is known as surge computing. 4. It also involves a smooth access. The cloud mainly hosts web-based services. This means the services can easily be accessed through a number of devices provided they are connected to the Internet. These gadgets are computers, as well as Personal Digital assistants and phones. 5. Cloud computing also reduces business risks and maintenance expenses. Outsourcing the service infrastructure to the cloud minimizes business risks like hardware failure. The business risks are shifted to infrastructure providers, who often have better expertise and are better equipped for the management of these risks. A service provider also cuts down the hardware maintenance and staff training costs (Armbrust et.al 2009). The other interesting benefits of cloud computing to businesses and end users are as described below: 1. Self-service provisioning. The end-users can always customize the computing resources to suit their needs. There is also elasticity. Companies can expand their computing resources for almost any type of workload that is on-demand. 2. Moreover, cloud computing allows pay per use. Users can pay for the resources and workloads they use since computing resources are measured at a granular level. The services of cloud computing can be hybrid, private, or public. For private cloud services, the data center of the business generates the services to internal users. The model offers versatility and convenience while at the same time preserving management, control and security. The internal customers, on the other hand, may or may not be billed for services through an IT chargeback (Armbrust et.al 2009). 3. In a public cloud model, the cloud service is provided by a third party over the internet. The public cloud services are sold on demand. Customers only pay for the CPU cycles, bandwidth or storage consumed. There are various types of public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, IBM/SoftLayer and Google Compute Engine. Future trends in cloud computing advancements in design, implementation, and technologies The global market for global computing has continued growing and still looks promising. It is expected that enterprises will continue expanding the focus of cloud computing as a driver for business innovation. Cloud computing is expected to continue playing a significant role in shaping client value propositions. In addition, enterprises will look at the cloud to drive innovation across the eco-system. The cloud will be increasingly used as a driver for collaboration and reduction of business complexity (Aljawarneh, 2013). Technologies related to cloud computing There are various technologies pertaining to cloud computing since they share certain aspects with cloud computing. The first one is called grid computing (Aljawarneh, 2013). This is a computing technique that coordinates resources that are networked so as to attain the most desired objective of computing. The scientific applications of Grid computing lead to the development of scientific applications that are fully dependent on computation. Cloud computing can be compared to related to Grid computing in that it also employs distributed resources for the achievement of application-level objectives. Cloud computing, however, goes a notch higher by useing technologies of virtualization as a leverage for multiplication of many levels such as the hardware and application platforms for realization of resource sharing and provision of resources that are dynamic in nature (Aljawarneh, 2013). Computing base on utility is another technology representing the model of provision of resources that are demanded and also determining charges on customers which normally uses a standard rate. In this case, cloud computation gives the perception of a realization of utility computing. It economizes on spending by adopting a utility-based pricing scheme. The service providers can maximize resource utilization while minimizing their operating costs due to the on-demand resource provisioning and utility-based pricing (Aljawarneh, 2013). Virtualization is another technology that provides virtualized resources for high-level applications while abstracting away the details of the physical hardware. A virtual machine acts as the virtualized server. Virtualization is an important aspect of cloud computing, as it provides the capability of putting together computing resources from several servers and then assigns or reassigns virtual resources dynamically to applications on-demand (Aljawarneh, 2013). Autonomic computing is another technology with the aspects of cloud computing. The aim of autonomic computing is to build computing systems capable of self-management. This means systems that can react to internal and external observations without human intervention. By so doing, autonomic computing overcomes the management complexity of today’s computer systems. Its main objective is to lower the resource cost (Aljawarneh, 2013). State-of-the-art implementations of cloud computing Cloud computing is implemented in a number of technologies. One of such technology is the architecture of the data centers based on their design. These centers forms an important aspect of cloud computing since it hosts computation power and storage and contains many devices such as servers, switches, and routers all which are carefully planned laid down for effective architecture. A typical data center consists of an access layer,a core, and an aggregation. Servers are physically connected to the network in the access layer. Access switches are linked to two aggregation switches for redundancy with links of 10 Gbps. The aggregation layer deals with provision of services such as domain, location, and balancing of the server load. The core routers help in the management of traffic in and out of the data center (Zhang, Cheng & Boutaba, 2010). The other technology is a distributed file system over clouds. A god example of such a system is the Google File System (GFS), designed to provide efficient, reliable access to data through the use of large clusters of commodity servers. The files are divided into 64 megabytes and are normally assigned to read only, with a few cases of overwriting. The GFS runs on data centers for provision of very high output of data, latency of a lower value survival in the event of failures of the server. In addition to GFS is Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) which deals with storage of huge files in several machines. Reliability is achieved through replication of the data across several servers. A cluster of data nodes builds up a file system. The nodes serves the network, by concentrating on a number of blocks. Provision of data is via a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows the web browser and other clients to access the system. Data distribution is achieved by communication of data nodes which moves copies around while keeping high data replication (Zhang, Cheng & Boutaba, 2010). Distributed application framework over clouds is another important technology. In today’s data centers, several servers are used for purposes like computing and other jobs requiring massive data like the animation of films and checking of financial trends. Google