LECTURE NOTES ON CLOUD COMPUTING

LECTURE NOTES

CLOUD COMPUTING

UNIT-I

SYSTEM MODELING, CLUSTERING AND

VIRTUALIZATION:

DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM MODELS AND ENABLING

TECHNOLOGIES

The Age of Internet Computing

 Billions of people use the Internet every day. As a result,

supercomputer sites and large data centers must provide high-

performance computing services to huge numbers of Internet

users concurrently. Because of this high demand, the Linpack

Benchmark for high-performance computing (HPC)

applications is no longer optimal for measuring system

performance.

 The emergence of computing clouds instead demands high-

throughput computing (HTC) systems built with parallel and

distributed computing technologies . We have to upgrade data

centers using fast servers, storage systems, and high- bandwidth

networks. The purpose is to advance network-based computing

and web services with the emerging new technologies.

The Platform Evolution

 Computer technology has gone through five generations of

development, with each generation lasting from 10 to 20 years.

Successive generations are overlapped in about 10 years. For

instance, from 1950 to 1970, a handful of mainframes, including

the IBM 360 and CDC 6400, were built to satisfy the demands

of large businesses and government organizations.

 From 1960 to 1980, lower-cost mini- computers such as the

DEC PDP 11 and VAX Series became popular among small

businesses and on college campuses.

 From 1970 to 1990, we saw widespread use of personal

computers built with VLSI microproces- sors. From 1980 to

2000, massive numbers of portable computers and pervasive

devices appeared in both wired and wireless applications. Since

1990, the use of both HPC and HTC systems hidden in.

Fig 1. Evolutionary trend toward parallel, distributed, and cloud

computing with clusters, MPPs, P2P networks, grids, clouds, web services,

and the Internet of Things.

High-Performance Computing

 For many years, HPC systems emphasize the raw speed

performance. The speed of HPC systems has increased from

Gflops in the early 1990s to now Pflops in 2010. This

improvement was driven mainly by the demands from

scientific, engineering, and manufacturing communities.

 For example,the Top 500 most powerful computer systems in the

world are measured by floating-point speed in Linpack

benchmark results. However, the number of supercomputer users

is limited to less than 10% of all computer users.

 Today, the majority of computer users are using desktop

computers or large servers when they conduct Internet searches

and market-driven computing tasks.

High-Throughput Computing

 The development of market-oriented high-end computing

systems is undergoing a strategic change from an HPC paradigm

to an HTC paradigm. This HTC paradigm pays more attention to

high-flux computing.

 The main application for high-flux computing is in Internet

searches and web services by millions or more users

simultaneously. The performance goal thus shifts to measure high

throughput or the number of tasks completed per unit of time.

HTC technology needs to not only improve in terms of batch

processing speed, but also address the acute problems of cost,

energy savings, security, and reliability at many data and

enterprise computing centers. This book will address both HPC

and HTC systems to meet the demands of all computer users.

Three New Computing Paradigms

 A Figure 1. illustrates, with the introduction of SOA, Web 2.0

services become available. Advances in virtualization make it

possible to see the growth of Internet clouds as a new computing

paradigm. The maturity of radio-frequency identification

(RFID), Global Positioning System (GPS), and sensor

technologies has triggered the development of the Internet of

Things (IoT).

Computing Paradigm Distinctions

. The high-technology community has argued for many years

about the precise definitions of centralized computing, parallel

computing, distributed computing, and cloud computing. In

general, distributed computing is the opposite of centralized

computing. The field of parallel computing overlaps with

distributed computing to a great extent, and cloud computing

overlaps with distributed, centralized, and parallel computing.

The following list defines these terms more clearly; their

architectural and operational differences are discussed further in

subsequent chapters.

 Centralized computing. This is a computing paradigm by which

all computer resources are centralized in one physical system. All

resources (processors, memory, and storage) are fully shared and

tightly coupled within one integrated OS. Many data centers and

supercomputers are centralized systems, but they are used in

parallel, distributed, and cloud computing applications

 Parallel computing In parallel computing, all processors are

either tightly coupled with centralized shared memory or loosely

coupled with distributed memory. Some authors refer to this

discipline as parallel processing. Interprocessor communication

is accomplished through shared memory or via message passing.

A computer system capable of parallel computing is commonly

known as a parallel computer . Programs running in a parallel

computer are called parallel programs. The process of writing

parallel programs is often referred to as parallel programming.

 Distributed computing This is a field of computer

science/engineering that studies distributed systems. A

distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers,

each having its own private memory, communicating through a

computer network. Information exchange in a distributed

system is accomplished through message passing. A computer

program that runs in a distributed system is known as a distributed

program. The process of writing distributed programs is referred

to as distributed programming.

 Cloud computing An Internet cloud of resources can be either a

centralized or a distributed computing system. The cloud applies

parallel or distributed computing, or both. Clouds can be built

with physical or virtualized resources over large data centers that

are centralized or distributed. Some authors consider cloud

computing to be a form of utility computing or service computing

COMPUTER CLUSTERS FOR SCALABLE PARALLEL

COMPUTING

Technologies for network-based systems

 With the concept of scalable computing under our belt, it‘s time

to explore hardware, software, and network technologies for

distributed computing system design and applications. In

particular, we will focus on viable approaches to building

distributed operating systems for handling massive parallelism in

a distributed environment.

Cluster Development Trends Milestone Cluster Systems

 Clustering has been a hot research challenge in computer

architecture. Fast communication, job scheduling, SSI, and HA

are active areas in cluster research. Table 2.1 lists some milestone

cluster research projects and commercial cluster products. Details

of these old clusters can be found in

TABLE 2.1:MILE STONE CLUSTER RESEARCH PROJECTS

Fundamental Cluster Design Issues

 Scalable Performance: This refers to the fact that scaling of

resources (cluster nodes, memory capacity, I/O bandwidth, etc.)

leads to a proportional increase in performance. Of course, both

scale-up and scale down capabilities are needed, depending on

application demand or cost effectiveness considerations.

Clustering is driven by scalability.

 Single-System Image (SSI): A set of workstations connected by

an Ethernet network is not necessarily a cluster. A cluster is a

single system. For example, suppose a workstation has a 300

Mflops/second processor, 512 MB of memory, and a 4 GB disk

and can support 50 active users and 1,000 processes.

 By clustering 100 such workstations, can we get a single system

that is equivalent to one huge workstation, or a mega-station, that

has a 30 Gflops/second processor, 50 GB of memory, and a

400 GB disk and can support 5,000 active users and 100,000

processes? SSI techniques are aimed at achieving this goal.

 Internode Communication: Because of their higher node

complexity, cluster nodes cannot be packaged as compactly as

MPP nodes. The internode physical wire lengths are longer in a

cluster than in an MPP. This is true even for centralized clusters.

 A long wire implies greater interconnect network latency. But

more importantly, longer wires have more problems in terms of

reliability, clock skew, and cross talking. These problems call for

reliable and secure communication protocols, which increase

overhead. Clusters often use commodity networks (e.g., Ethernet)

with standard protocols such as TCP/IP.

 Fault Tolerance and Recovery: Clusters of machines can be

designed to eliminate all single points of failure. Through

redundancy, a cluster can tolerate faulty conditions up to a certain

extent.

 Heartbeat mechanisms can be installed to monitor the running

condition of all nodes. In case of a node failure, critical jobs

running on the failing nodes can be saved by failing over to the

surviving node machines. Rollback recovery schemes restore the

computing results through periodic check pointing.

Fig2.1: Architecture of Computer Cluster

IMPLEMENTATION LEVELS OF VIRTUALIZATION

 Virtualization is a computer architecture technology by which

multiple virtual machines (VMs) are multiplexed in the same

hardware machine. The idea of VMs can be dated back to the

1960s . The purpose of a VM is to enhance resource sharing by

many users and improve computer performance in terms of

resource utilization and application flexibility.

 Hardware resources (CPU, memory, I/O devices, etc.) or software

resources (operating system and software libraries) can be

virtualized in various functional layers. This virtualization

technology has been revitalized as the demand for distributed and

cloud computing increased sharply in recent years .

 The idea is to separate the hardware from the software to yield

better system efficiency. For example, computer users gained

access to much enlarged memory space when the concept of

virtual memory was introduced. Similarly, virtualization

techniques can be applied to enhance the use of compute engines,

networks, and storage. In this chapter we will discuss VMs and

their applications for building distributed systems. According to

a 2009 Gartner Report, virtualization was the top strategic

technology poised to change the computer industry. With

sufficient storage, any computer platform can be installed in

another host computer, even if they use proc.

Levels of Virtualization Implementation

 A traditional computer runs with a host operating system

specially tailored for its hardware architecture ,After

virtualization, different user applications managed by their own

operating systems (guest OS) can run on the same hardware,

independent of the host OS.

 This is often done by adding additional software, called a

virtualization layer .This virtualization layer is known as

hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM). The VMs are

shown in the upper boxes, where applications run with their own

guest OS over the virtualized CPU, memory, and I/O resources.

 The main function of the software layer for virtualization is to

virtualize the physical hardware of a host machine into virtual

resources to be used by the VMs, exclusively. This can be

implemented at various operational levels, as we will discuss

shortly.

 The virtualization software creates the abstraction of VMs by

interposing a virtualization layer at various levels of a computer

system. Common virtualization layers include the instruction set

architecture (ISA) level, hardware level, operating system level,

library support level, and application level.

UNIT – II

FOUNDATIONS

INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD COMPUTING



Cloud is a parallel and distributed computing system

consisting of a collection of inter-connected and virtualized

computers that are dynamically provisioned and presented as

one or more unified computing resources based on service-

level agreements (SLA) established through negotiation

between the service provider and consumers.



Clouds are a large pool of easily usable and accessible

virtualized resources (such as hardware, development

platforms and/or services). These resources can be

dynamically reconfigured to adjust to a variable load (scale),

allowing also for an optimum resource utilization. This pool

of resources is typically exploited by a pay-per- use model in

which guarantees are offered by the Infrastructure Provider

by means of customized Service Level Agreements.

ROOTS OF CLOUD COMPUTING



The roots of clouds computing by observing the advancement

of several technologies, especially in hardware

(virtualization, multi-core chips), Internet technologies (Web

services, service-oriented architectures, Web 2.0), distributed

computing (clusters, grids), and systems management

(autonomic computing, data center automation).

From Mainframes to Clouds



We are currently experiencing a switch in the IT world, from

in-house generated computing power into utility-

supplied computing resources delivered over the Internet as

Web services. This trend is similar to what occurred about a

century ago when factories, which used to generate their own

electric power, realized that it is was cheaper just plugging

their machines into the newly formed electric power grid.



Computing

delivered

utility

can

defined

―

demand delivery of infrastructure, applications, and business

processes in a security-rich, shared, scalable, and based

computer environment over the Internet for a fee‖.

Hardware

Systems Management

FIGURE 1.1. Convergence of various advances

leading to the advent of cloud computing.

Internet Technologies

Distributed Computing

Hardware Virtualization

Utility &

SOA

Cloud

Grid

Web 2.0

Web Services

Autonomic Computing



This model brings benefits to both consumers and providers

of IT services. Consumers can attain reduction on IT-related

costs by choosing to obtain cheaper services from external

providers as opposed to heavily investing on IT infrastructure

and personnel hiring. The

―

on-demand

‖

component

thi

model

allo

con

umer

to adapt their IT usage to rapidly increasing or unpredictable

computing needs.



Providers of IT services achieve better operational costs;

hardware and software infrastructures are built to provide

multiple solutions and serve many users, thus increasing

efficiency and ultimately leading to faster return on

investment (ROI) as well as lower total cost of ownership

(TCO).



The mainframe era collapsed with the advent of fast and

inexpensive microprocessors and IT data centers moved to

collections of commodity servers. Apart from its clear

advantages, this new model inevitably led to isolation of

workload into dedicated servers, mainly due to

incompatibilities

Between software stacks and operating systems.



These facts reveal the potential of delivering computing

services with the speed and reliability that businesses enjoy

with their local machines. The benefits of economies of

scale and high utilization allow providers to offer

computing services for a fraction of what it costs for a typical

company that generates its own computing power.

SOA, WEB SERVICES, WEB 2.0, AND MASHUPS



The emergence of Web services (WS) open standards has

significantly con-tributed to advances in the domain of

software integration. Web services can glue together

applications running on different messaging product plat-

forms, enabling information from one application to be made

available to others, and enabling internal applications to be

made available over the Internet.



Over the years a rich WS software stack has been specified

and standardized, resulting in a multitude of technologies to

describe, compose, and orchestrate services, package and

transport messages between services, publish and dis- cover

services, represent quality of service (QoS) parameters, and

ensure security in service access.



WS standards have been created on top of existing ubiquitous

technologies such as HTTP and XML, thus providing a

common mechanism for delivering services, making them

ideal for implementing a service-oriented architecture

(SOA).



The purpose of a SOA is to address requirements of loosely

coupled, standards-based, and protocol- independent

distributed computing. In a SOA, software

res

ource

are

packaged

―

services

,‖

whi

are

ll- defined, self-

contained modules that provide standard business

functionality and are independent of the state or context of

other services. Services are described in a standard definition

language and have a published interface.



The maturity of WS has enabled the creation of powerful

services that can be accessed on-demand, in a uniform way.

While some WS are published with the intent of serving end-

user applications, their true power resides in its interface

being accessible by other services. An enterprise application

that follows the SOA paradigm is a collection of services that

together perform complex business logic.



In the consumer Web, information and services may be

programmatically aggregated, acting as building blocks of

complex compositions, called service mashups. Many

service providers, such as Amazon, del.icio.us, Facebook,

and Google, make their service APIs publicly accessible

using standard protocols such as SOAP and REST.



In the Software as a Service (SaaS) domain, cloud

applications can be built as compositions of other services

from the same or different providers. Services such user

authentication, e-mail, payroll management, and calendars

are examples of building blocks that can be reused and

combined in a business solution in case a single, ready- made

system does not provide all those features. Many building

blocks and solutions are now available in public

marketplaces.



For example, Programmable Web is a public repository of

service APIs and mashups currently listing thousands of APIs

and mashups. Popular APIs such as Google Maps, Flickr,

YouTube, Amazon eCommerce, and Twitter, when

combined, produce a variety of interesting solutions, from

finding video game retailers to weather maps. Similarly,

Salesforce.com‘s offers AppExchange, which enables the

sharing of solutions developed by third-party developers on

top of Salesforce.com components.

GRID COMPUTING



Grid computing enables aggregation of distributed resources

and transparently access to them. Most production grids such

as TeraGrid and EGEE seek to share compute and storage

resources distributed across different administrative

domains, with their main focus being speeding up a broad

range of scientific applications, such as climate modeling,

drug design, and protein analysis.



A key aspect of the grid vision realization has been building

standard Web services-based protocols that allow

tributed

res

ource

―

discovered,

acce

ed,

allocated, monitored, accounted for, and billed for, etc., and

in general managed as a single virtual system.‖ The Open

Grid Services Archi- tecture (OGSA) addresses this need for

standardization by defining a set of core capabilities and

behaviors that address key concerns in grid systems.

UTILITY COMPUTING



In utility computing environments, users assign a

―

utility

‖

value

their

job

wher

utility

fixed or

time-varying valuation that captures various QoS constraints

(deadline, importance, satisfaction). The valuation is the

amount they are willing to pay a service provider to satisfy

their demands. The service providers then attempt to

maximize their own utility, where said utility may directly

correlate with their profit. Providers can choose to prioritize

Hardware Virtualization



Cloud computing services are usually backed by large- scale

data centers composed of thousands of computers. Such data

centers are built to serve many users and host many disparate

applications. For this purpose, hardware virtualization can be

considered as a perfect fit to overcome most operational

issues of data center building and maintenance.



The idea of virtualizing a computer system‘s resources,

including processors, memory, and I/O devices, has been

well established for decades, aiming at improving sharing

and utilization of computer systems.



Hardware virtua-lization allows running multiple operating

systems and software stacks on a single physical platform.

As depicted in Figure 1.2, a software

layer, the virtual machine monitor (VMM), also called a

hypervisor, mediates access to the physical hardware

presenting to each guest operating system a virtual machine

(VM), which is a set of virtual platform interfaces .



