16May

Micro-Segmentation

May 16, 2022 admin

Cloud computing has become the hottest trend in today’s business world because it offers users the opportunity to store and process massive amounts of data in virtual environments. A major benefit of using cloud services is the ease with which data can be stored, the ease with which data can be manipulated, and the ability to create friendly user environments, and all at a budget-friendly cost.
Security issues, attacks, and vulnerabilities have escalated in tandem with cloud computing and cloud services. Micro-segmentation is introduced as a solution to this problem. Micro-segmentation allows users to create a secure zone in the cloud and data center, and further, this allows to isolate workloads smoothly. By this approach, users can implement security mechanisms for the applications in the cloud.

To ensure zero threat on the cloud, micro-segmentation allows users to create firewall policies. Further, this helps to limit traffic from all sides. Increased traffic in the network is the primary entry point for attackers, and if that is secure, applications can be secured. To reduce surface attack, there is a need to prevent the movement of threats that can possess’ serious vulnerabilities for database and application data. In multiple cloud and data center environments, micro-segmentation is also known as application segmentation or east-west segmentation.

The Process Utilized by Micro-Segmentation

Through micro-segmentation, users can allow specific applications and traffic while blocking other traffic in the network. To handle cloud workloads in a secure manner, this model is used as a zero threat and security model. Traditionally, data was stored on the cloud using a complex and expensive method. That has changed with the evolution of the cloud. Many users have turned to cloud computing to store and process large volumes of business data. For cloud services to be more secure, a Micro-segmentation implementation strategy is necessary. Therefore, it’s critical to learn how it works and what it can offer.

Though there are some challenges in using the Micro-segmentation foundation, one of them is the successful implementation of granular firewall policy. This firewall policy is specifically used to control host workload across different virtual machines and servers. Managing the policy life cycle, which supports changes to the applications and business, is one of the most critical challenges with Micro-segmentation. To deploy firewall policy, it is imperative to keep refining the policy and automation rules until the desired result is obtained.

Why Choose Micro-segmentation rather than Firewall Rules?

As opposed to a firewall, Micro-segmentation allows users to ensure security during actual use of the application and manage workload simultaneously. It helps to create a secure perimeter of operation for every workload and provides consistency across the network. Apart from this, a critical feature of using a micro-segmentation policy is that it helps increase visibility and control from zone-based firewalls.

There is an increase in attack surfaces thanks to the fact that most organizations now use virtual environments to manage workloads, meetings, seminars, and business-related activities. Workload automation helps minimize attacks and API-based attacks. Surface risk can be significantly reduced in different types of work environments by using the allow-list model. Using Micro-segmentation, it is possible to limit the lateral movement of traffic in compromised virtual machines.

System administrators use this approach to limit the network traffic because most of the attacks are executed through massive or unknown traffic in the network. Improvisation in breach containment and Micro-segmentation helps to achieve regulatory compliance with greater efficiency. SDNs also serve the same purpose to users, however, their concept and operation differ. SDN is used to virtualize the network function and divide the control data plane, and to implement the network intelligence of the software.

Features of SDN based Micro-segmentation

While micro-segmentation combined with traditional networking helps users control application and data, using the SDN approach gives more flexibility to system administrators. This system allows the administrator to manage security completely through software. Keeping this in mind, network and security virtualization vendors have started partnering with micro-segmentation to produce joint solutions for the users.

To handle increased sophisticated network attacks, network architect has started suggesting network segmentation where the network is divided into subnets. By creating subnets, sophisticated cybersecurity breaches can be controlled before they cause massive damage to the users.
Moreover, this helps to prevent attacks from happening from streamlined network operations. When we talk about traditional network segmentation, this works in monitoring network traffic from North-South mode, which means client-server architecture and interactions from the security parameters. Nowadays however, security breaches are mostly happening from the east-west direction, server to server, and that’s why there is a rising need for the use of SDN-based or traditional micro-segmentation.

More insight into Micro-segmentation

One can use a single server to host hundreds of workloads, along with its security requirements. In these cases, security is more important straight up at the application level, and it all comes down to micro-segmentation. In order to understand this more thoroughly, let’s suppose that the enterprise network is connected to the firewall, and network traffic flows from north to south.
When a single enterprise has a single or multiple locations, different services begin ahead, and there they are served from server to server, and traffic flows from east to west. To understand network threats closely and assess the level of risk properly, one needs to be familiar with the concept of network traffic direction. Only when we fully understand attackers, threats, and vulnerabilities can we achieve micro-segmentation.

Conclusion

The article discusses micro-segmentation in detail, including features, benefits, and the process for implementation. With the rise of virtualization and cloud networks, there is a need to re-define network traffic and policy rules for applications, and that’s why understanding Micro-segmentation in the cloud is so crucial. There are several differences between conventional and SDN-based micro segmentation strategies, as shown with an example above.
Through micro-segmentation, users can increase granular security and adopt firewall rules in a dynamic manner to make sure that their data centers and hybrid cloud platforms are secure. Granular security enables system administrators to strengthen and pinpoint security in real-time applications and services. Cloud computing on-demand can be completely secure if deployed on a micro-segmentation platform. An organization’s development and production systems are its primary building blocks, and they can be protected using a Microsegmentation strategy.

21Apr

AWS vs Google Cloud

April 21, 2022 admin

Title: Google Cloud versus Amazon Web Services

Description: This article will help the readers understand differences between Google cloud vs AWS, their pros and cons, advantages to help you make informed decisions.

Various large and small companies these days use cloud computing services to store their data and infrastructure via a third party cloud service. It helps with extra security, scalability, flexibility, and reduces the cost of maintenance. But since the beginning of the cloud ecosystem, it has become somewhat complex while providing a lot of services, technologies, products, etc., at the same time. But to get the best cloud computing services for your company, you might have to consider diverse options. For instance, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services are in great competition with each other. And if you don’t compare these two well, then you won’t know which one is suitable for your business. So, here in this guide, we are going to compare the features, prices, pros and cons of AWS and Google Cloud to help you choose the best option for your company.

What is Google Cloud?

Google Cloud, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), was released in 2011 to help various sized businesses grow at their own pace. It provides intelligent and secure services that are also flexible to use. The Google Cloud is known to be the fastest and most powerful cloud infrastructure on the Internet. Even Google itself uses its cloud service for Gmail, Youtube, Maps, etc., because it allows you to manage high traffic on your network.

The Google Cloud platform was written in Java, Python, and C++ languages; even Ruby was used while programming the platform. It offers multiple options for networking that include virtual private clouds, DNS, CDN, load balancing, and more. GCP also allows you to manage huge data and the Internet of Things (IoT), and offers a machine learning cloud speech API and plenty of other services to business owners. However, you must ensure that the platform is accessible from your location in order to use its services.

Availability Zones of Google Cloud

Almost all AWS products can be deployed within regions from all over the world.Every location has its own data center, and all of them stay approximately close to each other. Amazon separates these locations as availability zones, and Google separates the availability of their service into zones from all around the globe. Google’s cloud services are from different regions of the world. The services are mostly Google App Engine and Google Cloud Storage. So, the availability zones are the United States, Asia, and Europe. But you also have to know which features GCP provides before considering it your best option.

The new features of Google Cloud

Google has announced some great new features for GCP users, and among them is Big Query Omni, a multi-cloud analytics solution. It allows you to run the same database across different clouds and data centers in different environments. It also extends Google’s analytics platform to public clouds, and that does not require the user to close the Big Query Omni interface and move or copy databases.

There is a new Confidential VMs computing portfolio that helps you run workloads on the Google cloud platform, and it also makes sure that your information is protected before it is processed in running workloads. Confidential VMs are available in a beta version for Google Compute Engine that will help you remove the cloud adaptation limitation for your clients.

Another new Google Cloud feature is Assured Workloads for Government, which is currently in beta in the United States.With it, users can add controls to their workloads, create more security requirements, set personal access, set data locations, and more.

Customer to Community (C2C) is another Google Cloud feature that allows the customers of GCP and IT executives and other professionals to interact with each other. This service is available in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Africa. Not only through virtual events, though, but this service also helps you connect with Google Cloud professionals through in-person meetings as well. Customer to Community (C2C) has expanded its availability through forums, methodologies, white papers, etc.

Let’s take a look at the most significant features of Google Cloud at a glance:

Google Cloud continuously include different languages and operating systems
The user interface is simple and easy
Provides you with on-demand self-services
Has a wide network access
Resource pooling and elasticity on a speedy level

But amidst all these, you still need to find the pros and cons of using Google Cloud Services.

