CLOUD COMPUTING

COMP30520/COMP41110 PRACTICAL 1:
INTRODUCING CLOUD COMPUTING

Submitted by: Ademola Kazeem

Student No: 15200214

Due: 24th September, 2015

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Cloud Computing
As of now,computer networks are still in their infancy, but as they growup and become
sophisticated, we will probably see the spread of computer utilities which, like present electric
and telephone utilities, will service individual homes and offices across the country. Those are
the world of Leonard Kleinrock, one of the chief scientists of the original Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which seeded the Internet, in 1969. (Buyya, Vecchiola
and Selvi, 2013).
Today computing has been commoditized as predicted by Kleinrock, businesses, governments,
corporate bodies and individuals can now have services delivered to them like utilities (telephony,
electricity, gas, etc). It is on pay-per-use or pay-as-you-go basis. Companies do not need to worry
about the configuration, management and running of datacenter any more. Individuals do not have
to worry about losing their data anymore. This is made possible by the advent of Cloud
Computing.
Cloud Computing according to (Gatner, 2013) is defined as a style of computing in which
scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service using Internet technologies
while (Amazon Web Service, 2015) defined cloud computing as the on-demand delivery of IT
resources and applications via the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.
The leaders in the provision of Cloud Services are but not limited to) the following:
1.

Amazon Web Services

2.

Rackspace

3.

Windows Azure

4.

Google Computer Engine

1. Deployment Model
This refers to the type of access users have to the cloud. There are for deployment models by
which users can have access to the cloud, namely: Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Community Cloud
and Hybrid Cloud.

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Private Cloud: This is a deployment model in which the infrastructure is built for and
operated for a single Organization with many customers. The organization might be
responsible for the ownership and management of the infrastructure or might employ the
service of a third party. The infrastructure could also be located on premise or off-premise.
(Mell and Grance, 2011). Private Cloud is more secured than the public cloud.

Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine and Rackspace
provide private Cloud Deployment model. Although Rackspaces private cloud is powered
by VMware vCloud, Microsoft Cloud Platform and Openstack Cloud. (Rackspace, 2015).
Public Cloud: This is a deployment model that allows for scalable and elastic IT services
to be rendered to external customers over a public network (in this case, internet) (Gartner,
2013). Amazon Web Service, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine, and Rackspace
operate public cloud.
Community Cloud: This deployment model is a multi-tenancy infrastructure that allows
organizations (e.g. Banks, Government, Health organization etc) with similar concern share
services. This concern might be privacy, security, compliance, policy, among others.
(Gartner, 2013). Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services provides this service.
Hybrid Cloud: This is a combination of public, private or community distinct-but-stillbounded cloud services, which can be from different cloud providers. (Wikipedia, 2015).
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Rackspace provide Hybrid Cloud.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon.com launched Amazon Web Services in 2006 to offer customers cloud computing
services. Amazon Web Services has a range of products that is deployed to customers as Public,
Private, Hybrid (Amazon Web Services, 2015) and Community Cloud (Barr, 2012).

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Rackspace
US based Rackspace Inc. provides pay-as-you-use cloud products and services with Rackspace
Cloud. Rackspace cloud deploys Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud (Rackspace, 2015).
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing Service provider that was created by created by Microsoft
Inc. in 2010 to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) for
customers. Microsoft Azure provides Public (Herskowitz, 2015), Private, Hybrid and Community
Cloud (Microsoft Azure, 2015).
Google Compute Engine
Google Inc. provides several products and services, Google Cloud Platform is the cloud computing
branch of the company. One of the component parts of Google Cloud Platform is Google Compute
Engine, which is the component that is dedicated to providing Infrastructure as a Service to
customers. (Wikipedia, 2015). GCE provides Public (Silverthorne, 2015) and Private Cloud
(Wikipedia, 2015).
2. Cloud Delivery
Infrastructure as a Service: This delivery model in which cloud provider provides computer
hardware in form of physical servers, virtual machines or other resources (Wikipedia, 2015).
Amazon Web Services (Amazon Web Services, 2015), Google Compute Engine (Wikipedia,
2015), Microsoft Azure (Wikipedia, 2015) and Rackspace (Rackspace, 2015), provide
Infrastructure as a Service.
Platform as a Service: With Platform as a Service, customers are provided with platform for
developing, managing, executing and running their applications with their infrastructure already
setup for them by the provided. (Wikipedia, 2015). Amazon Web Services (Hinchcliffe, 2008),
Microsoft Azure (Microsoft Azure, 2015), Rackspace (Wikipedia, 2015) all provide Platform as a
Service.