The advent of several innovative technologies—multi- core

chips, paravir- tualization, hardware-assisted virtualization,

and live migration of VMs—has contributed to an

increasing adoption of virtualization on server systems.

Traditionally, perceived benefits were improvements on

sharing and utilization, better manageability, and higher

reliability.

FIGURE 1.2. A hardware virtualized server hosting three

virtual machines, each one running distinct operating system

and user level software stack.



Management of workload in a virtualized system, namely

isolation, consolida-tion, and migration. Workload isolation

is achieved since all program instructions are fully confined

inside a VM, which leads to improvements in security. Better

reliability is also achieved because software failures inside

one VM do not affect others.



Workload migration, also referred to as application

Virtual Machine 1

Virtual Machine 2

Virtual Machine N

User software

App A App X

Data Web

Java

Ruby on

App B

App Y

Linux

Guest OS

Virtual Machine Monitor (Hypervisor)

mobility, targets at facilitating hardware maintenance, load

balancing, and disaster recovery. It is done by encapsulating

a guest OS state within a VM and allowing it to be

suspended, fully serialized, migrated to a different platform,

and resumed immediately or preserved to be restored at a

later date. A VM‘s state includes a full disk or partition

image, configuration files, and an image of its RAM.



A number of VMM platforms exist that are the basis of many

utility or cloud computing environments. The most notable

ones, VMWare, Xen, and KVM.

Virtual Appliances and the Open Virtualization Format



An application combined with the environment needed to run

it (operating system, libraries, compilers, databases,

application containers, and so forth) is referred to as a

―

virtual

appliance

.‖

ackaging

application

environment

the shape of virtual appliances eases software customization,

configuration, and patching and improves portability. Most

commonly, an appliance is shaped as a VM disk image

associated with hardware requirements, and it can be readily

deployed in a hypervisor.



On-line marketplaces have been set up to allow the exchange

of ready-made appliances containing popular operating

systems and useful software combina- tions, both commercial

and open-source.



Most notably, the VMWare virtual appliance marketplace

allows users to deploy appliances on VMWare hypervi- sors

or on partners public clouds, and Amazon allows developers

to share specialized Amazon Machine Images (AMI) and

monetize their usage on Amazon EC2.



In a multitude of hypervisors, where each one supports a

different VM image format and the formats are incompatible

with one another, a great deal of interoperability issues arises.

For instance, Amazon has its Amazon machine image (AMI)

format, made popular on the Amazon EC2 public cloud.



Other formats are used by Citrix XenServer, several Linux

distributions that ship with KVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, and

VMware ESX.

AUTONOMIC COMPUTING



The increasing complexity of computing systems has

motivated research on autonomic computing, which seeks to

improve systems by decreasing human involvement in their

operation. In other words, systems should manage

themselves, with high-level guidance from humans.



Autonomic, or self-managing, systems rely on monitoring

probes and gauges (sensors), on an adaptation engine

(autonomic manager) for computing optimizations based on

monitoring data, and on effectors to carry out changes on the

system. IBM‘s Autonomic Computing Initiative has

contributed to define the four properties of autonomic

systems: self-configuration, self- optimization, self-healing,

and self-protection.

LAYERS AND TYPES OF CLOUDS

Cloud computing services are divided into three classes, according to

the abstraction level of the capability provided and the service model

of providers, namely:

Infrastructure as a Service

Platform as a Service and

Software as a Service.

Figure 1.3 depicts the layered organization of the cloud stack from

physical infrastructure to applications.



These abstraction levels can also be viewed as a layered

architecture where services of a higher layer can be composed

from services of the underlying layer. The reference model

explains the role of each layer in an integrated architecture. A

core middleware manages physical resources and the VMs

deployed on top of them; in addition, it provides the required

features (e.g., accounting and billing) to offer multi-tenant pay-

as-you-go services.



Cloud development environments are built on top of

infrastructure services to offer application development and

deployment capabilities; in this level, various programming

models, libraries, APIs, and mashup editors enable the creation

of a range of business, Web, and scientific applications. Once

deployed in the cloud, these applications

can be consumed by end users.

Infrastructure as a Service



Offering virtualized resources (computation, storage, and

communication) on demand is known as Infrastructure as a

Service (IaaS).

FIGURE 1.3. The cloud computing stack



A cloud infrastructure enables on-demand provisioning of

servers running several choices of operating systems and a

customized software stack. Infrastructure services are

considered to be the bottom layer of cloud computing systems.



Amazon Web Services mainly offers IaaS, which in the case

of its EC2 service means offering VMs with a software stack

that can be customized similar to how an ordinary physical

server would be customized.



Users are given privileges to perform numerous activities to

the server, such as: starting and stopping it, customizing it

Service

Main Access &

Service content

Web Browser

Social networks, Office suites, CRM,

SaaS

Cloud

Cloud Platform

PaaS

Programming languages,

Frameworks,,Mashups editors,

Structured data

Virtual

IaaS

Infrastructure

Compute Servers, Data Storage,

by installing software packages, attaching virtual disks to it,

and configuring access permissions and firewalls rules.

Platform as a Service



In addition to infrastructure-oriented clouds that provide raw

computing and storage services, another approach is to offer a

higher level of abstraction to make a cloud easily

programmable, known as Platform as a Service (PaaS).



A cloud platform offers an environment on which developers

create and deploy applications and do not necessarily need to

know how many processors or how much memory that

applications will be using. In addition, multiple programming

models and specialized services (e.g., data access,

authentication, and payments) are offered as building blocks

to new applications.



Google App Engine, an example of Platform as a Service,

offers a scalable environment for developing and hosting Web

applications, which should be written in specific programming

languages such as Python or Java, and use the services‘ own

proprietary structured object data store.



Building blocks include an in-memory object cache

(memcache), mail service, instant messaging service (XMPP),

an image manipulation service, and integration with Google

Accounts authentication service.

Software as a Service



Applications reside on the top of the cloud stack. Services

provided by this layer can be accessed by end users through

Web portals. Therefore, consumers are increasingly shifting

from locally installed computer programs to on-line software

services that offer the same functionally.



Traditional desktop applica-tions such as word processing

and spreadsheet can now be accessed as a service in the Web.

This model of delivering applications, known as Software as

a Service (SaaS), alleviates the burden of software

maintenance for customers and simplifies development and

testing for providers.



Salesforce.com, which relies on the SaaS model, offers

business productivity applications (CRM) that reside

completely on their servers, allowing costumers to customize

and access applications on demand.

Deployment Models

Although cloud computing has emerged mainly from the appearance

of public computing utilities, other deployment models, with

variations in physical location and distribution, have been adopted. In

this sense, regardless of its service class, a cloud can be classified as

public, private, community, or hybrid based on model of deployment

as shown in Figure 1.4.

Clouds

Hybrid/Mixed Clouds

3rd party,

multi-tenant Cloud

infrastructure

& services:

Cloud computing

model run

within a company‘s

own Data Center/

infrastructure for

internal and/or

Mixed usage of

private and public

Clouds:

Leasing public

cloud services

when private cloud

capacity is

FIGURE 1.4. Types of clouds based on deployment models.

 P

ublic

cloud

―

cloud

made

available

pay-

as-you-go

manner

the

general

public

‖

and

private

cloud

―

internal

data center of a business or other organization, not made

available to the general public.‖



Establishing a private cloud means restructuring an existing

infrastructure by adding virtualization and cloud-like

interfaces. This allows users to interact with the local data

center while experiencing the same advantages of public

clouds, most notably self-service interface, privileged access

to virtual servers, and per-usage metering and billing.

 A

community

cloud

―

shared

everal

organization

and

a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission,

security require-ments, policy, and compliance

considerations) .



A hybrid cloud takes shape when a private cloud is

supplemented with computing capacity from public clouds.

The approach of temporarily renting capacity to handle spikes

in load is known as cloud-bursting.

FEATURES OF A CLOUD

Self-service

ii.

Per-usage metered and billed

iii.

Elastic

iv.

Customizable

SELF-SERVICE



Consumers of cloud computing services expect on-demand,

nearly instant access to resources. To support this

expectation, clouds must allow self-service access so that

customers can request, customize, pay, and use services

without intervention of human operators.

PER-USAGE METERING AND BILLING



Cloud computing eliminates up-front commitment by users,

allowing them to request and use only the necessary amount.

Services must be priced on a short- term basis (e.g., by the

hour), allowing users to release (and not pay for) resources

as soon as they are not needed. For these reasons, clouds

must implement features to allow efficient trading of service

such as pricing, accounting, and billing.



Metering should be done accordingly for different types of

service (e.g., storage, processing, and bandwidth) and usage

promptly reported, thus providing greater transparency.

ELASTICITY

Cloud computing gives the illusion of infinite computing resources

available on demand. Therefore users expect clouds to rapidly

provide resources in any Quantity at any time.

In particular, it is expected that the additional resources can be

Provisioned, possibly automatically, when an application

load increases and

ii.

Released when load decreases (scale up and down).

CUSTOMIZATION



In a multi-tenant cloud a great disparity between user needs is

often the case. Thus, resources rented from the cloud must be

highly customizable. In the case of infrastructure services,

customization means allowing users to deploy specialized

virtual appliances and to be given privileged (root) access to

the virtual servers.

CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT

A key challenge IaaS providers face when building a cloud

infrastructure is managing physical and virtual resources, namely

servers, storage, and net- works.



The software toolkit responsible for this orchestration is called

a virtual infrastructure manager (VIM). This type of software

resembles a traditional operating system but instead of dealing

with a single computer, it aggregates resources from multiple

computers, presenting a uniform view to u

and

application

The

term

―

cloud

operating

syste

m‖

also used

to refer to it.



The availability of a remote cloud-like interface and the ability

of managing many users and their permissions are the

primary features that would distinguish cloud toolkits from

VIMs.

Virtually all VIMs we investigated present a set of basic features

related to managing the life cycle of VMs, including networking

groups of VMs together and setting up virtual disks for VMs.

FEATURES AVAILABLE IN VIMS

VIRTUALIZATION SUPPORT:



The multi-tenancy aspect of clouds requires multiple

customers with disparate requirements to be served by a single

hardware infrastructure. Virtualized resources (CPUs,

memory, etc.) can be sized and resized with certain flexibility.

These features make hardware virtualization, the ideal

technology to create a virtual infrastructure that partitions a

data center among multiple tenants.

SELF-SERVICE, ON-DEMAND RESOURCE,

PROVISIONING:



Self-service access to resources has been perceived as one the

most attractive features of clouds. This feature enables users

to directly obtain services from clouds, such as spawning the

creation of a server and tailoring its software, configurations,

and security policies, without interacting with a human

system administrator.



Thi

cap-

ability

―

eliminates

the

need

for more

time-

consuming, labor-intensive, human- driven procurement

processes familiar to many in IT‖. Therefore, exposing a self-

service interface, through which users can easily interact with

the system, is a highly desirable feature of a VI manager.

MULTIPLE BACKEND HYPERVISORS:



Different virtualization models and tools offer different

benefits, drawbacks, and limitations. Thus, some VI managers

provide a uniform management layer regardless of the

virtualization technology used. This characteristic is more

visible in open-source VI managers, which usually provide

pluggable drivers to interact with multiple hypervisors.

STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION:



Virtualizing storage means abstracting logical storage from

physical storage. By consolidating all available storage

devices in a data center, it allows creating virtual disks

independent from device and location. Storage devices are

commonly organized in a storage area network (SAN) and

attached to servers via protocols such as Fibre Channel, iSCSI,

and NFS; a storage controller provides the layer of abstraction

between virtual and physical storage.



In the VI management sphere, storage virtualization support

is often restricted to commercial products of

companies such as VMWare and Citrix. Other products

feature ways of pooling and managing storage devices, but

administrators are still aware of each individual device.



Interface to Public Clouds. Researchers have perceived that

extending the capacity of a local in-house computing

infrastructure by borrowing resources from public clouds is

advantageous. In this fashion, institutions can make good use

of their available resources and, in case of spikes in demand,

extra load can be offloaded to rented resources .



A VI manager can be used in a hybrid cloud setup if it offers

a driver to manage the life cycle of virtualized resources

obtained from external cloud providers. To the applications,

the use of leased resources must ideally be transparent.



Virtual Networking. Virtual networks allow creating an

isolated network on top of a physical infrastructure

independently from physical topology and locations . A

virtual LAN (VLAN) allows isolating traffic that shares a

switched network, allowing VMs to be grouped into the same

broadcast domain. Additionally, a VLAN can be configured

to block traffic originated from VMs from other networks.

Similarly, the VPN (virtual private network) concept is used

to describe a secure and private overlay network on top of a

public network (most commonly the public Internet).

DYNAMIC RESOURCE ALLOCATION:



In cloud infrastructures, where applications have variable

and dynamic needs, capacity management and demand

predic-tion are especially complicated. This fact triggers the

need for dynamic resource allocation aiming at obtaining a

timely match of supply and demand.



A number of VI managers include a dynamic resource

allocation feature that continuously monitors utilization

across resource pools and reallocates available resources

among VMs according to application needs.

VIRTUAL CLUSTERS:



Several VI managers can holistically manage groups of VMs.

This feature is useful for provisioning computing virtual

clusters on demand, and interconnected VMs for multi-tier

Internet applications.

RESERVATION AND NEGOTIATION MECHANISM:



When users request computational resources to available at

a specific time, requests are termed advance reservations

(AR), in contrast to best-effort requests, when users request

resources whenever available.

HIGH AVAILABILITY AND DATA RECOVERY:



The high availability (HA) feature of VI managers aims at

minimizing application downtime and preventing business

disruption.

INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE PROVIDERS

Public Infrastructure as a Service providers commonly offer virtual

servers containing one or more CPUs, running several choices of

operating systems and a customized software stack.

FEATURES

The most relevant features are:

Geographic distribution of data centers;

ii.

Variety of user interfaces and APIs to access the system;

iii.

Specialized components and services that aid particular

applications (e.g., load- balancers, firewalls);

iv.

Choice of virtualization platform and operating systems; and

Different billing methods and period (e.g., prepaid vs. post-

paid, hourly vs. monthly).

GEOGRAPHIC PRESENCE:

 Ava

ilability

zone

are

―

distinct

location

that

are

engineered to be insulated from failures in other availability

zones and provide inexpensive, low-latency network

connectivity to other availability zones in the same region

.‖

Region

turn,

―

are

geographi-

cally

per

ed and will

be in separate geographic areas or countries.‖

USER INTERFACES AND ACCESS TO SERVERS:



A public IaaS provider must provide multiple access means to

its cloud, thus catering for various users and their preferences.

Different types of user interfaces (UI) provide different levels

of abstraction, the most common being graphical user

interfaces (GUI), command-line tools (CLI), and Web service

(WS) APIs.



GUIs are preferred by end users who need to launch,

customize, and monitor a few virtual servers and do not

necessary need to repeat the process several times.

ADVANCE RESERVATION OF CAPACITY:



Advance reservations allow users to request for an IaaS

provider to reserve resources for a specific time frame in the

future, thus ensuring that cloud resources will be available at

that time.



Amazon Reserved Instances is a form of advance reservation

of capacity, allowing users to pay a fixed amount of money

in advance to guarantee resource availability at anytime

during an agreed period and then paying a discounted hourly

rate when resources are in use.

AUTOMATIC SCALING AND LOAD BALANCING:



It allow users to set conditions for when they want their

applications to scale up and down, based on application-

specific metrics such as transactions per second, number of

simultaneous users, request latency, and so forth.



When the number of virtual servers is increased by automatic

scaling, incoming traffic must be automatically distributed

among the available servers. This activity enables applications

to promptly respond to traffic increase while also achieving

greater fault tolerance.

SERVICE-LEVEL AGREEMENT:



Service-level agreements (SLAs) are offered by IaaS

providers to express their commitment to delivery of a certain

QoS. To customers it serves as a warranty. An SLA usually

include availability and performance guarantees.

