Cloud is Already Here with You

Nowadays, everyone talks about “Cloud”, “5G", “AI”.

Since cloud computing is such a hot topic,

what is cloud computing?

Where is the cloud? Actually, cloud computing is already here with you.

Most of the apps we use in our daily life rely on cloud computing. Take Google Translate as an example,
it has a simple user interface, but provides powerful performance.

 This depends on powerful servers in the cloud. With a lightweight APP and powerful cloud
computing capabilities in the background, the accuracy of translation is guaranteed.
 And cloud storage, like Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox, is another type of cloud service. We
can upload local files to the cloud for storage and backup.
 Another example is cloud conferencing. With cloud conference, we can quickly and
efficiently share voice, videos and data files with teams and customers around the
world.
 Currently, cloud computing has been widely used in e-commerce, education, healthcare,
transportation, government, gaming, airport, bioscience, automobile and other industries,
everywhere. We live in the world of cloud computing.
 Cloud computing is the present and the future.

In this course, we will demystify cloud computing, help you understand its advantages,
concepts, history, models and trend. We will also introduce some other technologies that
reforming the world with cloud, and how cloud support them. Then let's start our learning
journey.
Advantages of Cloud
Why is cloud computing more and more popular?

What are the advantages of cloud computing?

Now let’s have a look.

 Generally, cloud computing has five advantages.

 They are on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid
elasticity and measured service.
 The first is on-demand self-service. It means that you can purchase different types
and quantities of services according to your needs. Usually, cloud service providers
have their own service catalogs. You only need to select desired resources’ type and
quantity, add them to the shopping cart, and pay for them just like shopping on a
shopping website. The whole process is efficient and convenient with low
communication costs.
 The second advantage is broad network access. It means that you can get your
service wherever you are and whenever you are. Imagine that you have purchased
storage space to store your photos and you can easily obtain them wherever you
go. The only thing you need is internet access, whether it's fiber optic, Wi-Fi or
cellular network.
 The third advantage is resource pooling. Imagine that you're in the cafeteria and
want a coke. You might buy a bottled Coke or grab a cup and get it from the soda
fountain. A bottled cola, which is similar to the traditional device usage model, you
buy it then drink it alone. While a soda fountain is a resource pool, which can be
shared by multiple people. Just like in cafeteria, we have not only coke, but orange
juice, beer, etc. Cloud computing resource pools also have resources of the same
type grouped together, including computing, storage and network etc. Resource
pooling has two benefits: one is resource aggregation, unified management and
control; the other is fine-grained and flexible division.
 The fourth is rapid elasticity. Elasticity refers to elasticity in obtaining and releasing
cloud computing resources. Enterprises can quickly obtain required resources for
service deployment. Resources can be flexibly scaled. For example, on shopping
festivals such as Black Friday, e-commerce enterprises have to bear much more
pressure than usual. In such cases, additional cloud computing resources can be
quickly obtained to support the service and then released after peak hours.
Enterprises only need to pay for the resources they use instead of purchasing
additional infrastructure. Thus the cost is lower and service deployment is faster.
 The last one is measured services. Services in cloud computing can be measured
based on the usage time, resource quota, and traffic. Customers can clearly view
the usage of purchased services, analyze the used resources, and optimize the
configuration to purchase more or degrade some. They can also precisely pay for
the resources they use and know what resources they are paying for and for which
period.
 These are the five advantages of cloud computing. Cloud computing makes it easier and cost-effective
for enterprises to acquire IT infrastructure resources and technical support. This allows enterprises to
focus more on business innovation.

On-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service.
These are the five advantages of cloud computing. They make cloud computing more and more
significant in enterprise strategic planning and implementation. And cloud computing is an important
reality in today’s IT world. That´s all for this class. In the next lesson, we will elaborate what’s cloud
computing, See you.

Chapter 2

Term Full name Description

OBS Object Storage Service An object-based cloud storage service. It provides data

storage of easy extensibility, high security, proven reliability,

and high cost efficiency.

EIP Elastic IP Address The Elastic IP Address (EIP) service provides independent

public IP addresses and bandwidth to the Internet. An EIP

can be flexibly associated with or disassociated from an ECS,

BMS, virtual IP address, load balancer, or NAT gateway.

Various billing modes are provided to meet diversified

service requirements.

Definition of Cloud
In the previous lesson, we learned five advantages of Cloud computing: on-demand self-service, broad
network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service.

