Cloud Computing and Server Farms

By Krishnamoorthy Anantharaman ( CWID 10449377 ) One of the recent waves in the world of computing can be attributed to cloud computing. Cloud computing is seen to break new barriers and become part of our other utilities like gas, telephone, electricity and water. Utility computing as it is called comes in different forms and types to cater to the diverse needs of the industry. This new trend is seen to simplify the end user experience without having to worry about planning resources that would be needed for a complex task. In this paper we will define cloud computing and define the architecture involved in deployment and the various services offered by cloud.

Introduction
A few decades ago, computers were the size of a warehouse and data was fed manually for calculations. Computers were seen as specialized equipment and they had special climate control surroundings to maintain temperature. This trend evolved into a dumb terminal concept, were in users were able to feed data remotely from a dumb terminal while application and data storage was still in the central computer. Since computing was restricted to a single large computer, it led to the innovation of private computers. Although private computers were an instant hit due to their dedicated computing prowess, it gave rise to a new problem, distributed data. Since data become distributed it led to repeated efforts of duplicating data. This gave birth to inter networking of computers and thus came Local Area Networks which further evolved into the Wide Area Network. 1990s saw the internet boom which let to thousands and millions of web sites and web pages. As internet based applications got bulkier and complex, it demanded more processing power and storage. It led to the creation of data centre where computing is performed and storage is located. Since computing is any way being performed centrally, it has again lead to Thin clients which has less powerful processors and less storage. Cloud Computing What is cloud computing? This is perhaps the most popular question among many people who are not aware of this new wave in computing. In simple words, Cloud computing is a way of offering compute services without making the end user know on how and where it is performed. Drawing an analogy with one of our existing utility, Telephone networks, Telephone has become so much part of our life that we have little idea about how a call is routed and what resources are being used to achieve an interactive call. Similarly, it is envisioned that computing will be performed transparently without revealing a lot about the whereabouts of the servers that are being used for achieving our computation results. By far, such trends are driven by the rapid spread of Internet and the explosion of data. Every form of data is being recorded in digital format and processed digitally. When this is combined with the diverse market area, such technologies are born more out of need than out of fancy. Traditionally computing cannot provide some of the benefits given by cloud
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computing, due to their diversified nature. By far cloud computing is not a brand new concept, but an evolution of practise like Grid Computing and Cluster computing. All of these are possible because of new breakthrough in technology like Virtualization, Broadband connectivity, Wireless network and so and so forth. Without these building blocks it would not have been possible to go in this direction. Early adopters of cloud computing cites the following reasons for change: -

Cloud Computing Reduces IT labour costs by more than 50% thus improving margins. Improves quality of software and eliminates defects up to 30%. Efficient use of computing resource because they are provisioned depending on the demand instead of statically allocating them. Be anywhere access anywhere advantage. Pay only for what you use and achieve cost advantage.