HYPERVISOR AND OPERATING SYSTEM CHOICE:



IaaS offerings have been based on heavily customized open-

source Xen deployments. IaaS providers needed expertise in

Linux, networking, virtualization, metering, resource

management, and many other low-level aspects to

successfully deploy and maintain their cloud offerings.

PLATFORM AS A SERVICE PROVIDERS



Public Platform as a Service providers commonly offer a

development and deployment environment that allow users to

create and run their applications with little or no concern to

low-level details of the platform.

FEATURES



Programming Models, Languages, and Frameworks.

Programming mod-els made available by IaaS providers

define how users can express their applications using higher

levels of abstraction and efficiently run them on the cloud

platform.



Persistence Options. A persistence layer is essential to allow

applications to record their state and recover it in case of

crashes, as well as to store user data.

SECURITY, PRIVACY, AND TRUST



Security and privacy affect the entire cloud computing stack,

since there is a massive use of third-party services and

infrastructures that are used to host important data or to

perform critical operations. In this scenario, the trust toward

providers is fundamental to ensure the desired level of

privacy for applications hosted in the cloud.



When data are moved into the Cloud, providers may choose to

locate them anywhere on the planet. The physical location of

data centers determines the set of laws that can be applied to

the management of data.

DATA LOCK-IN AND STANDARDIZATION



The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) was

formed by organizations such as Intel, Sun, and Cisco in

order

―

enable

global

cloud

computing

eco

tem

whereby organizations are able to seamlessly work together

for the purposes for wider industry adoption of cloud

computing technology.‖ The development of the Unified

Cloud Interface (UCI) by CCIF aims at creating a standard

programmatic point of access to an entire cloud

infrastructure



In the hardware virtualization sphere, the Open Virtual

Format (OVF) aims at facilitating packing and distribution

of software to be run on VMs so that virtual appliances can

be made portable

AVAILABILITY, FAULT-TOLERANCE, AND DISASTER

RECOVERY



It is expected that users will have certain expectations about

the service level to be provided once their applications are

moved to the cloud. These expectations include availability

of the service, its overall performance, and what measures

are to be taken when something goes wrong in the system

or its components. In summary, users seek for a warranty

before they can comfortably move their business to the

cloud.



SLAs, which include QoS requirements, must be ideally set

up between customers and cloud computing providers to act

as warranty. An SLA specifies the details of the service to

be provided, including availability and performance

guarantees. Additionally, metrics must be agreed upon by

all parties, and penalties for violating the expectations must

also be approved.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND ENERGY-EFFICIENCY



The multi-dimensional nature of virtual machines complicates

the activity of finding a good mapping of VMs onto available

physical hosts while maximizing user utility.



Dimensions to be considered include: number of CPUs,

amount of memory, size of virtual disks, and network

bandwidth. Dynamic VM mapping policies may leverage the

ability to suspend, migrate, and resume VMs as an easy way

of preempting low-priority allocations in favor of higher-

priority ones.



Migration of VMs also brings additional challenges such as

detecting when to initiate a migration, which VM to migrate,

and where to migrate. In addition, policies may take

advantage of live migration of virtual machines to relocate

data center load without significantly disrupting running

services.

MIGRATING INTO A CLOUD



The promise of cloud computing has raised the IT

expectations of small and medium enterprises beyond

measure. Large companies are deeply debating it. Cloud

computing is a disruptive model of IT whose innovation is

part technology and part business model in short a

―

disruptive

techno-commercial

model

‖

of IT.



propo

the

followi

definition

cloud

computing:

―

is a techno-business disruptive model of using distributed large-

scale data centers either private or public or hybrid offering

customers a scalable virtualized infrastructure or an abstracted set

of services qualified by service-level agreements (SLAs) and

charged only by the abstracted IT resources consumed.‖

FIGURE 2.1. The promise of the cloud computing services.



In Figure 2.1, the promise of the cloud both on the business

front (the attractive cloudonomics) and the technology front

widely aided the CxOs to spawn out several non-mission

critical IT needs from the ambit of their captive traditional

data centers to the appropriate cloud service.



Several small and medium business enterprises, however,

leveraged the cloud much beyond the cautious user. Many

startups opened their IT departments exclusively using cloud

services very successfully and with high ROI. Having

observed these successes, several large enterprises have

started successfully running pilots for leveraging the cloud.

Cloudonomics

‗Pay per use‘ – Lower Cost Barriers

On Demand Resources –Autoscaling

Capex vs OPEX – No capital expenses (CAPEX) and only operational expenses OPEX.

SLA driven operations – Much Lower TCO

Attractive NFR support: Availability, Reliability

Technology

‗Infinite‘ Elastic availability – Compute/Storage/Bandwidth

Automatic Usage Monitoring and Metering

Jobs/ Tasks Virtualized and Transparently ‗Movable‘

Integration and interoperability ‗support‘ for hybrid ops

Transparently encapsulated & abstracted IT features.



Many large enterprises run SAP to manage their operations.

SAP itself is experimenting with running its suite of products:

SAP Business One as well as SAP Netweaver on Amazon

cloud offerings.

THE CLOUD SERVICE OFFERINGS AND DEPLOYMENT

MODELS



Cloud computing has been an attractive proposition both for

the CFO and the CTO of an enterprise primarily due its ease

of usage. This has been achieved by large data center service

vendors or now better known as cloud service vendors again

primarily due to their scale of operations.

FIGURE 2.2. The cloud computing service offering and

deployment models.

IaaS

Abstract Compute/Storage/Bandwidth Resources

Amazon Web Services[10,9] – EC2, S3, SDB, CDN, CloudWatch

IT Folks

PaaS

Abstracted Programming Platform with encapsulated infrastructure

Programmers

• Google Apps Engine(Java/Python), Microsoft Azure, Aneka[13]

SaaS

Application with encapsulated infrastructure & platform

Cloud Application Deployment & Consumption Models

Public Clouds

Hybrid Clouds

Private Clouds

FIGURE 2.3. ‘Under the hood’ challenges of the cloud computing

services implementations.

BROAD APPROACHES TO MIGRATING INTO THE CLOUD



Cloud Economics deals with the economic rationale for

leveraging the cloud and is central to the success of cloud-

based enterprise usage. Decision-makers, IT managers, and

software architects are faced with several dilemmas when

planning for new Enterprise IT initiatives.

THE SEVEN-STEP MODEL OF MIGRATION INTO A CLOUD



Typically migration initiatives into the cloud are implemented

in phases or in stages. A structured and process-oriented

approach to migration into a cloud has several advantages of

capturing within itself the best practices of many migration

projects.

Conduct Cloud Migration Assessments

Isolate the Dependencies

Distributed System Fallacies

Challenges in Cloud Technologies

and the Promise of the Cloud

Full Network Reliability

Security

Zero Network Latency

Infinite Bandwidth

Secure Network

Performance Monitoring

Consistent & Robust Service abstractions

Meta Scheduling

Energy efficient load balancing

No Topology changes

Centralized Administration

Scale management

SLA & QoS Architectures

Zero Transport Costs

Interoperability & Portability

Homogeneous Networks & Systems

Green IT

Map the Messaging & Environment

Re-architect & Implement the lost Functionalities

Leverage Cloud Functionalities & Features

Test the Migration

Iterate and Optimize

The Seven-Step Model of Migration into the Cloud. (Source:

Infosys Research.)

FIGURE 2.5. The iterative Seven-step Model of Migration

into the Cloud. (Source: Infosys Research.)

START

Assess

Optimize

Isolate

END

The Iterative Seven Step

Test

Map

Augment

Re-

Migration Risks and Mitigation



The biggest challenge to any cloud migration project is how

effectively the migration risks are identified and mitigated. In

the Seven-Step Model of Migration into the Cloud, the

process step of testing and validating includes

efforts to identify the key migration risks. In the optimization

step, we address various approaches to mitigate the identified

migration risks.



Migration risks for migrating into the cloud fall under two

broad categories: the general migration risks and the security-

related migration risks. In the former we address several issues

including performance monitoring and tuning—essentially

identifying all possible production level deviants; the business

continuity and disaster recovery in the world of cloud

computing service; the compliance with standards and

governance issues; the IP and licensing issues; the quality

of service (QoS) parameters as well as the corresponding

SLAs committed to; the ownership, transfer, and storage of

data in the application; the portability and interoperability

issues which could help mitigate potential vendor lock-ins; the

issues that result in trivializing and non comprehencing the

complexities of migration that results in migration failure and

loss of senior management‘s business confidence in these

efforts.

ENRICHING THE ‘INTEGRATION AS A SERVICE’

PARADIGM FOR THE CLOUD ERA

THE EVOLUTION OF SaaS



SaaS paradigm is on fast track due to its innate powers

and potentials. Executives, entrepreneurs, and end-users

are ecstatic about the tactic as well as strategic success

of the emerging and evolving SaaS paradigm. A number

of positive and progressive developments started to grip

this model. Newer

resources and activities are being consistently readied

to be delivered as a IT as a Service (ITaaS) is the most

recent and efficient delivery method in the decisive IT

landscape. With the meteoric and mesmerizing rise of

the service orientation principles, every single IT

resource, activity and infrastructure is being viewed

and visualized as a service that sets the tone for the

grand unfolding of the dreamt service era. This is

accentuated due to the pervasive Internet.



Integration as a service (IaaS) is the budding and

distinctive capability of clouds in fulfilling the business

integration requirements. Increasingly business

applications are deployed in clouds to reap the business

and technical benefits. On the other hand, there are still

innumerable applications and data sources locally

stationed and sustained primarily due to the security

reason. The question here is how to create a seamless

connectivity between those hosted and on-premise

applications to empower them to work together.



IaaS over- comes these challenges by smartly utilizing

the time-tested business-to-business (B2B) integration

technology as the value-added bridge between SaaS

solutions and in-house business applications.

1. The Web is the largest digital information superhighway

The Web is the largest repository of all kinds of resources

such as web pages, applications comprising enterprise

components, business services, beans, POJOs, blogs,

corporate data, etc.

The Web is turning out to be the open, cost-effective and

generic business execution platform (E-commerce, business,

auction, etc. happen in the web for global users) comprising a

wider variety of containers, adaptors, drivers, connectors, etc.

The Web is the global-scale communication infrastructure

(VoIP, Video conferencing, IP TV etc,)

The Web is the next-generation discovery, Connectivity, and

integration middleware

Thus the unprecedented absorption and adoption of the Internet is

the key driver for the continued success of the cloud computing.

THE CHALLENGES OF SaaS PARADIGM

As with any new technology, SaaS and cloud concepts too suffer a

number of limitations. These technologies are being diligently

examined for specific situations and scenarios. The prickling and

tricky issues in different layers and levels are being looked into. The

overall views are listed out below. Loss or lack of the following

features deters the massive adoption of clouds

Controllability

2. Visibility & flexibility

Security and Privacy

High Performance and Availability

Integration and Composition

Standards

A number of approaches are being investigated for

resolving the identified issues and flaws. Private cloud, hybrid

and the latest community cloud are being prescribed as the

solution for most of these inefficiencies and deficiencies. As

rightly pointed out by someone in his weblogs, still there are

miles to go. There are several companies focusing on this

issue.

Integration Conundrum

. While SaaS applications offer

outstanding value in terms of features and functionalities relative

to cost, they have introduced several challenges specific to

integration. The first issue is that the majority of SaaS applications

are point solutions and service one line of business.

APIs are Insufficient:

Many SaaS providers have responded to the

integration challenge by developing application programming

interfaces (APIs). Unfortunately, accessing and managing data via

an API requires a significant amount of coding as well as

maintenance due to frequent API modifications and updates.

Data Transmission Security:

SaaS providers go to great length to

ensure that customer data is secure within the hosted environment.

However, the need to transfer data from on-premise systems or

applications behind the firewall with SaaS applications hosted

outside of the client‘s data center poses new challenges that need to

be addressed by the integration solution of choice.

The Impacts of Cloud:.

On the infrastructural front, in the recent

past, the clouds have arrived onto the scene powerfully and have

extended the horizon and the boundary of business applications,

events and data. That is, business applications, development

platforms etc. are getting moved to elastic, online and on-demand

cloud infrastructures. Precisely speaking, increasingly for business,

technical, financial and green reasons, applications and services are

being readied and relocated to highly scalable and available

clouds.

THE INTEGRATION METHODOLOGIES

Excluding the custom integration through hand-coding, there are

three types for cloud integration

Traditional Enterprise Integration Tools can be empowered

with special connectors to access Cloud-located

Applications—This is the most likely approach for IT

organizations, which have already invested a lot in

integration suite for their application integration needs.

Traditional Enterprise Integration Tools are hosted in the

Cloud—This approach is similar to the first option except that

the integration software suite is now hosted in any third-party

cloud infrastructures so that the enterprise does not worry

about procuring and managing the hardware or installing the

integration software. This is a good fit for IT organizations that

outsource the integration projects to IT service

organizations and systems integrators, who have the skills

and resources to create and deliver integrated systems.

Integration-as-a-Service (IaaS) or On-Demand Integration

Offerings— These are SaaS applications that are designed to deliver

the integration service securely over the Internet and are able to

integrate cloud applications with the on-premise systems, cloud-to-

cloud applications.

SaaS administrator or business analyst as the primary resource for

managing and maintaining their integration work. A good example

is Informatica On-Demand Integration Services.

In the integration requirements can be realised using any one of the

following methods and middleware products.

Hosted and extended ESB (Internet service bus / cloud

integration bus)

Online Message Queues, Brokers and Hubs

Wizard and configuration-based integration platforms (Niche

integration solutions)

Integration Service Portfolio Approach

Appliance-based Integration (Standalone or Hosted)

CHARACTERISTICS OF INTEGRATION SOLUTIONS

AND PRODUCTS.

The key attri-butes of integration platforms and backbones gleaned

and gained from integration projects experience are connectivity,

semantic mediation, Data mediation, integrity, security, governance

etc

●

Connectivity refers to the ability of the integration engine to

engage with both the source and target systems using

available native interfaces. This means leveraging the

interface that each provides, which could vary from

standards-based interfaces, such as Web services, to older

and proprietary interfaces. Systems that are getting

connected are very much responsible for the externalization

of the correct information and the internalization of

information once processed by the integration engine.

●

Semantic Mediation refers to the ability to account for the

differences between application semantics between two or

more systems. Semantics means how information gets

understood, interpreted and represented within information

systems. When two different and distributed systems are

linked, the differences between their own yet distinct

semantics have to be covered.

●

Data Mediation converts data from a source data format

into destination data format. Coupled with semantic

mediation, data mediation or data transformation is the

process of converting data from one native format on the

source system, to another data format for the target

system.

●

Data Migration is the process of transferring data between

storage types, formats, or systems. Data migration means

that the data in the old system is mapped to the new systems,

typically leveraging data extraction and data loading

technologies.

●

Data Security means the ability to insure that information

extracted from the source systems has to securely be placed

into target systems. The integration method must leverage the

native security systems of the source and target systems,

mediate the differences, and provide the ability to transport

the information safely between the connected systems.

●

Data Integrity means data is complete and consistent. Thus,

integrity has to be guaranteed when data is getting mapped

and maintained during integration operations, such as data

synchronization between on-premise and SaaS-based

systems.

●

Governance refers to the processes and technologies that

surround a system or systems, which control how those

systems are accessed and leveraged. Within the integration

perspective, governance is about mana- ging changes to core

information resources, including data semantics, structure,

and interfaces.

THE ENTERPRISE CLOUD COMPUTING PARADIGM:

Relevant Deployment Models for Enterprise Cloud Computing

There are some general cloud deployment models that are accepted by

the majority of cloud stakeholders today:

Public clouds are provided by a designated service provider for general

public under a utility based pay-per-use consumption model. The cloud

resources are hosted generally on the service provider‘s premises.

Popular examples of public clouds are Amazon‘s AWS (EC2, S3 etc.),

Rackspace Cloud Suite, and Microsoft‘s Azure Service Platform.

Private clouds are built, operated, and managed by an organization for

its internal use only to support its business operations exclusively.

Public,private, and government organizations worldwide are adopting

this model to exploit the cloud benefits like flexibility, cost reduction,

agility and so on.

