1. Cloud Computing
and Virtualization-
Newest Trends
Srinath Perera, Ph.D.
Senior Software Architect, WSO2
Research Scientist, Lanka Software Foundation
Member, Apache Software Foundation
Visiting Faculty, University of Moratuwa

2. Next 1 hour: Goal

What is Cloud?

More on Why and
When and less about
How?

Take home is some
idea of when to and
when not to use the
Cloud

3. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will
be seen that they go mad in herds, while they
only recover their senses slowly, and one by
one. ~ Charles Mackay
Copied from http://www.flickr.com/photos/54555810@N00/2848637190/, by Rambling Traveler

4. Gold Rush

Very good example of a hype

Only few actually made money

But associated services (merchants
and transportations) made lot of money

5. The Cloud Bandwagon

Is Cloud a hype? Of course
it is!

Is it Just hype? may be not,
thats what we will discuss.
But don’t get me wrong,
even if it is a hype, that
doesn’t mean we should
not be talking about it.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/88929764@N00/4436978855/

6. Some Hypes Deliver: Hype Cycle

We have to understand what it is and what
drives it? That would tell us how to navigate.

7. Selling Shovels In the Gold Rush
Hype change the demand
and supply dynamics.

8. Fire Open up the space for new
Trees
Hypes often change the dynamics, and give a
chance for new comers to climb to the top
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/leppre/485528374/

9. So What is Cloud?

Based on the idea that computation and storage
can be rented as a utility from data centers that
runs somewhere (in the cloud) on demand.
− Remote resources that are rented
− On demand and in elastic manner
− Pay as you go

10. Electricity as a Utility as an
Example

Now, no one run generators themselves

Use electricity that is remotely generated

Can draw when need it

Only pay for what you use

11. Electricity as a Utility: Benefits

Small startup cost (do not have to buy
a generator)

No operational cost

Do not need to do capacity planning

Overall cheaper electricity due to
economics of scale

Making it parts of the everyday life,
commodity (accessibility)
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/infomofo/3220498521

12. Benefits of the Cloud

Avoid/reduce operational
costs by outsourcing

Can scale up and down as
needed

Pay as you go

Making it parts of the
everyday life, commodity
(accessibility)

Cheaper computing power
due to economy of scale

13. Drivers of Cloud

Unused computing power at Google, Amazon

Max load >> average load

High operational cost, need for outsourcing

Availability of large scale solutions and
infrastructure as side efforts of high tech
company operations

14. Cloud Classification
For end-users
For developers, integrators, architects
For infrastructure specialists

15. IaaS Example: Amazon

Two services
− S3 Storage
− EC2 computing cloud

Based on Virtualization, where each user is given a
virtual machine and charged by the hour

Need least amount of changes to move apps to the
Cloud. They in a way replace hosting services

Least amount of out of the box services (e.g. DOS
attack prevention) and advanced services like scaling
etc., are a responsibility of the user.

Often the best choice for ad-hoc computer users.

16. PaaS Example: Google App
Engine

Support Java and Python

Support web requests and run user written web
applications in an isolated environment
− Java version based on servlets

Support storage based on Big table, memcache
based cache, and auto scaling

Can write apps locally, test it, and then upload
to the Cloud

17. SaaS Example: Salesforce

Provide support for CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) software as a
Service

The application available out of the box users
just configure and use it.

Salesforce handles all the details, and a ideal
choice for outsourcing IT functions

However, applications are very specific and
customizations are limited.

18. Virtualization
Mimic the hardware layer using software, and
provide a “virtual” machine to the next layers
− Used to mimic multiple machines
within the same machine
− easier manageability and migration
(move machines based on load)
− e.g. Vmware, Xen, KVM

IaaS uses Virtualization to provide infrastructure as a
service

Virtualization can add significant overhead (each
instruction become 2 instructions)
− new CPUs have hardware support for virtualization,
which make things better
− Still I/O is a challenge

19. Cloud Platform Tradeoffs

20. Private Cloud
Run a Cloud within the
organization (mainly due
to security concerns).
e.g. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
(VPC), IBM private cloud, WSO2
Stratos private Cloud

Idea is optimizing resource sharing, utilizations,
and operations
− e.g. testing environments

Connection to public Cloud is possible
− Amazon VPC uses VPN, WSO2 Cloud Service
Gateway
Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/glasgows/536185797/, Some rights reserved by M Glasgow

21. Potential Impact

22. More Room to Outsource Non
Key Functions of a Organization

Organizations outsource their
non-competitive areas to
reduce costs and focus on their
own expertise.

