Virtualization – Back bone of cloud

Virtual refers to something which do not exist in reality. We use a technique called Virtualization in cloud computing which is the heart of the cloud. The cloud service providers setup data centers at various locations. This data center is a repository of processing capability and storage capability. The idea is to extend these capabilities to various customers . The advantage to the customer is that they need not invest a lot in infrastructure but pay nominally to the service provider.

In order to extend this kind of service the technique primarily used among various cloud service providers is Virtualization. In line with the definition of virtual, virtualization technique in cloud computing also gives an impression of the resources which actually do not exist in reality.

In order to use the cloud service now a developer can use the API given by the cloud service provider to describe application’s initial composition onto virtual machines, but also how it scales and evolves to accommodate workload changes. The developer should have a complete vision about the application and its scalability.

The challenge here however lies in predicting the scalability extent of all the applications running in a data center. As the cloud is based on virtualization, the availability of the service and the integrity of the data are in doubt. The data security and integrity is totally dependent on the practices followed by the cloud service provider, their principles of resource allocation and recoverability. The cloud user need some techniques to ensure that their data is safe and their application is up and running.

I think its inherent in our nerves that we are skeptical about a service which is not real. That might be the reason we are hesitant to spend on credit cards. Lets find out what can we conclude about the cloud .

Clouds in the Net.

As discussed in my previous blog on cloud computing, this new form of service is useful for beginners. Small and Medium firms can experiment with their ideas . The cloud solution is inexpensive as the experimentation do not require procuring the underlying infrastructure and it allows you to scale your systems horizontally and the user is supposed to pay only for the storage and compute resources consumed by the application. This setup converts the storage and compute resources into utilities, i.e pay for what you use.

There are advantages and disadvantages for everything we use, it is up to the user to weigh the advantages to decide whether to go for it or not. If we count the advantages of cloud.

1. Useful for experimentation.
2. High capacity systems available at low cost.
3. Accommodates surge computing.

Innovative ideas are meaningful only when put to implementation. Cloud enables innovation as there is less economic burden. People can deploy their experiment on cloud and discard if it is not feasible after deployment.

The end user who uses a cloud pays only for the amount of resources used, it is possible to have high capacity systems at lower prices as compared to owning the systems.

Surge computing is a situation where a particular application might see a sudden spike in the service requests. In a traditional system when this kind of situation occurs the server with its limited capability may go down. As cloud offers horizontal scalability, in case of a spike additional virtual servers are brought up to handle the additional traffic.

When we look at the disadvantages of cloud computing, we can list out the following.

1. Security of data stored on a third party server is unknown.
2. Confidentiality of data stored and transferred on the cloud is unknown.

Even if there is a security mechanism in place how robust is the mechanism. To gain wide acceptance these issues are to be addressed.

Cloud Computing…whats the buzz?

Cloud Computing is a very common word heard among the technical people these days. What is really exciting about it? Cloud is used synonymously to the internet. It is not that we have not been using internet before the word cloud computing came into limelight. The new idea is about using internet to provide Infrastructure as a Service(Iaas). The essence of cloud computing is to provide high processing capabilities and storage capabilities to the end user. The best part here is the end user need not own these capabilities but they are priced according to their utility. This kind of set up enables small and medium enterprises to have high performance and processing capabilities on ad hoc basis without actually owning the infrastructure.

This kind of set up opens up an opportunity for many entrepreneurs to try their ideas at a nominal price, where they can use the processing and storage capabilities as utilities and only pay according to the usage. This is a very good idea to start off, but as the organization grow the requirements of processing and storage will also grow. What about the sustainability of the process on cloud? How safe and reliable are the processes? Can someone completely bank upon the cloud to run their business to whatever extent the organization’s business grow? Is there any threshold after which the organization cannot depend on the cloud but has to switch to their own infrastructure?

These are the issues we need to really understand before starting off with using the technique for the organization. The reliability and long term sustainability of the process is to be assessed before initiating the process.