ANSWER KEY – IAE 1 – CLOUD COMPUTING

1. Define cloud computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computer system resources (e.g., servers, storage, databases,
networking, software, analytics) over the internet

“The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as a
"payper-use model for enabling available, convenient and on-demand network access to a
shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications
and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or
service provider interaction."

2. List any two advantages of distributed computing.

Distributed computers offer two key advantages:
Easy scalability: Just add more computers to expand the system.

Redundancy: Since many different machines are providing the same service, that service can
keep running even if one (or more) of the computers goes down.

3. Bring out the differences between private cloud and public cloud.

Public Cloud: Public clouds are owned and operated by third-party service providers who deliver
computing resources like servers and storage over the Internet.

Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are prime
examples. They offer scalability and flexibility, making them ideal for many businesses.

Private Cloud: A private cloud refers to cloud computing resources used exclusively by one
business or organization.

It can be hosted on-site or by a third-party provider, offering enhanced security and control,
which is crucial for industries with strict data regulations.

S.No. Public Cloud Private Cloud

1. When the computing infrastructure and When the computing infrastructure and the
resources are shared to the public via the resources are shared to the private network via
internet, it is known as a public cloud. the internet, it is known as a private cloud.
 2. A public cloud is like a multi-tenant in which A private cloud is like a single-tenant in which
the network is managed by your service the network is handled by the in-house team.
provider.

3. Here the data of several enterprises is Here the data of a single enterprise is stored.
stored.

4. It supports the activity performed over the It supports the activity performed over the
public network or internet. private network or internet.

5. The scalability is high in a public cloud. The scalability is limited in a private cloud.

6. Reliability is moderate here. Reliability is high here.

7. The security depends on the service It delivers a high class of security.

provider.

8. It is affordable as compared to the private It is expensive as compared to the public cloud.

cloud.

9. In the public cloud, the performance is low The performance is high in a private cloud.
to medium.

10. It covers the shared servers. It covers the devoted servers.

4. Define SOA.

SOA, or service-oriented architecture, defines a way to make software components reusable and
interoperable through service interface. is a method of software development that uses
software components called services to create business applications.
 5. Write the name of Web services tools
XML-RPC, UDDI, SOAP, and REST, Google Maps

6. a) Explain the evolution of cloud computing

Evolution of Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing has evolved from the Distributed system to the current technology. Cloud
computing has been used by all types of businesses, of different sizes and fields.

1. Distributed Systems
In the networks, different systems are connected. When they target to send the message from
different independent systems which are physically located in various places but are connected
through the network. Some examples of distributed systems are Ethernet which is a LAN
technology, Telecommunication network, and parallel processing. The Basic functions of the
distributed systems are −
• Resource Sharing − The Resources like data, hardware, and software can be shared
between them.
• Open-to-all − The software is designed and can be shared.
• Fault Detection − The error or failure in the system is detected and can be corrected.

2. Mainframe Computing
It was developed in the year 1951 and provides powerful features. Mainframe Computing is still
in existence due to its ability to deal with a large amount of data. For a company that needs to
access and share a vast amount of data then this computing is preferred. Among the four types
of computers, mainframe computer performs very fast and lengthy computations easily.
The type of services handled by them is bulk processing of data and exchanging large-sized
hardware. Apart from the performance, mainframe computing is very expensive.
3. Cluster Computing
In Cluster Computing, the computers are connected to make it a single computing. The tasks in
Cluster computing are performed concurrently by each computer also known as the nodes which
are connected to the network. So the activities performed by any single node are known to all
the nodes of the computing which may increase the performance, transparency, and processing
speed.
To eliminate the cost, cluster computing has come into existence. We can also resize the cluster
computing by removing or adding the nodes.
4. Grid Computing
It was introduced in the year 1990. As the computing structure includes different computers or
nodes, in this case, the different nodes are placed in different geographical places but are
connected to the same network using the internet.
The other computing methods seen so far, it has homogeneous nodes that are located in the
same place. But in this grid computing, the nodes are placed in different organizations. It
minimized the problems of cluster computing but the distance between the nodes raised a new
problem.
5. Web 2.0
This computing lets the users generate their content and collaborate with other people or share
the information using social media, for example, Facebook, Twitter, and Orkut. Web 2.0 is a
combination of the second-generation technology World Wide Web (WWW) along with the web
services and it is the computing type that is used today.
6. Virtualization
It came into existence 40 years back and it is becoming the current technique used in IT firms. It
employs a software layer over the hardware and using this it provides the customer with cloud-
based services.
7. Utility Computing
Based on the need of the user, utility computing can be used. It provides the users, company,
clients or based on the business need the data storage can be taken for rent and used.

