VIT’s very own Cloud Computing Centre #2

This is the second instalment in the series of articles on Cloud Computing. As promised in the previous article, this article will cover two major topics

 

 

 

• Deployment Models
• Importance of Interoperability and open standards in Cloud Computing.

Deployment Models:

1. Public Clouds: Public clouds are based on the standard cloud computing model, where a service provider provides resources (Applications, platforms, Infrastructure) to the general public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or priced on pay-per-usage model.

Benefits:

1. Easy access to resources through the Internet
2. Inexpensive due to the payment model.
3. Scalability(The most important benefit of cloud computing i.e. elasticity)

Examples of Public Clouds: Amazon EC2 service –> paid service ->provider of Iaas, Google App engine –> paid service –>PaaS, Google Docs –>Free (I'm not sure if they have an enterprise subscription) ->SaaS

2. Private Clouds: Private clouds are similar to Public clouds, except that they are build on private networks. The idea behind private cloud is to deliver the benefits of cloud computing at the same time reducing the security risks that arise with public clouds. Private clouds are best suited for large corporations that are not comfortable with having their data on a public cloud. It is estimated that private clouds will be adopted more in the coming years until all the security concerns are addressed. Eucalyptus is an open source software used to build private clouds. The cloud infrastructure that is being build at VIT by the Linux User Group is powered by Eucalyptus.

3. Hybrid Clouds: Hybrid cloud is an environment in which some resources are kept in-house (may be on a private cloud) and some resources are placed on the public cloud. This setup is also ideal for corporations.

Interoperability:

Interoperability w.r.t Cloud Computing refers to the ability of customers to use the same artefacts (Management tools, OS images, APIs) with a variety of cloud computing vendors. Let me give you two examples:

a) GNU/Linux images running on Amazon EC2 should be able to run on Slicehost without changes.

b) The Office documents created on Google Docs should be editable on other Vendor services.

The idea behind open standards and interoperability is to avoid vendor lock-in so that customers can migrate between vendors depending on their service. It is an important issues as proprietary lock-in can hinder the adoption of cloud computing. If cloud computing is to move ahead, vendors need to put aside their differences and agree on common principles related to security and the interoperability of cloud platforms. A lot of groups and forums have been formed to address these issues of which the important ones are CCIF and DMTF.

In the next article I will cover a step by step procedure to build your own Private Cloud. Till we meet again, Happy reading.