Chapter 15
Life in Cloud City
In This Chapter
Examining the basics of cloud computing
Looking at three kinds of cloud computing services
Understanding the pros and cons of cloud computing
Perusing a few major cloud computing service providers
Two of the world’s great science fiction franchises — Star Wars and Star Trek — feature cities that are suspended in the clouds. In Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Han takes the Millennium Falcon to Cloud City, hoping that his friend Lando Calrissian can help repair their damaged hyperdrive. And in the original Star Trek series episode “The Cloud Minders,” the crew of the Enterprise visits a city named Stratos, which is suspended in the clouds.
Coincidence? Perhaps. Or maybe Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas both knew that the future would be in the clouds. At any rate, the future of computer networking is rapidly heading for the clouds. Cloud computing, to be specific. This chapter is a brief introduction to cloud computing. You discover what it is, the pros and cons of adopting it, and what services are provided by the major cloud computer providers.
Introducing Cloud Computing
The basic idea behind cloud computing is to outsource one or more of your networked computing resources to the Internet. “The cloud” represents a new way of handling common computer tasks. Following are a few examples of how the cloud way differs from the traditional way:
E-mail services
• Traditional: Provide e-mail services is to install Microsoft Exchange on a local server computer. Then your clients can connect use Microsoft Outlook to connect to the Exchange server to send and receive e-mail.
• Cloud: Contract with an Internet-based e-mail provider, such as Google Mail (Gmail). Cloud-based e-mail services typically charge a low monthly per-user fee, so the amount you pay for your e-mail service depends solely on the number of e-mail users you have.
Disk storage
• Traditional: Set up a local file server computer with a large amount of shared disk space.
• Cloud: Sign up for an Internet file storage service and then store your data on the Internet. Cloud-based file storage typically charges a small monthly per-gigabyte fee, so you pay only for the storage you use. The disk capacity of cloud-based storage is essentially unlimited.
Accounting services
• Traditional: Purchase expensive accounting software and install it on a local server computer.
• Cloud: Sign up for a web-based accounting service. Then all your accounting data is saved and managed on the provider’s servers, not on yours.
Looking at the Benefits of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a different — and, in many ways, better — approach to networking. Here are a few of the main benefits of moving to cloud-based networking:
Cost-effective: Cloud-based computing typically is less expensive than traditional computing. Consider a typical file server application: To implement a file server, first you must purchase a file server computer with enough disk space to accommodate your users’ needs, which amounts to 1TB of disk storage. You want the most reliable data storage possible, so you purchase a server-quality computer and fully redundant disk drives. For the sake of this discussion, figure that the total price of the server — including its disk drive, the operating system license, and the labor cost of setting it up — is about $10,000. Assuming that the server will last for four years, that totals about $2,500 per year.
If you instead acquire your disk storage from a cloud-based file sharing service, you can expect to pay about one fourth of that amount for an equivalent amount of storage.
The same economies apply to most other cloud-based solutions. Cloud-based e-mail solutions, for example, typically cost around $5 per month per user — well less than the cost of setting up and maintaining a Microsoft Exchange Server.
Scalable: So what happens if you guess wrong about the storage requirements of your file server, and your users end up needing 2TB instead of just 1TB? With a traditional file server, you must purchase additional disk drives to accommodate the extra space. Sooner than you want, you’ll run out of capacity in the server’s cabinet. Then you’ll have to purchase an external storage cabinet. Eventually, you’ll fill that up, too.
Now suppose that after you expand your server capacity to 2TB, your users’ needs contract to just 1TB. Unfortunately, you can’t return disk drives for a refund.
With cloud computing, you pay only for the capacity you’re actually using, and you can add capacity whenever you need it. In the file server example, you can write as much data as you need to the cloud storage. Each month, you’re billed according to your actual usage. Thus, you don’t have to purchase and install additional disk drives to add storage capacity.
Reliable: Especially for smaller businesses, cloud services are much more reliable than in-house services. Just a week before I wrote this chapter, the tape drive that a friend uses to back up his company’s data failed. As a result, he was unable to back up data for three days while the tape drive was repaired. Had he been using cloud-based backup, he could have restored his data immediately and wouldn’t have been without backups for those four days.
The reason for the increased reliability of cloud services is simply a matter of scale. Most small businesses can’t afford the redundancies needed to make their computer operations as reliable as possible. My friend’s company can’t afford to buy two tape drives so that an extra is available in case the main one fails.
By contrast, cloud services are usually provided by large companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and IBM. These companies have state-of-the-art data centers with multiple redundancies for their cloud services. Cloud storage may be kept on multiple servers so that if one server fails, others can take over the load. In some cases, these servers are in different data centers in different parts of the country. Thus, your data will still be available even in the event of a disaster that shuts down an entire data system.
Hassle-free: Face it, IT can be a hassle. With cloud-based services, you basically outsource the job of complex system maintenance chores, such as software upgrade, patches, hardware maintenance, backup, and so on. You get to consume the services while someone else takes care of making sure that the services run properly.
