All AWS offerings are billed according to usage. The rates vary from service to service.
4 Basic Principles of Cloud Computing:-
The Right Kind of Workload Optimization
At
the core of cloud computing is this idea of optimizing the workload.
This allows you to make the most of your IT resources while increasing
your overall flexibility. Power Systems use technology like IBM’s New
Intelligent Threads to switch between processor threading dynamically.
The Power Systems TurboCore mode lets you provide the most performance
per core for things like database or transaction workloads. Active
Memory expansion lets you expand your physical memory logically by as
much as 100 percent for memory-intensive workloads like SAP.
Limitless Virtualization
With
PowerVM, the virtualization component to IBM Power Systems, you can
virtualize not just processor resources, but memory and I/O resources as
well. You can use PowerVM to adjust capacity in a dynamic fashion, to
move workloads between servers, and to maximize availability. This kind
of virtualization even allows you to prevent planned downtime.
Automated Management
Being
able to provision resources within the cloud is key to maximizing
utilization and efficiency. It also helps to reduce your TCO and
management costs. Utilizing IBM Systems Director Enterprise for Power
Systems, you have a way to manage physical as well as virtual servers in
an automated fashion. These tools are cross-platform, too. This means
that, no matter what your environment, the Power Systems cloud can
provision virtual machine images and effectively allocate resources, all
while providing you with an accurate picture of how your systems are
operating.
Solutions of All Kinds
No matter
the shape, size or composition of your cloud, IBM Power Systems has a
possible solution. Here are a few of the specific offerings:
• IBM
CloudBurst. CloudBurst lets the data center quickly create and
implement a private cloud environment. It’s a cloud computing quickstart
aimed at a defined portion of the data center.
• IBM WebSphere
CloudBurst Appliance. This offering lets you deploy and manage your SOA
foundation in a cloud computing environment, and easily deploys
WebSphere virtual images to your Power Systems partitions.
• IBM
Smart Business Development and Test Cloud. This solution lets you create
a private cloud environment for the purposes of development and
testing, reducing your operating costs and your test cycle times.
Advantages of Cloud Computing :-
Cost Efficiency
This
is the biggest advantage of cloud computing, achieved by the
elimination of the investment in stand-alone software or servers. By
leveraging cloud’s capabilities, companies can save on licensing fees
and at the same time eliminate overhead charges such as the cost of data
storage, software updates, management etc.
The cloud is in
general available at much cheaper rates than traditional approaches and
can significantly lower the overall IT expenses. At the same time,
convenient and scalable charging models have emerged (such as
one-time-payment and pay-as-you-go), making the cloud even more
attractive.
If you want to get more technical and analytical,
cloud computing delivers a better cash flow by eliminating the capital
expense (CAPEX) associated with developing and maintaining the server
infrastructure.
Convenience and continuous availability
Public
clouds offer services that are available wherever the end user might be
located. This approach enables easy access to information and
accommodates the needs of users in different time zones and geographic
locations. As a side benefit, collaboration booms since it is now easier
than ever to access, view and modify shared documents and files.
Moreover,
service uptime is in most cases guaranteed, providing in that way
continuous availability of resources. The various cloud vendors
typically use multiple servers for maximum redundancy. In case of system
failure, alternative instances are automatically spawned on other
machines.
Backup and Recovery
The
process of backing up and recovering data is simplified since those now
reside on the cloud and not on a physical device. The various cloud
providers offer reliable and flexible backup/recovery solutions. In some
cases, the cloud itself is used solely as a backup repository of the
data located in local computers.
Cloud is environmentally friendly
The
cloud is in general more efficient than the typical IT infrastructure
and It takes fewer resources to compute, thus saving energy. For
example, when servers are not used, the infrastructure normally scales
down, freeing up resources and consuming less power. At any moment, only
the resources that are truly needed are consumed by the system.
Resiliency and Redundancy
A
cloud deployment is usually built on a robust architecture thus
providing resiliency and redundancy to its users. The cloud offers
automatic failover between hardware platforms out of the box, while
disaster recovery services are also often included.
