Technology advancements are crucial to the dynamic IT landscape in today’s times. Cloud computing has been crucial which presents excellent opportunities to business for the future. SysOps and DevOps are commonly used terminologies in cloud computing.

In the past times organizations hired multiple personnel to perform different set of activities however as the cloud computing came into existence the job role become simpler and administrators have flexibility to support developers in the process of building applications without or lesser defects which otherwise got missed or ignored due to lower weightage in terms of application functionality. Similar way SysOps also found a recognition for business to align with certain standards or frameworks.

Today we look more in depth about DevOps and SysOps terminologies and understand how they could help businesses in bringing agility in delivery and time to market.

About DevOps

DevOps is the commonly used terminology in Cloud computing world. The focus of DevOps is tasks such as development, testing, integration, and monitoring. DevOps uses opensource and cross platform tools like Chef and Puppet for delivery of system configuration and automation. The administrators deal with infrastructure building tasks in DevOps as well as developers have access to the concerns of continuous deployment through automation of build tools.

Features of DevOps

• Reduction in implementation time of new services
• Productivity increase for enterprise and IT teams
• Saves costs on maintenance and upgrades
• Standardization of strategies for easy replication and quick deliveries
• Improves quality, reliability, and reusability of system components
• Rate of success is increased with digitization and transformation projects

About SysOps

SysOps generally deals with monitoring and justifying the right cloud services with best practises. The SysOps is a modern approach that supports monitoring, management and operations of infrastructure systems. SysOps is useful in troubleshooting of issues emerging during operations. SysOps is based on IT service management (ITIL) framework which concentrates on aligning business goals to IT services. ITIL enables organizations to form a baseline from which they can design, execute and measure the effectiveness. It shows compliance and estimated improvement.

Comparison Table: DevOps vs SysOps

Below given table summarizes the difference between DevOps and SysOps:

FUNCTION	DevOps	SysOps
Definition	DevOps is a collaboration between software development and IT teams	SysOps is an administrator of cloud services which handle some or most of the tasks relayed to software development environment
Approach	Adaptive approach by breaking down complex problems in small iterative steps	Consistent approach to identify and implement changes to systems
Aim	Acceleration of software development process by bringing development and IT teams together	SysOps aim is to manage all key responsibilities of the IT operations in a multi user environment
Delivery Methodology	Compliance with principles for seamless and stable collaboration and coordination between development and operations team	Compliance with ITIL for services delivery and focuses on alignment of business objectives with IT services
Code development approach	Unpredictable rate of changes in code deployment	Predictable changes in code and deployment at specified intervals with the support of SysOps professionals
Responsiveness to change	Adaptive approach to code change	Consistency in approach with de-risking factor in the event of new changes are introduced
Implementation of changes	Changes are applied to code	Changes are applied to servers
Value for business	Value improvement for customers henceforth improvement in business	Smooth functioning of system processes ensure improvement in value for organization
Infrastructure management approach	Depends on usage of best automation tools	Drive by focused attention on each server

Download the comparison table: DevOps vs SysOps

Conclusion

Every organization faces tough decision when it comes to choose between DevOps and SysOps so a clear understanding is required in terms of business need for speed of execution, significance of predictions and traffic rate determination for an application – highs and lows of traffic, businesses also need to know speed of scaling based on change in traffic, frequency of performing releases to the applications.

DevOps and SysOps are two major areas of cloud computing and both are used to manage infrastructure. If choice is to be made between the two than we need to look deeper into the requirements so as to build an application as under:

• Load predictability estimation
• Traffic trends (Highs and lows)
• Clear idea of execution speed requirements
• Rapid application change requirements
• Rapid scaling requirements of applications
• Business nature global or local
• Frequency of application releases

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DevOps vs NetOps

DevOps vs NetDevOps

The tremendous technical development in the IT and other digital fields started the popular trend of creating acronyms with the Suffix Ops. And the word DevOps, NetOps, and SecOps are confusing IT and Tech communities further as they are more interrelated. Here in this article, you will get a clear differentiation between them.

To put it simply, DevOps, NetOps and SecOps are the different stages and process involved in an Application and Software production and implementation. Here is a further explanation about it.

 What is DevOps?

DevOps is expanded as Development Operations. It is the development framework that uses a different combination of tools to make the organizations the Application development faster and continuous.  It covers the whole Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) from planning to final testing.

When the customer makes a request the DevOps team starts working on them and aim to make fast and quick delivery. They practice many automation techniques like machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to make create a continuous and qualified delivery.

DevOps is a direct successor of Agile Software Development involving many iterative software development methodologies like –

• Scrum
• Kanban
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAF)
• Lean Development
• Extreme Programming (XP)

In short, DevOps is the practice whose prime motive is to reduce the barriers the traditional development operations. You can learn more about DevOps through devops courses.

What is NetOps?

NetOps is expanded as the Network Operations. Former organizations didn’t focus on NetOps, but since the recent development of cloud technology, NetOps are given more importance. NetOps is classified into two types as NetOps 1.0 and NetOps 2.0.

After the DevOps team deliver the tested application, NetOps teams start working on them. They design the network connections and infrastructure and ensure the responsiveness and scalability of the application. NetOps 1.0 is a traditional approach where most of the operations are processed manually and delayed delivery.

Thus the NetOps 2.0 integrated DevOps major characteristics including automation, virtualization, and Orchestration, etc… This made the Networking Operations fast ad easily accessible.

Still today there is no clear definition for NetOps. Here is our view about it -NetOps refers to the implementation of some DevOps and other network techniques to satisfy the business needs and goals.

Difference between NetOps and DevOps

Though both of them are interrelated and have many similarities, there are some differences to understand them better they are here –

PARAMETER	DevOps	NetOps
Meaning	Development Operations	Network Operations
Scope of work	DevOps includes development, remodeling, and fast delivery of Applications	NetOps involves the maintenance and upgrading of the network infrastructure of applications.
Goal	Continuous and fast App Development	Robust-Network Infrastructure
Focus	Focused on implementation of new automation tools and meeting the final customer requirement.	Addresses the limitations in the network and makes them more responsive and scalable
Stage	DevOps is the first stage of the production process. External environment needs.	As a second stage, it follows the DevOps.
Types of Approaches	Simple DevOps and DevSecOps (Integration with Security Operations)	NetOps 1.0 and NetOps 2.0
Dependency	DevOps is a Semi-Dependent on SecOps and independent of NetOps	NetOps is a dependent of DevOps and SecOps
Way of processing	Mostly automated an AI-driven	Involves both manual and automated processes.
Knowledge Requirements	Wide knowledge of different Script languages and specialization anyone (preferably Python)	Deep knowledge of Network Security, Troubleshooting, configuration, etc…

Download the difference table here.

What is SecOps?

Like the previous two, it is expanded as “Security Operations”. After the development and network channeling of the application or product, it is important to ensure that it doesn’t expose any vulnerabilities. The process or practices involved in ensuring the security of the product is called SecOps.

The clash between DevOps, NetOps, and SecOps:

There is always a never-ending clash between the DevOps and NetOps team. As the DevOps focus more on fast delivery, they finish the development and throw them to the NetOps team. But NetOps team needs to ensure that the application satisfies all the users and organization goals.

DevOps team has been complaining about the NetOps manual delay whereas the NetOps team complains about the DevOps team’s core concepts. And this clash is fired when the SecOps demand the inbuilt security in App development and networking.

However, this clash has been smoothened by the incorporation of the three teams, and this lead to the creation of new acronyms like DevSecOps, Super-NetOps, etc…

The recent survey by the F5 shows that nearly 75% of the NetOps acceptance over DevOps concepts and 60% of DevOps approves the NetOps view.  Irrespective of the disputes at the end of the day they are the reason for the quick, quality, and secure app development.

Palo Alto Prisma Access is a Cloud service provided by Palo Alto Networks. This service provides secure access to Internet and business applications that may be hosted on SASE, a corporate headquarters, Data Centres, OR instances that you may have running inside of Public Cloud.

Let’s discuss the above given diagram to understand the Prisma Access :

Prisma Access deployed in the middle of a data centre or headquarters, your mobile users and remote networks and the Internet. This kind of set-up allows Prisma Access to inspect and analyse all traffic. To identify applications, threat, content, and it provides visibility into the use of SASE applications and ability to control which SASE applications are available to use by your users.

Being a Cloud service, Prisma also allows you to avoid the challenges of figuring out what type of Hardware to buy (It provides Scalability). It also minimises the coverage gaps or inconsistencies associated with distributer organisations.

In the past perhaps you have multiple point solutions for remote access that you had to deploy across your enterprise and the access was not the same, the user experience was also not the same.

All these scenarios create in-consistencies in how these point products were managed. Well, in Prisma Access you don’t need to worry about these because it all encompassed within the cloud services. We can shrink or expand our requirement based on the user’s load and avail cloud services accordingly. If the number of users connected decreases, we are able to decrease the amount of compute resources that are allocated to Prisma Access.

Let’s take a look of individual components of Prisma Access:

Palo Alto Prisma Access for Mobile Users

Palo Alto Prisma Access for Mobile Users provide security services that Palo Alto Networks is known for. For example, App-ID, User-id, Threat-Prevention, DNS-Security, Enterprise-DLP, all these services are available with Prisma Access.

Prisma Access also provides an alternative to the traditional on-premises deployment of Remote Access VPN. Instead of having multiple solutions at various locations, you can manage it as part of a Unified Service in a single pane of glass. 

You are able to select locations that are suitable for users. Prisma Cloud Access has more than 100 locations available to choose from, it includes locations in regions like Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Japan, Middle East, North America, Central America, South America.

You can also enable Prisma access with Mobile users in Hybrid-network in which Mobile users combine with on-premises firewalls that can run Global Protect Gateways for areas where Palo Alto Networks don’t have coverage. If you are familiar with Global Protect, the functionalities are very similar, 

1. Users will connect to the portal, 
2. Then the portal will decide which is the best available location for that specific user, 
3. It will connect to that location; the user will build the IPSec tunnel to that location. 
4. Then traffic gets sent through that tunnel to the Prisma Access.

From Prisma Access, the traffic will split to the direct out to the Internet from the cloud service OR leverage the service connection to reach internal resources that you may have stored in Headquarters, DC, in your Cloud Instances. All of this is logged, and all the logs are sent to the Cortex Data Lake.

Palo Alto Prisma Access for Remote Networks

Palo Alto Prisma Access for remote networks provides security services just like it does for mobile users (App-ID, Threat-Prevention, User-id) 

Enabling your remote network to safely use common applications and web access. Remote Access connects to Prisma Access via industry IPSec VPN cable devices (don’t need Palo Alto Firewall at both ends). Any firewall which supports IPSec VPN can connect with Prisma Access and we can send that remote site’s traffic to, so that traffic may be forwarded to the Prisma Access and provide internet access to internal DC or H.Q resources through a service connection. 

See below image -> features of Remote Network Setup

Prisma Access for remote networks are managed in the same manners as Mobile users so, you can use a single pane of glass to manage all of these remote sites.

Let’s take a look at Service Connections.

Service Connections

Service connections are glue that hold everything together, they connect Prisma Access to your H.Q or Data Centre resources. It also leverages IPSec tunnels for secure transport over the internet. 

These are Layer 3 router connections which can accommodate static or dynamic routing and can terminate any IPSec capable firewall, router or SD-WAN device that may be sitting on your premises.

These terminate on a corporate access node on the Prisma Access end of the connection and the service connections are what provide the inbound connectivity to those centrally located resources that may be sitting in your Headquarters, DC. Below image can explain the set-up process to enable Service Connections in Prisma.

• It covers tunnel information
• Routing
• QoS (Bandwidth Allocation)

The difference between Remote Network and Service Connection is

• Remote Network can do outbound and inbound connectivity
• Whereas Service Connections are only for inbound connectivity

In Service Connection you can route traffic to Prisma Access to the internet. 

Palo Alto Prisma Access Management Methods

There are two methods which are used to manage Prisma Access

1. First method is via the Cloud Service plug-in on a Panorama managed device. If you are already a consumer of Palo Alto Network device, you can use same Panorama with a Cloud Services plug-in to manage your on-premises firewall and Prisma Access through Panorama.
2. Second option is Cloud Manage; this is also a Cloud provider service. If you don’t have Panorama or are new to Palo Alto Networks, this will be the easiest way to get Prisma Access. It’s ability to deploy Prisma Access and use Prisma Access service without need to deploy another on-premises device OR VM (Virtual-Machine) on which you may have to run services.

Plao Alto Prisma Access uses Cortex Data Lake to store logs. Cortex Data Lake stores the logging that happens for any of the actions taken by Prisma Access. You can forward logs to any other device by redirecting the logs from Cortex Data Lake to on-prem device or log server.

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USER ID – PALO ALTO NETWORKS

High Availability Palo Alto

Palo Alto vs Fortinet Firewall: Detailed Comparison

In the IT community, we define with the term VPS (Virtual Private Server), any virtual machine that is sold as a service by an Internet Hosting Service. In normal conditions, a virtual private server usually runs its own copy of an operating system (OS) and customers have full administration access to that operating system instance. Meaning that they can install almost any kind of software.

Regarding many kind of purposes, the VPS is functionally equivalent to any dedicated physical server and it is being software customized, meaning that it can be easily created and configured. On the other hand, a virtual server costs much less money than an equivalent physical server. However, as virtual servers share the underlying physical hardware with other Virtual Private Servers performance is usually slower and depends on the workload of any other executing virtual machines on the network.

There are a number of VPS Hosting service providers available. For example: AccuWeb Hosting provides one of the best affordable VPS Hosting services.

Virtual Private Server Advantages & Features

Nowadays, in the IT industry many enterprises are using Virtual Private Servers for many reasons. The most advanced features and advantages of VPN technology are addressed below:

Virtualization:

The most advanced technology that the VPS offers is based on the force of driving server virtualization. Although in most virtualization techniques, the resources are shared, as they are under the time-sharing model. Virtualization provides a higher level of security which depends on the type of virtualization used. Most of the individual virtual servers are mostly isolated from each other and may run their own operating system which can be independently rebooted as a virtual instance.