Globally accessible: One of the best things about cloud services is that they’re available anywhere you have an Internet connection. Suppose that you have offices in five cities. Using traditional computing, each office would require its own servers, and you’d have to carefully design systems that allowed users in each of the offices to access shared data.
With cloud computing, each office simply connects to the Internet to access the cloud applications. Cloud-based applications are also great if your users are mobile because they can access the applications anywhere they can find an Internet connection.
Detailing the Drawbacks of Cloud Computing
Although cloud computing has many advantages over traditional techniques, it isn’t without its drawbacks. Here are some of the most significant roadblocks to adopting cloud computing:
Entrenched applications: Your organization may depend on entrenched applications that don’t lend themselves especially well to cloud computing — or that at least require significant conversion efforts to migrate to the cloud. For example, you might have use an accounting system that relies on local file storage.
Fortunately, many cloud providers offer assistance with this migration. And in many cases, the same application that you run locally can be run in the cloud, so no conversion is necessary.
Internet connection speed: Cloud computing shifts much of the burden of your network to your Internet connection. Your users used to access their data on local file servers over gigabit-speed connections; now they must access data over slower bandwidth Internet connections.
Although you can upgrade your connection to higher speeds, doing so will cost money — money that may offset the money you otherwise save from migrating to the cloud.
Internet connection reliability: The cloud resources you access may feature all the redundancy in the world, but if your users access the cloud through a single Internet connection, that connection becomes a key point of vulnerability. Should it fail, any applications that depend on the cloud will be unavailable. If those applications are mission-critical, business will come to a halt until the connection is restored.
Here are two ways to mitigate this risk:
• Make sure that you’re using an enterprise-class Internet connection. Enterprise-class connections are more expensive but provide much better fault tolerance and repair service than consumer-class connections do.
• Provide redundant connections if you can. That way, if one connection fails, traffic can be rerouted through alternative connections.
Security threats: You can bet your life that hackers throughout the world are continually probing for ways to break through the security perimeter of all the major cloud providers. When they do, your data may be exposed.
The best way to mitigate this threat is to ensure that strong password policies are enforced.
Examining Three Basic Kinds of Cloud Services
Three distinct kinds of services can be provided via the cloud: applications, platforms, and services (infrastructure). The following paragraphs describe these three types of cloud services in greater detail.
Applications
Most often referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS), fully functional applications can be delivered via the cloud. One of the best-known examples is Google Apps, which is a suite of cloud-based office applications designed to compete directly with Microsoft’s traditional office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook. Google Apps can also replace the back-end software often used to support Microsoft Office, including Exchange and SharePoint.
When you use a cloud-based application, you don’t have to worry about any of the details that are commonly associated with running an application on your network, such as deploying the application and applying product upgrades and software patches. Cloud-based applications usually charge a small monthly fee based on the number of users running the software, so costs are low.
Also, as a cloud-based application user, you don’t have to worry about providing the hardware or operating system platform on which the application will run. The application provider takes care of that detail for you, so you can focus simply on developing the application to best serve your users’ needs.
Platforms
Also referred to as Platform as a Service (PaaS), this class of service refers to providers that give you access to a remote virtual operating platform on which you can build your own applications.
At the simplest level, a PaaS provider gives you a complete, functional remote virtual machine that’s fully configured and ready for you to deploy your applications to. If you use a web provider to host your company’s website, you’re already using PaaS: Most web host providers give you a functioning Linux system, fully configured with all the necessary servers, such as Apache or MySQL. All you have to do is build and deploy your web application on the provider’s server.
More-complex PaaS solutions include specialized software that your custom applications can tap to provide services such as data storage, online order processing, and credit card payments. One of the best-known examples of this type of PaaS provider is Amazon.
When you use PaaS, you take on the responsibility of developing your own custom applications to run on the remote platform. The PaaS provider takes care of the details of maintaining the platform itself, including the base operating system and the hardware on which the platform runs.
Infrastructure
If you don’t want to delegate the responsibility of maintaining operating systems and other elements of the platform, you can use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). When you use IaaS, you’re purchasing raw computing power that’s accessible via the cloud. Typically, IaaS provides you access to a remote virtual machine. It’s up to you to manage and configure the remote machine however you want.
Public Clouds versus Private Clouds
The most common form of cloud computing uses what is known as a public cloud — that is, cloud services that are available to anyone in the world via the Internet. Google Apps is an excellent example of a public cloud service. Anyone with access to the Internet can access the public cloud services of Google Apps: Just point your browser to http://apps.google.com.
A public cloud is like a public utility, in that anyone can subscribe to it on a pay-as-you-go basis. One of the drawbacks of public cloud services is that they’re inherently insecure. When you use a public cloud service, you’re entrusting your valuable data to a third party that you cannot control. Sure, you can protect your access to your public cloud services by using strong passwords, but if your account names and passwords are compromised, your public cloud services can be hacked into, and your data can be stolen. Every so often, we all hear news stories about how this company’s or that company’s back-door security has been compromised.
