Cloud Monitoring and Management

Cloud Monitoring and Management

• Cloud monitoring tools and best practices are critical for cloud application reliability, availability, and efficiency.

Cloud Monitoring Tools

• Cloud monitoring tools can help ensure performaance optimization
• Help ensure you have reliable and available resources

Amazon CloudWatch (AWS)

• Provides monitoring and observability services for AWS resources and applications
• Offers metrics monitoring, log management, alarms, dashboards, and automated actions
• Integrates with various AWS services, allowing comprehensive monitoring and troubleshooting

Google Cloud Monitoring (GCP)

• Offers monitoring and alerting services for GCP resources and applications
• Includes metric collection, dashboards, uptime checks, alerting policies, and integration with other GCP services
• Provides insights into resource utilization, performance metrics, and application health

Azure Monitor (Microsoft Azure)

• Provides monitoring solutions for Azure resources including virtual machines, containers, and serverless functions
• Features metrics, logs, application insights, dashboards, and alerting capabilities
• Integrates with Azure services and third-party tools for comprehensive monitoring and troubleshooting

Prometheus

• It is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for cloud-native environments
• Collects metrics from applications, services, and infrastructure components
• Has a multi-dimensional data model, PromQL, alerting rules, and Grafana integration

Datadog

• Provides monitoring, logging, and analytics capabilities as a cloud monitoring and observability platform
• Supports monitoring of cloud infrastructure, applications, containers, and microservices across multi-cloud and hybrid environments
• Includes real-time metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, anomaly detection, and integrations with cloud services

New Relic

• Offers application performance monitoring (APM), infrastructure monitoring, and observability solutions for cloud environments
• Provides insights into metrics like application performance, dependencies, and user experience
• Includes distributed tracing, error analytics, dashboards, and cloud platform/service integration

Performance Optimization - KPIs

• Define Key Performance Indicators relevant to application and business objectives
• Monitor KPIs like response time, throughput, error rate, and resource utilization to gauge performance and user experience

Performance Optimization - Alerts and Thresholds

• Configure alerts and thresholds based on KPIs to proactively detect and respond to performance issues
• Define alerting policies for anomalies, spikes, or deviations from baseline performance, triggering timely notifications

Performance Optimization - End-to-End Transactions

• Monitor end-to-end transactions and user journeys to understand application performance from the user's perspective
• Trace transactions across distributed components and services to identify bottlenecks, latency, or errors

Performance Optimization - Resource Utilization

• Analyze resource utilization metrics (CPU, memory, storage) to optimize resource allocation
• Scale resources dynamically based on demand for optimal performance and cost efficiency

Performance Optimization - Identify and Resolve Bottlenecks

• Use monitoring tools to identify performance bottlenecks like CPU saturation, memory leaks, or network latency
• Apply optimization techniques like code profiling, query optimization, caching, or horizontal scaling to address bottlenecks

Performance Optimization - Optimization and Tuning

• Continuously optimize and tune
• Monitor performance trends over time, conduct root cause analysis, and implement optimizations

Performance Optimization - Security and Compliance Monitoring

• Monitor security metrics and compliance requirements to ensure integrity, confidentiality, and compliance
• Implement security best practices like encryption, access controls, and vulnerability scanning

Performance Optimization - Capacity Planning and Forecasting

• Perform capacity planning and forecasting to anticipate future resource requirements and scaling needs
• Use historical data and performance trends to predict workload patterns and provision resources accordingly

Cloud Application Development - Intro

• Cloud-native development leverages cloud infrastructure scalability, elasticity, and flexibility

Cloud Application Development - Containerization

• Packages applications and dependencies, enabling consistent deployment across environments
• Simplifies deployment, scaling, and management, promoting consistency and reproducibility

Cloud Application Development - Microservices Architecture

• Decomposes applications into small, independent services for specific functions
• Promotes modularity, scalability, and flexibility, allowing independent development, deployment, and scaling

Cloud Application Development - Dynamic Orchestration

• Manages container lifecycle with platforms like Kubernetes, automating deployment, scaling, and load balancing
• Enables efficient resource utilization, resilience, and scalability

Cloud Application Development - Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Treats infrastructure configuration as code, enabling automated provisioning, configuration, and management
• IaC facilitates repeatability, consistency, scalability, reduces manual errors, and improves agility

