Processing, Management Concepts, and Cloud Computing
Chapter 4 Chapter 4 Refresher
Business support services (BSS) and operational support services (OSS) of cloud service management help enable automation.
4.13.1 Cloud Challenges
Cloud Computing is posed with multiple challenges in data and information han- dling. Some of the challenges are:
● Security and Privacy;
● Portability;
● Computing performance;
● Reliability and availability; and
● Interoperability.
Security and privacy—Security and privacy of the data is the biggest challenge posed on cloud computing specifically when the resources are shared and the data resides in the cloud service provider’s storage platform outside the corpo- rate firewall. Hacking would attack many clients even if only one site of the cloud service provider is attacked. This can be overcome by employing security applications and security hardware that tracks unusual activities across the server.
Portability—Portability is yet another challenge on cloud computing where the applications are to be easily migrated from one cloud computing platform to another without any lock-in period.
Computing performance—High network performance is required for data intensive applications on the cloud, which results in a high cost. Desired comput- ing performance cannot be met with low bandwidth.
Reliability and availability—The cloud computing platform has to be reliable and robust and provide round the clock service. Lack of round the clock services results in frequent outages, which reduce the reliability of the cloud service.
Interoperability—Interoperability is the ability of the system to provide ser- vices to the applications from other platforms.
2 A distributed file system disperses _______ among the machines of distrib- uted system.
A clients
B storage devices C servers D all of the above Answer: d
3 Teradata is a _________.
A shared-nothing architecture B shared-everything architecture
C distributed shared memory architecture D none of the above
Answer: a
4 The attributes of virtualization is/are ________.
A encapsulation B partitioning C isolation D all of the above Answer: d
5 The process of collecting, processing, manipulating, and managing the data to generate meaningful information to the end user is called _______.
A data acquisition B data Processing C data integration D data transformation Answer: b
6 The architecture sharing all the resources such as storage, memory, and processor is called _________
A shared-everything architecture B shared-nothing architecture C shared-disk architecture D none of the above Answer: a
7 The process of splitting up a larger task into multiple subtasks and executing them simultaneously to reduce the overall execution time is called _______.
A parallel computing B distributed computing
C both a and b D none of the above
8 _______ is/are the type/types of virtualization A Desktop virtualization
B Storage virtualization C Network virtualization D All of the above Answer: d
9 _______ is also called uniform memory access.
A Shared-nothing architecture B Symmetric multiprocessing
C Distributed shared memory architecture D Shared-everything architecture
Answer: b
10 _______ is used in log analysis where the data are collected over a time and analysis is performed.
A Batch processing B Real-time processing C Parallel processing D None of the above Answer: a
11 ______ refers to the applications that run on a distributed network and uses virtualized resources.
A Cloud computing B Distributed computing C Parallel computing D Data processing Answer: a
12 Which of the following concepts is related to sharing of resources?
A Abstraction B Virtualization C Reliability D Availability Answer: b
13 Which of the following is/are cloud deployment model/models?
A Public B Private C Hybrid
D All of the above Answer: d
14 Which of the following is/are cloud service model/models?
A IaaS B PaaS C SaaS
D All of the above Answer: d
15 A cloud architecture within an enterprise data center is called _____.
A public cloud B private cloud C hybrid cloud D none of the above Answer: b
16 Partitioning a normal server to behave as multiple servers is called ______.
A server splitting B server virtualization C server partitioning D none of the above Answer: b
17 Google is one of the types of cloud computing.
A True B False Answer: a
18 Amazon web service is a/an _____ type of cloud computing distribu- tion model.
A software as a service B infrastructure as a service C platform as a service D none of the above Answer: b
Conceptual Short Questions with Answers
1 What is data processing?
Data processing is defined as the process of collecting, processing, manipulating, and managing the data to generate meaningful information to the end user.
2 What are the types of data processing?
There are basically two different types of data processing, namely, centralized and distributed data processing. Centralized processing is a processing technique that requires minimal resources and is suitable for organizations with one centralized location of service. Distributed processing is a processing technique where data collection and processing are distributed across different physical locations. This type of processing overcomes the shortcomings of centralized data processing, which mandates data collection to be at one central location.
3 What is shared-everything architecture and what are its types?
Shared-everything architecture is a type of system architecture sharing all the resources such as storage, memory, and processor. Distributed shared memory and symmetric multiprocessing are the types of shared-everything architecture.
