Understanding Cloud Computing

Introduction to Cloud Computing

• Cloud computing enables ubiquitous, convenient, and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources like servers, storage, networks, applications, and services.
• Resources are rapidly provisioned and released
• It involves minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
• A cloud comprises network-accessible hardware and software resources.
• It consists of IT resource pools in data centers.
• Cloud model lets consumers hire IT resources as services.

Essential Cloud Characteristics

• On-demand self-service: Users can unilaterally provision computing resources as needed automatically
• Broad network access: Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms.
• Resource pooling: Provider's computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with resources dynamically assigned and reassigned.
• Rapid elasticity: Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, scaling rapidly outward and inward based on demand.
• Measured service: Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability.

Cloud Service Models:

• Cloud infrastructure supports three service models: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):

• Provides consumers with the ability to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources.
• Consumers can deploy and run arbitrary software, including operating systems and applications.
• Consumers do not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but have control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly select networking components.

Platform as a Service (PaaS):

• Offers consumers the capability to deploy consumer-created or acquired applications onto the cloud infrastructure.
• Applications are created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider (e.g., Google App Engine, Heroku, Microsoft Azure).
• Consumers do not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, but have control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.

Software as a Service (SaaS):

• Permits consumers to use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure.
• Applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface like a web browser (e.g., web-based email).
• Consumers do not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or individual application capabilities, except for limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Cloud Deployment Models

• Public Cloud: Cloud infrastructure is available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.
• Private Cloud: Cloud infrastructure is for exclusive use by a single organization, supporting multiple internal consumers.
• Community Cloud: Cloud infrastructure is for exclusive use by a specific community of consumers with shared concerns.
• Hybrid Cloud: Cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together.

Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Platform includes Static External IP Addresses and is divided into Zones and Regions for VMs and Disks.
• Compute Engine enables virtual machines hosted on Google’s infrastructure as Infrastructure-as-a-Service.
• App Engine allows you to deploy code directly to a fully-managed platform as Platform-as-a-Service.
• Container Engine runs a Docker container cluster on Google Cloud Platform as Container-as-a-Service.
• Cloud SQL offers full SQL support for an online transaction processing (OLTP) system.
• Cloud Datastore stores highly structured objects and query with SQL-like statements.
• Cloud Storage stores immutable blobs larger than 10 MB, such as large images or videos.
• Cloud BigTable is a high-performance, extremely scalable NoSQL database that scales to billions of entries.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

• AWS encompasses Amazon's web-based technology services.
• AWS primarily offers infrastructure services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon SimpleDB.
• Amazon Web Services provides Compute, Storage, Databases, Networking, and many more services.
• Cross-Service includes Support, Marketplace, Management Console, SDKs, IDE kits and CLIs.

Microsoft Azure

• Microsoft Azure offers various services, organized into app services, data services, and infrastructure services.

Cloud Benefits

• Cost & management benefits arise from economies of scale and “out-sourced” resource management.
• Reduced Time to deployment is achieved through ease of assembly and "out of the box" functionality.
• Scaling is facilitated by on-demand provisioning and co-location of data and compute resources.
• Reliability is enhanced through massive, redundant, shared resources.
• Sustainability is improved because hardware is not owned.