Cloud Computing: Elasticity, EC2, and Security Considerations Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of cloud computing elasticity and its implementation through Amazon EC2. It begins by defining cloud elasticity as the ability of a system to adapt to workload changes through autonomic resource provisioning, differentiating it from earlier computing paradigms. The report highlights the importance of elasticity in handling dynamic workloads, managing information processing, and ensuring both stability and security, especially in data-intensive applications. It then delves into the functionalities of Amazon EC2, emphasizing its role in providing scalable computing capacity and removing the need for upfront hardware investments. The discussion covers the benefits of EC2, including the ability to scale up and down to manage traffic, and the practices for maintaining security, resource management, and backup. The report also addresses over-provisioning and under-provisioning, explaining how EC2 allows organizations to pay only for the resources they utilize. The report concludes by outlining the components of EC2, including OS support, security measures, pricing models, and fault tolerance, while also discussing migration and automatic scaling capabilities. It emphasizes the importance of understanding these components to determine if EC2 is appropriate for a particular environment.

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Introduction
The main aim of the report is to describe the elasticity of cloud and the examples of EC2 and its working.
Elasticity is mainly considered as the ability to stretch a system as well as expanding the tolerances of it. In the
computing of cloud, elasticity can be defined as the degree of adapting the changes of workload of a system by
resource provisioning in a manner which will be autonomic [1]. Elasticity is such a characteristic which mostly
differentiates the computing of cloud from the paradigms of computing which was proposed earlier like the
computing of grid. The dynamic capacity adaption by the alteration of the utilization of the resources of computing
for meeting a workload which is varying is called elastic computing. Cloud computing is mainly determined with
the capability of handling a number of processes and scaled as per the desired operation. Leakage of any data can be
a huge advantage for all the hackers as the elasticity enables information processing which will be both stable as
well as secure within the cloud. This is seen to be very critical in several functions of shopping businesses which are
perceived to be digitized a lot more than before. There is a massive challenge of maintaining both elasticities as well
as security due to the processing of more and more information [3]. If the flexibility is broken, that means that the
material is cracked and there is a fulfillment of weaknesses. The elastic limit of the cloud allows the hackers in
gaining access to medical, business or some other sensitive information with the help of which they can utilize for
their purpose[2]. It is observed that security is a major issue but also the experience of the user when it comes to the
elasticity of the cloud.
Discussion
The elasticity of the cloud is responsible for managing the load of work along with several processes as
well as procedures of security [4]. Elasticity helps in handling a large network of information and has the ability to
scale up and managing high traffic volumes. It has the capability of scaling down and using less number of resources
when required [5]. Apart from the benefits of scaling up for handling traffic bursts or scaling down, it is very much
crucial for knowing about the concept of elasticity. While opting for a provider of cloud, it is essential for
considering if they have the service of flexibility. Elasticity belongs to the core if several products of AWS.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud or Amazon EC2 helps in providing a scalable capacity of computing in the
cloud of Amazon Web Service. Utilizing Amazon EC2 removes the requirement for investing in the upfront of
hardware, and this helps in further development as well as the faster deployment of applications [6]. With the help of

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EC2, many virtual servers can be launched, security can be configured and storage can be managed. It also enables
scaling up or down for handling the changes in the needs and the reduction of the requirement for forecasting traffic.
There is a list of practices which helps in getting excessive benefits from Amazon EC2. It includes the
working related to storage, security and network, management of resource, recovery, and backup. In the case of
maintaining security, access to the resources of AWS and APIs using the federation of identity is managed [7]. All
the credential policies of management as well as the process for the creation, rotation, and distribution are
established. The least permissive rules can be implemented for the group of security. The operating system is needed
to be regularly patched, updated and secured. In case of storage, there is a need for understanding the root device
type’s implications for the persistence of data, backup as well as recovery. Separate volumes of Amazon EBS are
used for the operating system versus the amount of data. The available instance store can be used for storing
temporary data. In the case of the management of the resource, instance metadata is , and the resources of AWS are
needed to be identified. The new limits of Amazon EC2 are to be viewed. In case of keeping a backup and recovery,
there is a need for maintaining a regular backup of the volumes of EBS with the use of the snapshots of Amazon
EBS. Applications are needed to be designed for handling the dynamic addressing of IP.
Elasticity mostly aims at matching the resource amount which is allocated to a service with the amount of
resource which it requires actually by avoiding over-provisioning or under-provisioning [8]. Over-provisioning is
the allocation of much more resources than which is needed must be avoided because the provider of service has to
pay for all the resources which are allocated to the service. In this case, the expense of the service provider is much
higher than the optimal one, and there is a reduction in profit [9]. On the other hand, under-provisioning is the
process of allocating few resources than needed, should be avoided. If it is not prevented, then the service is not able
to serve the users of it with excellent service.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a service of the web which helps in providing a resizable
capacity of computing in servers in the data centers of Amazon which are used for building as well as hosting
systems of software [10]. For using EC2, a developer needs to create an AMI or Amazon Machine Image containing
an operating system, settings of configuration and several programs of application. Then the AMI is uploaded to the
Amazon Simple Storage or Amazon S3 and then finally gets registered with Amazon EC2, thus creating an

