Practical lesson 12 Cloud technology. General characteristics of cloud computing.

Objectivе: Obtaining theoretical knowledge and practical skills in the architecture of the "cloud" technologies, methods and design features of the "cloud" services, as well as obtaining the skills development of applications for the major current "cloud" platforms.

Practical work 1.

Read the text on security and match the headings in the box with the paragraphs 1-4.

Private cloud Hybrid cloud Public cloud Cloud computing

(1)_____________is the emerging buzz word in information technology. It consists of a virtual pool of resources such as storage, CPU, networks and memory to fulfill users’ resource requirements and provides on demand (pay per use) hardware and software without barriers.

(2)_____________is a proprietary architecture subscribed to by an organization. It provides hosted services to the users within the organization. This is protected by the firewall to form a barrier against the outside the world to access hosted services from the private cloud.

(3)_____________is not proprietary of any organization. The services provided in these clouds can be accessed by any organization.

In (4)_____________, the services are offered to a limited and well defined number of parties. A hybrid cloud allows the Internet to be used as a desktop.

Answer key:

1 Cloud computing

2 A private cloud

3 A public cloud

4 a hybrid cloud

Practical work 2.

Answer the following questions -- be sure to discuss as a group!

1. Name some companies you know of that provide cloud services.

2. Explain what type of cloud services they are providing, e.g. SaaS, PaaS or IaaS?

3. What were the early forms of cloud computing and how did they evolve into the

present state?

Practical work 3.

Cloud computing styles and its advantages:

A. SaaS SaaS stands for Software as a Service. Service providers provide software services in the cloud. Users access these services as software and can do work without installing the same on the local machine. Google Apps provides such services to create documents and spreadsheets online without having to install any document or spreadsheet application. Salesforce.com also provides software as a service.

B. PaaS Platform as a Service allows users to use cloud computing for developing any application using a development kit provided by cloud computing. Users are not required to install the development kit on a local machine. Installed software or a development kit can be used in cloud computing to develop any program. Oracle involves providing platform as a Service.

C. IaaS Infrastructure as a Service enables the installation and execution of software. Here, users can gain access to a virtualized server. IaaS targets operating systems, hardware, CPUs and embedded systems, networks and storage. This enables a homogenous virtualized environment, where specific software can be installed and executed. Amazon is one company that provides infrastructure as a service.

Advantages:

• Faster, simpler and cheaper services

• Highly elastic because resources are easily released or occupied on the basis of demand.

• Optimized utilization of computing resources.

• Users have more resources such as unlimited storage etc.

• Everything is provided as a service.

• Less power consumed on hardware and software

• High availability and scalability

• No data loss

Practical work 4.

Brainstorming as a Team

Meet as a team to brainstorm the disadvantages of cloud computing and some possible solutions.

Sl. no	Disadvantages	Your innovative solutions