 Now, we will learn the definition of it. According to the National Institute of Standards and
Technology(NIST), cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand
network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources, such as networks,
servers, storage, applications, and services, that can be rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
 This definition is very long, and we can grasp three keywords to understand it. First keyword:
network.
 Networks are indispensable to cloud computing.
 A complete cloud computing environment consists of the cloud, networks,
and terminals.
  The cloud refers to where we complete our computing tasks. Generally, this
place is a data center equipment room where many servers process data.

The terminal is an input/output device. The computer network connects the cloud to the terminal to
transmit information – it transmits instructions input from the terminal to the cloud, and returns the
execution result to the terminal, just like a pipe.

Second: resources. As the definition says, cloud computing resources include computing, storage,
network, applications, and services etc. Resource features are pooled, configurable, and can be quickly
provided and released.

Third: Services. For example, when you're going out, you can buy a car or take an Uber. Buying a car is
on-premises, while the Uber solution is a service. You do not buy a car from Uber, but pay for the service
that Uber moves you from place A to place B. Cloud computing provides cloud resources to customers
as services. Customers do not actually own devices in equipment room of cloud vendors such as
HUAWEI, but use some to process services. This is similar to leasing. In general, cloud computing means
moving the computing process from the local computers to the remote servers. We do not need to
care about the specific equipment room and device, just like a cloud in the sky.

Cloud is a metaphor for networks. Underlying details are omitted. Computing is like a computer,
powerful enough to provide computing, storage, and other services. "Cloud computing" can be
understood as a model providing services to users by using computers that are powerful enough to
provide them over the Internet.

That‘s all for today, we learned the definition of cloud computing. In the next lesson, we will talk about
the origin and development of cloud computing.

Chapter 4

Term Full name Description

ARM Advanced Reduced Instruction Reduced instruction set computing, is a CPU design strategy
Set Computing Machines based on the insight that a simplified instruction set provides
higher performance when combined with a microprocessor
architecture capable of executing those instructions using fewer
microprocessor cycles per instruction. A computer based on
this strategy is a reduced instruction set computer.

VMware / A leader in virtualization technology. VMware provides a

portfolio of software products for virtualizing hardware
resources to enable one physical server to take the role of
 multiple servers.

X86 / x86 is the generic name for Intel processors released after the
original 8086 processor.

OpenStack / OpenStack is a free and open-source software platform for

cloud computing, mostly deployed as Infrastructure as a

Service (IaaS), whereby virtual servers and other resources are

made available to customers. The software platform consists

of interrelated components that control diverse, multi-vendor

hardware pools of processing, storage, and networking

resources throughout a data center.

Docker / The term docker can refer to The Docker project as a whole,

which is a platform for developers and sysadmins to develop,

ship, and run applications the docker daemon process

running on the host which manages images and containers

VPN Virtual Private Network The term describes any technology that can encapsulate and

transmit network data, typically Internet Protocol data, over

another network. Such a system enables users to access

network resources that may otherwise be inaccessible from

the public internet.

DNS Domain Name Server A functional entity in the TCP/IP network. With deployment of

the DNS, subscribers can access related servers using

corresponding domain names. In the TCP/IP network, a

domain name maps an IP address. Domain names are easier

to remember but servers in the network communicate with

each other using IP addresses. Therefore the DNS is used to

convert domain names to corresponding IP addresses.

TCP/IP Transmission Control Common name for the suite of protocols developed to

Protocol/Internet Protocol support the construction of worldwide internetworks.

WWW World Wide Web A large scale hypermedia information system that allows users

to browse information.

ESXi / A virtualization platform for creating and running virtual

machines. ESXi virtualizes processor, memory, and storage
resources and allocates the resources for virtual machines.
Virtual machines, operating systems, and applications can run
above the ESXi.

Xen Xen is a Hypervisor providing services that allow multiple

computer operating systems to execute on the same computer
hardware concurrently.

KVM Kernel-based Virtual Machine Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization

infrastructure for the Linux kernel. KVM requires a processor

with hardware virtualization extension.

LXC Linux Container LXC (Linux Containers) is an operating-system-level

virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux

systems (containers) on a control host using a single Linux

kernel.

Hyper-V / A VM system provided by Microsoft, which is installed on

hosts.

EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web

service provided by Amazon. It enables users to rent cloud

computers to run required applications.

