CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud Computing

Is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient,
on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable
computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, database,
applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and
released with minimal management effort and provider interaction.

Cloud Enabling Technologies

• Broadband Networks and Internet Architecture

• Data Center Technology

• Virtualization Technology

• Web Technology

• Multitenant Technology
  • Service Technology

Cloud Computing (Key Characteristics)

• Data stored on the cloud
• Software and services on the cloud & Access via web browsers
• Broadband network access
• Accessible from any device
• Low-cost software
• Advanced security technologies

On-Demand Usage (Cloud Characteristics)

Ability of a cloud consumer to self-provision and use necessary cloud-based services without requiring cloud provider interaction

Ubiquitous Access (Cloud Characteristics)

Support for a range of devices, transport protocols, interfaces, and security technologies

Multi-Tenancy/Resource Pooling (Cloud Characteristics)

Ability of an instance of the program to serve different consumers

Elasticity (Cloud Characteristics)

Ability of a cloud to transparently scale IT resources

Measured Usage (Cloud Characteristics)

Ability to keep track of the usage of its IT resources

Resiliency (Cloud Characteristics)

Failover through redundant implementations of IT resources across physical locations

Goals and Benefits of Cloud Computing

• Reduced Investments and Proportional Costs

• Increased Scalability

• Increased Availability and Reliability

Risks and Challenges of Cloud Computing

• Increased Security Vulnerabilities

• Reduced Operational Governance Control

• Limited Portability Between Cloud Providers

• Multi-Regional Compliance and Legal Issues

Changing Role of the IT function in Organizations (Business Case)

• IT must evolve to secure its future in a cloud-enabled business

• IT must shift its focus from building bespoke systems to
  selecting and managing pre-configured components

• IT must become the ‘data custodian’ for the entire business

• IT must evolve into a role as a ‘service director and integrator’

New role of the IT Function in Organizations (Business Case)

• Selection of services

• Integration of services

• Operational excellence and security

New Era in Digital/Cyber/IT Management (CTO/CIO/CDO)

• Business Relationship Management

• Service
  - Strategy
  - Development
  - Management

• IT Management

• Vendor Management

Managerial Implications (Business Cases)

• Ask hard questions and demand data-based analyses regarding cost savings

• Establish a clear governance structure for cloud computing

• Keep cloud efforts on track

• Set the standards for success
  •Provide the necessary support
  •Buy cautiously, appraise frequently

IT Resource (Concepts)

An IT resource is a physical or virtual IT-related artifact that can be either software based, such as a virtual server or a custom software program, or hardware-based, such as a physical server or a network device.

On-Premise (Concepts)

• An IT resource that is hosted in a conventional IT enterprise within an organizational boundary (that does not specifically represent a cloud).

• An IT resource that is on-premise cannot be cloud-based,
  and vice-versa.

Cloud Service (Concepts)

• An IT resource that is provided through a cloud environment and accessed over a network.

• The cloud provider typically manages the underlying infrastructure, while the customer uses the service.

Organizational Boundaries (Concepts)

• The physical or logical boundary that separates an organization’s IT resources from resources outside the organization.

• Example: The boundary around a company's servers, computers, networks, and systems.

Organizational Trust Boundaries

• A boundary that separates IT resources with different levels of trust within an organization.

• Access controls are used to control what can cross the trust boundary.

• Example: Separating the employee network from a highly sensitive database network.

Single Tenant Environment (Concepts)

• A cloud environment in which one customer exclusively uses a particular instance of a resource.

• The customer's resources are not shared with other customers.

• Think: 1 customer → 1 dedicated environment.

Multi-Tenant Environment (Concepts)

• A cloud environment in which multiple customers share the same underlying resources.

• Each customer's data and resources are logically separated from the others.

• Think: Many customers → shared infrastructure.

Resiliency (Concepts)

• The ability of an IT system to continue operating or recover quickly when something fails.

• Example: If one server fails, another server takes over.

