WP_VI_CloudComputing

8/8/2019 WP_VI_CloudComputing

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Expert Reerence Series o White Papers

1-800-COURSES www.globalknowledge.com

Cloud Computing:

What It Is and What It

Can Do or You


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Copyright 2010 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 2

Cloud Computing: What It Is and

What It Can Do or YouSteve Baca, Global Knowledge Instructor

IntroductionCloud computing is one o the latest computer and business industry buzz words. It joins the ranks o virtualiza-tion, grid computing, and clustering, among others, in the IT industry. The problem is that, depending on yourpoint o view, the denition o cloud computing can be quite dierent. Depending on your perspective, youcould look at it rom a business point o view or an application point o view, as well as others. This has createdconusion on the denition and a uzzy view as to what cloud computing is or even does.

The term cloud computing is overused and ill-dened, which has led many IT proessionals and management tomake assumptions as to what cloud computing does and how their companies can best utilize it. The IT Industryis not making it easier or their customers by oering many dierent denitions and products that only createconusion. This conusion is what the IT vendors are utilizing to create many dierent products and call themcloud products. Examples o this behavior can be seen by watching television ads that are being broadcastto everyone, not just IT proessionals and management. One large IT company denes cloud computing in away that only a person with a PhD. in linguistics and computer science could understand, but the ad tells youthey are making a simple denition, and i you do not understand their denition then call up their proes-sional services to help your company take advantage o cloud computing. This ad, as well as other marketing,makes the idea so complex that no one understands it, and this only makes cloud computing more o a riddlewrapped in an enigma.

The cloud is a great marketing term, with lots o hype behind it. This white paper will dene cloud computingusing a commonly accepted denition to get past the hype. Then we will discuss the dierent types o cloudcomputing, which also have added to the conusion as to what cloud computing is and does. We will end withideas on how you can begin to implement the cloud in your environment.

The term cloud, which is a amiliar computer clich that every computer networking proessional has used asthe public internet in a network design at one time or another, is a great place to start. The internet cloud isdrawn into the network design as the part o the network that is not controlled by the company. It representsthe unknown path to send data or inormation between the company and the customer.

For the IT proessional, this is a well-understood concept and has been an acceptable practice or many years.In addition, the internet cloud design has been shown to management over the years, and they also have a com-ort level with the design and the concept. Now IT proessionals do have a common knowledge o the internetcloud; however, i you combine cloud with computing, the denition becomes uzzy, and there is no single


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acceptable meaning. I the concept comes up in a meeting, it begins to remind you o the story o the Emperorwho has no clothes. No one wants to admit that they do not know exactly what cloud computing is, and this iswhy, many years ago, the industry developed Request For Comments (RFC). The RFCs were designed to stan-dardize computer concepts. By standardizing, computers and the Internet were able to grow quickly, becausecompanies had to abide by the RFC. This standardization made it easy or the producer and the consumer toavoid conusion on what was being produced and consumed. However, there are no RFCs or cloud computing,

and this creates conusion as to what should or must be done to implement it. Without standardization, theproducer and consumer are let to write their own rules and make their own denitions.

Defnition o Cloud ComputingCloud Computing can be broadly dened as several dierent methods to deliver inormation or services to cus-tomers who pay or what they use. Thus, it is a new mechanism to deliver products rom a producer to a con-sumer. O course, what has not changed is that we have a consumer who wants or needs to utilize inormation.Who is the customer? Well, the customer can be an external person or company who is paying or a serviceor inormation. The customer could also be an internal customer, such as the application owner who is usingservices that another department within the same company is oering, who is being charged or consumption.

Part o the conusion in cloud computing is that there are two completely dierent customers or two dierenttypes o clouds. One type o cloud the customer gets inormation and services externally (public cloud) and theother type gets theirs internally (private cloud). With the public cloud, the customer owns no storage or serverand has no capital expenditures; they simply want to buy what they need on demand. The other customer is aninternal customer so the company spends capital to either provide services and data internally, or spends capitalto provide the servers, storage, networking, and applications (capital spending) or an external customer.