6.b) Examine in detail about the multi core CPUs and multithreading technologies

Multicore CPUs:

Unlike multi-processor systems that make use of multiple processors to carry out
concurrent operations, multicore CPUs make use of multiple cores within a single processor. The
idea here is to divide the processor into multiple cores such as dual, quad etc to carry out
operations in parallel. The main advantage of these systems is that it improves potential
performance of the overall system. One of the major examples of such systems in Intel
processors whose speed of processing increased from 10 MHZ to 4 GHZ. This value is considered
as limit for most (or) all of the chips that are based on CMOS because of the power constraints.
These constraints can be removed by employing ILP (Instruction level Parallelism) mechanisms
which are based on super scalar architecture and speculative execution.
Some systems use many-core GPU (Graphics Processing Units) that make use of thousands of
processor cores. These GPUs are capable of managing instructions with varying magnitudes
similar to that of multi core CPU.

Some of the processors that are based on multi-core and multithreaded processing are Intel i7.
AMD opteron, IBM power 6 and many more. Multithreading: Multithreading is a feature which
enables multiple threads to execute on a single processor in an overlapping manner. A thread is
an atomic unit of a process and many threads usually make up a process. In a multithreading
environment, the resources of a processor are being shared by multiple threads, so each thread
gets a separate copy of the functional unit or resource. Functional units generally include

a register file, a separate Program Counter (pc) or a separate page table to enable virtual
memory access, which in turn enables multiple program to execute simultaneously by sharing
the memory

Multithreading
To enable multithreading, the hardware must be able to perform threads switching which is
more efficient than switching the processes, as each process consists of threads and usually
takes many clock cycles for its execution. As threads are lightweight, they can execute and switch
among themselves during the execution. Therefore, they are considered more efficient and fast
than processes.

Multithreading can be implemented in two ways

1. Fine-grained multithreading
2. Coarse-grained multithreading.

1. Fine Grained Multithreading: In this approach, the threads are switched on each instruction.
The delay caused because of the switch operation of threads is very little. The threads are
switched only if the current running thread encounters a stall. The subsequent thread is chosen
from a pool of waiting threads in a round-robin fashion. The approach becomes effective if
threads are switched at every clock cycle.

Advantage: The advantage of fine-grained multithreading is that it can efficiently recover the
losses of throughput which come from short and long stalls of the thread.

Disadvantage: The execution of the stalled thread is delayed that in turn decreases the execution
speed of that individual thread since another thread is being executed in its place.

2. Coarse-Grained Multithreading: Coarse-grained multithreading is another approach for

implementing multithreading. In a coarse grained multithreading approach, the threads switch
only when a costly stall is encountered. A costly stall can be defined as a stall where a thread
requires resources which usually consumes more CPU clock cycles than required.
A level 2 cache miss is an example of a costly stall. If such a case is encountered in a coarse-
grained approach, then another thread replaces it and executes till the stalled thread has
recovered.

In contrast to a fine-grained approach, in a coarse-grained approach, the threads without stalls

can be executed completely without any interruption until a costly stall is encountered.

The main disadvantage of coarse-grained multithreading is that, when a thread encounters a

costly stall, its instruction pipeline which is carrying out the execution gets frozen. The new
thread which replaces this frozen thread has to wait until the emptied pipeline is filled, prior to
completion of instruction execution. The time delay is significant and appears to be an overhead.
Coarse-grained multithreaded approach doesn't have the ability.

