Cloud Computing: Selection of Cloud Architectures for a Hybrid Cloud

Running head: CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud Computing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................. 2
Discussion.................................................................................................................................3
1. Selection of Cloud Architectures for a Hybrid Cloud........................................................3
1.1. Description of the Selected Cloud Architectures and the Reasons for this
Deployment......................................................................................................................5
1.2. Benefits and Issues for the Deployment of the Selected Cloud Architectures..........6
2. Risks Associated with Hybrid Cloud and Micro Services Strategy and their Controls.......8
3. Information Security Steps and Controls for Securing Hybrid Cloud..............................12
4. Business Continuity Planning for Hybrid Cloud and Micro services Approach...............13
5. Remote Server Administration, Resource Management and SLA Management............16
6. Migration of email instances to the Amazon Web Services Cloud.................................17
6.1. Various Steps for Migrating the Organizational Services.........................................17
6.2. Critical Point as well as Issues for the Steps with Proper Explanation.....................18
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................. 19
References..............................................................................................................................21

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Introduction
Cloud computing can be defined as the specific part of the information technology or
IT, which has the ability to enable the ubiquitous access in every shared pool of several
system resources that could be configurable (Pahl, 2015). Moreover, the high level services
could be easily as well as rapidly provisioned with extremely lesser amount of managerial
effort, on the connection of Internet. The most significant characteristic of this particular
technology of c loud computing is that a specific client server model is present, which could
easily distinguish between the service requestors or clients and the service providers or
servers (Hwang, Dongarra & Fox, 2013). The next important feature of this technology is
that a service bureau is present that helps in providing computer services. Moreover, grid
computing as well as fog computing is also possible here. Thus, the distributed computing
paradigm, providing data, storage and finally application services remain close to the client
or near user edge devices like network routers. There are various types of cloud architecture
models. They are the infrastructure as a service or IaaS, platform as a service or PaaS and
software as a service or SaaS. All of these are extremely important for the organizations as
they provide virtual infrastructures, platforms and software to the client (Brender & Markov,
2013). There are four service models also present for the organizations. They are private
cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud and finally community cloud. Hybrid cloud is the mixture of
other two clouds and hence is termed as the most effective of all.
The following report outlines a brief discussion on the entire case study of Regional
Gardens Ltd. It is a specific organization that eventually runs various and several number of
related gardening enterprises. It has a large display garden that it opens for public
inspection a number of times a year. These enterprises include the Regional Gardens

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Nursery which sells plants and garden supplies to the public, and Regional Garden Planners
which provides garden advice, design and consultancy services. This particular company has
taken the decision to consider various strategic proposals. They have planned to shift their
entire web services to Hybrid cloud and for gaining flexibility and scalability, they have
thought of moving to the model of Micro services. This report will be focusing on this
shifting of hybrid cloud.
Discussion
1. Selection of Cloud Architectures for a Hybrid Cloud
Cloud computing architectures are considered as the most important and significant
features of this technology cloud computing that helps all the users in understanding this
technology perfectly and properly. There are three types of cloud architectures. They are as
follows:
i) Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS: The first and the foremost cloud computing
architecture model is IaaS or infrastructure as a service. It is the significant form of the cloud
computing, which helps in providing virtualized computing resource on the connection of
Internet (Zhan et al., 2015). The cloud provider eventually hosts the components of
infrastructure, which present in any on premises centre of data, involving storage, servers,
networking hardware, hypervisor layer and the virtualization layer. The provider of this
infrastructure as a service or IaaS subsequently supplies the wide range of various services
for accompanying all those components of infrastructure. All these components majorly
involve monitoring, detailed billing, load balancing, security, clustering, log access as well as
the storage resiliency like recovery, replication and back up (Ramya & Ramya, 2013). All

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these services are increasingly driven by policy, which helps to enable all the users of this
infrastructure as a service in properly implementing the greater level for automation as well
as orchestration.
ii) Platform as a Service or PaaS: The second cloud architecture model after the
infrastructure as a service is the PaaS or platform as a service. Platform as a service is the
particular model of cloud computing, where the third party provider delivers all the tools
and technologies of hardware as well as software (Bora & Ahmed, 2013). All these are
required for developing the applications to their clients with the connectivity of Internet.
The provider of this platform as a service significantly hosts the software as well as
hardware over its own infrastructure. Thus, the platform as a service helps in freeing the
users from getting installed the in house hardware or software for either developing or
running the new application. The main feature of this platform as a service is that it never
replaces the complete infrastructure of the information technology and instead it relies on
the providers of the platform as a service like development of Java and application hosting
(Al-Roomi et al., 2013). The building as the supplying of the resilient as well as the optimized
environment by the provider of a platform as a service, over which the clients could easily
install the sets of data and applications are done easily. All these features help the users in
acquiring the cloud architecture model under any circumstances.
iii) Software as a Service or SaaS: Software as a service of SaaS is the third most
important cloud architecture model or software distribution model, where the third party
provider eventually hosts every application in making them completely available to the
customers on the Internet. The software as a service eradicates the need for the companies
in installing as well as running the applications over their own computers or over their own

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data centres (Hsu, Ray & Li-Hsieh, 2014). This feature helps to eliminate the costs of the
provisioning as well as maintenance, acquisition of hardware, software installation, software
licensing and finally support. The most significant advantages of this software as a service
model mainly include flexibility in payments, scalability in usage, automatic updates,
persistence as well as accessibility and many more.
For the organization of Regional Gardens Ltd, they should select the cloud
architecture model of Platform as a service or PaaS. The main reason for this suggested
architecture model is that this organization is shifting to the hybrid cloud (Ali, Khan &
Vasilakos, 2015). Platform as a service or PaaS is the most suitable for this approach of
hybrid cloud.
1.1. Description of the Selected Cloud Architectures and the Reasons for this Deployment
The platform as a service or PaaS is the specific category of the several services of
cloud computing that is based on platforms (Almorsy, Grundy & Müller, 2016). This
particular architecture model is responsible for providing a basic platform and thus helping
the clients or customers in proper development, running as well as management of each
and every application without much complexities for building or maintaining the significant
infrastructure that is completely linked with the proper development or launching of their
applications. The platform as a service can be subsequently delivered to their clients in three
distinct methods. The first method of this delivery is as the public cloud provider by the
cloud provider. Here the client comprises of the ability to control the deployment of the
software with very less options of configuration and hence providing several networks,
storage, servers and operating systems. The next method of this delivery is as the specific
software, which is deployed on the public infrastructure as a service or IaaS. The most