Cloud ComputingChallenges and Opportunities of

Moving to Cloud Based Computing

Arron ClagueBsc(Hons) MBCS

Synapse Consulting

Email : arron@synapse-consulting.com

Twitter : arroncx

http://www.synapsecn.com

Owen Cutajar

Intelligence Ltd

Email : owen@cutajar.net

Twitter : OwenC

Skype: owencutajar

http://intelligence.im

Defining Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a model for building out loosely coupled systems which run at scale, with elastic resourcing properties.

Defining Cloud Computing

Service Models•Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)•Platform as a Service (PaaS)•Software as a Service (SaaS)Deployment Models•Private Cloud•Community Cloud•Public Cloud•Hybrid Cloud

Defining Cloud Computing

Elasticity and Scalability

TIME

IT C

AP

AC

ITY

Actual Load

Allocated IT-capacities

Too Much Power

Not Enough Power

Load Forecast

How the Cloud can help

• Reduce upfront cost (no CapEx)• Reduce ongoing expenses• JIT infrastructure if things go well (or not)• Efficiently test multiple scenarios• Leverage repeatable “web scale” patterns

Some Use Cases• Mobile backends • Campaign Support Apps • Geographically diverse apps• Examples

1. The New York Times used 100 Amazon EC2 instances and a Hadoop application to process 4 TB of raw image TIFF data (stored in S3) into 11 million finished PDFs in the space of 24 hours at a computation cost of about $240 (not including bandwidth).

2. Scale to demand (next slide)

Scale to demand-Financial Services

Current playing field

• Microsoft Azure• Amazon Web Services• Google Cloud Platform

• VMware vCloud/vFabric/Cloud Foundry

Azure Deep Dive

Windows Azure provides a ‘pay-as-you-go’ scale out application platform

Intelligent Network Load Balancer

Stateless ‘Worker’ Machines

Stateless Web and/or Application Servers

Shared Filesystem

Partitioned RDBMS

Key/ValueDatastores

State Tier Queues

Representational State Transfer

Enterprise

Windows Azure

Service Bus

ClientClient

ServiceService

VMware vFabric

AWS Service Overview

AWS Global Infrastructure

Simple Storage Service

• Cloud based file storage• Simple API to CRUD• Unlimited capacity• Excellent for static web content• Files are URL-accessible• Move BLOBS from RDS

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)• Hardware virtualisation in the cloud• Various sized servers• All major operating systems• Uses Elastic Block Store (EBS) service• Provision, configure, start and stop

instances through browser or API• Full operating system access

Relational Database Service (RDS)

• Specialised RDBMS hosting• Supports MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server• Automated backups• Live replication for fail-over support• Transparent to your apps• DB provisioning from your

browser or through API

SimpleDB & DynamoDB

• NOSQL databases• Simple DB

– Excellent for small amount of structured data– 10GB limit per table

• DyanamoDB– Hosted on SSD– No size or request limitation

CloudWatch• Scalable unified resource monitoring• Monitor EC2, RDS and any other AWS

resource• Also monitor your own application• Create your own alarm conditions• Flexible notification system via Simple

Notification Service (SNS)

Auto Scaling

• Works with CloudWatch• Automatically provision additional instances

when load increases• Shutdown instances when load decreases• Pre-emptive scaling• Monitoring health of EC2

instances

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)• Scaled fault-tolerant load balancing• Works with Auto Scaling and CloudWatch• Load balances request over a set of EC2 instances• Can monitor health of EC2 instances and

shutdown non-performance instances• Can trigger scale-up and

scale-down events

Elastic Beanstalk (EBS)• Platform as a Service (PaaS)• Bundles up services provided by EC2, S3,

CloudWatch, Auto Scaling and ELB• Browser based provisioning of production

ready applications• Supports live hot-swapping

for applications• Java, .Net, Python, PHP only

Simple Notification Service (SNS)• Scalable fault tolerant messaging• Public-Subscribe model (push)• Messages are persisted and can survive

common outage scenarios• Notifications via

– HTTP– SMTP – SMS– SQS

Simple Queue Service (SQS)• Compliments SNS functionality• Queue model (FIFO)• Message publishers and consumers

inside and outside of AWS• Using SNS and SQS paramount for

applications to ensure – Scalability– Reliability– Resilience

Simple Workflow Service (SWF)• Coordinated synchronous and asynchronous

work in distributed application• Supports automated and manual (human-

based) tasks• Like SNS and SQS, using SWF as part of your

application can help build “web-scale” applications

Elastic MapReduce (EMR)• “Big Data”• Hosted Apache Hadoop environment• Uses EC2, S3 and DynamoDB service• Specify the number and type of EC2 instances

used• Full control via API• Examples: Scientific Analysis,Financial Analysis, Content indexing

Discussion Points

• Stateless development is key ?• Can you abstract away from the

underlying technology – Cloud Foundry ?• Remember that platforms are still

evolving…• Rate of change of platforms is high• Need to factor in existing staff Skill Base