The key advantage of coarse grained multithreading is that it stops the execution of threads
which encounter costly stall and replaces with a new thread. A costly stall consumes more clock
cycles when compared to the time taken to remove a frozen thread and replace a new thread
into the pipeline.

7. a) Discuss the purpose of Publish-Subscribe Model.

Publish/Subscribe systems are nowadays considered a key technology for information diffusion.
Each participant in a publish/subscribe communication system can play the role of a publisher or
a subscriber of information. Publishers produce information in form of events, which are then
consumed by subscribers. Subscribers can declare their interest on a subset of the whole
information issuing subscriptions. There are two major roles: Publisher and Subscriber

Push strategy: It is the responsibility of the publisher to notify all the subscribers. Eg: Method
invocation.
Pull strategy : The publisher simply makes available the message for a specific event. It is the
responsibility of the subscribers to check whether there are messages on the events that are
registered. Subscriptions are used to filter out part of the events produced by publishers. In
Software Architecture, Publish/Subscribe pattern is a message pattern and a network oriented
architectural pattern It describes how two different parts of a message passing system connect
and communicate with each other.
There are three main components to the Publish Subscribe Model:
Publishers: Broadcast messages, with no knowledge of the subscribers.
Subscribers: They ‗listen‘ out for messages regarding topic/categories that they are interested in
without any knowledge of who the publishers are.
Event Bus: Transfers the messages from the publishers to the subscribe

Pub-Sub messaging is an asynchronous communication method used in microservice

architecture.
The Pub-Sub model consists of three components.
• A publisher who publishes message.
• A message broker or topic where the messages are pushed.
• A subscriber who receives the message via a message broker

A pub/sub model allows messages to be broadcasted asynchronously across multiple sections of

the applications. In publish-subscribe, the sender of the message doesn’t know anything about
receivers. The message is being sent to the topic. After that, it’s distributed among all endpoints
subscribed to that topic. It can be useful e.g. for implementing notifications mechanism or
distributing independent tasks.

Pub/Sub messaging allows to create decoupled applications easily with a reliable communication
method and enables users to create Event-driven architectures. Event-driven architecture (EDA)
is a software design pattern that enables a system to detect events (such as a transaction or site
visit) and act on them in real time or near real time. This pattern replaces the traditional
Request/Response architecture where services would have to wait for a reply before they could
move onto the next task.

7. b) Discuss classification or taxonomy of virtualization at different levels

In computing, virtualization refers to the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of
something, like computer hardware platforms, operating systems, storage devices, and
computer network resources

Work of Virtualization in Cloud Computing

Virtualization has a prominent impact on Cloud Computing. In the case of cloud computing, users
store data in the cloud, but with the help of Virtualization, users have the extra benefit of sharing
the infrastructure. Cloud Vendors take care of the required physical resources, but these cloud
providers charge a huge amount for these services which impacts every user or organization.
Virtualization helps Users or Organizations in maintaining those services which are required by a
company through external (third-party) people, which helps in reducing costs to the company.
This is the way through which Virtualization works in Cloud Computing.
Taxonomy of Virtualization

Virtualization is technology that you can use to create virtual representations of servers, storage,
networks, and other physical machines. Virtual software mimics the functions of physical
hardware to run multiple virtual machines simultaneously on a single physical machine.

Virtualization is mainly used to emulate the execution environment, storage, and networks.
The execution environment is classified into two:
1. Process-level — implemented on top of an existing operating system.

2. System-level — implemented directly on hardware and does not or minimum requirement of

the existing operating system.
Benefits of Virtualization
• More flexible and efficient allocation of resources.
• Enhance development productivity.
• It lowers the cost of IT infrastructure.
• Remote access and rapid scalability.
• High availability and disaster recovery.
• Pay peruse of the IT infrastructure on demand.
• Enables running multiple operating systems.
Drawback of Virtualization

• High Initial Investment: Clouds have a very high initial investment, but it is also true that
it will help in reducing the cost of companies.

• Learning New Infrastructure: As the companies shifted from Servers to Cloud, it requires
highly skilled staff who have skills to work with the cloud easily, and for this, you have to
hire new staff or provide training to current staff.

