Defining the Cloud Architecture and Reasons for Deploying It

Question: Defining The Cloud Explain Architecture And Reasons For Deploying It? Answer: Introduction Cloud Computing is gradually becoming the necessity for every organization due to its unique features and security. It also offers varieties of option for every group of organization so that it can support well in the premise. Cloud computing also helps in understanding the market quite well and can generate better decisions (Rosado Bernardino, 2014). Cloud computing also aims in providing efficient work. The following report discusses about the different cloud architectures and the problems related on having hybrid cloud architecture. Cloud Architecture that is useful for SoftArc Engineering There are various types of cloud services that can be deployed by SoftArc in order to meet the board strategy. Some are as follows: Redundant Storage Architecture Elastic Disk Provisioning Architecture Service Load Balancing Architecture Dynamic Scalability Architecture Resource Pooling Architecture Defining the Cloud Architecture and reasons for deploying it Resource Pooling Architecture: It a type of architecture where all the identical IT resource pools are grouped together and stored in a system and later maintained by the system which ensures that all of the resources stay synchronized with all other resources (Alamri et al., 2013). The main reason of deploying it because with this, the company can store all their resources within a single system and they can retrieve these resources from anywhere and the best part of using this architecture is that all of them works simultaneously meaning this will make the process much faster and also makes it efficient (Almorsy, Grundy Mller, 2016). Dynamic Scalability Architecture: It is a type of architectural model that is completely works on pre-defined system having scaling condition that helps in triggering the dynamic allocation of all IT resources from resource pools. It is very closely related to Resource Pooling Architecture. The reason behind using this architecture is that it helps in allocating dynamic storage that is those spaces can be changed later which is not possible in static storage. Service Load Balancing Architecture: It is a type of cloud architecture that is specifically designed to scale down the cloud service implementation. The main reason of implementing this architecture is because with this, the load can be evenly distributed so that there is no load on a single server and also it helps in scaling of the cloud services (Almorsy, Grundy Mller, 2016). Elastic Disk Provisioning Architecture: It is type of architecture where it helps in giving a dynamic storage provisioning system which helps the cloud users to be billed for the exact amount of storage that the individual uses and not for the whole part (Othman, Madani Khan, 2014). The main reason to consider this architecture as then SoftArc will have to pay for the amount storage they are using and not for the whole which will be cost efficient. Redundant Storage Architecture: It is a type of cloud architecture where a duplicate secondary storage is introduced which works as a failover system and helps in synchronizing the data that is already presented in the cloud storage device (Othman, Madani Khan, 2014). The main reason behind to consider this is that it will create a backup and save the data elsewhere and after that it can be merged later on with the primary one. Benefits and Issues related with these architectures Redundant Storage Architecture Benefits: It is having high availability when it comes on cloud storage. It also helps in providing high level protection. With the help of this, a backup is generated automatically which then merges with the primary one afterwards. Issues: Redundant Cloud Storage devices are mainly the subject for failure and this is caused by some network connectivity issues or controller or some general hardware failure or even the security breaches. Elastic Disk Provisioning Architecture Benefits: The main advantage of using this cloud architecture is that the company needs to pay for only the amount of cloud storage it is using and not the rest (Rosado Bernardino, 2014). This functionality helps the company from the financial perspective as their cost to company would be less. Issues: Problem with using this architecture is that the companies are given a limited amount of storage that they ask for. If that storage gets used up, they need to ask for extra storage again for which they need to pay extra amount. Service Load Balancing Architecture Benefits: The benefit of using Cloud Load Balancing is that it is scalable and is a global character. It helps the company by handling all types of traffic spikes without compromising the performance. This is done by placing a cloud load balancer which helps in auto scaling so meet the requirements. Issues: There are many issues that needs to be considered while implementing Cloud Load Balancer like Infrastructure as the main purpose of cloud load balancer is to distribute the traffic among all the servers in the infrastructure and without proper infrastructure, messages will not get delivered. Bindings are also another issue because it is dependent on the infrastructure and under bindings; there are various sub parts like the BasicHttpBinding and NetTcpBinding (Sadiku, Musa Momoh, 2014). Dynamic Scalability Architecture Benefits: There are many benefits of using this cloud architecture as these can monitor and track runtime usage with dynamic fluctuations. It is also useful as the hypervisor can be invoked with the help of dynamically scalable systems which in turn helps in removing virtual server instances (Alqahtanye et al., 2014). Issues: It can become very tedious at times and also quite time consuming. When there are multiple requests, one of server will gets full loaded. Here the performance is reduced with the increase in servers. Resource Pooling Architecture Benefits: The benefit of using this cloud storage architecture is that with this, it can help in storing all the IT resources in a single place. It is mainly used for the interface with backend systems and programs so that resource pool administration can be featured (Sanaei et al., 2014). This is used to generate instances for IT resources. Issues: As all the systems remains synchronized so if there is any technical issue found inside the system, then it becomes very difficult for the retrieval of information from that dedicated pool of resources. Hybrid Cloud Strategy risks and mitigating with the risks Identifying the risk Possible explanation Controlling the risk IT architectural design A hybrid cloud computing is a very complex type of cloud computing which basically involves all forms of cloud services like the public clouds, private clouds and in premises IT. To build a hybrid cloud computing, it requires great skill as it has to be secure from one end to another end so that the communication becomes secure else anyone can highjack in the middle. The only way to control this risk is that it the cloud based architecture needs to build by someone who is quite experienced and has got acquired quite expertise in this field. Data Management Many companies uses this storage for automation in the their data centers to route data to their tiers but for some reason the data may gets lost in its way and it can be quite problematic. In this way, it puts the companys data into a greater risk and even more complex when data goes to some non-data center destination. The only possible way to mitigate these problems is to make a backup for these data and all the routes should be made secure so that the company can keep a track record of every data and in this way the data will be safe. Network Visibility Hybrid cloud computing can create some problems as through a loss of network visibility. Without perimeter, the