Project 3: Cloud Provider Evaluation
Step 1: Research Networking and Auxiliary Services in the Cloud
The executives at BallotOnline have been impressed with your research on cloud computing thus far. While there are a variety of cloud providers, BallotOnline is considering using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, two of the top providers in the market. BallotOnline's executives want you to help determine which would be the best provider for the organization.
You will start with learning about internet networking basics and cloud networking. You will also research many cloud services that cloud providers make available to their customers to help them take full advantage of cloud service and deployment models.
Project 3: Cloud Provider Evaluation
Step 2: Research Cloud Trends, Best Practices, and Migration Issues
The cloud computing revolution is redefining ways that companies of all sizes use information technology. The cloud landscape shifts rapidly, and current trends reflect this rapid pace of change. You likely got an idea about this in the last step when you conducted research on cloud architecture. Now, continue gathering information for your final report by assessing:
• issues outside the company, such as emerging issues in the industry, regulatory changes, and general trends in cloud computing to gain an understanding of how these issues may influence BallotOnline's decisions;
• best practices for cloud implementation and assess whether BallotOnline can benefit from these;
• cloud migration strategies for the application and data, since BallotOnline is moving an existing web application to the cloud, making sure that the application is configured properly for the system architecture of your cloud deployment; and
• IT change management techniques that could help BallotOnline make this transition.
In the Discussion: Cloud Trends and Migration Issues forum, post your findings and discuss them with your colleagues.
Project 3: Cloud Provider Evaluation
Step 3: Research Typical Architectures of Cloud Deployments
In the previous step, you considered best practices and trends in the cloud industry. Next, you will have to look at the kinds of architectures needed for cloud.
Because most elements of cloud deployments are implemented in a virtualized environment controlled by software, the degree of freedom in defining your deployment of cloud reference models is unprecedented. You can define the number of virtual servers required and the configuration, and even change them dynamically as needed. You can also define your virtual local area networks (LANs) and subnets, and place servers in them to implement network security requirements.
The basic cloud deployment components are cloud consumer, cloud provider, and cloud carrier, with cloud brokers and auditor as possible additions.
Typical cloud architectures of cloud deployments vary from single server (suitable for proof-of-concept engagements) and multiserver architectures with various servers carrying different software components and occupying different security zones, to geographically dispersed deployments to achieve high availability, resilience, and speed of delivery. There are several issues to consider when selecting a server architecture, including cost, scalability, performance, and use of management.
For this step, research the typical architectures of cloud deployments and begin to consider what might be a good fit for BallotOnline. Discuss your findings and thoughts with your colleagues in the Discussion: Cloud Architectures forum.