Virtual private clouds are a derivative of the private cloud deployment

model but are further characterized by an isolated and secure segment

of resources, created as an overlay on top of public cloud infrastructure

using advanced network virtualization capabilities. Some of the public

cloud vendors that offer this capability include Amazon Virtual Private

Cloud , OpSource Cloud , and Skytap Virtual Lab.

Community clouds are shared by several organizations and support a

specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security

requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). They may be

managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise

or off premise. One example of this is OpenCirrus formed by HP,Intel,

Yahoo, and others.

Managed clouds arise when the physical infrastructure is owned by

and/or physically located in the organization‘s data centers with an

extension of management and security control plane controlled by the

managed service provider. This deployment model isn‘t widely agreed

upon, however, some vendors like ENKI and NaviSite‘s NaviCloud

offers claim to be managed cloud offerings.

Hybrid clouds are a composition of two or more clouds (private,

community,or public) that remain unique entities but are bound

together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data

and application.

UNIT-3

VIRTUAL MACHINES PROVISIONING AND

MIGRATION SERVICES

ANALOGY FOR VIRTUAL MACHINE PROVISIONING:

•

Historically, when there is a need to install a new server for a

certain workload to provide a particular service for a client, lots

of effort was exerted by the IT administrator, and much time was

spent to install and provision a new server. 1) Check the

inventory for a new machine, 2) get one, 3) format, install OS

required, 4) and install services; a server is needed along with

lots of security batches and appliances.

•

Now, with the emergence of virtualization technology and the

cloud computing IaaS model:

•

It is just a matter of minutes to achieve the same task. All you

need is to provision a virtual server through a self-service

interface with small steps to get what you desire with the

required specifications. 1) provisioning this machine in a public

cloud like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), or 2) using a

virtualization management software package or a private cloud

management solution installed at your data center in order to

provision the virtual machine inside the organization and within

the private cloud setup.

Analogy for Migration Services:

•

Previously, whenever there was a need for performing a

server‘s upgrade or performing maintenance tasks, you would

exert a lot of time and effort, because it is an expensive

operation to maintain or upgrade a main server that has lots of

applications and users.

•

Now, with the advance of the revolutionized virtualization

technology and migration services associated with

hypervisors‘ capabilities, these tasks (maintenance, upgrades,

patches, etc.) are very easy and need no time to accomplish.

•

Provisioning a new virtual machine is a matter of minutes,

saving lots of time and effort, Migrations of a virtual machine is

a matter of millisecondsVirtual Machine Provisioning and

Manageability

VIRTUAL MACHINE LIFE CYCLE

 The cycle starts by a request delivered to the IT department,

stating the requirement for creating a new server for a particular

service.

 This request is being processed by the IT administration to start

seeing the servers‘ resource pool, matching these resources with

requirements

 Starting the provision of the needed virtual machine.

 Once it provisioned and started, it is ready to provide the required

service according to an SLA.

 Virtual is being released; and free resources.

FIG.3.1 VMS LIFE CYCLE

VM PROVISIONING PROCESS

•

The common and normal steps of provisioning a virtual server are

as follows:

•

Firstly, you need to select a server from a pool of available servers

(physical servers with enough capacity) along with the appropriate

OS template you need to provision the virtual machine.

•

Secondly, you need to load the appropriate software (operating

System you selected in the previous step, device drivers,

middleware, and the needed applications for the service required).

•

Thirdly, you need to customize and configure the machine (e.g., IP

address, Gateway) to configure an associated network and storage

resources.

•

Finally, the virtual server is ready to start with its newly loaded

software.

 To summarize, server provisioning is defining server‘s

configuration based on the organization requirements, a hardware,

and software component (processor, RAM, storage, networking,

operating system, applications, etc.).

 Normally, virtual machines can be provisioned by manually

installing an operating system, by using a preconfigured VM

template, by cloning an existing VM, or by importing a physical

server or a virtual server from another hosting platform. Physical

servers can also be virtualized and provisioned using P2V

(Physical to Virtual) tools and techniques (e.g., virt- p2v).

 After creating a virtual machine by virtualizing a physical server,

or by building a new virtual server in the virtual environment, a

template can be created out of it.

 Most virtualization management vendors (VMware, XenServer,

etc.) provide the data center‘s administration with the ability to do

such tasks in an easy way.

LIVE MIGRATION AND HIGH AVAILABILITY

 Live migration (which is also called hot or real-time

migration) can be defined as the movement of a virtual machine

from one physical host to another while being powered on.

FIG.3.2 VIRTUAL MACHINE PROVISIONING PROCESS

ON THE MANAGEMENT OF VIRTUAL MACHINES

FOR CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURES

THE ANATOMY OF CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURES

Here we focuses on the subject of IaaS clouds and, more specifically, on

the efficient management of virtual machines in this type of cloud. There

are many commercial IaaS cloud providers in the market, such as those

cited earlier, and all of them share five characteristics:

(i)

They provide on-demand provisioning of computational resources;

(ii)

They use virtualization technologies to lease these resources;

(iii)

They provide public and simple remote interfaces to manage those

resources;

(iv)

They use a pay-as-you-go cost model, typically charging by the

hour;

(v)

They operate data centers large enough to provide a seemingly

unlimited amount of re

ource

to their client

(

ually touted as

―

infinite

capacity

‖

―

unlimited elasticity

‖

). Private and hybrid clouds share

these same characteristics, but instead of selling capacity over publicly

accessible interfaces, focus on providing capacity to an organization‘s

internal users.

DISTRIBUTED MANAGEMENT OF VIRTUAL

INFRASTRUCTURES

VM Model and Life Cycle in OpenNebula The life cycle of a VM within

OpenNebula follows several stages:

 Resource Selection. Once a VM is requested to OpenNebula, a

feasible placement plan for the VM must be made. OpenNebula‘s

default scheduler provides an implementation of a rank

scheduling policy, allowing site administrators to configure the

scheduler to prioritize the resources that are more suitable for the

VM, using information from the VMs and the physical hosts. In

addition, OpenNebula can also use the Haizea lease manager to

support more complex scheduling policies.

 Resource Preparation. The disk images of the VM are transferred

to the target physical resource. During the boot process, the VM

is contextualized, a process where the disk images are specialized

to work in a given environment. For example, if the VM is part of

a group of VMs offering a service (a compute cluster, a DB-based

application, etc.), contextualization could involve setting up the

network and the machine hostname, or registering the new VM

with a service (e.g., the head node in a compute cluster). Different

techniques are available to contextualize a worker node, including

use of an automatic installation system (for instance, Puppet or

Quattor), a context server, or access to a disk image with the

context data for the worker node (OVF recommendation).

 VM Termination. When the VM is going to shut down,

OpenNebula can transfer back its disk images to a known

location. This way, changes in the VM can be kept for a future

use.

ENHANCING CLOUD COMPUTING

ENVIRONMENTS USING A CLUSTER AS A

SERVICE

RVWS DESIGN

Dynamic Attribute Exposure



There are two categories of dynamic attributes addressed in the

RVWS framework: state and characteristic. State attributes

cover the current activity of the service and its resources, thus

indicating readiness. For example, a Web service that exposes

a cluster (itself a complex resource) would most likely have a

dynamic state attribute that indicates how many nodes in the

cluster are busy and how many are idle.



Characteristic attributes cover the operational features of the

service, the resources behind it, the quality of service (QoS),

price and provider informa- tion. Again with the cluster Web

service example, a possible characteristic is an array of support

software within the cluster. This is important information as

cluster clients need to know what software libraries exist on

the cluster.



To keep the stateful Web service current, a Connector [2] is

used to detect changes in resources and then inform the Web

service. The Connector has three logical m

—

odules: Detection,

Decision, and Notification. The Detection module routinely

queries the resource for attribute information. Any changes in

the attributes are passed to the Decision module (3) that

decides if the attribute change is large enough to warrant a

notification. This prevents excessive communication with the

Web service. Updated attributes are passed on to the

Notification module (4), which informs the stateful Web

service (5) that updates its internal state. When clients requests

the stateful WSDL document (6), the Web service returns the

WSDL document with the values of all attributes

(7)

at the request time.

Connector

FIGURE 3.3. Exposing resource attributes

CLUSTER AS A SERVICE: THE LOGICAL DESIGN

Simplification of the use of clusters could only be achieved through

higher layer abstraction that is proposed here to be implemented using

the service-based Cluster as a Service (CaaS) Technology. The

purpose of the CaaS Technology is to ease the publication, discovery,

selection, and use of existing computa- tional clusters.

CaaS Overview



The exposure of a cluster via a Web service is intricate and

comprises several services running on top of a physical

cluster. Figure 7.6 shows the complete CaaS technology.

A typical cluster is comprised of three elements:

Client

Characteristic Attrib.

Web Service

State Attrib.

Characteristic Attrib.

Resource

State Attrib.

Notific.

Decision

Detection

nodes, data storage, and middleware. The middleware

virtualizes the cluster into a single system image; thus

resources such as the CPU can be used without knowing the

organization of the cluster. Of interest to this chapter are the

components that manage the allocation of jobs to nodes

(scheduler) and that monitor the activity of the cluster

(monitor). As time progresses, the amount of free memory,

disk space, and CPU usage of each cluster node changes.

Information about how quickly the scheduler can take a job

and start it on the cluster also is vital in choosing a cluster.



To make information about the cluster publishable, a

Publisher Web service and Connector were created using

the RVWS framework. The purpose of the publisher Web

service was to expose the dynamic attributes of the cluster

via the stateful WSDL document. Furthermore, the

Publisher service is published to the Dynamic Broker so

clients can easily discover the cluster.



To find clusters, the CaaS Service makes use of the

Dynamic Broker. While the Broker is detailed in returning

dynamic attributes of matching services, the results from

the Dynamic Broker are too detailed for the CaaS Service.

Thus

another

role

the

CaaS

Service

―

summarize

‖

the result data so that they convey fewer details.



Ordinarily, clients could find required clusters but they still

had to manually transfer their files, invoke the scheduler,

and get the results back. All three tasks require knowledge

of the cluster and are conducted using complex tools. The

role of the CaaS Service is to

(i)

provide easy and intuitive file transfer tools so clients

can upload jobs and download results and

(ii)

offer an easy to use interface for clients to monitor

their jobs. The CaaS Service does this by allowing

clients to upload files as they would any Web page

while carrying out the required data transfer to the

cluster transparently.

Because clients to the cluster cannot knowhow the

data storage is managed, the CaaS Service offers a

simple transfer interface to clients while addressing

the transfer specifics. Finally, the CaaS Service

communicates with the cluster‘s scheduler, thus

freeing the client from needing to know how the

scheduler is invoked when submitting and

monitoring jobs.

FIGURE 3.4 Complete CaaS system.



It allowing clients to upload files as they would any Web

Clients

Software Service

Human

CaaS Service

Dynamic Broker

Publisher Service

Connector

Scheduler

Monitoring

Cluster Middleware

Data Storage

Node 1

Node n

Cluster Nodes

Example Cluster

page while carrying out the required data transfer to the

cluster transparently.

Because clients to the cluster cannot know how the data

storage is managed, the CaaS Service offers a simple

transfer interface to clients while addressing the transfer

specifics. Finally, the CaaS Service communicates with the

cluster‘s scheduler, thus freeing the client from needing to

know how the scheduler is invoked when submitting and

monitoring jobs.

Cluster Discovery

Before a client uses a cluster, a cluster must be discovered

and selected first. Figure 3.5 shows the workflow on

finding a required cluster. To start, clients submit cluster

requirements in the form of attribute values to the CaaS

Service Interface (1). The requirements range from the

number of nodes in the cluster to the installed software

(both operating systems and software APIs). The CaaS

Service Interface invokes the Cluster Finder module

(2)

that communicates with the Dynamic Broker

(3)

and returns service matches (if any).

To address the detailed results from the Broker, the Cluster

Finder module invokes the Results Organizer module (4)

that takes the Broker results and returns an organized

version that is returned to the client (5—6). The organized

FIGURE 3.5 CaaS Service design.

Data Storage

Example Cluster

ent

Cli

CaaS Service Interface

Scheduler

Job Manager

Cluster Finder

File Manager

Result Organizer

Dynamic

results instruct the client what clusters satisfy the specified

requirements. After reviewing the results, the client chooses

a cluster.

Job Submission

. After selecting a required cluster, all

executables and data files have to be transferred to the

cluster and the job submitted to the scheduler for execution.

As clusters vary significantly in the software middleware

used to create them, it can be difficult to place jobs on the

cluster. To do so requires knowing how jobs are stored and

how they are queued for execution on the cluster

FIGURE 3.6. Cluster discovery

FIGURE 3.7. Job submission

CaaS Service Interface

Client

CaaS Service Interface

Result Organizer

mic Broker

Dyna

Dynamic Broker

Data Storage

Example Cluster

Client

CaaS Service

Interface

Job Manager

Scheduler

Client

Interface

CaaS Service

Job Monitoring

. During execution, clients should be able

to view the execution progress of their jobs. Even though

the cluster is not the owned by the client, the job is. Thus, it

is the right of the client to see how the job is progressing

and (if the client decides) terminate the job and remove it

from the cluster

Result Collection

. The final role of the CaaS Service is

addressing jobs that have terminated or completed their

execution successfully. In both

FIGURE 3.8. Job result collection

cases, error or data files need to be transferred to the

client. Figure 3.8 presents the workflow and CaaS Service

modules used to retrieve error or result files from the

cluster.

Clients start the error or result file transfer by

contacting the CaaS Service Interface (1) that then invokes

the File Manager (2) to retrieve the files from the cluster‘s

data storage (3). If there is a transfer error, the File Manager

attempts to resolve the issue first before informing the

client. If the transfer of files (3) is successful, the files are

returned to the CaaS Service Interface (4) and then the

client (5). When returning the files, URL link or a FTP

address is provided so the client can retrieve the files.

Example Cluster

Scheduler

Job Manager

SECURE DISTRIBUTED DATA STORAGE

INCLOUD COMPUTING

CLOUD STORAGE: FROM LANs TO WANs



Cloud computing has been viewed as the future of the IT

industry. It will be a revolutionary change in computing

services. Users will be allowed to purchase CPU cycles,

memory utilities, and information storage services

conveniently just like how we pay our monthly water and

electricity bills. However, this image will not become

realistic until some challenges have been addressed. In this

section, we will briefly introduce the major difference

brought by distributed data storage in cloud computing

environment. Then, vulnerabilities in today‘s cloud

computing platforms are analyzed and illustrated.

Most designs of distributed storage take the form of either storage

area networks (SANs) or network-attached storage (NAS) on the

LAN level



Such as the networks of an enterprise, a campus, or an

organization. SANs are constructed on top of block-

addressed storage units connected through dedicated high-

speed networks. In contrast, NAS is implemented by

attaching specialized file servers to a TCP/IP network and

providing a file-based interface to client machine . For SANs

and NAS, the distributed storage nodes are managed by the

same authority. The system administrator has control over

each node, and essentially the security level of data is under

control. The reliability of such systems is often achieved by

redundancy, and the storage security is highly dependent on

the security of the system against the attacks and intrusion

from outsiders. The confidentiality and integrity of data are

mostly achieved using robust cryptographic schemes.

Existing Commercial Cloud Services



In normal network-based applications, user authentication,

data confidenti- ality, and data integrity can be solved

through IPSec proxy using encryption and digital signature.

The key exchanging issues can be solved by SSL proxy.

These methods have been applied to today‘s cloud

computing to secure the data on the cloud and also secure

the communication of data to and from the cloud. The

service providers claim that their services are secure. This

section describes three secure methods used in three

commercial cloud services and discusses their

vulnerabilities.

Verify the manifest file

Service

with

ived

sig

ature

provides

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with different terms,

such as Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), SimpleDB,

Simple

Mobile Laptop

Station

FIGURE 3.9 Storage Server Farm

SaaS

Cloud

(Network Fabric)

PaaS

IaaS

Cloud

Create a job

Ama

’

manife

Storage Service (S3), and so on. They are supposed to ensure

the confidenti- ality, integrity, and availability of the

customers‘ applications and data. Figure 3.9

presents one of the data processing methods adopted in

Amazon‘s AWS , which is used to transfer large amounts of

data between the AWS cloud and portable storage devices.

