Several aspects that should be considered in the cloud computing boom

Objective

Cloud computing is still one of the hottest terms in the IT field, and it can be heard in a variety of technical forums or seminars, involving hardware vendors, software vendors, and large enterprise users. Unlike the idea of just talking about the cloud, and looking at the future of cloud computing, the words that are now being talked about are cloud devices, cloud platforms and cloud applications, from waiting to wait for the practice of cloud computing.

Some people say that cloud computing is a big technological revolution, bringing great technological innovation. Some people say that cloud computing is a market idea, a packaging of old technology, but a new bottle of stale wine. Regardless of the arguments, everyone at least recognizes that cloud computing has brought new opportunities for IT development and agreed on the basic features of cloud computing. The basic features of cloud computing include: The computing power provided by the network (Internet), the use of virtual technology in host and storage devices to provide rapid deployment capabilities, the platform and Software provided to users in the form of services, through resource sharing, can significantly improve resource utilization; The ability to flexibly deploy to meet the different needs of the user, and to adopt a Pay-as-you-go business model for the public cloud.

This article does not pay attention to the implementation of cloud computing technology, only from the development of cloud computing, standard norms and uncertainties and other aspects of personal thinking, hope to be able to give the various drivers of cloud computing to provide a point of view, for the real landing of cloud computing to play a reference role.

The advantages of cloud computing

Cloud computing first addresses the readiness challenge of applying the infrastructure and platform environment in deployment, leaving software developers no longer consuming energy for hardware maintenance and integration. The deployment of cloud computing has given full play to the intensification of computing power, and because of the full use of hardware virtual technology, on a single host can be virtual several times the physical host capabilities of the device. Because the cloud computing platform supports the image of different operating system hosts, different versions of the operating system can coexist peacefully, changing the traditional application with the operating system upgrade passive upgrade situation.

Cloud computing offers different levels of out-of-the-box services: a custom or standardized hardware configuration and operating system out-of-the-box at the IaaS layer, and a one-stop meeting of platform-level software requirements for developing deployment environments and middleware platforms at the PAAs level; A standardized software service can be provided at the SaaS level for SMEs or individual users.

The advent and application of cloud computing technology is similar to the social specialization. In the era of hardware device, middleware platform, application independent deployment, the software system is similar to the early construction company in human society, it is Spadger spite to start from the purchase of mechanical equipment to employ skilled workers to complete a construction project. Construction companies are limited by the size of equipment and skilled workers, which restricts the development of the company. When the demand for tasks increases and decreases, the equipment and personnel are the problems faced by the company, when need not to take the hand, when not to keep. The presence of the infrastructure services company (similar to the IaaS provider in cloud computing) solves the problem of equipment and can provide hardware leasing services including storage leasing, mechanical leasing, etc. On the basis of basic services, the intermediary service providers are derived, providing professional services such as plumbing installation, tunnel excavation, material transportation and so on, the service Providers pack the manpower and equipment (equivalent to the PAAs provider in cloud computing) and provide professional services focused on a specific skill. Construction companies focus on organizational management and construction coordination and the ability to find markets at the front.

From the sociological point of view, professional social division of Labor will inevitably increase the cost of management, this is the same in the cloud computing practice. At the same time, the specialization of social division of Labor brings the benefits of cost-saving and market-adaptability to the service-provider, which brings the difference benefit of reducing unit service cost by the scale and centralization effect, which is the chance for both sides to win. In cloud computing, because of the difference of the host and storage resources in virtual power and resource, the replication of virtual assets such as software and intermediary service software, the service provider has more flexible profit space, which can promote the further reduction of service price and attract more service users. This is also an important driving force for the parties to actively engage in cloud computing practices.

Cloud computing challenges to application development

Cloud computing is the product of the development of Internet information technology and the demand of information service, and the traditional software development mode can not be applied to the application development of cloud computing environment directly. In the cloud computing environment at the IaaS level, as the platform provides a standardized, horizontally scalable virtual machine supply capability, developers need to decouple applications and decompose them into fine-grained applications that can run on separate virtual machines when the mainframe computing power of the application requirements is higher than the virtual machine capability. The scheduler is used to coordinate the tasks between the various programs.

In the PAAs-level cloud computing framework, the platform provides further abstraction by classifying cloud applications, summarizing common problems in practice, and abstracting specific patterns and solutions. Provides basic functional services including load balancing, caching, data access, message communication, etc.

Because of the diversity of the Platform software and the implementation of the basic services, the PAAs platform provider the underlying services provided are tailored to different specific requirements, and vary in the type of application targeted, customer positioning, and implementation, which brings to the end developer the compatibility issues that must be faced when running on different PAAs platforms.