Pros and Cons of GCP

Pros: Google is no doubt one of the best companies out there that has implemented the best engineering practices. It offers application deployments, Kubernetes management, high-end computing offerings, machine learning, big data management, analytics, scaling, data load balancing, and a lot more. It provides the fastest data security of all time.

You can obtain higher productivity through quick access to innovation.

Google Cloud professionals can work from anywhere and anytime.

Future-Proof infrastructure

It offers a serverless environment and helps you connect your cloud services to a massive microservices architecture.

Stable and robust data analysis

Cost-effective

Big data

Machine learning

Instance and payment configurations are supported.

Cons: However, when you compare GCP with AWS (we are going to get to that part shortly), you will notice that Google does not offer as many services as Azure and AWS. It also does not host as many data centers worldwide as AWS. However, that’s not a thing you should be worried about right now since its data centers are expanding as well.

This is all you need to know about the Google Cloud Platform, and now we should explore Amazon Web Services (AWS).

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

AWS is a cloud service solution from Amazon that has expertise in computing, storage, and scaling of data, among many other services that help online businesses grow. Scaling, storage, computing, etc. are domains in AWS that Amazon uses as services. These services help developers build and distribute different types of applications and save them on the cloud platform. All these services work in a certain way to ensure that they can blend with each other and create a specific outcome. AWS has three types: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Let’s take a glance at the key features that AWS provides.

Important Features of AWS

There is a new feature in AWS called AWS Control Tower that provides you with an organization-level aggregator that detects external AWS Config rules seamlessly. The external AWS Config rules will be visible from the tower, and you can gain access to unmanaged accounts with a link provided by the AWS Config console. And in that case, the tower won’t need to interfere with the unmanaged account access controls.

There is a new management console released by the Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). With it, you can build, edit, view, and delete Amazon ECS services as well as tasks. Also, it allows you to view the ECS clusters in just a few simple steps. With ECS, you can learn about your controls in data management, explore your data resources, and switch to the existing console from a new console whenever required. The new console will continue to receive updates until it adopts all the functions of the existing control. And then both of the consoles will work just fine.

Another new AWS feature is the AWS IoT SiteWise Monitor, which is compatible with AWS CloudFormation. With it, you can develop and maintain AWS IoT SiteWise Monitor resources. These include widgets, dashboards, portals, properties, projects, etc.

Let’s look at all the AWS features in a nutshell:

The cost of ownership is lower than private or dedicated servers
AWS offers Centralized Billing and management
Also offers hybrid multi-cloud services
You can deploy your programs in different locations or regions in just a few clicks

These features are liked and disliked by some of the AWS customers. Let us dig for some of the pros and cons of AWS.

Pros and Cons of AWS

Pros: When AWS was released in 2006, it didn’t have any high-value competitors for about a couple of years. But it continued to invest in its services and data centers, and now it dominates the public cloud industry with GCP and Azure against them. After launching Simple Storage Service in 2006, AWS was the market leader in the cloud industry for at least a decade.The biggest reason why AWS is so popular is that it provides global operations, has a huge library of available services, has data centers from all over the world, and is able to maintain a large number of users and resources.

Easy deployment for applications

It is simple for DevOps teams to configure and manage AWS infrastructure.

It takes a little time to deploy your new applications like web or mobile apps.

AWS is the perfect solution for high-power projects.

boosts the productivity of the application development team.

It offers computing, scaling, setup, configurations, etc.

You can pay for only what you use and have no long-term commitments.

Limitless cloud capacity.

Cons: AWS can be really expensive for starters, and that’s why it has already lowered its prices over 80 times. AWS has a really complicated cost structure that most companies don’t find understandable. The costs are usually higher when companies are running a high volume of workload on the server.

Now that we know about both AWS and Google Cloud, let’s look at their key similarities and contrasts.

Key similarities and differences between AWS vs GCP

Firstly, you need to create an AWS account to avail of the AWS features and services. And after you create an account, you can utilize any service on your account within the limitations of Amazon. And the services have their own costs that will be billed to your account, and you can organize the billing structures properly by creating a billing account and then sub-accounts.Likewise, Google Cloud needs users to register for an account first. But unlike AWS, their service costs are categorized by projects, not accounts. You can create various projects under the same Google Cloud account. This allows organizations to create multiple projects for the company, and once you are done with the project, it can be deleted as well.

Both AWS and GCP have small limits on their accounts, and those limits are based on technical terms of a particular service that helps the companies prevent fraud. Unfortunately, fraud accounts can also use extra resources, and they can also put the real users at risk. If you find your account at risk, talk to the support team immediately, and they will suggest the necessary steps to get rid of the situation.

Differences in Management Interfaces

Both AWS and GCP have a command-line interface, or CLI, that allows the system to communicate with other programmes or resources. Amazon CLI is the Amazon command-line interface, and Google Cloud SDK is the Google Cloud SDK.All these command-line services are cross-platform, and the binaries are available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc. You can also use the Cloud SDK in your internet browser using Google Cloud Shell. There are web-based consoles in AWS and GCP that let you build, manage, and operate your resources. You can find GCP consoles here.

Differences in Prices

Price is the notable department when you can find differences between AWS and GCP. In AWS, there is a pay-as-you-go model that charges you per hour for using a particular service, no matter how long or short you are using the service for. In GCP, it is the to-the-minute pricing process.

Conclusion

We discovered some drawbacks to AWS and GCP. The disadvantage of GCP is that it is difficult to get started and that it is expensive outside of its free tier. The most significant disadvantages of AWS are that it is a complex process that takes more than 15 minutes to deploy applications on AWS. And if an error occurs during the deployment, you will not be able to request an error description. If your company is not technologically savvy, AWS may not be for you.

Even though Google Cloud has a few features in its free tier, it may be suitable for you if your business is small. Aside from that, choose AWS if you have more experience and knowledge with application and website deployment.

13Apr

What is Cloud Server? How Does it Work?

April 13, 2022 admin

Cloud servers are physical or virtual servers that run on a cloud-based computing environment. A cloud server is built and hosted as well as performed in the cloud environment on the internet. Since cloud servers run only via an internet connection, it is easy to approach them remotely from a different machine and location. Cloud servers are also known as virtual servers rather than physical servers because they consist of a group of software programmes that helps them run and work independently on the network. There are some key benefits of cloud servers that physical servers don’t provide. Check out this entire post if you want to learn more about the cloud and cloud servers.

What is Cloud?

The cloud is a combination of servers that are connected to the same internet connection and are part of an application or service. These services can include web hosting, software use, data hosting, data sharing, etc. Alternatively, the cloud also refers to cloud computing where different servers are connected with each other to transfer workload. It also means that you can distribute complex tasks throughout different machines in the cloud servers without having to use just one machine for the workload.

Cloud also provides you with cloud storage where you can store many distributed resources. If your cloud has data and files, you won’t have to create another version of them to distribute them to another computer because those data and files are accessible on other machines through the internet.

When a resource is on the cloud, it means that you can deliver it to another machine over the network, and the resource does not have to be in the physical place to access directly. Cloud servers are an example of a cloud-computing resource. But cloud storage, networking and software, cloud databases also fall under cloud computing. To understand how a cloud server works, you will have to check out the below section.

How does the Cloud Server Work?

A cloud server is created through virtualization on the network by installing a hypervisor or a management software program. Hypervisor connects the cloud servers together and virtualizes them by separating their resources and gathering them together that would create virtual servers. Then developers automate these resources and deliver them across multiple companies or in a single company over the cloud environment. And then, the staff at the company can access the databases in the cloud.

Automation and delivery of the cloud resources across multiple organizations of a single organization are known as the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model. The companies that apply LaaS don’t manage their network but they can monitor it from the third-party companies that deliver on-demand resources via the cloud network. Cloud servers examples include public or private cloud environments.

A public cloud can be used to access or store data temporarily and scale it as soon as the needs change. Cloud providers can also configure the cloud server as a dedicated server, and that would make it a bare-metal server. Cloud service providers dedicated physical servers to a particular user who needs a lot of storage or performance. We said that there are two main types of cloud servers—public and private cloud servers. But there is another one attached to the list.

How many types of Cloud Servers are there?

There are different types of cloud servers that enterprises can choose from but these are the main options:

Public Cloud Servers

Public cloud server providers host a virtual machine or computing instance on their own network infrastructure and then distribute that to other users through the internet. We have talked about this before and informed you that this distribution method is recognised as IaaS. The public cloud servers include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Google Compute Engine instances, and Microsoft Azure instances.

Private Cloud Servers

When a cloud server is a system instance within a private cloud on an on-premise basis, you can call it a private cloud server. Now, the organization will deliver the cloud server to its users through a LAN network. And the company can also deliver the server to outside users through the internet. Private servers exist only within the company’s infrastructure, while public cloud servers are available outside of the office premise as well.

