Question 1:
(a) Advantages of Cloud Computing
Cost savings
once an organization migrates to cloud services, accessing the company data becomes easy and fast hence saving time and resources in project startups. Again, the cloud infrastructure has currently cleared the worry about paying for what an organization has not used through pay-as-you-go approach. Meaning the organization will only pay for what it has used (Avram, 2014). The system of pay as you go will equally apply on the data storage service implying that an organization gets as much space as it needs but won’t be charged for space it doesn’t use. Keenly considered together, these two factors will result into lower costs and higher returns.
Security
The issue of cloud computing security has been among the major hang ups worrying organizations when it comes to adopting cloud computing solutions. After all, when organization programs and files are not kept securely on site it’s not easy to detect (Botta, Persico & Pescapé, 2016). Again, the same way an organization can access its data remotely, it’s the same way cyber criminals can access the same data. Considering that the full time role of cloud hosts is to monitor the security of their client’s data, this makes the technology more secure as compared to conventional in house systems where organizations divide the effort of security provision as a myriad of its IT concerns. Statistics have indicated that most data breaches in organizations are facilitated internally and therefore cloud computing can be much safer to store the organization’s sensitive information off-site (Gangwar, Date & Ramaswamy, 2015).
Flexibility
Any business strives to achieve its goals and meet all its customer demands. However, if the finite time the business management has is divided into other responsibilities like IT concerns, it becomes very hard for such a business to achieve its two main agendas. Also, relying on third party organizations to take care of the organization’s IT infrastructure creates more time for the organization to devote towards the main aspects affecting it directly. Cloud technology enables a business to be more flexible compared to when servers are hosted locally (Botta, Persico & Pescapé, 2016). Lastly, because businesses keep on expanding, to get extra bandwidth becomes easier when under cloud-based service than when under local hosting where the process of updating the whole IT infrastructure is needed.
Disaster recovery
Ensuring business control has been a major factor to many businesses and which is accorded the necessary attention by most of organizations (Botta, Persico & Pescapé, 2016). Unfortunately, however much an organization tries to be fully in control of its operations there will always be some incidences that run out of control and which can have resoundingly negative impacts especially in today’s market trends. For instance, a small downtime in an organization services may lead to lost productivity, brand reputation and revenue. Cloud-based services in such scenarios provide fast data recovery for all kinds of emergencies right from natural disasters like earthquakes to power outages (Wang, Zheng, Lou & Hou, 2015).
(b) Differences between Public Cloud and Private Cloud
Categorically, the differences between private cloud and public cloud can be grouped into five domains (Krishnan, Bhagwat & Utpat, 2015): Tenancy, exposure to public, data center location, cloud service management and hardware components. In regard to tenancy, private cloud operates in a single tenancy because the data in this cloud belongs to a single organization. On the other hand, public cloud operates as a multi-tenancy because it deals with data from multiple organizations in a shared environment (Ali, Khan & Vasilakos, 2015).
In terms of exposure to public exposure, the private cloud does not allow exposure because it’s only the organization itself that can use the cloud services (Goyal, 2014). For, public cloud; the infrastructure allows exposure of the services to all the organizations which wishes to use it under shared environment. For private cloud, data center is located within the organization network while for public cloud it’s located anywhere on the internet where the cloud service provider is located (Krishnan, Bhagwat & Utpat, 2015).
In regard to cloud service management, under private cloud management of cloud services is done by the internal team while under public cloud it’s the responsibility of the service provider to manage and control the cloud service where organization data is stored. Finally, in regard to hardware components of the two services, in private cloud the organization provides the components which entail servers and other storage devices while in public cloud that’s the responsibility of CSP (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016).
Question 2
(a) Considerations when Implementing Private Cloud
Although, on premise data centers have problems when it comes to resources, management skills and monitoring, there are some instances where private cloud is more preferable than the public cloud. This depends on the client requirements. Here are some of the cases I would advise a client to go for private cloud services (Cooper, Nedbal & Nadkarni, 2017).
Backup and Recovery needs of the Organization
If the client would like to have full control of their backup frequencies and recovery, I would advise the clients to go for this cloud service because in public cloud service they would get what is supported by the service provider regardless of whether it meets their demands or not (Krishnan, Bhagwat & Utpat, 2015).
Security aspect
It’s beyond any reasonable doubt that public cloud service has some weaknesses in regard to organization data privacy and encryption has remained to be a challenge. So, if the client is handling sensitive data which requires high levels of privacy, I would encourage him to go for private cloud service which won’t compromise with its requirements in terms of privacy goals (Krishnan, Bhagwat & Utpat, 2015).
Performance aspect
Although both public and private cloud services have good performance, in public cloud service the client will be confiscated on the level of performance provided by the service provider. However, if the client needs to remain in full control of his or her data center performance like moving certain information to faster disks or pushing something into memory and increase caching performance whenever a need arises, private cloud is the best (Jiang, Song, Wang, Gu, Sun & Sha, 2017).).