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Software as a Service: In this delivery model, customers do not have access to the underlying
platform and Infrastructure. They are access to the application and can only make changes at the
application level. Amazon Web Services (AWS Cloudfront, 2015), Rackspace (Rackpace SaaS,
2015), Microsoft Azure (Wikipedia, 2015) provide SaaS.
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services provides Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service (Amazon Web
Services, 2015), as well as Software as a Service (AWS Cloudfront, 2015).
Rackspace
Rackspace also provides Infrastructure as a Service (Rackspace, 2015), Platform as a Service
(Wikipedia, 2015) and Software as a Service (Rackpace SaaS, 2015).
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure provides Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a
Service (Greiner, 2014).
Google Compute Engine
Google Cloud Platform Compute is divided into 3 main parts namely: Google App Engine, which
is the platform as a Service, Google Container Engine, and Google Compute Engine which is the
Infrastructure as a Service division.
Google Compute Engine provides Infrastructure as a Service. (Wikipedia, 2015).
3. Considerations before virtualizing datacenter.
The following are some of what to consider before virtualizing datacenter. (Amazon Web Services,
2015)
Security: The company that want to virtualize its environment needs to be wary of
different threats associated with virtualization and which provider out there provide the
best Security features to deal with security threats to the barest minimum.
AWS:

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o Amazon Web Services Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM)

o AWS Directory Service, and
o AWS CloudHSM service (Cloud Hardware Security module), among others.
(Amazon Web Services, 2015).
Microsoft Azure:
o Design and operational security
o Identity and access
o Encryption and key management
o Network security
o Threat management
o Monitoring, logging, and reporting
o Security partners
o Penetration testing (Microsoft Azure, 2015).
Google Compute Engine:
o Intrusion Detection
o Secure Global Network
o Security Scanning
o Compliance and Certifications
o Logging
o Secured Service APIs and Authenticated Access. Etc. (Google Cloud Platform, 2015).
Rackspace Cloud
o Security Organization
o Information Security Controls.
o Compliance and Validation
o Security Operations. (Rackspace, 2015).

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Storage and databases: Consider the highly durable storage for your data. Encryption,
what size of storage would you need? Data protection. You should consider the
Input/output performance of the storage, list of databases you need and what database does
the provider provide. You need to consider the availability of the storage and database etc.
(Amazon Web Services, 2015).
AWS provides:
o S3 (Simple Storage Service)
o Amazon Relational Database Service and
o Amazon Aurora (Amazon Web Services, 2015).
GCE
o Google Cloud Storage
o Google Cloud SQL
Microsoft Azure
o Block Blobs and Files
o Relational DBs

Global Infrastructure: Locations of the deployment of the servers. It is recommended that

provider with global infrastructure spread be selected for virtualization to reduce latency.
AWS has:
o 11 regions located all over the world (e.g. North America, South America,
Europe, Asia Pacific),
o 28 redundant Availability Zones,
o 52 Amazon CloudFront points-of presence. (Amazon Web Services, 2015).

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Compute: How scalable is the infrastructure provided by the provider? Load balancing,
reboot time, auto-scaling, flexibility of the pricing options, Networking configuration
option, High Availability. etc.
AWS:
o Amazon EC2
o Amazon Lamba
Support: Are you going to sign 24/7 support option with the most rapid response time? Go
for the provider with flexible and reasonable support options.
o 24/7 Support options
o Direct one to one technical support and rapid case review
o AWS Trusted Advisor
Licensing: Most providers would not tell you about the hidden charges, if it exists, until
you subscribe into their cloud services. Service Level agreement might change and they
would inform you that it could change anytime without your consent. So you need to be
weary of this.
AWS:
o License Mobility
Microsoft Azure
o License Mobility
GCE
o License Mobility
Rackspace
o License Mobility

Big Data: Do you need big data? Do you want to manage non-relational database? Etc.,
this are things to consider too when selecting.
AWS:

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o Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR)

o Amazon DynamoDB
GCE
o Cloud Datastore
o Big Query
o Hadoop
Microsoft Azure
o Windows Azure Table
o HDInsight
Deployment and Management: How is the infrastructure going to be deployed? Who
manages what? You should go for provider that has the most uncomplicated way of
deploying Infrastructure.
AWS:
o AWS CloudFormation
o AWS Elastic Beanstalk
o AWS OpsWorks
Cost: One of the most important thing to be considered is when trying to virtualize your
datacenter is cost. You should do comparative analyses of the pricing before you go for
virtualization. (Aldiab, 2015).
AWS
o Per hour rounded up
o On demand, reserved, spot
Microsoft Azure
o Per minute rounded up commitments (pre-paid or monthly)
o On demand short term commitments (pre-paid or monthly)
GCE
o Per minute rounded up (minimum 10 minutes)

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o On demand sustained use

(Aldiab, 2015).