Scalability and Performance
Scalability
is a built-in feature for cloud deployments. Cloud instances are
deployed automatically only when needed and as a result, you pay only
for the applications and data storage you need. Hand in hand, also comes
elasticity, since clouds can be scaled to meet your changing IT system
demands.
Regarding performance, the systems utilize distributed
architectures which offer excellent speed of computations. Again, it is
the provider’s responsibility to ensure that your services run on
cutting edge machinery. Instances can be added instantly for improved
performance and customers have access to the total resources of the
cloud’s core hardware via their dashboards.
Quick deployment and ease of integration
A
cloud system can be up and running in a very short period, making quick
deployment a key benefit. On the same aspect, the introduction of a new
user in the system happens instantaneously, eliminating waiting
periods.
Furthermore, software integration occurs automatically
and organically in cloud installations. A business is allowed to choose
the services and applications that best suit their preferences, while
there is minimum effort in customizing and integrating those
applications.
Increased Storage Capacity
The
cloud can accommodate and store much more data compared to a personal
computer and in a way offers almost unlimited storage capacity. It
eliminates worries about running out of storage space and at the same
time It spares businesses the need to upgrade their computer hardware,
further reducing the overall IT cost.
Device Diversity and Location Independence
Cloud
computing services can be accessed via a plethora of electronic devices
that are able to have access to the internet. These devices include not
only the traditional PCs, but also smartphones, tablets etc. With the
cloud, the “Bring your own device” (BYOD) policy can be easily adopted,
permitting employees to bring personally owned mobile devices to their
workplace.
An end-user might decide not only which device to use,
but also where to access the service from. There is no limitation of
place and medium. We can access our applications and data anywhere in
the world, making this method very attractive to people. Cloud computing
is in that way especially appealing to international companies as it
offers the flexibility for its employees to access company files
wherever they are.
Smaller learning curve
Cloud
applications usually entail smaller learning curves since people are
quietly used to them. Users find it easier to adopt them and come up to
speed much faster. Main examples of this are applications like GMail and
Google Docs.
Disadvantages of Cloud Computing :-
As made
clear from the above, cloud computing is a tool that offers enormous
benefits to its adopters. However, being a tool, it also comes with its
set of problems and inefficiencies. Let’s address the most significant
ones.
Security and privacy in the Cloud
Security
is the biggest concern when it comes to cloud computing. By leveraging a
remote cloud based infrastructure, a company essentially gives away
private data and information, things that might be sensitive and
confidential. It is then up to the cloud service provider to manage,
protect and retain them, thus the provider’s reliability is very
critical. A company’s existence might be put in jeopardy, so all
possible alternatives should be explored before a decision. On the same
note, even end users might feel uncomfortable surrendering their data to
a third party.
Similarly, privacy in the cloud is another huge
issue. Companies and users have to trust their cloud service vendors
that they will protect their data from unauthorized users. The various
stories of data loss and password leakage in the media does not help to
reassure some of the most concerned users.
Dependency and vendor lock-in
One
of the major disadvantages of cloud computing is the implicit
dependency on the provider. This is what the industry calls “vendor
lock-in” since it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to migrate
from a provider once you have rolled with him. If a user wishes to
switch to some other provider, then it can be really painful and
cumbersome to transfer huge data from the old provider to the new one.
This is another reason why you should carefully and thoroughly
contemplate all options when picking a vendor.
Technical Difficulties and Downtime
Certainly
the smaller business will enjoy not having to deal with the daily
technical issues and will prefer handing those to an established IT
company, however you should keep in mind that all systems might face
dysfunctions from time to time. Outage and downtime is possible even to
the best cloud service providers, as the past has shown.
Additionally,
you should remember that the whole setup is dependent on internet
access, thus any network or connectivity problems will render the setup
useless. As a minor detail, also keep in mind that it might take several
minutes for the cloud to detect a server fault and launch a new
instance from an image snapshot.
Limited control and flexibility
Since
the applications and services run on remote, third party virtual
environments, companies and users have limited control over the function
and execution of the hardware and software. Moreover, since remote
software is being used, it usually lacks the features of an application
running locally.
