v Intropedia:
“Cloud” computing – a relatively recent term, builds on decades of research in virtualization, distributed computing, utility computing, and more recently networking, web and software services. It implies a service oriented architecture, reduced information technology overhead for the end-user, great flexibility, reduced total cost of ownership, on-demand services and many other things. This paper discusses the concept of “cloud” computing, some of the issues it tries to address, related research topics, and a “cloud” implementation available today. “Cloud computing” is the next natural step in the evolution of on-demand information technology services and products. To a large extent, cloud computing will be based on virtualized resources.
v Features:
The concept of “cloud” computing, some of the issues it tries to address, related research topics, and a “cloud” implementation available today. Section 2 discusses concepts and components of “cloud” computing. Section 3 describes an implementation based on Virtual Computing Laboratory (VCL) technology. VCL has been in production use at NC State University since 2004, and is a suitable vehicle for dynamic implementation of almost any current “cloud” computing solution. Section 4 discusses “cloud”-related research and engineering challenges. Cloud computing, A key differentiating element of a successful information technology (IT) is its ability to become a true, valuable, and economical contributor to cyber infrastructure. “Cloud” computing embraces cyber infrastructure, and builds upon decades of research in virtualization, distributed computing, “grid computing”, utility computing, and, more recently, networking, web and software services. It implies a service oriented architecture, reduced information technology overhead for the end-user, greater flexibility, reduced total cost of ownership, on demand services and many other things.
v Developers:
Cyber infrastructure developers who are responsible for development and maintenance of the Cloud framework. They develop and integrate system hardware, storage, networks, interfaces, administration and management software, communications and scheduling algorithms, services authoring tools, workflow generation and resource access algorithms and software, and so on. They must be experts in specialized areas such as networks, computational hardware, storage, low level middleware, operating systems imaging, and similar. In addition to innovation and development of new “cloud” functionalities, they also are responsible for keeping the complexity of the framework away from the higher level users through judicious abstraction, layering and middleware. One of the lessons learned from, for example, “grid” computing efforts is that the complexity of the underlying infrastructure and middleware can be daunting, and, if exposed, can impact wider adoption of a solution.