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Clouds like love

What are clouds, and when does it make sense to build cloud solutions? And if you build, what platforms to use? Do I need to provide clients with cloud services? Or maybe it is better to use virtualization? And how does virtualization differ from clouds? These questions are asked by all IT and non-IT companies: from large telecom operators to small start-ups. Let's try to figure it out! In a previous article, we looked at the concepts of SDN and NFV. The question arises - if both of them are connected with virtualization and networks, then it turned out to be clouds? After all, we all know perfectly well that clouds are the virtualization of resources somewhere on the network. I tried to find a formal definition of clouds, but did not. Definitions were vague and fuzzy, like real clouds. And then I had a feeling that it is impossible to give CLOUDS a clear definition, they are like LOVE, which can only be described and characterized from different sides. Further investigation confirmed this assumption. To begin with, I found the Cloud Computing standard, which is being developed by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). He identifies 3 dimensions of cloud services:

Clouds




Those. There is no clear definition of the cloud even in the standard. Let's take a closer look at all the measurements:

Service model or service model


The following concepts must have been heard:
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It is believed that these clouds are only PaaS and SaaS, but the standard does not confirm this opinion.

Deployment model


Now about the deployment models, which are also well known:


Functional characteristics


But the functional characteristics of clouds are often not paid attention, whereas for clouds these are essential requirements:


It turns out that the Service has the right to be called cloudy, you need to be able to answer the question "Where is it located in all three dimensions?".

The reverse side of the clouds


But with all the advantages of clouds, there are a number of things that can have negative consequences, especially in public clouds:


  1. How are sensitive data handled?
  2. Are the requirements of the regulator complied with personal data?
  3. How reliable is data integrity (duplication, backup)?
  4. What is the protection against hacker attacks?

This is all, of course, not a reason to abandon the use of clouds, but a reason to more thoroughly understand the pros and cons.

Virtualization


Now a few words about virtualization, without which there can be no clouds. Virtualization also has several dimensions that can be conventionally called “Type” and “Virtualization Method”.

I will briefly sit about everyone. For a deeper immersion in the topic I recommend the article "Review of virtualization methods, architectures and implementations"

Types of Virtualization


Server virtualization



Resource virtualization


Resources are RAM, hard drives, and processors. They can also be sliced ​​and distributed in parts to different users.

Application Virtualization


Application Virtualization is what we already know as PaaS and SaaS

Ways of Virtualization


Full virtualization and paravirtualization


The main methods of virtualization are full virtualization and para-virtualization. The scheme of both methods is very similar. There is a hypervisor and virtual machines with guest OS. With full virtualization, no changes are made to the guest OS. With paravirtualization, optimized images for a specific hypervisor are installed. This allows maximum utilization of hardware resources and does not require any changes from applications. An example of a system that implements full virtualization is VMware, an example of paravirtualization is Xen and KVM.

There are several ways to virtualize:

Operating System Level Virtualization


The special feature is that there can be only one guest OS. An example of OS-level virtualization is Linux-VServer:


Containerization


Recently, containerization systems such as Docker or Kubernetes have been used increasingly. They allow you to automatically deploy prepared OS images mainly for automated testing purposes and for CI systems. Containers are very similar to virtual machines, but they do not require a hypervisor, but only the corresponding engine:


Equipment emulation


With this virtualization method, the VM fully emulates the operation of certain hardware. On the one hand, this makes it possible, for example, on one processor to emulate another type of processor. On the other hand, it is clear that this will slow down the work tenfold. An example of an emulator is Bochs .


OS library emulation


And to complete the picture I will add library emulation. This is the way in which not the whole OS is emulated, but only a part. For example, Wine on Linux is an emulation of libraries for Windows applications.

It turns out that we can virtualize different systems using different methods. Those. we see that many methods can be solved by existing methods and types of virtualization. There is a logical question, when does it make sense to deploy a cloud platform?


Cloud platforms are located above a set of virtual machines, completely isolating the application from both hardware and the structure of the virtual environment. Cloud platforms are used for automatic and manual scale in / scale out, start / stop / configure VM and applications. When it makes sense to stay in virtualization, and when to stay in the cloud? The concept is as follows: when there is a lot of everything - a cloud, a little - virtualization:


A few words about the platform for building clouds. There is a lot of information on them, so I’ll give only a dry squeeze:

Cloud Platforms


To build clouds now there are two main platforms, the rest (Eucalyptus, Cloudstack, Microsoft Azure) occupy an insignificant share.


Cloud platforms are typically used by customers to accomplish the following tasks:


I dwell on these tasks in detail and plan on “Cloud Ready” applications in one of the following articles.

Telecoms and Clouds


It is interesting to understand whether mobile telecom operators have clouds? Do they provide cloud services? From open sources the picture is as follows:

Beeline


From the cloud services provides:


Megaphone


There are traces on the network that in 2013 MegaFon provided IaaS. Now on the site of the similar you can find the service Colocation . However, MegaFon has a lot of specialized services: CDN, M2M, WiFi authentication, VPN, etc.

Mts


MTS provides cloud services under the brand name “Belarusian Cloud Technologies” .


RTK / Tele2


Tele2 is not seen in attempts to promote the clouds, but RTC, whose mobile assets are in a joint holding with Tele2 (T2 RTC Holding), has turned seriously. RTK has made the “National Cloud Platform” and now it provides on its basis:


From the data we can conclude that the provision of cloud services is not a priority for mobile telecom operators, they are more focused on the development of their networks and services. Telecom operators should be contacted for network services, such as: virtual PBX, virtual network, M2M and in general all that can be provided on SDN & NFV technologies: virtual Firewall, DPI, etc. And behind computing clouds it is better to go to specialized providers.

The following articles


Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/317428/

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