S3 Simple Storage Service Amazon Simple Storage Service is storage for the Internet. It

is designed to make web-scale computing easier for

developers.
Origin and Development
From the definition in the previous section, we already know that cloud computing moves
the processing process that was originally local to the remote end and then sends the
results back. Therefore, cloud computing originates from the development of networks and
the transformation of computing. First, let's look at the development of networks.

In the early days, computers were huge and expensive. People wanted to communicate
and share resources with computers in other regions.

ARPANET was born in 1969. It was the precursor of the Internet.

Later, more computers around the globe were connected.

In the 1990s, Tim Berners Lee led the World Wide Web project, which became the www in
front of our website. Meanwhile, Amazon and Google were established.

After the millennium, network connections and traffic boomed.

Facebook was founded in 2004.

More and more people became Internet players.

The bandwidth and speed of the network have been improved continually.

Then let's review the development of computing.

Here we focus on virtualization, which is a core technology of cloud computing. In the

mainframe age, computing resources were quite limited.

In 1955, John McCarthy proposed the theory of sharing computing time among users.

10 years later, IBM launched the Time Sharing System (TSS).

In 1999, VMware launched software that can implement virtualization on the x86 platform.
This is important, because before that virtualization was a game of mainframes, while over
decades, Intel's x86 architecture PCs and servers had become the mainstream.

In the next ten years, multiple commercial or open-source virtualization software

appeared such as VMware ESX, the predecessor of ESXi，Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen, KVM.

If only virtualization technology is applied, the current cloud computing will not be
available.

What is more important is to combine virtualization and network to share computing

resources, forming a business model that can generate huge economic benefits.
 Amazon was the pioneer. In 2006, AWS launched the first cloud products, Simple Storage
Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), enabling enterprises to use AWS
infrastructure to build their own applications.

Then more tech giants launched their own cloud platforms and products.

The cloud computing business model has been recognized in the market. More and more
users accept and use cloud computing service and the industry chain has started to
develop and integrate.

Then, the emergence of OpenStack makes heterogeneous platform management more

intelligent.

And docker has made virtualization more lightweight.

VMs has been gradually replaced by containers.

Cloud computing entered the container era. From the birth of cloud computing to today,
Cloud computing evolution has three milestones.

In the cloud computing 1.0 era, computing virtualization is the core. More IT applications
exist on fewer computing nodes to improve resource utilization.

2.0 Then, next era features “software-defined" and integration. We concentrate on

resource servitization and management automation.

In the 3.0 era, the key words are "cloud native" and "APP redesign", cloud computing
focuses on cloud-native and service reconstruction, bringing enterprise services to a new
level in intelligence, agility, and efficiency improvement.

Today, with multiple advantages, cloud computing supports the development and
innovation of multiple industries and technologies. In this class, we have learned the origin
and development of Cloud Computing, cloud computing is still evolving and is promising in
the future. Next, we will talk about Cloud computing deployment models.

Chapter 4

Term Full name Description

ARM Advanced Reduced Reduced instruction set computing, is a CPU design

Instruction Set Computing strategy based on the insight that a simplified instruction set
 Machines provides higher performance when combined with a
microprocessor architecture capable of executing those
instructions using fewer microprocessor cycles per
instruction. A computer based on this strategy is a reduced
instruction set computer.

VMware / A leader in virtualization technology. VMware provides a

portfolio of software products for virtualizing hardware
resources to enable one physical server to take the role of
multiple servers.

X86 / x86 is the generic name for Intel processors released after
the original 8086 processor.

OpenStack / OpenStack is a free and open-source software platform

for cloud computing, mostly deployed as Infrastructure as

a Service (IaaS), whereby virtual servers and other

resources are made available to customers. The software

platform consists of interrelated components that control

diverse, multi-vendor hardware pools of processing,

storage, and networking resources throughout a data

center.

Docker / The term docker can refer to The Docker project as a

whole, which is a platform for developers and sysadmins

to develop, ship, and run applications the docker daemon

process running on the host which manages images and

containers

VPN Virtual Private Network The term describes any technology that can encapsulate

and transmit network data, typically Internet Protocol

data, over another network. Such a system enables users

to access network resources that may otherwise be

 inaccessible from the public internet.

DNS Domain Name Server A functional entity in the TCP/IP network. With

deployment of the DNS, subscribers can access related

servers using corresponding domain names. In the TCP/IP

network, a domain name maps an IP address. Domain

names are easier to remember but servers in the network

communicate with each other using IP addresses.

