SE315: Cloud Computing
BESE-2k23-14AB Fall 2025 Lecture 5ABC
Dr. Qaiser Riaz, Tenured Associate Professor
Faculty of Computing, NUST-SEECS
Agenda
❑Cloud Enabling Technologies
• Data Centers
• Virtualization
2
Data Center
Technology
Data is
Everywhe
re!
Customized Data Search
Every part of the Amazon’s
web page is data
driven!!!
Every part of the
Amazon’s web page
is data driven!!!
Every part of the
Amazon’s web page
is data driven!!!
Every part of the
Amazon’s web page
is data driven!!!
Every part of the
Amazon’s web page
is data driven!!!
Every part of the
Amazon’s web page
is data driven!!!
Data Growth Worldwide
[Link]
How Much Data is Generated Every Day?
• [Link]
13/worldwide-data-created/
Data Creation by Category
• Facebook: Around 51% of shared
content is video-based
• Snapchat: It is estimated that each
snap sent requires 1MB, many of
which are videos.
• Together with social (12.69%) and
gaming (9.86%), these three
categories make up more than 3/4s
(76.27%) of all internet data traffic.
Data Usage –
YouTube
Data Centers by
Nations
[Link]
Data Center
Revenue
Growth Forecast
AI-Driven Data Center Growth
Annual Global Data Center Power Consumption
Data Centers
Data Centers
Definition Core Components Types
Facilities that house computing, Servers (compute) Enterprise (owned/operated by
storage, and networking Storage systems (data) one company)
equipment to support IT Colocation (shared facilities with
operations. Networking (switches, routers,
firewalls) rented space)
Power supply and backup (UPS, Hyperscale (large-scale, used by
generators) cloud providers like AWS, Google,
Microsoft)
Cooling and HVAC systems
Edge (smaller, distributed centers
closer to end-users)
Technical Overview of Data Centers
Layered Architecture and Key Components
Physical Layer
Power Systems Cooling & Environment Physical Security
Utility power feeds (dual feeds for CRAC/CRAH units (air Biometric access
redundancy) conditioning/handling) Guards
UPS (battery backup) Hot & cold aisle containment Video surveillance
Power generators Liquid cooling Sensors
Power distribution units (PDUs)
Network Layer
Core Networking Traffic Control Security
Spine-leaf architecture Routers, switches, firewalls, load Microsegmentation
High-speed fiber interconnects balancers Zero-trust networking
(40/100/400 Gbps) SDN (Software-Defined DDoS protection
Networking) controllers
Compute Layer
Server Hardware Virtualization Containerization
Rack-mounted, blade, Hypervisors (VMware Kubernetes
hyperconverged ESXi, KVM, Hyper-V) DockerSwarm
infrastructure Bare-metal provisioning OpenShift
High-density nodes for
AI/ML (GPU/TPU/FPGAs) Docker
Storage Layer
Types of Storage Hardware High Availability
SAN (block storage) HDD arrays for bulk Replication, erasure
NAS (file storage) data coding, snapshots
Object storage (S3- SSD/NVMe for low-
compatible) latency workloads
Modern
Data
Centers
Building Blocks - Modern Data Centers
Top-of-Rack
Architecture
Data Center Networks
Load balancer: application-layer routing
▪ receives external client requests
▪ directs workload within data center
▪ returns results to external client (hiding
Internet
data center internals from client)
Border router
Load Load balancer
balancer Access router
Tier-1 switches – Aggregation Switches
B
A C Tier-2 switches – Access Switches
TOR switches
Server racks
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Data Center
Tier-1 switches
Networks
v Rich interconnection
Tier-2 switches among switches,
racks:
§ increased
TOR switches throughput between
racks (multiple
Server racks
routing paths
possible)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
§ increased reliability
via redundancy
Virtualization
IaaS
Architecture –
Virtualization
❑Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS) delivers computer
infrastructure for cloud user,
typically a platform virtualization
environment as a service.
❑Virtualization is an enabling
technique to provide an
abstraction of logical resources
from underlying physical resources
Key Technology: Virtualization
Multiple virtual
machines on one
physical machine
Applications run
unmodified as on real
machine
VM can migrate from
one computer to
another
Virtualization
Overview
Virtualization
Creation of a virtual (rather than physical)
version of something, such as an operating system,
a server, a storage device or network resources.
It hides the physical characteristics of a resource
from users, instead showing another abstract
resource.
But, where does virtualization come from ?
Virtualization is NOT a new idea of computer science.
Virtualization concept comes from the component
abstraction of system design
Virtualization: Not a new idea
• 1960’s: first track of virtualization
• Time and resource sharing on expensive
mainframes
• Late 1970s and early 1980s: became
unpopular
• Cheap hardware and multiprocessing OS
• Late 1990s: became popular again
• Wide variety of OS and hardware
configurations
• VMWare
• Since 2000: hot and important
• Cloud computing
• Docker containers
Virtualization Overview
• System abstraction
• Computer systems are built on different levels of
abstraction
• Higher level of abstraction hide details at lower
levels
• Designer of each abstraction level make use of
the functions supported from its lower level
and provide another abstraction to its higher
one.
• Example - files are an abstraction of a disk
The essence of abstraction is preserving information that is relevant in a
given context, and forgetting information that is irrelevant in that context.
– John V. Guttag