Don and Associates - Cloud computing is very beneficial to every company intending to expand to different PDF

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Cloud computing is very beneficial to every company intending to expand to different regions within the country or even globally. Don & Associate tends to do the same by bringing onboard cloud computing. At the moment the company has one physical infrastructure housing its servers and all are runnin...

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Proof-of-Concept Report

Name: Eyouel Mesfin

Date:

Contents Abstract....................................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3 Statement of Need....................................................................................................................................... 3 Assumptions................................................................................................................................................ 3 Description of Current Infrastructure...........................................................................................................4 Cloud Service Providers..............................................................................................................................4 Project Details.............................................................................................................................................5 Building a VPC on AWS.........................................................................................................................5 Launching a Web Server on AWS............................................................................................................6 Challenges Encountered..............................................................................................................................7 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................7 References...................................................................................................................................................8 Appendix - Screenshots...............................................................................................................................8

Abstract Cloud computing is very beneficial to every company intending to expand to different regions within the country or even globally. Don & Associate tends to do the same by bringing onboard cloud computing. At the moment the company has one physical infrastructure housing its servers and all are running on Windows Operating system. This document contains information on how Don & Associates intends to migrate from its current information technology infrastructure towards cloud computing and also expand to other regions of the country.

Introduction The Internet is changing the ways business is conducted globally plus the way we communicate as a society. Conventionally, applications and hardware are contained within a person’s computer or laptop. This means only one-person at a time can access services required from that device. With the introduction of Cloud computing, it permits access to programs and data exterior your computing environment to several users at the same time. Alternatively, programs and data on the server or personal computer are stored in the cloud. Don & Associate a financial consulting company, to better enhance their service and grow to have branches in several states, would love to bring onboard clouding computing. Statement of Need Don & Associates' perfect solution to its current problem is to embrace cloud computing. The advantage of migrating to cloud computing infrastructure is that the company will be able to do cost savings. Cloud computing does not require physical hardware investment or trained personnel to maintain the hardware since it will be at the cloud service provider. Since the company is a private company, it will utilize Private cloud a model of cloud computing where information technology services will be provisioned over private Information Technology Infrastructure for its dedicated utilization as a single corporation. Assumptions Several assumptions were made when selecting which type of cloud computing model is best suitable for Don & Associates. Between public and private cloud computing, the best for the firm is private cloud computing for the following reasons: 

Compared to the public cloud, the private cloud is cost-effective

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Private cloud offers better elasticity options

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Flexible in offering the unique needs of the company

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Secure and more compliant

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Better disaster recovery

Description of Current Infrastructure Currently, the company has a server room where all the servers are contained on-site at the company’s headquarter. The headquarter is the only location housing the physical infrastructure of the company and all the servers are running Windows Server Operating System. Having this type of infrastructure is dangerous to the company because in case of anything, for example, fire in the server room, then everything will be lost. Therefore, cloud computing should come into effect immediately because another advantage of cloud computing is back-up and restoration of data. Cloud Service Providers When it comes to the three leading cloud computing merchants; Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform come into play. Each one of them has their weakness and strengths which makes ideal for diverse use cases. The competition is fierce and it has become a three-way race between the three companies. Starting with the one getting the largest share in this industry, AWS, its colossal strength is its supremacy of the public cloud market, the magic quadrant being Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Apart from that, AWS has a huge scope of its operation the ever-growing range of services available not forgetting the comprehensive network and its data centers located globally. Another good thing about AWS is that it is enterprise-ready to offer services and have the ability to govern a great number of resources and users. When it comes to weakness, the cost is the biggest problem at AWS. Occasionally, AWS lowers its prices, this makes it difficult for many

organizations to understand the cost structure of the company. Even when it comes to managing those costs effectively when executing a high volume of workloads on the services gets difficult. Microsoft Azure in contrast came late into this market of cloud computing but gave itself a huge jump start by basically taking its own premises applications and software. For example; Office, .Net, SharePoint, Windows Server, Dynamics Active Directory, and many more, then repurposing into their cloud. The main reason for Azure’s success is the deployment of Microsoft software and Windows Operating Systems. Azure is tightly integrated with these softwares and organizations using Microsoft products find it making sense for them to execute Azure. This leads towards loyalty building with Microsoft customers. Looking at the demerits, Microsoft Azure is that they are not enterprise-ready, there are complaints raised by customers concerning documentation and technical support. Coming to Google Cloud Platform, it has a robust submission in containers, Kubernetes was developed by Google and now both Azure and AWS offer it. GCP mainly concentrates on a high level of computing that offers analytics, machine learning, Big Data, load balancing, and scaling. GCP’s downside is distant third in the market share reason being no traditional relationship with past enterprise consumers but they are looking forward to bringing more tough competition into the cloud market. Another problem is that most people select GCP as a secondary provider and not as a strategic provider. Project Details Building a VPC on AWS Within Amazon Web Services (AWS) there is Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) service that lets one provision isolate a private section within the AWS cloud where AWS services can be launched plus other AWS services. Before the development of the VPC on AWS,

compute resources within the computing environment will need external network access to link with Amazon ECS service termination. A private subnet will also be required to be created since certain tasks may need to run on them. VPC created with both private and public subnets is flexible since jobs may require either one of them. Access to the Internet for private subnets can be accessed through the NAT gateway. During the first steps of creating the VPC on AWS, an Elastic IP has to present for NAT gateway then later run the VPC wizard which will automatically configure and create most of the VPC resources. After the VPC is created the following must be considered: 

Creation of security groups for both private and public resources.

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AWS Batch compute environment for launching compute resources within the VPC.

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AWS Batch job queue has to be created.

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Job definition to execute the tasks has to be created. Launching a Web Server on AWS To launch a web server on AWS, open the Amazon EC2 console on the following

link https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/ then from the dashboard select Launch Instance. Choose an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) page that will open showing basic configurations that will serve as templates for the instance. While on the AMI page, select the instance type, after that you will be taken to the “Review and Launch” page. On that page, there is “Security Groups” where you will be required to configure the security groups or select from an existing one. Thereafter, you will be required to connect to a Windows Instance, later on, do a cleanup of the instance before launching.

Challenges Encountered Don & Associates is becoming increasingly attracted to cloud computing technology in terms of scaling, efficiency, low cost, and easy to manage, but some challenges will need the users to overcome. They include: 1. Identifying the main business objectives during the planning phase 2. New technology acceptance and adoption by the users 3. Security of data and compliance increases anxiety into the top management thoughts Conclusion Selecting AWS for cloud computing services will provide the best architectural practices across the five major pillars of cloud computing. Namely cost-effective systems, efficiency, data integrity and security, database design, and operation reliability. Finally, it will be easy to deploy applications used within the company across multiple regions globally hence lower latency and the experience for clients at a minimal cost.

References https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/concepts.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3429365/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-whats-the-bestcloud-platform-for-enterprise.html?page=2#toc-9 https://www.datamation.com/cloud-computing/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-cloudcomparison.html

Appendix - Screenshots...