4 What is shared-nothing architecture?
Shared-nothing architecture is a type of distributed system architecture that has multiple systems interconnected to make the system scalable. Each system in the network is called a node and has its own dedicated memory, storage, and disks inde- pendent of other nodes in the network, thus making it a shared-nothing architecture.
5 What is batch processing?
Batch processing is a type of processing where series of jobs that are logically con- nected are executed sequentially or in parallel, and then the output of all the indi- vidual jobs are put together to give a final output. Batch processing is implemented by collecting the data in batches and processing them to produce the output, which can be the input for another process.
6 What is real-time data processing?
Real-time data processing involves processing a continual data flow producing the results. Here data are processed in-memory due to the requirement to analyze the data while it is streaming. Hence, data are stored on the disk after the data is being processed.
7 What is parallel computing?
Parallel computing is the process of splitting up a larger task into multiple subtasks and executing them simultaneously to reduce the overall execution time. The exe- cution of subtasks is carried out on multiple processors within a single machine.
8 What is distributed computing?
Distributed computing, similar to parallel computing, splits up larger tasks into subtasks, but the execution takes place in separate machines networked together forming a cluster.
9 What is virtualization? What is the advantage of virtualization in big data?
What are the attributes of virtualization?
Data virtualization is a technology where data can be accessed from a heterogene- ous environment treating it as a single logical entity. The main purpose of virtual- ization in big data is to provide a single point of access to the data aggregated from multiple sources. The attributes of virtualization are encapsulation, partitioning, and isolation.
10 What are the different types of virtualization?
The following are the types of virtualization:
● Server virtualization;
● Desktop virtualization;
● Network virtualization;
● Storage virtualization; and
● Application virtualization.
11 What are the benefits of cloud computing?
The major benefit of the cloud is that it offers resources in a cost-effective way by offering the liberty to the organizations to pay-as-you-go. Cloud computing has improved storage capacity tremendously and has made data gathering cheaper than ever making the organizations prefer buying more storage space than deciding on what data to delete. With cloud computing the resources can be scaled up according to the demand making it more flexible and cost effective. Cost effectiveness, ease of set-up, reliability, flexibility, and scalability are the benefits of cloud services.
12 What are the cloud computing types?
● Public cloud;
● Private cloud; and
● Hybrid cloud.
13 What is a public cloud?
In a public cloud, services are provided over the Internet by third-party vendors.
Resources such as storage are made available to the clients via the Internet. Clients are allowed to use the services on a pay-as-you-go model, which significantly reduces the cost. In a pay-as-you-go model the clients are required to pay only for the resources consumed. Advantages of public cloud are availability, reduced
investment, and reduced maintenance as all the maintenance activities including hardware and software are performed by the cloud service providers.
14 What is a private cloud?
A private cloud is also known as corporate cloud or internal cloud. These are owned exclusively by a single company with the control of maintaining its own data center.
The main purpose of private cloud is not to sell the service to external customers but to acquire the benefits of cloud architecture. Private clouds are comparatively more expensive than public clouds. In spite of the increased cost and maintenance of a private cloud, companies prefer a private cloud to address the concern regarding the security of the data and keep the assets within the firewall, which is lacking in a private cloud.
15 What is a hybrid cloud?
Hybrid clouds are a combination of the public and the private cloud where the advantages of both types of cloud environments are clubbed. A hybrid cloud uses third-party cloud service providers either fully or partially. A hybrid cloud has at least one public cloud and one private cloud. Hence, some resources are managed in-house and some are acquired from external sources. It is specifically beneficial during scheduled maintenance windows. It has increased flexibility of computing and is also capable of providing on-demand scalability.
16 What are the services offered by the cloud?
The cloud offers three different services, namely, SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
17 What is SaaS?
SaaS provides license to an application to a customer through subscription or in a pay-as-you-go basis on-demand. The software and data provided are shared securely simultaneously by multiple users. Some of the SaaS providers are sales- force.com, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM.
18 What is PaaS?
PaaS provides platform to the users to develop, run, and maintain their applica- tions. PaaS is accessed through a web browser by the users. The users will then be charged on pay-per-use basis. Some of the PaaS providers are Amazon, Google, AppFog, and Heroku.
19 What is Iaas?
IaaS provides consumers with computing resources, namely, servers, networking, data center space, and storage on pay-per-use and self-service basis. Rather than purchasing these computing resources, clients use them as an outsourced service
on-demand. The resources are provided to the users either as dedicated or shared (virtual) resources. Some of the IaaS providers are Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, Fujitsu, and Hewlett-Packard.