UNIT 5

Fundamentals of Cloud Platform

5.1. Commercial cloud computing Infrastructures.

Cloud Computing which is one of the demanding technology of current scenario and which has been proved as
a revolutionary technology trend for businesses of all sizes. It manages a broad and complex infrastructure setup to
provide cloud services and resources to the customers. Cloud Infrastructure which comes under the backend part of
cloud architecture represents the hardware and software component such as server, storage, networking, management
software, deployment software and virtualization software etc. In backend, cloud infrastructure enables the complete
cloud computing system.

Why Cloud Computing Infrastructure :

Cloud computing refers to providing on demand services to the customer anywhere and anytime irrespective of
everything where the cloud infrastructure represents the one who activates the complete cloud computing system. Cloud
infrastructure has more capabilities of providing the same services as the physical infrastructure to the customers. It is
available for private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud systems with low cost, greater flexibility and scalability.

Cloud infrastructure components :

Different components of cloud infrastructure support the computing requirements of a cloud computing model. Cloud
infrastructure has number of key components but not limited to only server, software, network and storage devices. Still
cloud infrastructure is categorized into three parts in general i.e.
1. Computing
2. Networking
3. Storage
The most important point is that cloud infrastructure should have some basic infrastructural constraints like transparency,
scalability, security and intelligent monitoring etc.
The below figure represents components of cloud infrastructure

1. Hypervisor :
Hypervisor is a firmware or a low-level program which is a key to enable virtualization. It is used to divide and allocate
cloud resources between several customers. As it monitors and manages cloud services/resources that’s why hypervisor
is called as VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor) or (Virtual Machine Manager).
2. Management Software :
Management software helps in maintaining and configuring the infrastructure. Cloud management software monitors
and optimizes resources, data, applications and services.
3. Deployment Software :
Deployment software helps in deploying and integrating the application on the cloud. So, typically it helps in building
a virtual computing environment.
4. Network :
It is one of the key components of cloud infrastructure which is responsible for connecting cloud services over the
internet. For the transmission of data and resources externally and internally network is must require.
5. Server :
Server which represents the computing portion of the cloud infrastructure is responsible for managing and delivering
cloud services for various services and partners, maintaining security etc.
6. Storage :
Storage represents the storage facility which is provided to different organizations for storing and managing data. It
provides a facility of extracting another resource if one of the resources fails as it keeps many copies of storage.
Along with this, virtualization is also considered as one of important component of cloud infrastructure. Because it
abstracts the available data storage and computing power away from the actual hardware and the users interact with their
cloud infrastructure through GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Infrastructural Constraints
Fundamental constraints that cloud infrastructure should implement are shown in the following diagram:

Transparency: Virtualization is the key to share resources in cloud environment. But it is not possible to satisfy the
demand with single resource or server. Therefore, there must be transparency in resources, load balancing and
application, so that we can scale them on demand.

Scalability: Scaling up an application delivery solution is not that easy as scaling up an application because it involves
configuration overhead or even re-architecting the network. So, application delivery solution is need to be scalable which
will require the virtual infrastructure such that resource can be provisioned and de-provisioned easily.

Intelligent Monitoring: To achieve transparency and scalability, application solution delivery will need to be capable
of intelligent monitoring.

Security: The mega data centre in the cloud should be securely architected. Also the control node, an entry point in
mega data centre, also needs to be secure.

5.2. Amazon Web Services (AWS)

What is Amazon Web Service or AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform offered by Amazon. It
provides a wide range of on-demand services like computing power, storage, and databases,
allowing businesses to scale and manage their IT resources efficiently. AWS offers services
such as EC2 for virtual servers, S3 for scalable storage, RDS for managed databases, and
Lambda for serverless computing. By using AWS, companies can reduce infrastructure costs,
improve flexibility, and deploy applications globally with ease.
o AWS stands for Amazon Web Services.
o The AWS service is provided by the Amazon that uses distributed IT infrastructure to
provide different IT resources available on demand. It provides different services such
as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and packaged software
as a service (SaaS).
o Amazon launched AWS, a cloud computing platform to allow the different
organizations to take advantage of reliable IT infrastructure.

How AWS Works?

AWS comes up with its own network infrastructure on establishing the datacenters in
different regions mostly all over the world. Its global Infrastructure acts as a backbone for
operations and services provided by AWS. It facilitates the users on creating secure
environments using Amazon VPCs ( Virtual Private Clouds ). Essential services like Amazon
EC2 and Amazon S3 for utilizing the compute and storage service with elastic scaling. It
supports the dynamic scaling of the applications with the services such as Auto
Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing ( AWS ELB ). It provides a good user-friendly AWS
Management Console facilitating seamless configuration and management of AWS services to
the Users. Its Architecture ensures high availability , fault tolerance making AWS as a versatile
powerful Cloud Computing Platform.

Uses of AWS
o A small manufacturing organization uses their expertise to expand their business by
leaving their IT management to the AWS.
o A large enterprise spread across the globe can utilize the AWS to deliver the training to
the distributed workforce.
o An architecture consulting company can use AWS to get the high-compute rendering of
construction prototype.
o A media company can use the AWS to provide different types of content such as ebox
or audio files to the worldwide files.