Scaling (Concepts)

• The process of increasing or decreasing IT resources to handle changes in workload or demand.

• Example: Adding more computing power when many users access an application.

Horizontal Scaling (Concepts)

• Increasing or decreasing capacity by adding or removing multiple instances of a resource.

• Example: Going from 2 servers → 5 servers.

• Think: Scale OUT / IN.

Vertical Scaling (Concepts)

• Increasing or decreasing capacity by adding or removing resources from an existing instance.

• Example: Upgrading a server from 8 GB RAM → 32 GB RAM.

• Think: Scale UP / DOWN.

How is Horizontal different than Vertical Scaling

• Less Expensive (Through Commodity hardware components)

• IT Resources instantly available

• Resource replication and automated scaling

• Additional IT resources needed

• Not limited by hardware capacity

How is Vertical different than Horizontal Scaling

• More expensive (Specialized servers)

• IT Resources normally instantly available

• Additional Setup is normally needed

• Limited by maximum hardware capacity

Cloud Provider

The party that provides cloud-based IT resources

Cloud Consumer

The party that uses cloud-based IT resources

Cloud Service Owner

A cloud consumer can be a ______ when it deploys its own service in a cloud

• A cloud provider becomes a ________ if it deploys its own cloud service, typically for other cloud consumers to use.

Cloud Resource Administrator

Can be with a cloud consumer organization and administer remotely accessible IT resources IT resources that belong to the cloud consumer

• A _____ can be with a cloud provider organization for which it can administer the cloud provider’s internally and externally available IT resources

Cloud Auditor

A third-party (often accredited) that conducts independent unbiased assessment of cloud environments to help strengthen the trust relationship between cloud consumers and cloud providers.

Cloud Auditor is responsible for the evaluation of

• Security Controls

• Privacy Impacts

• Performance

Cloud Broker

Responsible of managing and negotiating the usage of cloud services between cloud consumers and cloud providers.

Cloud Carrier

Responsible for providing the wire-level connectivity between cloud consumers and cloud providers

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Use providers applications over a network

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Deploy customer created application to cloud

Infrastructure as Service (IaaS)

• Rent processing, storage network capacity

• And other fundamental computing resources

SaaS (Comparison: Level of Control)

Typical Level of Control Granted to Cloud Consumer

• Usage and usage-related configuration

Typical Functionality Made Available to Cloud Consumer

• Access to front-end user-interface

PaaS (Comparison: Level of Control)

Typical Level of Control Granted to Cloud Consumer

• Limited administrative

Typical Functionality Made Available to Cloud Consumer

• Moderate level of administrative control over IT resources relevant to cloud consumer’s usage of platform

IaaS (Comparison: Level of Control)

Typical Level of Control Granted to Cloud Consumer

• Full Administrative

Typical Functionality Made Available to Cloud Consumer

• Full access to virtualized infrastructure-related IT resources and, possibly, to underlying physical IT resources.

SaaS (Comparison: Division of Labour)

Common Cloud Consumer Activities

• Uses and configures cloud service

Common Cloud Provider Activities

• Implements, manages, and maintains cloud service

• Monitors usage by cloud consumers

PaaS (Comparison: Division of Labour)

Common Cloud Consumer Activities

• Develops, tests, deploys, and, manages cloud services and cloud-based solutions

Common Cloud Provider Activities

• Pre-configures platform and provisions underlying infrastructure, middleware, and other needed IT resources, as necessary.

