Certain features of a cloud are essential to enable services that truly represent the cloud computing model and satisfy expectations of consumers, and cloud offerings must be (i) self-service, (ii) per-usage metered and billed, (iii) elastic, and (iv) customizable.
Self-Service
Consumers of cloud computing services expect on-demand, nearly instant access to resources. To support this expectation, clouds must allow self-service access so that customers can request, customize, pay, and use services without intervention of human operators.
Per-Usage Metering and Billing
Cloud computing eliminates up-front commitment by users, allowing them to request and use only the necessary amount. Services must be priced on a shortterm basis (e.g., by the hour), allowing users to release (and not pay for) resources as soon as they are not needed. For these reasons, clouds must implement features to allow efficient trading of service such as pricing, accounting, and billing [2]. Metering should be done accordingly for different types of service (e.g., storage, processing, and bandwidth) and usage promptly reported, thus providing greater transparency.
Elasticity
Cloud computing gives the illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand. Therefore users expect clouds to rapidly provide resources in any quantity at any time. In particular, it is expected that the additional resources can be (a) provisioned, possibly automatically, when an application load increases and (b) released when load decreases (scale up and down).
Customization
In a multi-tenant cloud a great disparity between user needs is often the case. Thus, resources rented from the cloud must be highly customizable. In the case of infrastructure services, customization means allowing users to deploy specialized virtual appliances and to be given privileged (root) access to the virtual servers. Other service classes (PaaS and SaaS) offer less flexibility and are not suitable for general-purpose computing, but still are expected to provide a certain level of customization.
Source of Information : Wiley - Cloud Computing Principles and Paradigms 2011
Self-Service
Consumers of cloud computing services expect on-demand, nearly instant access to resources. To support this expectation, clouds must allow self-service access so that customers can request, customize, pay, and use services without intervention of human operators.
Per-Usage Metering and Billing
Cloud computing eliminates up-front commitment by users, allowing them to request and use only the necessary amount. Services must be priced on a shortterm basis (e.g., by the hour), allowing users to release (and not pay for) resources as soon as they are not needed. For these reasons, clouds must implement features to allow efficient trading of service such as pricing, accounting, and billing [2]. Metering should be done accordingly for different types of service (e.g., storage, processing, and bandwidth) and usage promptly reported, thus providing greater transparency.
Elasticity
Cloud computing gives the illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand. Therefore users expect clouds to rapidly provide resources in any quantity at any time. In particular, it is expected that the additional resources can be (a) provisioned, possibly automatically, when an application load increases and (b) released when load decreases (scale up and down).
Customization
In a multi-tenant cloud a great disparity between user needs is often the case. Thus, resources rented from the cloud must be highly customizable. In the case of infrastructure services, customization means allowing users to deploy specialized virtual appliances and to be given privileged (root) access to the virtual servers. Other service classes (PaaS and SaaS) offer less flexibility and are not suitable for general-purpose computing, but still are expected to provide a certain level of customization.
Source of Information : Wiley - Cloud Computing Principles and Paradigms 2011
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