Cloud Computing Model Paper

CLOUD GROWTH AND STORAGE

INTRODUCTION:

CLOUD:

·       An Internet based computing environment where you pay only for resources that you use.

·       A set of pooled computing resources delivered over the internet.

·       Resource allocation can be adjusted.

·       Cloud Computing is the next phase in the evolution of computing.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

·       Reduction of costs – unlike on-site hosting the price of deploying applications in the cloud can be less due to lower hardware costs from more effective use of physical resources.

·       Universal access - cloud computing can allow remotely located employees to access applications and work via the internet.

·       Up to date software - a cloud provider will also be able to upgrade software keeping in mind feedback from previous software releases.

·       Choice of applications. This allows flexibility for cloud users to experiment and choose the best option for their needs. Cloud computing also allows a business to use, access and pay only for what they use, with a fast implementation time

·       Potential to be greener and more economical - the average amount of energy needed for a computational action carried out in the cloud is far less than the average amount for an on-site deployment. This is because different organisations can share the same physical resources securely, leading to more efficient use of the shared resources.

·       Flexibility – cloud computing allows users to switch applications easily and rapidly, using the one that suits their needs best. However, migrating data between applications can be an issue.

Uses of Cloud Computing

• Rapid Service
• Secure Service
• Satisfying User Experience
• Lower Costs
• Multi-User Access
• Development Platform
• Infinite Storage

  Clouds can also be classified according to the different services they offer:

Ø Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) - buying access to computing capacity over the internet, such as servers or storage. Also known as utility computing, as it is like buying in a utility service such as gas or electricity. IaaS often employs virtualisation so users can create their own "virtual computer". This means they can specify the applications, software and operating system they want to deploy in the cloud. Advantages are that users don't need to worry about purchasing and running their own hardware but disadvantages include that it can be difficult to package up and run a computer remotely.

Ø Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) - developing applications that use web-based tools, so they run in a software environment (i.e. a platform) provided by another company.

Ø Software-as-a-service (SaaS) - using a complete application running on someone else's system. Web-based email and customer service management systems are examples of SaaS.

Cloud storage :

Cloud storage is a model of networked enterprise storage where data is stored in virtualized pools of storage which are generally hosted by third parties. Hosting companies operate large data centers, and people who require their data to be hosted buy or lease storage capacity from them. The data center operators, in the background, virtualize the resources according to the requirements of the customer and expose them as storage pools, which the customers can themselves use to store files or data objects. Physically, the resource may span across multiple servers and multiple locations. The safety of the files depends upon the hosting companies, and on the applications that leverage the cloud storage.

Cloud storage services may be accessed through a web service application programming interface (API) or by applications that utilize the API, such as cloud desktop storage, a cloud storage gateway or Web-based content management systems.

In cloud computing environment, virtual machine technology is used as a means of flexibly assigning workloads to real machines based on the workload’s static profiles. Though this technology aims at flexible and dynamic resource sharing, memory is under utilized in cloud environments. We propose a virtual swap management mechanism (VSMM) that enables flexible and dynamic memory sharing via a local area network. The VSMM can virtualize swap devices seen by a guest operating system (OS), and transparently switch underlying physical devices to that OS. In this paper, we explain the VSMM architecture and provide details on our prototype implementation using the Xen open source hyper visor, open source iSCSI implementations, and logical volume management. Through various experiments, we demonstrate that VSMM can contribute to improving process performance and maximally utilizing the equipped memory in cloud environments.

Big Data will continue to drive storage growth:  Enterprise storage requirements have grown explosively over the last few years, and there's no sign that that's going to change in 2014. IDC predicts enterprise storage compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of over 50% through to 2016, and that means that budgets will be stretched as IT departments struggle to accommodate these growing storage requirements. The good news is that with the global economy improving, there may be room for increased budgets in some businesses.

There's little doubt that one of the key drivers of this storage growth is Big Data and its related applications. There's plenty of hype surrounding the term, but the fact is that Big Data is here to stay and the adoption of Big Data applications is still increasing. The only question is whether that 50% CAGR figure will stay the same or increase after 2016.

Primary storage will start to move to the cloud: The year 2013 saw the dimise if Nirvanix,a well-established cloud storage provider. But Nirvanix's failure is unlikely to do anything more than slow the trend towards moving enterprise storage to low cost cloud resources.

Two things are likely to change in 2014, however. The fallout of Nirvanix is likely to be a flight to quality, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and just one or two other big name cloud providers the likely winners. After all, if Nirvanix can fail, why trust anyone but the biggest cloud providers?

But the biggest change is likely to be the type of data that's stored in the cloud. Up to now it has primarily been backup and archive data, but offerings like Amazon's Direct Connect  and the increasing sophistication of cloud storage gateways mean that enterprises will increasingly look to the cloud when it comes to increasing their primary storage capacity.

Storage efficiency technologies will play a bigger role : In the face of the relentless growth in storage requirements, enterprises will look to get more from the storage resources they have already invested in by implementing efficiency technologies like deduplication - even in primary data - and thin provisioning.
The good news is that there are plenty of untapped opportunities for increased efficiency: for example,  Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) estimates that only around half of enterprises have turned on thin provisioning in their storage systems. "There are all sorts of un-mined storage efficiency opportunities if people take the time to investigate their options and actually deploy the functions they have on existing systems," says ESG's Mark Peters.
SSD adoption will go more mainstream: There are many benefits of solid state drives, including high performance and reliability, and low heat generation. The main drawback has always been the cost. While SSDs will continue to be more expensive per gigabyte than conventional hard disk drives, SSD prices are falling fast. That means that the high performance they offer will be worth paying for in an increasingly large number of applications.
But there's another factor at work here too. Enterprises achieve high performance storage in a number of ways, including short stroking large numbers of HDDs to get the IOPS they require. By introducing a small amount of SSDs into their storage mix, many enterprises will be able to achieve the same performance for lower cost – and potentially free up much greater volumes of HDD storage capacity that can be redeployed elsewhere.
Virtual storage appliances will proliferate in smaller enterprises: Server virtualization has been moving steadily down from large enterprises to much smaller organizations, but many of the benefits of server virtualization are only available to enterprises with SAN resources. VMware, HP, Datacore and others have unveiled virtual storage appliances over the last few years that use internal and direct attached storage resources to create shared storage, and 2014 could be the year that they start to be used in earnest by smaller companies.
Higher storage densities and helium will change data center economics : Power, cooling and floor space costs are key considerations for any enterprise operating its own data center. The year 2014 will see enterprises looking to get more storage for less cost by testing new technologies such as low energy, high capacityhelium filled drives.
The high densities that helium drives can provide (up to 6TB per standard 3.5 inch drive) will offer the prospect of significant floor space savings, while the attraction of their lower energy consumption (and related cooling costs) are obvious. The technology is relatively new and untested in production environments, but if it proves successful then it could be adopted rapidly in places where energy costs are high or floor space is at a premium.
Cloud storage will become a two way street :  Another result of the Nirvanix storage cloud shutdown is likely to be that enterprises demand – and cloud providers increasingly offer – SLAs that spell out how data can be moved from one cloud to another, the bandwidth that will be available, the support that will be offered, and what happens to data that is left behind.

Thus,cloud computing has become the order of the day due to high its data reliability, Rapid Service,Secure Service,Satisfying User Experience,Lower Costs etc etc..In the upcoming future a life without cloud is impossible…..