The downloading process is similar to the uploading process.

The user creates a manifest and signature file, e-mails the

manifest file, and ships the storage device attached with

signature file. When Amazon receives these two files, it will

validate the two files, copy the data into the storage device, ship

it back, and e-mail to the user with the status including the MD5

checksum of the data. Amazon claims that the maximum

security is obtained via SSL endpoints.

Microsoft Windows Azure

. The Windows Azure Platform

(Azure) is an Internet-scale cloud services platform hosted

in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating

system and a set of developer services that can be used

individually or together [8]. The platform also provides

scalable storage service. There are three basic data items:

blob

(up

B),

table

and

queue

(

8k).

the

Azure Storage, based on the blob, table, and queue

structures, Microsoft promises to achieve confidentiality of

the users‘ data.

FIGURE 3.10. Security data access procedure.

PUT

GET

Data with MD5

Create a Account

Get the Secret Key

Create Signature

Create

ContentMD5

Cloud Storage

TECHNOLOGIES FOR DATA SECURITY IN CLOUD

COMPUTING

This section presents several technologies for data security

and privacy in cloud computing. Focusing on the unique

issues of the cloud data storage platform, this section does not

repeat the normal approaches that provide confidentiality,

integrity, and availability in distributed data storage

applications. Instead, we select to illustrate the unique

requirements for cloud computing data security from a few

different perspectives:

●

Database Outsourcing and Query Integrity Assurance.

Researchers have pointed out that storing data into

and fetching data from devices and machines behind

a cloud are essentially a novel form of database

outsourcing.



Data Integrity in Untrustworthy Storage. One of the

main challenges that prevent end users from adopting

cloud storage services is the fear of losing data or data

corruption. It is critical to relieve the users‘ fear by

providing technologies that enable users to check the

integrity of their data.

●

Web-Application-Based Security. Once the dataset is

stored remotely, a Web browser is one of the most

convenient approaches that end users can use to access

their data on remote services. In the era of cloud

computing, Web security plays a more important role

than ever.

●

Multimedia Data Security. With the development of

high-speed network technologies and large bandwidth

connections, more and more multi- media data are

being stored and shared in cyber space. The security

requirements for video, audio, pictures, or images are

different from other applications.

DATABASE OUTSOURCING AND QUERY INTEGRITY

ASSURANCE

●

In recent years, database outsourcing has become an

important component of cloud computing. Due to the

rapid advancements in network technology, the cost

of transmitting a terabyte of data over long distances

has decreased significantly in the past decade.

●

In addition, the total cost of data management is five

to ten times higher than the initial acquisition costs.

As a result, there is a growing interest in outsourcing

database management tasks to third parties that can

provide these tasks for a much lower cost due to the

economy of scale.

●

This new outsourcing model has the benefits of

reducing the costs for running Database Management

Systems demonstrates the general architecture of a

database outsourcing environment with clients.

●

The database owner outsources its data management

tasks, and clients send queries to the untrusted service

provider. Let T denote the data to be outsourced. The

data T are is preprocessed, encrypted, and stored at the

service provider. For evaluating queries, a user

rewrites a set of queries Q against T to queries against

the encrypted database.

●

The outsourcing of databases to a third-party service

provider was first

introduced by Hacigu

s et al.

Generally, there are two security concerns

Query Integrity Assurance.



In addition to data privacy, an important security

concern in the database outsourcing paradigm is

query integrity. Query integrity examines the

trustworthiness of the hosting environment.



When a client receives a query result from the service

provider, it wants to be assured that the result is both correct

and complete, where correct means that the result must

originate in the owner‘s data and not has been tampered

with, and complete means that the result includes all records

satisfying the query.

Data Integrity in Untrustworthy Storage



While the transparent cloud provides flexible utility of

network-based resources, the fear of loss of control on their

data is one of the major concerns that prevent end users

from migrating to cloud storage services.



Actually it is a potential risk that the storage infrastructure

providers become self-interested, untrustworthy, or even

malicious.



There are different motivations whereby a storage service

provider could become untrustworthy—for instance, to

cover the consequence of a mistake in operation, or deny

the vulnerability in the system after the data have been

stolen by an adversary. This section introduces two

technologies to enable data owners to verify the data

integrity while the files are stored in the remote

untrustworthy storage services.



Note that the verifier could be either the data owner or a

trusted third party, and the prover could be the storage

service provider or storage medium owner or system

administrator.

●

Requirement #1. It should not be a pre-

requirement that the verifier has to possess a

complete copy of the data to be checked. And in

practice, it does not make sense for a verifier to

keep a duplicated copy of the content to be

verified. As long as it serves the purpose well,

storing a more concise contents digest of the data

at the verifier should be enough.

●

Requirement #2. The protocol has to be very

robust considering the untrustworthy prover. A

malicious prover is motivated to hide the viola-

tion of data integrity. The protocol should be

robust enough that such a prover ought to fail in

convincing the verifier.

●

Requirement #3. The amount of information

exchanged during the verification operation should

not lead to high communication overhead.

●

Requirement #4. The protocol should be

computationally efficient.

●

Requirement #5. It ought to be possible to run the

verification an unlimited number of times.

A PDP-Based Integrity Checking Protocol.



Ateniese et al proposed a protocol based on the provable

data procession (PDP) technology, which allows users to

obtain a probabilistic proof from the storage service

providers. Such a proof will be used as evidence that their

data have been stored there. One of the advantages of this

protocol is that the proof could be generated by the storage

service provider by accessing only a small portion of the

whole dataset. At the same time, the amount of the metadata

that end users are required to store is also small—that is,

O(1). Additionally, such a small amount data exchanging

procedure lowers the overhead in the communication

channels too.



As part of pre-processing procedure, the data owner (client)

may conduct operations on the data such as expanding the

data or generating additional metadata to be stored at the

cloud server side. The data owner could execute the PDP

protocol before the local copy is deleted to ensure that the

uploaded copy has been stored at the server machines

successfully. Actually, the data owner may encrypt a dataset

before transferring them to the storage machines.

Web-Application-Based Security



In cloud computing environments, resources are provided

as a service over the Internet in a dynamic, virtualized, and

scalable way . Through cloud computing services, users

access business applications on-line from a Web browser,

while the software and data are stored on the servers.

Therefore, in the era of cloud computing, Web security

plays a more important role than ever. The Web site server

is the first gate that guards the vast cloud resources. Since

the cloud may operate continuously to process millions of

dollars‘ worth of daily on-line transactions, the impact of

any Web security vulnerability will be amplified at the level

of the whole cloud.



Web attack techniques are often referred as the class of

attack. When any Web security vulnerability is identified,

attacker will employ those techniques to take advantage of

the security vulnerability. The types of attack can be

categorized in Authentication, Authorization, Client-Side

Attacks, Comm- and Execution, Information Disclosure,

and Logical Attacks . Due to the limited space, this section

introduces each of them briefly. Interested read- ers are

encouraged to explore for more detailed information from

the materials cited.



Authentication.

Authentication is the process of verifying

a claim that a subject made to act on behalf of a given

principal. Authentication attacks target a Web site‘s method

of validating the identity of a user, service, or application,

including Brute Force, Insufficient Authentication, and

Weak Password Recovery Validation. Brute Force attack

employs an automated process to guess a person‘s

username and password by trial and error.



In the Insufficient Authentication case, some sensitive

content

functionality

are

protected

―

hiding

‖

the

specific location in obscure string but still remains

accessible directly through a specific URL. The attacker

could discover those URLs through a Brute Force probing

of files and directories. Many Web sites provide password

recovery service. This service will automatically recover

the user name or password to the user if she or he can

answer some questions defined as part of the user

registration process. If the recovery questions are either

easily guessed or can be skipped, this Web site is

considered to be Weak Password Recovery Validation.



Authorization.

Authorization is used to verify if an

authenticated subject can perform a certain operation.

Authentication must precede authorization. For example,

only certain users are allowed to access specific content or

functionality.

Authorization attacks use various techniques to gain access

to protected areas beyond their privileges. One typical

authorization attack is caused by Insufficient Authorization.

When a user is authenticated to a Web site, it does not

necessarily mean that she should have access to certain

content that has been granted arbitrarily. Insufficient

authorization occurs when a Web site does not protect

sensitive content or functionality with proper access control

restrictions. Other authorization attacks are involved with

session. Those attacks include Credential/Session

Prediction, Insufficient Session Expiration, and Session

Fixation.



In many Web sites, after a user successfully authenticates

with the Web site for the first time, the Web site creates a

session

and

generate

unique

―

session

D‖

identify

this

session. This session ID is attached to subsequent requests

the

Web

site

―

Proof

‖

the

authenticated

ion.



Credential/Session Prediction attack deduces or guesses the

unique value of a session to hijack or impersonate a user.



Insufficient Session Expiration occurs when an attacker

is allowed to reuse old session credentials or session IDs

for authorization. For example, in a shared computer,

after a user accesses a Web site and then leaves, with

Insufficient Session Expiration, an attacker can use the

browser‘s back button to access Web pages previously

accessed by the victim.



Session Fixation forces a user‘s session ID to an arbitrary

value via Cross- Site Scripting or peppering the Web site

with previously made HTTP requests. Once the victim logs

in, the attacker uses the predefined session ID value to

impersonate the victim‘s identity.



Client-Side Attacks.

The Client-Side Attacks lure victims

to click a link in a malicious Web page and then leverage

the trust relationship expectations of the victim for the real

Web site. In Content Spoofing, the malicious Web page can

trick a user into typing user name and password and will

then use this information to impersonate the user.



Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) launches attacker-

supplied executable code in the victim‘s browser.

The code is usually written in browser-supported

scripting languages.



Languages such as JavaScript, VBScript, ActiveX,

Java, or Flash. Since the code will run within the

security context of the hosting Web site, the code has

the ability to read, modify, and transmit any sensitive

data, such as cookies, accessible by the browser.



Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is a serve

security attack to a vulnerable site that does not

take the checking of CSRF for the HTTP/HTTPS

request. Assuming that the attacker knows the

URLs of the vulnerable site which are not

protected by CSRF checking and the victim‘s

browser stores credentials such as cookies of the

vulnerable site, after luring the victim to click a

link in a malicious Web page, the attacker can

forge the victim‘s identity and access the

vulnerable Web site on victim‘s behalf.



Command Execution.

The Command Execution attacks

exploit server-side vulnerabilities to execute remote

commands on the Web site. Usually, users supply inputs to

the Web-site to request services.



If a Web application does not properly sanitize user-

supplied input before using it within application code, an

attacker could alter command execution on the server.



For example, if the length of input is not checked before

use, buffer overflow could happen and result in denial of

service. Or if the Web application uses user input to

construct statements such as SQL, XPath, C/C11 Format

String, OS system command, LDAP, or dynamic HTML,

an attacker may inject arbitrary executable code into the

server if the user input is not properly filtered.



Information Disclosure

. The Information Disclosure

attacks acquire sensi- tive information about a web site

revealed by developer comments, error messages, or well-

know file name conventions. For example, a Web server

may return a list of files within a requested directory if the

default file is not present. This will supply an attacker with

necessary information to launch further attacks against the

system. Other types of Information Disclosure includes

using

special

paths

such

―

.‖

and

―

‖

for

Path Traversal,

or uncovering hidden URLs via Predictable Resource

Location.



Logical Attacks.

Logical Attacks involve the exploitation

of a Web applica- tion‘s logic flow. Usually, a user‘s

action is completed in a multi-step process. The

procedural workflow of the process is called application

logic. A common Logical Attack is Denial of Service

(DoS). DoS attacks will attempt to consume all available

resources in the Web server such as CPU, memory, disk

space, and so on, by abusing the functionality provided

by the Web site. When any one of any system resource

reaches some utilization threshold, the Web site will no

long be responsive to normal users. DoS attacks are often

caused by Insufficient Anti-automation where an

attacker is permitted to automate a process repeatedly.

An automated script could be executed thousands of

times a minute, causing potential loss of performance or

service.

Multimedia Data Security Storage



With the rapid developments of multimedia technologies,

more and more multimedia contents are being stored and

delivered over many kinds of devices, databases, and

networks. Multimedia Data Security plays an important role

in the data storage to protect multimedia data. Recently,

how storage multimedia contents are delivered by both

different providers and users has attracted much attentions

and many applications. This section briefly goes through

the most critical topics in this area.

Protection from Unauthorized Replication.



Contents replication is requi- red to generate and keep

multiple copies of certain multimedia contents. For

example, content distribution networks (CDNs) have been

used to manage content distribution to large numbers of

users, by keeping the replicas of the same contents on a

group of geographically distributed surrogates .



Although the replication can improve the system

performance, the unauthor- ized replication causes some

problems such as contents copyright, waste of replication

cost, and extra control overheads.

Protection from Unauthorized Replacement.



As the storage capacity is limited, a replacement process

must be carried out when the capacity exceeds its limit. It

means the situation that a currently stored content must be

removed from the storage space in order to make space for

the new coming content. However, how to decide which

content should be removed is very important. If an

unauthorized replacement happens, the content which the

user doesn‘t want to delete will be removed resulting in an

accident of the data loss. Furthermore, if the important

content such as system data is removed by unauthorized

replacement, the result will be more serious.

Protection from Unauthorized Pre-fetching



The Pre-fetching is widely deployed in Multimedia Storage

Network Systems between server databases and end users‘

storage disks . That is to say, If a content can be predicted

to be requested by the user in future requests, this content

will be fetched from the server database to the end user

before this user requests it, in order to decrease user

response time. Although the Pre-fetching shows its

efficiency, the un- authorized pre-fetching should be

avoided to make the system to fetch the necessary content.

UNIT-4

MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT:

AN ARCHITECTURE FOR FEDERATED CLOUD

COMPUTING

THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLOUD COMPUTING

In this section we unravel a set of principles that enable Internet

scale cloud computing services. We seek to highlight the

fundamental requirement from the providers of cloud

computing to allow virtual applications to freely migrate, grow,

and shrink.

Federation



All cloud computing providers, regardless of how big they

are, have a finite capacity. To grow beyond this capacity,

cloud computing providers should be able to form

federations of providers such that they can collaborate and

share their resources. The need for federation-capable cloud

computing offerings is also derived from the industry trend

of adopting the cloud computing paradigm internally within

companies to create private clouds and then being able to

extend these clouds with resources leased on- demand from

public clouds.

Independence



Just as in other utilities, where we get service without

knowing the internals of the utility provider and with

standard equipment not specific to any provider (e.g.,

telephones), for cloud computing services to really fulfill

the computing as a utility vision, we need to offer cloud

computing users full independence. Users should be able

to use the services of the cloud without relying on any

provider- specific tool, and cloud computing providers

should be able to manage their infrastructure without

exposing internal details to their customers or partners. As

a consequence of the independence principle, all cloud

services need to be encapsulated and generalized such that

users will be able to acquire equivalent



virtual resources at different providers.

Isolation



Cloud computing services are, by definition, hosted by a

provider that will simultaneously host applications from

many different users. For these users to move their

computing into the cloud, they need warranties from the

cloud computing provider that their stuff is completely

isolated from others. Users must be ensured that their

resources cannot be accessed by others sharing the same

cloud and that adequate performance isolation is in place to

ensure that no other user may possess the power to directly

effect the service granted to their application.

Elasticity



One of the main advantages of cloud computing is the

capability to provide, or release, resources on-demand.

These

―

elasticity

‖

capabilitie

s s

hould

enacted

automatically by cloud computing providers to meet demand

variations, just as electrical companies are able (under

normal operational circumstances) to automatically deal

with variances in electricity consumption levels. Clearly the

behavior and limits of automatic growth and shrinking

should be driven by contracts and rules agreed on between

cloud computing providers and consumers.

Trust



Probably the most critical issue to address before cloud

computing can become the preferred computing paradigm

is that of establishing trust. Mechanisms to build and

maintain trust between cloud computing consumers and

cloud computing providers, as well as between cloud

computing providers among themselves, are essential for the

success of any cloud computing offering.