The technique used for partitioning single servers in order to appear as multiple servers is very common on microcomputers since the launch of VMware ESX Server in 2001. The common features include a physical server that typically runs a hypervisor which is releasing and managing the resources of what we call “guest” operating systems or virtual machines.

In addition, these “guest” operating systems are allocated to share the resources of the physical server. As the VPS runs its own copy of its operating system, users have high administrative level access to that operating system instance and can install any kind software that runs on the OS.

Motivation:

In addition, VPS is used to decrease hardware costs by trimming a failover cluster to a single machine, therefore decreasing costs dramatically while it provides the same services. As a general rule the common server roles and features are generally designed to operate isolated in most system architectures. Like Windows Server 2019 OS requires a certificate authority and a domain controller to exist on independent servers.

This happens because the additional roles and features increases areas of potential failure as well as adding visible security risks. This procedure directly motivates needs for virtual private servers in order to retain conflicting server roles and features on a single hosting machine. Also, the occurrence of virtual machine encrypted networks decreases most of the passing through risks that might have discouraged the VPS usage as a legitimate hosting server.

Hosting:

Finally, VPS is used from many companies in order to provide virtual private server hosting or virtual dedicated server hosting as an advanced alternative solution for web hosting services. These services have several challenges to be considered such as licensing the proprietary software in a multi-tenant virtual environment.

They are categorized to “Unmanaged” or “Self-Managed” hosting. This includes the user to administer his own server instance or on other hand, “Unmetered” hosting, which is generally provided with no limit on the amount of data transferred on a fixed bandwidth line.

In general, in a virtual private server, bandwidth will be shared and a fair usage policy should be involved.

Conclusion 

We explained in this article that VPS is one of the most advanced ways to keep up the success of any web-site security and integrity. It’s also the best plan that can provide scalability for enterprises and large organizations. With VPS, not only the user enjoys a tremendous amount of storage and bandwidth but it’s also a cost-effective solution to meet the demands of a busy site. Hopefully in the future, new technologies will be invented for manipulating hardware resources more efficiently.

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Public vs Private vs Hybrid vs Community Clouds

What is Multi Cloud Network Architecture?

Today we look more in detail about two important terminologies: Cloud security posture management and cloud security access broker, what is the purpose of each, advantages and disadvantages, use cases etc.

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is meant for protection of workloads from outside by assessment of secure and compliant configurations on control plane in cloud platform. There are a set of tools which support monitoring of compliance, DevOps processes integration, incident response, risk assessment and risk virtualization.

It identifies unknown and excessive risk across an organization cloud plane including cloud services for computing, storage, identify and access management, and many more. It provides continuous compliance monitoring, configuration drift prevention, investigations in security operations center. Policies can be created at organization level to define desired state of configuration for cloud infrastructure; which CSPM product can use for monitoring based on those policies.

It enables enterprises to detect and take care of configuration issues which affect their cloud environments as per center for internet security benchmarks for cloud providers. CSPM tools can automatically detect the cloud environments non-compliance and security violations and provide automated steps to fix them. New risks for cloud environment, breach prevention, and uniform cloud configurations are manageable with CCPM.

Features of CSPM

• Visibility and security controls enforcement across multi cloud providers
• Discovery and identification of cloud workloads and services
• Threat detection and alert prioritization
• Capabilities of Cloud risk management, risk visualization and risk prioritization
• Continuous compliance monitoring against different regulatory standards

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)

Cloud access security broker (CASB) is a firewall for cloud environment. It has a security policy enhancement gateway to make sure that users are compliant to organization policies and actions are authorized. It can identify all cloud services used by an organization, be it Shadow IT, unapproved or unmanaged SaaS and PaaS products. It enables alerts, cloud usage tracking, reporting, logging, assessment of risks posed by Shadow IT and event monitoring.

It has auditing and reporting tools for regulatory compliances, in addition to cloud stored areas. This provides user authentication, authorized applications, anti-phishing, account takeover, URL filtering, malware detection, and sandbox protection.

CASB can also monitor access to data and with granular access controls it can enforce data centric security policies and policy-based encryption.

Features of CASB

• Detection of shadow IT
• Usage tracking in cloud services
• Reporting and logging
• Alerts generation
• Enforcement of regulatory requirements
• User behaviour analysis
• Malware detection
• Encryption and tokenization
• Enforcement of data loss prevention policies

Comparison Table: CSPM vs CASB

Below table summarizes the difference between the two:

Download the comparison table: CSPM vs CASB

Conclusion

The recent cloud breaches are forcing organizations to double their security and it is a domination conversation across board meetings. Cloud security means all procedures and technologies which secure the cloud computing environment against internal and external threats and ensure adherence to regulatory requirements which may differ from country to country. Both CSPM and CASB are needed to secure a cloud computing environment. CASB acts as a security policy enforcement gateway to ensure users are compliant to policy requirements whereas CSPM is required to ensure continuous compliance monitoring.

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Top 13 CASB Solutions

What is CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker)?

Today in this article you will get to know about the difference between these two domains and the career opportunities and skills required and more. Okay without further ado let’s get started. 

What is Network Security? 

Network security is the branch of cyber security that focuses on the protection of data, applications, or systems that are connected at the network level. To understand more about Network security you should first know what a Network is. 

So the simple definition for the network is, that network refers to the two or more computers that are systems that are linked to share resources and communications. Today’s network architecture is developed into more complex ones and is open to various vulnerabilities. 

These vulnerabilities are spread through various devices. It can be unauthorized access to data, hardware or software problems, and so on.  So a network security analyst is responsible for protecting the data, and resources of the computers or other electronic devices connected in a network. 

Network Security Control Methods

Network security can be achieved by the following three types of controls – 

i) Physical Network Control 

Here the security personnel focuses on preventing unauthorized access to the network through physical components like Routers, cables, etc… Some of the security measures taken are biometric authentication to data or network rooms, locks, etc… 

ii) Technical Network Control

Here both data and system are protected from the malicious activities of both outsiders and employees. The most well-known security measures like firewalls, and antivirus come under this control. They protect the network from any technical threats. 

iii) Administrative Control 

This control deals with the control of policies and other processes like user behavior, administrative powers, etc….This is achieved by providing different levels of power to each system in the network, in short, it gives special power to the admin to access and rewrite the data of the company. 

What is Cloud Security? 

Cloud security refers to the protection of interests of both cloud provider and client in a cloud-based infrastructure. Cloud security is a broader concept than network security which covers the whole corporate structure, as they are mostly offered as infrastructure as service. Before seeing more about cloud security let’s what is a Cloud? 

Cloud computing is an advanced form of networking where all the computers are connected to a particular cloud or server through the internet instead of physical cables. These cloud services are available in three forms: infrastructure as a Service, Software as a service, and platform as a service. 

And different types of cloud security are adopted in each of the above forms. Though cloud services providers take active steps to minimize the risk, in modern days the threats are increasing as most businesses are migrating to cloud-based services. 

Cloud Security Solutions

Here are some well-known cloud security solutions – 

i) Identity and Access Management (IAM)

It is like administrative control in network security, IAM allows the enterprise to policy-driven enforcements and protocols to prevent authorized access. Separate digital identities are created for each user to achieve this

ii) Data Loss Prevention (DLP) 

Offers a set of tools and services to ensure the security of the cloud, which includes data encryption, remediation alerts, backup strategy, etc… 

iii) Security Information and event management (SIEM )

It focuses on threat monitoring and detection in cloud-based environments, uses AI-driven technologies to correlate with the past data, and ensures against any potential threats. 

Difference Between Network Security and Cloud Security

Now we get to know about the difference between Network Security and Cloud Security. Let’s summarize the things we have seen till now, to form a difference table. 

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Top 10 SIEM Tools

Cyber Security vs Network Security: Know the difference

Advent of cloud computing had brought many new models of delivery and services in Infrastructure services, Application services, Network services and so on. Cloud computing provides a cost-effective way to use computing resources, share applications, share databases, share network resources etc. 

In the software industry, customers could have diverse requirements and if software products are implemented according to every customer’s needs separately and delivered then implementation timelines would be more, and maintenance would also become cumbersome. Multi tenancy comes as a solution to provide solutions to all problems faced by software providers to satisfy diverse customer needs. 

One such term which is very popular in cloud computing environment is ‘Multi Tenancy’.

What is Multi Tenancy?

Multi Tenancy is an architecture which supports a single instance of a software application to be used by multiple users called ‘Tenants’. Cloud computing architecture has broadened the multi tenancy architecture due to new service models which are using technologies like virtualization and remote access services. Software as a service (SaaS) model runs one single instance of software application on a single instance of database and provides access via web to multiple users. Multi-tenant data is separated and remain invisible to other users (tenants). 

The users or tenants have some flexibility to modify the look and feel of the application presentation interface, but they can’t customize the source code of the application. The tenants operate in a shared environment and they are physically integrated but there is a logical separation due to which each tenant data is stored separately on a common storage in the cloud.

Multi tenancy is supported both on Public and Private cloud architecture. Multi tenancy architecture gives a better Return on Investment (ROI) as it brings down costs and aid in quicker maintenance and updates. 

Multi Tenancy Architecture

Multi tenancy architecture can be divided into three categories based on its complexity and costs. We will learn about them more in detail in consecutive sections. 

A single , shared database schema – this is the simplest form of multi tenancy model which has relatively low costs due to use of shared resources. This form uses a single application and a single database instance to host tenants and for data storage. Scaling is easier but operational costs are high. This is also known as the ‘Shared Everything’ model. All resources are shared equally between all tenants. There are some inherent risks in this model such as implementing such a complex model could be challenging for all resources at all levels, business risks could arise due to data sharing between users, limited scope for backup and restore functionality, load balancing and distribution is complex.  

A single, multiple databases schema – use a single database with multiple schemas, this model has multiple tenants, but databases are individual for each tenant which are identified by unique IDs assigned to each customer. It involves high costs due to additional overheads to manage individual databases. This kind of architecture is useful when tenants are spread geographically and require data from different tenants to be treated differently as per geographic regulations.

Multi-tenant architecture with multiple databases – is a complex model as it involves management and maintenance high costs. Highly suited for multi-tenant SaaS where multiple schemas and restrictions are implemented at database level to have more closed interactions. 

Multi tenancy features in many cloud computing models including SaaS, PaaS, containers and serverless computing , public cloud computing. 

Some of the popular examples of multi tenancy applications are Gmail, Good drive, Yahoo etc.

Multi Tenancy Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Less expensive
• Pricing model based on pay to what you need offerings
• Updates are pushed through host providers
• Hardware is managed by provider
• Single system maintenance and administration
• Easily scalable architecture 
• Variety of licensing models and membership options 
• Personalized and customized reporting 
• Custom end user sceneries and preferences 
• Same software version across all customers
• Application can be tailored to specific business needs without expensive , time consuming, and risky customer development 

Cons:

• Limited interoperability between providers 
• More complex architecture
• Response time could be slow due to nosy neighbours as same CPU consumes a lot of cycle (shared)
• Downtime issues depending on provider
• Data security concerns

Quick Facts!

The global market for multi-tenant LMS (SaaS) is expected to grow $30 billion by 2026. 

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Telco Cloud Architecture

Public vs Private vs Hybrid vs Community Clouds

Multi Tenancy offers customers , organizations and consumers which are sharing infrastructure and databases to gain advantages on price and performance front. Service offerings available through cloud involve customers (or ‘tenants’) getting a piece of cloud which contains the resources required to run their businesses. 

Tenants may share hardware on which their virtual machines or servers run, or they may share database tables where data is stored for multiple tenants. However, security measures are mandatory to ensure tenants don’t pose risk to each other in terms of data loss, misuse, or privacy violations. 

In cloud services be it SaaS, LaaS, PaaS services offered by providers. A tenant is a person who occupies land or property by giving rent. In a Multi-tenancy architecture, there are multiple occupants and tenants who share software, but each consumer is unaware of the other tenant. It allows one instance of an application to serve multiple customers by resource sharing. Independent customers are serviced. The security of data is of prime concern as data is the key factor between customer and provider. The data architecture in a multi-tenancy model should be robust, secure, efficient, and cost effective.

Impact of Multi tenancy 

Master data support – master data is shared instead of replicating for every tenant for cost reduction. Data is shared across organizations and may be modified by tenants as per their requirement and DBMS should support those changes privately to each tenant’s needs.

Application modifications and extensions – applies to database schema and its master data . This is required to tailor application to tenant specific requirements. Limited form of customization or ability to modify database schema of the application or building an extension to be sold as an add-on to base application as per tenant business need.

Schema evolution and master data – when applications are upgraded , offered as self-service to contain operational costs, and require minimal amount of interaction between service provider and tenants. 

Approaches of Multi Tenancy in Cloud

There are three approaches to manage Multi-tenant data as under : –

• Separate database process, shared system
• Shared database process, separate tables
• Shared tables 

1. Separate database process, shared system 

The system is shared, and each tenant gets its own database process. Computing resources and application code are shared among all tenants on a server, each tenant has its own set of data which remains logically isolated from other tenant’s data.  

Separate database process, shared system: Pros and Cons

PROS:

• Easy to implement 
• Can be customized for each customer and vendor can apply new releases or customization as per customer requirement

CONS:

• Heavy on resources 
• Every customer has unique configuration and vendor need to manage them all 
• Expensive in terms of management, integration, updates, customer support etc 

2. Shared database process, separate tables 

Every tenant has its own table and multiple tenants share the same database process. Multiple tenants are housed in the same database, each tenant having its own table which are grouped into a schema specific to a tenant. 

Shared database process, separate tables: Pros and Cons 

PROS:

• Low licensing costs 
• Low cost of maintenance 
• Less memory consumption 
• Smaller administration team 

CONS:

• Complex management 
• Collaboration and analytics are problematic 

3. Shared tables  

In this model the same database and same tables are used for hosting multiple tenant’s data. A table would include records from multiple tenants stored data in random order and each tenant record is identified using a tenant ID column , as record is linked to its appropriate tenant. 