When developing cloud computing applications on PAAs platforms, it is necessary to follow a range of development specifications provided by the platform layer. As the platform layer provides basic services such as application deployment, applied management, metering and billing, it is stipulated in application development specification that a series of test piles must be mounted in the application. Because many of the platform's configurations do not allow application developers to adjust arbitrarily, this will have an impact on tuning. If the application also needs to expose some of its functions as a service for use by other applications, the application developer also needs to consider issues such as service registration. In addition, the cloud application itself should consider integrating the functionality or services provided by different cloud service providers.

In fact, the need for the development of cloud computing has not diminished, as the resulting functionality is seen to be consistent among the end users. So the adoption of cloud computing, for the Enterprise front-end business needs department, there is no obvious driving force, the demand department will not encourage IT departments to adopt cloud computing, and will not assume the risk of cloud computing. Therefore, the enterprise's IT department must find ways to eliminate the risk of using cloud computing and the risk of future sustainable development within the Department.

It's all about the new requirements of cloud computing for development, and in other ways, cloud computing has also brought some positive changes to application development. In the traditional application development, due to the continuous upgrading of system software, middleware platform, database and development environment, the running environment of existing programs is constantly challenged, the program compatibility check of every environment upgrade is a nightmare, system incompatibility is often the biggest problem that the system runs. But in the cloud computing environment, the user has the independent choice to the operating system and so on environment, the user can completely put the original application to run in the safe sandbox environment.

The introduction of cloud computing technology also points the way for the future of large-scale application and development. Computer application software in the large-scale use of enterprises since the 1990s, has experienced almost all of the application development, deployment, migration, upgrade, change vendors, and then develop and deploy such a cycle. If you look at the software assets of each major enterprise, in addition to the system used, many years ago, software investment has hardly seen any traces. Early software change is usually due to the process is not solidified, demand changes and other reasons caused by frequent upgrades, in essence, the basic function of software is to adapt to production needs, and from the long-term development of enterprises, although the local process adjustment is present, but most of the basic function is stable. Therefore, for enterprise applications, basic skills in the long-term should also be stable. After the adoption of cloud computing technology, equipment maintenance problems, software operating environment compatibility issues have been resolved, the virtual host isolated the impact of different operating system versions, on-demand resources are enough to allow the application of a very low volume of applications for a long time in the running state. Therefore, the enterprise application of the most basic, long-term stability of the function of curing, as a long-term operation of the service should be listed as the primary consideration for the development of content.

The core idea of application cloud is how to make large application balance distributed to many independent physical or virtual machines for computing. Through this application, can reduce the different size of the application of the host capacity of the differential demand, through the horizontal increase of standard equipment technology, to meet the size of small to large applications to deal with the needs of the capacity. Application cloud brings the complexity of application management up, this is the same as the daily work, when an all-round technology master in doing one thing, the task of the decomposition of the scheduling and coordination of tasks by his own reasonable arrangements, and if the same work to be assigned to a number of only one or two of the ability of the junior technicians to complete, We need to consider the cohesion of the task, the rationality of each person's work, the integrity of the two-person work handover, but also need to check in time to prevent some mistakes. These are the challenges that must be faced in the development of cloud computing applications.

The influence of cloud computing on operation and dimension

Cloud Computing in the enterprise user's practice is the first to face the challenge of operational dimension. Before adopting cloud computing technology, the operator would assume that everything is under control and that the system A is running on the z host in the x row y cabinet, that the device has been included in the backup management, that the device is running normally, and that only B-segment hosts can be accessed securely. and the adoption of cloud computing technology, operations and maintenance personnel is difficult to explain the specific operation of a system on which host, because all the use of equipment virtualization management, a system at different times may be on different host. Operational personnel need to change the static management of the inherent thinking, take the initiative to meet the challenges of dynamic management.

After the introduction of cloud computing, the focus of operations will be not only the original management of the equipment running normally, network unimpeded, but also focus on the active supply of resources, automatic configuration, sustainability, traceable real-time configuration management.

In the traditional operation and maintenance management, in order to ensure reliability and scalability, not only need to support in the deployment phase, but also need to monitor the running state of the application at any time, to determine whether there is a node failure or excessive load, in the event of an exception, the administrator based on a good workflow to start the standby server, Run the appropriate management script to configure and initialize the new server. In the cloud computing environment, one part is responsible for the operation of physical equipment, part of the application of related monitoring and management. The fault of operational personnel locating system is not only relying on the traditional network management means, but also needs to analyze the running efficiency and the fault reason of the system through cloud computing platform and virtual equipment management platform more deeply.

