The Surf Shoppe and MegaCorp Headquarters - Assignment Example

? The Surf Shoppe In The Cloud [Pick the Because it will be a small, tightly controlled operation, with limited IT support, the Surf Shoppe project manager has decided that local data should be maintained on a single, highly protected server. Determine the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining data on a single, highly protected server Surf Shoppe Project Manager has decided to maintain the data on a single, highly protected server. The data protection he has planned to get working is the mission critical element of modern data centers (Davies, 2008). Their design of these data protection servers assure elimination of points of failure that can be recovered to an acceptable state and point in time in case of site loss, server or data. Following are some of the advantages of single highly protected servers: Centralization: They are centrally controlled and are held by a central administration. They architected with a central control design. They assist in administrating the entire set through a single central unit. Server is wholly responsible for access rights and resource allocation. Proper Management: All the resource files are stored and saved in the single destination. This makes file management real easy and locating files and accessing them becomes real easy. Back-Up and Recovery Possible: Since the entire data is saved and stored on the server, it makes it easy to make their back-ups. Backups do not have to be carried to every workstation. Alongside, if some unforeseen event or breakdown leads to data loss, it can be easily and efficiently recovered. Up gradation and scalability in client Server Head: Incase of the need of changes, they are easy to be made through simple server up gradation. If further any new changes are to be made or added, they can be made by making simple changes to the server. Accessibility: The server can be assessed remotely from various platforms in the network. Security: At the set up server time rules defining security and access rights are defined. However, the protected server incorporated by the Surf Shoppe Project Manager can face certain disadvantages. Some of them are following: Congestion in Network: When there are too many requests from the customers and server needs rapid enhancements, it can lead to congestion. As the total bandwidth of the network does not increase as the number of peers increase, overload can lead to breaking down of server. Not Robust: These single highly protected servers are very robust or strong. If the server fails, the whole network might go down. Further, in case of abandonment of the server because of some error during file downloading, downloading gets affected altogether. Even no broken parts of the file can be accessed. Costly and Difficult to set up: The cost of their setup is real expensive since installing this type involves high cost and is equally complex to set up. It can only be done by professionals and consultants. (Davies, 2008; Commvault, 2013) 2. Provide a recommendation for the additional equipment they should have to guarantee high availability and reliable application, file, and print services (e.g., NAS, RAID, etc.). As an additional equipment to guarantee high availability and reliability of applications, NAS is highly recommendable. NAS stands for Network attached Storage. It is an additional storage volume accessible over a network. They are incorporate with all the essential features of a common personal computer based server. It can provide centralized back up, file sharing, print sharing and remote access. Just simply within the capacity of a single unit, NAS can be a centralized file, print server, backup target and a lot more. It also is capable of the following, Photo and video sharing. Surveillance System. Time machine support along with iTunes and iPhone applications. Website Hosting. Expansion enclosures. 3. Sam Ayam suggests that you consider using a private cloud concept for maintaining data confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) between the Surf Shoppe and MegaCorp headquarters. He thinks this fits in nicely with MegaCorp’s main business model (i.e., cloud provisioning) and will give him a chance to assess the efficacy of this concept. Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of using a private cloud concept for maintaining data CIA between the Surf Shoppe and MegaCorp headquarters The concept of private clouding between mega Corp and Surf Shoppe is an improved methodology of providing data to the end user. Private clouding is implemented under the supervision of IT departments through incorporation of corporate firewalls (Davies, 2008). They hold a good control over enterprise and control data along with the security and regulatory compliance issues. Sam Ayam’s suggestion holds great value as private clouding has a cut through in the hype and truly shifted the paradigm of IT in present days. Some of the common advantages his suggestion can bring in are as follows: Cost Effective: Cost effectiveness are one of the major and financially the most important advantages of cloud computing. Since the investment costs in standalone software’s and servers are eliminated, it provides financial edge. Mega Corp’s main business model can save additional costs that could otherwise have been borne over licensing fees and other overheads such as the cost of management, data storage and software updates. The extraordinary capabilities can help eliminate the undesired costs for maintenance. The initial purchase of the cloud is also cheaper than the existing traditional approaches and can further lower the overall IT expenses. The cloud becomes more attractive because of the newly emerged scalable and convenient charging patterns. The costs associated with the development and maintenance of the server infrastructure gets eliminated through the cloud’s technical and analytical approach. Convenience and continuous availability: Cloud is looked upon as a convenient option since services are available wherever the end user might be located. The needs of users in different time and geographical zones accommodated and easy access routes are enabled towards the required information. The access, modification and viewing of shared files are boomed in collaboration as a side benefit. Continuous availability of resources is provided, since service uptime is guaranteed in most of the cases. Many of the cloud computing vendors