Cloud Application Development - Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

• Automates integrating code changes, running tests, and deploying applications
• Enables rapid iteration, feedback, and software updates, accelerating time-to-market and improving quality

Cloud Application Development - DevOps Culture

• Fosters collaboration between development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams
• Promotes automation, transparency, and accountability for faster, more reliable operations

Cloud Application Development - Scalability and Resilience

• Designed to scale dynamically in response to changing workloads and user demands
• Incorporates resilience mechanisms like redundancy, failover, and graceful degradation

Cloud Application Development - Observability and Monitoring

• Encompasses monitoring, logging, and tracing, providing insights into performance and behavior
• Enables real-time analysis, troubleshooting, and optimization for improved reliability and efficiency

Cloud Application Development - Security by Design

• Integrates security throughout the development lifecycle to protect data, infrastructure, and applications
• Leverages encryption, access controls, identity management, and other measures for risk mitigation and compliance

Cloud Application Development - Service Mesh and API Gateway

• Provides essential infrastructure for managing communication and interactions between services
• Offers service discovery, load balancing, authentication, and traffic management for enhanced reliability and security

Cloud Security - Identifying Threats

• Maintaining integrity, confidentiality, and availability of data/resources requires threat identification in cloud environments

Cloud Security - Data Breaches

• Unauthorized access from misconfigured permissions, weak authentication, or insider threats
• Insecure APIs expose data to unauthorized users/attackers
• Lack of encryption leads to potential data interception/theft

Cloud Security - Account Hijacking

• Compromised user credentials, weak authentication leading to unauthorized cloud access
• Phishing attacks steal credentials for cloud access
• Insufficient monitoring hinders detection/response

Cloud Security - Insecure Interfaces and APIs

• Exploitable vulnerabilities in cloud provider APIs or management interfaces
• Lack of proper API authentication, authorization, and encryption exposes sensitive data/functionalities

Cloud Security - Insufficient Access Controls

• Misconfigured access controls, overly permissive permissions, or inadequate RBAC policies can allow unauthorized access or modification
• Failure to implement least privilege grants excessive permissions

Cloud Security - Data Loss

• Accidental deletion or data corruption from human error, software bugs, or hardware failures
• Lack of data backup and recovery mechanisms hinders restoration

Cloud Security - Insecure Configuration Management

• Misconfigured cloud services, VMs, containers, or networks expose vulnerabilities and entry points
• Failure to apply timely security patches leaves systems vulnerable

Cloud Security - Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks

• Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks disrupt services/applications and overwhelm resources
• Inadequate DDoS protection allows attackers to disrupt user access

Cloud Security - Shared Technology Vulnerabilities

• Vulnerabilities in cloud infrastructure, hypervisors, or hardware shared among tenants lead to unauthorized access/data leakage
• Lack of isolation allows exploiting shared vulnerabilities for unauthorized access

Cloud Security - Mitigation Strategies

• Organizations must implement robust security measures and best practices
• Best practices include strong authentication, encryption, access controls, regular assessments, segmentation, and incident response

IAM - Policies and Roles

• IAM policies and roles manage access and secure cloud environments

IAM Policies - Definition

• JSON documents that define permissions for accessing cloud resources and services
• They specify allowed or denied actions

IAM Policies - Components

• Actions: Operations that can be performed
• Resources: Cloud services, APIs, or specific resources
• Effect: Specifies whether to allow or deny actions
• Conditions: Criteria for evaluating access

IAM Policies - Types

• Managed Policies: Predefined policies provided by the cloud provider
• Inline Policies: Custom policies attached to users, groups, or roles

IAM Roles - Definition

• Entities with permissions assumed by users, applications, or services for secure access
• They enable temporary access without long-term credentials

IAM Roles - Key Features

• Least Privilege: Minimum necessary permissions
• Cross-Account Access: Grants access across AWS accounts
• Federation: Supports external identity providers
• Temporary Credentials: Issues short-term credentials

IAM Roles - Use Cases

• EC2 Instance Roles: Grants applications access without embedding keys
• Lambda Execution Roles: Specifies function permissions
• Cross-Account Access: Establishes trust and grants secure access to accounts