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4. Compare the cost of using different cloud services from Amazon Web Services, Window Azure and Google Compute Engine.
Virtual CPUs or cores

RAM

Cost per hour (US$)

Amazon m1.medium

3.75GB

12 cents

Amazon c3.large

3.75GB

15 cents

Amazon m3.2xlarge

30.00GB

90 cents

Google n1-standard1

3.75GB

10.4 cents

Google n1-highcpu-2

1.80GB

13.1 cents

Google n1-standard-8

30.00GB

82.9 cents

Windows Azure Small VM

1.75GB

6 cents

Windows Azure Medium VM

3.50GB

12 cents

Windows Azure Extra Large VM

14.00GB

48 cents

According to (Wayner, 2014), the above table compares the pricing for each of the Services provided by each of the cloud
providers under discuss. Vis--vis Google Compute Engine, Amazon Web Service and Windows Azure.

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5. If you want to develop application on the cloud which cloud provider will you choose?
and why?
Amazon Web Services:
Developer tools: With AWS cloud, Source Code management, code deployment and continuous
delivery become easier. Developers can store their codes in private repositories, code deployment
can be automated, and the final software can be realized using continuous delivery. (Amazon Web
Services, 2015).
Support for Developers: Support for several programming languages including: Java, PHP,
Ruby, Python etc. It also supports Oracle and MySQL database. AWSs Relational Database
(RDB) web service eliminates the setting up and administration of database. (Sullivan, 2014).
Availability: AWS has the highest availability among all the Cloud providers. In 2014, Amazon
only had 23 outages, resulting in just 2.69 hours of downtime. (Neeraj, 2015).
Global Infrastructure: AWS is in 11 regions located all over the world (e.g. North America,
South America, Europe, Asia Pacific), 28 redundant Availability Zones, 52 Amazon CloudFront
points-of presence. (Amazon Web Service, 2015).
Capacity: 14 largest next competitors to AWS have 5 times less capacity than AWS combined.
(Neeraj, 2015).
Enough Resources for development: AWS provides developers with lots of tools for
development from development to deployment. (Amazon Web Services, 2015).
Cost Effective: If you are willing to pay for the reserved instance, AWS seems to be the cheapest.
Market Share: AWS has the largest market share (28%) the next competitor Microsoft Azure has
10%. (Neeraj, 2015).

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Part II: Cloud Platforms

1. What is Openstack? What is Xen Project? What is HP Helion Eucalyptus?
a. What is Openstack?
According to (Openstack, 2015), Openstack is an Open Source Cloud Operating System that
controls large pools of Compute, Storage and Network resources throughout the datacenter, by
providing administrative dashboard or Openstack API for the management and control the pools
and still gives users web interface to provision resources.
b. What is Xen Project?
According to (Xen Project, 2015), Xen Project is a global open source community that develops
the leading Open Source virtualization platform called Xen Project hypervisor. It powers some of
the most prominent cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud, etc. It can
also be integrated into cloud platforms such as OpenStack.
Xen Project hypervisor is the only type-1or baremetal hypervisor that is open source. With Xen
Project hypervisor, many instances of operating systems can be run on one machine usually called
host concurrently. It is widely used by commercial users as well as to power open source
applications which include but not limited to: Server Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization,
security applications, Infrastructure as a Service etc. (Xen Wiki, 2015).
c. What is HP Helion Eucalyptus?
HP Helion Eucalyptus is an open source cloud solution for building private AWS-compatible
cloud computing environment. (HP, 2015). Eucalyptus is an acronym for Elastic Utility
Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems. (Wikipedia, 2015).
2. Which Cloud services are provided by OpenStack? By Xen Project? By HP Helion
Eucalyptus?
i.

OpenStack
a. OpenStack provides both Private and Public Cloud services. (Openstack, 2015).
b. It is primarily deployed as an Infrastructure as a Service (Wikipedia, 2015).

ii.

Xen Project

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a. Infrastructure as a Service. (XenProject, 2015).

b. Private Cloud: Amazon Web Services uses Xen Project to provide scalable virtual
private server with Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2). (Wikipedia, 2015).
c. Public Cloud (XenProject, 2015).
iii.

HP Helion Eucalyptus
a. provides only private cloud for the Amazon Web Services
b. It is a Platform as a Service delivery model.

3. Compare Xen Project Architecture and OpenStack architecture.

Xen project hypervisor is one of the hypervisors that could be used for the implementation of
OpenStack cloud platform. (Xen Project, 2015).

Fig 1: Open Stack Architecture

Fig 2: Xen Project Architecture

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Fig 1. (OpenStack, 2015). above is the architecture of OpenStack showing the operating System,
the applications as well as the underlying hardware. Primarily, the cloud operating system sits on
hypervisors, which might be Xen, hyperV etc.
Fig 2. (Kurth, 2015), above represents the Xen Project Architecture, where guest operating system
as described in the image represent the virtual operating system which could be OpenStack,
CloudStack etc. But since we are comparing OpenStack and Xen Project, we will assume
OpenStack is placed on the Xen Project hypervisor.

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