Dedicated or Hybrid Cloud Servers

Dedicated cloud servers are also known as dedicated cloud instances that are used in organizations when they deploy the third layer of virtualization to the cloud server to improve its security and performance. These types of hybrid cloud servers can be public or private cloud servers.

Cloud servers are important for large or small enterprises, and they are available in a large range of computing options. They come with different processors and memory resources. They also have many other benefits.

What are the Benefits of Cloud Servers?

In order to choose the best cloud server, you need to determine your specific requirements. Regardless of what type of server you select, the following benefits are always available.

Spread Your Workloads Globally

With public cloud servers, you can share your workloads with a global audience. However, the performance of the server is dependent on several other factors such as geographic distance, network latency, etc. But public cloud servers allow you to upload your workloads in different geographic locations so that the resources are easy to access from anywhere.

Low Cost and Flexibility

There is a pay-per-use model for public cloud servers and they are more affordable than physical servers. Even the maintenance cost of the physical servers are more than the public servers. Hence, this can help you save some money for other organizational success. Moreover, cloud servers are flexible since you can obtain them from any device anytime. Most of the time, we use cloud servers for temporary workloads and developers use them for software deployments mostly.

Easy to Use

Cloud servers can be managed by a single administrator within a few minutes. You won’t have to bother about the installation of a server if it is a public cloud server. And you won’t even have to worry about the maintenance and other related things about using a public server, unlike a physical server.

Despite all these advantages, there are some disadvantages that cloud servers come with too.

What are the Disadvantages of Cloud Servers?

If your organization wants to use cloud servers, you might as well want to consider its disadvantages.

Government’s Regulations

Governance rules and various regulatory obligations sometimes won’t allow organizations to use cloud servers to store data in different locations.

Performance

The cloud servers are multi-tenant environments where you cannot control the performance of the servers directly especially when it comes to their locations. Therefore, the servers can negatively impact the storage and performance of virtual machines. However, a dedicated cloud service can help a company prevent this problem.

Conclusion

The difference between cloud servers and physical servers is their nature. Cloud servers are accessible through the internet, while physical or the traditional form of servers are only accessible through computing machines. However, that’s not the only advantage of public or private cloud servers. Cloud servers can also provide organizations with cost-effectiveness, reliability, flexibility, scalability, etc. Cloud servers might not be able to meet all the requirements of a particular organization. The lack of control over the server can make using cloud servers for your business more challenging than it needs to be. Even so, cloud servers are worth it for companies since they offer high security and convenience.

09Apr

What is Cloud Computing Architecture?

April 9, 2022 admin

The Cloud Computing Architecture concept was first introduced in 2006, yet it has gained a lot of traction since then. This technology is changing the way people access services and resources. Even though it is a relatively simple concept, many still have doubts about it.

Cloud Computing is an advancing technology which is constantly in demand. The internet is changing the way businesses work today, how people access data and resources, and how remote locations are not left without information. The Internet is the backbone of this technology.

In this article, you will learn about cloud, cloud computing, its architecture, different components of cloud computing architecture, and its benefits.

What Is Cloud Computing?

You must first understand what a cloud is. As a floating cloud doesn’t belong anywhere, a cloud is a free network with a remote location that doesn’t belong to anyone. Cloud computing is the Internet; networks can be defined as clouds.

Cloud computing refers to a combination of hardware, software, and other cloud computing components which coordinate with each other to provide services like infrastructure, storage, platforms, etc., via the internet.

These services or resources can be requested by anyone with internet access by paying according to usage. In addition, they are used for developing, managing and testing software applications. They can be downloaded and used without installing them on your PC.

Cloud Computing Architecture

To offer these services, a large system works in the background. The different components collaborate and thus provide such large-scale services. The way these components collaborate and work is called cloud computing architecture.

Cloud computing Architecture has two parts- a front end and a back end.

Front End

It refers to the architecture which the users access. It includes interfaces and applications which are required to access the services offered on cloud. The front-end components collectively call client infrastructure, such as computers, mobile, internet connection, browser, etc. Front end devices are accessed via a Graphical User Interface through which clients perform different functions.

Back End

It refers to the cloud which the service provider uses. Security and resources are located there. This includes storage, applications, virtual machines, traffic control mechanisms, etc. The following are explained:

Service- It refers to the different services provided by the cloud, such as SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, CaaS, etc.

Storage- The storage of a cloud is huge. It offers flexible and on-demand storage to the clients. The stored data is also managed here.

Application- It is the application that caters to the client’s needs. It is a service or a platform that the client accesses.

Management- It refers to the back-end management of all the resources. It includes allotting tasks, managing service, storage, data, infrastructure, etc.

Infrastructure- The infrastructure in the back-end refers to all the hardware and software which makes the cloud computing services possible.

Security- It refers to all the security measures put in place to secure cloud resources and data. Providing the secure infrastructure to end users, files, systems, etc., is accomplished here.

Internet- It is the backbone of the cloud computing architecture as it is the bridge between a cloud and a user to access the desired services.

Cloud Deployment Models

Deployment models refer to the way in which you access the cloud. There are four types of cloud models which are explained below-

Public Cloud

A public cloud is accessible by the general public. These are designed by IT specialists and are not owned by anyone, i.e., anyone from the public can access them and use them for free (in most cases).

Private Cloud

To facilitate an organization or a close-knit community where confidentiality is the key, a private cloud is built by the IT team of the organization to transmit data more effectively and quickly. It saves time because data is stored in the Cloud, and anyone authorized to access it can access it there. Access is restricted to authorized users only.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud is self-explanatory from its name itself. It refers to a mixture of private and public clouds. For example, an organization can get a private cloud created by its IT team for confidential data, and at the same time, it can use a public cloud for less sensitive information. In short, it has features of both private and public clouds.

Community Cloud

The purpose of a community cloud is to serve a particular class of users with similar interests. For example, a cloud for all government agencies or members of a particular industry is a community cloud. It is accessible only to those who belong to the community. This is a hybrid cloud.

How can one avail Cloud Computing Services?

The demand for cloud computing services is increasing rapidly. There are several major players in the market that offer these services. The list includes:

Google Cloud
Alibaba Cloud
IBM Cloud
Microsoft Azure
SAP
Oracle
VMWare
Amazon Web Services
SalesForce

These are some big names that offer cloud-based services.

Benefits of Cloud Computing Architecture

If you are wondering whether cloud computing is for your organization or not, you must look at the benefits that accrue from cloud computing.

Accessibility

There are numerous kinds of tools and software available on the cloud. An organization cannot afford to buy all the applications and software. And if it’s a small organization, it is a dream. But you can access any software or application from the cloud without even installing it. Thus, it provides greater accessibility.

Reduce IT Operating Cost

Implementing cloud architecture within the organization can be very costly as it requires a whole bunch of IT staff to manage and maintain it. Using a cloud-based service reduces IT cost to a great extent.

Scalability

It is a complete wastage of resources if you buy them, but they are not fully utilized. With cloud architecture, you can use only the required amount of resources and increase them. Plus, the cost is based on usage. Pay only for what you need.

Automatic Updates

You need not worry about system updates and managing the resources. It is undertaken by the service provider, so you can focus on business.

Increased Collaboration

Team members from distant locations can work together as it allows them to access, download, upload, and share files from anywhere.re.

Increase Savings

When you are able to pay for hardware and software based on usage, you don’t need to freeze your capital. It boosts small and growing businesses by allowing them to significantly lower their costs.

Better Disaster Recovery

If your data and backups are stored on a hard disk, and it gets lost or is stolen, you are doomed. You never know in whose hands your information will land. But cloud-based storage is not the same, as you can access them anytime, even if their hardware or software is encountering a problem.

Speed

Physical servers become slow when they become overloaded with data; otherwise, they must be upgraded. Cloud-based solutions, however, alleviate the latency issue. Cloud solutions are faster under any circumstance.

Business And Cloud Computing

If you are a business owner, the question may arise in your mind as to whether a cloud is good for business or not. To answer this question, you must look at your needs and whether your IT team is contributing towards its growth or not? What is the current IT cost along with the implementation of the IT system? Is it enough? Are you spending a large amount of resources on IT services?

It comes with many benefits as well. Check out the deployment models and choose the right one for your company. To make the right decisions, you must be well-equipped with the related knowledge. In this guide, you will learn everything there is to know about cloud architecture and will be able to make an informed decision.

05Apr

What is Cloud Migration?

April 5, 2022 admin

Cloud Migration Overview

The process by which a company migrates its digital assets and operations, including data and applications, from an in-house physical infrastructure to the cloud is called cloud migration. Businesses that rely heavily on digital architectures and tons of data would benefit from this process, giving them virtually unlimited scalability in terms of storage, networking, and performance.