Pay-As-You-Go
Based on the concept of Pay-As-You-Go, AWS provides the services to the customers.
AWS provides services to customers when required without any prior commitment or upfront
investment. Pay-As-You-Go enables the customers to procure services from AWS.
 o Computing
o Programming models
o Database storage
o Networking

Features of AWS

The following are the features of AWS:

o Flexibility
o Cost-effective
o Scalable and elastic
o Secure
o Experienced

1) Flexibility
o The difference between AWS and traditional IT models is flexibility.
o The traditional models used to deliver IT solutions that require large investments in a
new architecture, programming languages, and operating system. Although these
investments are valuable, it takes time to adopt new technologies and can also slow
down your business.
o The flexibility of AWS allows us to choose which programming models, languages, and
operating systems are better suited for their project, so we do not have to learn new skills
to adopt new technologies.
 o Flexibility means that migrating legacy applications to the cloud is easy, and cost-
effective. Instead of re-writing the applications to adopt new technologies, you just need
to move the applications to the cloud and tap into advanced computing capabilities.
o Building applications in aws are like building applications using existing hardware
resources.
o The larger organizations run in a hybrid mode, i.e., some pieces of the application run
in their data center, and other portions of the application run in the cloud.
o The flexibility of aws is a great asset for organizations to deliver the product with
updated technology in time, and overall enhancing the productivity.
2) Cost-effective
o Cost is one of the most important factors that need to be considered in delivering IT
solutions.
o For example, developing and deploying an application can incur a low cost, but after
successful deployment, there is a need for hardware and bandwidth. Owing our own
infrastructure can incur considerable costs, such as power, cooling, real estate, and staff.
o The cloud provides on-demand IT infrastructure that lets you consume the resources
what you actually need. In aws, you are not limited to a set amount of resources such as
storage, bandwidth or computing resources as it is very difficult to predict the
requirements of every resource. Therefore, we can say that the cloud provides flexibility
by maintaining the right balance of resources.
o AWS provides no upfront investment, long-term commitment, or minimum spend.
o You can scale up or scale down as the demand for resources increases or decreases
respectively.
o An aws allows you to access the resources more instantly. It has the ability to respond
the changes more quickly, and no matter whether the changes are large or small, means
that we can take new opportunities to meet the business challenges that could increase
the revenue, and reduce the cost.
3) Scalable and elastic
o In a traditional IT organization, scalability and elasticity were calculated with
investment and infrastructure while in a cloud, scalability and elasticity provide savings
and improved ROI (Return On Investment).
o Scalability in aws has the ability to scale the computing resources up or down when
demand increases or decreases respectively.
o Elasticity in aws is defined as the distribution of incoming application traffic across
multiple targets such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, and Lambda
functions.
 o Elasticity load balancing and scalability automatically scale your AWS computing
resources to meet unexpected demand and scale down automatically when demand
decreases.
o The aws cloud is also useful for implementing short-term jobs, mission-critical jobs, and
the jobs repeated at the regular intervals.
4) Secure
o AWS provides a scalable cloud-computing platform that provides customers with end-
to-end security and end-to-end privacy.
o AWS incorporates the security into its services, and documents to describe how to use
the security features.
o AWS maintains confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data which is the
utmost importance of the aws.
Physical security: Amazon has many years of experience in designing, constructing, and
operating large-scale data centers. An aws infrastructure is incorporated in AWS controlled
data centers throughout the world. The data centers are physically secured to prevent
unauthorized access.
Secure services: Each service provided by the AWS cloud is secure.
Data privacy: A personal and business data can be encrypted to maintain data privacy.
5) Experienced
o The AWS cloud provides levels of scale, security, reliability, and privacy.
o AWS has built an infrastructure based on lessons learned from over sixteen years of
experience managing the multi-billion-dollar Amazon.com business.
o Amazon continues to benefit its customers by enhancing their infrastructure capabilities.
o Nowadays, Amazon has become a global web platform that serves millions of
customers, and AWS has been evolved since 2006, serving hundreds of thousands of
customers worldwide.

AWS Global Infrastructure

o AWS is a cloud computing platform which is globally available.
o Global infrastructure is a region around the world in which AWS is based. Global
infrastructure is a bunch of high-level IT services which is shown below:
o AWS is available in 19 regions, and 57 availability zones in December 2018 and 5 more
regions 15 more availability zones for 2019.
The following are the components that make up the AWS infrastructure:
 o Availability Zones
o Region
o Edge locations
o Regional Edge Caches

Availability zone as a Data Centre

o An availability zone is a facility that can be somewhere in a country or in a city. Inside
this facility, i.e., Data Centre, we can have multiple servers, switches, load balancing,
firewalls. The things which interact with the cloud sits inside the data centres.
o An availability zone can be a several data centres, but if they are close together, they are
counted as 1 availability zone.
Region
o A region is a geographical area. Each region consists of 2 more availability zones.
o A region is a collection of data centres which are completely isolated from other regions.
o A region consists of more than two availability zones connected to each other through
links.

o Availability zones are connected through redundant and isolated metro fibers.
Edge Locations
o Edge locations are the endpoints for AWS used for caching content.
 o Edge locations consist of CloudFront, Amazon's Content Delivery Network (CDN).
o Edge locations are more than regions. Currently, there are over 150 edge locations.
o Edge location is not a region but a small location that AWS have. It is used for caching
the content.
o Edge locations are mainly located in most of the major cities to distribute the content to
end users with reduced latency.
o For example, some user accesses your website from Singapore; then this request would
be redirected to the edge location closest to Singapore where cached data can be read.
Regional Edge Cache
o AWS announced a new type of edge location in November 2016, known as a Regional
Edge Cache.
o Regional Edge cache lies between CloudFront Origin servers and the edge locations.
o A regional edge cache has a large cache than an individual edge location.
o Data is removed from the cache at the edge location while the data is retained at the
Regional Edge Caches.
o When the user requests the data, then data is no longer available at the edge location.
Therefore, the edge location retrieves the cached data from the Regional edge cache
instead of the Origin servers that have high latency.

Top AWS Services

In the rapid revolution of Cloud Computing, AWS facilitates with wide variety of services
respect to the fields and needs. The following are the top AWS services that are in wide usage:
• Amazon EC2(Elastic Compute Cloud) : It provides the Scalable computing power via
cloud allowing the users to run applications and manage the workloads over their
remotely.
• Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service ): It offers scalable object Storage as a Service
with high durability for storing and retrieving any amount of data.
• AWS Lambda: It is a service in Serverless Architecture with Function as a Service
facilitating serverless computing i.e., running the code on response to the events, the
background environment management of servers is handled by aws automatically. It
helps the developers to completely focus on the logic of code build.
• Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service): This is an aws service that simplifies
the management of database providing high available relational databases in the cloud.
 • Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): It enables the users to create isolated networks
with option of public and private expose within the AWS cloud, providing safe and
adaptable configurations of their resources.
Advantages Of Amazon Web Services
• AWS allows you to easily scale your resources up or down as your needs change, helping you to save
money and ensure that your application always has the resources it needs.
• AWS provides a highly reliable and secure infrastructure, with multiple data centers and a commitment
to 99.99% availability for many of its services.
• AWS offers a wide range of services and tools that can be easily combined to build and deploy a variety
of applications, making it highly flexible.
• AWS offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing you to only pay for the resources you actually
use and avoid upfront costs and long-term commitments.

