Building Cloud and Virtualization Infrastructure: A Hands-on Approach to Virtualization and Implementation of a Private Cloud Using Real-time Use-cases

By Mrs.Lavanya S, Dr. Venkatachalam K and Dr. Saravanakumar N M

The book ‘Building Cloud and Virtualization Infrastructure’ covers the designing of a private cloud using various components and tools on various platforms such as AWS and OpenNebula.

This book includes network virtualization and integrated technologies such as the Internet of Things and how to create web servers/instances on Amazon Web Services and OpenNebula.

The readers will gain a better understanding of the concept of resource management, which offers benefits such as cost savings and improved manageability after reading this book. They will also learn disaster recovery, techniques, and tools to support virtualization, as well as the security challenges inherent in cloud platforms, the various IAM roles and their associated security, and various security standards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BPB Online LLP
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9789390684557

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Cloud

In the past decades, technology was serving the world with limited scalability, reliability, and performance. From the era of basic disk types like floppy disks, CDs, and USB flash drives, file sharing and storage has experienced a faster and noteworthy evolution over the decades. The electronic devices needed to share data/files are becoming much smaller, tinier, and have unimaginable capacities and performance capabilities to support an on-the-go lifestyle.

The modern era no longer requires specific devices to store all the documents online. Instead, one can access the files from any node or terminal at any time. The technology that supports anytime and anywhere is referred to as cloud computing. It’s a buzzword in the IT industry and serves many small-scale businesses. Some people still wonder how cloud serves remotely in computing. Many of us are curious to know about cloud computing and its working principles, components, models, and so on. This book satisfies the reader’s expectations as well.

Structure

In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:

Introduction to cloud computing

Historical perspective

Statistics of cloud

Key drivers of cloud computing

Definition of cloud computing

Need for cloud computing

Benefits of cloud computing

Who can use cloud

How one can access cloud

Key characteristics of cloud computing

Trends in cloud

Prime uses and examples of cloud computing

Challenges of cloud computing

Objectives

In the wake of examining this section, the readers will:

Understand the fundamental concepts of cloud

Discuss the drivers, characteristics, benefits and the challenges in cloud

1.1 Introduction to cloud computing

Many of our minds eagerly want to know what cloud means. Why is it called cloud or simply Data in the wind? Let’s assume that you want to travel through a taxi, bus, or train to arrive at your destination. You take a ticket and hold on to your seat till you arrive at your destination. Similarly, all other travelers have taken their tickets for a similar transport, but it does not trouble or bother you where they are going. By expressing gratitude toward the driver, you’ll get off the transport. Cloud computing is similar to the transport, it provides information to various users 24 X 7 and allowing them to use resources as services with a minimal cost. Users can request, join, use and leave the environment at anytime from anywhere.

The buzzword cloud was used by network engineers to locate various network gadgets through their network design and its interconnection. The structure of a network design looks like a cloud. It is called cloud computing because the cloud users are allowed to perform computations in it. Prior to this expressive computing placing its strong foundation in the IT industry, the cloud symbol was very popular to represent the internet in different forms, specifications, and documentation of different web-based architecture. Most of the services are published on the World Wide Web (www). So, cloud computing always requires internet as an important and mandatory source to rent its resources to the outside world.

A simple situation as recollected before two decades, individuals run projects or applications from software entities which would be downloaded from a server on the web/internet, install them in a physical PC, do calculation and store all reports in a nearby PC or a local PC. This computing gives similar support/services to help users to get those applications without downloading them into a physical machine. For example, when you might want to do a notice of Facebook account or when you check bank balance on your mobile phone, then it becomes cloud computing.

1.2 Historical perspective

When purchasing any resource for an organization, one of the toughest factors in making the decision will be whether you choose the resource from cloud (online) or on-premise (offline). With the traditional model, all the businesses cannot afford the significant expense of in-house IT foundation and backup support services.

It requires more efforts to buy a new server and managing the server is also an extra effort for a production environment. This computing attracts bigger business giants as well because of its computation, efficacy in storing data, less maintenance cost, and so on. Any users can get a new licensed software and run it on their own servers. When accepting this model, organizations should make the operating and capital expenses associated with deployment, integration, operations, customization, maintenance, support, and updates.

It is too tremendous for tiny and mid-sized organizations to continue/sustain IT business. An on-premise solution becomes a feasible option for bigger companies. Normally, big organizations have a well-structured IT framework, infrastructure, investment capital, necessary software applications to manage the environment and expertise to support their users and employees. For a smaller organization, on-premise solutions may not be suitable and hence, their next focus should be to choose a cloud environment.