Shared table: Pros and Cons 

PROS:

• Updates apply automatically to every tenant at the same time 
• Application vendor can easily support any software capabilities which require a common query to be triggered across multiple tenants 
• It is simple to manage as there is only one version of production at any point of time
• Easier integration with back end infrastructure  

CONS:

• Isolation issues
• Security concerns and vulnerable to certain attacks like SQL injection etc.
• Slowness issue 

There are economic considerations when choosing the approach , a shared approach with optimized application requires larger development efforts than applications designed using an isolated approach (Due to complexity of shared architecture) which would result in higher initial costs however ongoing operational costs tend to be low.

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What is Multi Tenancy Architecture?

Public vs Private vs Hybrid vs Community Clouds

One Architecture. One Network. Any Cloud.

Aviatrix solves multi cloud environment problem by providing a point for connectivity between the major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. In addition, Aviatrix provides a centralized control to manage, monitor and troubleshoot and encrypted IPSEC tunnel connections between clouds. Aviatrix Controller auto discovers AWS VPCs, Azure VNETs, GCP VPCs in multiple cloud accounts and their associated IP information. Additionally, it uses policy and software defined routing to dynamically connect VNETs and VPCs, with its auto discover feature it doesn’t required administrator with in depth knowledge. Multi Cloud also supports high availability (HA) connections for redundancy and fault tolerance. Private cloud and on premise sites can also be connected using the Site to Cloud VPN solution.

3 Layers of Multi Cloud Network Architecture 

Aviatrix MCNA (Multi Cloud Network Architecture) is made of 3 primary layers (Components) which are –

• Cloud Core
• Cloud Access
• Cloud Operations

Related – Aviatrix (Multi Cloud Networking) Interview  Q&A 

Cloud Core is made up of 2 sub components i.e. Network and Application Workload. Core layer is where the majority of Routing decisions take place, in addition to service layer and most importantly, the applications workloads and storage. Just like the MPLS Core of a WAN provider Network, we have Cloud Core in MCNA framework.

Cloud Access is the pathway to enter and exit from Cloud. On-premise Data centers, Partners, remote customer locations and VPN users – All use Core Access to reach the Cloud. The technologies under this scope includes SDWAN, MPLS, Direct Connect, Express Route, 5G and IOT and others. In simple terms, Cloud Access relates to in and out for customer traffic towards the Cloud environment where actual workloads reside.

Cloud Operations resides on top of Cloud Core and Cloud Access layer. The architecture is conducive to troubleshooting, operational activities including logging, orchestration, alerting and flow analysis.

Now that we know the 3 layers of Multi Cloud Network Architecture, its imperative to know that MCNA is tailor made for enterprises with

• single region in single cloud
• multiple regions in single cloud and
• multiple clouds being leveraged

Having said that, MCNA architecture of Aviatrix is setup for single region, Multiple regions and multiple clouds also. MCNA creates an abstraction layer which is responsible for common control, data and orchestration plane, which is Aviatrix.

Aviatrix Operations Overview

• Manageability
• Automation
• Visibility
• Monitoring
• Logging
• Troubleshooting
• High Availability
• Compliance
• Software and Technical Support
• Flexible Consumption Mode

Features and Capabilities of Aviatrix Solution:

Centralized Controller

Aviatrix controller is the main processing unit of the cloud network platform. The platform provides the centralized intelligence and knowledge of the controller to dynamically program both native cloud network and Aviatrix’s own advanced services.

Network Service Gateways

Aviatrix gateways delivers advanced cloud networking and security services. Gateways are primarily deployed to deliver transit network and security services such as intelligent dynamic routing, active-active network HA, end-to-end and high-performance encryption and collect operational data.

High-Availability Networking

Aviatrix is designed with active-active HA and redundant pathing. Pair of Aviatrix Gateways deployed in different availability zones and establish a full mesh multi path connection that enhance both throughput performance and network availability. High-Performance Encryption with standard IPsec encryption is limited to 1.25 Gbps. Aviatrix’s high performance encryption distributes traffic across multiple cores and aggregates IPSec tunnels to achieve wire speed encryption up to 75 Gbps.

Secure Cloud Ingress and Egress

Aviatrix gateways offer both ingress and egress filtering. Centrally managed multi cloud security for any cloud application communicate with Internet based resources and service.

Multi-Cloud Network Service

Insertion Aviatrix Transit provides a secure point of access for network and security services such as next-generation firewalls, IDS/IPS and SD-WAN cloud edge connections. Aviatrix gateway provides load balancing to connected services and ensures redundant and failover HA.

Operational Visibility

Enterprise network operations must have in depth visibility into network activity. Public cloud networks are transparent, even basic analytics must be obtained from multiple sources.

Dynamic Network Mapping

Aviatrix collects the central intelligence and knowledge of the controller to dynamically generate and maintain an accurate multi cloud network topology map that includes all network resources and network configurations the controller is managing.

FlowIQ–Intelligence Network Traffic Flow Analytics

Aviatrix collects network traffic flow of data from Aviatrix controller including source port, destination port and application filtering and combined with additional data such as latency and tagging to deliver multi cloud flow inspection analyses.

Centralized Console

Controller automates the deployment of network configuration of Aviatrix gateways in your VPCs and VNETs making connectivity across public cloud services very simply and efficiently.

High Availability Connections

Gateways and tunnels can be deployed as HA configurations to enhance redundancy and fault tolerance.

Compatibility with Existing Infrastructure

Cloud to Cloud and Site to Cloud VPN connections support the on premise infrastructure that terminates VPN connections from the cloud. Engineers can also easily produce configuration templates for on premise routers and firewalls.

Simplified Troubleshooting

Aviatrix offers the troubleshooting tools which provide network performance report link status and alerts to simplify troubleshooting. In addition, events across all clouds can be logged and forwarded to tools such as Splunk and Data log for further analyses.

Multicloud Gateways Enabled via Cloud Provider Partnerships

Automate networking across multiple cloud providers – AWS, Azure and Google REST APIs to make multi cloud networking simple and dynamic.

Conclusion

Aviatrix is a cloud networking company helping customers to connect with the different clouds. Aviatrix offers end to end secure, automated routing, monitoring, and management and automates the handling of VPC networks. Aviatrix curriculum covers solutions for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform, enables connectivity between data center public cloud and different clouds through VPN.

Continue Reading:

Hybrid Cloud vs Multi Cloud

DATA CENTER VS CLOUD

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In recent years, with mushroom growth in Cloud technologies, a change has been observed w.r.t where the application Workload and data is hosted. A large number enterprises have started moving their data, applications and related business services to Cloud. Two terms, namely Hybrid Cloud and Multi Cloud do come into mind when Cloud types are considered. Before going into the details of Hybrid cloud vs Multi Cloud, let’s understand both the Cloud flavors in more detail along with their differences –

Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud is a solution that combines together a private cloud with one or more public cloud services with valid software that establishes communication between both clouds. A hybrid cloud provides businesses with more flexibility by moving workloads between cloud solutions. Hybrid cloud services are powerful because they give greater control over the private data. An organization can save confidential data on a private cloud or local data center. A hybrid cloud relies on a single plane of management while in a multi-cloud, administrator control and manage each cloud service independently.

Benefits of the Hybrid Cloud

• More Control
• Faster speed
• Strong Security
• Scalability
• Optimized Cost

Characteristics of Hybrid Cloud

• Hybrid Cloud is a centralized infrastructure that applies across multiple environments.
• High-speed connectivity and security between the enterprise and the cloud environment.
• Integrated networking that securely extends the corporate network, creating a segmented network single overall network infrastructure.
• Monitoring and resource management.

Multi Cloud

Multi cloud means multiple public clouds. Multi cloud is a cloud approach made up of more than one  cloud service from more than one cloud vendor. In cloud computing, a cloud is a collection of servers that can be accessed by customers over the Internet. Each cloud is managed and controlled by a cloud provider. Multi Cloud uses several vendors for cloud hosting, storage and the full application stack. A very good example of Multi Cloud setup is when a company’s web facing application is on AWS while Exchange servers etc are on Microsoft Azure

Related – Multi Cloud Network Architecture

Multi cloud deployments have a number of uses. A multi cloud deployment can take advantage from multiple IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) vendors and different vendors for IaaS, PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) services. Multi cloud’s primary purpose is for redundancy and system backup or it can be incorporate different cloud vendors for different services.

Benefits of Multi cloud

• Suitability and Flexibility and Scalability
• Mitigating Vendor Lock-in
• Competitive Pricing

Challenges in Multi cloud

• Different workflow and management tools
• Lack of unified security
• Skill gaps
• Data Sharing

 Difference between Multi cloud and Hybrid Cloud

Let’s understand differences between Multi Cloud and Hybrid Cloud in detail –

• Hybrid cloud combines private and public clouds, such as an OpenStack private cloud and AWS. On the other hand, Multi Cloud involves two or more public clouds, such as AWS, Azure, and Google.
• Hybrid cloud allows operators to perform a single task in two separate cloud resources. In contrast, Multi Cloud architecture provides access to several service models within the cloud.
• In both cases i.e. of Hybrid Cloud and Multi Cloud, data can be shared.
• In Hybrid Cloud, Security constraints and tools are different for public and private clouds, whereas in case of Multi Cloud, Security constraints and tools are different only for public clouds.
• In both Clouds Cloud-native workloads are hard to move.
• Hybrid Cloud Focus is on native ops tool support. On the other hand, In Multi Cloud Focus on third-party ops tool support.
• Hybrid Cloud focus stays on native cloud usage and cost management. Whereas, In Multi Cloud, the Focus will be on third-party cloud usage and cost management.
• Hybrid Cloud focuses on native performance analytics unlike Multi Cloud, which focuses on third-party performance analytics.

Related – Types of Clouds

Comparison Table : Hybrid Cloud vs Multi Cloud

PARAMETER	HYBRID CLOUD	MULTI CLOUD
Philosophy	Hybrid Cloud combines together private and public clouds, such as an OpenStack private cloud and AWS.	Multi Cloud involves two or more public clouds such as AWS, Azure and Google.
Concept	Public Cloud + Private Cloud	Public Cloud + Public Cloud
Multiple Public Cloud	Requirement based	Always
Data Security	User data is secure within the private or public cloud.	User data is secure within the public cloud provider.
Unified Security	Possible	Difficult to implement
Data sharing	Data can be shared between clouds.	Data can be shared between clouds.
Tools and security controls	Security constraints and tools are different for public and private clouds.	Security constraints and tools are different only for public clouds.
Tool support	Focus on native ops tool support.	Focus on third-party ops tool support.
Cost management	Hybrid Cloud focus will be on native cloud usage and cost management.	Multi Cloud focus will be on third-party cloud usage and cost management.
Analytics	Focus on native performance analytics.	Focus on third-party performance analytics.

Download the comparison table Hybrid cloud vs Multi cloud.

Conclusion

In a multi-cloud solution, different public cloud services are leveraged from multiple clouds (often from different providers). Hybrid Cloud includes private and public, while multi cloud always includes multiple public clouds but can also incorporate physical and virtual infrastructure (including private clouds).

All size of businesses receive prominent advantages from cloud computing. When part or all of the computer resources of a company are moved to the cloud, then the decision of most suitable cloud services is also included in it based on the demands of the company.

Private and public are the two types of cloud having fundamental differences and each with its own disadvantages and advantages.  Features of both private and public clouds are provided by the hybrid clouds while their recent variant has come up in the form of community cloud for serving particular demands of varying communities of business.

Related – Telco Cloud vs IT Cloud

Public Clouds

Application access and services access is shared by individual businesses in the public clouds. Infrastructure of Public Cloud is shared by multiple companies having cloud subscription. No minimum requirements of time are there in the payment. Since payment has to be done for just the used compute resources, therefore businesses find public clouds to be a highly cost effective option. For the web browsers or development platforms and hosting, the public clouds are highly suitable. They are also useful for processing of big data by which computer resources are placed with heavy demands. The companies where high level concerns of security is not the primary ask also find public clouds to be useful.

Advantages:

• Moderately reliable ensuring failure resistance
• Maintenance is offered by service provider

Private Clouds

Private clouds are those in which access to cloud infrastructure is there to business that no one else is sharing. Own software applications and platforms are deployed by the businesses on infrastructure of cloud. Usually a firewall is there in front of the infrastructure of cloud and for accessing the same, the intranet of the company is used over connections that are encrypted. Improved privacy and security levels are offered by the private clouds with their dedication to single client only. For meeting the demands of a company, there are more chances of cloud customization by the CSPs of private cloud.

Advantages:

• limited scalablility
• Offers enhanced flexibility

Hybrid Cloud

The cloud deployment of a company in case of hybrid cloud is divided in private and public cloud infrastructure. Within private cloud remains sensitive data where it is possible to maintain high standards of security. These clouds are highly suitable for carrying out the operations of big data in public cloud for the data that is non-sensitive while using private cloud for protecting the sensitive data. Companies also have the option in hybrid clouds for running their development platforms that are capacity intensive or applications that are public facing in cloud’s public portion while protecting the sensitive data.

Advantages:

• These are cost effective cloud solutions
• For the assets that are sensitive, private infrastructure could be maintained by the organization

Community Clouds

On the model of private cloud, the community clouds are serving like latest variation that offers overall solution of cloud for particular communities of business. Infrastructure that the CSP offers is shared by the businesses for development and software tools that are intended for meeting demands of the community. Along with this, individual private cloud space is there with each of the business that is made for meeting the demands of privacy, security and compliance that are common for all the communities.

The companies running in financial, health or legal spheres find an appealing option in the form of community clouds. This is because all these sectors are subject to severe compliance of regulatory. For the purpose of joint project management as well, they serve to be a suitable option by offering benefits of sharing development platform s or software applications that are specific to the community.

Advantages:

• Its management could be outsourced as well to the cloud provider
• Costs is divided between participants and therefore this is a cheaper option

After understanding each of the different types of cloud, let’s go through the comparative points.

