Infrastructure as a Service

Prepared by Rajind Ruparathna

What is Infrastructure as a Service?

“Infrastructure as a Service, sometimes abbreviated as IaaS, contains the basic building blocks for cloud IT and typically provide access to networking features, computers (virtual or on dedicated hardware), and data storage space.” - Amazon (https://aws.amazon.com/types-of-cloud-computing/)

What is Infrastructure as a Service?

Delivery of a compute foundation,Servers,networking technology,storage, anddata center space as a service.

Includes the delivery ofoperating systems andvirtualization technologyto manage the resources.

Comparison of Service Models

Why do we need IaaS?

Why do we need IaaS?

• Where demand is very volatile – any time there are significant spikes and troughs in terms of demand on the infrastructure

• For new organizations without the capital to invest in hardware

• Where the organization is growing rapidly and scaling hardware would be problematic

Why do we need IaaS?

• Where there is pressure on the organization to limit capital expenditure and to move to operating expenditure

• For specific line of business, trial or temporary infrastructural needs

Essential Characteristics

Scalability & Elasticity

Availability & Reliability

Manageability & Interoperability

Performance & Optimization

Accessibility & Portability

Scalability & Elasticity

Scalability & Elasticity

Clients should be able to dynamically increase or decrease the amount of infrastructure resources in need.

Large amount of resources provisioning and deployment should be done in a short period of time, such as several hours or days.

System behavior should remain identical in small scale or large one.

How to approach scalability and elasticity in IaaS ?

For computation resources :Dynamically create or terminate virtual machines for clients

on demand.Integrate hypervisors among all physical machines to

collaboratively control and manage all virtual machines.

How to approach scalability and elasticity in IaaS ?

For storage resources :Dynamically allocate or de-allocate virtual storage space for

clients.Integrate all physical storage resources in the entire IaaS

systemOffer initial storage resources by thin provisioning technique.

How to approach scalability and elasticity in IaaS ?

For communication resources :Dynamically connect or disconnect the linking state of virtual

networks for clients on demand.Dynamically divide the network request flow to different

physical routers to maintain access bandwidth.

Availability & Reliability

Clients should be able to access computation resources without considering the possibility of hardware failure.

Data stored in IaaS cloud should be able to be retrieved when needed without considering any natural disaster damage.

Communication capability and capacity should be maintained without considering any physical equipment shortage.

How to approach availability and reliability in IaaS ?

For computation resources :Monitor each physical and virtual machine for any possible

failure.Regularly backup virtual machine system state for disaster

recovery.Migrate virtual machine among physical machines for

potential failure prevention.

How to approach availability and reliability in IaaS ?

For storage resources :Maintain data pieces replication among different physical

storage devices.Regularly backup virtual storage data to geographically

remote locations for disaster prevention.

For communication resources :Built redundant connection system to improve robustness.

Manageability & Interoperability

Clients should be able to fully control the virtualized infrastructure resources which allocated to them.

Virtualized resources can be allocated by means of system control automation process with pre-configured policy.

States of all virtualized resource should be fully under monitoring.Usage of infrastructure resources will be recorded and then billing

system will convert these information to user payment.

How to approach manageability and interoperability in IaaS ?

For computation resources :Provide basic virtual machine operations, such as creation,

termination, suspension, resumption and system snapshot.Monitor and record CPU and memory loading for each virtual

machine.

How to approach manageability and interoperability in IaaS ?

For storage resources :Monitor and record storage space usage and read/write data

access from user for each virtual storage resource.Automatic allocate/de-allocate physical storage according to

space utilization.

How to approach manageability and interoperability in IaaS ?

For communication resources :Monitor and record the network bandwidth consumption for each

virtual link.Automatically reroute the data path when computation and storage

are duplicated.

Performance & Optimization

Physical resources should be highly utilized among different clients.

Physical resources should form a large resource pool which provide high computing power through parallel processing.

Virtual infrastructure resources will be dynamically configured to an optimized deployment among physical resources.

How to approach performance and optimization in IaaS ?For computation resources :Deploy virtual machine with load balancing consideration.Live migrate virtual machines among physical ones to balance the

system loading.

For storage resources :Deploy virtual storage with hot spot access consideration.Live migrate virtual storage among physical ones with different

performance level.

How to approach performance and optimization in IaaS ?For communication resources :Consider network bandwidth loading when deploying virtual

machines and storage.Dynamically migrate virtual machines or storage to balance

network flow.

Accessibility & PortabilityClients should be able to control, manage and access

infrastructure resources in an easy way, such as the web-browser, without additional local software or hardware installation.

Provided infrastructure resources should be able to be reallocated or duplicated easily.

How to approach accessibility and portability in IaaS ?For computation resources :Cloud provider integrates virtual machine management and

access through web-based portal.Comply the virtual machine standard for portability.

For storage resources :Cloud provider integrates virtual storage management and access

through web-based portal.

How to approach accessibility and portability in IaaS ?For communication resources :Cloud provider integrates virtual network management and access

through web-based portal.

Deployment Models

Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third-party and may exist on premises or off premises.

Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (for example, mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third-party and may exist on premises or off premises.

Deployment Models

Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (for example, cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).

Deployment Models

Two dimensions are used to classify the various deployment models for cloud computing:

Where the service is running: On customer premises or in a service provider's data center.

Level of access: Shared or dedicated.

Deployment Models

Where IaaS May Not be the Best Option

• Where regulatory compliance makes the offshoring or outsourcing of data storage and processing difficult

• Where the highest levels of performance are required, and on-premise or dedicated hosted infrastructure has the capacity to meet the organization’s needs

References

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4633.what-is-infrastructure-as-a-service.aspx

https://aws.amazon.com/types-of-cloud-computing/

https://support.rackspace.com/white-paper/understanding-the-cloud-computing-stack-saas-paas-iaas/

www.just.edu.jo/~msalhammouri/cs754/slides/IaaS.pptx

All resources of the materials and pictures were partially retrieved from the Internet.