introduced software network called MapReduce to support distributed computing on large data sets on clusters of computers. Many organizations are today making use of the technique of Hadoop MapReduce for reduction of computations requiring large data (Zhang, Cheng & Boutaba, 2010). Research challenges in cloud computing The industry has widely adopted cloud computing, even though, the technology is still at an early stage. In addition to some issues which are not yet addressed, there are new challenges emerging from industry applications. Some of the challenges include: Automated service provisioning The capability of acquisition and release of resources on-demand forms an important feature in cloud computing. In this case, the aim of the service provider is allocation and de-allocation of resources from the cloud in for satisfaction of (SLOs) meaning service level objectives, while working on minimization of the costs of operation. It is, however, difficult to determine mapping of SLOs to low requirements like requirements of memory and the CPU. Moreover, achievement of high response To increased fluctuation in demand such as in flash crowd has to be made online (Reddy, Rao & Reddy, 2011). Virtual machine migration Virtualization provides important benefit in cloud computation by making it possible for virtual machine to migrate and strike a balance between the data center and the workload. Additionally, the migration of enabled a high efficiency in the robustness and responsiveness of data centers. The migration in virtual machine has advanced from process techniques of migration to the new implementation of migration of VMS involving short downtimes that range from tens of milliseconds to a second. VM avoids hotspots, even though, this is not well pronounced. Currently, detection of workload hotspots and initiation of a migration does not have the ability of quick responsiveness to rapid changes in the workload (Clark et.al, 2005). Consolidation of the server This is an efficient way of maximizing utilization of resource cutting down the consumption of energy in cloud-based computation environment. Migartion of virtual migration has continuously developed from techniques of migration many servers to a single server for purposes of cutting on energy consumption. Thus, it is important to take note of the fluctuations of footprints of virtual machine and utilize the information for effective consolidation of the server. The system must also respond appropriately to occurrence of congestions of resource (Clark et.al, 2005). Energy management Cloud computation is faced with a major problem of energy efficiency. There is an increased demand for designing of energy-efficient data centers. One way of approaching this system is by designing an energy-efficient hardware architecture that will enable turning off hardware components by slowing down the speeds of the CPU. The other two ways are reducing power consumption by turning off unused machines (Brooks et.al, 2000). Traffic management and analysis In today’s data centers, analysis of data traffic is an important activity. For instance, web applications are dependent on traffic data analysis for optimization of experiences of customers. The key operators of the network need to have a sound knowledge of traffic within the network to help them make informed decisions (Brooks et.al, 2000). Data management and technologies for storage The design of software frameworks such as MapReduce and its implementations like Hadoop and Dryad is to allow distribution and processing of tasks that are data-intensive. The frameworks operate on Internet-scale file systems such as GFS and HDFS. The difference between the current file systems and the traditional ones is in their structure of storage, pattern of access programming interface of application. This has attracted research to be conducted on methods for supporting the MapReduce framework through the use of cluster file systems (Brooks et.al, 2000). Data security Service providers lack do not access the physical security system of their data centers, and must, therefore, depend on the provider of infrastructure to attain maximum security of data. The infrastructure provider must ensure confidentiality for a secure data access and transfer. The provider must also ensure audibility for testing the security of the applications. Confidentiality can be acquired by use of remote attestation techniques. In a virtualized environment like clouds, VMs can dynamically migrate from one location to another. The hardware layer of the system must be designed using hardware trusted platform module (TPM). The platform of virtualization must also be made of highly secure monitors (Buyya, Yeo, Venugopal, Broberg & Brandic, 2009). Novel cloud architectures The modern commercial clouds are being implemented in large data centers and operated in a centralized fashion. This design achieves economy of scale and high manageability, even though it comes with limitations such as high energy expense and high initial investment for constructing data centers. Current research suggests that small-size data centers can be more advantageous than big data centers. A small data center consumes less power. Development of attractive schemes for cost-effective architectures remains a rich area of research (Buyya, Yeo, Venugopal, Broberg & Brandic, 2009). Conclusion In the recent past, cloud-based computing has become an attractive technology for management and delivery of services via the Internet. Increased use of cloud computing has suddenly changed the technology industry, turning the long-awaited promise of assets into a reality. However, the technology has also been faced with challenges which have inhibited it from achieving its full potential. These are challenges like provisioning of resources automatically, management of power, and management of security, which have attracted the attention of researchers. This shows that contributions are still needed in the field of cloud computing. In this paper, state-of-the-art of cloud computing has been discussed, shedding more light on its most important concepts its essential concepts, characteristics, designs of its architecture, prominent technologies and opening the floor for further research. Cloud computing is still in its earl stage. However, this work has provided a good understanding of some of the major problems facing cloud computing. This is meant to prompt further research into the how the challenges can be minimized so as to develop the most cost-effective and successful implementation of cloud computing technology. References Aljawarneh, S. (2013). Cloud computing advancements in design, implementation, and technologies. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference Cloud computing advancements in design, implementation, and technologies. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference Armbrust, M., Fox, O., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, Y., Konwinski, A., ... & Zaharia, M. (2009). 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(2010). Cloud computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges. Journal of internet services and applications, 1(1), 7-18. Read More