Difference between different types of clouds:

FEATURES/CLOUD	PUBLIC	PRIVATE	HYBRID	COMMUNITY
Host	Service provider	Enterprise	Enterprise	Community (Third party)
Suitable for	Large Enterprise	Large Enterprise	Small and mid-size	Financial, heath and legal companies
Access	Internet	Intranet, VPN	Intranet, VPN	Intranet, VPN
Security	Low	Most secured	Moderate	Secured
Cost	Cheapest	High Cost	Cost effective	Cost effective
Owner	Service provider	Enterprise	Enterprise	Community
Reliability	Moderate	Very High	Medium to High	Very High
Users	Organizations, public like individuals	Business organizations	Business organizations	Community members
Scalability	Very High	Limited	Very High	Limited

Download the difference table here.

Continue Reading:

Hybrid Cloud vs Multi Cloud

What is Multi Cloud Network Architecture – Aviatrix ?

Cloud computing has opened a breath for enterprise and telecom related opportunities to hosting applications and services. While market talk is that somewhere in near future IT Cloud and Telco Cloud will merge to form a consolidated Cloud to serve the customers, however present landscape considers both the Cloud types as different. Telco Cloud commonly refers to a Private Cloud deployment within a Telco/ISP environment that hosts Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) of the Telco/ISP Network utilizing NFV techniques. On the other hand, IT Cloud is related to an enterprise workload and is a private cloud deployment. IT Cloud provides cloud based services to render enterprise requirements.

Related – Telco Cloud Architecture

Telco Cloud commonly refers to a Private Cloud environment to host Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) of the Telco Network by utilizing NFV techniques. On the other hand, VNF functions are not extensively employed in enterprise Cloud.

Further, Telco Cloud is very stringent on secured traffic flow and latency requirements. Delay needs to be very low upto scale of milliseconds. One the other hand, IT Cloud has low latency requirements , however not as strict as Telco Cloud. Moreover, Internet based access is also favored approach for IT Clouds, while Telco Clouds prefer using dedicated Service provider/Telcom Links to deliver Cloud services. In terms of over-subscription ratios, Telecom Clouds need 1:1 ratio for CPU allocation, while IT cloud can bear stealing of CPUs across applications.

With reference to standards, Open standard is the strategic approach for Service provider/Telco Cloud environment, while IT and Enterprise Clouds may employ vendor proprietary technologies.

Related – Public Cloud vs Private Cloud

Comparison Table: Telco Cloud vs IT Cloud

The above stated facts have been encapsulated in below table:

Parameter	Telco cloud	IT Cloud
Terminology	Telco Cloud commonly refers to a Private Cloud deployment within a Telco/ISP environment that hosts Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) of the Telco/ISP Network utilizing NFV techniques.	Related to an enterprise workload and is a private cloud deployment. IT Cloud provides cloud based services to render enterprise requirements.
Application Stack	Telecommunication applications	End user web based IT application
Related terms	BSS, OSS, VNF,NFV, SDN	Multi-tenancy, virtualization, IT workload
Delay / Latency	Very low latency requirements.	Low latency requirements
Throughput	Very High throughput .Port speed are required to be 100G or above	High throughput requirements and port speeds may start from 10G and beyond.
Oversubscription and CPU Allocations	Ratios are typically 1:1	Ratios may vary from 8:1 upto 16:1
Reliability	Very High due to distrusted Data Centres	High
Setup	Distributed Data Centres across locations	Consolidated Data Centers
Strategy	Open Standards	May use vendor proprietary technologies.

Download the difference table here.

Table of Content:

1. Definition of TelcoCloud
2. Definition of Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
3. NFV Architecture
4. Benefits of NFV
5. Application of NFV
6. Conclusion

Definition of Telco Cloud

Telco cloud represents the Data Center resources which are required to deploy and manage a mobile phone network. Telco clouds are based in private Data Center facilities which are used to manage the telecommunication requirements of 3G/4G and LTE networks. With the current roll-out of 5G equipment across the mobile service provider, vendors have adopted strategies related to network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined data center (SDDC) management which have become indispensable part of a telco setup.

Related – Telco Cloud vs IT Cloud

Definition of Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

Network functions virtualization (NFV) is a way to virtualize network services, such as routers, firewalls, and load balancers, that have traditionally been run on proprietary hardware or dedicated hardware. NFV’s functions like routing, load balancing and firewalls are packaged as virtual machines (VMs). NFV doesn’t depend on dedicated hardware for each network function. NFV improves scalability and agility by allowing service providers to deliver new network services and applications on demand, without requiring additional hardware resource.

Related – SDN vs NFV

NFV Architecture – A Telco Cloud Architecture

The NFV architecture was proposed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) which has helped to define standards for NFV implementation. Each component of the architecture is based on these standards with approach to promote better stability and interoperability. NFV architecture consists of:

1. Virtualization Network Function (VNF) Layer
2. NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) Layer
3. Operation Support Subsystem (OSS) Layer
4. Management, Automation and Network Orchestration (MANO) Layer

Virtualization Network Function (VNF) Layer

Virtualized network functions (VNFs) are software applications that deliver network functions such as file sharing, directory services, and IP configuration. Virtual Network Function (VNF) is the key component of NFV Architecture. It virtualizes network function e.g. when a router is virtualized, it is known as a Router VNF and when a base station is virtualized it is known as a base station VNF. Similarly, it can be DHCP server VNF and Firewall VNF. When one sub-function of a network element is virtualized, it is known as a VNF. VNF is deployed on Virtual Machines (VMs). A VNF can be deployed on multiple VMs where each VM host performs a single function of VNF. However, the whole VNF can also be deployed on a single VM as well.

Element Management System (EMS) has capability for the functional management of VNF. It includes –

• Fault management
• Configuration management
• Accounting management
• Performance and Security Management.

Depending on infrastructure, there can be provision of one EMS per VNF or else one EMS that can manage multiple VNFs. EMS can be deployed as Virtual Network Function (VNF).

NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) Layer

Network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) consists of the infrastructure components (compute, storage and networking) on a platform to support software, such as a hypervisor (like KVM) or a container management platform, needed to run network apps. NFV Infrastructure refers to the hardware and software components which build up the environment where VNFs are deployed, managed and executed. NFV Infrastructure includes following:

• Hardware Resources
• Virtualization Layer
• Virtual Resources

Operation Support Subsystem (OSS)/Business Support System (BSS) Layer

OSS deals with network management, fault management, configuration management and service management.

Management, Automation and Network Orchestration (MANO) Layer

Management, Automation and Network Orchestration (MANO) is responsible for managing NFV infrastructure and provisioning new VNFs. Management and Orchestration Layer is also abbreviated as MANO. Three components of this layer:

• Virtualized Infrastructure Manager
• VNF Manager
• Orchestrator

MANO interacts with both NFVI and VNF layer. It manages all the resources in the infrastructure layer, and also creates and deletes resources and manages their allocation of the VNFs.

Benefits of using NFV

• Reduced physical space required for network hardware.
• Reduced network power consumption.
• Reduced network maintenance costs.
• Easier network upgrades.
• Longer life cycle for network hardware.
• Reduced maintenance and hardware costs.
• Reduced physical hardware requirement.
• Increased flexibility to run VNFs across different servers or move them around as needed when demand changes.
• If the function is no longer needed, the VM can be decommissioned.

Application of NFV

• Mobile Edge Computing, this technology was born from the ongoing rollouts of 5G networks. The MEC uses individual components in its architecture which are similar to the NFV.
• Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN).
• Virtual Customer Premise Equipment (vCPE).
• Pre-NFV/SDN-based virtualized legacy infrastructure equipment.
• NFV telco Data Centers using SDN controllers.
• Evolved Packet Core (EPC).

Conclusion

Telco Cloud refers to a Private Cloud within a Telco/ISP environment. VNF functions are an imperative part of Telco Cloud and not extensively employed in enterprise Cloud or IT Cloud.

Cloud has changed the way how we do Business. Cost savings have led the IT assets, especially compute Infrastructure migration to Cloud. Accompanied by this move, there have been buffet of new roles which have pretty promising future in Cloud Computing. Two of these very crucial roles are Cloud Engineer and Devops Engineer. While both the roles are imperative part of any Cloud environment, but differ in their responsibilities and scope of work.

Cloud Engineer work area is focused more around provisioning and maintaining of infrastructure and platform for the Public Clouds. To put it another way, they can also be called Infrastructure engineers of Public cloud providers.

The term Devops is short term for Development and Operations. The responsibility of Devops engineer remains around software development and its engineering to expedite the delivery of software applications and services.

Cloud Engineer

Cloud Engineer can be considered a subset of the DevOps Engineer. There is no mandatory requirement for Cloud engineer to be Developer, however Cloud certification becomes essential in order to enhance Cloud Infrastcrture and platform related skills. These professionals work in creating Public Cloud systems for enterprises to use them for communication and sharing of data, its storage, backup, including big-data analysis. In this role, the resource prepares architectures and platforms which would cater to diverse customer needs and their specific requirements. Scalability, high availability and redundancy considerations are also kept in mind while designing architectures. An interaction across teams is required to build the solution, including the platform on Cloud.

Responsibilities of a Cloud Engineer

Cloud Engineer’s responsibility can be described as below –

• Creating Cloud designs and solutions
• Protection of company confidential data over the cloud
• Update Softwares, drivers and firmware where required
• Ensure compatibility of all Operating systems
• Manage Cloud infrastructure

DevOps Engineer

DevOps Engineers work in a collaborative way with operations and development teams with intension to release software products which are robust and within optimal time limits. In order to bring efficiency along with standardization of products, automation is another key scope Devops engineer needs to work on. This role also encompasses tracking the bugs in designs and also creation of automation opportunity for developers. Standard procedures may also be developed to achieve standardization and efficiency in product creation in addition to creation and maintenance of configuration.

Responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer

Devops Engineer’s responsibility can be described as below –

• Explore opportunities to automate things
• Using configuration tools like Puppet and Chef
• Monitoring security issues in Cloud
• Deployment and Maintenance of web applications
• Measuring application performance
• Application integration and testing

Key differences between Cloud Engineer and DevOps Engineer:

• Cloud Engineer is focused more on Infrastructure build and operations, while DevOps resource is dedicated towards development, testing and automation of tools and processes.
• Both the roles need atleast Bachelor’s degree to qualify for these job roles.
• The growth projection of DevOps engineer is pretty high (approximately 24%) in comparison to Cloud engineer (which is close to 6%). Though these figures are based on industry estimations and actuals may vary.
• Software Lifecycle management and Software development is primarily the forte for a DevOps Engineer, who also diligently follow Agile methodology. Cloud Engineer is more inclined towards Platform Designing and Infra designing to support robust Cloud setup of customers.

Comparison Table : Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer

Below table summarizes the difference between the two:

PARAMETERS	CLOUD ENGINEER	DEVOPS ENGINEER
Philosophy	Responsible for creating infrastructure and platforms that help individuals and businesses store and work with programs and data online.	Responsible for software development, engineering to expedite the delivery of software applications and services. Agile methodology is used in creation & testing during the lifecycle of software solution
Key Focus	Infra and Operations	Dev, Operations and QA
Scope	Infrastructure	Software methodology
Qualification	Bachelor’s Degree	Bachelor’s Degree
Job Growth projection	6%	24%
Software Lifecycle understanding	Less	Good understanding
Infra & Platform Designing	Yes	No
Software designing	No	Yes
Agile Methodology	Partially followed	Diligently followed

Download the comparison table here.

Continue Reading:

Cloud Architect vs Cloud Engineer

DevOps vs SRE

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Please check our e-store for Cloud Technologies Combo e-books on Interview Q&A on Cloud technologies. All the e-books are in easy to understand PDF Format, explained with relevant Diagrams (where required) for better ease of understanding.

Cloud Technologies has dramatically changed the world in the last decade, the data center has become a private cloud and Container technology has become mainstream, Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing are now interlinked industries. 

Looking back at 2021, top cloud computing companies have made exciting developments from Multi-cloud to Hybrid cloud then to now cloud and 5G. So now the question arises what are the best cloud service providers for 2022? 

Do you have this question in your mind? then you are in the right place. Today in this article you will get to know the Big 5 top cloud service providers to help your business succeed this year. 

List of top Cloud Service Providers

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud company that pulled the world into the cloud revolution, and its past year’s performance shows no sign of complaints. In midst of the large competition, AWS has shown a 30% growth rate last year. 

They provide 99.99% uptime, Free migration tools, Different types of databases, Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning, and Long-term storage and Data backup. They provide flexible cloud plans that help potential customers to minimize their cloud costs. 

Pros

• Global Availability 
• Helpful Customer support
• Multiple features 

Cons

• The confusing pricing structure can affect new users. 

2. Microsoft Azure 

Azure Cloud Services of Microsoft is second only in revenue. However, they are a head-to-head competitor for AWS. Their legacy in the Computer field is a great advantage for them. As many businesses use the Microsoft Office Tools it is easy for them to move to Azure Cloud services. 

Microsoft Azure provides various situational discounts and flexible plans, thus it is hard to estimate the cost for your business without contacting the sales representative. Azure has a top-level PaaS offering and is well-positioned in automation and AI. 

Pros

• Easy to migrate and manage
• Regular updates and promising uptime

Cons

• Licensing restrictions and confusing prices. 
• Support isn’t as responsive as AWS.

3. Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

If your business is related to applications and mix deployments then Google Cloud Platform is the best choice for you. Over the last few years, GCP has proved itself as the best company for small, new, or individual developers. It supports open-source programs. 

Having a dominant hand in networking and automation, GCP is undoubtedly leading in Artificial Intelligence, Machine and mainly Data Analytics and BigData. 

Pros 

• Flexible Contracts and Good Discounts 
• Best for API Documentation
• Helpful Customer support 
• Global Availability 

Cons

• Slightly fewer features compared to AWS and Azure
• User Interface may be confusing for some persons (migrating from other providers)

4. IBM Cloud 

IBM cloud has proved itself as the favorite choice of mid and large enterprise clients. IBM’s global influence has helped to achieve large cloud customers and made it a leading player in the multi-cloud landscape. 