Although it may sound similar to moving a small office to a larger commercial premise, here, nothing is being migrated physically, but the process involves a digital relocation process to the cloud datacenter. It is quite a daunting and complex process that requires quite a few preparation steps before the actual migration itself begins. However, once this is complete, a company’s digital operations can be managed with greater efficiency and security, which typically translates into cost savings and greater stability.

To understand the whole cloud migration process, including the steps involved and how a business can get the maximum benefit out of it, you need to follow this article to the end without skipping any part. We have also covered and explained in the article multiple strategies so that you can decide on the ideal one as per your specific requirements.

Types of Cloud Migration Strategies

If you’re wondering whether this will be a wise move for your business, you’re at the right place. In this article, we will discuss different cloud migration strategies that may be useful to you in deciding which option is best for you based on your own individual needs. Gartner, Inc., a renowned IT research firm, explained the following five R’s back in 2010 that summarize various cloud migration strategies.

1. Rehosting

This strategy is perhaps the easiest and would be ideal for organizations that are unfamiliar with cloud computing, providing them with a straightforward way to benefit from its simple and rapid deployment and ability to scale key functions as the user base grows without having to spend too much time or money on the expansion.

In a nutshell, here companies just lift their existing application from their physical framework and shift to a cloud environment without any modification to the application architecture or code. All you need to do is choose your favourite Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) vendor like Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services to deploy your applications on their platform.

2. Refactoring

An organization that uses the refactoring strategy would take advantage of the already built frameworks and codes of a Platform-as-a-Service or PaaS vendor and not an IaaS vendor.

3. Revising

This strategy involves partially optimizing (by expanding or rewriting) the application code without rebuilding its entire structure and then following either strategy (rehost or refactor) mentioned above.

4. Rebuilding

The migration strategy is not for most companies, but rather for those who feel confident about leveraging the native advantages of the cloud. Features such as serverless computing, auto-scaling, etc., are available only when you rebuild your apps on a Platform-as-a-Service or PaaS infrastructure and are otherwise not available on any IaaS platform.

Although it offers numerous state-of-the-art cloud advantages while allowing you to create a digital architecture that will be future-ready, rebuilding comes with its own cons. Apart from being the most expensive and complex route, you will have to stick to the vendor you are migrating to unless you want to repeat the process.

5. Replacing

Companies can also choose to get rid of their existing applications entirely and shift to their preferred pre-built Software-as-a-Service or SaaS architecture from any reliable third-party provider.

What Benefits Businesses can Expect from Cloud Migration?

While companies may have different reasons to migrate to the cloud, they are typically more inclined to do so when faced with growing challenges to meet the needs of their increasing user base and to scale their digital infrastructure in a way that is reliable, secure, and cost-effective at the same time. Once you migrate your applications and IT operations to the cloud, you can generally assume most of the following advantages, if not all.

1. It’s Infinitely Scalable:

With the growing business volume, other related things like analytics, database, and overall workload also increase, which your existing on-site infrastructure might not be sufficient enough to handle, and therefore affect performance negatively. On the other hand, the cloud allows a company to expand its resources as and when needed, offering additional room for the applications to match the requirements seamlessly.

2. Offers Flexibility:

Almost every business has some peak and low points in terms of number of customers and their demands, fluctuating between them frequently. In many cases, the physical platform cannot handle these variations in traffic, and as a result, provides an experience that is not satisfactory. When you migrate your applications to the cloud, you will be able to scale your digital capacity according to the need of the hour, giving unmatched flexibility that no physical framework can offer.

3. Helps Growing Business and Production Ability:

When the cloud vendor manages your complex IT infrastructure, you no longer need to address issues that otherwise arise regularly and eat up a major portion of your time and investment. Instead, now you can focus on the more important things like business growth and productivity that affect the bottom line directly.

4. Cloud is more secure by design:

When it comes to cloud computing, it’s often more secure than even the most advanced local data centre on the planet. Prominent security features like regular updates, security analytics, and cross-enterprise process visibility that come default with a cloud platform can outsmart any on-site framework.

5. More adaptable to constant Technological Advancements:

Business solutions must adapt to the rapid development of technology. Only the cloud can meet such demand quickly by adapting itself to the latest innovations and developments.

6. Cloud migration saves money:

Most cloud vendors bill based on usage, which means there is no need to make a significant investment in procuring physical resources based on predictions of future requirements. In short, cloud migration will save your company from spending unnecessarily, resulting in more efficient use of funds and an improved bottom line.

What Challenges should Companies be ready to face during Cloud Migration?

Migration of your entire IT infrastructure and applications to the cloud may seem simple and straightforward, but that’s far from the truth. While elaborate preparation is fundamental here, even the best-laid plans for migration rarely eliminate certain challenges as explained below.

1. Large Data Migration Risks:

Any digital application relies on databases, and cloud migration often involves terabytes of sensitive data about applications, their codes and architectures, and their users. Transferring such a massive amount of data over the internet can take days or even weeks, delaying the migration process. This is why some cloud vendors allow companies to ship data stored on physical hardware directly to the provider, which again comes with on-transit security risks. No matter which method you choose, cloud migration can be a time-consuming process.

2. Ensuring Data Integrity:

Once the data has been successfully migrated, you should ensure that it hasn’t been compromised during the transfer and is as secure as it was in your local data center. Data integrity is one of the primary concerns that make companies reluctant to the idea of moving their digital operations to the cloud.

3. Avoiding Operation Downtime:

During the process of transferring your applications to the cloud, you might need to take the services offline to ensure a smooth transition. However, such downtime can have disastrous effects on your business, especially when it’s almost impossible to predict the time such migration can take as various factors are involved in the process. It will help if you don’t try to move the whole operation at once and divide the process into several small parts.

4. Trained Human Resources:

Trusting the cloud platform and adapting to its processes are vital factors within an IT workforce. Your professionals who used to manage on-premise applications until now may not trust the unique framework at first and find it difficult to naturalize to this whole new environment. An ideal cloud migration planning should include giving the team proper training and education to make them battle-ready for the upcoming cloud-based operations in the company.

What Kind of Tools do you need to carry out a Successful Cloud Migration?

Almost every cloud vendor and third-party developers offer several services and tools to make the otherwise complex migration task easier. These open-source automated cloud-based tools can help you to check necessary migration prerequisites, manage and constantly monitor the process and confirm after-migration data and application integrity. Let’s have a closer look at some of the essential tools here.

1. Performance management tools:

Although cloud providers allow businesses to access detailed metrics related to a number of critical factors such as application performance, utilization of cloud service, and customer experience, these metrics sometimes fail to report correlations in real-time, and therefore it’s better to opt for a third-party monitoring solution.

2. Business monitoring tools:

To analyze the sheer benefits of cloud migration, this tool is crucial and can offer valuable insights into your business transactions which will help you to compare pre and post-migration performance and deploy necessary optimizations based on the same.

Make sure you select tools that seamlessly work with your platform and operating system. What kind of monitoring your business requires might have a decisive impact on your choice of cloud vendor.

A Step by Step Cloud Migration Process

While companies may have diverse purposes and hence would opt for different approaches for cloud migration, the basics will remain the same. Your cloud vendor could offer you a helping hand in setting up the most efficient migration process according to your needs as well.

1. Determine your goals:

Do you know what performance gain you are looking forward to from cloud migration? To compare the post-migration results with the goals set prior to migration, an organization should set a specific performance target, business growth target, and other related goals. This will help them to find whether the migration is delivering the desired outcome.

2. Plan a Custom Security Strategy:

When your data and applications are in the cloud, your IT operations are no longer protected behind brick-and-mortar security protocol and an in-house firewall. You may want to consult about installing a robust cloud-native firewall with your cloud provider in advance.

3. Make a copy of your database in the cloud:

Once you select a cloud vendor and are ready to initiate the migration process, start by replicating your local database. Continue the process throughout the entire time to ensure the exact latest copy of your on-site data in your new cloud framework.

4. Transfer your business applications:

You may need to refactor or rewrite application codes in accordance with the cloud platform. This can either be done in parts over a certain period or in a one-off process.

5. Move your IT operation:

It’s the final stage. Once the data integrity is ensured, and the applications are verified to work within the newly set cloud infrastructure, you can now make the cloud go live and start your operations from there.

Conclusion:

Regardless of which strategy you choose out of the five Rs, cloud migration comes with a set of risks that can’t be underestimated. A business that is new to cloud computing is like stepping onto a battlefield without knowing where the mines are. Although the largest cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or IBM can ensure close to 99% uptime with a negligible failure rate, it’s critical to set up a well-thought-out migration plan in advance to reduce the risks significantly.

