Cloud Computing Architecture

Cloud computing is a utility-oriented and Internet-centric way of delivering IT services on

demand. These services cover the entire computing stack: from the hardware infrastructure
pack aged as a set of virtual machines to software services such as development platforms
and distributed applications.
Infrastructure- and hardware-as-a-
service
• Infrastructure- and Hardware-as-a-Service (IaaS/HaaS) solutions are
the most popular and devel oped market segment of cloud
computing. They deliver customizable infrastructure on demand. The
available options within the IaaS offering umbrella range from single
servers to entire infra structures, including network devices, load
balancers, and database and Web servers.
Platform as a service
Software as a service
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model that provides
access to applications through the Internet as a Web-based service. It
provides a means to free users from complex hard ware and software
management by offloading such tasks to third parties, which build
applications accessible to multiple users through a Web browser. In this
scenario, customers neither need install anything on their premises nor
have to pay considerable up-front costs to purchase the software and the
required licenses. They simply access the application website, enter their
credentials and billing details, and can instantly use the application, which,
in most of the cases, can be further customized for their needs. On the
provider side, the specific details and features of each customer’s applica
tion are maintained in the infrastructure and made available on demand.
Economics of the cloud
• The main drivers of cloud computing are economy of scale and
simplicity of software delivery and its operation. In fact, the biggest
benefit of this phenomenon is financial: the pay-as-you-go model
offered by cloud providers. In particular, cloud computing allows:
• Reducing the capital costs associated to the IT infrastructure
• Eliminating the depreciation or lifetime costs associated with IT
capital assets
• Replacing software licensing with subscriptions
• Cutting the maintenance and administrative costs of IT resources
• In terms of the pricing models introduced by cloud computing, we can
distinguish three different strategies that are adopted by the providers:
• Tiered pricing. In this model, cloud services are offered in several tiers, each of
which offers a fixed computing specification and SLA at a specific price per unit of
time. This model is used by Amazon for pricing the EC2 service, which makes
available different server configurations in terms of computing capacity (CPU
type and speed, memory) that have different costs per hour.
• Per-unit pricing. This model is more suitable to cases where the principal source
of revenue for the cloud provider is determined in terms of units of specific
services, such as data transfer and memory allocation. In this scenario customers
can configure their systems more efficiently according to the application needs.
This model is used, for example, by GoGrid, which makes customers pay
according to RAM/hour units for the servers deployed in the GoGrid cloud.
• Subscription-based pricing. This is the model used mostly by SaaS providers in
which users pay a periodic subscription fee for use of the software or the specific
component services that are integrated in their applications.
Open challenges
• Cloud definition: The characterizations and taxonomies reflect what is
meant by cloud computing at the present time, but being in its
infancy the phenomenon is constantly evolving, and the same will
happen to the attempts to capture the real nature of cloud
computing. It is interesting to note that the principal characterization
used in this book as a reference for introducing and explaining cloud
computing is considered a working definition, which by nature
identifies something that continuously changes over time by
becoming refined.
• Cloud interoperability and standards: Cloud computing is a service-
based model for delivering IT infrastructure and applications like util
ities such as power, water, and electricity. To fully realize this goal,
introducing standards and allowing interoperability between solutions
offered by different vendors are objectives of funda mental
importance. The current state of standards and interoperability in
cloud computing resembles the early Internet era, when there was no
common agreement on the protocols and technologies used and each
organization had its own network.
The current state of standards and interoperability in cloud computing
resembles the early Internet era, when there was no common
agreement on the protocols and technologies used and each
organization had its own network.
• Scalability and fault tolerance: The ability to scale on demand constitutes one of
the most attractive features of cloud computing. Clouds allow scaling beyond the
limits of the existing in-house IT resources, whether they are infrastructure
(compute and storage) or applications services. To implement such a capability,
the cloud middleware has to be designed with the principle of scalability along
different dimensions in mind—for example, performance, size, and load. The
cloud middleware manages a huge number of resource and users, which rely on
the cloud to obtain the horsepower that they cannot obtain within the premises
without bearing considerable administrative and maintenance costs. These costs
are a reality for whomever develops, manages, and maintains the cloud
middleware and offers the service to customers. In this scenario, the ability to
tolerate failure becomes fundamental, sometimes even more important than
providing an extremely efficient and optimized system. Hence, the challenge in
this case is designing highly scalable and fault-tolerant systems that are easy to
manage and at the same time provide competitive performance.
• Security, trust, and privacy: Security, trust, and privacy issues are major
obstacles for massive adoption of cloud computing. The traditional
cryptographic technologies are used to prevent data tampering and access
to sensi tive information. The massive use of virtualization technologies
exposes the existing system to new threats, which previously were not
considered applicable.
• Organizational aspects: Cloud computing introduces a significant change in
the way IT services are consumed and man aged. More precisely, storage,
compute power, network infrastructure, and applications are deliv ered as
metered services over the Internet. This introduces a billing model that is
new within typical enterprise IT departments, which requires a certain
level of cultural and organizational pro cess maturity. In particular, a wide
acceptance of cloud computing will require a significant change to business
processes and organizational boundaries.