Inside The Cloud Every entity is loaded with specific attributes which can be distinguished and identified independently. At the heart of the cloud is the Data Centre. A Data Centre can be defined as a single location with number of servers, network switches, and storage hardware and application software. Managing them efficiently without compromising on the performance of output and service is the challenge of cloud computing service, which includes peak traffic and natural disasters. One of the pioneering technologies used in accomplishing this feat is Virtualization. Virtualization is a very old concept, but with cloud computing it is being taken to a different height. Remember the regular windows C: drive, which can be partitioned in to several logical drives, although there is only one physical drive. This is one primitive way of virtualization in which every logical drive is made to appear like an independent physical drive. This is being extended to other areas of computing like processing and storage. With the invention of virtualization software a single physical resource is being shown as multiple resources. Virtual servers run on a single physical server and each Virtual server is dedicated to a single user. The end user application gets the perception that they have a single server of their own, but in reality the physical server is being shared by many applications running on multiple Virtual servers. The same concept is extended to storage devices. Applications are provided with huge storage space, but the actual storage provisioned could be limited. Provisioning of storage is increased dynamically as and when it is needed. This leads to a lot of cost saving and efficient utilization of resource, because a single resource is not blocked by an application. By provisioning what is needed, a huge cost saving is achieved for example, hard disks space
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can be used more efficiently thus reducing the number of hard disks required. This is directly transferred to purchasing less hardware and less power consumption. Network is the next important components of a Cloud. How is it useful to have a huge pool of resources with sophisticated application software if we cannot have high speed connectivity to it. High speed broadband access is a must for cloud computing because it is only this connectivity that provides access to cloud hosting servers from clients. Network is widely used within the cloud for accessing various resources that are distributed across the data centre. Apart from this, it is required to connect across data centre for heterogeneous operations and disaster recovery. It does not suffice if we have high speed access outside the cloud, but it is also required within the cloud. Just to give a perception of the network within a cloud, consider having a few hundred servers attached to several storage entities. With many applications servicing requests and accessing data across the storage entities, it is required to have high speed switches which can cater to the speed and performance of service. Types of Cloud Cloud computing can be broadly categorized into three types Private, Public and Hybrid. Depending on the type of data you are working with and the size of your organization you can create one. A private cloud is one in which services and infrastructure is maintained locally within an organization. Since they are private they offer maximum security and control. Private cloud is more apt or beneficial to mid-size or large corporation whose business is spread across geographies. Applications can be hosted in a private cloud and offered to several groups within the organization. This will bring a great amount of cost advantage since applications need not be deployed on individual systems. Maintenance of IT becomes a lot easier because, applications are not spread all over the organization. Users outside the corporations network will not be able to tap into the cloud. A public cloud is one which is open to anyone who is registered with the cloud service provider. Just like our network provider, a public cloud provider can cater to diverse people and corporations. It is not restricted to any individual. Small organizations and individuals can benefit from this service, because applications which are less used can be taken from the cloud service provider on a pay per use basis. Since public cloud is accessed by users on the internet, security and protection of data is a huge concern. The service provider needs to ensure that enough precaution is taken to protect data and servers from being hacked. A combination of these two types of service is called the Hybrid Cloud. Services offered in the cloud are dedicated for private use, yet use some of the infrastructure used by the public cloud service. Different services are being offered for a different set of users and they could be either open to all or restricted to a select few in the organization. Security is a main concern here, because different security standards need to be maintained for different kind of service.
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Fig1 Depiction of Public-Private Cloud

Cloud Architecture
Cloud Computing follows a layered architecture and the layers can be defined as Fabric Layer, Abstraction Layer, Platform Layer and Application Layer. Fabric Layer defines the underlying hardware like the processors, storage subsystem, network hardware and interface. Abstraction layer defines the virtualization which abstracts the underlying hardware. This is very important in cloud architecture to achieve optimum resource usage and performance. Also this layer helps in scalability as perceived by the applications. Platform layer provides the middleware and tools required to develop custom applications which can be deployed by the end users and Application layer refers to the end user applications offered as service.

Application Layer Platform Layer

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Abstraction Layer

Fabric Layer

A good quality cloud service provider will impart a simple architecture as defined above to meet efficiency, scalability, reliability, and being light weight. Scalability is an important aspect of cloud, because a cloud service is expected to provision more processing and other computing resources as peak demands increase and scale down when required to save resource usage. Having lean management policies for service is required to avoid complex cloud management. Finally it is important for any cloud architecture to have a standardized interface at all layer to enable inter operability across different cloud operators and enablers. Cloud Services The birth of cloud computing was made with the intent of offering different service so that end users can get what they need and pay only for it. Thus there are varying services that are offered in the cloud, and here we will look at a few of them. These services can be mapped to the different layers of the cloud architecture that is defined above. Software as a Service ( SaaS ) Applications software can be hosted in the cloud and served to general public or end users on a pay per use or a different usage model. End users are only required to invoke the application and need not worry about the underlying hardware or the configuration environment like network, operating system, servers and storage subsystem required to run the application software. Accessing the application should not require any other sophisticated software; it should be accessible over a browser installed on a thin client. Salesforce.com is a widely used Customer Relationship Management application offered online. Another example of Software as a service can be regarded to LiveMesh from Microsoft which offers file and folder management. Platform as a Service ( PaaS ) A high-level integrated environment is offered to build, test and deploy custom applications. End users can use this environment to develop custom application which can offer unique services for their business needs. End users need not be concerned about the underlying hardware or software like operating system, servers or storage available to them. End users only need to use the platform for their development. They have to develop custom application based on the programming language and tools offered to them. Infrastructure as a Service ( IaaS ) In this form of service, the cloud service provider provides the basic building blocks of computing resources like processing power, storage subsystem and network switches as a
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resource. The end user controls the deployment of software ranging from operating systems to end user applications. The above mentioned services are crafted with the ability to scale and reduce development time and cost for the end users.

