Question

VideoDev Ltd is a video and production development company which works for clients across Australia and New Zealand. The company is considering moving some of its computer infrastructure into the Cloud. The VideoDev Board is contemplating this move as a way to increase the company’s flexibility and responsiveness, as well as to achieve some savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure. VideoDev has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 100 video production, engineering and support staff that work on different projects for clients in Australia and New Zealand. They have been advised that a move to using a Cloud based infrastructure would be an advantage to them. VideoDev have a number of application servers in their Sydney and Melbourne datacentres that provide video processing capabilities for their staff. These servers are quite heavily customised and run reasonably heavy workloads while doing video processing. There is often a considerable queue of jobs waiting to be processed, which causes backlogs in getting jobs completed on time. The Board hopes that a move to a cloud based operation may help to relieve these backlogs. Another of VideoDev’s initial projects is to provide all their staff with a Standard Desktop Operating Environment (SDOE) on their desktop. This would include providing a standard desktop to any device that their staff may be using, as well as access to office automation, such as email, word processing, spreadsheet capabilities, as well as online storage for their files. The Board want the SDOE to be available on any device that their staff use, whether they are in the office, at home, or deployed at a customer’s office in the field. VideoDev is considering the use of either Amazon WorkSpaces (https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/) or Windows Virtual Desktop (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/services/virtual-desktop/) as a replacement for their existing desktop environment. Your task is to: Prepare a PowerPoint briefing for the VideoDev board. Your briefing should: Explain the Cloud Computing to the Board: What are the main cloud computing concepts that the Board should understand before committing to move to the Cloud? (10 marks) and, Why you think that a move to the Cloud could be good for VideoDev (10 marks); Explain how you think that VideoDev could move their video processing to the cloud. You will need to discuss: Explain the differences between the service models IaaS and PaaS (10 marks) What type of service model you would recommend? (10 marks) What are the advantages of, and the issues with, the service model that you recommended for VideoDev’s video processing? (10 marks) What other types of architectural patterns could be used in this deployment? (20 marks) How that move would assist in removing backlogs? (10 marks) Which would provide the best SDOE for VideoDev – Amazon WorkSpaces or Windows Virtual Desktop? Briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each possible SDOE (10 marks) Briefly discuss how the SDOE could be delivered to a staff members laptop (10 marks).

Answer 1

Already answered this before. Providing the same answer below.

1) Cloud refers to a method or technology where various resources across various platforms are provided in a data resilient , scalable ,persistent and fault tolerant fashion. The services are provided to multiple customers and across multiple geos through the internet.

some of the basic concepts would include the following:

SAAS: Software As A Service is something that is used by the end users directly. What generally used to happen previously was that a customer would buy a disk or a CD-ROM and install various devices on their system. SAAS provides a way of software delivery for the end user to buy software and their license online over the internet  and thus ommiting the need of physical discs to get the software. The subscription of SAP concur or DocuSign that you buy is an example of this type of service.

PASS: Platform as a Service are used by the developers to build their software (develop), deploy the developed software , test it for bugs and thus helps i maintaining the entire development cycle in a clean fashion.  It allows the customer to develop, run and maintain their software without the difficulty of having to maintain the infrastructure themselves. Google app engine which is widely used for deployment of services and software is an example of PASS.

IAAS: Infrastructure as a service are used by the system architects to build a system from scratch. It involves the virtual-machines , resource architectures, discs, subnets, keyvaults and many other things which is used to build a resilient architecture. Amazons EC2 (Electronic cloud compute) is an example.

There is also DASS (desktop as a service) which provides the view of a desktop or a system remotely over the internet. Citrix Reciever is one such service

2) There are various advantages of moving over to the cloud:

• It provides an easy method to build a system in a bottom-up fashion.
• It provides easy method to build an infrastructure and an easy gateway for maintenance of the infrastructure.
• I helps in building a resilient system.
• Easy to deploy the microservices
• Easy to develop and test the microservices
• Easy to build a fault tolerant service
• Easy to build a scaleble services
• Easy to get rid of single point of failures

3) IaaS and PaaS comparision (already being mentioned in the first questions):

• IaaS refers to Infrastructure as a service whereas PaaS refers to platform as service
• IaaS are used by the system architects to build a system architecture whereas PaaS is used by the developers to build, deploy and test their softwares.
• IaaS requires you to take care of the Operating system, Middle ware and Runtime whereas in PasS this is taken care by the service provider.
• In PaaS you cannot use the language and framework of your choice whereas IaaS provides this facilities.
• While some of customers may want to use Legacy software and services The IaaS may not at all time provide the flexibility to use these legacy services. PasS is very flexible in this manner.

4) The Most valid recommendation would be to use the IaaS method because of the following reasons:

• Easy to Develop a wide range of infrastructure .
• Video apps and services uses some data driven protocols and include event driven system design models and hence can be better suited if the whole system/ architecture is build form the scratch.
• It is scalable and hence hardware can be purchased dynamically based on the consumption. Scale up would be easy as the customer base starts to inflate.
• It comes with a high degree of flexibility and gives complete control over the infrastructure.
• Videos and other such application makes use of multimedia driven networks and protocols. Such infra will be really easy to create and deploy in IaaS method.
• If you are building a small software , you are a startup or a small company or a company which is freshly trying out their hands with the cloud services it is very easy to use the IaaS method as it is very flexible and scalable and hence easy to maintain.