FEDERATED CLOUD: A DEVELOPMENT IN CLOUD COMPUTING AND A SOLUTION TO EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

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1 International Journal of Computer Engineering and Applications, Volume VIII, Issue II, November 14 FEDERATED CLOUD: A DEVELOPMENT IN CLOUD COMPUTING AND A SOLUTION TO EDUCATIONAL NEEDS Saju Mathew 1, Dr. T. Anuradha 2 1 Department of Information Technology, Al Khawarizmi International College, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E 2 Associate Professor, Head Department of Computer Science, Dravidian University, Kuppam, India ABSTRACT: In today s fast moving life, everything is developing at a very high pace. Individuals, organizations, corporate sector, education institution have no time to waste and want to grab every opportunity of development. In the present scenario our social life is totally under the control of booming technology such as smart phone, latest gadgets, computers etc. Though the technology has made our life simple sometimes it becomes very difficult to effort such technology. Mostly business organizations, education institutions, health centers are the place where large number of resources are required which puts an overhead on the budget. To avoid such overhead on the budget a new booming technology can be introduced called as cloud computing. The development of cloud computing can be considered as an alternative option than using the traditional computing methods. Presently cloud computing is focusing on the latest Internet technologies such as blogs, web tops, Google Docs, wikis etc, The main objective of cloud computing is to reduce the cost and expenses for client by providing proper service to them. Sometimes due to over demand of the customer the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) may face problem in scalability and security issues. To overcome such issues all the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) can be clubbed together and termed as Federated Cloud (FC), which can be useful in all the sectors especially in education institutes and universities. The main objective of paper is to propose the federated cloud, its advantages, challenges, and solution to the challenges found in federated cloud. Keywords: Organization, technology, cloud computing, Internet, CSP (Cloud Service Provider). [1] INTRODUCTION In 1969 Leonard Kleinrock [1] said computer networks are its infancy, but as they grow up and become sophisticated we will probably see the spread of computer utilities like the present utilities such as electric, telephone and will provide the service to the entire country. Today computing has become the public utility and cloud computing is one such booming example. The computing utilities had played a major role in providing the service that has brought a huge transformation. Presently when all the developing sectors are busy in their future investment and in improving technology, computing services can be made available on demand as any other utility 18

2 Federated Cloud: A Development In Cloud Computing And A Solution To Educational Needs services. The client can access any required services from any location without knowing where the service is hosted, without bothering about the maintenance difficulties, investment for new computing resources infrastructure, platforms etc. All the services can be accessed through Internet as Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) basis. This type of model where the services can be availed on demand is termed as cloud computing [2]. Due to PAYGO facility reduced cost and 24*7 availability of services has attracted all the major sectors that are playing an important role in increasing the economy of the country. The paper is divided into following sections. Section 2 discuss the current approaches towards cloud computing, section 3 list the challenges of cloud computing, section 4 introduces a new cloud federated cloud, section 4.1 and 4.2 list the advantages and challenges of federated cloud respectively while section 5 gives a brief solution to the challenges of federated cloud. [2] CURRENT APPROACH TOWARED CLOUD COMPUTING The development of cloud computing or new web services is one of the promising developments in the computing sectors which have given a great relief to all the organization. The major cloud service such as Amazon [3], Microsoft [4], Google [5], and Salesforce [6] are expanding their services in all areas such as business, social networking, education etc, by providing all the required and demanded resources for their clients. There are many cloud services available but the most services that the client demands or required are [7]; a. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service): This helps in eliminating the requirement for installing and running the application on the client s computer and worrying about their maintenance. b. PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service): service providers can provide the clients with their required application platform and makes them relief from the complexity of hardware and software worries. c. IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service): the service provider can provide the infrastructure to the clients either locally or globally as per their requirements. d. CaaS (Computing-as-a-Service): providers offer access to raw computing power on virtual server such as Amazon, EC2. e. TaaS (Testing-as-a-Service): the provider can help the organization by providing static or dynamic on demand testing facility over the clouds as a result the organization can reduce their cost of software testing. The following figure 1 shows different cloud services. 19

