Cloud Computing Questions

Security is one of the major aspects which come with any application and service used by the user. Companies or organizations remain much more concerned with the security provided with the cloud. There are many levels of security which has to be provided within cloud environment such as:

• Identity management: it authorizes the application service or hardware component to be used by authorized users.

• Access control: permissions has to be provided to the users so that they can control the access of other users who are entering the in the cloud environment.

• Authorization and authentication: provision should be made to allow the authorized and authenticated people only to access and change the applications and data.

Cloud computing platform has various databases that are in support. The open source databases that are developed to support it is as follows:

- MongoDB: is an open source database system which is schema free and document oriented database. It is written in C++ and provides tables and high storage space. 

- CouchDB: is an open source database system based on Apache server and used to store the data efficiently

- LucidDB: is the database made in Java/C++ for data warehousing. It provides features and functionalities to maintain data warehouse.

Cloud computing architecture consists of many layers which help it to be more organized and can be managed from one place. The layers are as follows:

1. Cloud controller or CLC is the top most level in the hirerachy which is used to manage the virtualized resources like servers, network and storage with the user APIs. 

2. Walrus is used for the storage and act as a storage controller to manage the demands of the users. It maintains a scalable approach to control the virtual machine images and user data.

3. Cluster Controller or CC is used to control all the virtual machines for executions the virtual machines are stored on the nodes and manages the virtual networking between Virtual machines and external users.

4. Storage Controller or SC provides a storage area in block form that are dynamically attached by Virtual machines. 

5. Node Controller or NC is at the lowest level and provides the functionality of a hypervisor that controls the VMs activities, which includes execution, management and termination of many instances.

Cloud architecture provide large pool of dynamic resources that can be accessed any time whenever there is a requirement, which is not being given by the traditional architecture. In traditional architecture it is not possible to dynamically associate a machine with the rising demand of infrastructure and the services. Cloud architecture provides scalable properties to meet the high demand of infrastructure and provide on-demand access to the user.

There are four phases that basically gets involved in the cloud architecture:

1. Launch phase: it launches the basic services and makes the system ready for communication and for application building

2. Monitor phase: it monitors the services that is being launched and then manages them so that on demand the user will be able to get what he wants.

3. Shutdown phase: it shutdown the services that are not required first and after all the services gets shutdown, and then it closes the system services. 

4. Cleanup phase: it clean up the left out processes and services that is being either broken or didn’t get shutdown correctly.

Cloud computing is going all together for a different look as it now includes different data types like emails, contracts, images, blogs, etc. The amount of data increasing day by day and cloud computing is requiring new and efficient data types to store them. For example if you want to save video then you need a data type to save that. Latency requirements are increasing as the demand is increasing. Companies are going for lower latency for many applications.

1. Zero infrastructure investment : Cloud architecture provide user to build large scale system with full hardware, machines, routers, backup and other components. So, it reduces the startup cost of the business. 

2. Just-in-time Infrastructure : It is very important to scale the infrastructure as the demand rises. This can be done by taking cloud architecture and developing the application in the cloud with dynamic capacity management. 

3. More efficient resource utilization : Cloud architecture provides users to use their hardware and resource more efficiently and utilize it in a better way. This can be done only by applications request and relinquish resources only when it is needed (on-demand).

Cloud computing is a metaphor used for internet. It provides on-demand access to virtualized IT resources that can be shared by others or subscribed by you. It provides an easy way to provide configurable resources by taking it from a shared pool. The pool consists of networks, servers, storage, applications and services.