Cloud Technologies (Part-1)terms and definitions

Cloud Technology- “ Definition’s, Terms, Concepts & Commonly asked questions

What is Virtualization:

Any action or act that can create virtual version of something is called as Virtualization. The something can include various things like hardware, networking, storage,  or any other resources that can make believe an application to be making use of actual hardware, networking , storage etc.

What is KVM:

Kernel based virtual machine: It is an open source with ability to expose /dev/kvm interface.

Key points to remember-

1)     It does not provide any emulation but exposes the interface for emulation.

2)     Can support nested environment which means one can run virtual machines within virtual machines.

3)     It allows to over-commit more resources and use resources from other sources (which are not being used) dynamically.

4)     Highly scalable with security features.

5)     It is a Type 1 hypervisor and one of the choices available and widely used.

Q: How to create virtual machines and what are hypervisors?

 Virtual machines can be created by using hypervisors. Hypervisors helps in creating the abstraction and virtualization layer to separate everything we have on the hardware.

The machine on which hypervisor is installed is called as “Host OS” and any other OS running on top is known as “guest virtual machine”.

 We have different choices of hypervisors.

 Type 1 Hypervisor runs directly on the system hardware

 Some vendors offering’s for Type 1: VMWare (Esxi), KVM, Hyper-V, Oracle VM etc.

Type 2 Hypervisors are part of the OS and runs inside of an operating system of a physical host machine. These Hypervisor also acts as a “Management Console” for the virtual machines.

Some vendors offering’s for Type 2:  Oracle (Virtual Box), VMWare Workstation, Parallels Desktop etc..

Q: How to create and configure virtual machines.

 We have different choices to create and configure virtual machines via Citrix (Xen) , KVM, VMWare (Exsi), Virtual box , Hyper-V etc.

Q: What is Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

   Infrastructure as a service is a cloud computing, which can provide on-demand provide the following

      -Physical and virtual computing needs

     -Storage, Networks, Firewall, Load Balancing, Redundancies, etc

     -Support for all services which are running on top of the computing needs.

Q: Who provides Infrastructure as a service.

We have different choices to pick from Amazon EC2, Azure, Digital Ocean, Google Cloud Platform etc..

Each of above comes with all functionality that is needed which includes, auto-scaling, securing, automation, load balancing firewall, networking etc.

Q: What is OpenStack and how it is different?

Ans: With OpenStack one can offer cloud computing addressing the needs for both private and public clouds. The modular nature of the OpenStack gives ability to add specific features and functionality. OpenStack has various components to it, the most commonly used are below (not a complete list..)

Cinder for block storage

Nova for on demand compute resources

Neutron for networking as a service

Horizon for web-based user interface to manage OpenStack

Q: What is PaaS, and how it is related to IaaS

Ans: PaaS is cloud computing, where users can develop, run, and manage applications without worrying about underlying infrastructure needs, PaaS can be deployed on IaaS if needed, or it can be deployed independently on VM’s, baremetal , containers etc.

Q: Do we have any open source PaaS?

Ans: Class foundry, WSO2, OpenShift, Stackato, Alibaba, Cloudify are some open source PaaS.

We also have commercial providers like IBM, SAP, Pivotal etc..

Q: What is OpenShift:

Ans: Openshift is open source PaaS which uses Kubernetes underneath and it comes with 3 choices-

Microsoft Azure Redhat Openshift, OpenShift dedicated, OpenShift Container platform.

Q: What other benefits that OpenShift provides?

Ans: Since OpenShift uses Kubernetes we get all benefits that Kubernetes provides like scaling, security, persistent data storage, adding or removing the nodes from the cluster, etc..

Q: What is the role of containers and images.

Ans: We want our applications to run everywhere which can include pvt cloud, public cloud, data centers, laptops, VM’s, multiple hardware with different configurations etc.

To make above work we need container’s and some container technology for management.

Image: Image is something that contains our application that we have build and all it’s dependencies.

Containers: A running instance of the image is called as a container. We can have multiple containers of the same image. When a container is created from the image it is going to run on some hosts kernel and as a process on the host kernel.

VM’s: VM’s run on top of the hypervisors which makes them less efficient as compared to containers.

Q: What is IoT, and what role cloud technology can play in it.

Ans: IoT includes “Internet” and “Things”. Things can be anything that can provide something meaningful and help resolve some business problem. It can include devices, people, machines, sensors, or anything that can share data some ways, and make use of internet to give something meaningful. Where the processing of data actually gets processed makes the difference for the end users.

IoT will be applicable across all verticals of the industries bringing and resolving new unique cases and resolving many things via automation, which can also include serverless computing.