An Overview of Cloud Computing

Christopher Curtin

About Me

• 19+ years in Technology• Background in Factory Automation,

Warehouse Management and Food Safety system development before Silverpop

• CTO of Silverpop• Silverpop is a leading marketing

automation and email marketing company

Cloud Computing

• What exactly is ‘cloud computing’?• Beats me• Most overused term since ‘dot com’• Ask 10 people, get 11 answers

Topics• Types of Clouds

– Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)– Platform as a Service (PaaS)– Software as a Service (SaaS)– Private– Hybrid

• Google Docs• Privacy and security• Return of the ISV?• Map Reduce/Hadoop• Thoughts for Architects

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)• Provides ‘raw iron’ VM for you to use• Pretty much a root login and total

control• ‘pay as you go’ – charged by hour

running and bandwidth/storage used• Amazon’s EC2 • Rackspace Cloud• Probably every co-lo provider

IaaS Benefits and Risks• Benefits– Do whatever you want on the machine– Build it however you want– ‘pay as you go’– Can deploy one server or 1000

• Risks– Same as benefits– Mostly credit card today– Not something you’d give to a business group– Authentication is not provided

IaaS – EC2

• Offers prebuild machine images ‘AMI’• Can build your own as well• Provides some infrastructure services

such as load balancing, basic monitoring, queuing, disk storage

• Biggest design challenge - storage

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

• Platforms provide you a container and set of services

• You code to the API, worrying about business logic, not infrastructure

• Microsoft’s Azure• Google’s AppEngine• SalesForce.com’s Force.com• EngineYard for Ruby

PaaS

• Very well defined ‘boxes’ to work in• Even when .net and Java containers

are provided, not all APIs and libraries are available

• No local disk• Hard (impossible?) to know how

many instances are running

PaaS Benefits and Risks

• Benefits– No need to worry about networking, load

balancers, Apache/IIS etc– Auto scaling is part of the application

• Risks– Same as Benefits– Authentication is not robust– Constraints – Credit Card payments

PaaS – Azure and AppEngine

• Basically provide Servlet/MVC containers

• Azure provides SQL Server• AppEngine provides JDO access to

BigTable-like database• Long running tasks not supported

(how to do reporting?)• No third party libraries, applications

etc to integrate into your solution

Software as a Service (SaaS)

• Traditional Web applications?• Business applications hosted by

others• Silverpop• SalesForce.com• Google Docs• Microsoft Live

SaaS Benefits and Risks

• Benefits– No IT costs– Department Level management– Support by Vendor

• Risks– Possibly no IT knowledge– Privacy, Security, data outside firewall– Integration challenges

SaaS Example: Silverpop

• Provide Lead Management and Marketing applications

• Marketing Departments lead RFP process, rarely see IT

• However, security is critical• Integrations are often ‘build and

forget’

Private Clouds

• Another really abused term• NOT the same as virtualization• Allows IaaS and PaaS inside your

firewall or in a controlled, dedicated third party

• Eucalyptus• 3Tera• IBM, Unisys, Sun, HP etc• Expect VMWare (SpringSource)

Private Clouds Benefits and Risks• Benefits– Total control– Provisioning– Reuse of existing capital systems– Easier integrations

• Risks– Not adopting ‘services’ part of solution– Capital costs over time

Private Clouds – 3Tera

• Tool to let you define machines as resources

• Build ‘applications’ drag and drop • Cloud can be internal, remote or both

3Tera Screenshot

Hybrids

• Amazon Virtual Private Cloud• 3Tera• Cloud Bursting– Build internal system for ‘normal’ load– Call up cloud resources for extreme

cases– Design architectures where some parts

are in the cloud and some local by default

Cloud Bursting Examples• IBM DB2 Workgroup for $3/hour– What could you do with 100 DB2 instances?

• Billing– Day to day use local apps– Spin up 100 EC2 instances to do a monthly

billing run

• Financial– Spin up 100 EC2 instances to close the books

monthly

• Development– Large unit test suites– Spin up 10 EC2 instances, parallel tests nightly

Google Docs

• Microsoft Live too (eventually)• Can be PaaS or SaaS• Online collaboration • Can also build simple applications

(forms)

Privacy and Security

• IaaS– Almost none by default– You must build it/manage it

• PaaS– Some by platform but often tied to Live

ID, Gmail login etc– SOME support integration with

LDAP/Active Directory– Critical to get this under control!

Privacy and Security 2

• SaaS– Audit the vendors– Penetration tests– IP restrictions

• Define rules for use of all 3• Amazon Virtual Private Cloud– “on your network”– Can use your infrastructure– Supposedly 100% VLAN’d

Return of the ISV?

• Remember the late 80’s and early 90’s?

• The guy from church or neighbor build dBase 3 apps for everyone?

• Corporate IT killed that by taking control of the desktop

• PaaS and SaaS will bring them back

ISV Continued

• If IT is seen as the bottleneck, users will go around you

• Access/Excel apps• A department manager could pay

someone to build an app and host it on Azure for a few thousand

• Paid monthly on a credit card, no capital, no IT traceability

Map Reduce/Hadoop

• Ever wonder how Google indexes the web?

• Map/Reduce is a framework for diving jobs into manageable pieces

• Then implementing the logic across many machines

Map/Reduce 2

• First step is to define the key for the data

• For example, words in a document• Or customer identifiers• Next step is to run logic on the rows

that match each key (Reduce)• Output is then combined into results

directory

Runtime Distribution © Concurrent 2009

Map/Reduce 3

• Don’t think about threading, scheduling, memory utilization

• Think about business logic• VERY different way of thinking about

solving a problem• A whole presentation by itself …

Product Architects

• How would I build my solution if I had lots of hardware on demand?

• What are the things we do infrequently but have dedicated hardware for?

• Learn about map/reduce for reporting, billing etc.

Product Company Architect (SaaS)• What things are we doing in ‘back

office’ that we only need once a week/month?

• What quick/dirty things are the non-production teams doing to do their jobs?

• Do I have the volume to support building my own infrastructure?

Enterprise Architects

• Know that your departments are going to the cloud with or without you

• Look at applicable use of all types of ‘cloud’ solutions: PaaS, IaaS, SaaS all have their place

• Think about internal/private clouds to make resource management easier

• Provide resources to answer/direct departments about PaaS/SaaS

AWSome Atlanta

• Meets Second Tuesday of the month at ATDC

• Started about Amazon’s services, but more general now

• http://www.meetup.com/awsomeatlanta/

Thank you

• Chris Curtin [email protected]• Twitter: @ChrisCurtin• SlideShare:

www.slideshare.com/chriscurtin• Silverpop:

http://www.silverpop.com/marketing-company/careers/index.html