However, while choosing a cloud vendor, make sure they provide a host of reliable tools and services and assist you to carry out the process right from the initial strategy discussion to the final execution, allowing you to deploy a robust future-ready IT infrastructure.

Here in this brief piece, we made sure to describe the whole cloud migration process in a concise manner and also pointed out the pros and cons that are equally important to consider before you proceed.

30Mar

Difference Between Private and Public Cloud

March 30, 2022 admin

Private Cloud versus Public Cloud

Public clouds enable virtual machines, apps, and storage to be run on shared physical servers. Google, AWS, and Azure are examples of public clouds. Many public clouds offer pay-as-you-go pricing. As a result, you will be charged per use. A payment model like this is a good choice for businesses, especially if you don’t want to waste resources.

Multi-tenant public clouds let hundreds of users share the same servers, power, cooling, and other resources. Public clouds can scale immediately to handle an increase in traffic, but you will still be charged the same price if you fail to scale down your resources. Provisioning is unlimited, regardless of whether it has been used. In the event of a large data spike, you would have to pay for input-output, data input, data output, and power.

Private cloud computing is a form of cloud computing that serves only the needs of a particular business or client. The public cloud has similar benefits such as scalability, but the private cloud offers greater security and control via a single architecture. Private clouds are often used by businesses seeking greater security.

A private cloud, for example, would suit industries like finance and government that have complex computing requirements. It is used to manage environments and comply with regulatory and security requirements.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing lets you access and store apps, programs, and data via the Internet rather than on your hard disk. Cloud computing allows you to only pay for the services you use. And this helps lower operating costs, scale your business more efficiently, and reduce your overhead. No cloud computing service is the same. In order to find the right solution for you, you have a variety of options and types of services to choose from.

It is important to first decide what type of cloud deployment or architecture you want to use. There are three ways to deploy cloud services: public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. Each of these deployments has distinctive advantages.

What is a Public Cloud?

A public cloud is an IT model that allows on-demand computing services managed by third-party providers and shared with other organizations via the public Internet. Public cloud service providers may offer cloud-based services such as platform as a service (IaaS), SaaS, and platform as a service (PaaS). You can pay either a monthly or peruse fee. And this eliminates the need to host these services in their data centers.

Cloud providers use data centers divided into virtual machines that tenants can share. In addition to software development tools and storage, virtual machines can be rented or paid for as an additional cloud-based service. Public cloud services are used by many companies to store data that isn’t frequently accessed or for less-sensitive applications that are subject to unpredictable spikes in usage.

The Pros and Cons of Public Cloud

Pros:

Cost savings: Companies can reduce their IT operations costs by moving to a public cloud. These costs are being outsourced to third-party vendors who can better manage them. Public clouds are typically less expensive than private ones, as the cloud provider can maximize their hardware usage and make more money by selling their services to multiple clients at once.
There is less server management: An organization that uses a public cloud doesn’t need to manage servers as much as legacy data centers on-premises or internal private clouds.
Security: Small and medium-sized businesses might not have the funds to implement robust security measures. They can use a public cloud service to outsource certain aspects of cyber security to a more extensive provider with more resources.

Cons:

Multi-Tenancy can pose security and compliance issues for businesses that must adhere to strict regulatory compliance standards. Multi-Tenant cloud service has a slight risk of data leakage. Which may not be something that companies in highly specialized areas can afford to risk. The risk of data leakage is shallow as most cloud providers adhere to rigorous security standards. It can be challenging to apply the same security policies for internal resources as public clouds, mainly when a cloud migration occurs.
Vendor lock-in: This is a problem with cloud technology. While the cloud can help organizations save money and make their operations more flexible, they may also become dependent on the services of cloud vendors – virtual machines, storage, apps, and other technologies they offer – to keep their business running.

What is a Private Cloud?

Private cloud computing provides unique benefits to one business entity. Private clouds are similar to other cloud computing environments. It provides virtualized computing resources as well as physical components stored on-premises or in the vendor’s data center.

Private cloud deployment offers several advantages. One is the increased control that the company has over the environment. A single company can only access the private cloud to customize the background and manage it according to its specific computing requirements.

Private cloud strategies may include hosting hardware locally at a company’s facility or hosting a cloud service provider. In spite of the fact that virtual private clouds are usually paid for on an ongoing basis, one can still use provisioned storage configurations and hardware to ensure the security of a private network.

Private Cloud – The Pros & Cons

Private cloud solutions can add value to your enterprise by abstracting computing processes more efficiently than traditional virtualization. Some of the main benefits include:

Pros:

Compliance and Security: Compliance is essential for businesses that operate in highly regulated industries. Because sensitive data is stored on hardware inaccessible to others, private cloud infrastructure allows organizations to adhere to stringent regulations. One can achieve this advantage through both hosted services and on-site hardware installations.
Organizations can customize the solution. A cloud architect creates a fully private cloud, so stakeholders can choose the environment best suited to their applications. Hosted private clouds offer the same benefits without requiring any on-site setup. Cloud services are set up and managed by vendors for exclusive use by companies.
Hybrid Integration: If an application requires additional computing resources, hybridization expands the resources of a private cloud into a publicly accessible cloud. This allows for uptime and eliminates the need to purchase different servers. Integrating private and public clouds in a hybrid manner can be a cost-effective solution for companies that need the security of a private cloud, but want the same functionalities of a public cloud.

Cons:

If an organization doesn’t have consistent computing requirements, a private cloud could pose problems. The inability of private clouds to scale efficiently when resource demand changes can cause problems for organizations and raise costs over time. IT stakeholders should consider these key points:

Costs upfront: Private clouds hosted on-site will require significant capital investment before they can be of any value to an organization. Investing in private clouds can be quite expensive. To reduce these costs significantly, cloud architects will need to create, manage, and maintain private clouds.
Capacity utilization: The private cloud computing model places the responsibility on the organization to maximize capacity utilization. A cloud deployment that is not used to its full potential can lead to significant business losses.
Scalability: It may be more expensive and time-consuming to scale up private cloud resources if the business requires additional computing power. This process is typically slower than scaling a virtual computer or asking for other resources from a private cloud provider.

The Differences at a Glance

Private Cloud	Public Cloud
The Private Cloud is a cloud-based service hosted on private servers within an organization.	A public cloud allows anyone to purchase computing resources. Multiple users usually share a public cloud.
Protect your most sensitive data.	Application testing and disaster recovery for public-facing companies.
You can manage it at home. Extreme performance – Fine-grained control of both storage and compute.	It all depends on the Service Level Agreement, but it is usually simple via self-managed software that the customer will use.
High performance, security, customization, and control options.	Solutions are affordable and allow for growth
Single Tenant: Your business’s dedicated network and hardware, managed by technical staff.	Multi-Tenant: A shared network that is hosted offsite and managed by your service provider.
Your technical managers.	The technical team at Cloud Service Provider.
Implementing hardware, software, or staff resources can be costly upfront. It must include maintaining and growing ongoing expenses.	An affordable option that charges a monthly fee. Pay as you go, scale up or down according to your needs, and charge per minute.
Isolated Network environment. Increased security to comply with data protection legislation.	Basic security compliance. Some might offer bolt-on security options.
A dedicated server provides high performance.	Performance levels can be reduced by competing users.

Let’s conclude

It doesn’t matter which cloud solution you choose. You need to thoroughly research all options and make sure you select the right cloud solution for your workload. Many factors influence the choice between private and public cloud solutions. The reality is that there is no either-or solution. Cloud solutions offer distinct value propositions, which explains why organizations tend to utilize all three types.

It is good to be familiar with the differences, and keep in mind that a hybrid solution may offer advantages of both.

30Mar

What is Cloud Migration Strategy?

March 30, 2022 admin

Nowadays, every business relies on the cloud to host and manage its services. It can be challenging to move everything from your legacy infrastructure to the cloud at the same time, but various tools and platforms are now available to make this possible. However, you must prepare a strategy beforehand that will help you to execute seamless migration. The purpose of this article is to discuss cloud migration, what it is, why it is important, the benefits, challenges faced, and migration strategies for successfully migrating to the cloud.

What is Cloud Migration?

Generally, cloud migration uses public cloud solutions for replacing the existing on-premises IT resources with modern technology. However, cloud migration starts with a compatible replacement of the existing solutions but some of the companies look for a more sublime approach for the cloud migration like considering the on-premises fixed cost, changed security management, and others.

Some companies do not want to move all their workload to the cloud and some look for complete migration depending on their requirement. But for some companies the engagement process before the cloud migration seems to be challenging and comes with a few set of questions that everyone should consider once before they move to the Cloud.