Disadvantages Of Amazon Web Services

• AWS can be complex, with a wide range of services and features that may be difficult to understand
and use, especially for new users.
• AWS can be expensive, especially if you have a high-traffic application or need to run multiple
services. Additionally, the cost of services can increase over time, so you need to regularly monitor
your spending.
• While AWS provides many security features and tools, securing your resources on AWS can still be
challenging, and you may need to implement additional security measures to meet your specific
requirements.
• AWS manages many aspects of the infrastructure, which can limit your control over certain parts of
your application and environment.

Applications Of AWS
The AWS services are using by both startup and MNC companies as per their usecase. The
startup companies are using overcome hardware infrasture cost and applications deployments
effectively with cost and performance. Whereas large scale companies are using AWS cloud
services for the management of their Infrastructure to completely focus on the development of
products widely. The following the Real-world industrial use-cases of AWS services:
• Netflix: The Large streaming gaint using AWS for the storage and scaing of the
applications for ensuring seamless content delivery with low latency without
interruptions to millions of users globally.
• Airbnb: By utilizing AWS, Airbnb manages the various workloads and provides
insurable and expandable infrastructure for its virtual marketplace and lodging offerings.
• NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: It takes the help of AWS services to handle and
analyze large-scale volumes of data related to vital scientific research missions and
space exploration.
 • Capital One: A financial Company that is utilizing AWS for its security and compliance
while delivering innovative banking services to its customers.

5.3. Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

What is Google Cloud Platform?

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services provided by
Google. It is a public cloud computing platform consisting of a variety of services like
compute, storage, networking, application development, Big Data, and more, which run on the
same cloud infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google
Search, Photos, Gmail and YouTube, etc.
The services of GCP can be accessed by software developers, cloud administrators and
IT professionals over the Internet or through a dedicated network connection.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services provided by
Google. It offers a wide range of services, including computing power, storage, databases,
machine learning, networking, and more, all delivered over the internet. GCP enables
businesses to build, deploy, and scale applications and services quickly and efficiently without
the need to invest in or manage physical infrastructure.
Starting from 1998 with the launch of Google Search. google has developed one of the
largest and most powerful IT Infrastructures in the world. Today, this infrastructure is used by
billions of users to use services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Photos, and Maps.
In 2008, Google decided to open its network and IT infrastructure to business customers,
taking an infrastructure that was initially developed for consumers’ applications to public
service and launching the Google Cloud platform.
All the services listed above are provided by Google, hence the name Google Cloud
Platform (GCP). Apart from these, there are many other services provided by GCP and many
concepts related to them that we are going to discuss in this article.

Regions and Zones

Let’s start at the finest grain level (i.e. the smallest or first step in the hierarchy), the Zone. A
zone is an area where Google Cloud Platform Resources like virtual machines or storage are
deployed.
For example,
when you launch a virtual machine in GCP using Compute Engine, it runs in a zone you
specify (suppose Europe-west2-a). Although people consider a zone as being sort of a GCP
Data Center, that’s not strictly accurate because a zone doesn’t always correspond to one
physical building. You can still visualize the zone that way, though.
Zones are grouped into regions which are independent geographic areas and much
larger than zones (for example- all zones shown above are grouped into a single region Europe-
west2) and you can choose what regions you want your GCP resources to be placed in. All the
zones within a neighbourhood have fast network connectivity among them. Locations within
regions usually have trip network latencies of under-five milliseconds.
As a part of developing a fault-tolerant application, you’ll need to spread your resources
across multiple zones in a region. That helps protect against unexpected failures. You can run
resources in different regions too. Lots of GCP customers do this, both to bring their
applications closer to users around the world, and also to guard against the loss of a whole
region, say, due to a natural disaster.
A few GCP Services supports deploying resources in what we call a multi-Region. For
example, Google Cloud Storage, lets you place data within the Europe Multi-Region. What
that means is that it is stored redundantly in a minimum of two different geographic locations,
separated by at least 160 kilometres within Europe. Previously, GCP had 15 regions. Visit
cloud.google.com to ascertain what the entire is up to today.

Why Google Cloud Platform?