Therefore the DNS is used to convert domain names to

corresponding IP addresses.

TCP/IP Transmission Control Common name for the suite of protocols developed to

Protocol/Internet Protocol support the construction of worldwide internetworks.

WWW World Wide Web A large scale hypermedia information system that allows

users to browse information.

ESXi / A virtualization platform for creating and running virtual

machines. ESXi virtualizes processor, memory, and storage
resources and allocates the resources for virtual machines.
Virtual machines, operating systems, and applications can
run above the ESXi.

Xen Xen is a Hypervisor providing services that allow multiple

computer operating systems to execute on the same
computer hardware concurrently.

KVM Kernel-based Virtual Machine Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization

infrastructure for the Linux kernel. KVM requires a

processor with hardware virtualization extension.

LXC Linux Container LXC (Linux Containers) is an operating-system-level

virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux

systems (containers) on a control host using a single Linux

 kernel.

Hyper-V / A VM system provided by Microsoft, which is installed on

hosts.

EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web

service provided by Amazon. It enables users to rent cloud

computers to run required applications.

S3 Simple Storage Service Amazon Simple Storage Service is storage for the Internet.

It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for

developers.

Deployment Models

Welcome back. After we learned about the history and evolution of cloud computing, we'll focus
on the deployment models of cloud computing in this section. The three most common cloud
computing deployment models are public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud.
Here is a simple metaphor to understand. Alice, she puts a safe at home to keep all her
property.
And this way is like a private cloud. While for Bob, there's no safe. He puts his property in the
bank, like a public cloud.
For Carol, she puts some money in her own safe, and the rest in the bank, like a hybrid cloud
model.
Their money can be seen as enterprise’s service and data, and safe is cloud infrastructure.
Their houses are firewalls of enterprises, while the bank is just like a cloud vendor providing
services to the public.

For example, Amazon AWS，Microsoft Azure, HUAWEI ClOUD.

In general, the difference lies in whether data and services are deployed inside or outside the
enterprise firewall.
Now we have three models, which one should we choose?
Actually, the answer depends on service requirements and scenarios
. Let's discuss pros and cons of them.
For public cloud, it is a model in which resources, such as applications and storage, are
prepared by cloud vendors, then and the public can access them through the network. Public
cloud services can be free of charge or pay-per-use, and it is the most popular one. No
investments are required to deploy and maintain the IT infrastructure. It provides powerful
resource flexibility and agility. For enterprises, the capital expenditure (CAPEX) can be
converted into operating expense (OPEX) to shorten the return on investment. The advantages
of the public cloud are low costs and excellent scalability. As the data volume increases,
the capacity can be expanded continuously. But due to the lack of control over cloud resources,
security issues of confidential data, network performance, and compatibility issues maybe
bottlenecks. Many customers worry about the security of public cloud. Actually, for small and
medium-sized companies, the risks of data leakage and service interruption when adopting
public cloud are far less than those of using their own equipment rooms. Some
enterprises, such as those in the financial industry, cannot afford the risk of any data loss or
leakage. Or facing the situation that some critical services, can't be migrated to the public cloud.
Building their own private clouds can be a better choice.
The private cloud refers to cloud solution that is used exclusively by an organization. Private
clouds can be built by enterprise IT departments or cloud platform service providers. Usually the
data center resources are located on-premises. The computing resources are not shared with
other customers, but just kept inside the organization. Private cloud can effectively control data
confidentiality, data security, and service quality. Private clouds are good choices for enterprises
that have high requirements on data security and stability. However, all hardware, software, and
security resources must be purchased by themselves, which is costly. And it takes a long time
to deploy it. In addition, professional maintenance teams are required in the company. Here is a
brief contrast between Public and Private cloud.
Hybrid cloud is a combination of the above two. It integrates the convenience and cost-
effectiveness of public cloud with the security and stability of private cloud. Enterprises who
want to store data on private clouds and use resources of public clouds at the same time, can
use public clouds and private clouds in a hybrid manner. Sensitive data or critical workloads can
be stored on private clouds, while common or extended workloads can be stored on public
clouds. Or they can use a private cloud environment to handle their daily IT workloads and use
public cloud resources to supplement the infrastructure to accommodate occasional surges in
network traffic. Everything comes with limitations. T
he hybrid cloud draws on the advantages of public and private clouds, but the complexity is also
greatly increased, requiring strong compatibility and integration between cloud infrastructures
across different locations and categories.
It’s hard to manage. And as organization operations and management evolves, the combination
of private and public cloud complicates the architecture.
This is all about this part. We mainly introduced the concepts of public, private and hybrid cloud,
and their pros and cons. Have you got it? In the next section, we will learn three service models
of cloud computing: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.