• Monitors usage by cloud consumers

IaaS (Comparison: Division of Labour)

Common Cloud Consumer Activities

• Sets up and configures bare infrastructure, and installs, manages, and monitors any needed software

Common Cloud Provider Activities

• Provisions and manages the physical processing, storage, networking, and hosting required

• Monitors usage by cloud consumers

A cloud deployment model represents a specific type of cloud environment, primarily distinguished by…-

• Ownership

• Size

• Access

Four common cloud deployment models:

• Public Cloud

• Community Cloud

• Private Cloud

• Hybrid Cloud

Public Cloud (Cloud Deployment Models)

• Is a publicly accessible cloud environment owned by a
  third-party cloud provider

• The IT resources on public clouds are usually provisioned via the
  previously described cloud delivery models and are generally offered to
  cloud consumers at a cost or are commercialized via other avenues
  (such as advertisement)

• The cloud provider is responsible for the creation and on-going
  maintenance of the ________and its IT resources

Community Cloud (Cloud Deployment Models)

• Is similar to a public cloud except that its
  access is limited to a specific community of cloud consumers

• The community cloud may be jointly owned by the community
  members or by a third-party cloud provider that provisions a public
  cloud with limited access

• The member cloud consumers of the community typically share
  the responsibility for defining and evolving the community cloud.

Private Cloud (Cloud Deployment Models)

• Is owned by a single organization
•Enable an organization to use cloud computing technology as a means of centralizing access to IT resources by different parts, locations, or departments of the organization

Hybrid Cloud (Cloud Deployment Models)

• Is a cloud environment comprised of two or more
different cloud deployment models
• For example, a cloud consumer may choose to deploy cloud
services processing sensitive data to a private cloud and other,
less sensitive cloud services to a public cloud. The result of this
combination is a hybrid deployment model

Virtual Private Cloud (Cloud Deployment Models)

Also known as a "dedicated cloud" or "hosted
cloud," this model results in a self-contained cloud environment
hosted and managed by a public cloud provider and made available
to a cloud consumer.

Inter-cloud (Cloud Deployment Models)

This model is based on an architecture comprised of two or
more inter-connected clouds .

Purchase and Deployment of On-Premise IT Resources (Business Cost Metrics: Up-Front Costs)

Leasing of Cloud-Based IT Resources (Business Cost Metrics: Up-Front Costs)

• Access

• Setup

Operations of On-Premise (Business Cost Metrics: On-going Costs)

Operations of Cloud-Based (Business Cost Metrics: On-going Costs)

Business Cost Metrics: Additional Costs

• Cost of Capital

• Sunk Costs

• Integration Costs

• Locked-in Costs

Cloud Usage Cost Metrics

• Network Usage

• Server Usage

• Cloud Storage Device Usage

• Cloud Service Usage

Cloud Usage Cost Metrics: Network Usage

• Inbound Network Usage Metric

• Outbound Network Usage Metric

• Intra-Cloud WAN Usage Metric

• Other Cost Metrics:
  - Static IP Address Usage
  - Network Load-Balancing
  - Virtual Firewall

Cloud Usage Cost Metrics: Server Usage

• On-Demand Virtual Machine Instance Allocation Usage Metric

• Reserved Virtual Machine Instance Allocation Usage Metric

• Other
  - Performance Capabilities(CPU, RAM, Storage)

Cloud Usage Cost Metrics : Cloud Storage Device Usage

• On-Demand Storage Space Allocation Usage Metric

• I/O Data Transferred Metric

Cloud Usage Cost Metrics: Cloud Service Usage

• Application Subscription Duration Metric

• Number of Nominated Users Metric

• Number of Transactions Users Metric

Cloud Management Considerations: Lifecycle Stages 1/2

• Cloud Service DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

• Cloud Service DEPLOYMENT

• Cloud Service CONTRACTING

• Cloud Service OFFERING

• Cloud Service PROVISIONING

• Cloud Service OPERATION

• Cloud Service DECOMISSIONING

Cost Management Considerations: Pricing Models 1/3

• Cost Metrics and Associated Prices

• Fixed and Variable Rates Definitions

• Volume Discounts

• Cost and Price Customization Options

Cost Management Considerations: Additional

• Negotiation

• Payment Options

• Cost Archiving

Scenario: Cost Metrics & Pricing Models: Software Licenses

• Cloud environments come with costs bundled with the instances for the common operating systems and software packages (Windows, MySQL, Linux versions)

• Cloud is an impetus to work with freeware and open source.