IBM has an advantage over data analytics like GCP, because of its widespread data centers from Brazil to India to Germany to Korea. The company acquisition of Red Hat in 2019 and its recent Watson initiative has implanted a firm global footprint on laaS, PaaS solutions, and AI-based cloud offerings. 

Pros

• Awesome storage facility and 
• Positive customer Support Satisfaction 
• Data security 

Cons

• Less diverse server options
• Overpriced for small enterprises 

5. Oracle Cloud 

Despite the late entry into the Cloud market, Oracle cloud has proved itself as a promising cloud service provider in the past years. Though it lacks cloud service providers like AWS and Azure, the positive reviews and growing market share makes it a better choice. 

Oracle leads the market by offering their Oracle software and leads the market using their strength in the database and core enterprise offerings. It wins points by providing a transparent pricing structure. 

Pros

• Friendly User Interface
• Scalability
• Free tier for new users

Cons

• Little expensive 
• The cost structure is not flexible. 

Wrapping Up:

These are only leading cloud service providers, there are still many good cloud computing companies that may be suitable for you. However, if you are not a tech-geek or looking for an easy Cloud migration for your business then it is better to choose AWS or GCP. 

If you have any thoughts or questions relating to this article please feel free to share them in the comment section below. 

Continue Reading:

IBM Cloud: An Overview

Top 10 Cloud Computing Certifications

An Introduction to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)

With the growing advancement in technology there is an increasing need for collaboration and Agility. Software developments require a constant collaboration between programmers and system administrators in the software development process to develop apps which are efficient, secure and have maintained all standards of quality. Earlier programmers worked in silos from system administrators and involved at a very later stage when app is already launched. The advent of programmable network and APIs lead to transformation in the way applications are deployed, developed, and hosted which could do minor adjustments in the network in terms of optimizing latency, bandwidth, and routing etc.

Today we look more into details of two modern terminologies – DevOps and NetDevOps and understand how they work, their purpose, features, and usage.

Definition – DevOps

DevOps methodology unites the activities which are related to development, quality assurance, deployment, and integration in Software development environment. It builds a collaboration between diverse and isolated teams – in traditional landscape software development and software deployment is done usually by two different teams or departments. Aim of DevOps is to improve the efficiency by fazing out the boundaries between these two phases of software development and software deployment.

• DevOps comprises of continuous integration at every stage of software development – coding, building, integration, testing, processes,
• Continuous delivery which comprise of continuous integration with focus on product delivery,
• Continuous deployment with the aim of automation of project deliverables.

In DevOps model activities are no more drawn out ‘Silos’. Quality confirmation and security groups all more firmly incorporated with development and operations through the software development life cycle. Some use cases for DevOps are – Use of DevOps in the Online Financial Trading Company, car manufacturing industry, network cycling, Airlines Industry etc

History of DevOps

The idea of Devops originated in 2008 by Partrick Debois and Andrew Clay Shafer regarding the concept of Agile infrastructure. The idea took shape and started spreading in 2009 with the advent of first DevOpsDays event which was held in Belgium. The idea generated during Patrick frustrating experience during an assignment he took up with Belgium government to help with data center migrations. His experiences over the project lead to development of an idea for ‘Agile infrastructure’ to address walls of separation and lack of cohesion between application methodology and infrastructure methods.

In year 2009 a presentation presented by two Flickr employees made the case that only rational way forward for application development is its integration with operational activities for seamless , transparent, and fully integrated Agile deployments.  In 2010 a conference held in United states on DevOpsDays and in year 2013 a book called “The Phoenix project” is written by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford introduced concept of ‘DevOps’.

DevOps Characteristics

• Built in security as security is incorporated in code and allow security testing during program development lifecycle
• Faster time to market by preventing miscommunication, and flaws and microservices may be set up , updated, scaling, independent restarting , frequent updates, and quick delivery of applications.
• Faster recoveries as DevOps is well ready to diagnose and recover from code breaks
• Higher customer satisfaction and market fit product development
• Lower risks and smother deployments due to coordinated development, installation, scaling, archiving etc.

Definition – NetDevOps

Legacy networks are managed in isolation box by box and are CLI interface driven. Small change lead to major changes or undesired behaviour. The static network infrastructure impacts the application experience and can’t adapt to application requirements during peaks.

NetDevOps is a principle, philosophy, a discipline, and a set of holistic methodologies. NetDevOps brings all that is good in software DevOps and applied towards networking, end goal is where changes can be applied in a faster and smooth manner in the network. The key of NetDevOps is its agility – to be able to design, develop, integrate, test, and deploy on demand. NetDevOps leverages the practise from DevOps to ensure network changes are multiple and small but executed in an efficient, reliable way and more automated.

NetDevOps Characteristics

• High network uptime with latest updates
• Network changes are small and more frequent but automated, efficient, and more reliable
• Reduction in manual intervention with infrastructure as code (laC) – deployment using machine readable definition files instead of physical configuration files
• Incremental changes make deployment less risky
• Data collection and telemetry
• Compliance checks

Comparison Table: DevOps vs NetDevOps

Below table summarizes the key differences between the two technologies:

PARAMETER	DevOps	NetDevOps
Definition	DevOps methodology unites the activities which are related to development, quality assurance, deployment, and integration in Software development environment. It builds a collaboration between diverse and isolated teams	NetDevOps is a principle, philosophy, a discipline, and a set of holistic methodologies. NetDevOps brings all that is good in software DevOps and applied towards networking , end goal is where changes can be applied in a faster and smooth manner in the network
Features	Dev and operations teams are no longer silos Mindset and foundation for ‘Agile’	Network Config as a code Bringing DevOps principles to networking
Applications	Gradle, Git, Jenkins, Bamboo, Docker, Kubernetes.	Ansible, Puppet, Chef Infra etc.

Download the Comparison Table: DevOps vs NetDevOps

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DevOps vs NetOps

Agile vs Devops

Today we look more in detail about DevOPs and DevSecOps strategy and principles, how they work, what are their advantages etc. 

About DevOps 

‘DevOPs’ is a combination of two words ‘Development’ and ‘Operations’. It represents a set of principles, ideas, practices and tools which helps an organization to increase its ability to deliver applications and services with improved efficiency and at a much faster pace instead of traditional methods of development. It is a software development strategy which aims to bridge the gap between development teams and IT operations teams. The IT operations team and development team work in collaboration during the entire software development lifecycle to produce better, reliable applications and products. 

Advantages of DevOps 

• Improved customer satisfaction and retention
• Business efficiency improvement
• Improved response times
• Reduction in costs over time
• Improved business agility 

About DevSecOps 

The DevOPs offers speed and quality development and deployment but it does not cater to needs of security. The focus on security has increased tremendously hence DevSecOps has come into picture. DevSecOps optimizes the DevOPs strategy by security automation and implementation. It breaks silos between development teams and security teams and empowers development teams not only to be responsible for performance of applications in production but also accountable for product security in production.

The goal is to focus on security requirements right from the beginning of software development life cycle and provide built in security practices throughout the integration pipeline. 

Developer responsibilities in DevSecOps 

• Composition analysis in conjunction with security to choose safe third party and open-source tools
• Static and dynamic analysis of code along with automated vulnerability scans and penetration tests
• Automated tests alongside functional tests and check and verify against improper security configurations
• Threat modelling adoption to understand how attackers think and operate 

Comparison: DevOps vs DevSecOps

Below table summarizes the differences between the two:

Function	DevOps	DevSecOps
Definition	DevOPs is a combination or unification of “Development’ and ‘Operations” . It is a set of principles and strategies to increase organization ability to deliver application and services with improved efficiency and at a faster pace	DevSecOps is a combination or unification of ‘Development’ , ‘Security’ and ‘Operations. It focuses on incorporation of security practises in development
Methodology	It is a software development methodology which aim to bridge gap between development and IT operations team and hence their collaboration during entire software development lifecycle	It is a methodology which is integrated into DevOPs process to incorporate security at every stage of software development process
Goal	Breakdown organization silos and adoption of a culture where people work together by developing and automating continuous delivery pipeline	Goal is to move security activities throughout the software development lifecycle and provide built in security practises throughout the continuous integration pipeline
Approach	Based on cultural philosophy which support agile movement in the context of system-oriented approach	It is about validating all building blocks and embed security in architecture design
Elements	CI/CD are critical elements of DevOps , automation of code development process let teams change code more frequently and in reliable manner	Shift left is most critical element in DevSecOps making security core responsibility for each and everyone involved in development and identifying issues early and fixing them quickly
Tools	Ansible, Docker, Puppet, Jenkins, Chef, Nagios, Kubernetes etc.	Aqua Security, Codacy, Checkmarx, Prisma cloud, Threatmodeler etc.

Download the comparison table: DevOPs vs DevSecOPs

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SecOps vs DevOps: Understand the difference

Cloud Engineer vs DevOps Engineer : Future of 21st Century

Top 10 DevOps Tools

Today we look more in detail about two important terminologies Serverless computing and terraform understand their key differences, benefits and purpose they adopted for.  

About Serverless Computing

Server less model helps to provision and deploy server less functions across different cloud providers. Server less computing provides backend services on as used basis and users can write and deploy code without worrying about infrastructure underneath. Backend services are charged on the basis of actual computation usage. There is no reservation of any sort in terms of bandwidth, number of servers as the service operates in auto scale mode.

Though by name it is server less, physical servers are there in underlying infrastructure which developers are not aware of. Backend services consist of a server where application files reside and database where user and business data is stored.

Serverless computing offers Function as a service (FaaS), like Cloudflare workers , it allows developers to execute small pieces of code on the network edge. With FaaS developers can build modular architecture , a scalable codebase without the need to spend resources to maintain the underlying backend infrastructure. 

Benefits of Serverless Computing 

• Very cost effective as compared to its counterpart traditional cloud providers of backend services as users end up paying for unused or idle CPU times
• Developers need not to worry about scaling up their code as it can handle all application scaling demands
• Simple functions can be created by developers in FaaS to perform a single independent function such as call to an API
• Significantly can cut time to market as code can be added and modified on piecemeal basis

About Terraform 

‘Infrastructure as a code’ tool is one of the most popular IaC tools with huge providers. It allows to configure and provision infrastructure. Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as a code software which provides a consistent CLI workflow to manage multitude of cloud services. It codifies Cloud APIs into declarative configuration files. It can be used with any cloud provider.

Benefits of Terraform

• It supports orchestration not just configuration management
• Supports multiple providers such as AWS, Azure, GCP, DigitalOcean etc.
• Provides immutable infrastructure to support smooth infrastructure changes
• Easy to understand language , HCL (Hashicorp configuration language)
• Supports portability to any other provider
• Supports client only architecture no need for additional configuration management on server

Comparison Table: Serverless vs Terraform

Below table summarizes the differences between the two:

Function	Serverless computing	Terraform
Scope	Cross platform support via service providers	Covers most AWS resources and part of it offers faster support for new AWS features
License	Open source and enterprise	It is an open-source project
Support	Based on subscription model chosen	Hashicorp offers 24*7 support
Type	It is a framework and stateless	It is an orchestration tool and stateful application
Language	Java, Go, PowerShell, Node. js JavaScript, C#, Python, and Ruby	It uses declarative language
VM provisioning , network and storage management	Offloads all backend management responsibility and operations tasks such as provisioning, scheduling, scaling etc.	It offers comprehensive VM provisioning, network and storage management
Services	AWS Lambda, Microsoft Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions and IBM OpenWhisk	Terraform is open-source infrastructure as code software tool

Download the comparison table: Serverless vs Terraform

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Server less Computing vs Containers

Server less Architecture vs Traditional Architecture

Most organizations are adopting agile methodology to enable better collaboration between customer and the IT. With Agile the power of teamwork is unleashed. Agile is an iterative approach which concentrates on a continuous delivery framework. The focus is to start small and get timely and constructive feedback from customers. Many terminologies are circulating around Agile methodology such as DevOps , SecOps, Cloud OPs and so on. 

Today we look more in detail about SecOps and DevOps methodologies, their advantages , and use cases etc.

About SecOps 

SecOps is a combination of two separate concepts. SecOps meant ‘Security’ into ‘Operations’. SecOps aims to automate security tasks by combining security teams and ITOps teams together. Security is injected into the entire Lifecycle of a product from the starting and not at later stage. Objective is to ensure each and every member of the development team is aware of the security responsibility. 

Goals:

The goals of SecOps are :

• Increased security by prioritization of cybersecurity at all stages of development 
• Keep security dynamic process which is constantly improving and adopting
• Spread responsibility for security to all parties involved in production and securing a given application 

Benefits of SecOps

• Improvement in productivity
• Enhanced usage of resources
• Increased return on investment
• Application disruptions are reduced
• Reduction in cloud security threats
• More efficient auditing processes 

About DevOps

DevOps is the first and original methodology which blends two focuses of computer science. ‘Dev’ means software development and ‘Ops’ means information technology operations or services. Hence Dev+Ops = DevOps or software development operations / services. DevOps methodology is designed to improve quick software production and improvement using constant collaboration, automation, combination and intelligence.

DevOps practises throughout the development cycle developers are able to have more control over product infrastructure and prioritize software performance over other tasks.

Goals

The goals of DevOps are :

• increase speed of software delivery enablement using automation and collaboration,
• increased control over production infrastructure,
• prioritization of efficient and consistent software delivery,
• streamlining the integration of software architecture and systems into future products 

Modern DevOps cycle is different from traditional software development approach and look something like below:

• Plan software or application or patch for either of them
• Built patch or software
• Test the software or application in extensive manner
• Release the software to customers and end users
• Monitor customer feedback 
• Begin planning for next iteration of software or application

DevOps methodologies include key components such as Microservices , IoC or infrastructure as a code, PaC or policy as code. 