Flexibility aspect
Beyond the flexibility offered by both public and private cloud services in terms of servers and storage, private cloud service has an additional flexibility aspect of allowing the client to do what he or she wants at any instance. For such a case, the client should consider private cloud.
(b) Private Cloud Monitoring and Operation by System Centre
Mainly, private cloud monitoring and operation solution relies on System Centers as the virtualization engine platforms that enable pooling and sharing of computing resources like network, storage and memory. Also System Centers support private cloud security and isolation of hosted services (Krishnan, Bhagwat & Utpat, 2015). The components of System Center which include System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Operations Manager, System Center Data Protection Manager, System Center App Controller, System Center Service Manager and System Center Orchestrator work together to provide automation, operation, and management of private cloud, as well as enabling the elasticity, self-service, and metering attributes.
Question 3
(a) (I) Security issues with Cloud Computing
Data Breaches
Considering the fact that data breaches have been existing for quite a long time while cloud computing is a new technology which has not been scrutinized fully by the IT security experts, this clearly shows that security in cloud computing must be low (Krishnan, Bhagwat & Utpat, 2015). A research conducted by Ponemon Institute indicated that over 50% of the IT security professionals were not adequately conversant with the security aspects of cloud computing. For that matter, they believed that security in cloud computing infrastructure was highly exposed to data breaches.
Malware Injection
These are scripts and codes which are embedded into the cloud services to act as “valid instances” and run as normal SaaS to the cloud servers. Once these injections are executed and cloud begins to operate in tandem with them, attackers can easily eavesdrop hence compromising the integrity of data inside the servers especially if it’s sensitive data, they can also steal the data (Krishnan, Bhagwat & Utpat, 2015).
Insecure APIs
For users to be able to customize their cloud experience, cloud technology uses Application Programming Interfaces (API). However, these APIs have turned to be a threat in cloud security because they can also give attackers the chance to customize features of the cloud services to fit target goals by authenticating, provide access, and effecting encryption just like the real users (Krishnan, Bhagwat & Utpat, 2015).
Denial of Service Attacks
Rather than other cyberattacks, DoS attacks usually make organization servers at the cloud environment unavailable with an aim of legitimizing users. In other instances , however, DoS attacks are used as smokescreens for other malicious activities like taking down the security appliances like web application firewalls.
(ii) Security Controls in Cloud Security Architecture
Setting up strong cloud data security policies
Strong policies play a very crucial role in preventing organization data breaches and maintaining security within the cloud computing environment. Policies help in preventing data breaches originating from the inside of the organization and which has been ranked as the top source of the current data breaches (Julian et al, 2017).
Encryptions to sensitive data
Sensitive data and which is more prone to compromises should always be kept in encrypted manner whether being retrieved of under storage. That way, even under successful attacks the data is secure because it’s meaningless to the attackers who may not have decryption keys. This control measure backed up by the strong security policies ensures high security of data in cloud computing infrastructures (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016).
DLP and Activity Monitoring
Data leaks in organizations can also be caused by employees, and whether they are whether inadvertently or maliciously pose security concerns to the organization. So, organizations need to back up their security policies and the encryption strategies with Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and activity monitoring solutions which helps in detecting any attempts made to access or transmit sensitive data from the cloud servers (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016).
(b) Selection Criteria Assessment for Private and Public Cloud Security Aspect
The main selection criteria of private and public cloud services in regard to security are the sensitivity of data being handled and the level of privacy required. Looking at this criterion however, there are a lot of concerns. First, if data privacy can be compromised in the cloud computing environment implies that security of data from different angles can also be compromised. For that matter, data security can either be 100% or 0% and therefore any organization that worries of privacy in any of these two should also be worried of insecurity from the rest of data security aspects (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016).
Question 4: Verifying the Health Status of System Center Components
Operations Manager
The main function of this component is to keep eye on cloud servers, operating systems, applications and networks. So, if tested through System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and cannot return the results based on the status of the three, it is deemed to have a fault. However, if it can return the status its health status is approved (Kampas, Tarkowski, Portell & Bhatti, 2016).
Virtual Machine Manager
This component manages fabric infrastructure for virtualization right from the hosts, networks to clusters. When tested through System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and accessibility of virtual machines does not go through, it is deemed to have a fault. However, if it can be accessed its said to be healthy.
Service Manager
Service manager acts as a help desk system that helps in tracking incidents, changing requests and configuring management at the configuration management database. If it can’t achieve these functionalities when tested by a System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) then its deemed fault otherwise its healthy.
Orchestrator
This component links and integrates all the other components of System Center through automation. So, if the components of system center are not integrated at any instance, it is deemed as fault, otherwise it is seen as healthy.
Application Controller
This component allows the end users to see Virtual Machine Manager Private clouds as well as the services deployed in them. If the end users cannot see the Virtual Machine Manager Private Cloud, the component is declared faulty otherwise it is considered healthy.
