Cloud Delivery and Hosting Models - Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure - page 176

seems to be tailor-made for cloud computing. It somewhat suggests a level of autonomy and
even some intelligence because of its effects, but that is largely just an association because,
technically, it is simply automation done right using elements of control theory.
For our purposes, it is the ability of an organization to automate the processes of man-
aging the cloud environment and any underlying infrastructure. It is used to simplify and
accelerate the delivery of cloud services. The delivery of cloud computing solutions goes
through a series of intense and complex IT and system orchestration processes at a very
granular level. Orchestration is the key driver behind cloud computing technology because
it enables IT and other computing resources to be created and provisioned automatically. A
key example is how users access software services by provisioning virtual machines or serv-
ers in order to deliver websites and other cloud applications.
With literally no installation and complexity at the user end, cloud applications can be
used from a standard web browser and the cloud orchestration platform automatically con-
nects the user to the server infrastructure hosting the application for seamless connectivity
and control. The API calls, port selection, and all other aspects of connectivity are man-
aged by the primary or host software and installed and deployed at the software server or
the web server end, not at the user end.
The following IT resources can be orchestrated using the cloud:
Computing Power Virtual computer and servers can instantly be provisioned and are
available for use by the end users. Users just need to sign up for the service and select a type
of server/computer to use, and they are instantly provided with an interface to connect to it
and install the operating system and other related applications. In most cases, service pro-
viders provide templates of virtual or cloud servers that include a predefined specification,
an operating system, and possibly business or workflow applications.
Orchestration is typically achieved through virtual machine creation software such as
a hypervisor. KVM, Oracle Virtual Box, and Microsoft Hyper-V are popular virtual
machine software packages. For enterprise orchestration and automation solutions, most
popular vendors such as Microsoft and VMware provide server or enterprise cloud auto-
mation and management software. Multiple virtual computers and virtual servers can be
provisioned in very little time, and with just a few key strokes multiple virtual machine
instances can be created.
Cloud Storage As with other compute resources, cloud storage is supported by orchestra-
tion. Typically, to provision cloud storage, you make use of storage management software
that controls the entire storage infrastructure, which is usually already a part of the cloud
management platform. The capacity of the virtual drives is not derived from a single drive
and not even from a single location or cluster but may be a composite of storage devices
from different availability zones and countries.
The cloud storage supports or works on hardware abstraction. For instance, if a single
availability zone or even data center has a measly total of 1,000 terabytes and a user simply
needs to provision a 100 GB virtual drive, the orchestration platform will not take all of
that 100 GB from that single zone, even though it has more than enough resources for it. It
will take from different zones and centers allocated for the user. However, for the end user,