Benefits of DevOps

• More strong collaboration and communication within teams
• Achieve greater agility and speed for security teams
• Early detection and mitigation of code vulnerabilities
• Enhanced quality assurance testing 

Comparison Table: SecOps vs DevOps 

Below table summarizes the difference between the two terms:

FUNCTION	SecOps	DevOps
Definition	Collaboration between IT security and operations team	Collaboration between software development and IT operations team
Approach	Focus on security aspect of software or application	Focus on strong collaboration and communication with teams to ensure agility in software or application delivery
Scope	Building secure application or software	Development, remodelling and faster delivery of applications
Goal	Security in focus from start till end	Continuous and faster application development
Way of processing	Combination of manual or automated tests	Mostly automated or driven via AI
Implementation of changes	Changes are applied onto servers and applications	Changes are applied onto code

Download the Comparison Table: SecOps vs DevOps

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DevOps vs NetOps: Detailed Comparison

Devops vs Sysops: Understand the difference

DevOps Engineer vs Software Engineer: Know the difference

Over the years organizations have invested money in buying costly servers. The traditional architecture requires large IT staff for maintaining data centres, training and hiring skilled personnel, tracking obsolete hardware and replacing it which would bring in heavy investment and increase in IT budget year by year. With the advent of cloud computing companies could rent storage space, processing power, memory and other infrastructure services and use them in pay as you use model. 

Today we look more in detail about Serverless architecture and traditional architecture, understand their key differences, benefits and purpose they adopted for.  

About Server less Computing

In Server less computing organizations need not to purchase servers or rent cloud space. Servers are involved but developers are not concerned with them. In serverless computing you pay only for services you use and the entire infrastructure is maintained by the service provider. This is a cheaper option to spend less and scale fast on demand. As backend services expand and you need more server space it can be easily availed. There is no need to shell out on servers, physical space and skilled staff to maintain this. 

Benefits of Serverless Architecture

• Scalability – scaling up and down is the main feature of server less computing . The developers can do limitless coding while server providers can take care of increasing or decreasing demand of capacity required.
• Ease of coding – Developers can easily write independent methods to invoke calls to backend and function as a service coding is quick and free of any hassles.
• Faster delivery – code deployment and bug fixing time is reduced substantially. Testing and fixing on piecemeal basis is available instead of major overhaul to developers.

About Traditional Architecture 

A traditional architecture has physical servers which are accessed over the Internet to provide access to services and information. With physical servers, development, management, and even usage is complex affair at various stages and require expert or skill staff to support it. 

Comparison Table: Serverless vs Traditional Architecture

FUNCTION	SERVERLESS COMPUTING	TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURE
Definition	Server less is a cloud computing model in which cloud providers manage the allocation and provisioning of servers in a dynamic manner.	Traditional server is quite large which can be accessed over web and provide access to services and applications.
Costs	Vendor charges based on number of functions executed which are done timeslots are allocated to run a function.	In traditional architecture costs are always there to maintain it.
Networking	Required to setup private APIs.	Traditional architecture require you to access code via regular IP’s
Integration	In Server less computing libraries and integrations are made available within the application which can make it heavy or sluggish.	Application dependency over 3rd party libraries such as coding or cryptography require traditional computing.
Multiple environments	It is easy to setup multiple environments in server less architecture.	In traditional architecture it is tough and requires additional expense, time to setup multiple environments.
Timeout	Timeouts requirements are more stringent in server less computing and may not suite applications requiring external referencing or having variable execution times.	Traditional architecture is well suited for applications require variable execution times.
Scalability	Scaling up and down is very easy in server less computing but coders may not be able to mitigate glitches when new functions or executions are instantiated.	Traditional architecture has limitations in terms of scalability and it can’t scale up and down on a flicker and require careful planning and estimation on resources requirement while hosting an application and also developers require to configure auto scaling and load balancing manually.
Maintenance	Infrastructure maintained by provider such as AWS, Lambda, Azure etc.	Users can control underlying infrastructure such as physical servers, VMs etc.

Download the comparison table: Server less vs Traditional Architecture

Conclusion

Server less computing is the future of cloud computing. It is expected to grow around USD 200 million in 2022 as it gives immense benefit of costs over on premises deployments. It offers backend services to developers to run and execute their applications without  worrying about underlying infrastructure and when resources are not used no computing resources are allocated to the application. 

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What is Serverless Computing? Cloud Services

Top 10 Serverless Compute Providers

Top 10 Server Monitoring Tools & Software

In the IT industry, VMware Horizon is defined as a commercial desktop and app virtualization product developed by VMware Inc for Microsoft Windows, Linux and macOS operating systems. It was initially introduced in the market with the name VMware VDM, but after the updated release of version 3.0.0 in 2008, the name was changed to “VMware View”. Later on, with the launch of version 6 in April 2014, the name was updated to “Horizon View” now and is referred to as “VMware Horizon” to represent desktop and app virtualization platform editions.

VMware Horizon: Specifications and Features

In general, VMware Horizon assists IT efficiently deployment and scales virtual desktops and applications from a single control panel with fast provisioning, automated tasks and simplified management interface.

Exploiting world class management services and deep architecture integrations with the VMware technology ecosystem, the VMware Horizon platform delivers a modern approach for desktop and app management that extends from existing solutions to the hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The outcome, we observe is fast and simple virtual desktop and application delivery that extends the optimal user experience to all remote and local applications.

The most advanced specifications and features in the latest edition, according to the official website are the following:

Hybrid Delivery, Management and Scale:

Horizon VMware currently supports hybrid and multi-cloud architectures that allows IT customers to scale with flexibility across public and private clouds such as VMware Cloud on AWS and Microsoft Azure. Finally, the latest edition of VMware Horizon supports VMware Cloud and Google Cloud on Dell EMC platforms, as well as Azure VMware Solution (currently in preview mode).

Finally, the newly integrated Universal Broker service system, delivers a global entitlement layer that intelligently provisions all the users to their personal desktop or application, in any connected pod or cloud environment, according to the availability or proximity for the best possible user experience.

Modern Platform for Simplicity and Speed:

In addition, VMware Horizon latest platform, provides abilities to deliver stateless, non-persistent desktops very fast (in seconds). The result is centralized and simplified management with one-to-many provisioning and zero downtime updates.

Furthermore, Instant Clone technology provides extra capabilities to Horizon platform through integration to VMware vSphere and App Volumes Software. The New Instant Clones Smart Provisioning abilities, can effectively improve Instant Clones with Horizon functionality to help reduce storage requirements and buying costs.

Finally, Elastic DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) gives to the system administrators the ability to dynamically expand pools and scale burst (up and down) automatically, in order to meet business needs.

The Best Digital Workspace Experience:

In the latest edition of VMware Horizon the company introduced some new Advances in Blast Extreme protocol that deliver a great user experience with support for high quality video content, including 3D graphics workloads that use the new HEVC H.265 codecs and GPU’s acceleration. Therefore, now the users can use both 4K and 8K monitor displays. In addition, new automation techniques are introduced, that mainly reduce the CPU and network bandwidth utilization with intelligent selection of the transport mode (protocol) and Codec depending on screen visual content and network connection conditions.

 Finally, VMware Horizon offers improved capabilities for unified communications and social network applications for best user experience and improved productivity.

End to End Security from Your Trusted Partner:

Another advanced feature of VMware Horizon, applies to Virtualizing desktops and applications by providing inherent security because the data and the applications reside in the datacenter and not on the terminal endpoints.

With this particular technique, Horizon improves the experience by taking advantage of intrinsic security that is built into the user’s VMware infrastructure to further enhance security from the device, across the network and into the datacenter or cloud. These integrations are compatible with the Unified Access Gateway, Workspace ONE Access, VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud and NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi Networks).

Finally, with next-generation endpoint protection from VMware Carbon Black, IT departments can further improve security on virtual desktops and applications.

Conclusion 

As we explained in this article, VMware Horizon is a complete solution product that delivers, manages and protects virtual desktops. Starting from provisioning to management and finally monitoring, VMware Horizon platform offers an integrated stack of enterprise-class technologies that can deploy hundreds of customized desktops and Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) servers in a few seconds from centralized single images.

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Hyper V vs VMware : Detailed Comparison

Hypervisor in Cloud Computing

There is no doubt that cloud computing is one of the most successful and significant technical inventions of the 21st century. Now the market has tons of cloud Computing Software to help Enterprises to make their Cloud management simple and easy. 

Are you wondering which one should you choose? Don’t worry, Here in this article you will get to know about the top 10 Cloud computing tools  you should have. 

List of Top Cloud Computing Tools

Okay without further ado let’s get started. 

1.Cloudability 

It is one of the best financial management software available in the market, that notifies you of the opportunities to lower your cloud computing costs. It’s available under two plans Pro and Enterprise.

It gives alerts and guidance based on the budget.

Features:

It has major features like –

• Budget Tracking,
• API Integration,
• Real-time Sync, etc…

It is reported that the company monitors more than $250 million cloud costs. 

2.Cloudyn

Cloudyn helps the business or enterprise from over-usage of the Amazon cloud resources. It checks the whole cloud structure and gives suggestions to get rid of the unsuccessful things. It provides various data to the users. 

Functions:

It has the following functions:

• Intuitive dashboards,
• Overall cost analysis,
• Resource Cost Analysis, etc…

Though it is currently focused on the Amazon cloud, it is stated that the company will soon start to work on other clouds like Rackspace, Microsoft Azure, and GoGrid. 

3.Netdata. cloud

It is a next-generation observability platform that gives real-time insights and instantly diagnoses the anomalies in your infrastructure. It is free and open-source software that can work with all types of physical and virtual machines. 

Features:

It comes with the following features –

• Event monitoring and performance metrics,
• Auto-detects,
• a custom database engine

On the downside, it’s not available in mobile applications. 

4.Informatica

It is a cloud data integration software developer that has been in the market for a long time. Its latest Cloud spring product comes in a full suit that consists of data security, IT data Integration, and hybrid cloud deployments. 

It is one of the most famous and widely used cloud computing tools by the organization for ETL purposes. 

5.AtomSphere

AtomSphere is the cloud computing tool produced by Dell Boomi. It is the best choice for organizations that want to integrate more than one cloud-based application. It is reported that AtomSphere is handling more than 1 million integration processes per day. 

Features:

It contains features like:

• a drag and drop option,
• high scalability, and
• the availability of a broad set of connectors to integrate platforms. 

6.CloudHub 

It is also the cloud integration services software developed by MuleSoft. 

As an Open source technology, it gives quick and reliable application integration. And it is reported that CloudHub is currently serving more than a billion customers per day. 

Features:

The major features are:

• Scalable Interface,
• Data mapping,
• One-click Application Deployment,
• Visual Data Transformation, etc… 

7.Enstratius

Enstratius is a cloud infrastructure management tool developed by a company of the same name.

Functions:

Their functions include-

• self-service provisioning,
• customizable role-based access controls, etc… 

It also supports the integration with management tools such as Chef and Puppet across different types of clouds. 

8.Chef

It is a Cloud configuration management software developed by Opscode under the Apache License(which is open source). With the hosted Chef and Private Chef cloud system, you can easily administer all the problems automatically and cut down all manual and repetitive operations. 

Features:

It comes with features like

• Backup and recovery,
• Test deployment reliability, etc… 

9.RightScale

RightScale cloud management software is the first one to introduce cross-platform cloud management. It allows organizations to deploy and manage applications across public, private, and hybrid clouds. 

Features:

Its major features are –

• multi-cloud platform,
• high scalability,
• controllability and reporting,
• budgeting, and auditing with a clear view. 

10.Puppet 

Last but not least, Puppet is also an Open source of Cloud Configuration Management Software that easily automates repetitive works. Its new features allow the admin

• to respond to the request graphically and
• support third-party authentication.

Puppets customers include 24/7 Real Media, Harvard, Google, etc… 

Conclusion:

The article summarizes the list of best cloud computing tools. However, the sequence may vary based on your goals and needs. If you have different thoughts or questions please share them in the comment section below. 

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Top 10 DevOps Tools

Top 10 Cloud Monitoring Tools

Today we look more in detail about Oracle cloud infrastructure which is a leading provider in the cloud services market and holds 9% of market share as per statistics available in 2021, learn about its features , advantages and why choose oracle cloud.

Introduction to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Oracle cloud infrastructure is a set of complementary cloud services which let you build and run a wide range of applications and services on a highly available hosted infrastructure spread globally. It offers high compute capabilities and storage capacity in a flexible overlay virtual network which is secure and robust. It gives a free trial with $300 cloud credits to be used within 30 days.

Oracle cloud infrastructure accounts have a set of resources which are free from charge for the life of the account. Free resources enable you to set up a virtual machine instance, an oracle autonomous database, networking, load balancing, storage resources to support applications you built or host . Using these resources, you can set up small scale applications and run them or use this infrastructure to test proof of concept.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Components

Oracle cloud infrastructure comprises several components. Let’s look at them in more detail as under:

• OCI regions are collection of availability domains located in a single geographic region
• Availability domains are one or more isolated, fault tolerant oracle data centres which host cloud resources like instances, volumes and subnets. A region may contain multiple or single availability domains
• Fault domains are logical grouping of hardware and infrastructure in the availability zone itself. Fault domains are used to isolate resources during hardware failure or sudden or unexpected outages in software
• Compartments are collection of related resources which can be accessed only by groups which have been allotted permissions by regional administrators
• DevOps is continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD) service for automation of delivery and deployment of software to Oracle cloud infrastructure (OCI) computing platform

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architecture

With regions we have availability domains which are also known as ADs. ADs are fully isolated data centres within a region connected over low latency and high bandwidth networks. With ADs lies the fault domains also called FDs , act as logical data centres within an availability domain. Applications hosted on fault domains are protected from hardware failures.

Applications running across multiple availability zones having protection against physical data centre outage and applications which are running across regions having protection against regional failures. This also provides load balancing capabilities apart from fault tolerance and high availability.

In availability domains physical infrastructure such as cooling and power are not shared and neither the internal network.

Resources and compartments can be added or removed at any point of time. Resources movement from one compartment to another compartment is very flexibly designed. If an organization has done acquisition resources need to be moved. Compartments are logical segregation so multiple resources from several regions can be in one compartment. Upto six levels of nesting is possible in compartments to have sub compartments.