IAM - Best Practices

• Follow the principle of least privilege, granting only necessary permissions
• Regularly review IAM policies and roles and manage them efficiently

IAM - Managed policies

• Managed policies can be provided by the cloud provider to use industry best practices
• For security enhance multi-factor authentication for IAM users and enforce strong password policies

IAM - Monitoring and Documentation

• Monitor IAM activity logs and set up alerts for suspicious attempts
• Implement proper documentation and tagging of IAM policies and roles

Cloud Security - Ethical Aspects

• Ethical considerations include data privacy and compliance such as Republic Act No.10173, Republic Act No.10175

Data Privacy - Informed Consent

• Users should be informed about data collection, processing, and storage
• Provide transparent privacy policies and consent mechanisms

Data Privacy - Data Minimization

• Only collect and retain minimal personal data
• Avoid unnecessary data to minimize privacy risks

Data Privacy - User Control

• Users should control their cloud data
• Providers should have mechanisms for data portability

Data Privacy - Anonymization and Pseudonymization

• Personal data should be anonymized or pseudonymized to reduce identification risk

Cloud Security - Compliance Requirements

• Compliance includes legal and regulatory compliance and data localization

Compliance - Legal and Regulatory Compliance

• Cloud providers and users must adhere to regulations

Compliance - Data Localization

• Some regulations require that data be stored and processed within specific geographic regions
• Cloud providers should offer data residency options

Compliance - Data Security Safeguards

• Cloud providers should implement strong security measures to protect sensitive data
• Encryption, access controls, audit trails, and security assessments are essential

Compliance - Breach Notification

• Cloud providers and users must notify if any personal data has a breach

Compliance - Business Associate Agreements (BAAs)

• Cloud providers must enter into BAAs with covered entities to ensure compliance

Cloud Security - Ethical Use of Data

• Fair and responsible data use should be ensured by Data users
• Data should be ethically used, avoiding discrimination, bias, or harm

Cloud Security - Data integrity

• Cloud users should have measures that ensure the integrity and accuracy of data

Cloud Security - Transparency and accountability

• Cloud providers and users should maintain accountability for data handling practices
• Be transparent about how data is used in the cloud

Cloud Security - AI and Machine Learning

• Requires bias and fairness and transparency and explainability

AI Bias and Fairness

• AI algorithms should be trained on unbiased datasets

AI Transparency and Explainability

• Cloud users should strive for transparency for AI models with explanation as to how decisions are made

Cloud Infrastructure

• Composed of data centers, networking, and storage, delivering scalable and reliable services

Cloud Data Centers

• Centralized facilities for computing resources managed by cloud providers
• Designed to scale horizontally and vertically and implement hardware, and network redundancy

Cloud networking

• Infrastructure and technologies used to connect resources within and between data centers
• Cloud providers offer virtual networks, load balancing, CDNs, and security services

Cloud Storage Options

• Cloud storage is for resources and over the internet
• Options include object, block, file, and data backup/archiving

Cloud Infrastructure Scalability

• Cloud is essential for organizations and that they use applications, and deliver services efficiently
• Leveraging that they provide, achieves agility, cost savings, and innovation

Cloud storage - popular services

• The following features are popular: Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage:
• Popular clouds each have their own individual unique features

Amazing S3

• It is the scalable object storage service offered by Amazon and Web Services (AWS), that is designed to store and retrieve data
• Provides robust security features and management and Seamlessly integrates with other AWS services

GCS

• GCS is a scalable object storage service provided by Google Cloud Platform (GCP), that is designed to store and retrieve data
• Provides Multi-Regional and Regional Storage and lifecycle management along with integration with GCP services

Azure Blob Storage

• Azure Blob Storage is the scalable object storage service provided by Microsoft Azure
• This is designed to store and manage unstructured data, and offers multiple storage tiers and integrations

Cloud Computing - S3 and Azure DynamoDB

• Automatically replicates data across multiple AZs for redundancy
• Provides services for applications

Data Storage - Reliability

• AWS designs its infrastructure with redundancy at multiple levels to minimize failures and aws has multiple levels

Amazon S3

• Amazon S3 automatically replicates data across multiple Zone for redundancy

High-Performance Networking

• AWS provides Direct Connect and Global content across the Network
• This ensures that all deployments and services are performed reliably with high-performance