Study on Computing in the Cloud

Introduction:dynamic, and Internet-scale solutions. An Internet
In traditional network diagram, the cloud alwaysoperating system offers the scale and services
represented a fairly static view of an intermediaryrequired to meet the requirements of a dynamic,
virtual area on the Internet. It basically had no realglobal, software application.
function other than passing data from one point toIn an infrastructure cloud environment, the situation is
the other between servers on the Internet and clientradically different. Our data and processing power can
where we cloud setup our applications to runget moved at win from location to location, possibly
The cloud computing model changes this slightly.with varying levels of physical access controls. The
Instead of providing just a medium for messages tounderlying virtualization system of some infrastructure
pass through between clients and severs, it tries tocloud providers may not yet be capable of providing
provide a number of services within the Internetstrong assurances that virtual machines sharing a
"cloud" itself. These services can range from storage,hyper visior are in fact separated and immune from
computation, applications and even completeattack. Cloud providers-in particular, the infrastructure
operating systems. All available as a service on thevariety-tend to be opaque computing services
Internet which you can go ahead and use directly.offering little visibility into their underlying architectures
The "Software_as_a_Servic" or SaaS concept is oneand technologies.
of the major diving forces of cloud computing alongCloud computing is the natural evolution of the
with other concepts such as Web2.0, the webapplication service provider (ASP) from the late
browser and mobile applications.nineties and software as a service (SaaS) strategies
Objective of the Study:from more recent year. Vendors that provide cloud
1. Purpose of the study is to virtualization of thecomputing services supply the data centers required
environment.to host virtualized environments for their customers.
2. Less expensive in context to server maintenance.Business no longer need the same capital expenditure
3. According to demand provide the applicationto up and running and they can buy additional cloud
services and others.computing resources on demand to meet the
Methodology:requirements of increased server load or peak
In this paper relevant literature, information and dataperiods in their business.
have been used from the published books, magazinesGetting into the cloud:
like PCQuest, DeveloperIQ, Computer Today,Currently we can create cloud applications through
InformationWeek, relevant web sites etc.two major implementations:
Text:1- Amazon
We can't turn around these days without hearing2- Google
"Cloud Computing". So what is cloud computing? Is itAmazon:
the same old stuff with a new wrapper? CloudAmazon has a number of cloud offering. The Amazon
computing is a development model leveraged by ITEC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is an offering that allows
to reduce infrastructure costs and/or addressusers to request "virtual machines" in the cloud. Once
capacity/scalability concerns. It is the infrastructurethe request is met, the user can "provision" these
and model of deployment. Cloud computing is aboutvirtual cloud servers to run any software they want.
how an application or service is deployed andThis is completely dynamic in the sense that the user
delivered. Cloud computing is a deployment modelhas control over how many virtual instances he
leveraging on demand computing to scale and servewants to provision and run at a particular point in
applications through a shared resource model.time. The servers can run anything from OpenSolaris,
Are there different types of clouds? Yes, there are.Linux to Windows Server 2003.
There are public clouds like Amazon and Microsoft,Other services that Amazon has include S3 (Simple
and there are going to be private clouds as well.storage service)- a service that lets users or
Because cloud computing is concerned with howapplications use unlimited storage for their files and
applications and infrastructure resources areSimpleDB a distributed database system that can be
provisioned and delivered, location is really irrelevant inused in conjunction with S3 and EC2. All of these
determining whether an architecture is or is not aservices are available through programming models to
cloud.enable end users the ability to use them in their own
There is also differentiation between cloud models;applications as well.
some are based heavily in virtualization and weGoogle:
deploy applications by pushing a virtual image of ourGoogle provides two different sets of services in the
applications and its environment into the cloud usingcloud computing world. the first is the famous Google
web services. Other provides platforms upon whichApps- a combination of services that users can use
we develop the application and which are thenas part of their own domain to enable common
packaged up and provisioned on demand through thefunctionality. The different parts of the Google
provider's custom environment.network- Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Sites and Docs- are
Scalability is an issue in all kinds of softwarecombined into a packaged offering that users can
development and computing. Dose this include cloudsubscribe to in an enterprise. This enables users to
computing? Absolutely, there are basically twohave their organization's data stored up in Google's
different kind of scalability such as horizontal and"cloud" and make it accessible almost anywhere.
vertical. Horizontal scalability means the application canThe other service that Google offers is the App
serve many concurrent users, which is easy and oneengine. This is an online application frame work where
of the benefits of cloud computing. That's the job ofusers can host their own applications. However, the
load balancing and application delivery solutions andGoogle App Engine only supports a limited version of
should be taken care of by the cloud. Then there ispython as their programming frame work. It also has
vertical scalability, which means that the applicationa database like construct with an SQL like language
continues to perform consistently as load increases,to be able to use to program applications.
and that is just note something the cloud provides.Conclusion:
What about security when it comes to cloudThere are many other companies in this playing field
computing? Secure cording is an absolute requirementas well-IBM, HP, Sales Force-to name just a few,
for cloud computing, as is a wide variety ofwho are heavily investing in this model of computing.
application and network layer security in the cloudSince cloud computing reduces the infrastructure
computing infrastructure. Secure coding practice arerequirements and budgets that an enterprise needs
the best way to prevent exploits of application logicto host their applications or data, this model seems
and unauthorized access while firewalls, webto be getting more popular. One doesn't need to
application firewalls, network(IP) and transportworry about purchasing and provisioning hardware
layer(TCP) security solutions are all necessary toand software integrating it into the network and
prevent as many attacks as possible fromother headaches. Simply request the service or
penetrating the outer rim of the cloud. Secureupdate we want and it gets done for us
remote access to applications and services in thetransparently. Cloud computing can help us or at least
cloud, allowing for more sensitive applications tomanage our infrastructure costs better and allow
execute in the cloud and be accessed fromavailability of our application and data over the
anywhere while protecting the communication.Internet. However, one must be able to ensure that
Cloud computing offers virtually unlimited, on demanddata is available anytime one needs it and having
computing resources. Our applications now live in agood software and a seamless connectivity to the
new platform- a computing cloud. In the cloud, ourservice is essential in this regard.
applications take advantages of the seeminglyReferences and Bibliography:
limitless processor cycles, memory storage, and1. InformationWeek Published from United Business
network bandwidth along with extensive softwareMedia
capabilities. Our applications only pay for what they2. Dr. Dobb's Published from United Business Media
use. Cloud computing offers a range of application3. PCQuest, Published from Mumbai
services that from a new platform-an Internet4. DeveloperIQ, Published from New Delhi
operating system suitable for cost effective,5.