Google Cloud Platform is known as one of the leading cloud providers in the IT field. The
services and features can be easily accessed and used by the software developers and users
with little technical knowledge. Google has been on top amongst its competitors, offering the
highly scalable and most reliable platform for building, testing and deploying the applications
in the real-time environment.
Apart from this, GCP was announced as the leading cloud platform in the Gartner's IaaS Magic
Quadrant in 2018. Gartner is one of the leading research and advisory company. Gartner
organized a campaign where Google Cloud Platform was compared with other cloud providers,
and GCP was selected as one of the top three providers in the market.
Most companies use data centres because of the availability of cost forecasting, hardware
certainty, and advanced control. However, they lack the necessary features to run and maintain
resources in the data centre. GCP, on the other side, is a fully-featured cloud platform that
includes:
o Capacity: Sufficient resources for easy scaling whenever required. Also, effective
management of those resources for optimum performance.
o Security: Multi-level security options to protect resources, such as assets, network and
OS -components.
 o Network Infrastructure: Number of physical, logistical, and human-resource-related
components, such as wiring, routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, etc.
o Support: Skilled professionals for installation, maintenance, and support.
o Bandwidth: Suitable amount of bandwidth for peak load.
o Facilities: Other infrastructure components, including physical equipment and power
resources.
Therefore, Google Cloud Platform is a viable option for businesses, especially when the
businesses require an extensive catalogue of services with global recognition.
How to Interact with Google Cloud Services?
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers three primary methods for interacting with its services
and resources:
1. Google Cloud Console
The Google Cloud Console is a web-based, graphical interface that allows you to manage and
configure your GCP projects and resources. You can either create a new project or select an
existing one to use resources within the project. The console provides an easy-to-navigate
dashboard to monitor and control various Google Cloud services.
2. Command-Line Interface (CLI)
For those who prefer command-line operations, Google Cloud provides the Cloud SDK, which
includes the cloud CLI. This tool allows you to manage GCP resources directly from a terminal
window. For example, to create a Compute Engine virtual machine (VM), you can use the
`cloud compute instances create` command. You can use the cloud CLI in two ways:
• Install it locally on your computer.
• Use Cloud Shell, a browser-based terminal environment accessible directly from the
Google Cloud Console, eliminating the need for local installation. Cloud Shell provides
features such as a built-in code editor, 5 GB of persistent storage, and pre-installed tools,
including the cloud CLI. It supports multiple programming languages like Java, Python,
Go, Node.js, and more.
3. Client Libraries
Google Cloud also offers client libraries that simplify resource management and application
development. These libraries expose APIs tailored to specific languages such as Python and
Node.js, allowing you to interact with GCP services more intuitively. Client libraries are
available for:
• App APIs for accessing services with less code and seamless integration with GCP.
• Admin APIs for managing resources, ideal for building automation tools.
Google Cloud Platform Services
Here are some of the services offered by Google Cloud Platform categorized by their
functionalities:

Cloud Computing
• Compute Engine: It is used to provision the virtual machine machines to deploy the
application with the need of your required ram, rom and security groups.
• Google Kubernetes Engine(GKE): Google cloud provide Kubernetes(GKE) as an
service where you can deploy the application and rest of the things like autoscaling and
load balancing will be taken care by the google cloud.
• App Engine: A scalable runtime environment, Google App Engine is mostly used to
run Web applications. These dynamic scales as demand change over time because of
Google’s vast computing infrastructure. Because it offers a secure execution
environment in addition to a number of services, App Engine makes it easier to develop
scalable and high-performance Web apps.
Storage
• Cloud Storage: You can store the data which is required to be highly available and
which is in large amount.
• Persistent Disk: Persistent disk is an storage disk which can be attached to the virtual
machine and can be reused for the another virtual machine.
• Cloud SQL: Cloud SQL is an fully managed service by the google cloud platform and
it offers services like MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server.
Networking
• Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): You can deploy your application in the private network
which can be achieved by the google cloud.
• Cloud Load Balancing: This is most important service in the google cloud which is
used to distribute the cloud across the multiple replicas of the applications.
• Cloud CDN: This is the service which will cache the content and delivers to the end
users with the help of edge locations.
Data analytics
• Big query: All organizations look for unlocking business insights from their data. But
it can be hard to scalable ingest, store, and analyse that data as it rapidly grows. Google’s
enterprise data warehouse called Big Query, was designed to make large-scale data
analysis accessible to everyone.
• Dataflow: It is the analysis of flow of data in control flow graph, i.e., the analysis that
determines the information regarding the definition and use of data in program. With the
help of this analysis, optimization can be done.
• Pub/Sub: Pub/sub Consider a scenario of synchronous message passing. You have two
components in your system that communicate with each other. Let’s call the sender and
receiver. The receiver asks for a service from the sender and the sender serves the request
and waits for an acknowledgment from the receiver. There is another receiver that
requests a service from the sender. The sender is blocked since it hasn’t yet received any
acknowledgment from the first receiver. The sender isn’t able to serve the second
receiver which can create problems. To solve this drawback, the Pub-Sub model was
introduced.
Machine learning
• Vertex AI Platform: As we know Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undergone
advancements throughout the years leading to a transformation of industries and
reshaping how businesses operate. The emergence of cloud-based AI platforms has
further accelerated this revolution enabling organizations to leverage the potential of AI.
• AI Platform Training: You can train the AI model with the help of AI Platform Training
in google cloud.
• AI Platform Prediction: You can make the predictions by using the your machine
learning models.
Productivity and collaboration
• Google Workspace: Most of us are familiar with various Google Workspace
products(also called G Suite) like Calendar, Drive, and Gmail, etc.
 • Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM): Identity Access Management is used
by the root user (administrator) of the organization. The users represent one person
within the organization, and the users can be grouped in that all the users will have the
same privileges to the services.
Compute Services
GCP offers a scalable range of computing services, such as:
o Google App Engine: It is a cloud computing platform that follows the concept of
Platform-as-a-Service to deploy PHP, Java and other software. It is also used to develop
and deploy web-based software in Google-managed data centers. The most significant
advantage of Google App Engine is its automatic scaling capability. This means that the
App Engine automatically allocates more resources for the application when there is an
increase in requests.
o Compute Engine: It is a cloud computing platform that follows the concept of
Infrastructure-as-a-Service to run Windows and Linux based virtual machines. It is an
essential component of GCP. It is designed on the same infrastructure used by Google
search engine, YouTube and other Google services.
o Kubernetes Engines: This computing service is responsible for offering a platform for
automatic deployment, scaling, and other operations of application containers across
clusters of hosts. The engine supports several container tools like a docker, etc.
Networking
GCP includes the following network services:
o VPC: VPC stands for Virtual Private Network. The primary function of VPC is to offer
a private network with routing, IP allocation, and network firewall policies. This will
help to create a secure environment for the application deployments.
o Cloud Load Balancing: As its name states, Cloud balancing is used to distribute
workload across different computing resources to balance the entire system
performance. This also results in cost-reduction. The process also helps in minimizing
the availability and maximizing the capability of the resources.
o Content Delivery Network: CDN is a geographically distributed network of proxy
servers and their data centres. The primary aim of using CDN is to provide maximum
performance to the users. Additionally, it also helps deliver high availability of resources
by equally distributing the related services to the end-users.
Big Data
GCP provides a variety of services related to big data; they are:
o Big Query: It is a fully managed data analysis service by Google. The primary aim of
Google Big Query service is to helps businesses to analyse Big Data. It offers a highly
 scalable data management option. This means Big Query allows users to perform ad-
hoc queries and share data insights across the web.
o Google Cloud Datastore: Google Cloud Datastore is a kind of datastore service that is
fully managed, schema-less, and non-relational. This service enables businesses to
perform automatic transactions and a rich set of queries. The main advantage of Google
Cloud Datastore is the capability of automatic scaling. This means that the service can
itself scale up and down, depending on the requirement of resources.
o Google Cloud Datapost: It is a very fast and easy to use big data service offered by
Google. It mainly helps in managing Hadoop and Spark services for distributed data
processing. The service allows users to create Hadoop or Spark clusters sized according
to the overall workload and can be accessed whenever users want them.
Security and Identity Management
GCP includes the following services related to Security and Identity management:
o Cloud Data Loss Prevention API: It is mainly designed to manage sensitive data. It
helps users manage sensitive data elements like credit card details, debit card details,
passport numbers, etc. It offers fast and scalable classification for sensitive data.
o Cloud IAM: It stands for Cloud Identity and Access Management. It is a framework
that contains rules and policies and validates the authentication of the users for accessing
the technology resources. That is why it is also known as Identity Management (IdM).
Management Tools
GCP includes the following services related to management tools:
o Google Stackdriver: Google Stackdriver service is primarily responsible for displaying
the overall performance and diagnostics information. This may include insights of data
monitoring, tracing, logging, error reporting, etc. The service also prompts an alert
notification to the public cloud users.
o Google Cloud Console App: It is a native mobile application powered by Google. The
primary aim of this service is to enable users to manage the core features of Google
Cloud services directly from their mobile devices anytime, anywhere. The primary
functions of this service are alerting, monitoring, and performing critical actions on
resources.
Cloud AI
When it comes to Cloud AI, GCP offers these services:
o Cloud Machine Learning Engine: It is another fully managed service that allows users
to create Machine Learning models. The service is mainly used for those ML models,
which are based on mainstream frameworks.
 o Cloud AutoML: It is the type of service that is based on Machine Learning. It helps
users to enter their data sets and gain access to quality trained pre-designed ML models.
The service works by following Google's transfer learning and Neural Architecture
Search method.
IoT (Internet of Things)
GCP contains the following IoT services:
Cloud IoT Core: It is one of the fully managed care services. It allows users to connect,
control, and ingest data from various devices that are securely connected to the Internet. This
allows other Google cloud services to analyse, process, collect and visualize IoT data in real-
time.
Cloud IoT Edge: The Edge computing service brings memory and other computing-power
resources near to the location where it is required.