Besides security, another drawback of public cloud computing is that it’s dependent on high-speed, reliable Internet connections. Your cloud service provider may have all the redundancy in the world, but if your connection to the Internet goes down, you won’t be able to access your cloud services. And if your connection is slow, your cloud services will be slow.
A private cloud mimics many of the features of cloud computing but is implemented on a private hardware within a local network, so it isn’t accessible to the general public. Private clouds are inherently more secure because the general public can’t access them. Also, they’re dependent only on private network connections, so they aren’t subject to the limits of a public Internet connection.
As a rule, private clouds are implemented by large organizations that have the resources available to create and maintain their own cloud servers.
A relative newcomer to the cloud computing scene is the hybrid cloud, which combines the features of public and private clouds. Typically, a hybrid cloud system uses a small private cloud that provides local access to the some of the applications and the public cloud for others. You might maintain your most frequently used data on a private cloud for fast access via the local network and use the public cloud to store archives and other less frequently used data, for which performance isn’t as much of an issue.
Introducing Some of the Major Cloud Providers
Hundreds, if not thousands, of companies provide cloud services. Most of the cloud computing done today, however, is provided by just a few providers, which are described in the following sections.
Amazon
By far the largest provider of cloud services in the world is Amazon. Amazon launched its cloud platform — Amazon Web Services (AWS) — in 2006. Since then, hundreds of thousands of customers have signed up. Some of the most notable users of AWS include Netflix, Pinterest, and Instagram.
AWS includes the following features:
Amazon CloudFront: A PaaS content-delivery system designed to deliver web content to large numbers of users.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud: Also called Amazon EC2. An IaaS system that provides access to raw computing power.
Amazon Simple Storage Service: Also called Amazon S3. Provides web-based data storage for unlimited amounts of data.
Amazon Simple Queue Service: Also called Amazon SQS. Provides a data transfer system that lets applications send messages to other applications. SQS enables you to build applications that work together.
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud: Also called Amazon VPC. Uses virtual private network (VPN) connections to connect your local network to Amazon’s cloud services.
Google is also one of the largest providers of cloud services. Its offerings include the following:
Google Apps: A replacement for Microsoft Office that provides basic e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet, and database functions via the cloud. Google Apps is free to the general public and can even be used free by small business (up to 50 users). For larger businesses, Google offers an advanced version, Google Apps for Business. For $5 per month per user, you get extra features, such as 25GB of e-mail data per user, archiving, and advanced options for customizing your account policies.
Google Cloud Connect: A cloud-based solution that lets you work with Google cloud data directly from within Microsoft Office applications.
Google App Engine: A PaaS interface that lets you develop your own applications that work with Google’s cloud services.
Google Cloud Print: Allows you to connect your printers to the cloud so that they can be accessed from anywhere.
Google Maps: A Global Information System (GIS).
Microsoft
Microsoft has its own cloud strategy, designed in part to protect its core business of operating systems and Office applications against competition from other cloud providers, such as Google Apps.
The following paragraphs summarize several of Microsoft’s cloud offerings:
Microsoft Office 365: A cloud-based version of Microsoft Office. According to Microsoft's website, Office 365 provides "anywhere access to cloud-based email, web conferencing, file sharing, and Office Web Apps at a low predictable monthly cost." For more information, check out www.office365.com.
Windows Azure: A PaaS offering that lets you build websites, deploy virtual machines that run Windows Server or Linux, or access cloud versions of server applications such as SQL Server.
Microsoft Business Productivity Suite: A SaaS product that provides cloud-based access to two of Microsoft’s most popular productivity servers: Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint. The suite lets you deploy these servers without having to create and maintain your own local servers.
Getting Into the Cloud
After you wrap your head around just how cool cloud computing can be, what should you do to take your network toward the cloud? Allow me to make a few recommendations:
Don’t depend on a poor Internet connection. First and foremost, before you take any of your network operations to the cloud, make sure that you’re not dependent on a consumer-grade Internet connection if you decide to adopt cloud computing. Consumer-grade Internet connections can be fast, but when an outage occurs, there’s no telling how long you’ll wait for the connection to be repaired. You definitely don’t want to wait for hours or days while the cable company thinks about sending someone out to your site. Instead, spend the money for a high-speed enterprise-class connection that can scale as your dependence on it increases.
Assess what applications you may already have running on the cloud. If you use Gmail rather than Exchange for your e-mail, congratulations! You’re already a cloud user. Other examples of cloud services that you may already be using include a remote web or FTP host, Dropbox or another file sharing service, Carbonite or another online backup service, a payroll service, and so on.
Don’t move to the cloud all at once. Start by identifying a single application that lends itself to the cloud. If your engineering firm archives projects when they close and wants to get them off your primary file server but keep them readily available, look to the cloud for a file storage service.
Go with a reputable company. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are all huge companies with proven track records in cloud computing. Many other large and established companies also offer cloud services. Don’t stake your company’s future on a company that didn’t exist six months ago.
Research, research, research. Pour yourself into the web, and buy a few books. Cloud Computing For Dummies, by Judith Hurwitz, Robin Bloor, Marcia Kaufman, and Fern Halper (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), is a good place to start.