SLA MANAGEMENT IN CLOUD COMPUTING:

A SERVICE PROVIDER’S PERSPECTIVE

TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO SLO MANAGEMENT

Traditionally, load balancing techniques and admission control

mechanisms have been used to provide guaranteed quality of

service (QoS) for hosted web applications. These mechanisms can

be viewed as the first attempt towards managing the SLOs. In the

following subsections we discuss the existing approaches for load

balancing and admission control for ensuring QoS.

Load Balancing

The objective of a load balancing is to distribute the incoming

requests onto a set of physical machines, each hosting a replica of

an application.

Load Balancing Algorithms

Class-agnostic Class-aware

Client-aware Content-aware Client plus

Content aware

FIGURE 4.1. General taxonomy of load-balancing algorithms.

The load balancing algorithm executes on a physical machine that

interfaces with the clients. This physical machine, also called the

front-end node, receives the incoming requests and distributes these

requests to different physical machines for further execution. This

set of physical machines is responsible for serving the incoming

requests and are known as the back-end nodes.

FIGURE 4.2. Shared hosting of applications on

virtualized servers within ASP’s data centers.

Application Service

Application

Service

ProviderASP)

Service Level

Enterpri

Virtualiz

Enterprise-I

Ap Ap

Serve

Virtualiz

Response with

certain

Server

Check for

Infrastructu



Typically, the algorithm executing on the front-end node is

agnostic to the nature of the request. This means that the front-

end node is neither aware of the type of client from which the

request originates nor aware of the category (e.g., browsing,

selling, payment, etc.) to which the request belongs to. This

category of load balancing algorithms is known as class-

agnostic.



There is a second category of load balancing algorithms that is

known as class-aware. With class-aware load balancing and

requests distribution, the front-end node must additionally

inspect the type of client making the request and/or the type of

service requested before deciding which back-end node should

service the request. Inspecting a request to find out the class or

category of a request is difficult because the client must first

establish a connection with a node (front-end node) that is not

responsible for servicing the request.

Admission Control



Admission control algorithms play an important role in

deciding the set of requests that should be admitted into the

application

server

when

the

server

experiences

―

very

‖

heavy

loads During overload situations, since the response time for

all the requests would invariably degrade if all the arriving

requests are admitted into the server, it would be preferable

to be selective in identifying a subset of requests that should

be admitted into the system so that the overall pay-off is high.

The objective of admission control mechanisms, therefore, is

to police the incoming requests and identify a subset of

incoming requests that can be admitted into the system when

the system faces overload situations.

TYPES OF SLA



Service-level agreement provides a framework within which

both seller and buyer of a service can pursue a profitable

service business relationship. It outlines the broad

understanding between the service provider and the service

consumer for conducting business and forms the basis for

maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship. From a legal

perspective, the necessary terms and conditions that bind the

service provider to provide services continually to the service

consumer are formally defined in SLA.



SLA can be modeled using web service-level agreement

(WSLA) language specification .Although WSLA is intended

for web-service-based applica- tions, it is equally applicable

for hosting of applications. Service-level para- meter, metric,

function, measurement directive, service-level objective, and

penalty are some of the important components of WSLA and

are described in Table 4.2.1.

TABLE 4.1. Key Components of a Service-Level Agreement

Service-

Level

Parameter

Describes an observable property of a service whose

value is measurable.

Metrics These are definitions of values of service roperties

that are measured from a service-providing system

or computed from other metrics and constants.

Metrics are the key instrument to describe exactly

what SLA parameters mean by specifying how to

measure or compute the parameter values.

Function A function specifies how to compute a metric‘s value

from the values of other metrics and constants.

Functions are central to describing exactly how SLA

parameters are computed from resource metrics.

Measure

ment

directives

These specify how to measure a metric

There are two types of SLAs from the perspective of application

hosting. These are described in detail here.

Infrastructure SLA.



The infrastructure provider manages and offers guaran- tees

on availability of the infrastructure, namely, server machine,

power, network connectivity, and so on. Enterprises manage

themselves, their applica- tions that are deployed on these

server machines. The machines are leased to the customers

and are isolated from machines of other customers. In such

dedicated hosting environments, a practical example of

service-level guarantees offered by infrastructure providers.

Application SLA.



In the application co-location hosting model, the server

capacity is available to the applications based solely on their

resource demands. Hence, the service providers are flexible

in allocating and de-allocating computing resources among

the co-located applications. Therefore, the service

LIFE CYCLE OF SLA

Each SLA goes through a sequence of steps starting from

identification of terms and conditions, activation and monitoring of

the stated terms and conditions, and eventual termination of

contract once the hosting relationship ceases to exist. Such a

sequence of steps is called SLA life cycle and consists of the

following five phases:

Contract definition

Publishing and discovery

Negotiation

Operationalization

De-commissioning

Here, we explain in detail each of these phases of SLA life cycle.

Contract Definition.



Generally, service providers define a set of service offerings

and corresponding SLAs using standard templates. These

service offerings form a catalog. Individual SLAs for

enterprises can be derived by customizing these base SLA

templates.

Publication and Discovery.



Service provider advertises these base service offerings

through standard publication media, and the customers

should be able to locate the service provider by searching the

catalog. The customers can search different competitive

offerings and shortlist a few that fulfill their requirements for

further negotiation.

Negotiation.



Once the customer has discovered a service provider who can

meet their application hosting need, the SLA terms and

conditions needs to be mutually agreed upon before signing

the agreement for hosting the application. For a standard

packaged application which is offered as service, this phase

could be automated. For customized applications that are

hosted on cloud platforms, this phase is manual. The service

provider needs to analyze the application‘s behavior with

respect to scalability and performance before agreeing on the

specification of SLA. At the end of this phase, the SLA is

mutually agreed by both customer and provider and is

eventually signed off. SLA negotiation can utilize the WS-

negotiation specification .

Operationalization.



SLA operation consists of SLA monitoring, SLA ac-

counting, and SLA enforcement. SLA monitoring involves

measuring parameter values and calculating the metrics

defined as a part of SLA and determining the deviations. On

identifying the deviations, the concerned parties are notified.

SLA accounting involves capturing and archiving the SLA

adherence for compliance. As part of accounting, the

application‘s actual performance and the performance

guaranteed as a part of SLA is reported.

De-commissioning



SLA decommissioning involves termination of all activ- ities

performed under a particular SLA when the hosting

relationship between the service provider and the service

consumer has ended. SLA specifies the terms and conditions

of contract termination and specifies situations under which

the relationship between a service provider and a service

consumer can be considered to be legally ended.

SLA MANAGEMENT IN CLOUD

SLA management of applications hosted on cloud platforms

involves five phases.

Feasibility

On-boarding

Pre-production

Production

Termination

These activities are explained in detail in the following subsections.

Feasibility Analysis

MSP conducts the feasibility study of hosting an application on

their cloud platforms. This study involves three kinds of

feasibility: (1) technical feasibility,

(2)

Infra structure feasibility, and (3) financial feasibility. The

technical feasi-bility of an application implies determining the

following:

Ability of an application to scale out.

Compatibility of the application with the cloud platform

being used within the MSP‘s data center.

The need and availability of a specific hardware and software

required for hosting and running of the application.

Preliminary information about the application performance

and whether be met by the MSP.

PERFORMANCE PREDICTION FOR HPC ON CLOUDS

GRID AND CLOUD



“Grid vs Cloud” is the title of an incredible number of recent Web blogs

and articles in on-line forums and magazines, where many HPC users

express their own opinion on the relationship between the two paradigms



Cloud is simply presented, by its supporters, as an evolution of the grid.

Some consider grids and clouds as alternative options to do the same thing

in a different way. However, there are very few clouds on which one can

build, test, or run compute-intensive applications. In fact it still necessary

to deal with some open issues. One is when, in term of performance, a

cloud is better than a grid to run a specific application. Another problem

to be addressed concerns the effort to port a grid application to a cloud.

Grid and Cloud Integration



To understand why grids and clouds should be integrated, we have to

start by considering what the users want and what these two

technologies can provide. Then we can try to understand how cloud and

grid can complement each other and why their integration is the goal of

intensive research.



The integration of cloud and grid, or at least their integrated utilization,

has been proposed since there is a trade-off between application

turnaround and system utilization, and sometimes it is useful to choose

the right compromise between them.

Some issues to be investigated have been pointed out:

●

Integration of virtualization into existing e-infrastructures

●

Deployment of grid services on top of virtual infrastructures

●

Integration of cloud-base services in e-infrastructures

●

Promotion of open-source components to build clouds

●

Grid technology for cloud federation

In light of the above, the integration of the two environments is a

debated issue . At the state of the art, two main approaches have

been proposed:

●

Grid on Cloud. A cloud IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) approach is

adopted to build up and to manage a flexible grid system .Doing so, the

grid middleware runs on a virtual machine. Hence the main drawback of

this approach is performance. Virtualization inevitably entails perfor-

mance losses as compared to the direct use of physical resources.

●

Cloud on Grid: The stable grid infrastructure is exploited to build up a

cloud environment. This solution is usually preferred because the cloud

approach mitigates the inherent complexity of the grid. In this case, a set

of grid services is offered to manage (create, migrate, etc.) virtual

machines. The use of Globus workspaces [16], along with a set of grid

services for the Globus Toolkit 4, is the prominent solution, as in the

Nimbus project .

The integration could simplify the task of the HPC user to select, to configure,

and to manage resources according to the application requirements. It adds

flexibility to exploit available resources, but both of the above-presented

approaches have serious problems for overall system management, due to the

complexity of the resulting architectures. Performance prediction, application

tuning, and benchmarking are some of the relevant activities that become

critical and that cannot be performed in the absence of performance

evaluation of clouds.

HPC IN THE CLOUD: PERFORMANCE-RELATEDISSUES

This section will discuss the issues linked to the adoption of the cloud

paradigm in the HPC context. In particular, we will focus on three different

issues:

The difference between typical HPC paradigms and those of current

cloud environments, especially in terms of performance evaluation.

A comparison of the two approaches in order to point out their

advantages and drawbacks, as far as performance is concerned.

New performance evaluation techniques and tools to support HPC in

cloud systems.

TABLE 4.1. Example of Cost Criteria

Cloud Provider Index Description

Amazon

$/hour

Cost (in $) per hour of activity of

the virtual

machines.

Amazon

$/GB

Cost (in $) per Gigabyte

transferred outside

the cloud zone (transfers inside

the same

zone have no price)

Go Grid

$*RAM/ho

Cost (in $) by RAM memory

allocated per

hour

APPLICATIONS

BEST PRACTICES IN ARCHITECTING CLOUD

APPLICATIONS IN THE AWS CLOUD

 Business Benefits of Cloud Computing

There are some clear business benefits to building applications in

the cloud. A few of these are listed here:

Almost Zero Upfront Infrastructure Investment

. If you have to build a

large- scale system, it may cost a fortune to invest in real estate, physical

security, hardware (racks, servers, routers, backup power supplies),

hardware management (power management, cooling), and operations

personnel. Because of the high upfront costs, the project would typically

require several rounds of management approvals before the project could

even get started. Now, with utility-style cloud computing, there is no

fixed cost or startup cost.

Just-in-Time Infrastructure

. In the past, if your application became

popular and your systems or your infrastructure did not scale, you became

a victim of your own success. Conversely, if you invested heavily and

did not get popular, you became a victim of your failure. By deploying

applications in-the-cloud with just-in-time self- provisioning, you do not

have to worry about pre-procuring capacity for large-scale systems. This

increases agility, lowers risk, and lowers operational cost because you

scale only as you grow and only pay for what you use.

More Efficient Resource Utilization.

System administrators usually

worry about procuring hardware (when they run out of capacity) and

higher infrastructure utilization (when they have excess and idle

capacity). With the cloud, they can manage resources more effectively

and efficiently by having the applications request and relinquish

resources on-demand.

Usage-Based Costing

. With utility-style pricing, you are billed only for

the infrastructure that has been used. You are not paying for allocated

infrastructure but instead for unused infrastructure. This adds a new

dimension to cost savings. You can see immediate cost savings (some-

times as early as your next month‘s bill) when you deploy an optimization

patch to update your cloud application. For example, if a caching layer

can reduce your data requests by 70%, the savings begin to accrue

immediately and you see the reward right in the next bill. Moreover, if

you are building platforms on the top of the cloud, you can pass on the

same flexible, variable usage-based cost structure to your own customers.

Reduced Time to Market

. Parallelization is one of the great ways to

speed up processing. If one compute-intensive or data-intensive job that

can be run in parallel takes 500 hours to process on one machine, with

cloud architectures , it would be possible to spawn and launch 500

instances and process the same job in 1 hour. Having available an elastic

infrastructure provides the application with the ability to exploit paralle-

lization in a cost-effective manner reducing time to market.

Technical Benefits of Cloud Computing

Some of the technical benefits of cloud computing includes:

Automation—“Scriptable Infrastructure”:

You can create repeatable

build and deployment systems by leveraging programmable (API-

driven) infrastructure.

Auto-scaling:

You can scale your applications up and down to match your

unexpected demand without any human intervention. Auto-scaling

encourages automation and drives more efficiency.

Proactive Scaling:

Scale your application up and down to meet your

anticipated demand with proper planning understanding of your traffic

patterns so that you keep your costs low while scaling.

More Efficient Development Life Cycle:

Production systems may be easily

cloned for use as development and test environments. Staging environ-

ments may be easily promoted to production.

Improved Testability:

Never run out of hardware for testing. Inject and

automate testing at every stage during the development process. You can

spawn

―

instant

test

lab

‖

with

preconfigured

environments

only for the duration of testing phase.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity:

The cloud provides a lower

cost option for maintaining a fleet of DR servers and data storage. With

the cloud, you can take advantage of geo-distribution and replicate the

environment in other location within minutes.

“Overflow” the Traffic to the Cloud:

With a few clicks and effective load

balancing tactics, you can create a complete overflow-proof application

by routing excess traffic to the cloud.

UNIT-5

GOVERNANCE AND CASE STUDIES

ORGANIZATIONAL READINESS AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN THE

CLOUD AGE

INTRODUCTION



Studies for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD) economies in 2002 demonstrated that there is a strong

correlation between changes in organization and workplace practices

and investment in information technologies .



This finding is also further confirmed in Canadian government studies,

which indicate that the frequency and intensity of organizational changes

is positively correlated with the amount and extent of information

technologies investment. It means that the incidence of organizational

change is much higher in the firms that invest in information

technologies (IT) than is the case in the firms that do not invest in IT, or

those that invest less than the competitors in the respective industry .



In another study, Bresnahan, Brynjolfsson, and Hitt found that there is

positive correlation between information technology change

(investment), organizational change (e.g., process re-engineering,

organizational structure), cultural change (e.g., employee

empowerment), and the value of the firm as a measure of the stock

market share price. This is mostly due to the productivity and

profitability gain through technology investment and organizational

changes. The research and analysis firm Gartner has released the Hype

Cycle report for 2009, which evaluates the maturity of 1650

technologies and trends in 79 technologies. The report, which covers

new areas this year, defines cloud computing as the latest growing trend

the

industry,

stating

―

super-

hyped.

‖

The

other

new areas

include data center power, cooling technologies, and mobile device

technologies.



In order to effectively enable and support enterprise business goals and

strategies, information technology (IT) must adapt and continually

change. IT must adopt emerging technologies to facilitate business to

leverage the new technologies to create new opportunities, or to gain

productivity and reduce cost. Sometimes emerging technology (e.g.,

cloud computing: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) is quite disruptive to the existing

business process, including core IT services— for example, IT service

strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and

continual service improvement—and requires fundamental re-thinking

of how to minimize the negative impact to the business, particularly the

potential impact on morale and productivity of the organization.

The Context:



The adaptation of cloud computing has forced many companies to

recognize that clarity of ownership of the data is of paramount

importance. The protection of intellectual property (IP) and other



This will help the student to assess the organization readiness to adopt

the new/emerging technology. What is the best way to implement and

manage change? While this chapter attempts to explain why change is

important and why change is complex, it also raises the question of (a)

managing emerging technologies and (b) the framework and approaches

to assess the readiness of the organization to adopt. Managing emerging

technologies is always a complex issue, and managers must balance the

desire to create competiveness through innovation with the need to

manage the complex challenges presented by these emerging

technologies. Managers need to feel comfortable dealing with the

paradox of increasing complexity and uncertainty, and they need

balance it with desirable level of commitment and built-in flexibility.