Chapter 5
 Term Full name Description

CAPEX Capital Expenditure Capital expenditures (CAPEX or capex) are expenditures

creating future benefits. A capital expenditure is incurred

when a business spends money either to buy fixed assets or

to add to the value of an existing fixed asset with a useful

life that extends beyond the taxable year.

OPEX Operating Expense An operating expense, operating expenditure, operational

expense, operational expenditure or OPEX is an ongoing

cost for running a product, business, or system.

TCO Total Cost of Ownership Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate whose
purpose is to help consumers and enterprise managers
determine direct and indirect costs of a product or system. It
is a management accounting concept that can be used in full
cost accounting or even ecological economics where it
includes social costs.

Service Models

In the last class, we learned about the concepts of public, private and hybrid cloud, and their
pros and cons. And we mentioned that one of the key words of cloud computing is service in the
definition section.
Cloud computing resources are provided for users in the form of services.
Today，we will discuss cloud service models.
Here are three cloud service models based on the resource levels:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS),
Platform as a Service (PaaS),
and Software as a Service (SaaS).
For ease of memory, they can be refined into SPI.
There are some other aaS models,
such as DaaS (Data as a service),
STaaS (Storage as a Service),
BaaS (Backend as a Service),
which are classified by resource type
. Everything can be a service.
Let's go back to the "SPI". What are they, and what's the difference?
There is a classic analogy called "Pizza as a Service" as a visualization of the differences
among these concepts. Imagine that you want to enjoy a pizza. You can make your own pizza
from scratch. There's a lot of stuff to be prepared, including pizza ingredients, oven, gas and
even a table to put your pizza when you eat. That’s really a hassle. Or you can ask for help, or,
in other words, use services provided by others. You have three options. They are take &
bake，pizza delivered or dining out.
For the first option, you need to buy an uncooked pizza from the pizzeria, bake it at home, and
eat it at your own table. Unlike doing it yourself at home, you need a pizza vendor. For pizza
delivered, with just one call, then pizza's on the doorstep.
For dinning out, you don't have to prepare anything. The three solutions can be summarized as
above.
They are similar to IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS of cloud computing.
This is the case with cloud computing. From bottom to top, this is a complete set of IT
environment from underlying resources to applications.
We can see computing, storage, network resources, and virtualization.
These belong to infrastructure.
The OS is the operating system.
And the middleware and runtime environment are used by developers.
Data and applications are the last step.
If an enterprise wants to bring a service online without relying on external resources, it has to
prepare all these resources. But now that we have cloud services, things are much easier. We
can use resources provided by cloud service providers.
If we use their infrastructure, it is IaaS.
If the running environment is ready, it is PaaS.
If we directly use software developed by them, it is SaaS. From left to right, the workload is
decreasing，which is blue part in the preceding figure. IaaS > PaaS > SaaS. With more
resources provided by cloud service providers, our investment in management and
development is less, and the level of customization is reduced as well. IaaS is the bottom layer
of cloud services and provides basic resources. IaaS is the bottom layer of cloud services and
provides basic resources.
Users need to manage their cloud servers and data, and design how to interconnect cloud
servers. For example, ECS, EVS, VFW on HUAWEICLOUD.
For Startups and small companies, they may pick IaaS to avoid spending too much time and
money on purchasing and managing hardware and software when budgets are limited.
Enterprises can also take the advantage of IaaS services to implement elastic scaling of basic
resources and to cope with traffic peaks.
PaaS provides an online platform that's accessible to different users, mainly developers. These
platforms can be adopted for software development, IoT backend system, business
analytics/intelligence, or some other uses. Cloud vendors help manage the underlying
infrastructure, dev tools, runtime, database and so on. This spares users from troublesome
business like deploying physical resources, and installing various development tools. They can
focus on their own business logic. Typical PaaS platforms include Google App Engine and
OpenShift. PaaS services can greatly reduce costs and accelerate deployment when you are
developing an application.
SaaS is a model that software development, deployment, and management, are all handed
over to a third party. Therefore, you do not need to pay attention to technical issues and can use
the software as you want.
Almost all we access are SaaS services, such as Salesforce, Google Apps, Dropbox,
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For enterprises, they can also benefit from SaaS. For
example, if a company need Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, they may turn
to Salesforce. By choosing one of the different plans and subscribe to the system, then they can
create greater value for more customers. Compared with traditional self-developed software by
enterprises, SaaS can help enterprises save cost, improve efficiency and create value.
These are three service models of cloud computing: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Let’s recap these
three models. I indicates infrastructure, P indicates platform, and S indicates software. They
represent different levels of service. From IaaS to SaaS, making it more convenient for users to
use, meanwhile customization and lower-layer resource control are reduced. You can select
services at different levels based on your requirements. In the next section, we will learn the
architecture of cloud computing.