IT departments are a major
cost in most organizations

Cloud enables Organizations to
outsource some of the IT
functions

23. Small Start Up Cost

Small start up cost
− Reducing the gap
between visionaries and
dreamers
− New organization has
better chance for
outsourcing operations
through the Cloud
− Cloud competition likely
to drive down hosting
prizes

24. 1 computer for 100days = 100
computers for 1 day

Great tool for occasional
computations
− Research labs
− Reporting collecting data
for a story
− New york Times tiff to pdf
conversion

Rise of analytics
− great tool for offline
analysis
− Business Intelligence (BI)
−

25. Large Scale Computation and
Storage Resources becoming a
Commodity
Normal people, not
just organizations
can have access to
computing power
and storage

Computer intensive desktop apps (e.g. Excel, 3D Max)

26. Autoscaling and Cloud Bursting

Max load >> average load

Allocate based on the load

Running internal machines in an average load
(because cloud is still expensive than hardware ) and
scale out to cloud when there is high load
− Mimic the Hybrid car

27. Dangers and
Concerns

28. Privacy/ Security/ Trust

With cloud you will run your apps and put your
data in an outsider's administrative domain
− Can we trust the outsiders to not
look at our data? Well it depends.
But concern is normal for any out
sourcing
− Can we trust their security
measures? Does the isolations
are good enough?
− If we are keeping data owned by
others, what are the legal
implications etc.

29. Latency/ Bandwidth

Why does electricity as a Utility was so
successful? One key aspect was almost
unlimited speed and capacity

Is that the same for Cloud?
− Not really, specially for countries like
Sri Lanka
− Most people dismiss this, and does
not even want to discuss
− But for some apps (e.g. interactive
apps like games) this can be a issue

Possibilities
− support for offline operation
− Fedex your data

30. Performance
In the Cloud, your
software will run on an
another layer of
abstractions

It will inevitably slower (3-4 times if unlucky)
− Often the overhead comes from I/O
− Some hit on CPU power
− Expect the bottlenecks to shift

Remember performance ≠ scalability
− Cloud likely to let you scale out, but performance
on individual nodes likely to go down

31. Challenges

Cloud Middleware
− Long running, large scale, fault Tolerant
Computations
− Scalable service and resource
scheduling
− Scalable, secure, self-managing, fault-
tolerant data storage for long running
processors
− Multi-tenancy and Isolation
− Delegation across organizations

Cloud Operations
− Metering and Billing
− Provisioning and Monitoring
− Data Confidentiality and auditability

32. Challenges (Contd.)

Programming Model
− Parallel Programming (Map
Reduce)
− Better App programming
models – Web, Jason, APIs
− Supporting Mobile devices

33. Overall Recommendations

34. Cloud Platform Tradeoffs

35. Look back: Recommendations
© Copyright Kirsty
Smith and licensed
for reuse under this
Creative Commons
License

How can we benefits from the Cloud? My list of benefits
were by no means exhaustive.
− If you are small startup? Doing something part
time (writing Apps for App Store), then cloud is
for you definitely.
− If you have a small data center, need to
efficiently manage that and increase utilization,
you should think Private Cloud

36. Look back: Recommendations
(Contd.)

If your services have a Max load >> Average load, you
should think about crowd bursting

If you do heavy computations once in a while (analytics,
audits), then use IaaS there.

If you want to outsource some of your IT functions, think
SaaS

Before leap think about 3 major concerns of Cloud?
− Security/ Privacy, Latency and Performance

How much sharing and savings I need?
− IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

37. Questions?