Characteristics of Cloud Computing, Challenges, Features

 Characteristics and benefits  of Cloud Computing

As both commercially and technologically mature cloud computing services, companies will be easier to maximize their potential benefits. However, it is equally important to know what cloud computing is and what it does.

Basically following are characteristics of cloud computing

1. Resources Pooling

This means that the Cloud provider used a multi-leaner model to deliver the computing resources to various customers. There are various allocated and reassigned physical and virtual resources, which rely on customer demand. In general, the customer has no control or information about the location of the resources provided, but can choose location on a higher level of abstraction.

2. On-Demand Self-Service 

This is one of the main and useful advantages of Cloud Computing as the user can track server up times, capability and network storage on an ongoing basis. The user can also monitor computing functionalities with this feature.

3. Easy Maintenance

 The servers are managed easily and the downtime is small and there are no downtime except in some cases. Cloud Computing offers an update every time that increasingly enhances it. The updates are more system friendly and operate with patched bugs faster than the older ones. 

4. Large Network Access

 The user may use a device and an Internet connection to access the cloud data or upload it to the cloud from anywhere. Such capabilities can be accessed across the network and through the internet.

5. Availability

 The cloud capabilities can be changed and expanded according to the usage. This review helps the consumer to buy additional cloud storage for a very small price, if necessary.

6. Automatic System

 Cloud computing analyzes the data required automatically and supports a certain service level of measuring capabilities. It is possible to track, manage and report the usage. It provides both the host and the customer with accountability.

7. Economical

 It is a one-off investment since the company (host) is required to buy the storage, which can be made available to many companies, which save the host from monthly or annual costs. Only the amount spent on the basic maintenance and some additional costs are much smaller.

8. Security

 Cloud Security is one of cloud computing best features. It provides a snapshot of the data stored so that even if one of the servers is damaged, the data cannot get lost. The information is stored on the storage devices, which no other person can hack or use. The service of storage is fast and reliable.

9. Pay as you go

 Users only have to pay for the service or the space in cloud computing. No hidden or additional charge to be paid is liable to pay. The service is economical and space is often allocated free of charge.

10. Measured Service

 Cloud Computing resources that the company uses to monitor and record. This use of resources is analyzed by charge-per-use capabilities. This means that resource use can be measured and reported by the service provider, either on the virtual server instances running through the cloud. You will receive a models pay depending on the manufacturing company's actual consumption.

 Cloud Computing Challenges

Some common challenges are:

1. Data Protection

 Data Security is a crucial element that warrants scrutiny. Enterprises are reluctant to buy an assurance of business data security from vendors. They fear losing data to competition and the data confidentiality of consumers. 

In many instances, the actual storage location is not disclosed, adding onto the security concerns of enterprises. In the existing models, firewalls across data centers (owned by enterprises) protect this sensitive information. In the cloud model, Service providers are responsible for maintaining data security and enterprises would have to rely on them.

2. Data Recovery and Availability

All business applications have Service level agreements that are stringently followed. Operational teams play a key role in management of service level agreements and runtime governance of applications. In production environments, operational teams support

• Appropriate clustering and Fail over
•  Data Replication   
• System monitoring (Transactions monitoring, logs monitoring and others)
•  Maintenance (Runtime Governance)
•  Disaster recovery
•  Capacity and performance management

 If, any of the above mentioned services is under-served by a cloud provider, the damage & impact could be severe.

3. Management Capabilities

 Despite there being multiple cloud providers, the management of platform and infrastructure is still in its infancy. Features like „Auto-scaling‟ for example, are a crucial requirement for many enterprises. There is huge potential to improve on the scalability and load balancing features provided today.

4. Regulatory and Compliance Restrictions

 In some of the European countries, Government regulations do not allow customer's personal information and other sensitive information to be physically located outside the state or country. In order to meet such requirements, cloud providers need to setup a data center or a storage site exclusively within the country to comply with regulations. Having such an infrastructure may not always be feasible and is a big challenge for cloud providers.

FEATURES OF A CLOUD

Following are features of cloud computing

1. Self-service
2. Per-usage metered and billed
3. Elastic
4. Customizable

 SELF-SERVICE

Consumers of cloud computing services expect on-demand, nearly instant access to resources. To support this expectation, clouds must allow self-service access so that customers can request, customize, pay, and use services without intervention of human operators.

PER-USAGE METERING AND BILLING

• Cloud computing eliminates up-front commitment by users, allowing them to request and use only the necessary amount. Services must be priced on a short- term basis (e.g., by the hour), allowing users to release (and not pay for) resources as soon as they are not needed. For these reasons, clouds must implement features to allow efficient trading of service such as pricing, accounting, and billing. 
• Metering should be done accordingly for different types of service (e.g., storage, processing, and bandwidth) and usage promptly reported, thus providing greater transparency.

ELASTICITY

Cloud computing gives the illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand. Therefore users expect clouds to rapidly provide resources in any Quantity at any time. In particular, it is expected that the additional resources can be

•  Provisioned, possibly automatically, when an application load increases and
• Released when load decreases (scale up and down).

CUSTOMIZATION

In a multi-tenant cloud a great disparity between user needs is often the case. Thus, resources rented from the cloud must be highly customizable. In the case of infrastructure services, customization means allowing users to deploy specialized virtual appliances and to be given privileged (root) access to the virtual servers.

More Content from Cloud Computing: see below Table Content

Table of Contents

• 1.What is Cloud computing ? Principles?
• 2.Cloud Computing Models and Types of Cloud
• 3. Characteristics of Cloud Computing, Challenges, Features
• 4. Cloud Architecture , Servers, cloud storage Providers
• 5. Database used in Cloud computing
• 6. Information Security in Cloud Computing