Cloud Computing and its Services

Question: Discuss about Cloud computing and its services. Answer: Introduction Deployment of applications in the cloud has not been rampant among the cloud consumers because many consumers have been ignorant on what it takes for one to deploy an application and the roles that they play in ensuring the success of the application. When the client is aware of their roles and does a proper planning prior to the deployment of the application, the success rate in the performance of the application in the cloud increases. To guarantee this, the customer to the cloud service must go to an extra mile and gauge what is required of them by the cloud provider and what the service level agreement entails as a guarantee of the services offered. However, these services have not been utilized by the customers because most of them do not understand what services the cloud vendor offer. The SLAs provided by the cloud service providers are often drafted in a way that terminologies and jargons used in its content are difficult for the consumers to decipher hence making the resulting relationship between the cloud vendors and the consumers a challenging one. Misconceptions also exist in that most of the consumers believe that their responsibilities and duties as it pertains security and management of the deployed application ends immediately the application has been deployed to the cloud. The end result is a failed application that does not meet the expectations of the consumer and ends up being withdrawn from the cloud hence mistrust by the consumer on the capability of the cloud services. To curb these misconception and to reduce the fallout between the cloud vendor and the consumers, it is mandatory for the consumer to understand its roles and responsibilities together with those of the cloud provider before it does the deployment of the application to the cloud. Before making any agreement with the cloud providers, customers should seek to understand what to expect from the vendors and what its SLAs entail. This will give an easier platform for the enterprise to make comparisons of different cloud vendors and to get to know which of the vendors offer the best in terms of their services. The following subsections discusses the requirements that DSI should adhere to when deploying the OSDS application to the cloud. The requirements are broken down into remote administration, SLA management and resource management. This is coupled up by the guarantee for application resilience by the cloud provider and the backup and recovery services offered by the cloud. The paper also discusses the general standards followed when coming up with an SLA agreement. Management Requirements Management is the major role in cloud computing and this is necessary for all the parties to the cloud computing services. Understanding the proper management roles necessary for the cloud service provider and that of the end user is mandatory as it helps to ensure that the services of the cloud are well enjoyed by the customers to the cloud. Several things come into play when management in the cloud is talked of and this involves remote management, SLA and resource management. Dalbhanjan and Morad provides a clear specification that is essential for the management needs of the cloud services. The specific requirements for each category of the cloud management services is discussed in details in the subsequent sections. Remote Administration Requirements When remote administration is mentioned in regard to cloud computing, the same is actually used to mean the configuration and management of the cloud provided information technology resources by the enterprise administrators. This is normally done through the tools and interfaces like portals, which have been developed by the cloud providers for such purposes (Mustard Harrison, 2004). Several remote management tools have been provided by the cloud vendors and this can be used by the clients as the basis for choosing the best cloud vendor based on the provided tools (Rimal, Jukan, Katsaros, Goeleven, 2010). Amazon Web Services provides some of the tools that can be used for remote administration and this are listed below; The users to the cloud services are granted access with the help of an identity management tool known as Identity Access management abbreviated as IAM. Clients who wish to make requests to the cloud services are identified using particular credentials that are provided prior to the access. The cloud vendor utilizes a good operating system for client access credentials which guarantees that each and every client is issued with a unique identifier and this identifier is matched with AWS key pair such that everyone has its own unique way and does not need to share details with that users. Agreeing to business or endeavor bolster AWS represents the creation of the application and consolidating it with the AWS Trusted Advisor reports. Resource Management Requirements Resource management is yet another term that is tied with cloud computing and it simply means the coordination of IT resources by the cloud vendors and the clients who use the cloud services. Resource management in the cloud is the most essential thing as it determines how best the resources can be put into use for the betterment of the cloud services and to guarantee the application success in terms of performance and availability (Schubert and Jeffery, 2015). Using the AWS