The main functionality of Load Balancers is to automate the distribution of workloads across multiple application servers which gives better response times and provides redundancy when some resources fail. The pricing is based on pay as you go and there are no upfront costs. For more information go here.

I think that major cloud providers are working on it, especially Amazon that they are now PCI DSS compliant. On the other hand, the cloud infrastructure is what it is and there will always be the risk of data exposure unless you take the adequate preventive measures. Rather than expecting the impossible from the providers I would implement cloud aware mechanisms that help me protect my data.

Implementing a model that encrypts data all the way, that is, while in transit and when stored reduces the risks of disclosure considerably. Given that the latest encryption tools are put in place makes it harder for an attacker to decipher any data even if he/she is a cloud provider internal employee and has full access to our encrypted data!

Cloud Services have brought new challenges for all security professionals and we can’t expect Cloud Providers to guarantee the highest levels of security when the infrastructure has certain limitations and there’s no magic formula that makes it 100% secure. Therefore, it’s our task to secure our resources in the Cloud and should try to visualize the Cloud as our own server rooms left accessible to all internal staff and without any control measures in place. Only then we would start taking a different approach and finding new ways how to secure our data in the cloud!

Akamai Technologies specializes in content delivery networks (CDNs) and will enhance Rackspace content delivery infrastructure, plus it will provide the SSL and CNAME technology for Rackspace Cloud Files. The outcome of this deal is a one-stop cloud shop and faster Cloud Computing for Rackspace existing and prospective customers.

For more information visit Rackspace Newsroom.

As mid-2010 about 7% of small business owners were using cloud services but the number is expected to grow to more than 10% by mid-2011 according to a survey by IDC. Other surveys show that SMB owners are still hesitant to move their systems to the cloud due to compliance and security reasons.

Today, organizations can build their own private cloud infrastructure. Private clouds give an organization the flexibility and economics of cloud while retaining the security, transparency and control of internal IT. Some months ago, Amazon started offering an extended solution where organizations can host some of their services in house and others on Amazon’s EC2. Also, in the early days of cloud computing technically savvy organizations had an option to try the technology using an open source project called Eucalyptus that delivers private cloud software. This is an infrastructure software that enables enterprises to establish their own cloud computing environments. Today, Eucalyptus Systems have made major developments and is considered as a big contender.

If some organizations are reluctant to trust online service providers, others are wary of open source solutions such as Eucalyptus. But now we have the major IT hardware vendors into cloud computing! For those organizations that for so many years relied on HP products and services, would definitely give HP’s CloudStart a consideration.

HP CloudStart

On Aug. 30, 2010 – HP announced “HP CloudStart, the industry’s first all-in-one solution for deploying an open and flexible private cloud environment within 30 days”

HP claims that their solution can be setup within a 30 day time frame. While, this is a fast-track private cloud solution, one has to have the required hardware platform in place. Although HP states that CloudStart can be integrated with legacy applications, the solution is tightly integrated with HP proprietary hardware. The architecture allows organizations to integrate their own setup with third-party enterprise portals and public cloud services.

According to HP, CloudStart has the same administrative features of Public cloud solutions and the provisioning of services is simplified and fast. Therefore, one expects to find features such as pay-per-use models, automatic scaling up or down of services, real time reporting, and services based on consumption and chargeback reports. All of the above functions need to be managed from a central portal as we are accustomed to do with Public cloud solutions. HP CloudStart is built on the HP Converged Infrastructure.

HP Converged Infrastructure

HP Converged Infrastructure is a collection of tools that connect all IT assets into an interoperable pool of shared resources such as servers, storage and network devices. It’s the platform that manages and automates operations of all applications and infrastructure components. While it provides all the features that are found in Public clouds HP experts state that you can scale a service securely without worrying about management or upgrade issues.

The main components of the infrastructure are HP’s Blade System Matrix, Cloud Service Automation (HP CSA) and StorageWorks. The main benefits of combining HP components into one whole system which apart from the fast (one-touch) provisioning of applications and services will give you added benefits. Some of the added benefits include reduction in compliancy and governance efforts, improved response times to the changing business requirements, added DR functionality, expert support on workload analysis, legacy integration and service management.

The HP BladeSystem Matrix is the foundation of all shared resources while the Service Automation (HP CSA) is the engine that automates processes based on knowledge and best practices.The Network Storage Systems is the data repository component where HP has a varied choice of storage devices that connect with the infrastructure seamlessly.

HP’s solution is a proprietary solution, apparently you cannot mixed and match hardware from different vendors but it can be extended to the Public cloud. The solution reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) drastically and provisions of complex setups and applications can be done very fast.  Where organizations have already made their IT investments with adequate resources such as well developed data centers or they are bound with strict regulations then HP’s CloudStart is a prime candidate. From the business point of view, cloud computing promised the abstraction from legacy or proprietary systems. Will that truly happen for organizations implementing private clouds? Is the private cloud trend moving back to the mainframe concept?

