Cloud computing and big data analytics
Unit – 2
Important questions
1.What is cloud solutions? Explain cloud ecosystem
Any cloud-based solution refers to applications, storage, on-demand services, computer
networks, or other resources that are accessed with an internet connection through another
provider's shared cloud computing framework.
⦁ A cloud ecosystem is a complex system of interdependent components that all work
together to enable cloud services. In nature, an ecosystem is composed of living and nonliving
things that are connected and work together.
⦁ e.g.: ecosystem
⦁ It consists of hardware, software, customers, cloud engineers, consultants, partners.
⦁ Bringing cloud services to market requires pre-investments
The benefits of a cloud ecosystems
a) Reduced IT costs
• the cost of system upgrades, new hardware and software may be included in your contract
• you no longer need to pay wages for expert staff
• your energy consumption costs may be reduced
• there are fewer time delays.
b) Scalability Your business can scale up or scale down your operation and storage need quickly
to suit your situation, allowing flexibility as your needs change. Rather than purchasing and
installing expensive upgrades yourself, your cloud computer service provider can handle this for
you. Using the cloud frees up your time so you can get on with running your business.
C) Business continuity Protecting your data and systems is an important part of business
continuity planning. Whether you experience a natural disaster, power failure or other crisis,
having your data stored in the cloud ensures it is backed up and protected in a secure and safe
location. Being able to access your data again quickly allows you to conduct business as usual,
minimizing any downtime and loss of productivity.
D)Access to automatic updates Access to automatic updates for your IT requirements may be
included in your service fee. Depending on your cloud computing service provider, your system
will regularly be updated with the latest technology. This could include up-to-date versions of
software, as well as upgrades to servers and computer processing power.
2.Explain cloud business process management?
Business Process Management (BPM)
⦁ Business process management is a discipline in operations management in which people
use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate
business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business
processes is BPM
⦁ Heart of organization
⦁ BPM is a continuous cycle of evaluating and improving organizational processes
manages: creating product-services-deliver to clients
⦁ E.g. vacation approval process in an HR department
it governs organization function and end to end core business process
focus on driving all bottom-line approach surface and integrating core work. eg, order to
cash(O2C)
3.Explain cloud service management with characteristics?
Cloud Service Management:
⦁ CSM manages all organization activities such as plan, design, deliver, operate, and
control the IT and cloud services
⦁ It protects cloud assets against vulnerabilities, data loss and downtimes
⦁ Aim is to maximize service supply chain
⦁ provides efficient cloud delivery in public and private
⦁ provides product by integrating with other with low cost
⦁ increase system administrator productivity
Cloud Service Management:
⦁ Cloud monitoring and cloud service management tools allow cloud providers to ensure
optimal performance, continuity and efficiency in virtualized, on-demand environments.
⦁ The delivery of dynamic, cloud-based infrastructure, platform and application services
doesn't occur in a vacuum.
⦁ In addition to best practices for effective administration of all the elements associated
with cloud service delivery, cloud service management and cloud monitoring tools enable
providers to keep up with the continually shifting capacity demands of a highly elastic
environment
4.Explain computing on demand with benefits?
On-demand computing is a business computing model in which computing resources are made
available to the user on an “as needed” basis. Rather than all at once, on-demand computing
allows cloud hosting companies to provide their clients with access to computing resources as
they become necessary.
The on-demand computing model was developed to overcome the common challenge that
enterprises encountered of not being able to meet unpredictable, fluctuating computing
demands efficiently. Businesses today need to be agile and need the ability to scale resources
easily and quickly based on rapidly changing market needs. Because an enterprise’s demand
for computing resources can vary dramatically from one period to another, maintaining
sufficient resources to meet peak requirements can be costly. However, with on-demand
computing, companies can cut costs by maintaining minimal computing resources until they run
into the need to increase them while only paying for their use.
5.Explain cloud offerings?
Cloud Offerings
Patterns of this category cover different functionality found in clouds regarding the
functionality they provide to customers and the behavior they display.
Cloud-based services help the businesses to access cloud-based infrastructure that is assured
with security, reliability, saleable, and availability.
Using traditional method managing huge data was tedious task, but now software that capture
and organize all the scattered data. It will organize data enables better business decisions
6.Explain cloud analytics with neat diagram?
Cloud analytic
Cloud analytic is a marketing term for businesses to carry out analysis using cloud computing. It
uses a range of analytical tools and techniques to help companies extract information from
massive data and present it in a way that is easily categorized and readily available via a web
browser
Cloud analytic is the use of remote public or private computing resources—known as the
cloud—to analyze data on demand. Cloud computing analytics helps streamline the business
intelligence process of gathering, integrating, analyzing, and presenting insights to enhance
business decision making.
7.Explain testing under cloud and information security?
Testing Under Control: Cloud testing typically involves monitoring and reporting on real-world
user traffic conditions as well as load balance and stress testing for a range of simulated usage
conditions.
information Security is not only about securing information from unauthorized access.
