Question

Question 2: (5 Marks)

An increasing number of organizations in industry and business adopt cloud systems. Answer the following questions regarding cloud computing:

• List and describe the main characteristics of cloud computing systems.
• Discuss key enabling technologies in cloud computing systems.
• Discuss different ways for cloud service providers to maximize their revenues.

• Characterize the three cloud computing models using suitable examples.

Question 3: (5 Marks)

Evaluate the Cloud computing security mechanisms in terms of:

1. Encryption (using both Symmetric and Asymmetric Encryption)
2. Hashing
3. Digital Signature
4. PKI
5. IAM

6. SSO

Question 4: (5 Marks)

There is various storage mechanism used for storing, retrieving and updating enormous amount of data on cloud. Evaluate and explain the enterprise cloud storage solutions with respect to:

1. Storage Systems: Components and Architecture
2. RAID and its usage in Cloud Computing environment
3. Types of Cloud Storage Systems
4. Storage Area Network (SAN)
5. Network Attached Storage (NAS)
6. Business Continuity and Storage Security
7. Data Replication
8. Data Backup

Answer 1

Ans 2 a) The five main characteristics of cloud computing systems are given below:

• On-demand self-service: That use when needed
• Broad network access: That is Ubiquitous
• Multi-tenancy and resource pooling: That is sharing of resources
• Rapid elasticity and scalability : Deploy only the amount of resources needed at a time
• Measured service: Pay for what you use

b)  The five key enabling technologies in cloud computing systems are given below:

1. Client server using Application Control Interfaces
2. Server Virtualization : Allows platform independence sort of scenario.
3. Aggregation of computers into server based data centers: I.e high availability of computing resources
4. Storage technologies supporting logical shards: Replication and safety of data
5. Network virtualization

c) The three different ways for cloud service providers to maximize their revenues:

• Development : Here the revenue comes from subscriptions paid by the customers.These also testing a new market for development.
• Reselling : Using a pre-developed service or a cloud-based application- if it works really well. Then it can be ported to an on-premises solution thus bringing is a large possibility of prospective consumers.These also testing a new market for deployment.
• Hosting: Server hardware is very expensive thus cloud computing is marketed as a good solution for  disaster recovery solutions for customer data and profits are made as per subscription or dynamic virtual resource renting approach

d) The characteristics of three cloud computing models using suitable examples is given below:

• IAAS: This provides virtualised computing resources over cloud i.e over the internet. Here the cloud provider will host the infrastructure components which are traditionally present in an on-premises data center, hardware,servers etc. For example: Google Compute Engine, Linode
• PAAS: This usually provides a platform as a service which allows the customers to develop, run, and manage applications. The users do not have to undergo the the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure which is typically associated with developing and launching an app if they are using a PAAS. Examples are AWS Elastik beanstalk, Apache Stratos
• SAAS:In this model model the customer is  provided with access to application software which is often referred to as "on-demand software". For example Google Drive, PayPal etc

Ans.3 Encryption : In Symmetric similar keys are used both at sender and receiver side whereas in Asymmetric two keys are used i.e public and private keys which makes it more secured. Encryption is necessary for privacy of critical data in cloud computing paradigm.

Hashing: This is used to enable security in the process of message transmission. Especially when the message is intended for a particular recipient only by using a formula which generates the hash(mapping code), which is in turn used to protect the security of the transmission against tampering.

Digital Signature: This is an authentication mechanism which is basically a mathematical scheme used for verifying the authenticity of digital messages . These can be literal messages, passed documents, protocol conversations etc.

Public Key Infrastructure: PKI allows users(who are over the Internet, public networks, internal networks or cloud) to engage in secure communication. This involves securing data exchange and money exchange as well. This is achieved by public and private cryptographic key pairs. These pairs are issued by a certificate authority.

IAM: This stands for Identity and Access Management.Through IAM policy the cloud security mechanisms verify whether any user access requests are valid or not and whether to either grant or deny permission to protected company materials.

Single Sign On: SSO is a session and user authentication service. It is used to permits a user to use one set(that is the same one set) of login credentials (which can be for example name and password) to access multiple applications over the cloud.