Chapter 6

Term Full name Description

IaaS Infrastructure as a Service Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) enables consumers to use

processing, storage, network, and various basic computing

resources to deploy and execute various software such as

operating systems or applications without purchasing

 hardware devices such as servers and networks. Customers

cannot manage or control underlying infrastructure. However,

they can control operating systems, storage devices, and

deployed applications. Sometimes, they can control specific

network elements, such as the host firewall, to a certain

extent.

PaaS Platform as a Service PaaS is an application hosting and running environment. It is

an efficient development platform (development tools and a

large number of middleware services) and provides

DevOps/NoOps capabilities (O&M automation or O&M

outsourcing).

SaaS Software as a Service In this model, cloud providers install and operate application

software in the cloud and cloud users access the software

from cloud clients. The cloud users do not manage the cloud

infrastructure and platform on which the application is

running. This eliminates the need to install and run the

application on the cloud user's own computers simplifying

maintenance and support.

ECS Elastic Cloud Server An Elastic Cloud Server (ECS) is a computing server that

consists of CPUs, memory, images, and Elastic Volume Service

(EVS) disks and allows on-demand allocation and elastic

scaling.

EVS Elastic Volume Service Elastic Volume Service (EVS) disks are a type of virtual block

storage devices that use the distributed architecture and can

be elastically expanded.

VFW Virtual Firewall A network firewall service or appliance running in a virtualized

environment to provide the usual packet filtering and

monitoring functions like a physical network firewall.

 CRM Customer Relationship An enterprise business strategy, which is used to organize

Management enterprise resources effectively, cultivate customer-centric

operational behaviors and implement customer-centric

business processes, so as to raise profitability, revenue and

customer satisfaction.

Cloud Architecture

In last clip, we learned the following architecture.

We call it a complete set of IT environment architecture, from resources to applications.

Based on this, make some adjustments and refinements, then we can obtain the cloud
computing architecture.

This is a simple cloud computing architecture. How to understand it?

We can compare the cloud architecture to a supermarket.

If you want to open a supermarket,

what's the first thing? You must have your commodities. The goods could be food, daily
necessities, or some raw materials that needs to be processed.

Then we need a place to store our goods. We'd better classify them so we can find them
easily later.

Supermarkets also need management platforms to make sure it's running properly and
can make money.

A back-end system and related employees are responsible for pricing the product,
replacing expired goods, and repairing the cash register when something goes wrong.
Finally, with these preparations, our supermarket can be open now.

Our customers come to us and search for things on shelves, perhaps two hamburgers or
three pillows, there are various types of sorted goods.

Cloud architecture is similar to this. For the cloud, the goods of the supermarket
correspond to the infrastructure of the cloud, and the warehouse of the supermarket
corresponds to the resource pool of the cloud. The cloud also has a management platform.
The official website of the cloud service provider is like the shelf at the top of the
supermarket architecture.

Let's go to each layer of the cloud architecture and briefly look at the content of each layer.
First, the infrastructure layer consists of hardware devices, including computing, storage,
network and security devices. Servers include x86 servers. And Huawei has TaiShan servers
that use Kunpeng series processors of the ARM architecture, different from x86 ones.

For storage, we have storage servers and distributed storage. A storage server has a
dedicated chassis that can be connected to a disk enclosure with many hard disks.

Distributed storage uses disks on different servers to form a distributed storage pool for
data read and write.

Network devices are mainly used for communication. The network connects servers and
servers, servers and storage devices, as well as data centers and external networks.
Security is also important. There are some security devices in the data center.

At the resource pool layer, virtual computing resource pools, virtual storage resource pools,
and virtual network resource pools are abstracted from physical infrastructure devices
using virtualization technologies.