In addition, there are many dierent ways to use the cloud. Take the point-o-view o the producer. The pro-ducer can be an internal department oering services, which is called a private cloud. The producer can alsobe an external company that is supplying a server, storage, rack space, and electricity, and essentially suppliesthe capital or the inormation or service. As an example, lets say that I am a product manager, and I have anapplication that I want to put into production. What do I need to put together to roll out this product? Well, Ineed to nd a server and storage or the data. I also need to nd rack space or the server, and I need electric-ity, to name the big items. Basically, a capital investment is made to put my application into production in mycompanys data center.

With an external (public) cloud, I do not do any o these things; someone else builds the space and provides thecapital investment. Thus, we have a new way o doing business where the customer buys on demand, and thesupplier charges or what the customer uses. This concept is similar to cable television on demand, I only payor the movies that I want to watch. At issue are the details o providing the data to the users, and securing thatdata. Some o the concerns with cloud computing include new methodologies, how much control over the datathe provider companies maintain, where the data is maintained, and how it is secured.

Cloud computing is a new way o doing business that takes advantage o building eciencies into the systemthat can scale out to provide services or multiple companies. As an example, you drive down to your phar-macy to ll a drug prescription. You hand the pharmacist the prescription, and it gets put into the cloud. Your


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personal and nancial inormation is checked with your insurance company. The prescription is checked or druginteractions with other medications you are taking. The prescription is checked against a database o genericdrugs. During this whole process, which is running in computer time, your data has to remain secure. To seehow we got to this type o cloud interaction, lets take a look at the past.

Cloud EvolutionThe evolution o cloud computing can be traced to grid computing. The concept o The Grid exploded inpopularity The Grid: Blueprint or a new Computing Inrastructure by Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman waspublished in 1998. The basis o the grid is the electric utility grid that provides electric power to your home andbusiness. Using the same concept, hardware and sotware would be provided rom the grid on-demand muchlike electricity to run lights and everything else that plugs into the wall. What is interesting is that many o thesame issues that plagued the grid also plague cloud computing. Dening the grid, vendor lock-in, and ormingstandards were just some o the issues. Cloud computing expands upon the grid, but still suers rom some othe same issues. The cloud takes the grid a step urther.

Lets look at the dierent types o cloud computing that are available. I have organized the dierent types intotwo main categories: Public or External clouds and Private or Internal. These two categories can be sub-dividedeven urther.

Public Cloud or External CloudA public cloud is where resources, such as storage and applications, are made available over the internet bya third-party provider. The service is typically low-cost or pay-on-demand or what you utilize. The resourcesare located at an o-site location that is controlled by the third-party, and accessed by the customer via a webapplication or web service over the Internet. The term outsourcing is commonly used or this type o cloudcomputing. Several o the major players and the public cloud product they have to oer include Amazon ElasticCompute Cloud (EC2), IBM Blue Cloud, Sun Cloud, Google App Engine, Amazon Web Services, and Force.com.

These consumer portals, such as Yahoo email, are nice or the mass market. I can get my email rom anywherein the world at a very low cost. I rely upon Yahoo to provide and store my email, which is an application thatis used in the public cloud. This is a classic example o a public cloud, because I rely upon another company toprovide the capital expense to maintain my data. However, there are questions about reliability and the securityo my data.

The type o outsourcing provided by Yahoo and other vendors is termed public cloud to dierentiate it roman application that an organization has more control over and is managed by the organization itsel locally,which is termed private cloud. Basically, the public cloud provider is making the capital investment, as op-

posed to a private cloud in which the company internally makes the capital investment or the inrastructure.Thereore, when a company is thinking about whether to use a public or private cloud, the company is making adecision on whether or not to outsource the capital expense. Also, the company has to get the security right, aswell as the SLA contract as to who owes who money. It comes down to what the company wants to outsource,and what the company wants to do in-house.


