Let's say you're an executive at a large corporation. Your
particular responsibilities include making sure that all of your employees have
the right hardware and software they need to do their jobs. Buying computers for
everyone isn't enough -- you also have to purchase software or software licenses to give employees the tools they
require. Whenever you have a new hire, you have to buy more software or make
sure your current software license allows another user. It's so stressful that
you find it difficult to go to sleep on your huge pile of money every
night.
Soon, there may be an alternative for executives like you.
Instead of installing a suite of software for each computer, you'd only have to
load one application. That application would allow workers to log into a
Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for his or
her job. Remote machines owned by another company would run everything
from e-mail to word processing to complex data
analysis programs. It's called CLOUD COMPUTING,
and it could change the entire computer industry.
In a cloud computing system, there's a significant
workload shift. Local computers no longer have to do all the heavy lifting when
it comes to running applications. The network of computers that make up the
cloud handles them instead. Hardware and software demands on the user's side
decrease. The only thing the user's computer needs to be able to run is the
cloud computing system's interface software,
which can be as simple as a Web browser, and the cloud's network takes care of
the rest.
There's a good chance you've already used some form of
cloud computing. If you have an e-mail account with a Web-based e-mail service
like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, then you've had some experience with cloud
computing. Instead of running an e-mail program on your computer, you log in to
a Web e-mail account remotely. The software
and storage for your account doesn't exist on your computer -- it's on the
service's computer cloud.
Cloud
Computing Architecture
When talking about a
cloud computing system, it's helpful to divide it into two sections: the front
end and the back end. They connect to each other through a network,
usually the Internet.
The front end is the side the computer user, or client, sees. The back end is
the "cloud" section of the system.
The front end includes
the client's computer (or
computer network) and the application required to access the cloud computing
system. Not all cloud computing systems have the same user interface. Services
like Web-based e-mail programs
leverage existing Web browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Other systems have unique applications that provide network access to clients.
On the back end of the
system are the various computers, servers and data storage systems that create
the "cloud" of computing services. In theory, a cloud computing
system could include practically any computer program you can imagine, from
data processing to video games. Usually, each application will have its own
dedicated server.
A central server
administers the system, monitoring traffic and client demands to ensure
everything runs smoothly. It follows a set of rules called protocols and
uses a special kind of software called middleware. Middleware
allows networked computers to communicate with each other. Most of the time,
servers don't run at full capacity. That means there's unused processing power
going to waste. It's possible to fool a physical server into thinking it's
actually multiple servers, each running with its own independent operating
system. The technique is called server virtualization. By maximizing the output
of individual servers, server virtualization reduces the need for more physical
machines.
If a cloud computing
company has a lot of clients, there's likely to be a high demand for a lot of
storage space. Some companies require hundreds of digital storage devices.
Cloud computing systems need at least twice the number of storage devices it
requires to keep all its clients' information stored. That's because these
devices, like all computers, occasionally break down. A cloud computing system
must make a copy of all its clients' information and store it on other devices.
The copies enable the central server to access backup machines to retrieve data
that otherwise would be unreachable. Making copies of data as a backup is
called redundancy.
previous article
Newer Post
No comments
Post a Comment