• Risk of Data: Hosting data on third-party resources can lead to putting the data at risk, it
has the chance of getting attacked by any hacker or cracker very easily.
Characteristics of Virtualization

• Increased Security: The ability to control the execution of a guest program in a

completely transparent manner opens new possibilities for delivering a secure, controlled
execution environment. All the operations of the guest programs are generally
performed against the virtual machine, which then translates and applies them to the
host programs.

• Managed Execution: In particular, sharing, aggregation, emulation, and isolation are the
most relevant features.

• Sharing: Virtualization allows the creation of a separate computing environment within

the same host.

• Aggregation: It is possible to share physical resources among several guests, but

virtualization also allows aggregation, which is the opposite process.
1. Application Virtualization: Application virtualization helps a user to have remote access to an
application from a server. The server stores all personal information and other characteristics of
the application but can still run on a local workstation through the internet. An example of this
would be a user who needs to run two different versions of the same software. Technologies
that use application virtualization are hosted applications and packaged applications.

2. Network Virtualization: The ability to run multiple virtual networks with each having a
separate control and data plan. It co-exists together on top of one physical network. It can be
managed by individual parties that are potentially confidential to each other. Network
virtualization provides a facility to create and provision virtual networks, logical switches,
routers, firewalls, load balancers, Virtual Private Networks (VPN), and workload security within
days or even weeks.

3. Desktop Virtualization: Desktop virtualization allows the users’ OS to be remotely stored on a

server in the data center. It allows the user to access their desktop virtually, from any location by
a different machine. Users who want specific operating systems other than Windows Server will
need to have a virtual desktop. The main benefits of desktop virtualization are user mobility,
portability, and easy management of software installation, updates, and patches.

4. Storage Virtualization: Storage virtualization is an array of servers that are managed by a

virtual storage system. The servers aren’t aware of exactly where their data is stored and instead
function more like worker bees in a hive. It makes managing storage from multiple sources be
managed and utilized as a single repository. storage virtualization software maintains smooth
operations, consistent performance, and a continuous suite of advanced functions despite
changes, breaks down, and differences in the underlying equipment.

5. Server Virtualization: This is a kind of virtualization in which the masking of server resources
takes place. Here, the central server (physical server) is divided into multiple different virtual
servers by changing the identity number, and processors. So, each system can operate its
operating systems in an isolated manner. Where each sub-server knows the identity of the
central server. It causes an increase in performance and reduces the operating cost by the
deployment of main server resources into a sub-server resource. It’s beneficial in virtual
migration, reducing energy consumption, reducing infrastructural costs, etc.

6. Data Virtualization: This is the kind of virtualization in which the data is collected from various
sources and managed at a single place without knowing more about the technical information
like how data is collected, stored & formatted then arranged that data logically so that its virtual
view can be accessed by its interested people and stakeholders, and users through the various
cloud services remotely. Many big giant companies are providing their services like Oracle, IBM,
At scale, Cdata, etc.
8. a) Explain in detail underlying principles of Parallel and Distributed Computing. Tabulate the
differences between these computing.

Parallel computing, also known as parallel processing, speeds up a computational task by dividing
it into smaller jobs across multiple processors inside one computer. Distributed computing,
on the other hand, Distributed computing uses a distributed system, such as the internet, to
increase the available computing power and enable larger, more complex tasks to be executed
across multiple machines.
Parallel computing is the process of performing computational tasks across multiple processors
at once to improve computing speed and efficiency. It divides tasks into sub-tasks and executes
them simultaneously through different processors.
There are three main types, or “levels,” of parallel computing: bit, instruction, and task.
• Bit-level parallelism: Uses larger “words,” which is a fixed-sized piece of data handled as a
unit by the instruction set or the hardware of the processor, to reduce the number of
instructions the processor needs to perform an operation.
• Instruction-level parallelism: Employs a stream of instructions to allow processors to
execute more than one instruction per clock cycle (the oscillation between high and low
states within a digital circuit).
• Task-level parallelism: Runs computer code across multiple processors to run multiple
tasks at the same time on the same data.