Features of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

• Only cloud with standard based oracle software
• Only public cloud integrating documents , analytics, social network , Big data
• Only cloud offering with Real application clusters , data guard, Exadata and Exalogic
• Flexibility to transparently move workloads between environments
• Enables rapid adoption of PaaS for Test-dev, Backup and other patterns

How to access Oracle Cloud Infrastructure?

Oracle cloud infrastructure supports Google chrome browser 69 or later, Safari 12.1 or later and Firefox 62 or later.

To sign in to Oracle cloud at https://cloud.oracle.com you require cloud account name , username and password.

There are different ways to have an account created on:

• Paid order activation is done from welcome email in case you have ordered oracle infrastructure as a service (Oracle IaaS) and Oracle platform as a service (Oracle PaaS) cloud services with universal credits through oracle sales then you need to activate your services before using them. You need to create an account and activate the associated subscription.
• Oracle cloud infrastructure free tier sign up is valid for 30 days from the day of sign-up. For free trial your mobile number and credit card details will be requested but not used unless you upgrade the account post expiry period of free trial or before that.
• An administrator from existing oracle cloud account can create a new user account

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Top 10 Cloud Monitoring Tools

IBM Cloud: An Overview

Are you new to this IT revolution? Getting confused between Big Data and Cloud Computing? Then this article will help you to clear your doubts.

Here, you will get to know about the characteristics of Big Data and Cloud computing and the major difference and similarity between them. Okay without further intro, let’s get started with Big Data.

What is a Big Data?

Big Data simply refers to the Data (in other words information) that are large in size and increases from time to time. It can be of various types like structured data, semi-structured data, or unstructured data. And it can be formed from the output of different programs. These data cannot be processed using traditional management tools.

Some examples of the Big-data is, Data generated by social media, e-commerce industries, weather station, or Internet of Things (IoT), etc…

Nature of Big Data

• It can be of various variety – like structured, unstructured, etc…
• It has a high volume that cannot be processed by normal computers
• It has high value because of the useful information.
• It is consistent and varies from time to time

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing refers to the processing of the above said Big Data or any other thing that requires large computational resources. Big-data cannot be analyzed or operated using the traditional method. It is done using the cloud which is high-powered servers from various providers over the Internet.

Cloud computing involves servers, databases, analytics, and network and artificial intelligence. It often follows three service models –

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS),
• Platform as a Service (PaaS), and
• Software as a Service (SaaS).

Major cloud computing vendors who provide cloud computing services are Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM cloud services, etc…

Nature of Cloud Computing:

• On-Demand Availability
• Pay as you go, model
• Elastic stability and flexibility
• Multi-tenancy and resource pooling.

Comparison Table: Cloud Computing vs Big Data

By now, you should have got a basic idea about cloud computing and Big-Data. Now let’s see how these two leading technical things differ from each other.

PARAMETER	CLOUD COMPUTING	BIG DATA
Meaning	It refers to the computing resources available over the internet on-demand.	It is a huge size data that increase in respect of time.
Types of Model	It has three models – 1.Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 2.Platform as a Service (PaaS) 3.Software as a Service (SaaS)	It can be of a different variety – as Structured Data, Unstructured Data, and semi-structured data
Cost	It is cost-effective and scalable.	It helps in centralizing the platforms, which makes the backup and recovery and cost-effective.
Challenges	Major challenges in cloud computing include – availability, security, and transformation.	The various variety of data, storage integration, resource management are the major challenges of Big Data
Medium used	Internet is used as a medium to access cloud computing services from cloud servers	Distributed computing is used to analyze and extract the Data or useful information from Big Data.
Nature	It is of a processing or operational nature.	It is storage or Managerial nature.
Purpose	To access the cloud or large IT resources without physically installing them.	To organize a large volume of data for improvement of the business or application.
Examples	Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Services, etc…	Big data is generated in social media data, e-commerce data, weather station data, IoT, or other sensors.

Download the comparison table: Cloud Computing vs Big Data

Conclusion

In simple words, big data is just a huge quantity of data that has valuable information. Cloud computing provides computing resources and services for analyzing and operating big data.

Both of them are arguably leading technologies and are used simultaneously. And plays important role in our digital society so if you are a tech enthusiast then it is better two learn both of the fields as they come to hand to hand.

If you have any further doubts or thoughts please leave those in the comment section below.

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Mainframes vs Cloud Computing

How to make career in Cloud Computing?

In this digital era, it is all about Data and storage. This created the need for Cloud Computing and Cloud storage. There are various reputed Cloud Platforms and one of them is IBM Cloud.

If this is the first time you are hearing about the IBM Cloud or Are you interested to know further details about IBM Clouds? Then you are in the right place.

Here in this article, you will get a basic understanding of the IBM Cloud and its features. But before seeing it, here is a short intro for you to Cloud Computing.

What is Cloud Computing?

In simple words, the cloud refers to the virtual storage space or computing resources that are not physically owned by the user but used for his/her business.

The rapid development in the IT sector created the need for more storage, servers, analysis, and research, to reduce the operating cost the resources needed are purchased from the Cloud Computing platform which provides the services like servers, storage, software analytics, Artificial Intelligence on Internet.

What is IBM Cloud? 

IBM Cloud refers to the suite of American-based Information Technology company IBM that provides the cloud computing services both Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). (SaaS vs PaaS)

The Platform is designed to serve the full range of applications both small development teams and organizations and also large enterprise businesses. The IBM cloud networks have more than 60 data centers and servers in 19 countries around the Globe.

It supports various programming languages such as Java, PHP, and Python, etc… It supports modern, cloud-native apps and other microservices and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Product and Services covered under IBM Cloud:

IBM Cloud Catalog lists over 170 services in different categories here are some of them –

• Computing – bare metal servers, virtual servers, and other computing resources
• Storage – Storage of Images, files, Data, and other objects
• Security – Activity tracking, Access management, authentication, etc…
• Analytics – Data Science tools like Apache Spark, Apache Hadoop, and IBM Watson Machine Learning, and also Analytics for streaming data.
• Internet of Things (IoT) – IBM’s IoT and the data produced by them.
• Blockchain – Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to develop apps and monitor blockchain networks.

• Network – load balance, Content Delivery Network (CDN), Virtual Private Network (VPN), and firewalls.

• Data Management – SQL and NoSQL databases, data querying, and migration tools.

• Mobile – Helps in building and monitoring mobile applications and their back-end components.
• Developer and Migration Tools – Command-line Interface (CLI), tools for continuous delivery, application pipelines, continuous-release, and migration tools like IBM life CLI and Cloud Mass Data Migration.
• Integration – Provides various integration options like API Connect, IBM Secure Gateway, and APP Connect, etc…

Types of IBM Cloud Plans

The Cloud services provided by IBM can be divided into three types here, are they –

i) Public Cloud

Here the users rent the cloud resources on a subscription basis or usage-based fee. Everything is managed and owned by IBM. You don’t need to own any software or hardware; everything will be available under your plan.

IBM Cloud is trusted by 47 companies of the Fortune 50 and 10 largest banks and 8 out of 10 largest Airlines. It has various advantages like Ease of Use, Industry-leading compliance, Threat monitoring, and security.

ii) Private Cloud 

Here instead of renting a public place or server, you will be allocated with your own private Cloud space which will be fully under your control. Companies choose IBM Private Cloud to meet regulatory compliance, to deal with confidential documents, intellectual property, medical records, financial data, or sensitive data.

The IBM Private Cloud has the following advantages – elasticity, scalability, ease of service delivery, control, security, and resource customization.

iii) Hybrid Cloud 

IBM Hybrid Cloud refers to the integrated environment of both private and public cloud. The Hybrid cloud helps companies to easily manage speed, security, latency, and Performance. It is cost-efficient than doing business with private or public cloud alone.

Conclusion

It is said in the next 3 years, 75% of the existing non-cloud apps will move to the cloud. And it is said the cloud journey has only started now. While comparing to other cloud platforms IBM has many advantages. So if you are planning to Cloud then IBM is a good choice for you.

If you have any questions or doubts in the comment section below, and if you want to know more about any other Cloud platforms please let us know.

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Top 10 Cloud Monitoring Tools

Top 10 Cloud Computing Certifications

List of Top Serverless Compute Providers

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is FaaS service provider which is meant to help you to run code without managing or provisioning a server. AWS Lambda is an effective event driven platform which works when a function is going to be triggered. Lambda will execute the code only which will be loaded in function.

This is an effective and efficient serverless computing service by AWS. Lambda allows to write self-contained applications or develop functions in various languages. Coded script can be loaded on AWS Lambda to ensure efficient, effective and flexible execution.

Microsoft Azure

Azure has a usage based billing policy. For organizations that already rely on Microsoft technology, it is easy to integrate and adopt, as Azure is a Microsoft proprietary. Azure’s Function as an exciting serverless compute helps developers in executing event triggered code.

Azure is providing triggered based solution, therefore, it can easily run a code script in response to a wider range of events. Most amazingly, Azure can be used for reusability, decoupling, shared and higher throughput in a more effective way. Azure is one of the most reliable serverless architecture solutions and is suitable for higher production environments. Azure supports multiple languages including JavaScript, C#, Node.js.

Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud functions are similar to Azure Cloud and others related cloud providers. However, Google introduced its cloud run service, allowing developers to write functional code in addition to the other capabilities and features. Cloud Run uses a tool called Knative, which is a specification that allows you to run functions on Kubernetes clusters. Google Cloud functions have a good lifecycle. This platform also has integration with DevOps tools, making it easier to deploy them.

Back4app 

Back4app is a serverless backend application development platform it allows developers to build applications quickly. Back4app can help them to create backend without writing any code. Developers will be able to host their applications with back4app without any inconvenience of managing and scaling infrastructure.

Back4app is offering different approaches. Back4app has combined open source technologies with a vast range of propriety features. This is not only amazing to provide developers the speed they need to create and deploy their applications quickly and the flexibility of scaling resources for their applications as per needs.

Kinvey

Kinvey is an enterprise centric development platform which keeps on launching the features on a consistent basis. So that developers can keep their applications up to date in a very efficient way. Kinvey’s serverless vendor is allowing developers to develop and run their applications on private or dedicated cloud.

This solution is meant to enable application developers and enterprisers to deliver unique and up to date applications in a more effective way. This is one of the highly productivity development platforms with a complete toolset to rely on and developers and enterprisers will be able to develop robust channels with the help of its cloud based backend services.

Cloudflare Workers

Cloudflare workers serverless architecture feature is exceptional reliable and high performance. Developer can deploy code to all the data centers within 15 seconds only and can run application with in milliseconds to multiple locations. Cloudflare workers changed the way developers used to develop and manage their applications. Cloudflare workers deploy the serverless code to data centers available across 90 countries and over more than 200 cities.

IBM Cloud Functions 

IBM Cloud functions is a distributed computing service which can execute the application functions. Users can also set up the specific actions on the basis of API requests. Integrated performance monitoring can help to track how serverless deployments are working.

Parse 

Parse is another option in a row of serverless vendor. This is an open source solution. Parse server is offering a variety of features ranging from data modeling, real-time databases to social integrations, push notifications, email notification. Parse helps developers to utilize to use backend services. So that they can get more time to focus on their business logic or offering enhanced user experience with ease and to speed up their development processes and achieve deadlines.

Knative 

Knative is a serverless architecture solution which was developed by Google originally. Knative can deliver an effective and efficient set of components which is required to create and run serverless applications. It offers an amazing range of features including auto scaling, zero to scale, and event framework, in cluster builds, for efficient cloud native applications.

Knative can be on-premises/ in third party data centers or in the cloud. Knative confides the best practices which can help developers and companies to manage their applications in a more efficient way.

Oracle Functions 

Oracle Functions is a serverless architecture vendor it offers container based solutions for effective serverless deployment. Docker containers which makes it easier and faster for users to create and deploy their solutions. Oracle Functions is an open source.

Serverless Compute Service Providers Chart

PROVIDER	DESCRIPTION
AWS Lambda	Integration with broad AWS cloud portfolio. Event-driven, serverless computing platform.
Microsoft Azure Functions	DevOps workflow, Azure Pipelines service for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Event-driven and serverless computing platform.
Google Cloud Functions	Cloud Functions is an Event-driven, serverless computing platform.
Back4App	Low-code backend to build modern apps.
Kinvey	Serverless app development platform to create multichannel applications.
Cloudflare Workers	Platform to deploy serverless code instantly worldwide very quickly.
IBM Cloud Functions	Based on the open source Apache OpenWhisk project. Event-driven, serverless computing platform.
Parse	Open-source backend platform to build apps fast.
Knative	Multi-vendor open source effort based on Kubernetes.
Oracle Functions	Open source Fn project. Event-driven and serverless computing platform.

Download the table: Serverless Services Provider

Conclusion

There are a lot of options worth considering when looking for serverless computing from a cloud provider.

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What is Serverless Computing? Cloud Services

Mainframes vs Cloud Computing

Serverless computing is a manner of providing backend services on an as-used basis. Company that gets backend services from a serverless vendor and they get charged based on the usage, not on a fixed amount of bandwidth they used and not on a fixed number of servers.

• Automatically provisions the compute resources required to run application code on request, or in response to a specific event.
• Automatically scales those compute resources up or down depending on  increased or decreased demand.
• Automatically scales compute resources set to zero when the application is not running. 

In the AWS, Lambda allows you to instantly perform almost any operation on demand at almost any time but without having to provision and pay for always-on servers. Serverless computing allows developers to build apps without the headache of managing infrastructure and other data center overhead. 

Features of Serverless Computing are: 

• Provision a server
• Ensure its functionality
• Create test environments on a server
• Maintain server uptime
• Zero server management
• Scaling options
• Optimal availability
• Eliminates idle capacity

Benefits of Serverless Computing

• Cost-effective
• Simplified operations
• Boosts productivity
• Effortless efficiency

Serverless Computing

Pros

• Serverless Computing enables developers to focus on writing code, not managing infrastructure.
• Serverless customers pay for execution only. 
• Serverless is a polyglot environment.
• Serverless Computing can be both faster and more cost-effective than other forms of compute.
• Serverless Computing application development platforms provide near full visibility into the system.