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Private or Internal CloudA private, or internal, cloud is where the data is stored and accessed by a limited number o users in the com-panys own datacenter behind a rewall. The private cloud has all o the benets o the public clouds, but it ishosted inside the rewall o the company or department it is supporting. The uture o corporate IT is in privateclouds, which are modeled ater public clouds. One o the important eatures is that a private cloud can al-

low both internal and external consumers to access data in a secure local environment, which dierentiates aprivate cloud rom a public cloud.

Advances in virtualization and distributed computing have allowed corporate networking and datacenter ad-ministrators to become service providers that meet the needs o consumers within the corporation. The abilityto provide low-cost, convenient, and fexible access to data is a benet o cloud computing. Data or which youare responsible, such as nancial records and customer records, will stay in the internal cloud in the data center,but other parts o the data might be stored elsewhere with the fexibility o moving wherever needed. You coulddene a private cloud as servers, plus virtualization, plus applications.

Virtualization is the underlying technology enabling cloud computing and transorming the ace o the moderndata center. Virtualization is one o the keys to cloud computing, with a hypervisor such as VMwares vSphereleading the virtualization market. In essence, vSphere is a new type o operating system known as a VirtualDatacenter Operating System (VDC-OS). A sotware layer that aggregates virtualized servers, storage, and net-work resources into one big computing pool that can be used by virtual machines within the datacenter. FromVmwares point o view, a private cloud is really a hybrid o internal and external clouds interoperating.

Using Cloud Computing in Your EnvironmentOne o the initial steps toward cloud computing is incorporating virtualization, which is separating the hardwarerom the sotware. In the past, transitions o this magnitude meant rewriting code, such as the transition romthe mainrame to UNIX. Fortunately, the transition to VMware does not require the rewrite o code, and this hasueled the speed o the move toward virtualization sotware. There still will be challenges in this transition but,overall, the consolidation o servers into the virtual world has been airly rapid with many applications making aseamless transition.

The journey to get to cloud computing begins with virtualization with the cloud OS providing inrastructure andapplication services. The inrastructure services are the ability to virtualize server, storage, and the network,as well as application services that provide availability and security or the applications that are being utilizedin the cloud environment. VMwares vSphere satises the initial step o virtualization, the separation o thehardware and the sotware. The next step is adding some o the many cloud applications that include how to docharge-backs and other application sotware. These cloud-like capabilities include billing or usage, the abilityto do sel-service, and many others. Charging or consumption, even i it is internal, will lead to better manage-

ment, with the ability to keep track o what services the consumer is utilizing. In addition, with cloud computing,there is the ability to program in more sel-service by the end user in order to keep costs down.


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ConclusionCloud computing takes virtualization, which is the separation o the hardware and the sotware using virtual-ization sotware such as VMwares vSphere. Dening the dierent types o cloud computing provides us withknowledge as to what cloud computing has to oer. Whether you are a consumer or producer will dene yourdenition o cloud computing. The public cloud is really geared more or the individual consumer or small com-

pany, while the private cloud is geared more or a medium-to large-company. In addition, the private cloud isbranching out to incorporate the ability to have some data and applications serviced rom the public cloud.

Learn MoreLearn more about how you can improve productivity, enhance eciency, and sharpen your competitive edge.Check out the ollowing Global Knowledge courses:

VMware vSphere: Install, Congure, Manage [v4]

VMware vSphere: Fast Track [v4]

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting [v4]

For more inormation or to register, visit www.globalknowledge.com or call 1-800-COURSES to speak with asales representative.

Our courses and enhanced, hands-on labs and exercises oer practical skills and tips that you can immediatelyput to use. Our expert instructors draw upon their experiences to help you understand key concepts and how toapply them to your specic work situation. Choose rom our more than 1,200 courses, delivered through Class-rooms, e-Learning, and On-site sessions, to meet your IT and business training needs.

About the AuthorSteve Baca has been working in the Inormation Technology eld or more than 15 years, ater graduating romthe University o Nebraska with a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Ater spending timeprogramming and doing Systems Administration, Steve has been doing technical training or VMware, Sun Mi-crosystems, and Symantec. In addition, to teaching Steve has also done technical editing, and wrote the courseor Sun Microsystems Network Troubleshooting.

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