Advantages of Google Cloud Platform

There are several advantages of using Google Cloud Platform, such as:
o Google Cloud Offers Quick and Easy Collaboration: Multiple users can access the
data and simultaneously contribute their information. This is possible because the data
is stored on the cloud servers, not on the user's personal computers.
o Higher Productivity with Continuous Development: Google is always working on
adding new features and functionalities to provide higher productivity to the customers.
Therefore, Google delivers frequent updates to its products and services.
o Less Disruption with Adopting New Features: Instead of pushing huge disruptive
updates of changes, Google provides small updates weekly. This helps users to
understand and adopt new features easily.
o Least or Minimal Data is stored on Vulnerable Devices: Google does not store data
on local devices unless a user explicitly tries to do it. This is because the data stored on
local devices may get compromised compared to the cloud's data.
o Users can access Google Cloud from Anywhere: The best thing is that a user can easily
access the information stored on Google cloud from anywhere because it is operated
through web-based applications.
o Google provides Maximum Security with its Robust Structure: Google hires leading
security professionals to protect user's data. Users get process-based and physical
security features made by Google.
o Users have Full Control over their Data: Users gain full control over services and the
data stored in Google Cloud. If a user does not want to use Google services any longer
and wants to delete the cloud data, it can be easily performed.
 o Google provides Higher Uptime and Reliability: Google uses several resources to
provide higher and reliable up-time servers. If a data centre is not working for technical
issues, the system will automatically communicate with the secondary centre without
interruption visible to users.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Google Cloud Platform

advantages of google cloud platform:
1. Good documentation: We are talking about many pages in total, including a reasonably
detailed API Reference guide.
2. Different storage classes for every necessity: Regional (frequent use), Nearline
(infrequent use), and Coldline (long-term storage).
3. High durability: This suggests that data survives even within the event of the
simultaneous loss of two disks.
4. Many regions available to store your data: North America, South America, Europe,
Asia, and Australia.
5. The “Console” tab within the documentation allows you to try for free of
charge different SDKs. It’s incredibly useful for developers
6. One of the simplest free layers within the industry. $300 free credit to start with any
GCP product during the primary year. Afterward, 5 GB of Storage to use forever without
any charges.
disadvantages of google cloud platform:
1. The support fee is sort of hefty: Around 150 USD per month for the foremost basic
service (Silver class).
2. Downloading data from Google Cloud Storage is expensive. 0, 12 USD per GB.
3. Google Cloud Platform web interface is somewhat confusing. Sometimes I am lost
while browsing around the menus.
4. Prices in both Microsoft Azure (around 0.018 USD per GB/month) or Backblaze B2
(about 0.005 USD per GB/month) are less than Google Cloud Storage.
5. It has a high pricing schema, almost like AWS S3, so it’s easy to urge unexpected
costs (e.g. number of requests, transfers, etc.).

5.4. Microsoft Azure (M. Azure)

What is Azure?
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform, just like Google has its Google Cloud and Amazon
has its Amazon Web Service or AWS.000. Generally, it is a platform through which we can
use Microsoft’s resources. For example, to set up a huge server, we will require huge
investment, effort, physical space, and so on. In such situations, Microsoft Azure comes to our
rescue. It will provide us with virtual machines, fast processing of data, analytical and
monitoring tools, and so on to make our work simpler. The pricing of Azure is also simpler
and more cost-effective. Popularly termed as “Pay As You Go”, which means how much you
use, pay only for that.

