Cloud Computing

Moscow State University by M.V. Lomonosov

The Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics

“Cloud Computing”

Kuznetsov Nikita

group 213

Moscow, 2011.

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………3

2. Conception of CC………………………………………………………………………………3

3. History………………………………………………………………………………………………4

4. Modern description……………………………………………………………………………5

5. Cloud technologies……………………………………………………………………………6

6. Risks…………………………………………………………………………………………………9

7. Real CC – services……………………………………………………………………………10

8. Problems in Russia……………………………………………………………………………11

9. IT Cup………………………………………………………………………………………………11

10. Possible solutions …………………………………………………………………Coming soon 

11. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………11

12. References…………………………………………………………………………………………12

1. Introduction

C loud – computing. Most of us don’t even know what the thing it is, and I also didn’t. But some time ago I’ve seen one poster designed by Microsoft. It claimed “Microsoft IT Case Cup”. Case seems to be quite an interesting business so I found a web-page of this event and found out what cloud computing is, it interested me so I decided to write about it. I hope this information would be interesting and useful, so you could start to use these wonderful technologies and perceive how they work.

1. What’s the cloud?

What to do if one certain program is required, but its cost is too large? Or what about business that requires a lot of computer resources but price for buying and service it would make this business unprofitable, just because power, cooling, internet, office place, service and storage, experts and qualification of your workers, testings and developments are very expensive? Small businesses don’t have a chance. ⁽¹⁾ But there is such a thing as Cloud. The name of the technology is a good metaphor, it shows that ordinary user can abstract from technical problems and put all his computations into clouds. And the metaphor came prom computer diagrams, where Internet is shown as cloud. However, a precise definition is essential.

Gartner defines cloud computing as a style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service” using Internet technologies to multiple external customers.

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

To make the concept more understandable CC should be compared to something ordinary, such as public utilities. For example, without electricity, water, and sewers, a homeowner would be responsible for all aspects of these concerns. The homeowner would have to own and maintain a generator, keeping it fueled and operational and its failure would mean a power outage. They would have to pump water from a well, purify it, and store it on their property. And they would have to collect their sewage in a tank and personally transport it to a place where it could be disposed of, or they would have to run their own personal sewage treatment plant. Easier to use public utilities. Similar situation with clouds: usually it’s more beneficial to work with them.

1. History

Cloud computing has evolved through a number of phases which include grid and utility computing, application service provision (ASP), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

But the overarching concept of delivering computing resources through a global network is rooted in the sixties.

The idea of an "intergalactic computer network" was introduced in thesixties by J.C.R. Licklider, who was responsible for enabling the development of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) in 1969.

His vision was for everyone on the globe to be interconnected and accessing programs and data at any site, from anywhere, explained Margaret Lewis, product marketing director at AMD. "It is a vision that sounds a lot like what we are calling cloud computing."

Other experts attribute the cloud concept to computer scientist John McCarthy who proposed the idea of computation being delivered as a public utility, similar to the service bureaus which date back to the sixties.

Since the sixties, cloud computing has developed along a number of lines, with Web 2.0 being the most recent evolution. However, since the internet only started to offer significant bandwidth in the nineties, cloud computing for the masses has been something of a late developer.

One of the first milestones for cloud computing was the arrival of Salesforce.com in 1999, which pioneered the concept of delivering enterprise applications via a simple website. The services firm paved the way for both specialist and mainstream software firms to deliver applications over the internet.

The next development was Amazon Web Services in 2002, which provided a suite of cloud-based services including storage, computation and even human intelligence through the Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Then in 2006, Amazon launched its Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) as a commercial web service that allows small companies and individuals to rent computers on which to run their own computer applications.

"Amazon EC2/S3 was the first widely accessible cloud computing infrastructure service," said Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, which provides its SaaS online video platform to UK TV stations and newspapers.

Another big milestone came in 2009, as Web 2.0 hit its stride, and Google and others started to offer browser-based enterprise applications, though services such as Google Apps.

"The most important contribution to cloud computing has been the emergence of "killer apps" from leading technology giants such as Microsoft and Google. When these companies deliver services in a way that is reliable and easy to consume, the knock-on effect to the industry as a whole is a wider general acceptance of online services," said Dan Germain, chief technology officer at IT service provider Cobweb Solutions.

Other key factors that have enabled cloud computing to evolve include the maturing of virtualisation technology, the development of universal high-speed bandwidth, and universal software interoperability standards, said UK cloud computing pioneer Jamie Turner.

Turner added, "As cloud computing extends its reach beyond a handful of early-adopter Google Docs users, we can only begin to imagine its scope and reach. Pretty much anything can be delivered from the cloud." ⁽²⁾

1. Modern characteristics of cloud computing

• Agility improves with users' ability to rapidly and inexpensively re-provision technological infrastructure resources.

• Application Programming Interface (API) accessibility to software that enables machines to interact with cloud software in the same way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. Cloud computing systems typically use REST-based APIs.

• Cost is claimed to be greatly reduced and in a public cloud delivery model capital expenditure is converted to operational expenditure. This ostensibly lowers barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third-party and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house).

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

• Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing for:

• Centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.)

• Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels)

• Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilized.

• Reliability is improved if multiple redundant sites are used, which makes well designed cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.

• Scalability via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning of resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis near real-time, without users having to engineer for peak loads.

• Performance is monitored, and consistent and loosely coupled architectures are constructed using web services as the system interface.