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identifier of AMI. After this is done, the subscriber then requisite virtual machines by their needs. Data is seen to be
remaining only on an instance of EC2 while running.
On the other hand, a developer can utilize a volume of an Amazon Elastic Book Store for an additional
durability level and Amazon S3 for the data of EC2. VM import or export enables a developer for importing images
of virtual images on premises to Amazon EC2 where they are converted into instances. Amazon EC2 is responsible
for providing several types of cases, sizes and the structures of pricing which are designed for several computing or
requirements of budgets [11]. In addition to the instances which are utilized for the general purpose, Amazon EC2 is
capable of offering a type of example for computing, memory, and workloads which are storage optimized [12].
EC2 is capable of promising lower deployment of application and costs of migration and easy scalability. It
is seen that it is a hard service for understanding and it is much harder in determining whether it will be beneficial
for an organization or not. Amazon EC2 or Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is capable of offering a multitude of
virtual services of server deployment as well as the upgrades in networking and security [13]. It is very much
essential to get criteria needed for understanding what AWS EC2 does and then decide if it is the appropriate IaaS
for any particular environment.
EC2 is a cloud platform based upon pay as you go concept which involves the power of the computer,
storage and the services of the database as its main components. By utilizing AWS EC2, the time required for
obtaining and booting new instances of a server to minutes is reduced by allowing a quick capacity of scaling
including both up and down ones as the required change in computing. Amazon EC2 enables several organizations
in paying only for the resources of computing and capacity they utilize. It helps the developers by providing tools
for building applications which are failure resilient and then finally isolate them from the scenarios of failure which
are common [14]. The time before setting on the AWS EC2, all the enterprises must know that all the several
components which make up for the service of cloud involving the type of OS it supports, native measures of security
and structures of pricing.
The components are:
Support of the OS- Amazon EC2 is capable of supporting multiple OSes without the requirement for paying extra
fees for licensing. Some of these OSes include SUSE enterprise, Unix and Red Hat Enterprise. It is needed to be

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implemented in conjunction with Amazon VPC. Organizations may also buy licenses of their own and then finally
bring them into the environment which is integrated into the RDS or the Relational Database Service [15]. On the
other hand, this service does not support some OSes which are non-standard and specific applications of Microsoft.
Security-There can be complete control over the AWS system's visibility. The security systems of AWS EC2
enables placing the instances which are running into groups of any particular choice. With the help of the interface
of Web services, several teams of Information Technology help in the specification of the groups with which some
other groups can share information and the groups with which the subnets of IP on the net can talk [16]. This helps
in controlling access to the instances in the environment of AWS. It is to be ensured that the instance is secure.
Pricing- Amazon EC2 provides its services of Web with the help of a simple interface which allows the users for
configuring the resources of computing. Pricing is based on the clock hours of the time of the server, characteristics
of the database and the number of the instances of the database. There are many options for pricing, and in a few
cases there is no minimum commitment to certain types of the database which is needed [17]. Amazon EC2 is also
responsible for providing blocks of storage, and the pricing is based on the storage amount and the storage type
needed. For example, the storage which is provisioned comes with the pricing of EC2 and includes a full hundred
percent database for an instance which is active. Extra room can be purchased for covering the requirements of
backup and the data transfer which is both inbound as well as outbound.
Tolerance of fault and latency- Amazon EC2 is excessively flexible in allowing the users to procure the resources
of computing for designing the applications which are fault tolerant. One of the products which compliment EC2 is
the EBS which is Amazon Elastic Block Store. Users can implement an EC2 instance which is optimized by EBS
for the better performance of input and output and the latency which is almost non-existent. EC2 comprises all the
regions of geography and locations which are isolated known as availability zones for the tolerance of fault and
stability. Amazon does not release the exact locations of the regional centers of data for security. Whenever the
users launch an instance, they should opt for an AMI in the same region or rather copy an AMI from some other area
to the region where the instance will run.