How does Microsoft Azure Work?

It is a private and public cloud platform that helps developers and IT professionals build
deploy and manage applications. It uses the technology known as virtualization. Virtualization
separates the tight coupling between the hardware and the operating system using an
abstraction layer called a hypervisor. Hypervisor emulates all the functions of a computer in a
virtual machine, it can run multiple virtual machines at the same time and each virtual machine
can run any operating system, such as Windows or Linux.
Azure takes this virtualization technique and repeats it on a massive scale in the data centre
owned by Microsoft. Each data centre has many racks filled with servers and each server
includes a hypervisor to run multiple virtual machines. The network switch provides
connectivity to all those servers.

Types of Azure Services

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform which offers the following types of services:
• Infrastructure as a service ( IaaS )
• Platform as a service (PaaS)
• Software as a service (SaaS)
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Virtual machines, storage, and networking will come under the category of
infrastructure as a service but the users have to do manually the build and deploy of the
applications. Azure will support a wide range of operating systems because of its Hyper-
hypervisor.
Platform as a service (PaaS)
Azure app service, Azure functions, and logic apps are some services that are offered by
Azure under the platform as a service. This service will provide autoscaling and load
balancing and also there will be a pre-configured environment for the application.

Software as a service (SaaS)

Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure Active Directory are some of the services
provided by Microsoft Azure under Software as a Service (SaaS) the complete application will
be managed by the Microsoft azure including deploying, scaling and load balancing.

What is Microsoft Azure Used For?

Following are the some the use cases that Microsoft Azure Used.
 • Deployment Of applications: You can develop and deploy the application in the azure
cloud by using the service called Azure App Service and Azure Functions after
deploying the applications end users can access it.
• Identity and Access Management: The application and data which is deployed and
stored in the Microsoft Azure can be secured with the help of Identity and Access
Management. It’s commonly used for single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and
identity governance.
• Data Storage and Databases: You can store the data in Microsoft azure in service like
blob storage for unstructured data, table storage for NoSQL data, file storage, and Azure
SQL Database for relational databases. The service can be scaled depending on the
amount of data we are getting.
• DevOps and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment
(CI/CD): Azure DevOps will provide some tools like including version control, build
automation, release management, and application monitoring.

How Azure can help in Business?

Azure can help our business in the following ways:
• Capital less: We don’t have to worry about the capital as Azure cuts out the high cost
of hardware. You simply pay as you go and enjoy a subscription-based model that’s kind
to your cash flow. Also, setting up an Azure account is very easy. You simply register in
Azure Portal and select your required subscription and get going.
• Less Operational Cost: Azure has a low operational cost because it runs on its servers
whose only job is to make the cloud functional and bug-free, it’s usually a whole lot
more reliable than your own, on-location server.
• Cost Effective: If we set up a server on our own, we need to hire a tech support team to
monitor them and make sure things are working fine. Also, there might be a situation
where the tech support team is taking too much time to solve the issue incurred in the
server. So, in this regard is way too pocket-friendly.
• Easy Back-Up and Recovery options: Azure keeps backups of all your valuable data.
In disaster situations, you can recover all your data in a single click without your
business getting affected. Cloud-based backup and recovery solutions save time, avoid
large up-front investments and roll up third-party expertise as part of the deal.
• Easy to implement: It is very easy to implement your business models in Azure. With
a couple of on-click activities, you are good to go. Even there are several tutorials to
make you learn and deploy faster.
• Better Security: Azure provides more security than local servers. Be carefree about
your critical data and business applications. As it stays safe in the Azure Cloud. Even,
 in natural disasters, where the resources can be harmed, Azure is a rescue. The cloud is
always on.
• Work from anywhere: Azure gives you the freedom to work from anywhere and
everywhere. It just requires a network connection and credentials. And with most serious
Azure cloud services offering mobile apps, you’re not restricted to which device you’ve
got to hand.
• Increased collaboration: With Azure, teams can access, edit and share documents
anytime, from anywhere. They can work and achieve future goals hand in hand. Another
advantage of Azure is that it preserves records of activity and data. Timestamps are one
example of Azure’s record-keeping. Timestamps improve team collaboration by
establishing transparency and increasing accountability.

What are the various Azure Services and How does Azure Work?
Following is some of the services Microsoft Azure offers:
• Compute: Includes Virtual Machines, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Functions for
serverless computing, Batch for containerized batch workloads, Service Fabric for
microservices and container orchestration, and Cloud Services for building cloud-based
apps and APIs.
• Networking: With Azure, you can use a variety of networking tools, like the Virtual
Network, which can connect to on-premise data centres; Load Balancer; Application
Gateway; VPN Gateway; Azure DNS for domain hosting, Content Delivery Network,
Traffic Manager, ExpressRoute dedicated private network fibre connections; and
Network Watcher monitoring and diagnostics
• Storage: Includes Blob, Queue, File, and Disk Storage, as well as a Data Lake Store,
Backup, and Site Recovery, among others.
• Web + Mobile: Creating Web + Mobile applications is very easy as it includes several
services for building and deploying applications.
• Containers: Azure has a property that includes Container Service, which
supports Kubernetes, DC/OS or Docker Swarm, and Container Registry, as well as tools
for microservices.
• Databases: Azure also included several SQL-based databases and related tools.
• Data + Analytics: Azure has some big data tools like HDInsight for Hadoop Spark, R
Server, HBase, and Storm clusters
• AI + Cognitive Services: With Azure developing applications with artificial
intelligence capabilities, like the Computer Vision API, Face API, Bing Web Search,
Video Indexer, and Language Understanding Intelligent.
 • Internet of Things: Includes IoT Hub and IoT Edge services that can be combined with
a variety of machine learning, analytics, and communications services.
• Security + Identity: Includes Security Centre, Azure Active Directory, Key
Vault, and Multi-Factor Authentication Services.
• Developer Tools: Includes cloud development services like Visual Studio Team
Services, Azure DevTest Labs, HockeyApp mobile app deployment and monitoring,
Xamarin cross-platform mobile development, and more.

