28-05-2010, 08:00 PM
Cloud computing is a style of computing that provides virtualized resources as a service over the internet. The clientâ„¢s data is given to a third party (the cloud service provider) for storage. They lose control of their information and they are unaware of the location where their data is stored. This means that their data is vulnerable to external attacks. Firstly, in the physical infrastructure (the datacenter behind the cloud) different customers workloads are placed in the same physical machine. Secondly, concerns about malicious software take an important place. Failure of one physical machine should not deter the working of others. In this project, we implement a model to solve these issues. This model is based on the basic idea of removing abstraction from the cloud infrastructure. Thereby, allowing the user to evaluate the security properties and measures of the platform before they provision their data in the cloud. Further, isolation policies are deployed to provide workload isolation and data security.
Cloud computing can be divided into three areas:
¢ SaaS (software-as-a-service). WAN-enabled application services (e.g., Google Apps, Salesforce.com, WebEx)
¢ PaaS (platform-as-a-service). Foundational elements to develop new applications (e.g., Coghead, Google Application Engine)
¢ IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service). Providing computational and storage infrastructure in a centralized, location-transparent service (e.g., Amazon)
Cloud computing characteristics
¢ Massive, abstracted infrastructure
¢ Dynamic allocation, scaling, movement of applications
¢ Pay per use
¢ No long-term commitments
¢ On-demand self-service
¢ Ubiquitous network access
¢ No hardware or software to install