Information Security is basically the practice of preventing unauthorized access, use, disclosure,
disruption, modification, inspection, recording or destruction of information. Information can
be physical or electronic one.
8.Explain virtual desktop infrastructure and storage cloud?
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a virtualization solution that uses virtual machines to
provide and manage virtual desktops. VDI hosts desktop environments on a centralized server
and deploys them to end-users on request. accessed over the network with an endpoint device
(laptop, tablet, and so on).
Cloud storage is a cloud computing model that stores data on the Internet through a cloud
computing provider who manages and operates data storage as a service. It’s delivered on
demand with just-in-time capacity and costs, and eliminates buying and managing your own
data storage infrastructure. This gives you agility, global scale and durability, with “anytime,
anywhere” data access.
9.Explain cloud management and chargeback models?
Cloud computing management is maintaining and controlling the cloud services and resources
be it public, private or hybrid. Some of its aspects include load balancing, performance, storage,
backups, capacity, deployment etc. To do so a cloud managing personnel needs full access to all
the functionality of resources in the cloud. Different software products and technologies are
combined to provide a cohesive cloud management strategy and process.
In cloud computing, chargeback models help users to bill the cost to internal consumers of
cloud services. It means that not all expenditure falls under one department. Instead, each
business unit becomes responsible for its consumption.
The foundation of an effective chargeback depends on four main factors. With these factors in
mind, you can have tactics to do effective chargebacks for the cloud.
These factors are:
Accuracy of the chargeback model. For a chargeback model to be effective, it has to quantify
the right price paid by a given business unit with utmost clarity.
Transparency of your chargeback model. A good understanding of the cloud chargeback model
helps implement effective chargebacks.
Control on cloud consumption. Business units with a deeper control of cloud resources will
embrace your chargeback model, making it more effective.
Cost of the chargeback model. Some chargeback models are more costly to implement than
others.
10.what is asset management? Explain in briefly
Cloud asset management (CAM) is a component of cloud management services focused
exclusively on the management of a business’s physical cloud environment, such as the
products or services they use.
Developing a Strategic Asset Management Plan
1. Complete an Asset Inventory
Total count of assets, Where the assets are, value of asset, when assets were acquired
2. Compute Life-Cycle Costs
3. Set Levels of Service
4. Exercise Long-term Financial Planning
The Value of Cloud Asset Management
Cloud asset management delivers visibility and control of all the assets and infrastructure that
make up your cloud environment. It's a crucial first step towards a better optimized, more
secure cloud.
It enables your business to effectively keep ‘track’ of your cloud estate while maintaining the
smooth-running of your cloud infrastructure, for real-time visibility of your cloud inventory.
Considering cloud software's rapid adoption and the multitude of cloud providers each with
their own business interest, it's easy to see how businesses can become saddled with upsold
infrastructure or a subpar cloud environment. CAM allows you to recapture independent
control over your cloud environment, enabling your business to refocus efforts towards
optimizing and securing your cloud infrastructure.
What Are the Benefits of Cloud Asset Management?
Cloud asset management strives to provide businesses with the ability to make better
decisions, supported by valuable data.
When you align the long-term integrity of your cloud infrastructure (visibility, accuracy, and
reliability) with your cloud management objectives – you build a stronger cloud framework,
with minimized risks. Here are three prime benefits of cloud asset management:
• Improving Acquisition and Inventory Accuracy
A key advantage of cloud asset management is the ability to gain greater visibility over your
cloud estate. CAM systems can gather in-depth inventory information that can be used to make
educated decisions about managing your assets in the most cost-effective manner possible.
Not only does this encourage your business to make the most of your existing infrastructure, it
also targets extra or unnecessary spend. By minimizing risk, and steering clear of cloud projects
that would prove fruitless, you can avoid wasting valuable finances. Similarly, greater visibility
of your inventory can help you target exactly where improvements can be made. Inventory
accuracy ensures your business can optimize these measures with confidence, based on reliable
data instead of guesswork.
• Automation
CAM uses automated processing to instantly manage the discovery of your assets and provides
real-time, up-to-date inventory information. Not only can automation reduce the time-
consuming process of trawling through large amounts of data, it also removes human-error
from cloud asset management – boosting the accuracy of your cloud management processes.
Additionally, automation enables your business to become self-serving, placing control of your
cloud estate back in your hands. By using a system that enables your employees to service your
cloud infrastructure, you remove the unnecessary interference of your cloud provider,
providing you with greater transparency and visibility over your cloud expenses. For example,
CAM helps your business automatically track your cloud costs, and identifies extraneous or
unnecessary cloud spend that can be changed as appropriate.
• Improving Compliance and Security Assurance
Furthermore, CAM firms up your business's cloud security package – enabling you to keep track
of your critical security measures with actionable assessments of potential risks and threats to
your cloud infrastructure. Automated systems can fix vulnerabilities upon detection, without
human intervention – ensuring your business is not left with critical security gaps.
Additionally, cloud asset management systems identify non-compliant cloud resources, and
shift them back into compliance immediately. Considering cloud compliance is one of the most
vital legal requirements of cloud technology, it's important to have rigorous security and
compliance checkpoints in place. CAM enables this, by automatically processing regulatory
reviews of your cloud estate.