3 International Journal of Computer Engineering and Applications, Volume VIII, Issue II, November 14 TaaS SaaS Cloud Service Provider PaaS CaaS IaaS Figure1: Different Cloud Services In the present time all the educational institutions wants to improve their quality of infrastructure, resources, and the volume of data but they all are facing many challenges. Few of them are [7]; a. Cost: to invest every time on the developing technology that puts an extra overhead on the annual budget. b. Flexibility: to increase the scalability in resources, infrastructure statically or dynamically. c. Accessibility: to access all the available data without losing its sensitivity and with full confidence. The main focus of all the educational institutions and universities is to reduce the increasing cost that they are spending on the growing requirements if IT infrastructure, platforms, installed software s on the physical campus. Cloud computing can be one best solution to solve all these difficulties. [3] CHALLENGES OF CLOUD COMPUTING Cloud computing can be considered as - a. One stop solution for all the educational institutions, universities and other organizations. b. Next generation power in providing the service to the clients on demand. But cloud computing offers many challenges such as 1. Scalability issues: as the number of clients and their usage service increases it becomes very difficult for the service provider to handle the scalability issue. 2. Exchange of services among cloud provider: presently it is difficult for two different cloud service providers to exchange their services. As a result only limited number of 20

4 Federated Cloud: A Development In Cloud Computing And A Solution To Educational Needs cloud service providers is available with limited competition and clients always have to depend only on one service provider. 3. Service management and Agreement: due to the lack of proper service management and SLA (Service Level Agreement) it becomes difficult for the service providers to manage their daily services to the clients and organizations. 4. Security issue: it is one of the major issue which needs to addressed properly 5. Lack of confidence: due to lack of security measures many organizations show lack of confidence in subscribing the services from CSP (Cloud Service Provider). If the above mentioned challenges are addressed properly then many organization will come forward and make use of the services provided by CSP (Cloud Service Provider). [4] FEDERATED CLOUD In the current time every educational universities and institutes wants to prove themselves by investing more to improve their infrastructure, technology, the learning resources, software, hardware etc. But the most important challenge all of them face is cost. To overcome such situation and to facilitate all the educational universities with on-demand delivery of IT services, infrastructure, computing resources at metered price can be achieved by next generation model of cloud called as federated cloud [8]. Federated cloud is the next generation cloud computing model where independent CSP (Cloud Service Provider) can be clubbed together to form a federation and to create a single large cloud called federated cloud. The main objective of federated cloud is to develop and to improve the technological abilities between the different cloud service providers so that they can fulfill all the on-demand requirements of the educational institutes and universities. All the service provider of the federation can share their available resources upon the agreed price and provide the quality service to the universities and institutes. Figure 2 shows federated cloud where different CSP (Cloud Service Provider) are brought under one cloud and different universities are connected to single cloud. Figure 2: Federated Cloud 21

5 International Journal of Computer Engineering and Applications, Volume VIII, Issue II, November 14 [4.1] ADVANTAGES OF FEDERATED CLOUD By bringing all the independent cloud service providers under one federation can have many advantages such as; a. Due to the formation of federated cloud and inter-operability between the clouds can provide a variety of computing services to the clients. b. It encourages the competition and innovation between the different service providers. c. Federated cloud opens the new way for the small or medium level service providers to come under the federation. d. Due to the development of federated cloud, the workload between the service providers can be shared. e. All the service providers in the federation can share their own local preferences. [4.2] CHALLENGES OF FEDERATED CLOUD Federated cloud can provide the client with best opportunity to choose the variety of services provided by the provider [9] [10]. But it faces many challenges such as a. Lack of business service management and SLA (Service Level Agreement) between the service providers in the federated cloud. b. Regular monitoring of all the system component and services is necessary in the federated cloud. c. Due to the complicated and uncertainty in the behavior of resources and services it become difficult to map the services to the required resources. d. Due to the integration and inter-operability of services in the cloud it can cause problem for authentication and authorization of service used. e. To regularly monitor the security policies f. Selecting the best cloud service form the federated cloud can depend on few parameters such as i. Cost ii. Quality of service iii. Consistent behavior iv. Independent of location of different components such as data centers. [5] SOLUTION TO FEDERATED CLOUD Educational institutes and universities require different types of computing resources and services time to time which can be easily obtained by the federated cloud. Since different CSP (Cloud Service Provider) in the federation have different types of services, resources and price; 22