• Open source is ideal for the cloud

• Best licensing model is the one that charges by CPU-hour

• New features where you can compute with licenses you purchased; bring your own license (BYOL)

• Restricted software licenses are not good for cloud environment:

• Per user licensing that requires validation against a server, auditing and such

• Lesson: Make sure you understand the licensing for the IT resources you use

On-Demand (AWS EC2: 5 Payments)

Yu pay for the compute capacity by the hour or the second depending on which instances you run.

• No longer-term commitments or upfront payments are needed.

• You can increase or decrease your compute capacity depending on the demands of your application and only pay the specified per hourly rates for the instance you use.

On-Demand Instances are recommended for:

• Users that prefer the low cost and flexibility of Amazon EC2 without any up-front payment or long-term commitment

• Applications with short-term, spiky, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted

• Applications being developed or tested on Amazon EC2 or the first time

Reserved Instances (AWS EC2: 5 Payments)

Provide you with a significant discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand instance pricing.

• In addition, when _____ are assigned to a specific Availability Zone, they provide a capacity reservation giving you additional confidence in your ability to launch instances when you need them.

• For applications that have steady state or predictable usage, ____ can provide significant savings compared to using On-Demand instances.

Reserved Instances are recommended for:

• Applications with steady state usage

• Applications that may require reserved capacity

• Customers that can commit to using EC2 over a 1 or 3 year term to reduce their total computing costs.

Spot Instances (AWS EC2: 5 Payments)

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances allow you to request spare Amazon EC2 computing capacity for up to 90% off the On-Demand price

Spot Instances are recommended for:

• Applications that have flexible start and end times

• Applications that are only feasible at very low compute prices

• Users with urgent computing needs for large amounts of additional capacity

Dedicated Hosts (AWS EC2: 5 Payments)

Is a physical EC2 server dedicated for your use.

• Can help reduce you reduce costs by allowing you to use you resisting server-bound software licenses, including Windows Server, SQL server, and SUSE Linux Enterprise (subject to your license terms), and can also help you meet compliance requirements

• Can be purchased On-Demand (hourly)

• Can be purchased as a Reservation for up to 70% off the On-demand price.

Savings Plans (AWS EC2: 5 Payments)

Are a flexible pricing model that offer low prices on EC2 and Fargate usage, in exchange for a commitment to a consistent of usage (measured in $/hour) for a 1 or 3 year term.

Devil’s Advocate: Managing Cloud Spend

• Cloud spend as a KPI

• Incentivize the right behaviors

• Optimization, optimization, optimization

• Think about repatriation front

• Incrementally repatriate.

SLA is a document that descibes

• QoS features

• Guarantees

• Limitations

Availability (SLA Is a document that uses Service Quality Metrics)

Up-time, outage, service duration

Reliability (SLA Is a document that uses Service Quality Metrics)

Minimum time between failure, guranteed rate of successful responses

Performance (SLA Is a document that uses Service Quality Metrics)

Capacity, response time, delivery time guarantee

Scalability (SLA Is a document that uses Service Quality Metrics)

Capacity fluctuation and responsiveness gurantee

Resiliency (SLA Is a document that uses Service Quality Metrics)

Mean-time to switchover and recovery

SLA Key Takeaways

• Codifies the specific parameters and minimum levels required for each element of the service, as well as remedies for failure to meet those requirements

• Affirms your institution’s ownership of its data stored on the service provider’s system, and specifies your rights to get it back

• Details the system infrastructure and security standards to be maintained by the service provider, along with your rights to audit their compliance

• Specifies your rights and costs to continue and discontinue using the service

SLA Remedies

“SLAs must be enforceable, and they should state specific _____, such as corrections or penalities, for when they are not met”S:

SLA Corrections (Remedies)

Codify the actions the service provider must take to prevent a future failure to meet an SLA

SLA Penalties (Remedies)

