Introduction to Cloud Computing Benefits

The following article provides an outline of Cloud Computing Benefits. Cloud is essentially a set of resources and services offered through the internet. It can range from a varied source of services, such as office applications, desktop machines, or just a web service. Today Cloud has penetrated almost everything that is associated with the internet. We use many cloud services every day. Filled with our smartphones are apps, which all synchronize remotely with a cloud. On our desktop, we use services such as Picasa, which manages its interface remotely.

Cloud Computing Concept

The cloud computing basics At the back end of the Cloud are lines of server racks, each having lots of data storage and processing power. These high-server machines have a lot of processing power in it.

These processing machines, a warehouse of which has been set up remotely, that power the hardware behind the cloud. Using a technology called Virtualization, these machines power up and provide their computing resources for anything required.

From remote hosting several virtual machines or VMs, which provide the entire infrastructure to anyone required, to provide a framework for software development, Virtualization takes a lot of responsibility in orchestrating and providing the technology behind Cloud.

Here are cloud computing basics on OpenStack So, where does OpenStack come into the picture? OpenStack is essentially open-source software to manage this entire cloud ecosystem. By cloud ecosystem, we mean the entire hardware, the virtualized instances running on that hardware, and other such the latest cloud technologies that run on the backend of those smartphones and desktops.

It provides an essential management layer to run the cloud atmosphere. Let us take some more examples of cloud computing basics, shall we? Let us assume you are using a web service app and are using it to develop a framework for running software.

For that to happen, you need to rent out a virtual machine in order to test your framework. Therefore, you buy a cloud virtual machine from a cloud vendor like Amazon and use the billing system of pay as you use.

Now how would the vendor ensure that fair billing will happen? You are paying to use their hardware. So how do you ensure that the proper statistics of your users are calculated? To fill that gap, the management layer comes in between. Open-stack is the open-source management software for that.

Cloud computing benefits OpenStack is a cloud operating system software that happens to be open source. Therefore, the entire software’s development heavily depends on the vibrant and active community.

The community releases new features and enhancements to the software every six months and is backed by IT powerhouses such as IBM, Oracle, etc.

The main thing required in cloud computing basics. Their main requirement is that the “Cloud must be simple to implement and should be massively scalable”. This means that Open-Stack software focuses more on ease of use and on the flexibility of adapting to the latest technological advancement by absorbing more developed components easily.

The cloud computing benefit is that Although OpenStack covers a deep range of cloud technologies, vendors typically deploy it and IT companies alike as infrastructure as a service (IaaS). This means that OpenStack technology is mainly used to monitor the entire IT infrastructure of corporations or private usage.

On their website, you can go and download their entire software. The OpenStack project comes in different flavors; however, their core components remain the same.

Types of Cloud Computing Benefits

The open-stack project provides three main components as part of their project which are going to help you to know more about the cloud computing basics and cloud computing benefits:

1. Compute

Compute resources in the project provide the developers an entire set of APIs to enable them to develop different cloud applications. To the general user and data center administrator, it provides a web interface to monitor the running virtual infrastructure.

The entire computing architecture is additionally horizontally scalable, meaning it provides a framework for development according to individualistic or corporate requirements.

2. Object Storage

OpenStack object storage provides necessary features of storage options. It provides a cost-effective solution to store users’ data and deploys alongside other computing platforms or as a standalone storage mechanism. The key feature of object storage projects is distributed access. It provides a set of APIs for developers to use this distributed access feature to enable object storage platform application development.

For end-users, it provides integration with other applications and provisions for data backup and retention.

3. Compute + Object Storage

The complete OpenStack functionality provides both the computing power and the storage platform features of OpenStack. It includes the entire set of core services used by OpenStack as software. It is generally used to deploy and monitor infrastructure at the data center level independently. For developers, it provides the complete set of APIs. For end-users, it provides a sophisticated software suite that manages every aspect of a virtual machine, including deployment, image management, backups, and billing systems.

OpenStack deploys its own core components and several optional components with these core projects. Core components are the essential building blocks of the software, without which OpenStack will not function. Core components are shipped with every release of the software, more or less with enhancements and support for optional components. It is only through these core components optional components integrate. The OpenStack software suite’s Optional components are developed with the emerging cloud technology evolution.

What this means is that it provides extra features on top of OpenStack, making the entire OpenStack software very flexible in terms of scalability, which was the primary requirement of OpenStack software in the first place. Some optional components provide enhanced graphical access, such as Horizon (OpenStack Dashboard), while others provide emerging features, such as a database on demand (TROVE). However, the heart of OpenStack lies with the core components. Hence this was the point of the cloud computing basics.