Challenges in Cloud
Every technology has its own set of challenges that it will have to overcome. Cloud computing is no different in this front, especially this being a new technology it has plenty of them. These challenges are seen as opportunities for making cloud computing a successful shift in computing. We will discuss some of the common challenges relating to cloud computing here. High Availability Cloud services are offered to end users whose business model could be highly dependent on the service offered in the cloud. Hence service outage could potentially impact the productivity of a business house. Hardware crash and software exceptions are very common hence the cloud service provider can only provision for such a disaster by maintaining failover concepts. Yet another challenge is with respect to the existence of the cloud service provider, since this is an emerging technology a lot of new business ventures are being made, but their sustenance is not guaranteed. Since not all users are interested in high availability, it is being sold as a commodity of service with an associated cost. Data access in Cloud A lot of storage subsystems that are being used in various cloud infrastructures follow proprietary standards and interface. An easy and standard access method to retrieve data across different cloud service providers has not been established. This leads to a lot of concern with respect to accessibility when user applications are deployed across clouds. Performance Bundling up a lot of applications together can impact performance. Since virtualization enables multiple virtual machines to run and use the same set of hardware and storage subsystems, performance of applications is very important. If end users experience slow performance then it could defeat the purpose of cloud computing. Scalability Cloud computing is looked as entities with infinite capability to scale with respect to computing and storage. This has to be achieved dynamically depending on the load. During off peak hours it is expected to scale down. Challenge lies in how fast a system can scale up to meet the computing demands. Since peak traffic cannot be always predicted, research is being performed on historical statistics to arrive at different method by which they can predict peak usage and scale proactively.
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Security In any public system security of data is a major concern. Since cloud infrastructure share resources across different end users, the ability to main privacy and stop users data from being hacked or surveyed is of at most importance. Since security breach can happen from outside and inside, it is very important for cloud service providers to win the confidence of users with respect to internal security like theft or denial of service.

Role of Networks in Cloud

Computer Networks play a very important role in offering cloud services. Very often performance of a cloud service is attributed to performance of IT resources and the networks connecting it. The resources that populate the cloud infrastructure can offer superior performance only when they have the ability to communicate and exchange data within themselves at a high speed, and minimum loss and latency. To elaborate a little more on the loss and latency, many storage resources in a cloud infrastructure are distributed. Hence a data loss while transmission could lead to data corruption. To mitigate this, protocols are designed to retransmit data, which in turn can lead to latency. Cloud service providers are aware of these facts, and hence they try to put as minimal switches as possible. Because having more hops through various switches can lead to latency and loss. Again, this is a trade off because having minimum switches could deprive the network of having enough redundancy, which can lead to islands in case of switch failure. Hence, planning a network of a data centre is requires a lot of expertise. To ensure resources are used in an optimal way, most cloud infrastructure adopts Virtualization. Network management in a virtualized environment is not the same as regular environment, because it provisions for vNIC and vSwitches. This ends up creating new logical network topology and enables free movement of Virtual servers from one location to another. Network management is challenged to handle all obstacles that arise out of this virtualized environment and seamless movement. Beyond all this, it is needless to say that cloud technology and services are possible only due to the evolution of next generation broadband access.

Server Farms
Cloud computing is not possible by having a single powerful server. It is usually achieved by combining a number of servers. These servers cannot be geographically away from each other because then we will be incurring a lot of overhead in network traffic and will only defeat the purpose of hosting a cloud infrastructure. Servers are stationed together at a single location, preferably as close to each other servers, and connected with high speed network connections. A number of such servers connected and placed closely at a single location is defined as a server farm. Server farm planning is largely popular and an evolving technology, because placing server near each other leads to a host of problems. Servers are usually placed in racks or shelves Page 7 of 10