risk of security breaches increase. These are often vulnerable as these are outside the control of any business. This can be controlled by applying clear perimeters so that there might not be security breach. Also the company should try to take control of their application as they might get attacked and get corrupted and this might hamper their whole infrastructure. Bandwidth and latency Access of cloud computing mainly works with the internet connection as without internet connectivity, no work can be performed. Risk of latency for the real time data streams and this can be quite dangerous as this can interfere with companys own internal network. This can be avoided by making the internet available and the company should ask their service providers if they are offering high speed internet connectivity or not because to work with this, internet connectivity is really important for any type of data communication and this ensures un-interrupted data flow. General Information Security steps and controls Malware Protection: All the systems and servers should be installed with anti-malware defense mechanism as this can help in from getting the system from being collapsed or even stealing of any confidential data. Scanning for malware across the organization in every system should be made compulsory (Arora, Parashar Transforming, 2013). Malware can damage any system and cripple the networking systems which will put a huge financial pressure over the company. Network Security: Protecting the networking system from any kind of external and internal attack. Managing the network perimeter is really important and all the networks should be monitored well for any kind of unauthorized access (Kant Sharma, 2013). This should also try to monitor any kind of malicious content and the network security protocols should be maintained strictly. Secure Configuration: Applying security patches to all the existing applications would prove to be very useful as with this, the network layout can be kept secure. Applying security patches helps the application or system from any recent threat so it becomes very useful for the company to update their application on a monthly basis so as to secure their systems (Arora, Parashar Transforming, 2013). Monitoring: The Company should try to monitor everything that is related to cloud services as this is the place where the company will store all their data. That is why they need to keep a close look on the networks to see if anyone is trying to gain access without permission or if there is any virus, malware or anything like that which can steal information or can seriously damage the system (Kant Sharma, 2013). Incident Management: The Company should set up an incident management system where all the incidents regarding network issues will be registered. If the security officials find anything suspicious, then they can report it to the management and necessary steps are taken according to the registered complaint (Hashem et al, 2015). SoftArc Engineerings BCP in adopting the Hybrid Cloud approach There are multiple factors for which the SoftArcs can do a great deal of change if they use Hybrid Cloud System. The first is the Business Continuity and it can be described as something that it is not something where all the data gets backed up or replicating the content over the cloud. It basically means that data is still accessible over the cloud (Garg, Versteeg Buyya, 2013). It needs to be planned before hand so that working can be done properly. Second is that there are more opportunity for innovation that is with hybrid cloud computing, the company is getting the most advanced form of cloud computing from which the company can do their work more efficiently and also it can be able to store backup if there is any technical fault or even due to some natural disaster (Hashem et al, 2015). The third is the Scalability and this can help the company by scaling down the specific workloads and implementing these automation rules over the cloud provides the ability to scale resources up and down. It also helps in optimizing the environment that can help for better performance and efficiency. Points to be considered by SoftArc Remote Server Administration Remote Server Administration System mechanism helps in providing tools and also provides user interfaces that can be used for external cloud resource administrators so that they can configure and administer cloud based IT resources. The system can help in providing the user console while interfacing with underlying management system with the help of their APIs (Di Spaltro, Polvi Welliver, 2016). This helps any server to communicate remotely and they can share information. Resource Management System The Resource Management System can be useful when coordinating with IT resources with response the actions mainly performed by cloud consumers and providers. In the very core of this system lies the Virtual infrastructure manger that helps it in co-coordinating the server and this helps in creating virtual server instances (Bahrami Singhal, 2015). SLA Management System It is a management mechanism system that represents a varied range of commercially available cloud management products that features in administration, collection, storage and also helps runtime notification of SLA data (Hashizume et al., 2013) Steps involved in moving the current application to AWS cloud There are various steps that are involved in while moving the current application to AWS cloud. There are basically six steps through which it has to be passed through like: Cloud Assessment Phase: While having this phase, security and compliance assessment is being conducted and also the technical assessment is conducted. The officials should also try to identify the tools that need to build this (Wei et al., 2014). They should also try to migrate their licensed products and making of a plan and measure success. Proof of Concept Phase: Validating the technology and should try to test the existing software that is present in the cloud. Data Migration Phase: Understanding different storage options that are present in the AWS cloud. All fileservers should be migrated to Amazon S3 and MySQL to Amazon RDS. Application Migration Phase: Hybrid migration strategy made. Creating AMIs for every particular component (Wei et al., 2014). Leverage the Cloud Phase: Hardening the security is must and automat the elasticity and SDLC. It should also leverage multiple availability zones and should contain AWS services. Optimization Phase: Improving the efficiency and trying to implement advanced monitoring and telemetry. Should also re-engineer the application and should decompose all the relational databases. Critical Points and Issues Identifying the gaps that are present in between the current traditional legacy architecture and next generation cloud architecture. Mitigating the risk by validating critical pieces for the proposed architecture. They should also consider the security issues. Considering the location is also important It should be future proof Should be able to generate automated management backup. Conclusion From the above report it can be concluded that cloud computing is really important when it comes on business standards as they help in sharing of files and communication much easy. All the file sharing and communication takes place with full security so that no one can intercept in the middle. Also with cloud computing, efficient work is guaranteed as they can process huge data within very less time and that also from multiple systems. There are different cloud services which offer different functionalities. They should also try to implement network security and protocols so that they can keep all their files safe and intact. Reference Alamri, A., Ansari, W. S., Hassan, M. M., Hossain, M. S., Alelaiwi, A., Hossain, M. A. (2013). 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