Private cloud is an in-house cloud computing solution that is limited to the internal users of an organization. It is more secure and can be later connected with external providers. Public cloud is any commercial cloud computing service provider that offers storage and computing power over the Internet. Hybrid cloud is a cloud model that combines the advantages of public and private cloud computing environments.
Many remote online data backup service providers use public cloud providers as their backend infrastructure. Hence, backed up data is stored at the backend and that is why the backup service provider setup needs to be secure and reliable!

Amazon as one of the first organizations to provide cloud-computing services has become one of the major players. Their setup known as Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows customers to install and run applications on virtual machines (VMs). New VMs are instantiated from a library of images developed by various customers and Amazon themselves. Users can build and customize their own Amazon Machine Images. Running VMs are called running instances and you pay for the amount of computing power per hour and the in/out traffic generated (bandwidth used) while you are billed on monthly basis. Amazon EC2 provides a secure connection with public/private keys and firewall capabilities. Other database and performance/scalability services are provided such as, Simple DB and load balancing functions. Apart from EC2, Amazon has been providing a cloud storage service that provides scalable, unlimited online storage known as S3 that can provide caching functionality across the globe.

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. The main services consists of the Azure operating system, the SQL Azure database the AppFabric application connectivity service. Although, Microsoft are relatively new to cloud computing, their marketing strength is showing its force even in this area. They have a strong partnership program with its customers and resellers and this will help them become of the main players soon. Their main advantage is that they are offering their vast suite of products as cloud services plus while, on the other hand, they are offering users to run Azure in their own data centers with the Windows Azure platform appliance. Today, Microsoft cloud computing charges are very competitive with respect to other providers.

The long time hosting provider RackSpace are also in the arena! RackSpace Cloud known as Mosso includes a storage and a server infrastructure service while they still offer the traditional hosting services. RackSpace advantage may be their excellent support services when compared to other providers. RackSpace fellow competitors The Planet (Orbit) have a similar cloud setup whereas they claim that their prices are below that of a fully allocated dedicated server. While, this may be true for virtual servers, one has to work out bandwidth costs as in certain situations where a web server consumes a constant amount of bandwidth it might be cheaper to run your web applications on a dedicated server with an agreed dedicated bandwidth! The list of providers is getting bigger and bigger with names like GoGrid, HP Private Cloud, etc…

Google’s App Engine is a platform for web developers and Web hosting applications and you are charged for storage, bandwidth and CPU power. It is limited to a couple of programming languages.

The Cloud Security Alliance is making a great effort towards cloud computing security. To promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud computing, and provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

The cloud is not just a cool technology model but it is also a business model. It is a well-known fact that Amazon at the outset, designed the infrastructure for their own use but it evolved into a product or better a service offered as – Amazon’s Web, EC2, S3, or Amazon’s cloud. It is quite evident that now they are trying to increase their revenue by pushing their infrastructure to the limits through new offers such as, – Spot Instances enable you to bid for unused Amazon EC2 capacity. We all heard of power outages, resources that disappear and slower response times that may be a consequence of an overloaded setup. However, through personal experience I can say that these incidents are very rare with big providers such as, Amazon. Remember, that downtime is also possible with in-house solutions!

One common SaaS is email – if the main criteria are costs, then outsourcing email is your best option. Although, big corporations can negotiate favorable agreements with email providers such as, Google – remember that small to medium businesses may not get the same favor! A word about Google email and applications services – it is very hard to get reasonable support and you may need to rely on third-party tools for basic stuff such as, backing up email boxes. In addition, there is no guarantee that user data would be secure and backed up.

All cloud services share the available resources and therefore, you are competing for computer resources with other customers. A good alternative would be to place your assets with two different providers or use the cloud just to scale-up your systems when the demand rises. Although, you may implement all of the security measures provided by the cloud provider and by the systems themselves, there is still the risk of possible intrusion/destruction from neighboring hosts. Neighboring hosts are virtual machines that are running on the same server or in the same data center. One university claims to have a prototype/model that can identify the exact location of a virtual machine and eventually can start a neighboring VM (Virtual Machine) with high utilization that can hook the underlying platform! In the event of using the cloud as a storage provider, implementing data encryption would adequately harden security – read Securing your online backup archives

No cloud standards yet exist! If you are using the cloud as an infrastructure service, it is impossible to move your assets elsewhere say, to another cloud provider without rebuilding your systems from scratch and moving all your data, as virtual machines setups are not compatible from one provider to another. If you are using software as a service then you need to find another provider that provides the same service and data migration capabilities. Apart from all this, one of the major setbacks remains your Internet connection – so before contemplating to use cloud services make sure to invest in a good and reliable Internet connection, otherwise, you will be disappointed!