which appear like a stack. Since thousands of such servers will be stacked and placed nearby, they consume a lot of power and produce a lot of heat. Several techniques to cool the server surroundings and ensure there is cold air flow is being proposed and implemented. Servers are placed next to each other so that load balancing and scaling up and down of servers can be controlled efficiently in addition to utilizing resources efficiently. Server farms are designed to meet economies of scale and easy IT management. When clients make request for computing, each client has either one dedicated server or many servers depending on the kind of service the client has opted for. Since servers run continuously power consumption of a server farm is humongous. Hence they are usually placed at a site which is very close to power generation plant so that they can take maximum advantage of the power generated, and avoid the cost of transmission since a lot of power is lost during transmission and not generation. A lot of load balancing techniques have been proposed to efficiently use the servers hosted in the farm. Drive spin up are staggered to avoid power surge. Example Clouds Amazons EC2 is a very popular public cloud offered. Its offering look much like a hardware with users having the ability to control everything from kernel and upwards. Hardware offered is virtualized, so users can control the virtualized CPU, network and storage devices by using a set of API offered for this purpose. This does pose difficulty in automatic scaling, because the semantics associated with automatic scaling is application dependent. Google AppEngine is more of a web service kind of cloud offering. They are targeted for traditional web based applications and its operational model is seen to be request reply based.CPU time is severely rationed for every request that is being serviced, and it has an impressive scaling ability. Storage is fully managed on proprietary technology called BigTable. Since this is very application oriented, this cloud is not seen as a suitable utility for general purpose computation. Microsoft Azure is kind of middle path approach, when compared with the above two. Applications are developed on .NET and compiled into common language runtime a platform independent environment for executing programs. Users get to choose the language of their choice, but they are not allowed to choose the underlying infrastructure. Libraries provide a degree of automatic network configuration, scalability and availability, but expect the applications to declaratively specify them in order to do so. Microsoft Azure is not tied to any application and hence is capable of being used for general purpose computing.

Conclusion
Cloud computing is here to stay. Since most corporations are driving this effort at different levels it will evolve much further and become part of our computing paradigm. Since data computing and storage requirements are only going to increase, every user will look for ways to achieve his computation in a cost effective and more optimized way. Simply from just
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offering computing, Cloud computing will be part of an organizations strategic business plans and adaptive to change. Software development will accommodate the needs of a cloud infrastructure to scale in size according to the needs of a user. Hardware components will be designed to fit in small racks to accommodate more at minimum real estate. With the wide spread use of mobile phone networks, and social networking sites every one of us will be hooked on to the cloud directly or indirectly. Here are just a few Cloud applications : Google Docs: http://www.google.com/ Online word processing, spread sheet, presentation and collaboration software. EFAX: http://www.efax.com/ Faxes and voice mail by e-mail. YouTube: /www.youtube.com/ Online storage of videos. Webex: http://www.webex.com/ Online meetings. Yahoo! Calendar: www.yahoo.com. An online calendar. Mozy: http://mozy.com/. File backup service. Picnik: http://www.picnik.com/. Online photo editing. Zamzar: http://www.zamzar.com/ Online file conversion. PBWiki: http://pbwiki.com/. Online collaboration software. Blogger: www.blogger.com. A service for online publishing blogs.

Bibliography
Cloud Computing and emerging IT Platforms:Vision, hype and reality for delivering computing as the 5th utility Rajkumar Buyya, Chee Shin Yeo, Srikumar Venugopal, James Broberg, Ivona Brandic. Cloud Computing and Grid Computing 360-Degree Compared Iam Foster, Yong Zhao, Ioan Raicu, Shiyong Lu The Need for Speed: The importance of Next Generation Broadband Networks Stephen Ezell, Robert Atkinson, Daniel Castro and George Ou Above the clouds: A Berkeley view of cloud computing Michael Armbrust, Armando fox, Rean Griffith, Anthony D. Joseph, Randy H Katz, Andrew Konwinski, Gunho Lee, David A Patterson, Ariel Rabkin, Ion Stoica, Matei Zaharia. Getting Cloud Computing Right From IBM Whitpaper. Optimum Power Allocation in Server farms : Anshul Gandhi, Mor Harchol-Balter, Rajarshi Das Charles Lefurgy
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Assessing the security risks: Gartner Report June 2008 Cloud Computing: Brian Hayes from cloud computing journal July 2008 http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1993074 Ariel Dan http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/tip/Cloud-networking-Inter-networking-data-centersand-connecting-users Tom Nelle http://www.opportunityhamilton.co.nz/news/pageid/2145873464/Cloud_computing_brings_u nlimited_storage_power Hamilton Wikipedia on Cloud Computing and Server Farms.

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