Today’s IT companies require 100% service availability with negligible downtime at less cost. Cloud computing is an economical solution for people who are unable to afford expensive in-house IT infrastructure. It reduces the software and hardware demands from the businesses. Since all the IT companies are looking for scalability, efficiency, high availability, efficiency and low-cost infrastructure management, it is necessary to provide best service models to the end user. The job of the user is to run the interface software which can be as straightforward as a web browser to access information in the cloud. At some instance, every one of us has experienced cloud computing using different mail services like Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, and so on. When accessing any e-mail services, understand that our information is placed on a server and not on our PC. The innovation and framework are the imperceptible segments of a cloud. It is not important that the cloud services uses either XML, HTTP, PHP, or Ruby, but accessing to services are easy, user-friendly, and functional. An individual client can associate with cloud framework from his/her own gadgets like work area, workstation, or portable.

Cloud computing solutions (multitenant) like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, web-based banking, cloud-based money-related applications were constructed through the web. These mammoths offer direct access to the diverse IT solutions, typically pay-per-use. Multitenant alludes to the various clients accessing the common or a shared system. There are no capital speculations, upfront fees, or long term guarantees and it is not necessary to purchase a license or oversee underlying software, equipment, administration foundation, and networking infrastructure.

1.3 Statistics of cloud

According to the Forrester’s prediction, cloud usage, trends of cloud, and its growth globally as well is explained as follows. Figure 1.1 produces strategy of service model usage globally.

Figure 1.1: Global strategy of service model [Source from: Forrester Study]

Additionally, more than 50% of ventures will be adopting applications, platforms, and services empowered by the cloud in order to drive digital resource transformation of IT industries. Likewise, the SiliconANGLE determines that the cloud usage of enterprises is growing at a rate of 16-22%. It is the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2016 to 2026. Almost 68-72% of organizations are presently utilizing open, private, or hybrid cloud platforms in their IT activities as indicated by Cisco and IDC overview. In any case, it was 48% in 2015.

Dell reports that organizations that spend much in big data, mobility, cloud, and security acknowledge up to 53% faster revenue generation than their rivals. 94% of businesses guaranteed that they saw an improvement in security in the wake of changing to the cloud. 91% of businesses in cloud makes it less difficult to meet government compliance requirements. 96% of enterprises utilize the cloud overviewed by RightScale and has an estimated real misuse of resources at 35%. 20% of big businesses plan to dramatically increase open cloud expenditure in 2018. The open cloud is considered as the top need for enterprises/ventures that developed between 29% in 2017 and 38% in 2018. The public cloud market has reached $178B in 2018 and it create business at a 22% annual growth rate.

Throughout the following year, enterprises will see a move in IT tasks spend from on-premises to public cloud. Over 30% of enterprises will spend more on tasks in public cloud than on their other server farm. Multi-cloud is the favored technique among 81% of endeavors. While 20% of cloud clients guarantee calamity recuperation in hours or less though just 9% of non-cloud clients (on-premise) do the same in hours.

In two years, the undertaking will have the option to execute half of center security activities; for example, strategy setting and observing. The future extent of the cloud drives IT towards optimizing the cloud costs which is the top initiative in 2018 across overall business using the cloud. AWS, Google, and Microsoft will catch 76% of all cloud platform revenue by 2018 and 80% of all cloud platform revenue by 2020.

1.4 Key drivers of cloud computing

The preceding key drivers are the birth of clouds specified by AWS. Each IT business has its own unique needs such as availability, cost, time-to-market, etc. which may be considered as general terms.

The following are the key drivers of cloud computing:

Globalization

Application explosion

Aging data centers

Storage growth

Cost of ownership

Acquisitions

Any organization that responds to the competitive world through transforming IT into something with greater business agility experiences higher growth.

Globalization: It solves the IT business needs to serve customers round the clock— 365 days 24 x 7, world-wide.

Aging Data Centers: There are different techniques/technologies, different versions of the same application, different technologies that satisfies the same goals are evolving, that needs relocation and upgradation. This ensures that the old technology is replaced with new technology in operational environment.

Storage Growth: Each individual user is generating their own data and looking for online storage to store their data. The explosion of storage usage and consumption is called as storage growth.

Application Explosion: Many new and different applications are deployed over internet by organizations/individuals. These applications should be conveyed and their utilization may scale rapidly on demand is called application explosion.

