Cloud Storage

One of earliest cloud computing offering was cloud storage. Even today cloud storage remains a popular solution. Cloud storage is a huge world.  Cloud storage is an ideal solution for an enterprise which wants to maintain files off-site or of-premise.

 Source of Picture 

Wikipedia describe Cloud stoarge as follows

Cloud storage is a model of networked computer data storage where data is stored on multiple virtual servers, generally hosted by third parties, rather than being hosted on dedicated servers. Hostingcompanies operate large data centers; and people who require their data to be hosted buy or lease storage capacity from them and use it for their storage needs. The data center operators, in the background, virtualize the resources according to the requirements of the customer and expose them as virtual servers, which the customers can themselves manage. Physically, the resource may span across multiple servers.

Cloud storage concerns 
Security, cost and data lock-in are the top issues in this field and are vendor-dependent. At present, Amazon S3 is the leading cloud storage provider. 

Grid computing Vs Cloud Computing

Grid computing is sometimes is equated with cloud computing. But they are different.  Grid computing applies the resources of numerous computers in a network to work on a single problem at he same time. This is usually done to address a scientific or technical problem.

Example: C-DAC Garuda

Example: SETI

A well-known example of this is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) @Home project. In this project, people all over the world allow the SETI project to share the unused cycles of their computers to search for signs of intelligence in thousands of hours of recorded radio data.

Example 3:

Another well-known grid is the World Community Grid-Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC; see www.worldcommunity grid.org). Here you can dedicate as much or as little of your idle CPU processing power as you choose to help conduct protein-folding experiments in effort to create better and more durable rice crops to feed the world’s hungry. I bet you didn’t know you could feed the needy with your computer.

Technical details:     

• Grid computing necessitates the use of software that can divide and then send out pieces of the program to thousands of computers. It can be done throughout the computers of an organization, or it can be done as a form of public collaboration.
• Sun Microsystems offers Grid Engine software that allows engineers at companies to pool the computer cycles on up to 80 workstations at a time.

Uses of Grid Computing:

      Grid computing is appealing for several reasons:

• It is cost-effective way to use a given amount of computer resources.
• It is way it solve problems that need a tremendous amount of computing power.
• The resources of several computers can be shared cooperatively, without one computer managing the other.

 How does cloud and grid computing compare:

So, what do grid computing and cloud computing have to do with one another? Not much directly, as they function in fundamentally different ways. In grid computing, a large project is divided among multiple computers to make use of their resources. Cloud computing does just the opposite. It allows multiple smaller applications to run at the same time.

Components of Cloud computing

Client:

Clients are the devices that the end users interact with to manage their information on the cloud. A Cloud client consists of computer hardware and or computer software that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or that is specifically designed for delivery of cloud service.. Examples include certain computers, phones and other devices, operating systems and browsers. Client generally fall into the following category

• Mobile: mobile devices include PDA’s or smart phones such as Blackberry, windows mobile smart phone or iPhone
• Thin:  Clients are computers that do not have internal hard drives, but rather let the servers do all the work, but then display the information
• Thick:  This type of client is a regular computer, using a web browser like explorer or firebox..

Data Centre

The data centre is actual physical set of cloud computing infrastructure. It is the collection of servers where applications to which user subscribe (such as Gmail or similar) is housed. It could be a large room inside the premise or a room full of servers on the other side of the world that user access via the Internet. A growing trend in the cloud computing world is virtualizing the servers. Due to virtualization, software can be installed allowing multiple instances of virtual servers to be used. This makes it possible to have half a dozen virtual servers running on a physical server.

Distributed servers

In a cloud computing environment, a user can be anywhere and access applications globally. To serve users with applications, servers are located in geographically dispersed locations. However, user will be able to distinguish between servers and find out which server is serving them. Having severs located all over places gives service provider more flexibility in options and security. For instance, service providers such as Amazon and Google, have their cloud infrastructure in servers all over the world. If something goes wrong with severs in a given site, causing a failure, the services would still be accessed through another site. In addition, additional hardware can be installed in any site and made part of its cloud infrastructure.

Cloud Clients

Cloud Client:

Clients are the devices that the end users interact with to manage their information on the cloud. A Cloud client consists of computer hardware and or computer software that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or that is specifically designed for delivery of cloud service.. Examples include certain computers, phones and other devices, operating systems and browsers. Client generally fall into the following category

• Mobile: mobile devices include PDA’s or smart phones such as Blackberry, windows mobile smart phone or iPhone
• Thin:  Clients are computers that do not have internal hard drives, but rather let the servers do all the work, but then display the information
• Thick:  This type of client is a regular computer, using a web browser like explorer or firebox..

  Image source: Internet

 Thin clients are becoming increasingly popular due to their low cost, feature richness and effect on the environment. Certain benefits due to using thin client are

• Lower hardware cost:  Thin clients are cheaper than thick clients because they don’t contain as much hardware. They also have longer usage life and upgrading cycle.
• Lower IT investment: Thin clients are managed at the server and there are fewer points of failure
• Security: Since the processing happens on the server and there is no hard drive, there is less chance of a virus/malware invading the device. In addition, since thin client don’t work without a server, there is less chance of them being physically stolen
• Data security: Since the data is stored on the server, there is less chance for data to be lost if the client malfunctions/crashes or is stolen
• Less power consumption: Thin clients are economical in their power consumption. This translates into paying less for power or air-conditioning. ( a contribution towards green computing)
• Ease of repair or replacement: If a think client fails or dies, it is easy to replace. The device is simply swapped out and the user’s desktop returns exactly as it was before the crash
• Less noise:  Since thin client donot have a hard disk, there won’t be any spinning of hard drive, less heat is generated and quieter fans can be used on thin client.