CloudComputing-APrimer
Part 1: Models and Technologies
by T. Sridhar
Cloud computing is an emerging area that affects IT infrastructure, network services, and applications. Part 1 of this article
introduces various aspects of cloud computing, including the rationale, underlying models, and infrastructures. Part 2 will
provide more details about some of the specific technologies and scenarios.
The term "cloud computing" has different connotations for IT professionals, depending upon their point of view and often
their own products and offerings. As with all emerging areas, real-world deployments and customer success stories will
generate a better understanding of the term. This discussion starts with the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) definition:
"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable
computing resources (for example, networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned
and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."
The following is a list of characteristics of a cloud-computing environment. Not all characteristics may be present in a specific
cloud solution.
Elasticity and scalability: Cloud computing gives you the ability to expand and reduce resources according to your
specific service requirement. For example, you may need a large number of server resources for the duration of a
specific task. You can then release these server resources after you complete your task.
Pay-per-use: You pay for cloud services only when you use them, either for the short term (for example, for CPU time)
or for a longer duration (for example, for cloud-based storage or vault services).
On demand: Because you invoke cloud services only when you need them, they are not permanent parts of your IT
infrastructure—a significant advantage for cloud use as opposed to internal IT services. With cloud services there is no
need to have dedicated resources waiting to be used, as is the case with internal services.
Resiliency: The resiliency of a cloud service offering can completely isolate the failure of server and storage resources
from cloud users. Work is migrated to a different physical resource in the cloud with or without user awareness and
intervention.
Multitenancy: Public cloud services providers often can host the cloud services for multiple users within the same
infrastructure. Server and storage isolation may be physical or virtual—depending upon the specific user requirements.
Workload movement: This characteristic is related to resiliency and cost considerations. Here, cloud-computing
providers can migrate workloads across servers—both inside the data center and across data centers (even in a
different geographic area). This migration might be necessitated by cost (less expensive to run a workload in a data
center in another country based on time of day or power requirements) or efficiency considerations (for example,
network bandwidth). A third reason could be regulatory considerations for certain types of workloads.
Figure 1: Cloud Computing Context
Cloud computing involves shifting the bulk of the costs from capital expenditures (CapEx), or buying and installing servers,
storage, networking, and related infrastructure) to an operating expense (OpEx) model, where you pay for usage of these
types of resources. Figure 1 provides a context diagram for the cloud.
How Is Cloud Computing Different from Hosted Services?
From an infrastructure perspective, cloud computing is very similar to hosted services—a model established several years