What type of cloud model will you choose (public, private)?
What type of workload will be prioritized (either low-risk dev or new applications)?
What strategy do you choose for migrating your workload to the cloud for leveraging most of the cloud-native architecture?
What are the challenges that may have to face while migration?
What is the entire process behind the migration and how are you going to implement it?

Consider these factors before you move to a cloud platform because you might find that your infrastructure doesn’t match the cloud infrastructure.

What are the Main Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud?

Below are the benefits that any organization can leverage with cloud migration. These are the major points that are enough to compel any business to move all their data along with applications to the cloud.

1. Scalability

Every business tends to grow in the future and to manage those growing workloads we can easily rely on cloud computing. Using the traditional infrastructure, businesses have to spend much on the data centers and hardware for storing the growing data that would incur costs to manage and buy them. But you do not have to worry about this once you move to the cloud. It will give you room to grow your business as per the changing requirements.

2. Costs

Most of the cloud providers take the complete responsibility of upgrading and maintaining your system thus leading to low cost working on the cloud. In a traditional environment, you have to engage a specific IT team that will handle your data, security, and network related configurations. Thus you can also save on the IT team and infrastructure along with the space they require. This will help the cloud computing platform to engage the resources to the right place like developing new technology.

3. Performance

It is obvious that if you migrate to the cloud, you will experience improved performance and a better user experience. It allows your applications and hosted websites to scale accordingly providing high throughput. It allows the applications to be run in any geographical region making them highly available to a wider audience.

4. Agility and Flexibility

If your applications are running on the cloud platform, then deploying, processing, testing, and developing your applications on the cloud platform will be very efficient since the cloud service provides you with great agility and responds faster when changes are made to the system. It is easy to use various tools with just a single click. Additionally, it provides powerful tools for both small and large businesses.

It makes the system flexible, as it allows companies to set up offices in various locations without setting up individual infrastructure and they can access cloud services from anywhere increasing the flexibility.

5. Security and compliance

There are various large companies that are also relying on cloud technology for keeping their data. It is important that the security and the integrity of the data is being maintained. As the cloud is easily accessible to all, thus having the security measures in place can keep your data safe with cloud infrastructure. You can avail any type of cloud model depending on the type of companies you own and what type of data you want to be secured. The cloud places various authentication and authorization processes to protect the data. In addition, they keep track of what types of data can be accessed via the internet and follow some compliance guidelines.

6. Support and Maintenance

In the case of the traditional infrastructure, you have to maintain complete hardware and software but with the cloud platform, you do not have to worry about having a specific IT team handling such infrastructure. Your cloud provider will have to maintain and manage the hardware and software on your behalf.

What are Common Cloud Migration Challenges?

Apart from the benefits that you can leverage by migrating your business to the cloud platform, you may come across some challenges while doing so. Here, we have mentioned some of the challenges that you may face.

1. Complexity

Though cloud is easier to manage but can get complex sometimes due to the involvement of other cloud facilities like hybrid cloud and various applications running on it. As a result, you must be capable of handling such infrastructure.

2. Dependencies

Before migrating your applications to the cloud, make sure that there are no such dependencies that will halt the migration process or crash your server once you start running your application on the cloud. Make sure that you use the right cloud provider discovery tool for getting all the applications along with dependencies insight.

3. Legacy Applications

Some applications are not meant to be run on the cloud as they are tightly bound to the underlying infrastructure. Thus making it important that you think before migrating your legacy applications to the Cloud. If you want to reboot the application later to be compatible with the cloud then it is fine to start migrating.

4. Lack of Strategy

Some companies start migrating to the cloud without having any strategy in place and do not give enough time to make the right decisions. For implementing the cloud infrastructure successfully, you need to do rigorous end-to-end planning as there will be different sets of requirements for each application and dataset. Also, migrating to the cloud may require a different approach. So make sure that you are clear with all the prerequisites.

5. Cost Management

While migrating, many companies do not focus on KPIs for understanding what will be your expenditure after migration. This will provide you insight if the migration is successful from the monetary point of view. As we know, clouds are dynamic and have a tendency to expand. Also the cost will increase if you are exhausting more resources for your business.

6. Vendor Lock-In

Once you move to the cloud, you will come across the term vendor lock-in and its situation. You will get a ton of services by cloud providers but some of them are not able to extend to other cloud platforms. It might be a difficult and lengthy process of migrating workload from one cloud to another. But in some cases, once you opt for one cloud provider, you won’t be able to migrate to another provider even if the current provider is not meeting your requirements.

However, the migration process usually comes with security risks. Transferring a large set of data, which may be crucial , and managing proper access controls for accessing the applications across different environments, creates significant exposure.

Cloud Migration Strategies

Here, we have mentioned five different techniques of cloud migration. If you are recently looking to migrate your business to the cloud, then you must be aware of the following strategies and understand which strategy you can use to migrate your workload.

Rehost. Or can be specified as the Rehosting, or ‘lift and shift,’ comes with the involvement of the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). In such a case, you have to seamlessly redeploy your existing infrastructure consisting of your data and applications on the preferred cloud server. This is an easier way for businesses that are new to the cloud computing concept. Also, you can use this strategy where you are not going to change the code and want your applications to be migrated to the cloud without any impact.
Refactor. Or can be specified as Refactoring, or ‘lift, tinker, and shift,’. You can leverage this strategy if you want to tweak and optimize your applications once they migrate to the cloud. You can easily employ a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model for efficient working. As a result, the core architecture of the applications will remain intact, but you will need to make some adjustments to leverage cloud-based tools.
Revise. You can create the revised builds based upon the previous strategies, but it will require more significant changes that will include the change to the architecture and code of the systems that are being moved to the Cloud. In such a way the applications will leverage the complete benefits of the available services, along with the major code changes. For implementing such a strategy, you need foreplanning and advanced knowledge.
Rebuild. Taking the Revise approach would mean discarding the existing code base and replacing it with a new one. The process is long and is only preferred when an organization’s requirements cannot be met by existing platforms.
Replace. If you do not want to rebuild then you can go for an alternate approach called replace. The only difference here is that the company does not have to redevelop its own native application and system from scratch. In this, you need to migrate to a third-party, prebuilt application provided by the vendor. You only have to migrate the data else everything about the system is new.

Conclusion

Migrating to cloud platforms is nothing new and most companies are leveraging its benefits. If you are left behind then nothing to worry about, you can start now and start planning. Make your strategy and make sure to implement it well for a successful migration to Cloud. Migration offers many benefits, such as using various cloud tools that make working easier. With the help of this article, you will understand what migration is and why it’s important. As your business grows, you’ll need more room to scale your resources. You should think about cloud migration even if you’re a small business.

29Mar

What is a Public Cloud?

March 29, 2022 admin

The history of public clouds is not new but can be traced back a few decades. Clouds have been in the market since as early as the 1960s. However, public clouds gathered movement in the 1990s.

In the year 1999, one of the popular companies called Salesforce entered the market as a provider for SaaS. Users can get resources such as applications, storage, etc., remotely using the standard cloud computing model.

Public cloud can be free or made available through subscription services. They are also available based on pay-per-usage terms. Public clouds are parallel to orthodox onshore IT architectures. In a standard public cloud delivery model, IT resources are made available to users by a third-party host.

The public cloud enables organizations to reduce the onshore iT resources. Public clouds are incredibly scalable and can meet a lot of user demands. Since they provide a plethora of IT resources, they are efficient. They are also more affordable for the tenant. This is because the users can avail the pay-per-usage model and only incur costs for the services they use.

Public Cloud: Functioning and Architecture

A public cloud has a lot of features integrated with it. However, if you would dig deep, generally, a public cloud is about the pooling of resources. It provides scale and is incredibly flexible. Its pay-per-usage model also provides flexibility to users. The public cloud provider gives the infrastructure needed to the provider who’s the host. It also has various tools available for the users, such as monitoring or security. Some of the popular providers are Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. There are also a lot of small providers available in the market.

The public cloud, at its core, is a virtual environment. It relies on network connectivity to transmit data successfully. Providers have a tenant system that enables multiple tenants to use the same infrastructure and use the same resources. The tenants are the users who avail multiple resources. Even though they use the same resources, the data of each user is separate from the other.

Common Service Models

There are generally three popular service models for public clouds:

IaaS: The full form stands as Infrastructure as a Service. In this model, the third party hosts the components of infrastructure as well as the virtualized layer. The infrastructural features include storage, servers, etc. Examples include AWS, Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean, etc.

PaaS: The complete form stands as Platform as a Service. In this model, the provider gives the software and hardware. The tools provided are for the development of applications like operating systems.

Examples include Google App Engine, Heroku, Windows Azure, etc.

SaaS: Software as a Service, this model hosts the applications and makes them available for users using the Internet. Examples include Salesforce, Netsuite, Dropbox, etc.