Question 5: Service Models in Cloud Computing
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Under this level, consumers are provided with the capability of using the service provider applications running on cloud infrastructure. Also, the applications running the cloud infrastructure are availed from different client device either via thin client interfaces like web browsers or through program interface. Consumers are restricted from managing or controlling the core cloud resources like the network, individual application, servers, storage and OS except user-specific application configurations (Huang & Wu, 2017).
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Under this level, consumers are provided with the ability to deploy client applications onto cloud platform by the use of programming languages, libraries and services. At this level, consumers are not privileged to manage and control any underlying cloud resources like servers, networks, storage and operating system. They are however accorded control over installed applications and configuration settings in the applications-hosting environments (Manuel, 2015).
At this level, consumers are provided with the capability of provision processing, managing fundamental computing resources like storage and networks and can install and run subjective softwares like operating system and other applications. Consumers are not privileged to manage and control the primary cloud infrastructure but have control over deployed applications, operating system and storage (Jula, Sundararajan & Othman, 2014).
Windows PowerShell
This feature enables the VMM to have a great automation and control as well as being fully scriptable. The role of this tool in the private cloud infrastructure is to enable IT administrators to execute scripted services remotely against virtual machines hence avoiding labor-intensive processes performed manually in graphic user interfaces (Levchenko & Cardoso, 2018).
Fast and Reliable Physical to Virtual (P2V) Conversions
By this feature, VMM improves the P2V experience. In private cloud infrastructure, it helps in creating virtual machines faster and without interrupting the source physical servers.
Intelligent Placement
This feature enables the VMM to analyze data performance and resource requirements after the virtual machines are deployed. Through the feature, IT administrators can fine tune placement algorithms for customization in private clouds (Palanichamy, Charles & Gonsalves, 2016).
Centralized Resource Management and Optimization
This is central work area providing a VMM administrator with a Console to perform resource tuning. Through this feature, resource settings are changed on private cloud virtual machines without workload interruptions.
This feature provides for rapid provisioning of virtual machines by authorized self-service users and VMM administrators. Through the feature, quick provisioning of new virtual machines can be done it a private cloud infrastructure (Phan, 2017).
Question 6: Increasing the Capacity of Private Cloud
Through Storage Virtualization
This is a technique of pooling physical storage from various storage devices into a single storage like device or a pool of accessible storage capacity managed through a central console. This technology mainly relies on softwares to identify the available storage capacities from physical devices and then aggregate the capacities as storage pools to be used in virtual environments by virtual machines (Sun & Jafar, 2017). The softwares at virtual storage will intercept I/O requests from both physical and virtual machines and then convey those requests to appropriate physical locations of storage devices and that form part of overall storage pool in virtualized environments (Villari, Fazio, Dustdar, Rana & Ranjan, 2016).
Question 7: Aspects of Multitenancy
Cloud technology uses multi-tenancy to enable sharing of IT resources, services and softwares in cost efficient and secure ways. From an IT point of view, multi-tenancy has two aspects (Giannoulakis et al, 2016):
Internal Aspect
This is a scenario where an organization treats its departments as totally different tenants. In this case therefore, a logical isolation of infrastructure and applications is demanded while the physical infrastructure is being shared (Tewari & Kumar, 2016).
External Aspects
These are service provider environments where each tenant is handled as a different entity. For instance, financial companies require dedicated infrastructures (physical isolation), while retail companies can share the platform with other companies (logical isolation).
It is very interesting to comprehend how the magic of multi-tenancy operates unnoticeably and its significance to the cloud design. Certain factors like security, scalability, reliability and serviceability play crucial roles.
The Typical client expectations in a multi-tenant cloud or whatever the business, are:
Question 8: VMM profiles
The main reason behind the design of VMM was to enable building and management of dynamic IT environment while reducing the time taken in configuration and application of settings across virtualization infrastructures. VMM offers several profiles which contain configuration settings to be re-used while deploying virtual machines including guest OS profiles, application profiles, capability profiles, hardware profiles and SQL server profiles. There are no limitations in the number of VMM profiles to be created, but, it’s always advisable to avoid creating too many (Paithane & Vashisht, 2016).
Configuring Application Profile (Bacher, Lueck, Raspl & Spatzier, 2015)
On Opening the VMM admin console;
At the “Library” section navigate and expand the “Profiles” section to see the profiles
Right click on Application profile and choose “Create Application Profile”.
Specific on the Application Profile configurations desired in the “New Application profile dialog”, Give a name for the selected “Application profile” at the “General tab”
Select “Application Configuration” Tab then select “New Application Deployment”
Finally, click “OK” to save the profile.
Configuring SQL Server Profile (Vincent & Thomas, 2016)
On Opening the VMM admin console;
At the “Library” section navigate and expand the “Profiles” section to see the profiles
Right click on SQL Server Profile and choose “Create SQL Server Profile”.
Specific on the SQL Server configurations desired in the “New SQL server profile dialog”
Give a name for the selected “SQL Server profile” at the “General tab”
Select “SQL Server Configuration” Tab then select “New SQL Server Deployment”
Finally, click “OK” to save the profile.
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