On the upper part of the resource pool layer, usually there is a cloud resource
management system. On the Huawei cloud platform, the resource pool layer uses
FusionSphere OpenStack as the virtual resource scheduling system to integrate resources
in physical data centers and to provide interfaces for the upper layer.

FusionSphere OpenStack is a Huawei product that is enhanced based on open-source

OpenStack for commercial use.

For the third layer, the cloud management platform layer is responsible for O&M and
operation. How to understand the two concepts? Simply put, O&M is "to live" and
operation is "to live better".

For supermarket, O&M means running properly while operation means making
money. O&M ensures the continuous running of service systems. The key words are
stability, security, reliability, infrastructure-oriented and software-oriented. The keywords
of IT operation are experience, efficiency, and benefit, which are mainly business-oriented,
service-oriented and people-oriented.

On the basis of the preceding three layers, we can provide cloud services.

Generally, a web page is used for customers to purchase cloud resources, just like
supermarket shelves. Huawei provides more than 200 cloud service products of various
types,

 For example ECS for compute,

 OBS for storage,
 GaussDB for Database.
Just like the goods in our supermarket, if you are interested, visit the HUAWEI CLOUD
official website www.huaweicloud.com for further learning.

This is the main content of this course. Let's review the cloud computing architecture. It
consists of four layers: infrastructure layer, resource pool layer, cloud management
platform layer, and cloud service layer from bottom to top. Next section, we'll talk
about some new technologies and how cloud computing support them.

Cloud: Enabler of New Techs

In the last section, we learned about cloud computing architecture.

In this section, we will focus on how cloud computing supports other key technologies that
change the world.

The future will be a fully connected, intelligent society, which relies on a variety of
technologies, such as AI, IoT, 5G, Cloud Computing and so on.

What role does cloud computing play in it?

Cloud computing features powerful and scalable computing capabilities with effective and
flexible investment making it an important supporter and enabler of other technologies.

Let's use an analogy to illustrate their relationships.

 If an intelligent world is a computer, cloud computing will be its CPU and hard disks,
and provides computing and storage capabilities.
 While IoT devices are input and output devices like mouse, keyboard, and monitor,
for data collection and output.
 AI is an application program, which defines data usage and focuses on data analysis
and application.
 Last one is 5G, it functions as an ultra-high-speed network cable that can connect
massive keyboards, mouses and monitors around the world with the computer.

Now let's briefly introduce these concepts.

 First, IoT, The Internet of things. The concept of IoT is derived from the Internet. It is
the "Internet for things", which is a network of physical objects. We use RFID,
sensors, embedded systems to track and collect information. For example, the
temperature of your house, the road conditions around an autonomous driving car.
The data can be transferred to the cloud, and the cloud IoT platform can assist in
data storage and analysis. Many public cloud vendors provide IoT support, such as
the IoT Device Management service on HUAWEI CLOUD. IoT can be applied to many
fields, such as smart home, industry, agriculture, transportation, smart grid and
environmental protection.
  Then, Artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is a topic everyone is talking about.
A few years ago, AlphaGo, the AI robot developed by Google, winning the World Go
Championship, sparked the world's attention to AI. The elements of AI include the
following four:Big data, Computing capability, Algorithm, and scenario.
Applications of AI including robotics, speech recognition, image recognition, and
natural language processing. All of them require powerful computing
capabilities. Artificial intelligence is located at the application layer and transforms
computing power in cloud into scenario-based applications.
 Another area closely related to cloud computing is 5G. The advantages of 5G
Network are large bandwidth, low latency, and massive connection. 5G brings
faster data transmission speeds and data throughput, making cloud computers and
cloud games perform better. It can support remote real-time medical surgery and
better applications of latency-sensitive things such as VR, AR. Wide connectivity of
5G allows more IoT devices to connect to the Internet and communicate with cloud.
Also, cloud computing benefits the development of 5G. 5G can use cloud
computing to virtualize some access and core network devices, then software and
hardware decoupled, which improves network efficiency. In addition, the edge
cloud effectively reduces 5G transmission latency.
 In the future, IoT, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, 5G and other technologies
will increasingly be integrated and applied to industry upgrades and community
intelligence.

Among them, cloud computing will be an important digital infrastructure for society. It is
an irreplaceable part of enabling other enterprise applications and intelligent scenarios. In
this class, we have learned some technologies driving the world more digital and
intelligent together with cloud. And cloud computing plays an essential role in the
development of other technologies. Next, we will talk about some trends of cloud
computing.