The Take Away:



Transition the organization to a desirable level of change management

maturity level by enhancing the following key domain of knowledge and

competencies:

Domain 1. Managing the Environment: Understand the organization

(people, process, and culture).

Domain 2. Recognizing and Analyzing the Trends (Business and

Technology): Observe the key driver for changes.

Domain 3. Leading for Results: Assess organizational readiness and

architect solution that delivers definite business values.

Basic Concept Of Organizational Readiness:



Change can be challenging; it brings out the fear of having to

deal with uncertainties. This is the FUD syndrome: Fear,

Uncertainty, and Doubt.



Employees understand and get used to their roles and responsibility and

are able to leverage their strength. They are familiar with management‘s

expectation of them and don‘t always see a compelling reason to change.

Whenever there are major changes being introduced to the organization,

changes that require redesign or re-engineering the

business process, change is usually required to the organizational

structure and to specific jobs. Corporate leader- ship must articulate the

reasons that change is critical and must help the workers to visualize and

buy into the new vision. Corporate leadership also needs to

communicate and cultivate the new value and beliefs of the organization

that align and support the corporate goals and objectives. The human

resources department also needs to communicate the new reward and

compensation system that corresponds to the new job description and

identify new training and skills requirements that support the new

corporate goal and objectives.

It is a common, observable human behavior that people tend to become

comfortable in an unchanging and stable environment, and will become

uncomfortable and excited when any change occurs, regardless the level

and intensity of the change.



Protect Existing Investment: By building a private cloud to leverage

existing infrastructure.



Manage Security Risk: Placing private cloud computing inside the

company reduces some of the fear (e.g., data integrity and privacy

issues) usually associated with public cloud.

A Case Study:

Waiting in Line for a Special Concert Ticket



It is a Saturday morning in the winter, the temperature is 212

○

C outside,

and you have been waiting in line outside the arena since 5:00

this

morning for concert tickets to see a performance by Super tramp. You

have been planning for this with your family for the past 10 months

since they announced that Super tramp is coming into town next

December. When it is your turn at the counter to order tickets, the sales

clerk announces that the concert is all sold out. What is your reaction?

What should you do you need to change the plan? Your reaction would

most likely be something like this:

●

Denial. You are in total disbelief, and the first thing you do is to reject

the fact that the concert has been sold out.

●

Anger. You probably want to blame the weather; you could have come

here 10 minutes earlier.

●

Bargaining. You try to convince the clerk to check again for any

available seats.

●

Depression. You are very disappointed and do not know what to do

next.

●

Acceptance. Finally accepting the inevitable fate, you go to

plan B if you have one.



The five-stage process illustrated above was originally proposed by Dr.

Elizabeth

bler-Ross to deal with catastrophic news. There are times

in which people

receive news that can seem catastrophic; for example;

company merger, right-

sizing, and so on. In her book On Death and

ing,

Elizabeth

bler-Ro

cribe

s wh

kno

the

―

bler-

model

‖

the

―

Five

Stages

Grief

‖

;

this

model

relates

change

management, specifically the emotions felt by those affected by change.

The first stage of major change is often the announcement; there are

situations when an understanding of the five-stage process will help you

move more quickly to deal with the issue.

Drivers for Changes: A Framework To Comprehend The

Competitive Environment

The Framework: The five driving factors for change encapsulated by the

framework are:

●

Economic (global and local, external and internal)

●

Legal, political, and regulatory compliance

●

Environmental (industry structure and trends)

●

Technology developments and innovation

●

Socio cultural (markets and customers)

The five driving factors for change is an approach to investigate,

analyze, and forecast the emerging trends of a plausible future, by

studying and understanding the five categories of drivers for change.

The results will help the business to make better decisions, and it will

also help shape the short- and long-term strategies of that business. It

is this process that helps reveal the important factors for the

organization‘s desirable future state, and it helps the organization to

comprehend which driving forces will change the competitive

landscape in the industry the business is in, identify critical

uncertainties, and recognize what part of the future is predetermined

such that it will happen regardless how the future will play out. This

approach also helps seek out those facts and perceptions that challenge

one‘s underlying assumptions, and thus it helps the company make a

better decision.

●

Every organization‘s decisions are influenced by particular key factors,

some of them are within the organization‘s control, such as (a) internal

financial weakness and strength and (b) technology development and

innovation, and therefore the organization has more control. The others,

such as legal compliance issues, competitor capabilities, and strategies,

are all external factors over which the organization has little or no

control. There are also many other less obvious external factors that will

impact the organization; identifying and assessing these fundamental

factors and formulating a course of action proactively is paramount to

any business success.

A driving force or factor is a conceptual tool; it guides us to think deeply

about the underlying issues that impact our well-being and

success. In a

business setting, it helps us to visualize and familiarize ourselves with

future possibilities (opportunities and threats).

Economic (Global and Local, External and Internal)

●

Economic factors are usually dealing with the state of economy, both

local and global in scale. To be successful, companies have to live with

the paradox of having new market and business opportunities globally,

and yet no one can be isolated from the 2008 global financial crisis,

because we are all interdependent. Managers are often asked to do more

with less, and this phenomenon is especially true during economic

downturn. Managers and groups are expected to deal with the unpleasant

facts of shrinking market share, declining profit margins, unsatisfactory

earnings, new and increasing competition, and decreas- ing

competitiveness.

Following are sample questions that could help to provoke further

discussion:

●

What is the current economic situation?

●

What will the economy looks like in 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, and so

on?

●

What are some of the factors that will influence the future

economic outlook?

●

Is capital easy to access?

●

How does this technology transcend the existing business model?

●

Buy vs. build? Which is the right way?

●

What is the total cost of ownership (TCO)?

TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS AND INNOVATION

Scientific discoveries are seen to be key drivers of economic growth;

leading economists have identified technological innovations as the

single most important contributing factor in sustained economic

growth. There are many fronts of new and emerging technologies that

could potentially transform our world. For example, new research and

development in important fields such as bioscience, nanotechnology,

and information technology could potentially change our lives.

The following are sample questions that could help to provoke further

discussion:

●

When will the IT industry standards be finalized? By who?

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)?

●

Who is involved in the standardization process?

●

Who is the leader in cloud computing technology?

●

What

about

virtualization

—

plication

operating

tem

(platform) pair (i.e., write once, run anywhere)?

●

How does this emerging technology (cloud computing) open

up new areas for innovation?

●

How can an application be built once so it can configure dynamically

in real time to operate most effectively, based on the situational

constraint (e.g., out in the cloud somewhere, you might have bandwidth

constraint to transfer needed data)?

●

What is the guarantee from X Service Providers (XSP) that the existing

applications will still be compatible with the future infrastructure

(IaaS)? Will the data still be executed correctly?

SOCIO CULTURAL (MARKETS AND CUSTOMERS)

●

Societal factors usually deal with the intimate understanding of the

human side of changes and with the quality of life in general. A case in

point: The companies that make up the U.S. defense industry have seen

more than 50% of their market disappear. When the Berlin Wall

—

tumbled, the U.S. government began chopping major portions out of

the

defense budget. Few would disagree that the post Cold War United

States could safely shrink its defense industry. Survival of the industry,

and therefore of the companies, demands that companies combine with

former competitors and transform into new species.

CREATING A WINNING ENVIRONMENT

●

At the cultural level of an organization, change too often requires a

lot of planning and resource. This usually stems from one common

theme: Senior management and employees have different

perspectives and interpretations of what change means, what change

is necessary, and even if changes are necessary at all. In order to

overcome this, executives must articulate a new vision and must

communicate aggressively and extensively to make sure that every

employee understands.

COMMON CHANGE MANAGEMENT MODELS

There are many different change management approaches and models,

and we will discuss two of the more common models and one proposed

working model (CROPS) here; the Lewin‘s Change Management Model,

the Deming Cycle(Plan, Do, Study, Act) and the proposed CROPS

Change Management Framework.

Lewin’s Change Management Model

●

Kurt Lewin, a psychologist by training, created this change model in

the 1950s. Lewin observed that there are three stages of change,

which are: Unfreeze, Transition, and Refreeze. It is recognized that

people

tend

become

compla-

cent

comfortable

thi

―

freeze

‖

―

unchanging/stable

‖

environment,

and

they

remain

thi

―

safe/comfort

‖

zone.

turbance/di

sruption

thi

unchanging

state will cause pain and become uncomfortable.

●

In order to encourage change, it‘s necessary to unfreeze the environment

by motivating people to accept the change. The

motivational value has to be greater than the pain in order to entice people

to accept the change. Maintain- ing a high level of motivation is

important in all three phases of the change management life cycle, even

during

the

transition

period.

Lewin

put

it,

―

Motivation

for

change

must be generated before change can occur. One must be helped to

reexamine many cherished assumptions about oneself and one‘s relations

to others.‖ This is the unfreezing stage from which change begins.

●

Since

these

―

activities

‖

take

time

completed,

the

process

and

organizational structure may also need to change, specific jobs may also

change. The most resistance to change may be experienced during this

transition period. This is when leadership is critical for the change

process to succeed, and motivational factors are paramount to project

success.The last phase is Refreeze; this is the stage when the organization

once again becomes unchanging/frozen until the next time a change is

initiated.

●

The Deming cycle is also known as the PDCA cycle; it is a continuous

improvement (CI) model comprised of four sequential sub processes;

Plan,Do, Check, and Act. This framework of process and system

improvement was originally conceived by Walter She whart in the 1930s

and was later adopted by Edward Deming. The PDCA cycle is usually

implemented as an evergreen process, which means that the end of one

complete pass (cycle) flows into the beginning of the next pass and thus

supports the concept of continuous quality improvement.

●

Edward Deming proposed in the 1950s that business processes and

systems should be monitored, measured, and analyzed continuously to

identify variations and substandard products and services, so that

corrective actions can be taken to improve on the quality of the products

or services delivered to the customers.

●

PLAN: Recognize an opportunity and plan a change.

●

DO: Execute the plan in a small scale to prove the concept.

●

CHECK: Evaluate the performance of the change and report the results

to sponsor.

●

ACT: Decide on accepting the change and standardizing it as part of

the process.

Incorporate what has been learned from the previous steps to plan new

improvements, and begin a new cycle.

●

For many organizations, change management focuses on the project

management aspects of change. There are a good number of vendors

offering products that are intended to help organizations manage projects

and project changes, including the Project Portfolio Management Systems

(PPMS). PPMS groups projects so they can be managed as a portfolio, much

as an investor would manage his/her stock investment portfolio to reduce

risks.

●

In the IT world, a project portfolio management system gives management

timely critical information about projects so they can make better decisions;

re-deploy resources due to changing priorities, and keep close tabs on

progress.

●

However, as the modern economy moves from product and manufacturing

centric to a more information and knowledge base focus, the change

manage- ment process needs to reflect that people are truly the most

valuable asset of the organization. Usually, an organization experiences

strong resistance to change. Employees are afraid of the uncertainty, they

feel comfortable with the stable state and do not want to change, and are

afraid to lose their power if things change. To them, there is no compelling

reason to change, unless the company can articulate a compelling reason

and communicate it effectively to convince them and influentially engage

them to change.

●

The best approaches to address resistance are through increased and

sustained communications and education. The champion of change, usually

the leader— for example, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the

organization—should communicate the Why aggressively and provide a

Vision of Where he wants to go today. There are many writings and models

on organization development (i.e., how). A summary of this working model

follows: Culture, Rewards, Organization and Structures, Process, Skills and

Competencies (CROPS) framework.

Culture:

Corporate culture is a reflection of organizational (management and

employees) values and belief. Edgar Schein, one of the most prominent

theorists of organizational culture, gave the following very general definition

The culture of a group can now be defined as: A pattern of shared basic

assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external

adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be

considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct

way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.

Elements of organizational culture may include:

●

Stated values and belief

●

Expectations for member behavior

●

Customs and rituals

●

Stories and myths about the history of the organization

●

Norms—the feelings evoked by the way members interact with each

other, with outsiders, and with their environment

●

Metaphors and symbols—found embodied in other cultural elements

●

Rewards and Management System: This management system focuses on

how employees are trained to ensure that they have the right skills and

tools to do the job right. It identifies how to measure employee job

performance and how the company compensates them based on their

performance. Reward is the most important ingredient that shapes

employees‘ value and beliefs.

●

Organization and Structures: How the organization is structured is

largely influenced by what the jobs are and how the jobs are performed.

The design of the business processes govern what the jobs are, and when

and where they get done. Business processes need to align with

organizational vision, mission, and strategies in order to create customer

and shareholder values. Therefore, all the components of the CROPS

framework are interrelated.

●

Process: Thomas Davenport defined a business process or business

method as a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that

produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a

particular customer or customers.

●

hammer and Champy‘s definition can be considered as a subset of

Davenport‘s.

They

define

process

―

collection

activities

that

takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to

the customer.‖

Processes

Organization and Structures

Skills and Competencies

Rewards and

Management Systems

Culture

CHANGE MANAGEMENT MATURITY MODEL (CMMM):



A Change Management Maturity Model (CMMM) helps organizations

to (a) analyze, understand, and visualize the strength and weakness of

the firm‘s change management process and (b) identify opportunities

for improvement and building competitiveness. The model should be

simple enough to use and flexible to adapt to different situations. The

working model in Table 22.1 is based on CMM (Capability Maturity

Model), originally developed by Amer- ican Software Engineering

Institute (SEI) in cooperation with Mitre Corpora- tion. CMM is a

model of process maturity

How does CMMM help organizations to adopt new technology,

including cloud computing, successfully? The business value of

CMMM can be expressed in terms of improvements in business

efficiency and effectiveness. All organizational investments are

business investments, including IT investments. The resulting benefits

should be measured in terms of business returns. Therefore, CMMM

value can be articulated as the ratio of business performance to

CMMM investment.

DATA SECURITY IN CLOUD:

Introduction To The Idea Of Data Security



Taking information and making it secure, so that only yourself or certain

others can see it, is obviously not a new concept. However, it is one that

we have struggled with in both the real world and the digital world. In

the real world, even information under lock and key, is subject to theft

and is certainly open to accidental or malicious misuse. In the digital

world, this analogy of lock-and-key protection of information has

persisted, most often in the form of container-based encryption. But

even our digital attempt at protecting information has proved less than

robust, because of the limitations inherent in protecting a container

rather than in the content of that container. This limitation has become

more evident as we move into the era of cloud computing: Information

in a cloud environment has much more dynamism and fluidity than

information that is static on a desktop or in a network folder, so we now

need to start to think of a new way to protect information.



Before we embark on how to move our data protection methodologies

into the era of the cloud, perhaps we should stop, think, and consider

the true applicability of information security and its value and scope.

Perhaps we should be viewing the application of data security as less of

a walled and impassable fortress and more of a sliding series of

option

that

are

appropriately

termed

―

risk

mitigation

.‖



The reason that I broach this subject so early on is that I want the

reader to start to view data security as a lexicon of choices, as

opposed to an on/off technology. In a typical organization, the need

for data security has a very wide scope, varying from information

that is set as public domain, through to information that needs some

protection (perhaps access control), through data that are highly

sensitive, which, if leaked, could cause catastrophic damage, but

nevertheless need to be accessed and used by selected users.



One other aspect of data security that I want to draw into this debate is

the human variable within the equation. Computer technology is the

most modern form of the toolkit that we have developed since human

prehistory to help us improve our lifestyle. From a human need

perspective, arguably, computing is no better or worse than a simple

stone tool, and similarly, it must be built to fit the hand of its user.

Technology built without considering the human impact is bound to fail.

This is particularly true for security technology, which is renowned for

failing at the point of human error.



If we can start off our view of data security as more of a risk

mitigation exercise and build systems that will work with humans

(i.e., human-centric), then perhaps the software we design for

securing data in the cloud will be successful.