Cost of ownership: Due to large number of business requests, the expense of purchasing new hardware, power, cooling, support, licenses, and so forth builds the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Acquisitions: When one company purchases most or all of another company’s shares to gain control of that company.

1.5 Definition of cloud computing

Cloud alludes to a diverse IT environment that is intended for the purpose of remotely provisioning scalable and estimated/measured IT resources. It gives remote access to a lot of decentralized IT resources and it has a limited limit.

(OR)

Cloud Computing is the delivery of on-demand computing services/IT resources such as servers including RAM, OS, CPU, Network Speed, databases, software, networking, storage, analytics, and so on over the internet rather than actually having the processing assets at the customer territory.

The internet permits us to access many web-based IT assets which are possessed privately and offers right of entry to IT assets that are metered or on a pay-per-use basis. The typical cloud environment is shown in figure 1.2.

Example: Cloud infrastructure provider:

AWS EC2Instances, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud

Example of services deployed over cloud infrastructure:

Facebook, Banking, Gmail.

Figure 1.2 refers to the typical cloud environment that explains the components included in the cloud.

Figure 1.2: Typical Cloud Environment

Who owns the cloud? An individual or any venture offering IT computing resources as services is called cloud service providers/cloud specialist organizations. The clients of the cloud will be charged for the usage of resources depending on the usage, like how you are charged to use power (electricity billing) or water at home.

Examples of service providers: Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, and so forth.

1.6 Need for cloud computing

With mere increase in PC and mobile users, information stockpiling has become a need in all fields. Today, large scale organizations are taking tremendous measure to store information and to perform computations online. It requires a solid IT support and a capacity/storage hub. Cloud computing sets up independent organizations with restricted assets and it allows the small private organizations access to the resources. It encourages independent ventures to convert their maintenance and support costs into profit. Let’s see how this is possible.

You own an IT firm which consists of in-house IT server and other possible resources. You have to give a ton of consideration and assurance that there are no blemishes in the framework/system so that it runs smoothly. If a few days later, any technical glitch occurs in the server, then you are the one who is completely responsible for it. It will look for a great deal of consideration, time, and cash for bug fix and also, employees will have to work on the server until the server is prepared to serve. While in cloud computing, the provider will take the complete responsibility of the technical glitches and other complications as well.

Where exactly is this cloud? The client/cloud user is available at one end and the cloud services/blogs s are available at the opposite end in the web. The internet/web is meant as cloud where you can store your own documents. These documents can be accessed from anyplace at any time across the globe. This could be basically a significant arrangement for you due to the following three reasons:

You don’t need to keep up or control any framework/ infrastructure.

It will never come up short on limit/never run out of capacity since it is practically unbounded.

You can get to your cloud-based applications from wherever you are. You basically need a contraption that can connect with the web.

Intriguing isn’t it? A reasonable thought regarding the cloud is as follows:

The exercises that you do on the online web.

A package of your work that you do online relies upon cloud.

Social media coordinated efforts/interactions are all on the cloud.

Anything that you store on the web.

Paying your bills on the web.

Web-based/online shopping, and so forth.

Table 1.1 shows the comparison between on-premise and the cloud environment, which clearly depict the idea of making the best decision in the business world.

Table 1.1: Comparison between on-premise and the cloud environment

1.7 Benefits of cloud computing

The one great deal for cloud service adoption by numerous associations is the capability/potential of cost savings. It gives enormous liberty to utilize benefits as per request and follows the pay-per-use model (that is, one can use resources in the cloud based on their own prerequisites and pay just for what they use). The following are the significant advantages of distributed computing:

Lower IT foundation and PC costs for customers: If you are stressed over the sticker price that would accompany switching over to cloud computing, you aren’t the only one. 20 percent of organizations are worried about the initial capital underlying expense of actualizing a cloud-based server. However, the individuals who are endeavoring to gauge the favorable circumstances and weaknesses of utilizing the cloud need to think about a larger number of variables than simply introductory value; they have to think about ROI.

When you’re on the cloud, basic access to your organization’s data will put aside time and money in venturing into new organizations. Besides, for the people who are worried that they’ll end up paying for features that they do not require, most distributed computing organizations are pay-as-you-go. This infers if you don’t abuse what the cloud brings to the table, then at any rate you won’t have to drop money on it. The pay-as-you-gomodel additionally applies to the data storage which implies that you will get precisely a ton of storage as you need, and not be charged for any space that you don’t need. Taken together, these elements bring about lower expenses and more significant yields.