Chapter 8

Term Full name Description

IoT Internet of Things The Internet of things is the network of physical devices,

vehicles, home appliances and other items embedded with

electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network

connectivity which enables these objects to connect and

exchange data.
 RFID Radio Frequency Identification Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the wireless non-

contact use of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to

transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying

and tracking tags attached to objects. It uses radio

frequencies to identify objects and obtain data without

manual intervention.

NFV Network Functions Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) uses IT virtualization

Virtualization technologies to consolidate many network equipment types

onto industrial standards, such as servers, switches, and

storage, which could be located in data centers, network

nodes, and in end user premises.

Cloud Trends

In the last class, We have learned some technologies driving the world to become more
digital and intelligent together with cloud.

And cloud computing plays an important role in the development of other technologies.

 Today, we will discuss the development trend of cloud computing. Cloud is an

evolving concept.
 What will the cloud look like in the future? Search for cloud trends we can find
many answers, such as Serverless、Edge Computing、Multi-cloud、Cloud
Game、Mobile Office.
 Here we focus on two most important technologies.
 One is cloud native and the other is cloud-edge collaboration.
 First, what is cloud native?
According to the definition from the CNCF:

Cloud native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in
modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. Containers,
service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify
this approach. Generally, cloud native includes technologies (microservices and containers)
and organization and management (DevOps, CI/CD), which is a collection of cloud
technologies and enterprise management methods. Instead of focusing on migrating
applications to cloud, cloud-native features constructing and providing applications based
on cloud characteristics.

Among these technologies and methods, the most popular one is the container
technology.

 What is container? It is a popular application packaging solution. Application and the

required environment are packaged into images for development, shipment and
deployment. An image is a read-only template used to create container instances.
One mainstream container product is Docker.
 The containers are lightweight and portable. Compared with a virtual machine, it
is more lightweight and consumes less resources. So that thousands of containers
can run concurrently on a server. Containers feature portability as well. Because a
container encapsulates an application and all its dependencies, the application can
easily run on different platforms, either traditional servers or clouds. Using image
repository, images can be shared and distributed conveniently.
This is container, an important part of cloud-native.
 The second trend of cloud is cloud-edge collaboration. For Cloud computing, data is
transmitted to data centers, and in remote data centers, compute tasks are
completed. However, in the era of 5G and Internet of Things, more and more
terminals are participating and more data are being generated. The traditional cloud
mode has faced many bottlenecks, such as insufficient bandwidth, high power
consumption, and insufficient real-time performance. Edge computing places the
computing process close to the source end of data generation, which is the origin of
“edge”.Edge devices can be mobile phones, laptops, industrial robots, and so on.
In this way, the data is processed in real-time, ensuring low-latency performance,
saving network bandwidth, and reducing the pressure on the data center.
 A typical application is autonomous driving. For autonomous driving cars, even a
delay of a few milliseconds can lead to accidents and catastrophic losses.
Autonomous cars must respond immediately to the changing road conditions and
cannot simply stop while waiting for instructions or advice from remote cloud
server’s analysis data.
 If the sensor data is analyzed near the local edge device, the network latency
problem can be solved well. Edge computing cannot replace cloud computing.
 The powerful computing capability and resource scalability of cloud computing are
irreplaceable.
 In the future, cloud and edge will be better coordinated to implement various
intelligent applications.
 To sum up, cloud native focuses on application development and management.
It is a collection of technologies and methods, making application delivery more
agile and efficient and enabling enterprises to respond to services more quickly .
Cloud-edge collaboration is another direction of cloud computing
 development. This concept is more macroscopic. Edge computing is an extension
of cloud computing which can meet the requirements of low latency.
 Cloud computing is still developing rapidly. Cloud Native and Edge Computing are
only two of these trends.
 In the future, cloud computing will become the foundation of information
technology.
 Thank you for participating in this course. If you are interested, you can continue to
learn and explore more about cloud computing. Based on the importance of cloud
computing in today's IT society, having the knowledge and understanding of cloud
computing can help you develop faster and better.
 Chapter 9

Term Full name Description

edge / Edge computing is pushing the frontier of computing

computing applications, data, and services away from centralized

nodes to the logical extremes of a network. It enables

analytics and knowledge generation to occur at the source

of the data.