Virtualized DB Clustering and Server Consolidation: It’s Implementation with a Live Case Study

Virtualization is a technology that transforms today’s powerful computer hardware, which was designed to run a single operating system and a single application, to run multiple virtual machine having independent operating system. Many times, we observes that the server resources been underutilized. Virtualization allows us to efficiently utilize the available resources on physical machine. In virtualization environment, different virtualized machines can have different host operating system (i.e. different versions windows, Linux, Solaris etc). The most important concept to understand in virtualization is that, the virtual machines operating systems are independent from physical server operating system. This paper is an attempt to illustrate and appreciate the concept of virtualization and its implementation by using a live case study which we have implemented for one of our leading ETL tool development for a client. Case study elaborates the implementation details about Virtualized DB Clustering and Server Consolidatio

Implementation of Server Virtualization Technology: The Human Resource capacity factors to consider.

Virtualization is gradually losing its image as a new, highly advanced technology and it is becoming a mainstream data management technique. Indeed, two-thirds of all organizations (whether IT is their core business or not) are implementing virtualization in live production and even for core applications. Thus, virtualization is no longer considered to be a risky or unreliable technology. The findings and recommendations of this study will be useful to IT managers and other IS policy makers in organizations intending to implement server virtualization. The results of this study identify key factors that will influence the success or failure of server virtualization in their organisations. As such they will be in a position to understand the server virtualization process and avoid the pitfalls that may face them. The study employed a correlational survey research design and targeted the chief information technology officers, information communication technology managers, Management information systems managers and other managers involved in policy making decisions on computing systems in the listed companies on the NSE. The target population consisted of 360 persons, and the sample size was 25% of the population, namely 89 persons. Primary data were collected in completing this study. Primary data is collected using a questionnaire. Descriptive and content analysis techniques were employed on the collected data. Quantitative data analysis was done by descriptive statistics by use of SPSS version 20.0 to obtain percentages, tabulations, means and other measures of central tendency. The analysis indicates that 97.5% of the respondents indicated that server consolidation minimizes wasted capacity. The study found out that 82% of corresponding change in the implementation of server virtualization technology induced human  resource capacity factors.  Test of overall significance ANOVA, at 0.05 level of significance and found the  model to be significant. The study recommends that organizations should develop proper infrastructure in order to keep up with the demands of the constantly evolving virtualized environment that runs their servers. Keywords: Technology, Server, Virtualization, Resourc

Evaluating Performance of Serverless Virtualization

Abstract. The serverless computing has posed new challenges for cloud vendors that are difficult to solve with existing virtualization technologies. Maintaining security, resource isolation, backwards compatibility and scalability is extremely difficult when the platform should be able to deliver native performance. This paper contains a literature review of recently published results related to the performance of virtualization technologies such as KVM and Docker, and further reports a DESMET benchmarking evaluation against KVM and Docker, as well as Firecracker and gVisor, which are being used by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud in their cloud services. The context for this research is coming from education, where students return their programming assignments into a source code repository system that further triggers automated tests and potentially other tasks against the submitted code. The used environment consists of several software components, such as web server, database and job executor, and thus represents a common architecture in web-based applications. The results of the research show that Docker is still the most performant virtualization technology amongst the selected ones. Additionally, Firecracker and gVisor perform better in some areas than KVM and thus are viable options for single-tenant environments. Lastly, applications that run untrusted code or have otherwise really high security requirements could potentially leverage from using either Firecracker or gVisor

Kostnadsanalys av en molnbaserad konvergerad IT arkitektur för ett litet företag

The purpose of this thesis is to study the dispersed IT architecture of a small sized enterprise versus a converged cloud based IT architecture. Cloud computing enables moving to a pay-as-you-go model with low up-front investment making it attractive to small sized enterprises. Other traits that appeal to small sized enterprises are flexibility, modularity and ease of use. However, an important factor to be aware of when investing in a cloud solution is hidden costs, such as extra fees and premium support costs. The two scenarios (dispersed versus converged) are studied in terms of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Customer-Provider Strategic Alignment Maturity (CPSAM) as the IT services are outsourced in both scenarios. The TCO provides cost information on both scenarios indicating where savings could be made and exposes excess expenditures. Whilst the CPSAM studies the outsourcing strategies and unveils vendor management issues. Based on the analysis the main differences in TCO related to operational costs, which includes maintenance and support costs. These can vary, however taking in consideration a margin of error there was still a clear difference between the two scenarios and the converged architecture showed a decrease in operational costs. The CPSAM analysis showed issues in communication, articulation of processes and lacking knowledge of the whole value network. Some of the risks could be minimized by choosing scenario 2 as vendor management would be centralized and less complex. However, many of the recommended actions concern both scenarios, such as formalizing a collaboration blueprint, re-assessing contracts for suitability, defining and communicating roles and responsibilities and defining and articulating communication practices.Syftet med detta diplomarbete är att undersöka ett litet företags icke-centrerade IT arkitektur i jämförelse med en centrerad molnbaserad IT arkitektur. Molntjänster är attraktiva för små företag eftersom startavgiften för investeringen är låg och kostnadsmodellen ändras till så kallad ”pay-as-you-go” modell där man endast betalar för de tjänster som används. Andra egenskaper som mindre företag uppskattar är flexibilitet, modularitet och användarvänlighet. Dock är det viktigt att ta i beaktande så kallade gömda kostnader som till exempel kan bestå av extra utgifter eller premium support kostnader. Studien undersöker de två scenarierna (dispergerad och konvergerad) både ur ett Total ägandekostnads perspektiv (TCO) och ur ett maturitets perspektiv (CPSAM) där kundens och leverantörens strategiska positionering analyseras. Analysen på Total ägandekostnader ger kostnadsinformation för båda scenarierna och utgående från den information kan man identifiera besparingsmöjligheter och eventuella överskott i utgifter. CPSAM analysen studerar outsourcing strategier och avslöjar problem i leverantörhanteringen. Utgående från Total ägandekostnads analysen härstammar de största kostnadsskillnaderna från operativa kostnader så som underhåll och support. Dessa kostnader kan variera men även då en felmarginal tas i beaktande är skillnaden i kostnader tydlig. Den konvergerade IT arkitekturen leder till lägre operativa kostnader. Baserat på maturitets analysen kunde det konstateras att problemen relaterar till kommunikation, processartikulation, och bristande helhetskunskap. En del risker kunde minimeras med en konvergerad IT arkitektur, scenario 2, eftersom leverantörhanteringen skulle centraliseras och därmed bli mindre komplex. Däremot är de flesta rekommendationerna aktuella för båda scenarier, såsom formalisering och standardisering av samarbetspraxis, omvärdering av kontrakt för att möta dagens krav, definiering och kommunikation av roller och ansvarsområden, och definiering och artikulation av kommunikations praxis

Capability maturity model and metrics framework for cyber cloud security

© 2017 SCPE. Cyber space is affecting all areas of our life. Cloud computing is the cutting-edge technology of this cyber space and has established itself as one of the most important resources sharing technologies for future on-demand services and infrastructures that support Internet of Things (IOTs), big data platforms and software-defined systems/services. More than ever, security is vital for cloud environment. There exist several cloud security models and standards dealing with emerging cloud security threats. However, these models are mostly reactive rather than proactive and they do not provide adequate measures to assess the overall security status of a cloud system. Out of existing models, capability maturity models, which have been used by many organizations, offer a realistic approach to address these problems using management by security domains and security assessment on maturity levels. The aim of the paper is twofold: first, it provides a review of capability maturity models and security metrics; second, it proposes a cloud security capability maturity model (CSCMM) that extends existing cyber security models with a security metric framework