• Security could improve due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc., but concerns can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for stored kernels. Security is often as good as or better than under traditional systems, in part because providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many customers cannot afford. However, the complexity of security is greatly increased when data is distributed over a wider area or greater number of devices and in multi-tenant systems which are being shared by unrelated users. In addition, user access to security audit logs may be difficult or impossible. Private cloud installations are in part motivated by users' desire to retain control over the infrastructure and avoid losing control of information security.

• Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, because they do not need to be installed on each user's computer. They are easier to support and to improve, as the changes reach the clients instantly. ⁽⁴⁾

1. Cloud technologies

Discussing cloud computing, you should pay attention to where applications are located. Currently, there are three main models of the location of application:

 The infrastructure of the customer;
 The company-host;
 In the cloud.

Location in the customer's infrastructure (on premises). 

This is the most traditional model of application deployment, existing for decades. Application hosting in the local infrastructure requires substantial initial investment in hardware resources, software, network infrastructure and personnel. Such a model - pay, purchase, possession - are directly related to the high capital costs, but at the same time, it provides complete control over the infrastructure, hardware and software. 

The location of the company-hosting (hosting). 

This model of deployment, formerly called the Application Services Prodiver (ASP), and then - SaaS or simply "hosting" the beginning of active development of a few years ago and is one of the most popular ways to reduce the cost of information technology. It is based on the rental of the hardware platform, software, appropriate infrastructure and personnel performing maintenance. Such a model has less control over the infrastructure, hardware and software, and is based on payment of a fixed number of resources that usually involves payment, even in cases where the leased resources are not used.

 The location in the cloud (cloud). 

This model has appeared recently. It suggests postpaid use rented hardware and software resources, resulting in a significant reduction in start-up costs and a shift from capital investment to operating expenses. This model is virtually no control over the infrastructure and hardware, and renting the software - and even the lack of control over it.

"Cloud" services can be divided into three main categories:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). 

Model provision of infrastructure (hardware resources) as a service (Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS) provides the opportunity to rent such infrastructural resources such as servers, storage devices and networking equipment.Manage the entire infrastructure by service providers and users to manage only the operating system and installed applications. Such services are usually paid according to their actual use and allow the user to increase or decrease the volume of use of infrastructure through special portals provided by the service provider. Here the consumers are the owners of applications, IT specialists, preparing OS images to run them in the service infrastructure. Cloud platform provides services for running virtual machines and storage services. Agreement on the provision of services (Service Level Agreement or SLA) usually covers features such services as access to a virtual server, you deploy an OS image. In this service model can be run virtually any application installed on the standard OS images. As is the case with PaaS, payment infrastructure as a service usually carried out based on the volume of resources used.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS). 

Model for the platform as a service (Platform as a Service, PaaS) provides an opportunity to lease the platform, which usually includes the operating system and application services. Platform as a Service facilitates the development, testing, deployment and maintenance of applications without the need for investment in infrastructure and software environment. Platform as a Service also includes the infrastructure as a service. An example of a platform as a service can serve as Windows Azure and Amazon EC2. Here, customers are the companies that developed the application. The platform provides an environment for running applications, services, data storage, and a number of additional services, such as integration or communication services. An agreement to provide services (SLA) usually covers services such characteristics as the availability of the runtime application and its performance. Customization of applications to the needs of consumers are almost unlimited. Constraint could be just the functionality of the services provided at the platform. It should be understood: in order to take advantage of the cloud platform, you need to significantly upgrade or even re-write existing applications. Payment cloud platform is calculated based on the amount of used computing resources, such as:

 The time of application;
 The volume of data and number of data operations (transactions);
 Network traffic.

• Software as a Service (SaaS).

 Model of providing software as a service (Software as a Service, SaaS) provides the possibility of renting applications. Software as a service platform includes both service and infrastructure as a service. An example of the application as a service can be Business Productivity Online Suite33. Model of providing software as a service is a model for providing access to applications over the Internet pay-per use. This model is the most common today to provide cloud services model.Organizations can implement a similar model of providing service from the private cloud using the internal network channels, in addition secure and not connected to the Internet.Consumers of this type of service are end users who work with the applications provided in the cloud. An agreement to provide services (SLA) usually covers services such characteristics as their availability (uptime) and performance. Customizable application's needs are minimal or nonexistent, their level is dictated by market demands or opportunities for vendors of these applications.
Payment for end-service, usually made monthly and calculated on the basis of the number of users prilozheniya. In granting the cloud service uses the type of payment "pay-per-use". Typically, a unit of measurement of time taken a minute or an hour to use resources. In assessing the amount of data per unit of measurement is taken Megabytes of stored information. In addition, cloud infrastructure provides the user the ability if necessary to "raise" or "lower" maximum limits of available resources, thereby taking advantage of elasticity of the service provided. User cloud services do not need to worry about infrastructure, which ensures the efficiency of services provided to him. All configuration tasks, troubleshooting, expansion of infrastructure and other takes on the service provider. Like any new technology, “cloud computing” causes some concern among users. (4)

1. Risks

Here are seven of the specific security issues Gartner says customers should raise with vendors before selecting a cloud vendor.

1. Privileged user access. Sensitive data processed outside the enterprise brings with it an inherent level of risk, because outsourced services bypass the "physical, logical and personnel controls" IT shops exert over in-house programs. Get as much information as you can about the people who manage your data. "Ask providers to supply specific information on the hiring and oversight of privileged administrators, and the controls over their access," Gartner says.