Distributed computing is the process of connecting multiple computers via a local network or
wide area network so that they can act together as a single ultra-powerful computer capable of
performing computations that no single computer within the network would be able to perform
on its own.
Distributed computers offer two key advantages:
• Easy scalability: Just add more computers to expand the system.
• Redundancy: Since many different machines are providing the same service, that service
can keep running even if one (or more) of the computers goes down.
S.No Parallel Computing Distributed Computing

1 Parallel computing involves the use of multiple Distributed computing involves the use of
processors within a single computer to work on a multiple computers across a network to
problem. work together on a problem.

2 If one processor fails, others can continue If one computer fails, others can continue
working. working.

3 In parallel computing, communication between In distributed computing, communication

processors is usually fast because the processors between computers is slower because the
are housed within the same computer computers are connected over a network.

4 Parallel computing often requires a high degree In distributed computing, synchronization is

of synchronization between processors, as they more complex because the computers work
must coordinate their efforts to solve a problem. independently and must coordinate their
efforts over a network.

5 In parallel computing, the computer can have In distributed computing, each computer
a shared memory. has its own memory.

8. b) Give the importance of Virtualization Support and its implementation.

Virtualization is a computer architecture technology by which multiple virtual
machines (VMs) are multiplexed in the same hardware machine. The idea of VMs can be dated
back to the 1960s. The purpose of a VM is to enhance resource sharing by many users and
improve computer performance in terms of resource utilization and application flexibility.
Hardware resources (CPU, memory, I/O devices, etc.) or software resources (operating
system and software libraries) can be virtualized in various functional layers. This virtualization
technology has been revitalized as the demand for distributed and cloud computing increased
sharply in recent years.
Virtualization uses software to create an abstraction layer over computer hardware,
enabling the division of a single computer's hardware components—such as processors, memory
and storage—into multiple virtual machines (VMs). Each VM runs its own operating system (OS)
and behaves like an independent computer, even though it is running on just a portion of the
actual underlying computer hardware.
It follows that virtualization enables more efficient use of physical computer hardware
and allows a greater return on an organization’s hardware investment. Today, virtualization is a
standard practice in enterprise IT architecture. It is also the technology that drives cloud
computing economics. Virtualization enables cloud providers to serve users with their existing
physical computer hardware. It enables cloud users to purchase only the computing resources
they need when they need it, and to scale those resources cost-effectively as their workloads
grow.
Virtualization example
Consider a company that needs servers for three functions:
1. Store business email securely
2. Run a customer-facing application
3. Run internal business applications
Each of these functions has different configuration requirements:
• The email application requires more storage capacity and a Windows operating system.
• The customer-facing application requires a Linux operating system and high processing
power to handle large volumes of website traffic.
• The internal business application requires iOS and more internal memory (RAM).
To meet these requirements, the company sets up three different dedicated physical
servers for each application. The company must make a high initial investment and perform
ongoing maintenance and upgrades for one machine at a time. The company also cannot
optimize its computing capacity. It pays 100% of the servers’ maintenance costs but uses only a
fraction of their storage and processing capacities.
How does virtualization work?
Virtualization uses specialized software, called a hypervisor, to create several cloud instances
or virtual machines on one physical computer.

Cloud instances or Virtual Machines

After you install virtualization software on your computer, you can create one or more virtual
machines. You can access the virtual machines in the same way that you access other
applications on your computer. Your computer is called the host, and the virtual machine is
called the guest. Several guests can run on the host. Each guest has its own operating system,
which can be the same or different from the host operating system.
From the user’s perspective, the virtual machine operates like a typical server. It has settings,
configurations, and installed applications. Computing resources, such as central processing units
(CPUs), Random Access Memory (RAM), and storage appear the same as on a physical server.
You can also configure and update the guest operating systems and their applications as
necessary without affecting the host operating system.

