Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is an emerging model where users can gain access to their applications from anywhere through their connected devices. A simplified user interface makes the infrastructure supporting the applications transparent to users. The applications reside in massively-scalable data centers where compute resources can be dynamically provisioned and shared to achieve significant economies of scale. A strong service management platform results in near-zero incremental management costs when more IT resources are added to the cloud. The proliferation of smart mobile devices, high speed wireless connectivity, and rich browser-based Web 2.0 interfaces has made the network-based cloud computing model not only practical but
A central server administers the system, monitoring traffic and client demands to ensure everything runs smoothly. It follows a set of rules called protocols and uses a special kind of software called middleware. Middleware allows networked computers to communicate with each other.
A typical high-level architecture of a cloud computing platform consists of a data center, provisioning manager, monitoring server, application server, and virtualization components.
Fig 2 Architecture of Cloud Computing Platform
User interaction interface: This is how users of the cloud interface with the cloud to request services.
Services catalog: This is the list of services that a user can request.
System management: This is the piece which manages the computer resources available.
Provisioning tool: This tool carves out the systems from the cloud to deliver on the requested service. It may also deploy the required images.
Monitoring and metering: This optional piece tracks the usage of the cloud so the resources used can be attributed to a certain user.
Data Servers: The servers are managed by the system management tool. They can be either virtual or real.
These components serve as the back-end of the cloud computing environment. Apart from this backend architecture, it even has a couple of user interfaces to provision servers, one fully loaded, and other for basic provisioning requests. All requests are handled by Web 2.0 components deployed on the application server.The trend