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Migration- Amazon has made it very much easy in moving the applications which are existing into EC2. This kind
of service is best where a large amount of data is present for running. If it is started from scratch, this service is most
likely to be utilized.
Automatic scaling- EC2 enables the users in defining all the conditions for scaling up for increasing the capacity of
Amazon EC2 by about ten percent for handling the burst activity and scaling down the requirements for decreasing
the ability by five percent in case of saving the money. With the help of auto scaling, all customers can be able to
preserve the instances with the new configurations of launch and terminating the cases without the new
configurations of the start. Whenever there is more than one instance which is meeting this criterion, then the Auto
Scaling of AWS will terminate the running at an example so that there is the longest part of a billable hour of the
instance. A specific rule for ending the newest or the oldest case or vice versa can also be configured [18]. There are
specific sets of limit in the Auto Scaling of EC2, but if the teams of Information Technology needs some other
limits, then a request can be sent through AWS.
The commitment of Service- The standard agreement at standard service of AWS mostly guarantees the efforts
which are commercially reasonable for producing both Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS monthly percentages of
uptime of at least a portion of 99.95%. By following such practices which belong to the industry standard, violations
of SLA generally mean that all the customers who are available receive credits of service towards the invoices of the
future.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud or Amazon EC2 is a service of a web which is capable of providing the resizable
capacity of computing in servers in the data centers of Amazon which are used for building as well as hosting the
systems of software. Following examples can be utilized for accessing Amazon EC2 with the help of the use of
Amazon Web Services SDK for Python.
Examples
Management of the instances of Amazon EC2- This example of Python shows how to get the necessary
information about the cases of Amazon EC2, start and stop the monitoring in detail of an example of EC2, start and
stop an instance of Amazon EC2 and finally reboot an instance of Amazon EC2.

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Working with the Key Pairs of Amazon EC2- This example shows how to obtain information about all the key
pairs, create a couple of key for accessing an instance of EC2 and lastly delete a key pair which is already existing.
Description of the regions of Amazon EC2 and zones of availability- Amazon EC2 is seen to be hosted in several
locations throughout the world. Each part is a different geographic area. Each part has multiple locations which are
isolated known as Availability Zones. Amazon EC2 helps in providing the capability of placing both the data and
the instances in some areas. In this example, the code of python will be utilized in getting details about all the
regions and the zones of Availability [19]. The system utilizes the AWS SDK for Python in receiving data by
utilizing some methods of the Client class of EC2- describe_regions and describe_availability_zones.
Working with the groups of security in Amazon EC2- This Python example shows how to obtain information
about the groups of security, create a group of security for accessing an instance of EC2 and finally delete a security
group which already existed.
Utilizing elastic address of IP in Amazon EC2- This example mainly shows how to obtain descriptions of the
elastic addresses of IP, then allocate it and finally release it. An Elastic address of IP is an IP address which is static
defined for powerful computing of cloud. An elastic address of IP is associated with the account of AWS. It is an IP
address which is public and is reachable online [20]. If the instance does not have an IP address which is public, then
an Elastic IP address can be associated with the example for allowing sharing of information with the internet. In
this example especially, the code of python will perform several operations of Amazon Ec2 including the Elastic
addresses of IP.
Conclusion
It can, therefore, be concluded that the elasticity of the services is a compelling way of optimizing the costs.
By the combination of tagging, automation as well as proper monitoring, any organization will be able to match its
specific spending to the requirements and to put the resources where they are seen to have been providing the most
value. Tools of automation can help in minimizing some of the tasks which are related to both management and
administration with the deployment of IT. In the same way to the benefits gained from the services of application, an
automated approach for the infrastructure of AWS will help in providing both scalabilities as well as elasticity with
minimal intervention done manually. This also helps in providing a control level for getting control over the

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environment of AWs and the spending associated. For an example, when either the developers or the engineers are
allowed for provisioning the resources of AWS only through a process which is established and utilize tools which
can be both audited as well as managed, both the expense and waste can be avoided from turning simply on the
standalone resources.

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