Hypervisors
The hypervisor is the virtualization software that you install on your physical machine. It is a
software layer that acts as an intermediary between the virtual machines and the underlying
hardware or host operating system. The hypervisor coordinates access to the physical
environment so that several virtual machines have access to their own share of physical
resources.
For example, if the virtual machine requires computing resources, such as computer processing
power, the request first goes to the hypervisor. The hypervisor then passes the request to the
underlying hardware, which performs the task.
The following are the two main types of hypervisors.
Type 1 hypervisors
A type 1 hypervisor—also called a bare-metal hypervisor—runs directly on the computer
hardware. It has some operating system capabilities and is highly efficient because it interacts
directly with the physical resources.
Type 2 hypervisors
A type 2 hypervisor runs as an application on computer hardware with an existing operating
system. Use this type of hypervisor when running multiple operating systems on a single
machine.

Levels of Virtualization Implementation

The virtualization software creates the abstraction of VMs by interposing a virtualization layer at
various levels of a computer system. The main function of the software layer for virtualization is
to virtualize the physical hardware of a host machine into virtual resources to be used by the
VMs, exclusively. This can be implemented at various operational levels as mentioned below
a) Instruction Set Architecture Level
At the ISA level, virtualization is performed by emulating a given ISA by the ISA of the host
machine. For example, MIPS binary code can run on an x86-based host machine with the help of
ISA emulation. With this approach, it is possible to run a large amount of legacy binary code writ-
ten for various processors on any given new hardware host machine. Instruction set emulation
leads to virtual ISAs created on any hardware machine.

The basic emulation method is through code interpretation. An interpreter program interprets
the source instructions to target instructions one by one. One source instruction may require
tens or hundreds of native target instructions to perform its function. Obviously, this process is
relatively slow. For better performance, dynamic binary translation is desired. This approach
translates basic blocks of dynamic source instructions to target instructions. The basic blocks can
also be extended to program traces or super blocks to increase translation efficiency. Instruction
set emulation requires binary translation and optimization. A virtual instruction set architecture
(V-ISA) thus requires adding a processor-specific software translation layer to the compiler.
b) Hardware Abstraction Level
Hardware-level virtualization is performed right on top of the bare hardware. On the one
hand, this approach generates a virtual hardware environment for a VM. On the other hand, the
process manages the underlying hardware through virtualization. The idea is to virtualize a
computer’s resources, such as its processors, memory, and I/O devices. The intention is to
upgrade the hardware utilization rate by multiple users concurrently. The idea was implemented
in the IBM VM/370 in the 1960s. More recently, the Xen hypervisor has been applied to
virtualize x86-based machines to run Linux or other guest OS applications. We will discuss
hardware virtualization approaches in more detail in Section 3.3.

c) Operating System Level

This refers to an abstraction layer between traditional OS and user applications. OS-level
virtualization creates isolated containers on a single physical server and the OS instances to
utilize the hard-ware and software in data centers. The containers behave like real servers. OS-
level virtualization is commonly used in creating virtual hosting environments to allocate
hardware resources among a large number of mutually distrusting users. It is also used, to a
lesser extent, in consolidating server hardware by moving services on separate hosts into
containers or VMs on one server. OS-level virtualization is depicted in Section 3.1.3.

d) Library Support Level

Most applications use APIs exported by user-level libraries rather than using lengthy system
calls by the OS. Since most systems provide well-documented APIs, such an interface becomes
another candidate for virtualization. Virtualization with library interfaces is possible by
controlling the communication link between applications and the rest of a system through API
hooks. The software tool WINE has implemented this approach to support Windows applications
on top of UNIX hosts. Another example is the vCUDA which allows applications executing within
VMs to leverage GPU hardware acceleration. This approach is detailed in Section 3.1.4.

e) User-Application Level
Virtualization at the application level virtualizes an application as a VM. On a traditional OS, an
application often runs as a process. Therefore, application-level virtualization is also known
as process-level virtualization. The most popular approach is to deploy high level language (HLL)
VMs. In this scenario, the virtualization layer sits as an application program on top of the
operating system, and the layer exports an abstraction of a VM that can run programs written
and compiled to a particular abstract machine definition. Any program written in the HLL and
compiled for this VM will be able to run on it. The Microsoft .NET CLR and Java Virtual Machine
(JVM) are two good examples of this class of VM. Other forms of application-level virtualization
are known as application isolation, application sandboxing, or application streaming. The process
involves wrapping the application in a layer that is isolated from the host OS and other
applications.