typically use multiple servers for maximum possible redundancy. Just in case the system fails, cloud computing has ready backups for the convenience of end users and alternate instances automatically spawn on other machines. Back Up and Recovery: Since after the incorporation of cloud computing, the data resides on the cloud and not on any physical device, the process of data back up and its recovery has been largely simplified. Many major dealers of cloud computing providers basically extend flexible and reliable recovery and backup solutions. Under certain situations, the cloud in its own is wholly solely used as a flexible backup or recovery solution. It can be treated as the repository of the data located in the local computers. Resiliency and Redundancy: Users of cloud computing can conveniently avail resiliency and redundancy since the deployment of the cloud is usually built on robust architecture. The disaster recovery solutions and services are often included along with automatic failover between hardware platforms out of the box (Commvault, 2013). Scalability and Performance: Cloud deployments have scalability as a built in feature. Since cloud instances are automatically deployed as per the need and as a result, the end users pay only for the data storage and applications they needed for efficient working. As cloud computing can be scaled to meet the customer’s changing IT system demands, it alongside, hand in hand also brings the elasticity (Commvault, 2013). As far as the performance of the cloud computing is concerned, the systems are bound to utilize distributed architectures which offer extraordinarily excellent speed of computations. It again is considered the cloud computing provider’s responsibility that are services are efficiently performing on the cutting edge machinery. Improved performance instances can be speedily added and the end users can get total access to the resources of the cloud’s total hardware (Commvault, 2013). . Ease of Integration coupled with Quick Deployment: One of the key benefits of the cloud system is making quick deployment, running it in a very quick and short period. On the same aspect, the introduction of a new user in the system happens instantly. Increased Storage Capacity: The cloud computing has the ability to accommodate much more data compared to PC and further offers an unlimited range of storage capacity. With it on use, the worries of storage space get eliminated (Davies, 2008). And again through reducing the IT cost, it spares them the need to upgrade system hardware. Howsoever, cloud computing still has certain disadvantages. Some of them are listed below: Cloud Computing Privacy and Security: Security is one of the biggest issues to be concerned about in case of cloud computing. The data that could be sensitive or confidential that can essentially be let out of its private data and information through the leverage of cloud computing. This makes the provider’s reliability very critical since it is up to the service provider of the cloud service to manage, protect and retain them. It is normally suggested all other possible decisions before incorporating cloud computing since the company’ position could be put in jeopardy through this decision (Commvault, 2013). Under certain situations, the end users might equally hesitate before putting forward or surrendering their information to the third party. It can affect the peer confidence. Limited Control and Flexibility: As explained earlier, the applications and services are remote runner, companies, third party environments and end users have limited control over the working function and finally the execution of the operational software’s and the hardware. Conclusion: Although cloud computing is yet at an infant stage, it stays strong with great dominance potential in the future. It has made IT a better utility option and Mega Corp should incorporate their methodologies with the cloud computing. 4. Graphically depict the layout of the Surf Shoppe private cloud structure using Visio or a substantially similar freeware application such as Dia. Note: The graphically depicted solution is not included in the required page length Surf Shoppe Structure (Davies, 2008) 5. Determine the aspects of CIA that must be taken into account when using a private cloud concept for maintaining data CIA between the Surf Shoppe and MegaCorp headquarters. The first three aspects of cloud computing focus form business-technology organizations. They are as follows, i. Resource Optimization: Cloud computing has largely created awareness amongst executives towards the unbalanced proportion of utilized computing capacity versus the installed services. It is done along with the requisite expenses of power, support personal, software licenses and space. ii. Capability Delivery: The on demand characteristics along with automation and scaling of cloud computing result in the reduction of infrastructure services lead time delivery and commodity software from months to few days’ time. iii. Value Preposition: The operational practices of cloud computing technologies commoditize the delivery and common technology infrastructure and business software. The last two aspects focus on business-technology practices. iv. Software Design System: Resource optimization, cost containment, scalability and performance are greatly dependent the quality, design and readiness of the deployment code base for the effectiveness of cloud computing. v. Emergence of New Platforms: Cloud computing with the use of its 2.0 webs and mobility has basically changed the development experience rather than working directly under some operating system to directly interacting with the development tool kits API’s of integrated and purpose built platforms. ( Michelson, 2010) References Commvault, (2013, February 01). The Five Fundamentals of Virtual Server Data Protection. \Retrieved from http://webdocs.commvault.com/assets/five-fundamentals-of-virtual-server-protection-whitepaper.pdf Davies, A. (2008, January). Implementing Highly Available Data Protection with Veritas Backup. Retrieved from http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/white_papers/b-whitepaper_implementing_highly_available_dr_with_veritas_netbackup_01_08_13599373.pdf Michelson, B. (2010, January 6). 5 Enduring Aspects of Cloud Computing - Business-Driven Architect. Retrieved from http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/bda/2010/01/5_enduring_aspects_of_cloud_co.php Read More