These three are the most popular models. However, a fourth model called FaaS is also gaining popularity these days. This model regulates how much control the user has over the cloud. It functions as a service model and abstracts the infrastructure to a further extent. The model is run by serverless computing and hence is beneficial to customers who use microservices.

Advantages of Public Cloud and Challenges

It is mainly scalable. The resources can scale to meet the evolving needs of the end-users. Also, there is high availability as the user’s data are kept in separation from each other.
Public clouds give the user flexibility. You can store a huge amount of data there. Not only this, many firms are using the public cloud as a recovery to have data backed up in the unforeseen course of events. However, users should be encouraged to keep a tab on stored data and avoid storing it and incur costs for old and unwanted data.
It provides a gateway to evolving technology. All the companies that actively promote and use the public cloud also get first-hand experience on the latest IT technology. It enables them to benefit from AI and updated software. Understandably, not all users can otherwise access such the newest technology if not for public clouds.

Drawbacks for the public cloud include the costs. Even though the prices for public clouds are a lot cheaper than onshore IT options, it is tough to take tabs on spending for public clouds. Hence, companies are prone to miscalculate the overall spending on the public cloud. Secondly, we do not have a lot of cloud experts. The average IT workers are not skilled to adapt to the evolving cloud industries. It makes the overall model based on less-skilled workers.

Thirdly, many customers have complained of latency issues. Latency issues can arise because the data needs to be segregated by the user.

Difference Between Public and Private Cloud

The primary difference between both the clouds is that the private cloud is dedicated to one organization or company. The stored data is accessible to that company alone. The private cloud also offers services like storage and networking but can only be availed by that company and hence is not scalable. Whereas a public cloud service provider offers its resources like virtual machines, storage, applications, etc. to the general public over the Internet.

In addition to this difference, there are a few fundamental differences when you talk about how they operate. The private clouds are based on a single-user architecture, whereas the public clouds are based on multiple user systems. Private clouds also require a great deal of investment as compared to public clouds. Public clouds can bloom in a pay-per-use model.

The security and flexibility also have stark differences between the two models. Since the private cloud is more focal, they are believed to be less volatile and more stable. If the organization needs more security around their data, they can go for the private clouds with more rigid complacency. But, in modern times, private clouds are evolving, and some private clouds can compete with public clouds in terms of features and usage. Examples like AWS, Azure Stack, offer similar versions of the public cloud.

Conclusion

It is predicted that we will encounter the interaction of AI with public clouds in the coming times. We will move towards more automated versions of public clouds. Clouds started in the 1990s, and in the late 1990s, the market saw the first wave of public clouds. Public clouds involve a third party that acts as a host and provides various IT resources to the customers.

With time public clouds are interested in multiple models termed IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, and FaaS. Public clouds are vastly scalable and meet the growing demands of the customers. The data of different users are kept separated, and they have multi-user architecture.

Public clouds are different from private clouds. Private cloud is accessible by one company only. The growing archetypes of private clouds are having many features similar to public clouds. It is predicted that the future of general clouding is even more interconnected. Emerging trends such as quantum computing will greatly instigate changes in public clouds. The clouding expertise will grow in great demand, and the tools will be more focal and automated. The era of AI is on the horizon, if not already here, and its integration with public clouds will be the reality of the coming years.

29Mar

What is Cloud Scalability?

March 29, 2022 admin

For storing and deploying their data, businesses are now turning to cloud technologies. As the needs of business change, cloud computing offers the capacity to accommodate this data growth. Scalability is one of the benefits provided by Cloud. Regardless of the size of your business, cloud-based storage, data protection, and costs are all scalable to everyone.

Before the world was introduced with cloud computing, managing and maintaining the storage required a lot of investment and data centers from companies. But with cloud, you do not have to worry about maintaining the physical space for storing data and hardware, everything can be migrated to the cloud without any issue. Thus, creating a scalable and cost-effective option for businesses to grow.

In this article, we will focus on what is cloud scalability, different types of scalability, benefits, key features, how to determine cloud scalability, and best practices for maximizing cloud scalability.

What is cloud scalability?

One of the key features of cloud computing is the cloud scalability which refers to the ability of increasing and decreasing the IT resources as per the changing business requirement. It is the tendency of the cloud to expand or shrink as the business demands changes and helps in accommodating the business data accordingly.

A good cloud provider that helps in scaling the data storage, processing power, and the networking using the cloud computing infrastructure. Scaling can be implemented seamlessly and efficiently without giving you any downtime or impacting the performance of your business. If you go for the third-party cloud providers, then you will get all the facilities in place. Unlike traditional computing, scaling the physical infrastructure will take months and huge investment. Cloud computing saves you from this burden and makes working enjoyable.

Different types of Cloud Scaling

There are three types of cloud scaling- vertical, diagonal, and horizontal. Here, we will discuss them in detail.

Vertical scaling – you can also refer to it as the up/down scaling. In this type of scaling, you are allowed to add more resources to your existing operations that will help in managing the increasing workload. In this case, you won’t have to worry about modifying the code. It is simply the upgrading of the VMs to larger ones that resizes the capabilities. There is only one limitation with this type of scaling, which is that you may not be able to increase the capacity according to the size, so you may have performance issues at some point.
Horizontal scaling- with this type of scaling, you can enjoy high performance along with the storage and management facilities. You can also refer to this type of scaling as out/in scaling. This allows you to add nodes to your existing infrastructure. Increasing the number of nodes will help in managing the increased workload and reduce the latency.
Diagonal scaling – this refers to the combination of both vertical and horizontal scaling. This provides the flexibility of adding more resources as per your changing requests within specified time. Whenever you face the traffic hikes, it will scale accordingly and whenever there is a downfall in traffic, the configuration will change accordingly.

What are the key features of Cloud Scalability?

We have mentioned below the key features of cloud scalability.

It allows you to grow and shrink the cloud infrastructure accordingly as per the changing business requirement.
Scalability cannot be used for small changes. It refers to adding a significant amount of users or data to the cloud.
Scaling cannot be used for replacing. It means adding or removing the resources to the existing deployment. For example, if we switch to Office 365 as Google Apps could not provide you enough support is not considered as scaling. But if you consider adding seats to the Google Apps deployment whenever you grow that is considered to be scaling.
Scaling with cloud solutions is relatively fast as compared to the traditional way of setting the hardware physically.
Cloud offers easy scalability making things easier and efficient to work in the changed environment.

Benefits of Cloud Scalability

Below we have mentioned benefits of cloud scalability

With cloud scalability, you will be able to deploy thousands of servers, services, and resources with a single click without having any downtime.
With cloud scalability, you will be able to deploy your applications even faster as you will have more resources allocated to your cloud to handle all of its workload.
With cloud scalability, you do not have to worry about adding or removing the required resources as everything is managed with a single click, and if you face any issue then you will get a dedicated IT team helping you through it.
With cloud scalability, you will be able to rebuild the IT team in just a few hours as you just have to add new servers and applications.
You can enjoy a new level of flexibility using cloud scalability as it gives you enough resources, tools, and services to be run and deployed on the cloud.
Even if you want to migrate from one cloud platform to another, you can do it within hours and you can even get the same level of scalability as you had on your previous systems.
It allows you to save a lot of infrastructure costs. You only have to pay for what resources and services you have been using.

Determining Optimal Cloud Scalability

As your business demands change, so will your scalable cloud solution. It is up to you to decide by what amount you want to scale your storage, memory, processing power, and other resources, and whether you are looking to scale up or down.

Performing ongoing performance testing is important to determine the right size of a solution. Various factors such as response time, number of requests made, CPU load, and memory usage should also be considered and measured. Scalability for an application’s performance can also be determined by measuring its ability to scale up and down according to changing requirements.

If you implement automation, it will also help in optimizing cloud scalability. It allows in determining the thresholds for the usage of resources that helps in triggering the automatic scaling without impacting the performance of the application. You can even use the third-party configuration management tools for helping and managing the scaling requirements.

Best Practices for Enhancing the Cloud Scalability

With the cloud, you can experience a faster way of allocating, moving, and stooping resources. Whenever there is a spike or downfall in the application or service, the cloud will dynamically scale up or down as per the changing business requirement. Having great scalability will help to boost your business to a new level and make profits. We have mentioned some ways that will help in getting the most out of your cloud in terms of scalability.

Implement auto-scaling

Most of the cloud providers help in auto-scaling which will help in managing the resources and allocating the load balances correctly. Auto-scaling refers to the situation when the resources will get automatically scaled up or down whenever there is a change in request by the user. It ensures that enough resources are there at their disposal to meet the changing demands and to manage the increased load on your application.