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Core Components of Open Stack

Given below are the core components of the open stack:

1. Swift

Falling under the category of Object storage service, it provides features to access the data objects via a RESTful HTTP-based API mechanism. This essentially means that it provides features to access your data using the web interface or browser. Google Picasa is a software that successfully implements some of Swift’s object storage features. In the same manner, you access your images using URLs; Swift allows similar data access using the HTTP-based mechanism called REST.

Through means of object replication, it provides features of distributed data storage. It can be deployed in multitudes of architecture, being highly scalable. It is different from traditional file storage systems in the sense that the data being stored would be in the form of objects. Therefore, the stored data would be converted into bytes and distributed among different system architectures with a meta-data file connecting them. In distributing the data in such a way, Swift provides replicated data storage, making it highly fault-tolerant and providing a secure and highly reliable method of data storage.

2. Cinder

Cinder provides a persistent storage medium for running virtual machines. This means that Cinder acts as a regular hard disk, providing actual physical storage space to anyone requiring it. It acts and stores data as a traditional file system, with chunks of sectors created on a physical disk. However, what makes Cinder unique is that it provides the feature of pluggable architecture.

This means that Cinder can be used as an external hard disk. Therefore, data from one device can be stored in the cloud, taken out virtually, and attached to any other device. The virtual storage mechanism would ensure that the actual contents of the data remain unharmed. However, unlike Swift, Cinder does not have any data replication feature. If the physical device is damaged or the partition is lost, there is no way to recover data.

3. Nova

It is the component of the computer project. Nova does all the dirty work of facilitating the entire virtual machine provisioning. Also, provides the APIs and mechanisms to interact with all other underlying and running OpenStack components or services.

Using them, Nova launches the virtual machine to be used as a service. It also assigns the required details behind the virtual machine, such as storage space, the IP address for the network, the number of virtual CPUs, the memory required, and other essential parts of a virtual machine.

It acts as computing software, which uses its own set of algorithms to spawn a virtual machine. Besides spawning the virtual machine, it also reschedules, decommissions, and manages the entire inventory of running virtual machines.

4. Neutron

If Nova were the heart of OpenStack software, Neutron would be the brains behind it. It provides the feature of networking as a service, using which OpenStack assigns and monitors the entire networking aspect of virtual machines. It provides the developers access to the users and APIs to define, describe and create their own networks as per their requirements. The networks created can be highly flexible, with additional components integration in the form of plugins.

These extra attachments allow developers and users to deploy OpenStack and provide their virtual machines with any kind of computer network topology required. This includes support for virtual networking technologies of many vendors such as Cisco, NEC, etc. So using Neutron and Cisco router plugins, one can create their own Cisco virtual router and use it with OpenStack to test their software on Cisco routers.

5. Keystone

Keystone is the gatekeeper and the essential security mechanism of OpenStack. OpenStack uses RESTful API, meaning a valid token must authenticate every request-response mechanism. Keystone comes into the picture here and provides the necessary token mechanism for request-response exchanges between different components. It provides authorization of different components’ requests, using which; other components can base their responses because several hundreds of request-response mechanisms are going on between each of the several virtual machines spawned.

OpenStack relies heavily on Keystone, which is the only component deployed across all projects. Keystone acts as a central access mechanism where each OpenStack component meets, whether core or optional. In other words, Keystone acts as an important catalog to monitor all the OpenStack components. The security mechanism feature of Keystone prevents any unauthorized access. The software suite is distinctly segregated into various user access levels, granting the admin exclusive and complete access to the software.

6. Glance

The final core component of OpenStack would be the image provisioning service. Glance provides a comprehensive image management suite. Nova interacts with a glance heavily to select the list of available images. These images are nothing but virtualized instances of virtual machines. Virtualization technology extensively utilizes images to spawn virtual machines.

Nova spawns virtual machines, which utilize images for storage and execution. These images can include anything, from a customized framework to an entire operating system. Open-stack uses Glance to keep a list of all the available images and provide the user with a list of options using Glance.

Summary of Cloud Computing Benefits

Cloud and OpenStack are quickly becoming synonymous terms. This is because OpenStack provides a range of cloud software suites, enabling easier management of several cloud technologies.

At the base of OpenStack lies virtualization technology, which provides the provisions to deploy a virtual machine. Typically used as Infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

OpenStack uses this virtualization technology to provide the necessary framework to enable this Cloud feature. Cloud architecture, it is bundled with six core components and several optional components, and this is all about the cloud computing basics.

OpenStack provides a highly scalable software architecture for easier cloud management using cloud computing basics components. The core components provide computing power, storage, network, authentication, and image management feature, in the form of Nova, Cinder, Swift, Neutron, Keystone, and Glance, respectively. Hence, these are the cloud computing benefits.

Furthermore, the active and dynamic OpenStack community regularly develops new features and resolves bugs daily. Open-stack continues to evolve in its current form and seems poised to become the leading cloud management platform. This is all about cloud computing basics.

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