Introduction

Cloud computing in nutshell

When plugging an electric appliance into an outlet, we care neither how electric power is generated nor how it gets to that outlet. This is possible because electricity is virtualized; that is, it is readily available from a wall socket that hides power generation stations and a huge distribution grid. When extended to information technologies, this concept means delivering useful functions while hiding how their internals work. Computing itself, to be considered fully virtualized, must allow computers to be built from distributed components such as processing, storage, data, and software resources [1]. Technologies such as cluster, grid, and now, cloud computing, have all aimed at allowing access to large amounts of computing power in a fully virtualized manner, by aggregating resources and offering a single system view. In addition, an important aim of these technologies has been delivering computing as a utility. Utility computing describes a business model for on-demand delivery of computing power; consumers pay providers based on usage (“pay-as-you-go”), similar to the way in which we currently obtain services from traditional public utility services such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony. Cloud computing has been coined as an umbrella term to describe a category of sophisticated on-demand computing services initially offered by commercial providers, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. It denotes a model on which a computing infrastructure is viewed as a “cloud, ” from which businesses and individuals access applications from anywhere in the world on demand [2]. The main principle behind this model is offering computing, storage, and software “as a service.”

Cloud computing is the evolution of a variety of technologies that have come together to change an organization’s approach for building an IT infrastructure. There is nothing fundamentally new in any of the technologies that make up cloud computing as most of these technologies have been used for ages. The cloud computing term describes a variety of different types of computing concepts that involve a large number of computers connected through a real time communication network (typically the Internet). Cloud computing relies on sharing of various resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) to achieve coherence and economies of scale, and gives the highest interest to how to maximize the effectiveness of utilization of the shared resources. This thesis provides an introduction to the cloud computing concepts and terminologies. In addition, it’ll give a step by step example for creating a cloud instance using Amazon EC2 Infrastructure as a service (IasS) technology. Keywords: Cloud, Cloud Computing, Amazon EC2, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Web Service.

Education has been gradually expanded, and the education object has slowly turned to social staff. The teaching method from black board to online is growing fast than ever. An online tutor which helps has to take class in any hour is an advance of learning using technology. E-learning and online solution is what we required in education environment. With the increasing number in receiving education, a series of new problems have emerged. For example: As teaching methods change, the existing teaching-learning methods cannot meet demand; and with the constant expansion of education, the existing teaching facilities also need to constantly update. When Cloud Computing appears, it provides a new solution to establish a unified, open and flexible network teaching platform and reduce the hardware input.

Internet is the resource where we can transform cloud computing, it can deliver the most advanced software and educational materials, hardware resources and services to students and educators in even the most impoverished or remote school districts in the state, without the need for advanced IT expertise at those locations. At the same point, it does more for significantly less, providing needed relief for currently strained education budgets [3]. IT companies are eager to encourage educational adoption of cloud computing; for example, Google Apps for Education Suite comprises Google Mail, Calendar, Talk, Docs, Sites and Video with zero cost and without advertisements [4], according to a Forrester cost analysis [9], Google Apps is more effective than a Microsoft Exchange e-mail. Based on CSU research, the costs of software licensing, server hardware and staffing to support 50, 000 users by using Microsoft Exchange e-mail (the number of undergraduate e-mail accounts at CSU) would be $9, 774, 000 per year [5]. The cost of Google Apps for businesses is $50 per user per year, or with 50, 000 users, $2, 500, 000 per year. The cost of Google Apps Education Edition, however, is $0 per year [5]. As we can see from this example, the industrial cloud computing solution for the educational institution already gave an estimated savings from about $9, 774, 000 per year to $2, 500, 000 per year in the “businesses version” or to zero cost of licensing and equipment in the “educational version”. Taking into account the last two examples, we can see that both approaches, industrial (or commercial) and non-commercial cloud computing solutions can be successfully employed within educational institutions and another example, IBM launched IBM Cloud Academy that is provide a global forum for educators, researchers and IT professionals from education industry to pursue cloud computing initiatives, develop skill and share best practices for reducing operating costs while improving quality and access to education. In this way users do not need to buy a server, only need to purchase related " services" can create an efficient network teaching platform [7]. Using of cloud computing in academicians in universities are not aware of benefits and characteristic of minimizing the cost of cloud computing. From an IT management view, it radically reduces resource management costs —including electric power, cooling and system management personnel, while driving up the utilization of servers and software licenses, which in turn reduces purchasing requirements [6].

Students’ learning is no longer confined within the classroom in the era of e-learning 2.0[8]. The environment of IT education could be improved to let student access learning resources anywhere. Many Open Universities offer a good example of e-learning where students can learn and are given valid certificates of completion per subjects. The free software can be adopted for constructing the cloud computing service for the environment of IT like OpenOffice.org such as word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Only a browser is needed for students to connect to the cloud computing service for learning.

The maintenance of dozens of computers in the labs becomes a burden for the system administrator. That is why in this document, has been proposed diskless cluster computing environment in a computer classroom and the development of teaching network management system in computer classroom. In this report we discuss the “Cloud Computing” paradigm and characteristics, service and deployment models, implementations of cloud services at universities, and various opportunities and benefits of Cloud Computing for universities & academic institutions. Finally, we suggest a design prototype of Cloud Computing for Academic Environment.

Figure 1 - Introduction