Often take the form of a financial credit

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

• Mapping business cases to SLA
• Working with Cloud and On-Premise SLA
• Understanding the Scope of an SLA
• Understanding the Scope of SLA Monitoring
• Documenting Guarantees at Appropriate Granularity
• Defining Penalties for Non-Compliance
• Incorporating Non-Measurable Requirements
• Disclosure of Compliance Verification and Management
• Inclusion of Specific Metric Formulas
• Considering Independent SLA Monitoring
• Archiving SLA Data
• Disclosing Cross-Cloud Dependencies

Service Quality Metrics: Availability: Rate

Expressed as a percentage of up time

• Description: Percentage of service up-time

• Measurement: total up-time/total time

• Frequency: Weekly, monthly, yearly

• Cloud Delivery Method: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

Example: Minimum 99.5% up-time

Service Quality Metrics: Availability: Outage Duration

Expressed as maximum and average continuous outage

• Description: duration of single outage

• Measurement: date/time of outage end-date/time of outage start

• Frequency: per event

• Cloud Delivery Method: Iaas, PaaS, SaaS

Example: 1 hour maximum, 15 minutes average

Service Quality Metrics; Reliability: Mean-Time Between Failures (MTBF)

Expressed as an average duration

• Description: Expected time between consecutive service failures

• Measurement: Total normal operation period duration/ number of failures

• Frequency: Monthly, yearly

• Cloud Delivery Method: IaaS, PaaS

Example: 90 day average

Service Quality Metrics: Reliability: Rate

Expressed as a minimum percentage

• Description: percentage of successful service outcomes under pre-defined conditions

• Measurement: Total number of successful responses / total number of requests

• Frequency: Weekly, monthly, yearly

• Cloud Delivery Method: SaaS

Example: Minimum 99.5

Service Quality Metrics: Reliability: Guidelines

• How well can you trust the system to protect data integrity and execute the requested operations

• Data corruption is another reliability problem

• What if your instance goes down? Don’t store critical data in the instance store

• Example: Store your data in Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) and snapshot it frequently

Service Quality Metrics: Performance: List

• Network Capacity Metric
• Storage Device Capacity Metric
• Server Capacity Metric
• Web Application Capacity Metric
• Instance Starting Time Metric
• Response Time Metric
• Completion Time Metric

Service Quality Metrics: Performance: Guidelines

• Design your application so logic is spread across multiple servers

• Use multi-threading to exploit multi-core in the underlying
  architecture

• Clustering versus independent servers; a load balancer working with a
  set of independent nodes is better
  

• Mind your storage when considering performance
  • Example: instance-store is unpredictable, EBS is fine, S3 is slow

Service Quality Metrics: Scalability: List

• Storage Scalability (Horizontal) Metric

• Server Scalability (Horizontal) Metric

• Server Scalability (Vertical) Metric

Server Quality Metrics: Resiliency

Often described based on redundant implementation and resource replication over different physical location as well as various disaster recovery systems. Metric can be applied at three different phases

• Design Phase

• Operational Phase

• Recovery Phase

Service Quality Metrics: Resiliency: Mean-Time To Switchover (MTSO)

• Description: time expected for a resilient system to perform a complete recovery from a server failure

• Measurement: (date/time of recover - date / time of failure)/ total number of failures

• Frequency: Monthly, yearly

• Cloud Delivery Model: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

Example: 10 minutes average

Service Quality Metrics: Resiliency: Mean-Time System Recovery (MSTR)

• Description: The time expected to complete a switchover from a service failure to replicated instance in a different geographical area

• Measurement: (Date/time of switchover completion -date/time of failure)/ total number of failures

• Frequency: Monthly, Yearly

• Cloud Delivery Model: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

Example: 10 Minutes Average

Service Quality: Security: Guidelines

• Legal implications, regulatory constraints, standards, and compliance issues are different in the cloud

• No perimeter security: You secure the traffic not the infrastructure

• Cloud storage assumes high risk for exploits (unproven)

• Virtualization solutions may have their own vulnerabilities

Cloud Consumers and Cloud Providers typically use the Internet to….

Communicate which is based on decentralized provisioning and management model and is not controlled by any centralized entities.