Increased Vulnerability
Related
to the security and privacy mentioned before, note that cloud based
solutions are exposed on the public internet and are thus a more
vulnerable target for malicious users and hackers. Nothing on the
Internet is completely secure and even the biggest players suffer from
serious attacks and security breaches. Due to the interdependency of the
system, If there is a compromise one one of the machines that data is
stored, there might be a leakage of personal information to the world.
Big data is
an evolving term that describes any voluminous amount of structured,
semi-structured and unstructured data that has the potential to be mined
for information.Big data can be characterized by 3Vs: the extreme
volume of data, the wide variety of types of data and the velocity at
which the data must be must processed. Although big data doesn't refer
to any specific quantity, the term is often used when speaking about
petabytes and exabytes of data, much of which cannot be integrated
easily.Because big data takes too much time and costs too much money to
load into a traditional relational database for analysis, new approaches
to storing and analyzing data have emerged that rely less on data
schema and data quality. Instead, raw data with extended metadata is
aggregated in a data lake and machine learning and artificial
intelligence (AI) programs use complex algorithms to look for repeatable
patterns.
Load
balancing is dividing the amount of work that a computer has to do
between two or more computers so that more work gets done in the same
amount of time and, in general, all users get served faster. Load
balancing can be implemented with hardware, software, or a combination
of both. Typically, load balancing is the main reason for computer
server clustering. Load balancing is dividing the amount of work that a
computer has to do between two or more computers so that more work gets
done in the same amount of time and, in general, all users get served
faster. Load balancing can be implemented with hardware, software, or a
combination of both. Typically, load balancing is the main reason for
computer server clustering. On the Internet, companies whose Web sites
get a great deal of traffic usually use load balancing. For load
balancing Web traffic, there are several approaches. For Web serving,
one approach is to route each request in turn to a different server host
address in a domain name system (DNS) table, round-robin fashion.
Usually, if two servers are used to balance a work load, a third server
is needed to determine which server to assign the work to. Since load
balancing requires multiple servers, it is usually combined with
failover and backup services. In some approaches, the servers are
distributed over different geographic locations.
Difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption techniques:_
Symmetric Encryption:-
1) Speed is fast.
2) Size of cipher text is usually the same or less than that of the plain text.
3) Number of keys used is the square of the number of participants.
4) Key exchange is a major problem (hence, algorithms like the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange algorithm are used).
5) More storage space required.
6) symmetric encryption model eliminating the need to share the key by using a pair of public-private keys.
7) Symmetric Encryption is an age old technique while.
8) Symmetric Encryption uses a single secret key that needs to be shared among the people who needs to receive the message.
Asymmetric encryption:-
1) Slower in speed.
2) Cipher text size is usually greater than that of the plain text.
3) Number of keys used is same as the number of participants.
4) Key exchange is no problem.
5) Less storage space required.
6) Asymmetric Encryption was introduced to complement the inherent problem of the need to share the key.
7) Asymmetric Encryption is relatively new.
8) Asymmetric encryption uses a pair of public key, and a private key to encrypt and decrypt messages when communicating.
How to Reduce Security Breaches in Cloud Computing Networks :-
In general, follow these steps to reduce the risk of suffering security breaches:
Authenticate all people accessing the network.
Frame all access permissions so users have
access only to the applications and data that they’ve been granted
specific permission to access.
Authenticate all software running on any computer — and all changes to such software.
This includes software or services running in the cloud.
Your cloud provider needs to automate and
authenticate software patches and configuration changes, as well as
manage security patches in a proactive way. After all, many service
outages come from configuration mistakes.
Formalize the process of requesting permission to access data or applications.
This applies to your own internal systems and the services that require you to put your data into the cloud.
Monitor all network activity and log all unusual activity.
Deploy intruder-detection technology. Even if your
cloud services provider enables you to monitor activities on its
environment, you should have an independent view.
Even when cloud operators have good security (physical, network, OS, application infrastructure), it is your company’s responsibility to protect and secure your applications and information.
Log all user activity and program activity and analyze it for unexpected behavior.
Nearly 70 percent of security breaches are caused
by insiders (or by people getting help from insiders). Insiders rarely
get caught.
Encrypt, up to the point of use, all valuable data that needs extra protection.
Regularly check the network for vulnerabilities in all software exposed to the Internet or any external users.