For this, you have to define some policies, rules, and regulations that will trigger the creation of new instances automatically or expand the existing instance, or remove the unwanted instance to handle and monitor the incoming traffic. You can even define multiple policies for the single service based on some events. Suppose, you know that your website will be getting more requests in the daytime, then you will define a policy to scale at that time automatically.

Use Load balancing

Using load balancers will also ensure another automatic way of scaling the distributed workloads that are present across various nodes for maximizing the resources. Load balancer will take all the incoming requests and then distribute it accordingly for better management and utilization of the resources and direct those requests to the specific instance for processing and sending back the response accordingly.

It is beneficial during spikes in incoming requests since it cleverly distributes the requests to various instances, preventing resource waste and ensuring that resources are used appropriately. Load balancers monitor the instance health continuously to ensure traffic is directed to the healthy instances.

Implement Containers with container orchestration

Today containers and orchestration systems are gaining more popularity for creating more scalable and portable infrastructure. They package a specific application along with its dependencies and related files for running that package as an individual unit without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. An orchestration system helps in managing such containers on a large scale. Handling thousands of containers running on a single infrastructure is difficult thus we require an orchestration system of their management.

With Containers, you will be able to deploy several identical application instances along with the low use of resources to allow them to scale efficiently. With Container orchestration systems like Docker Swarm, Amazon ECS, and Kubernetes you can automate the process of management and coordination of containers offering services like auto-replication (similar to auto scaling) allowing container stacks to scale.

Rigorous testing

You might have a scalable cloud environment, but is the application you wish to deploy scalable? By implementing the right testing process in place, this scenario can be checked. It is a good idea to test your application’s scalability to prevent any problems in the future. You should take some time after deploying the application to test the scalability of that application.

Conclusion

Scalability is one of the major features of the cloud. Every type of cloud tends to offer great scalability whenever there is an increase in the requests. Cloud helps in managing the hike in requests by enhancing the scalability of the infrastructure. You can implement any type of scalability as per your project requirement. Here we have mentioned its benefits, key features and how you can determine the optimal cloud scalability. It will help in managing resource usage by distributing the incoming traffic to the right instance of the node. Make sure you leverage the scalability feature of the cloud efficiently for better results.

05Feb

What is Cloud Storage

February 5, 2022 admin

What is Cloud Storage

When you save files to your computer, they are committed to the hard disk. Now, with cloud storage, instead of keeping your files to your computer, you instead send them over the internet to a remote computer called a server. You can access the server and the files from any location in the world. Your files are not tied to your computer at home. As long as you have an internet connection, you can access your files from any device, whenever you feel like it. There are a bunch of upsides to using cloud storage, as well as some minor downsides.

Types of Cloud Storage

Private Cloud

Private cloud services are internal storage devices deployed in an isolated environment, protected behind firewalls. Personal cloud storage hosted internally implementations mimic the capabilities of public cloud services that are commercially available, offering easy access and distribution of storage resources to business users in addition to access to objects storage protocols. Private cloud storage is suitable for users who require customization and greater security over data or strict data security or regulations.

Public Cloud

The storage services are an environment with multiple tenants ideal for unstructured data accessed on a subscription basis. The information is stored in the service provider’s data centers, and storage data is distributed across several places or continents. Most clients pay for each user per month, similar to the model of utility. There are transaction fees dependent on the amount and frequency of data used. A few examples of these types are Amazon offering ‘Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)’ and ‘Amazon Glacier’ to store your documents in archival depth or cold storage. Google is providing Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud Storage Nearline for complex data. And Microsoft offering you their Microsoft Azure.

Hybrid Cloud

The cloud storage solution is a blend of cloud-based storage that is private as well as third-party cloud storage solutions and an orchestration management layer to manage the integration of both platforms.

The model gives businesses more flexibility to deploy data and offers more options. A company could store the regularly used and structured data in an internal cloud and then archive non-structured data on the public cloud. The hybrid cloud helps deal with unexpected spikes in creating data or cloud bursting access to external storage services and not investing in internal storage resources.

The popularity of cloud hybrid models has increased in the past few years. Although hybrid cloud models have numerous benefits, they pose technological, business, and management issues. For instance, private applications require interaction with cloud storage providers that are public. That is why compatibility, reliability as well as comprehensive network connectivity are essential.

The Pros and Cons

Pros

Get Your Files from Anywhere:

So, we already mentioned how your files are always available to you anywhere there’s an internet connection. Now, this by itself brings with it a ton of other benefits. For example, you don’t need to lug around your files on a laptop, an external hard drive, or even a USB.

Log in to your cloud account while at work and view all of your files there. Now, most of the time, a cloud service will offer what’s called cloud sync. And this means you’ll have the exact version of a file across every device. With cloud sync, whenever you change to a cloud file, the file gets updated everywhere. Another helpful feature is that when your files are online, it’s super easy to share them.

File-Sharing:

Most cloud storage services offer file sharing, at least reputable ones. And this lets you share private photos with people you care about without having to post them on Facebook for the world to see. But cloud sharing is also great if you need to collaborate with people remotely. We’ve all seen how tricky remote work can be, and if you’re one of the billions of people who’ve had to work from home this past year, you have probably already used the cloud.

Co-Operation:

Several cloud storage services let you create documents right within the cloud app, like Google Drive and OneDrive do. Because that document isn’t just on your computer, this enables you to work on the same paper with your coworkers simultaneously.

Security:

Now let’s talk a bit about security. Generally, you’ll want your files to be protected by what’s called zero-knowledge encryption. But in general, zero-knowledge encryption makes it so that only you can ever access your files. It even stops the cloud provider from seeing what you’ve uploaded, so it’s the highest form of cloud encryption possible.

If we have you convinced by now that cloud storage is the way to go, here’s one thing to consider. Making a long-term commitment always pays off, and in the world of cloud storage, there’s nothing better than a lifetime plan. This feature is a bit of a unicorn, as there are only two reliable providers with lifetime plans, Icedrive and pCloud. Not all providers have this feature, so be on the lookout for services that have it, like Synvc.com and MEGA. For your convenience, they are two of the most reliable cloud services in the market.

Finally, having a backup of your files in the cloud ensures you always have a copy of them available. Even if your laptop gets stolen or it breaks over you, your data will be secure on the cloud.

Cons

Needs Connection:

Cloud storage has a few negatives, but none of them are that serious. For example, you generally can’t access your cloud files without an internet connection. You can prevent this to some extent by synchronizing your files. And this will let you access them even when you’re offline. However, if someone else makes a change to that file while you’re offline, you won’t be able to see that change until you get back online.

Paid:

Another thing to remember is that you’ll have to pay for storage space. No surprise here; online services are usually not accessible. Keep in mind that most cloud services come with some free storage too. Now, if you don’t need more than 10 or 15GB of storage, you’ll be happy with a free service, but you’ll need to pay to get anything more than that. Thankfully, there’s a bunch of providers that won’t break the bank, like Sync.com and Icedrive.

Privacy Issue:

Finally, some cloud providers are just not safe to use. For example, Google Drive might be an excellent service for collaboration, but Google is known for harvesting its users’ data. And while it’s not likely to get hacked, some people aren’t comfortable with Google or any other company scanning and looking at their files. Another common mistake people make is that they’ll see a service offering 100GB or 500GB for free and dump all their important files onto that service. These services are usually terrible to use or just straight-up scams that take your data and sell it. In these situations, it is essential to keep in mind the saying: If the product is offered for free, it’s probably using the product.

Cloud Storage vs. Cloud Computing

The distinction between cloud storage and traditional storage comes down to data storage instead of applications and computation. Cloud storage’s purpose is to preserve backup copies of files and data to be used as a backup. This way, if the original file or data has been damaged, corrupted, or destroyed, it will store a backup in cloud storage to retrieve. If data gets lost or destroyed, the user can access cloud storage to gain access to duplicate data files.

Cloud computing is a way to make the power of computing and cloud storage accessible as an online service. Similar to cloud storage services, customers have access to any or limited capacity as they want. Cloud computing also provides access to apps through a virtual computer as well as a cloud-based PC.

Conclusion

Cloud storage is generally managed via a web-based programming interface, which is remotely implemented by connecting to the client’s cloud storage infrastructure in-house for input/output and read/write operations. If an external company provides cloud storage, cloud-based storage could be termed storage used for utility.

Cloud storage is the most important factor that businesses are using today regarding price and user-friendliness. Many of the biggest and most successful companies worldwide have built applications in record time using the flexibility, speed, and cost-effectiveness that cloud storage offers. Even static sites can be upgraded at a surprisingly low cost. Web developers across the globe are turning to pay-as-you-go storage solutions that eliminate problems with scale and management.