In the cloud computing environment, virtual machine virtual image disk file to the basic operating system, customers need to use the application and operation of the required middleware components, such as packaging, eliminating the traditional environment for the user to carry out the complex installation of the process, so that the Open box is used, in fact, become the virtual assets of the enterprise. This and traditional environment need to keep the host running environment, save the installation software, the virtual machine image files are loaded at any time means that new virtual devices can quickly enter the production state when needed, especially the preparation of some test development environment, can be quickly restored to the user through the original virtual image of the status required.

Before the cloud computing practice, most of the application services in the data center were deployed on the physical machines, and as the physical devices grew older and degraded, the stability and reliability of the applications running were greatly affected. There is a high risk of migrating services to a new system: on the one hand, because of the mobility of developers, it is difficult to find the relevant personnel of the original development team when migrating services are needed, on the other hand, the software's compatibility with the new operating environment, the specific interface or function library on which the software relies is not necessarily compatible in the new system. After the introduction of cloud computing technology, people adopt the New virtualization Auxiliary Technology (VMware) can transfer the application service and the operating system from the physical server to the virtual environment, the administrator no longer need to touch with the system tightly integrated application code, greatly improve the system migration feasibility and success rate. The migrated server, not only can be managed in a unified interface, and with the help of virtual machine management software, these servers can automatically switch to other alternative virtual servers in the network, so as to achieve uninterrupted business.

The role of enterprises in standard norms

Cloud computing technology includes hardware devices, virtualization platform, database middleware, such as basic applications, application software development and other aspects, involving the current issue of concern Monthlyfocus Song Zijun, Chishaohan cloud computing upsurge of several thinking 072012/07/dtpt norms are also more. And the industry is currently in the Cloud Computing standard specification distribution is a triangle, the underlying standards are relatively mature, through the driver or operating system compatibility, so that the equipment has a high interchangeability. More toward the top, near the application layer, in addition to the virtual machine level with open Virtualization format (OVF) standards, other aspects of almost no molding standards. Enterprise users spend energy to participate in the development of the underlying standards not only lack of energy, but also have no right to speak, so as long as the basic level of understanding, can provide reference to the technical selection of the enterprise.

For the enterprise, the most important is in the application level of standard-setting, play the role of the dominant, grasp the focus of the norms. From the point of view of Enterprise informatization, there are 2 levels of norms in the future information construction of the enterprise, one is the service of application level in WebService, because from the framework of service registration, interface semantics and invoking logic, we can find the corresponding international standard, the application providers can follow, However, the interface content level of the specification, it is necessary to rely on the internal development of the company's own norms. Another is the cloud computing application management platform standards, cloud computing construction is not 3-5 years of construction and survival cycle, once the enterprise began to use cloud computing technology to integrate the entire IT system, it means that the overall direction of enterprise informatization has been determined, and this direction in a long time is difficult to change. Therefore, the application of management platform in the specification should try to play a guiding role, from the beginning of selection must adhere to the principle of replaceable and migration, the cloud application management platform to provide the basic capabilities of external service interface is standardized, and can be compatible with other management platform.

Cloud computing to build is the enterprise computing aircraft carrier, once dependent on a management system, the future of the impact of the enterprise is fatal, software manufacturers can gradually fade out because of market reasons, and Enterprise informatization is to be a long-term existence and development. Therefore, enterprises should be based on the standards of management platform strict constraints, requiring all application developers to use the standard service must be the Enterprise Express, through the compatibility of testing services.

With cloud computing technology, application development must be improved to a strategic level in the implementation of the standard specification, because participating in the cloud computing environment is no longer an independent application, but a complex task accomplished by many services. So the standard specification will be the development contract of all parties involved, and any development behavior that does not conform to the contract is to challenge the authority of application management. The seriousness and continuity of the norms will also change the software manufacturers in the application development of long-term focus on function, do not pay attention to interface standards of development habits. The service interface of cloud computing is targeted at the service requester, especially some important services, and the inappropriate service interface changes for many service requesters may make the business difficult to evaluate. The safest solution is to build a compatible service provider, provide services for the new and old service interfaces, and then complete the replacement of old and new services through the service addressing relocation function.

5 Uncertainties in cloud computing

The current mainstream commercial middleware platform is commonly used in accordance with user license or host CPU core for sale, the adoption of cloud computing platform, whether from the IaaS virtual machine or PAAs pre-installed middleware, all bring a difficult problem of licensing calculation. Middleware vendors are unwilling to see their profits diluted by virtualization, and cloud computing providers are unwilling to pay extra license fees. In this case, for the public to provide cloud computing service providers, usually using open source middleware platform or its own middleware platform, rarely using commercial middleware platform, but for large and medium-sized enterprise users, the choice of platform software is a difficult choice of things. Therefore, it is one of the uncertain factors that can cultivate the enterprise's own development capability in cloud computing middleware Platform software evolution process.

Original source from "Bit net", reprint please keep the original link: http://cio.chinabyte.com/401/12383401.shtml

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)