THE CURRENT STATE OF DATA SECURITY IN THE CLOUD



At the time of writing, cloud computing is at a tipping point: It has many

arguing for its use because of the improved interoperability and cost

savings it offers. On the other side of the argument are those who are

saying that cloud computing cannot be used in any type of pervasive

manner until we resolve the security issues inherent when we allow a

third party to control our information.



These security issues began life by focusing on the securing of access

to the datacenters that cloud-based information resides in. However, it

is quickly becoming apparent in the industry that this does not cover the

vast majority of instances of data that are outside of the confines of the

data center, bringing us full circle to the problems of having a container-

based view of securing data. This is not to say that data- center security

is obsolete. Security, after all, must be viewed as a series of concentric

circles emanating from a resource and touching the various places that

the data go to and reside.



However, the very nature of cloud computing dictates that data are fluid

objects, accessible from a multitude of nodes and geographic

locations and, as such, must have a data security methodology that takes

this into account while ensuring that this fluidity is not compromised.

This apparent dichotomy data security with open movement of data—is

not as juxtaposed as it first seems. Going back to

statement

that

security

better

described

―

risk mitigation,‖ we

can then begin to look at securing data as a continuum of choice in terms

of levels of accessibility and content restrictions: This continuum allows

us to choose to apply the right level of protection, ensuring that the

flexibility bestowed by cloud computing onto the whole area of data

communication is retained.



As I write, the IT industry is beginning to wake up to the idea of content-

centric or information-centric protection, being an inherent part of a data

object. This new view of data security has not developed out of cloud

computing, but instead is a development out of the idea of

the

―

deperimerization

‖

the

enterpri

Thi

idea

was

put forward

by a group of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) who formed an

organization called the Jericho Forum [1]. The Jericho Forum was

founded in 2004 because of the increasing need for data exchange

between companies and external parties for example: employees using

remote computers; partner companies; customers; and so on.



The old way of securing information behind an organization‘s perimeter

wall prevented this type of data exchange in a secure manner. However,

the ideas forwarded by the Jericho Forum are also applicable to cloud

computing. The idea of creating, essentially, de-centralized perimeters,

where the perimeters are created by the data object itself, allows the

security to move with the data, as opposed to retaining the data within a

secured and static wall. This simple but revolutionary change in mindset

of how to secure data is the ground stone of securing information within

a cloud and will be the basis of this discussion on securing data in the

cloud.

HOMO SAPIENS AND DIGITAL INFORMATION



Cloud computing offers individuals and organizations a much more fluid

and open way of communicating information. This is a very positive

move forward in communication technology, because it provides a more

accurate mimic of the natural way that information is communicated

between individuals and groups of human beings.



Human discourse, including the written word, is, by nature, an open

transaction: I have this snippet of information and I will tell you, verbally

or in written form, what that information is. If the information is sensitive,

it may be whispered, or, if written on paper, passed only to those allowed

to read it. The result is that human-to-human

100



Cloud computing is a platform for creating the digital equivalent of this

fluid, human-to-human information flow, which is something that

internal computing networks have never quite achieved. In this respect,

cloud computing should be seen as a revolutionary move forward in the

use of technology to enhance human communications.



Although outside of the remit of this chapter, it is worthwhile for any

person looking into developing systems for digital communications to

attempt to understand the underlying social evolutionary and

anthropological reasons behind the way that human beings communicate

This can give some insight into digital versions of communication

models, because most fit with the natural way that humans communicate

information. Security system design, in particular, can benefit from this

underlying knowledge, because this type of system is built both to thwart

deceptive attempts to intercept communication and to enhance and

enable safe and trusted communications: Bear in mind that both

deception and trust are intrinsic evolutionary traits, which human beings

have developed to help them to successfully communicate.

Cloud Computing and Data Security Risk



The cloud computing model opens up old and new data security risks.

By its very definition, Cloud computing is a development that is

meant to allow more open accessibility and easier and improved data

sharing.



Data are uploaded into a cloud and stored in a data center, for access

by users from that data center; or in a more fully cloud-based model,

the data themselves are created in the cloud and stored and accessed

from the cloud (again via a data center). The most obvious risk in

this scenario is that associated with the storage of that data.



A user uploading or creating cloud-based data include those data that

are stored and maintained by a third-party cloud provider such as

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and so on. This action has several risks

associated with it: Firstly, it is necessary to protect the data during

upload into the data center to ensure that the data do not get hijacked

on the way into the database.



Secondly, it is necessary to the stores the data in the data center to

ensure that they are encrypted at all times. Thirdly, and perhaps less

obvious, the access to those data need to be controlled; this control

should also be applied to the hosting company, including the

administrators of the data center.

101



In addition, an area often forgotten in the application of security to a

data resource is the protection of that resource during its use—that is,

during a collaboration step as part of a document workflow process.



Other issues that complicate the area of hosted data include ensuring

that the various data security acts and rules are adhered to; this

becomes particularly complicated when you consider the cross

border implications of cloud computing and the hosting of data in a

country other than that originating the data.

CLOUD COMPUTING AND IDENTITY



Digital identity holds the key to flexible data security within a cloud

environment. This is a bold statement, but nonetheless appears to be the

method of choice by a number of industry leaders.



However, as well as being a perceived panacea for the ills of data

security, it is also one of the most difficult technological methods to get

right. Identity, of all the components of information technology, is

perhaps the most closest to the heart of the individual.



After all, our identity is our most personal possession and a digital

identity represents who we are and how we interact with others on- line.

The current state of the art in digital identity, in particular with reference

to cloud identities, is a work in progress, which by the time you are

reading this should hopefully be entering more maturity.



However, going back to my opening statement, digital identity can be

used to form the basis of data security, not only in the cloud but also at

the local network level too. To expand on this somewhat, we need to

look at the link between access, identity, and risk. These three variables

can become inherently connected when applied to the security of data,

because access and risk are directly proportional:



As access increases, so then risk to the security ofthe data increases.

Access controlled by identifying the actor attempting the access is the

most logical manner of performing this operation. Ultimately, digital

identity holds the key to securing data, if that digital identity can be

programmatically linked to security policies controlling the post- access

usage of data.



The developments seen in the area of a cloud-based digital identity layer

have

been

focused

creating

―

user-centric

‖

identity

mechanism. User- centric identity, as opposed to enterprise-centric

identity, is a laudable design goal for something that is ultimately o

wne

the

er.

ver,

the

Internet

tenet

―

who

say

I am‖

cannot support the security requirements of a data protection

methodology based on digital identity, therefore digital identity, in the

102

context of a security system backbone, must be a verified identity by

some trusted third party: It is worth noting that even if your identity is

verified by a trusted host, it can still be under an individual‘s

management and control.



With this proposed use of identity, on the type of scale and openness as

expected in a cloud computing context, we must also consider the

privacy implications of that individual‘s identity. A digital identity can

carry with it many identifiers about an individual that make identity

theft a problem, but identity should also be kept private for the simple

reason of respect. However, privacy is a very personal choice and, as

such, the ability to remain private within a cloud, should be, at the very

least, an option.

THE CLOUD, DIGITAL IDENTITY, AND DATA SECURITY



When we look at protecting data, irrespective of whether that protection

is achieved on a desktop, on a network drive, on a remote laptop, or in a

cloud, we need to remember certain things about data and human beings.

Data are most often information that needs to be used; it may be

unfinished and require to be passed through several hands for

collaboration for completion, or it could be a finished document needing

to be sent onto many organizations and then passed through multiple

users to inform.



It may also be part of an elaborate workflow, across multiple document

management systems, working on plat- forms that cross the desktop and

cloud domain. Ultimately, that information may end up in storage in a

data center on a third-party server within the cloud, but even then it is

likely to be re-used from time to time.



This

means

that

the

idea

―

static

‖

data

not

entirely

true

and

much better (certainly in terms of securing that data) to think of it as

highly fluid, but intermittently static.



What are the implications of this? If we think of data as being an

―

entity

‖

that

not

restricted

network

barriers

and

that

opened

multiple users in a distributed manner, then we should start to envision

that a successful protection model will be based on that protection policy

being an intrinsic part of that entity. If the protection becomes inherent

in the data object, in much the same way that perhaps a font type is

inherent in a document (although in the case of security in a much more

persistent manner), then it is much less important where that data resides.

However, how this is achieved programmatically is a little trickier,

particularly in terms of interoperability across hybrid cloud systems.

103



One of the other aspects of data security we need to assess before

embarking on creating a security model for data in the cloud is the levels

of need; that is, how secure do you want that data to be? The levels of

security of any data object should be thought of as concentric layers of

increasingly pervasive security, which I have broken down here into their

component parts to show the increasing granularity of this pervasiveness:

Level 1: Transmission of the file using encryption protocols

Level 2: Access control to the file itself, but without

encryption of the content Level 3: Access control (including

encryption of the content of a data object)

Level 4: Access control (including encryption of the content

of a data object) also including rights management options

(for example, no copying content, no printing content, date

restrictions, etc.)



Other options that can be included in securing data could also

include watermarking or red-acting of content, but these would

come under level 4 above as additional options.



You can see from the increasing granularity laid out here that security,

especially within highly distributed environments like cloud computing,

is not an on/off scenario. This way of thinking about security is crucial

to the successful creation of cloud security models. Content level

application of data security gives you the opportunity to ensure that all

four levels can be met by a single architecture, instead of multiple models

of operation which can cause interoperability issues and, as previously

mentioned, can add additional elements of human error, leading to loss

of security.



The current state of cloud computing provides us with a number of cloud

deployment models, namely, public (cloud infrastructure that is open for

public use, for example, Google App engine is deployed in a public

cloud), private (privately available clouds on a private network used by

an individual company; for example,



IBM provides private clouds to customers, particularly concerned by the

security issues surrounding public cloud deployments), managed (clouds

offered by a third-party hosting company who look after the

implementation and operational aspects of cloud computing for an

organization), and hybrid (a mix of both public and private cloud

implementations).



It is highly likely, especially in the early years of cloud computing, that

organizations will use a mixture of several, if not all, of these different

104

models. With this in mind, to allow an organization to deal with securing

data within any of these types of systems means that the issues of

interoperability, cross-cloud support, minimization of human error, and

persistence of security are crucial. The fluid movement of data through

and between these clouds is an integral part of the cloud philosophy, and

any data security added into this mix must not adversely encumber this

movement.



This requires that you look at that data as a separate entity with respect

to the underlying system that it moves through and resides within. If you

do not view the data as a free-moving object, you will build a data

security model that is not built to suit the data, but instead is built for the

specific system surrounding that data.



In a cloud-type system, the end result is likely to be only suitable for

static data (something that we have already described as not truly

existing) which will not be able to transcend that original system without

potentially having to be re-engineered to do so, or at the very least having

additional features and functions tagged onto the original specification.



This type of software engineering results in interoperability issues and

an increased chance of bugs occurring, because of feature adjuncts being

added as an afterthought, as opposed to being built into the original

working architecture of the software.



In addition, what can occur with security software development, which

uses a non-extensible approach to software design, is that security holes

end up being inadvertently built into the software, which may be very

difficult to test for as the software feature bloat increases. With this in

mind, the way forward in creating data security software models for a

cloud computing environment must be done from scratch.



We must leave the previous world of encrypted containers behind us and

open up a new paradigm of fluidic protection mechanisms based on

content-centric ideologies. Only through this approach will we hope to

achieve transcendence of security across the varying types of cloud

architectures.

105

EGAL ISSUES IN CLOUD COMPUTING

Definition of Cloud Computing

This chapter assumes that the reader is familiar with the manner in which

cloud computing is defined as set forth by the National Institute of

Standards and Technology, a federal agency of the United States

Government.



In brief, cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-

demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing

resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services)

that can be rapidly provisioned and released. This cloud model is

composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and

four deployment models.

OVERVIEW OF LEGAL ISSUES



The legal issues that arise in cloud computing are wide ranging.

Significant issues regarding privacy of data and data security exist,

specifically as they relate to protecting personally identifiable

information of individuals, but also as they relate to protection of

sensitive and potentially confidential business information either

directly accessible through or gleaned from the cloud systems (e.g.,

identification of a company‘s customer by evaluating traffic across the

network).



Additionally, there are multiple contracting models under which cloud

services may be offered to customers (e.g., licensing, service

agreements, on-line agreements, etc.).



The appropriate model depends on the nature of the services as well as

the potential sensitivity of the systems being implemented or data being

released into the cloud. In this regard, the risk profile (i.e., which party

bears the risk of harm in certain foreseeable and other not-so-foreseeable

situations) of the agreement and the cloud provider‘s limits on its

liability also require a careful look when reviewing contracting models.



Additionally, complex jurisdictional issues may arise due to the

potential for data to reside in disparate or multiple geographies. This

geographical diversity is inherent in cloud service offerings. This means

that both virtualization of and physical locations of servers storing and

processing data may potentially impact what country‘s law might

govern in the event of a data breach or intrusion into cloud systems.

106

DISTINGUISHING CLOUD COMPUTING FROM OUTSOURCING

AND PROVISION OF APPLICATION SERVICES

Cloud computing is different from traditional outsourcing and the

application service provider (ASP) model in the following ways:

●

In general, outsourcers tend to take an entire business or IT process of a

customer organization and completely run the business for the benefit of

the customer. Though the outsourcer may provide services similar to

those by multiple customers, each outsourcing arrangement is highly

negotiated, and the contract is typically lengthy and complex.

●

Depending on the nature of the outsourcing, the software belongs to the

customer, and software sublicense rights were transferred to the

outsourcer as part of the arrangement. The customer‘s systems are run

on the customer‘s equip- ment, though it is usually at an offsite location

managed by the out- sourcer.

●

Pricing is typically negotiated for each outsourced relationship. The

outsourcer‘s ability to scale to meet customer demand is a slow, and also

negotiated, process. The location of the data and processing is known,

predetermined, and agreed to contractually.

●

In the ASP model, the service provided is a software service. The

software application may have been used previously in-house by the

customer, or it may be a new value-added offering. The ASP offering is

precursor

what

now

called

―

software

service

.‖

The

transaction is negotiated, though typically it is not as complex and highly

negotiated as a traditional outsourcing arrangement.

●

The provider owns the software and hardware, and the software is

accessed over the Internet. The software tends to reside in one physical

location or a group of known locations with redundant and disaster

recovery backups, if any, being housed with third-party providers.

●

Pricing models vary by service, but tend to be negotiated. The more

sophisticated ASPs have realized that the provision of software over the

Internet is not the same as licensing of software, and the contracting

vehicles for ASP relationships have slowly morphed from typical

licensing models into services arrangements. There is no inherent ability

to scale the use or availability of ASP services on demand, nor is it

required.

Cloud Service Life Cycle

The input to the production of a cloud services are all the resources and

assets that will compose the cloud service (i.e., in the form of hardware,

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software, man power required from developer to the management level

and cost). The outcome of the cloud services production is an acceptable

and marketable cloud service, which will provide a measurable value to

the business objectives and outcomes. The sets of inputs are transformed

to derive the outcome by using the cloud service life cycle.

At the core of the cloud service life cycle is service strategy, which is

the fundamental phase in defining the service principles. The main core

of the cloud

FIGURE 5.1 CLOUD SERVICE LIFE CYCLE

Less emphasis is placed on location of data and processing than in

outsourcing, though this information was a generally ascertainable.

●

Cloud computing covers multiple service models (i.e, software,

infrastruc- ture, and platform as a service). As of this writing, access to

cloud computing services are (at least in the public cloud computing

frame- work), for the most part, one-size-fits-all ‗click here to accept‘

agreements, not negotiated arrangements. Similarly, pricing tended to be

unit-based (hence its comparison to utility computing).

●

In the cloud environment, performance economies are important for the

profitability of the cloud provider. Therefore a cloud provider may have

multiple data centers geographically dispersed to take advantage of

geographic cost differentials.

●

Additionally, the ability of cloud providers to quickly scale up and down

to meet customer requirements dictate that secondary and tertiary data

centers be available either directly from the cloud provider or through its

subcontracted arrangements. The location of data and processing at any

given instant in time tends to be less well known to the customer in a cloud

environment.

Service

Continuous Service

Improvement

Design

Service