What is Microsoft Azure Architecture?

Microsoft Azure, a well-known cloud computing platform, provides users with the tools
to design, deploy and manage numerous applications and services. Various products include
machine learning, mobile application development, and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions,
making it venerable for almost all application or service types. The Azure platform can work
from PCs, laptops, smartphones, and tablets, and supports many programming languages,
including HTML5, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and C#.
Along with application hosting, Microsoft Azure is also a safe place to store information where
users can store files online and access them from anywhere. Commonly used to host
applications including email and social media, it can store any kind of data from documents to
images to videos.
Microsoft also operates many physical data centres globally. IT infrastructure, such as server
racks and network connectivity, is necessary for enterprises and organizations to run their IT
requirements. The key technique in this infrastructure is virtualization, which reduces excess
physical hardware by dynamically scaling resources required, depending on the demand. This
is key to cloud computing because it allows the software to run on any server within a data
centre.
Azure’s foundation is envisioned by SDN principles. Due to the demand from the users,
Microsoft has been continually enhancing Azure’s network by installing several new servers,
hardware virtualization technologies, and new applications. Continuous evolvement of such
services calls for a constant enhancement in the already deployed network hardware and
software, thereby affecting the configuration and performance of the overall system. This
implies that the management of such complex network topology is increasingly important for
effectual scaling and resource management.
After establishing the emphasis on technology and architecture, the application’s technical
design is a natural progression. Each application is self-standing, but the following resources
can help in the process of construction:
• Reference Architectures: All reference architectures are designed for growth and
changes which every vendor must have these days. You can easily find one reference
architecture that accommodates the number of people in your team and the requirements
that your project entails. One if the remarkable goads of these architectures is that they
enable the user to start building from where they are comfortable, given the type of client
they are dealing with. Each reference architecture also includes implementation details
that are necessary for leveraging the architecture. Recommended architectures undergo
the sponsorship from the vendors in order to actualize their usage.
• Design Principles: It is important to appreciate the principles of design that are inherent
in the various perspectives. For example, in the context of the high level design
processes, there are principles to policy development that may be valuable, such as,
constraints based design principles. In contrast, alignment-based design principles may
be appropriate in low-level design processes. These principles should always be used as
a source of information in the course of carrying out the design phase of the system.
• Design Patterns: Cloud design patterns represent solutions that cloud providers use to
enhance the reliability and scalability of their services. These patterns consist of best
practices, guidelines, and rules that encapsulate effective strategies for cloud system
design. By leveraging these patterns, you can create a more robust and efficient cloud
architecture.

Features of Azure
Azure offers a comprehensive array of features designed to enhance data protection and
application management:
• Data Protection: Azure ensures the security of your data through various methods,
including replication, snapshots, and encryption. These options allow for data protection
across multiple regions globally, providing an added layer of security against natural
disasters, cyberattacks, or hardware failures. By storing data in various data centers
worldwide, Azure guarantees that your information remains safe, even if one location
experiences an incident.
• Azure Site Recovery: This feature gives you full control over data replication
processes, allowing you to define the level of detail and metrics to monitor. You can
customize the replication schedule based on your business requirements, ensuring your
data remains secure and accessible.
• Development Flexibility: Azure supports a wide range of capabilities for building,
deploying, and managing applications that can run on any device at any time. Users can
choose their preferred programming languages and frameworks, enabling horizontal
scaling by adding servers or distributing the load across multiple servers.
• Open-Source Tools: Azure provides numerous tools and services rooted in open-source
technology, facilitating monitoring, logging, and troubleshooting. These resources
enable you to keep track of your application’s health and address any issues that may
arise.
• App Services and Mobile Management: Azure offers hosting through App Services,
allowing you to quickly deploy updates and new features to your applications without
downtime. It also supports mobile device management (MDM) for apps tailored to
mobile users.
• Active Directory Integration: Azure Active Directory (AAD) enhances security by
connecting user profiles with applications, enabling seamless sign-in experiences.
Through Active Directory synchronization, user accounts, groups, and permissions are
automatically managed between on-premises Active Directory and Azure Active
Directory, streamlining user management and policy enforcement within your
organization.

Azure Security Best Practices

The Azure Security documentation serves as a valuable resource for security recommendations
and best practices. Here are some key tips to help you enhance your security posture:
• Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Use Azure Security Center’s RBAC
to manage permissions effectively. Familiarize yourself with the five built-in roles
(Subscription Owner, Resource Group Owner, Subscription Contributor, Resource
Group Contributor, and Reader) and two specific security roles (Security Administrator
and Security Reader), each with different levels of access.
 • Regularly Monitor the Azure Security Center Dashboard: Keep an eye on the
dashboard for a centralized view of your Azure resources, which also provides
actionable recommendations.
• Establish Security Policies: Implement security policies to prevent misuse of
resources. Azure can automatically generate a security policy tailored to your
subscription.
• Upgrade to Azure Security Center Standard: By upgrading your subscription, you
can access advanced features such as identifying and resolving security vulnerabilities,
leveraging analytics for threat detection, and enabling quick responses to security
incidents.
• Utilize Azure Key Vault: Store your keys securely in Azure Key Vault, which is
specifically designed to manage secrets like passwords and database credentials.
• Implement a Web Application Firewall: Protect your applications from common
threats and vulnerabilities by installing a web application firewall.
• Enable Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Use MFA, particularly for
administrative accounts, to add an extra layer of security.
• Encrypt Virtual Hard Disks: Ensure the confidentiality of your data by encrypting
virtual hard disk files.
• Connect Azure Virtual Machines via Virtual Networks: Enhance security by placing
Azure VMs on virtual networks when connecting to other networked devices.
• Leverage Azure DDoS Protection: Utilize Azure’s Distributed Denial of Service
(DDoS) services to safeguard against and mitigate DDoS attacks.