checklist for cloud management, there are several tools available offered by cloud vendors and can be utilized by cloud clients to ensure that the resources allotted to them are well managed. These tools are listed below together with their requirements. Understanding which of the venture examples is Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) - supported when contrasted with occasion put away sponsored. The undertaking ought to pick what is best for them as far as capacity and see the type of implications that this will have on the information tirelessness, reinforcement and recuperation (Lee, 2016). The DSI should be able to decide on whether they need to combine the working framework together with the AWS EBS volumes or have them stored separately. The DSI ought to comprehend the requirement for a customary reinforcement of the Amazon EC2 occurrences either with the assistance of the Amazon EBS depictions or by using an outsider for the administration. SLA Management Requirements SLA management is the actual things undertaken on the part of the cloud vendor and the cloud customer to ensure that the agreement entered between them is binding. Management of SLA ensures that whatever service is guaranteed in the SLA document is actually offered by the cloud vendor and it is to the satisfaction of the client. The same also ensures that the customer uses the services rendered to them by the cloud vendor in accordance to the agreement signed between them (Gillam, Li, O', and Loughlin, 2014). Several SLA management requirements and tools have been listed down in the AWS checklist and these include; Amazon Machine Images, Amazon EBS preview and bootstrapping are used in the routine testing of how practical it is to use the Amazon EBS volumes and the Amazon EC2 for recovery whenever there is a looming disaster. Ensuring that all possible loopholes for any failover has been identified and proper measure has been put in place to ensure that upon the occurrence of such failover, the application is able to still perform well. The features useful for provision of metrics for SLA management are routinely checked and tested to ensure that the procedure of securing and fixing them is possible and again, upgrade can be done without interruption to the services offered. The application to be deployed in the AWS cloud has been tested thoroughly and that no bug or problem has been left to chance just before the application is uploaded to the cloud. Sensitive and confidential information is highly protected and removed from the application before it is uploaded to the server. Other information that may pose security threats and become a vulnerability are encrypted just before being shared to the cloud. Backup and Disaster Recovery Application Resilience One of the basic requirement for the OSDS system is the high availability feature since most of its uses such as remote sensing, scanners, radars and photogrammetric instrumentation and these technologies are meant to constantly send data to a remote database stored with the app so that the data can be accessed by the users of the OSDS application, hence at no point should this system be down (Beach, Rezgui, Parashar, and Rana, 2013). Users to the OSDS system have varied need for the data stored and distributed by the system and may need to access it at different times. Subsequently, for an application to be sent, diverse contemplations ought to be made. Such contemplations are outfitted towards guaranteeing flexibility of the application furthermore guarantees that reinforcement of information is done at ongoing to guarantee that the information is accessible notwithstanding when there is a cataclysm that requires loss of information. For DSI to accomplish high accessibility necessity for the OSDS framework, looking for the instruments gave by the cloud administration supplier is a prerequisite. These instruments incorporate; Utilizing the auto scaling instrument this aides in running robotized example recuperation or scaling The utilization of flexible burden adjusting this is a device that help with burden adjusting over different zones that are utilized by the undertaking. The utilization of Amazon EBS previews this takes point-in-time depictions of the Amazon EBS volumes Storage of articles in Amazon S3 or utilizing Amazon CloudFront to help as a part of substance dispersion Utilization of the non-concurrent information replication innovations this incorporates such advances as database reflecting and it empowers propagation of information in a few databases such that on the off chance that one database comes up short, there is constantly another to fall again into (Varadharajan and Tupakula, 2016). Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan Thought of how the cloud administration supplier will provide food for reinforcement and recuperation of the application and information if there should arise an occurrence of any debacle is additionally a noteworthy sympathy toward the DSI division with respect to its online spatial conveyance framework (Arean, 2013). Having a decent cloud administration supplier that has great administrations for the reinforcement catastrophe recuperation will empower the association influence more from the administration supplier (Sohal, 2013). Several tools and technologies have been listed down in the AWS checklist that can be used for backup and recovery in case of an impending disaster. These tools are available and DSI can choose to leverage on them to better shield their application from unforeseen disasters. The checklist includes; Use of non-concurrent information replication innovations The utilization of EBS Snapshot duplicate crosswise over districts Capacity of information in various cloud supplier administration districts Utilizing on S3 object lifecycle arrangements to chronicle information Taking occasional EBS depictions to guarantee speedy recuperation from information misfortune Cloud Service Level Agreement Assessment Distributed computing licenses individuals, associations and general society zone to store their data and do data taking care of in remote servers, setting aside to 20% all things considered. An SLA is an agreement which describes a particular and honest to goodness parts of the organization that is provided by the administration supplier (B.S., Dakshayini, and Guruprasad, 2015). This is important for anyone that wishes to use the cloud services. Regardless, defenselessness over SLAs goes about as a hindrance which banishes the cloud consumers from comprehending how the cloud services are offered amidst the lack of clarity, vocabularies, standard structures, phrasings and estimations that specify a couple. The challenges experienced are becoming an obstacle to several customers that have a need for cloud computing and those looking forward to adopting an SLA agreement from the cloud vendors and this is the reason that explains why several people are slow to take up cloud computing services (Li and Du, 2013). Small enterprises are affected the most because they lack the necessary resources that are used by the large companies in trying to make sense of the terms and conditions contained in an SLA agreement that is to be signed between them and the service provider. Understanding and adhering to a standard method for thinking of an administration level assention is the most ideal method for unite every one of the partners (Gillam, Li, O', and Loughlin, 2014). There are a few methods that the DSI can leverage on to carry out survey and get an understanding of the cloud supplier to be utilized for the organization of the OSDS application. These methods incorporate; Recognizing the partners to the SLA the partners to the consent to be marked by the DSI division ought to be resolved so as to know the sort of relationship that exists. There are five interesting on-screen characters to the cloud SLA understanding and these are; cloud purchaser, supplier, transporter, intermediary and reviewer. Each has its own interesting parts and obligations to play and the right SLA report will unmistakably set out these obligations (Stanik, Kao, and Koerner, 2015). Assessment of the business level strategies after getting the approaches which are communicated in the SLA, it is the obligation of the venture to decide and contrast these arrangements and their own business level approaches. On the off chance that these approaches are not in concordance, then it will convey an issue to the administration of the endeavor and result to poor use of the cloud administrations. In this manner, the cloud strategies ought to be predictable with those of the business. Decide the cloud measurements the motivation behind the SLA is to decide the degree to which the supplier meets its administrations that it expressed that it will give. To know whether these guarantees have been met, there ought to be a method for measuring the achievement and this should be possible by touching base at standard measurements. It is consequently the obligation of DSI as the customer to decide the measurements utilized by the administration supplier as a part of measuring such limitations as accessibility and reaction time. Security the DSI ought to decide the security prerequisites gave by the administration supplier and the necessities from its side with a specific end goal to guarantee an ensured security of the cloud assets. Discovering these necessities is compulsory since the greater part of the guidelines/directions overseeing cloud administrations differ with nations and a sweeping presumption may influence the asset security of the DSI endeavor. Understanding the SaaS, PaaS and IaaS the undertaking ought to comprehend what the terms implies and the sort of cloud that runs them i.e. private, open or half and half. Ordinarily, the terms and conditions in the SLA will be controlled by the many-sided quality of the variables which are given to the shopper by the cloud administration supplier. Conclusion The DSI department needs to carry out a lot from their side in ensuring that the application deployment to the cloud is successful. This entails carrying out a prerequisite assessment of the cloud service provider to ensure that all the services and guarantees in the service level agreement is carried out to the latter by the cloud service provider. To make the work simple, a checklist is used to ensure that all details are considered. This checklist provides a guideline for the cloud customer to ensure that he/she has met all the requirements and that all the assessments have been done in order to facilitate proper deployment of the application. The DSI departments deployment of the OSDS application has to meet all the constraints placed to it in order for the application to be successful in delivering the spatial services to the end user. 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