Cons

• Serverless Computing scales up and down on demand in response to workload, it offers significant cost savings for spiky workloads. 
• Serverless Computing architectures are scalable and scale from up and down to zero, they also sometimes need to start up from zero to serve a new request.
• These operational tasks are challenging in any distributed system, but a move serverless architecture only exacerbates the complexity.
• Vendor lock-in.

Understanding the Serverless Stack

• Functions as A Service (FaaS): FaaS is an important component as the central/foundational compute/processing engine in serverless and sits in the center of most serverless architectures. 
• Serverless Databases and Storage: A Serverless approach to these technologies involves transitioning away from provisioning instances with defined capacity, connection and query limits, and moving toward models that scale with demand in both infrastructure and pricing.
• Event Streaming and Messaging: Serverless architectures are well suited for event driven and streaming, most preferably open source Apache Kafka event streaming platform.
• API Gateway: API gateway acts as proxies to web actions and provides HTTP service, client ID and secrets, rate limits, CORS, viewing API usage, viewing response logs, and API sharing policies.

Use cases for Serverless

• Serverless and Microservices: The microservices model is used to create small services that do a single job and communicate with one another using APIs. 
• API backend: Serverless platform can be turned into a HTTP. When it is enabled for web requests, these actions are called web actions. Once the web actions are ready, you can assemble them into a fully featured API with an API gateway that brings additional security, OAuth support, rate limiting, and custom domain support.
• Data Processing: Serverless Computing is very suitable for structured with text, audio, image, and video data, around tasks such as data enrichment, transformation, validation, cleansing; PDF processing; audio normalization; image processing i.e. rotation, sharpening, noise reduction, thumbnail generation, optical character recognition (OCR) and video transcoding.
• Stream Processing Workloads: Apache Kafka with FaaS and database/storage offers a powerful feature for real-time build outs of data pipelines and streaming apps. These architectures are ideally suited for data stream ingestions (for validation, cleansing, enrichment, transformation), including IoT sensor data, application log data, financial market data and business data streams.

Conclusion

Serverless computing is an architecture where code execution is totally managed by a cloud provider, instead of the traditional method of developing applications and deploying them on servers. In this way developers don’t have to worry about managing, provisioning and maintaining servers when deploying code.

Continue Reading:

Mainframes vs Cloud Computing

Telco Cloud Architecture

More so, DevOps is a blanket term for all the processes and practices that is focused on shrinking the lifecycle of software development through frequent updated features and attributes.

Root of DevOps

DevOps is a result of progressive minds of IT personnel and experts, the existence of which relates to two main predecessors:

• Enterprise System Management: Initially, the system administrators used the pivotal and crucial practices of ESM for Devops by managing the configuration, monitoring the system, automated interim and through a tool chain approach.
• Agile development: The core principle of agile software development is to iterate and continuously work on feedbacks to successfully fine-tune and bring into use a faster and more efficient software system. This is done by repeated testing, management, quality assurance and integration of the software project. Through designing of software to production support, all the practices are streamlined through different stages.

Thus, to lay it out in simple terms, Devops is an entire IT framework that completely focuses on integration, automation, communication of IT operations with software development to ameliorate the quality and speed of software delivery.

Objectives of DevOps

DevOps fulfills the following objectives:-

• DevOps works for the betterment of all the contributors from planning, designing up till delivery. All of this is done to further:-
• Bring down the rates of failure of new software releases.
• Reduce the lead time between the software fixes.
• Market the software more fastly.
• Better the frequency of deployment.
• Recover in a better time.

Working of DevOps

The culture of DevOps includes many themes or aspects that are worked upon which are collaboration, continuous automation, integration, monitoring, continuous testing, delivery and rapid feedbacks.

• Collaboration: The dissociation of both development and IT operations sectors was the very reason for DevOps to come into existence. This is why; the association or collaboration between the two sectors is undertaken and is considered important to fasten the delivery of the updated softwares.
• Continuous automation: To fasten the software deployment process, the requirement of different kinds of tools is fundamentally important in order to automate the entire deployment process of the software.
• Integration: Continuous integration is another theme on which DevOps relies simply because it is a ground rule or core principle on which agile development works. The developers need to communicate and integrate their work frequently so that conflicts related to the codes can be avoided to further shorten the time.
• Testing: Continuous testing of softwares is of vital importance to avoid the software failures or more so reduce the impact of software failures. Testing is not just specific to assure the quality of the product (software), but, it should be undertaken right from the designing or development stage. Quality is looked into at every aspect or stage in DevOps. The software is majorly tested for their speed and quality. However, testing though automated tools and continuously helps reduce the testing bottlenecks and efficiently manage time.
• Delivery: Continuous delivery is also focused upon in the Devops environment which typically means designing, testing and releasing the software for production repeatedly. The integration of these practices is very essential to make timed deliveries. Some software are directly released for users while some go back in development stages only to target reducing the impacts of software failures.
• Monitoring: Real-time monitoring is done for Devops so that the issues can be rightly identified and the performance glitches can be remedied at the same time. Both, server monitoring and application performance monitoring is carried out.

The commercial existence of DevOps is traced back to 2014 when renowned companies like Nordstorm, Lego and Target introduced the DevOps environment in their respective organizations.

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DevOps vs NetOps

DevOps vs NetDevOps

There are some basic and very important tools that every DevOps engineer should have. Do you want to know the Top 10 DevOps tools? Then you are in the right place here is a list for you. 

List of Top DevOps Tools

1.Site 24×7

Site 24×7 is a SaaS-based unified cloud monitoring for DevOps and IT operation in both small and large organizations. It is an all-in-one solution that works on Desktop, Windows, Linux, and mobile devices. 

Features:

The main key features of the Site 24×7 are – 

• Gives complete visibility across your cloud resources. 
• It collects, index, search, consolidate and troubleshoot issues with your application. 
• API
• Access Controls/Permissions
• Activity Dashboard
• Alerts/Notifications
• Audit Trail
• Availability Testing
• Bandwidth Monitoring, etc…

2.Git

It is one of the widely used DevOps, known for its free open source remote development teams and source contributors. Facilitating an agile workflow, Git makes the development faster and allows requests and integration with other platforms like GitHub, BitBucket, etc… 

Features:

The key features are – 

• Secure source code
• Track changes in your source code
• Easily shareable source code

3.Slack 

It is a communication tool created to support effective teamwork and collaboration. It gives a clear insight into the workflow. It allows the developers with other maintenance and service members through tool chains as they are in the same environment. 

Features:

Its key features are – 

• API
• Access Controls/Permissions
• Agile Methodologies
• Alerts/Notifications
• Billing & Invoicing
• Brainstorming
• Budget Management
• Calendar management 

4.Jenkins

It is also an open-source solution and is completely available free of cost. It has over 300,000 million users around the world and it is one of the most downloaded DevOps tools. It is a highly customizable tool and gives instant feedback. Another advantage of the Jenkins is their Jenkins’ CI server, it significantly reduces the time for the development of new software. 

Features:

The main features are – 

• API
• Access Controls/Permissions
• Activity Dashboard
• Continuous Delivery
• Continuous Deployment
• Pipeline Management

5.Puppet

It is an Open-source software that is written in Ruby, automates, inspects, delivers, and manages across the different development lifecycles. It has two layers namely configuration language and abstraction layer. The former describes how the service should look and later helps to implement the configuration on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc.)

Features:

The main features are- 

• Access Controls/Permissions
• Activity Management
• Activity Tracking
• Configurable Workflow
• Configuration Management
• Continuous Delivery
• IT Asset Tracking

6.Docker 

It is a forerunner in the containerization and IT trend that is quickly gaining momentum. The main plus of Docker is it separates the apps into containers. Thus they are made secure and transferable. Each of them consists of the source code, supporting files, run time, etc… 

Features:

The main features are – 

• Activity Dashboard
• Activity Tracking
• Application Management
• Lifecycle Management
• Monitoring
• Real-Time Monitoring

7.Phantom 

The phantom tool of Splunk removes one of the prime concerns of the DevOps team -the Security. This platform collaborates in a centralized environment and secures you from increasing threats. It also provides further features like file detonation, device quarantine, etc… 

Features:

The main features are – 

• API
• Configurable Workflow
• Document Extraction
• Email Address Extraction
• IP Address Extraction
• Image Extraction

8.Sentry 

It is a reputed tool used by large companies like Uber and Microsoft. It is the best DevOps tool for error or bug detection. It identifies the problem in the code and gives the possible solutions which you can incorporate with a single click. It continuously scans the lines of codes and gives reports. 

Features:

The main features are – 

• API
• Dashboard 
• Search/Filter 
• Real-Time Monitoring

9.Ansible 

It is an Open-source software created by Red Hat, which provides configuration, management, and application deployment services. It has another feature called Ansible Tower. It is a web service for automation tasks, considered as an alternative to Semaphore. 

Features:

The main features are – 

• API
• Access Controls/Permissions
• Activity Dashboard
• Performance Metrics
• Policy Management

10.Chef

Another configuration tool is used to repair, update, and simplify the development and infrastructure of applications. It has three components like chef server, workstation, and nodes. It has pre-built and customizable policies to effect changes in the development. 

Features:

The main features are- 

• Automatic Backup
• Compliance Management
• Configuration Management
• Dashboard
• Data Visualization

Conclusion

All the above tools have their advantages and one may prefer tools based on their needs. However, the recommendation is Site 24×7 which has all in one feature. 

If you have any questions or other thoughts please leave them in the comment section below. 

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Top 10 Cloud Monitoring Tools

DevOps vs NetOps

Top 10 API Testing Tools 

As Cloud services and technology go into rapid development, many new cloud solutions are innovated. It is important to keep in check every aspect of your system when you are providing cloud services to your customers. 

Are you looking for the best cloud monitoring tools or solutions for your cloud infrastructure? Then you are in the right place. Okay without further ado let’s get into the list.

List of Cloud Monitoring Tools

1. Sematext Cloud 

It is a full-stack cloud monitoring solution that gives in-depth visibility and control over your IT infrastructure. It is easily customizable with the infrastructure metrics like common databases, servers, containers, etc…

As for pricing, there are different plans for each solution. And they are super flexible and cost-efficient. 

The main features of the Sematext cloud are – 

• API
• dashboard
• Data Import/Export
• Data Security
• Data Visualization
• Endpoint Management
• Network Monitoring etc…

2.Datadog 

Datadog is a SaaS monitoring solution for monitoring your cloud infrastructure, applications, and also serverless features. The major advantage of this platform is that it gives a full observability solution with metrics, logs, security, real user, etc… It gives annual billing and demand billing options. 

The main features are- 

• CPU Monitoring
• Capacity Analytics
• Commenting/Notes
• Data Migration
• Data Visualization
• Debugging
• Demand Monitoring
• Dependency Tracking etc…

3.Netdata. cloud

It is a next-generation observability platform that gives real-time insights and instantly diagnoses the anomalies in your infrastructure. It is free and open-source software that can work with all types of physical and virtual machines. One downside is that it is not available in mobile applications. 

It comes with the following features – 

• Event monitoring 
• performance metrics, 
• Auto-detects, 
• a custom database engine etc…

4.New Relic 

It is a cloud monitoring solution with rich dashboarding support, real user monitoring which gives top to bottom visibility. It has an Error analytics tool that detects issues possible solutions. But the problem is they don’t use a single pricing plan for all features. Thus if you don’t have a flexible budget then New Relic can is not your choice. 

It has the following features – 

• Resource Management
• Uptime Reporting
• Performance Analysis
• Performance Management
• Performance Metrics

5.Sumo Logic 

This is a cloud monitoring solution in the form of Software as a Service, it lays a strong focus on working logs. Its field extraction enables the rule-based extraction of unstructured data. It is user-friendly to both experienced and new users. 

Some of its features are – 

• Drag & Drop
• Log Analysis
• Log Collection
• Log Management
• Threat Intelligence
• Threshold Alerts

6.Site 24x 7

Site 24×7 is a SaaS-based unified cloud monitoring for DevOps and IT operation in both small and large organizations. It is an all-in-one solution that works on Desktop, Windows, Linux, and mobile devices. 

The main key features of the Site 24×7 are – 

• API
• Access Controls/Permissions
• Activity Dashboard Availability Testing
• Bandwidth Monitoring, etc…

7.Auvik

It is a cloud monitoring service best for mapping out networks and gives an overall view of your network. It also automates configuration, backup, and recovery. It offers two pricing plans essential and performance. 

The important features are – 

• Bandwidth Monitoring
• Bandwidth Troubleshooting
• Change Management 
• Data Import/Export
• Data Mapping

8.Amazon CloudWatch 

Though it is primarily aimed at the customers using Amazon Cloud Services (AWS) you can use it for monitoring cloud resources usage, infrastructures of your cloud. It gives insight into overall health and performance. 

The major features are – 

• Requirements-Based Testing
• Resource Management
• Troubleshooting Reports
• Unicode Compliance
• Uptime Reporting

9.Google Operations 

It is formerly called Stackdriver, it is also suit designed for the Google Cloud platform infrastructure resource usage and application performance monitoring. But it also supports the other cloud providers. The pricing is similar to Amazon Cloud. 

Some of its features are – 

• Data Connectors
• Data Dictionary Management
• Load Balancing
• Log Access
• Metadata Management
• Monitoring

10.PagerDuty 

This cloud monitoring tool gives large customization opportunities and integration with other services like HipChat and Slack. And comes with a free trial. It also has a mobile app. 

Important features are – 

• Inventory Management
• Issue Management
• Mail Server Monitoring
• Maintenance Scheduling
• Role-Based Permissions
• Root Cause Analysis

Conclusion

You can select anyone on this list as per requirements as they all are best. If you have used their services please share your thoughts in the comment section below. 

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Top 10 Web Scraping Tools

Top 10 API Testing Tools