6 Federated Cloud: A Development In Cloud Computing And A Solution To Educational Needs a. It is very necessary for the universities to make a proper legal agreement i.e. SLA (Service Level Agreement) between them before using the services. b. The federated cloud should be scalable to satisfy all the growing demands and requirements of all educational universities. [5.1] SLA (SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT) It is one of an important element of cloud computing which needs to be understood properly before starting any services. It is a document that identifies all the required services for an educational universities or an organization. It describes; a. All the services that will be provided to educational universities b. It identifies the educational universities objectives based on which it tries to define the boundaries or the constraint of the service c. It identifies the agreed service goal, its operating practices and reporting policies. d. It should clearly mention all the charges of the services that an educational university wants to avail. Following are the major factors that should be considered to frame a good SLA (Service Level Agreement); a. Organizations Objective Organization should clearly state the reason for using the cloud services before using. b. Level of Responsibilities Organization should clearly mention the level of responsibilities between the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) and the user of the cloud. c. Disaster Recovery Before selecting the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) the organization or the user should make clear about the disaster recovery mechanism provided the service provider. d. Maintenance It is an important aspect for the organization or the user to know how the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) handles the maintenance task. e. Data Location In most cases the organization or the user does not know where their sensitive information is stored. Hence a clear idea should be given about the storage of data location of the organization or the user. f. Data Attacks Proper security should be developed to protect the data from the attacks and proper backup should be taken. g. Service Failure Proper plan should be developed to check the services offered by the provider without any failure. If any problem occurs then necessary actions should be taken. h. Jurisdiction It also an important aspect for both the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) and the organization to understand the local law before storing the data. 23

7 International Journal of Computer Engineering and Applications, Volume VIII, Issue II, November 14 i. Policies The organization should clearly understand all the policies of CSP (Cloud Service Provider) before selecting any service. [5.2] DYNAMIC SCALABILITY According to the growing demands of the universities federated cloud should be able to scale their requirements and demands automatically. When using the federated cloud this automated dynamic scalability can be achieved by elasticity rule [11]. Elasticity rule is a mechanism used to specify the dynamic capacity requirements of an application at deployment time. Elasticity rule follows the event driven condition approach. For example: If the client wants to change the storage service in such cases, storage service can be scaled up by increasing allocated storage to the component or the storage service can be scaled down by decreasing or removing the allocated storage to the component. As the demand of resources increases the federated cloud should be dynamically scalable, at the same time it should keep track of all the newly added services. The cloud management should continuously monitor all the demanded services, resources and newly added services and its capacity. As compared to traditional cloud computing which has different monitoring system due to its distributed in nature, federated cloud monitoring system can be more predictable. One solution is to make common protocol within the inter-cloud so as to have good interoperability between the clouds and can provide a quality services to the valuable clients. [6] CONCLUSION Cloud computing is one of the recent development on the field of technology which by its computing power and offered services has attracted all the major sectors such as business, education, health etc. The traditional cloud computing are distributed in nature and does not have any interaction with other CSP (Cloud Service Provider). Due to the formation of federation and bringing all the CSP (Cloud Service Provider) under one federation has given a new opportunity for all sectors to access the services and required computing resources from the federated cloud, especially the universities were every time there is a demand of new resources and services. The universities can make SLA (Service Level Agreement) with the federation and can make use of all the offered services of cloud computing on PAYGO basis. At the same time as the demands of university increases the federation can add more service providers to the federation to satisfy their demand. Development of federated cloud can surely be one solution to all working sectors by providing the organizations with variety of services and making organization free of worries. 24

8 Federated Cloud: A Development In Cloud Computing And A Solution To Educational Needs REFERENCES [1] R.M Fano, The MAC Systems: The Computer Utility Approach, IEEE Spectrum, Vol 2, p. 5644, January [2] Buyya. R, Yeo, C, Venugopal.S, Broberg. J, Brandic. I, Cloud computing and Emerging IT Platforms Vision, Hype and Reality for Delivering Computing as the 5ht Utitlity, Future Generation Computer Systems 25(6), (2009). [3] Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2), [4] Windows Azure Platform, [5] Google App Engine, [6] Salesforce.com, Application Development with Force.com s cloud computing platform, [7] Saju Mathew, Implementation of Cloud Computing in Education A Revolution, International Journal of Computer Theory and Engineering, vol.4, No.3, June 2012 [8] D. Linthicum, The case for the hybrid cloud, Infoworld cloud computing, March [9] Rajan. R, Coordinated Resources Provisioning in Federated Grids, Ph.D Thesis, The University of Melbourne, Australia [10] Rajan. R, Liu. A, Autonomic cloud service Aggregation, CRC Smart Service Report. [11] C.Chapman, W.Emmerich, F.G Marquez, S. Clayman and A. Galis, Software architecture definition for on demand cloud provisioning, in HPDC 10, Proceedings of the 19 th ACM International symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing, pp 61-72, [12] The Reservoir seed Team. Reservoir An ICT Infrastructure for Reliable and Effective Delivery of Services as Utilities, IBM Research Report, H-0262 (February 2008). [13] P.Bhoj, S.Singhal and S. Chutani, SLA Management in Federated Environments, Proceedings of the 6 th IFIP/IEEE International symposium on Integrated Network Management, Boston; Wiley-IEEE Press, Hoboken, NJ, 1999,pp