The service enterprises are liberated from capital use. There are no enormous costs of hardware equipment in cloud. You basically need to pay as you work on it and welcome the model subject to your participation plan.

Fewer maintenance issues: You will find the opportunity to appreciate an essential UI with no prerequisite for establishment. Also you are guaranteed to receive your IT support and management from the service providers with the help of SLA.

24x7 availability: Most of the cloud providers and suppliers are really trustworthy in offering their services, with a large portion of them keeping up an uptime of 99.9 percent. The users can get onto the applications required on a very basic level from anyplace.

Instant/automatic programming refreshes/updates: In distributed computing, the server suppliers routinely update your item/product remembering the reports for security that completely eliminates the task of often monitoring the system For the people who works in a hectic work environment, there isn’t anything more upsetting than sitting tight for system updates to be presented. Cloud-based applications subsequently restore and update themselves, instead of compelling an IT office to play out a manual affiliation wide update. The manual updation requires large amount of employee’s effort and money to be spent on outside IT counsel. PCWorld records that 50% of cloud adopters alluded to requiring less inside IT resources as a cloud advantage.

Increased collaboration effort:. Cloud applications enhance collaboration by authorizing diverse groups of people virtually meet and exchange information with the help of shared storage. Quality control: The ability to provide better data management is the quality control. In a cloud-based structure, all chronicles are taken care of in one spot and in a singular course of action. With everyone getting to a similar data, you can keep up consistency in data, maintain a strategic distance from human error and the unquestionable record of any rectifications or updates. Disaster recovery: One of the variables that add to the accomplishment of a business is control. Shockingly, regardless of how in charge your association might be with regards to its very own procedures, there will consistently be things that are totally out of your control, and in the present market, even a limited quantity of ineffective personal time leads to lose profit. Sustainability: It enables businesses to quickly track, analyze and report reliable environmental data to help them reduce their carbon emissions.

Flexibility in capacity: It means that the customer can use the resources according to their requirements and they will pay for what have been used.

Security: Cloud processing offers extraordinary security when any fragile data has been lost. You can even remotely clear out data from the lost machines to avoid it from getting in wrong hands.

Other major benefits are:

Improved compatibility between operating frameworks

Backup and recovery

Performance and scalability

Improved and reliable storage limit

Improved information security

Improved execution and performance

Cost saving in terms of capital investment, operational investment, and maintenance costs

Cope with demand

High availability

High-end compliance

Reduced carbon footprint

Quick deployment

Improved application migration

Improved data mobility

Location free

1.8 Who can use cloud?

Any user who does not own their own resources can make use of the cloud. For example, individuals, companies, organizations, government sectors, and so on.

1.9 How to access the cloud?

The types of clients who can access the cloud are as follows:

Thin clients like a web browser.

Thick clients like personal computers with office packages.

A thin client is a programming software that is essentially intended to communicate with the server. Its highlights are delivered by servers in a cloud platform. This thin client allows huge volume of data to be processed on the remote server.

A thick client is a software that implements and executes its own special highlights. It is a fully configured desktop personal computer, with a floppy drive, a large hard disk, a CD-ROM drive, and an ample amount of both memory and processing power. It might associate with servers; however, it remains mostly serviceable when disconnected. It performs the bulk of the processing in customer/server applications.

1.10 Key characteristics of cloud

Does any application become a cloud application? Yes, any application that fulfills the accompanying five key characteristics turns into a cloud application. The following points infer the various characteristics of cloud computing:

Broad network access: Cloud capabilities are accessible through network and standard components that promote use by heterogeneous thick or thin customer platforms such as cell phones, workstations, and PDAs.

Rapid elasticity: Cloud services can be quickly provisioned includes, quick scale out and quick scale-in. The cloud customers are allowed to access the boundless resources online ay anytime for rent. Measuring services/pay as you go: Cloud processing resource utilization can be estimated, controlled, and announced by transparency for both the supplier and the customer of the utilized service. It uses a metering capacity which empowers one to control and enhance resource use. For example, how electricity bill is generated in household electricity management PAY PER USE. The more you utilize, the higher the bill.

On-demand self-services: Computer services, for instance e-mail, applications, frameworks, or server organizations can be outfitted without requiring human connection with each specialized service provider. Cloud service providers offer on-demand self-services that incorporate Salesforce.com, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Microsoft, and