11.Explain ILM?
The life-cycle of information starts well before the business starts. Before starting a business, it
conducts market research which involves collecting vast amount of information, based on
which the business makes some of its most critical decisions such as the product/service to
focus on, the market/customer segment to focus on, the right placement and pricing and the
existing competition. When the business starts its operations, it starts creating information
which is further used to finetune its processes. The collected and created information is then
classified and stored such that it can be retrieved when required. As the business matures, the
older information is archived and obsolete data is deleted. Data stored is secured to make sure
that only authorized people get access to it. Data is continuously analyzed and assessed to use
it for further decision-making processes and for forming strategies.
12.Define cloud Testing, explain the various types with diagram?
Cloud Testing is a type of software testing in which the software application is tested using
cloud computing services. The purpose of Cloud testing is to test the software for functional as
well as non-functional requirements using cloud computing which ensures faster availability
with scalability and flexibility to save time and cost for software testing
Types of cloud computing
⦁ Stress – Stress Test is used to determine ability of application to maintain a certain level of
effectiveness beyond breaking point. It is essential for any application to work even under
excessive stress and maintain stability. Stress testing assures this by creating peak loads using
simulators. But the cost of creating such scenarios is enormous. Instead of investing capital in
building on-premises testing environments, cloud testing offers an affordable and scalable
alternative.
⦁ Load – Load testing of an application involves creation of heavy user traffic, and measuring its
response. There is also a need to tune the performance of any application to meet certain
standards. However, a number of tools are available for that purpose.
⦁ Performance – Finding out thresholds, bottlenecks & limitations is a part of performance
testing. For this, testing performance under a particular workload is necessary. By using cloud
testing, it is easy to create such environment and vary the nature of traffic ondemand. This
effectively reduces cost and time by simulating thousands of geographically targeted users.
⦁ Functional – Functional testing of both internet and non-internet applications can be
performed using cloud testing. The process of verification against specifications or system
requirements is carried out in the cloud instead of on-site software testing.
⦁ Compatibility – Using cloud environment, instances of different Operating Systems can be
created on demand, making compatibility testing effortless.
⦁ Browser performance – To verify application’s support for various browser types and
performance in each type can be accomplished with ease. Various tools enable automated
website testing from the cloud.
⦁ Latency – Cloud testing is utilized to measure the latency between the action and the
corresponding response for any application after deploying it on cloud
13. Define cloud stack and explain the benefits and features of cloud stack
Cloud Stack is open-source cloud computing software for creating, managing, and deploying
infrastructure cloud services. It uses existing hypervisor platforms for virtualization, such as
KVM, VMware vSphere, including ESXi and vCenter, and XenServer/XCP. BENIFITS OF CLOUD
STACK
⦁ Improved innovations improve business value enabling business workloads to accurately be
deployed when and where they are needed
⦁ Decrease optimal expenses using automation, maximize capital usage and reduce added
capital expenses
⦁ Reduce complexity and risk with automation, human error is minimized Features of cloud
stack
⦁ Rich Management User Interface Cloud Stack provides a feature-rich out-of-the-box user
interface implemented on top of the Cloud Stack API to manage the cloud infrastructure. It is a
fully AJAX based solution compatible with most of the latest internet browsers and can also be
easily integrated with your existing portal.
⦁ Powerful API Easily build, integrate, and use applications built on top of the Cloud Stack API.
The Cloud Stack API is well-documented and extensible. Cloud Stack also includes support for
the Amazon EC2 and S3 APIs.
⦁ Multi-role Support 3 distinct account roles for user interface and API access are supported
out-of-the-box:
⦁ Admin: can manage both the virtual and physical resources of the cloud
⦁ Domain-Admin: can manage only the virtual resources owned by the accounts within their
domain
⦁ User: can manage their own virtual resources
⦁ On Demand Virtual Data Center Hosting Provides users with virtually unlimited amount of
computing resources – on demand, as required and billed by actual usage.
⦁ Hypervisor Agnostic Cloud Stack provides you with the flexibility to allow you to integrate with
the major hypervisors in the market today including VMware, KVM, Citrix XenServer, and Citrix
Xen Cloud Platform.
⦁ Secure Cloud Deployments Ensures that all memory, CPU, network, and storage resources are
both available and isolated from one user account to another within the cloud.
14.Define BPM and explain the life cycle of BPM
Business process management is a discipline in operations management in which people use
various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate
business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business
processes is BPM .
The BPM life cycle consists of four phases
⦁The design phase consists of identifying existing procedures and capturing these business
processes into process models.
⦁The implementation phase deploys the results of the design phase. A BPMS package can be
used to house these processes.
⦁The enactment phase is the runtime phase where the business processes are deployed into
production and monitored by a BPMS
⦁The evaluation phase monitors the information gathered through the enactment phase and
uses it to review the business process in action. Findings of the evaluation phase are input for
the next iteration of the life cycle
