Balancing The Workload In A Cloud Environment | Part III

Examples of failover mechanisms include:

Load sharing redundancy – two or more systems loaded with up to 50 percent of the total load. When a device fails, other devices share the load with little or no interruption.

Instance feature redundant – two or more instances of resources loaded with up to 50 percent of the total load. When a court of appeal fails, other instances of resources share the load.

Retrying connection alternative – if the network outage lasts longer than two minutes, try to reconnect to another server via alternative connections.

Security in cloud computing services:

The security service’s cloud can be undermined by weak credentials, exposure of the protocol and failure to implement in remote management. The reuse of IP addresses can lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) unintentional.

SaaS can be intentionally affected with a virus that results in a DoS. Hackers have used PaaS, and decks IaaS as centers of Command and Control (CnC) to direct operations of a botnet (robot network of computers) for use in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and malware installation of software in the cloud.

The log should show the kind of security problem that a type of cloud service had and when and how the problem was fixed.

Issues to consider

Despite their service provider typically being responsible for computer systems underlying the cloud, you still have legal responsibility to ensure that their systems meet regulatory requirements and goals, that the practices are reasonably safe, that the officers cannot access your data without authorization and that an SLA is in force.

Make sure you understand how the SLA works, how to limit policy would affect the SLA and what are the procedures and expectations if your service provider disappoints.

Important components of the SLA are the availability of uptime, performance standards, response times of emergency, and security solutions for violations.

Discover how the threshold levels may differ from those specified as performance standards for uptime availability of the SLA. They should not be set in patterns of availability or above them.

Choose the availability of uptime (97 or 99.9%) and then the threshold levels that best meet your needs and budget of your business.

In the case of a breach of SLA, solutions must be provided. For example, your service provider shall issue a free credit or a refund if you miss a SLA (slow responses in the creation of additional instances of resources in the clouds).

If the provider does not meet the SLA several times in three months, you should be allowed to terminate your service. Ensure that the termination clause is included in the SLA and read it carefully.

The SLA states who and where the power authority would be if you and the provider disagree on the duration of an outage? You should know how long to wait after an event for filing a claim.

Review whether your insurance policy covers items that are not covered in an SLA, including loss of revenue, damage to reputation or data breach.

Conclusion

Set a limit policy for dynamically balancing the workload demands that require advance planning to address the problems of creating additional instances of resources in the cloud environment.

Developers should communicate with the consumer and cloud providers on the issues of economies of scales (public versus private clouds) and development limit policy for testing and production applications.

Use capacity planning in advance to prepare your system to allocate additional resources to instances when the workload demands of reaching the threshold level.