5.5. Sales Force

What is Salesforce?
o Salesforce is a SaaS or Software as a Service, which means there is no need to install
the software or server to work on. Users can simply sign-up in Salesforce.com and can
 start running the business instantly.

o It was founded by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank
Dominguez in 1999.
o Salesforce was started as a CRM software, but today it provides various products and
software solutions to users and developers.
o Since Salesforce is cloud-based software, hence it does not require any IT professional
to set up anything.
o It provides one of the best ways to connect with customers, business partners, and
clients over the single integrated environment. It allows the businesses to identify the
customer's requirements, address the problems easily, and provide the same solution in
the minimum timeframe.

Before going in deep with this tutorial, let's understand two basic concepts of
Salesforce, CRM and Cloud Computing.

CRM(Customer Relationship Management)

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, a software to manage all the
customer and company's interactions. It contains and manages all the customer-related
information such as Customer Name, Address, Phone Number, Email address, and other
business-related information. The software keeps all the interactions done with customers,
complaints registered by the customer, resolutions provided by the executive, and other
customer activities with the particular business or product.
It also allows us to track and manage the sales, marketing, and prospects given to customers.

Cloud-Computing
Cloud computing is a technology to store, manage, process, and access the internet instead
of a local server or computer hard drives.
With the help of cloud computing, an organization can save lots of cost to local storage of data,
maintenance of data, etc. The information over the Cloud can be accessed much efficiently and
from anywhere, with the help of the internet.
Using cloud computing instead of traditional storage helps users with lots of benefits such
as speed, cost-effectiveness, security, global access, etc.

Why choose Salesforce?

In the above section, we have learned about the Salesforce, but why should we choose it? What
are the benefits? So below are some points that explain the benefits of choosing Salesforce:

o The first benefit of choosing Salesforce is that we do not need to install any software to
build an application or run our business activities. We can focus on building the apps
instead of installing, setup, repairing, etc.
o Since it is the cloud-based CRM platform, any user can access it from anywhere using
the internet.
o Any new user or business start-up can choose Salesforce for building apps or run
business, as it is so affordable with lots of capabilities.
o One can easily integrate the Salesforce with any third-party applications, such as Gmail,
which is much easier than other CRM Software.
o It is the world's number 1 CRM software, as it is easy to use, fast to deploy any app, and
provide efficient outputs as per the requirements.
o The development cost is also very less.

Technologies used by the Salesforce

 o Apex: Salesforce has its own programming languages, knows as Apex. Hence to
become a salesforce developer, or to create a salesforce app, user must have a good
knowledge of Salesforce Apex.
o VisualForce: Visualforce is the framework introduced by the Salesforce, which enables
the developers to create the custom user interfaces that can work on the lighting
platform.
o Compiler: Salesforce contains its own complier to compile the Apex programs and
Visual Force Pages.

Companies using Salesforce

Today, there are multiple big brands, and new start-ups who are using the Salesforce platform
as CRM software and for other services. Below is the list of some popular companies that are
using Salesforce for their businesses:
1. HCL Technologies use Salesforce CRM for data entry to validate customer data.
2. Pizza Hut is providing the smart mobile experience to its customer using the marking
salesforce cloud.
3. L'Oreal builds a social network using the Salesforce, by which they can share any Hair
fashion-related plans or events to their stylist or customer.
4. American Express is using the Salesforce cloud since 2010, and now they can connect
to their employees together across the organization, or from anywhere.
5. Nikon Instrument opted for the Salesforce CRM for their business, but later, they also
started using the social network provided by the Chatter.
6. Comcast-Spectator uses the salesforce platform to manage the customer profiles that
help them identify the customer interest and market more efficiently.
7. Sony uses the Salesforce Service Cloud to connect with their customers. All customer
complaints are managed and taken care of with this to make the customers satisfied.
Other companies, such as Urban Ladder, InMobi, Paytm, Genesys, etc., use Salesforce
services for their business growth.

5.6. IBM Cloud

What is IBM Cloud?

IBM: International Business Machines
IBM stands for International Business Machines. It is a multinational
technology and consulting organization that is a trusted brand in the IT sector. Its
headquarters is in Armonk, New York, and its current CEO is Ginni Rometty. The
company manufactures computer hardware and software and offers infrastructure,
hosting, and consulting services. Its products can be divided into different
categories such as cloud, cognitive, data & analysis, IT infrastructure, etc. Its
services include Business, Mobility, networking, Resiliency services, security
services, technical support services etc. Furthermore, it also offers various
enterprise and business solutions.

IBM Cloud, an industry veteran, has a wide-ranging line of cloud

services that are intended to empower businesses in the present-day world. IBM
Cloud stands out from other cloud providers who prioritize public clouds first.
Consequently, this makes it easier for you to combine your on-premises
infrastructure with the cloud system into one cohesive unit thus enabling you to
have full control and flexibility over your IT environment. This hybrid
approach ensures seamless movement of applications and helps customers
leverage their existing IT investments.

Difference between Google Cloud Platform, AWS and Azure

Like Google cloud platform, AWS and Azure are the other popular cloud-based platforms.
However, there are differences amongst them. Some of the main differences between
GCP, AWS and Azure are tabulated below:

Google Cloud AWS Azure

It uses GCE (Google It uses virtual machines

AWS EC2 offers core
Compute Engine) for for computation
compute services.
computing purposes. purposes.

It uses a storage block

It uses Google Cloud Storage It uses Amazon S3 for bob that comprises
for storage purposes. storing the data. blocks for storing the
data.

It offers the lowest price to AWS pricing is generally Like AWS, Azure pricing
the customers to beat other keen to have inscrutable. structure is also difficult
cloud providers. The overall structure of to understand unless you
 granular pricing is a bit have considerable
complex. experience.

It uses Cloud Test labs for It uses a device farm for It uses DevTest labs for
App Testing purposes. App Testing purposes. App Testing purposes.

It uses Subnet as a virtual It uses VPC as a virtual It uses VNet as a virtual

network. network. Network.

It follows the Elastic It follows the Load-

It follows the Cloud Load
Load Balancing Balancer Application
Balancing configuration.
configuration. Gateway configuration.