Test 000-281: Foundations of IBM Cloud Computing Architecture V2

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Note: This test will be withdrawn on Jul 31 2013.
The replacement test is: (000-283) Foundations of IBM Cloud Computing Architecture V3

Section 1: Cloud Computing Concepts and Benefits

Given a list of cloud computing environment's attributes, describe how those attributes are realized to provide business advantages so that the business advantages of cloud computing have been defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Virtualization: IT resources can be shared between many computing resources (physical servers or application servers).
  1. Provide more efficient utilization of IT resources and reduce hardware cost through resource consolidations and Economies-of -scale. Lower total cost of ownership and improving asset utilization.
2. Provisioning: IT resources are rapid provisioned (or de-provisioned) based on consumer demands.
  1. Reduce IT cycle time and management cost.
3. Elastic scaling: IT environments scale up and down by any magnitudes as needed to satisfy customer demands.
  1. Optimize IT resource utilization and increase flexibility.
4. Service Automation Management: IT environments that provide the capability to request, deliver, and manage IT services automatically.
  1. Reduce IT operational costs by automating the processes used to deliver and manage a cloud computing environment.
5. Pervasiveness: Services are delivered through use of Internet and on any platform.
  1. Improve customer experience by enabling services to be accessed from anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
6. Flexible pricing: Services are tracked with usage metrics to enable multiple payment models.
  1. Improve cost transparency and offer more flexible pricing schemes.
Given the definition and attributes of virtualization, describe how it is a key infrastructure element for cloud computing so that the costs for infrastructure investment can be reduced.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Computing resources (application servers. physical servers, databases, storages, services) are dynamically created, expanded, compacted, or moved as demand varies.
2. Under-utilized physical servers are consolidated into a smaller number of more fully utilized physical servers.
3. Virtualization is a key infrastructure element for cloud computing because:
  1. Provide important advantages in sharing, manageability, and isolation of computing resources.
  2. Significant cost savings via server consolidations and optimal resource utilization.
  3. Provide a way for provisioning a computing resource dynamically and automatically.
Given an audience with knowledge of current data system technology, define dynamic infrastructure so that a model of how cloud computing relates to dynamic infrastructure is produced.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain dynamic infrastructure: dynamic infrastructure is an information technology paradigm concerning the design of data centers so that the underlying hardware and software can respond dynamically to changing levels of demand in more fundamental and efficient ways than before.
2. Explain cloud computing's relationship to dynamic infrastructure. Cloud computing is a way to establish a dynamic infrastructure, specifically to:
  1. Optimize the IT infrastructure through virtualization and energy efficiency initiatives to achieve more with less. Dynamic infrastructure helps to visualize all resource servers, storage, desktops, and applications, and proactively handle energy management across the business. This helps to reduce cost, resolve power and cooling issues, free up staff and better manage and automate operations while enabling you to dynamically adjust your IT to meet changing demand levels and new business requirements.
Given an audience with knowledge of current data system technology, define elasticity so that a model of how cloud computing relates to elasticity is produced.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain elasticity as it relates to cloud computing.
  1. A user can create, launch, and terminate server instances as needed, paying by the hour for active servers, hence the term "elastic".
  2. "Cloudbursting" (capacity overdrafting) is automatically adding and subtracting compute capacity on demand to handle workloads in the cloud.
  3. Define the 3 levels of elasticity
2. Explain the benefits of elasticity.
Given the benefits of automation in an IT infrastructure, describe how it is a key infrastructure management attribute of cloud computing, so that how automation can reduce system administrative tasks and achieve cost saving has been explained.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
Automation is a key infrastructure management for cloud computing because without the benefits of automation, the complexity of a cloud environment is increased significantly and thus generate added costs – costs high enough to cancel out the cost savings derived from cloud computing in the first place.
1. Provides standardization and automation for deployment and management of IT services.
2. Provides the ability to maintain or improve quality and cost per IT service.
3. Provides a management stack that is easier to handle and provides for smoother workload migration.
4. Provides the ability to be audit proof and integrated with process governance.
5. Provides the ability to reduce costly manual interventions.
6. Provides the ability for IT to reduce the skill requirements needed for deploying and managing IT services.
7. Reduces errors caused by manual processes.
Given the benefits of provisioning in an IT infrastructure, define how it is a key infrastructure management for cloud computing, so that the benefits of provisioning have been defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Provisioning is the automated process of creating, preparing and configuring computing resources (physical servers, middleware and application server, network, storage space, services, etc.).
2. Provisioning helps optimize availability by maintaining configurations and managing changes to resources.
3. Provisioning is used to capture and rerun scenarios of highly complex tasks, thus minimize the potential for human errors.
Given the characteristics of a public cloud, explain how the cloud users would utilize services from a public cloud in an economical way so that the uses and benefits of a public cloud have been explained.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Obtaining an instance of cloud computing environment via a public cloud is easy and inexpensive set-up because hardware, application and bandwidth costs are covered by the provider.
2. The processes are deemed more easily standardized and a lower security risk
3. Public cloud functions that can be moved with ease are search, e-commerce, and business processes like sales force management.
4. Computing resources in a public cloud can be scaled to meet the needs of the cloud users.
5. Public cloud can use flexible pricing models. No wasted resources because the cloud users pay for what they use on an as-needed basis, without the requirement to invest in additional internal infrastructure.
6. Public clouds helps businesses shifting the bulk of the costs from capital expenditures and IT infrastructure investment to an utility operating expense model. It also helps isolate the end users from the complexity of IT operations and management.
Given the characteristics of a private cloud environment, explain how enterprise and business users may benefit from private cloud infrastructures so that the business and technical benefits of private clouds are clearly defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. A private cloud is owned by an enterprise and can only be accessed by internal users.
2. A private cloud is deployed internally (on or off-premise) behind the corporation's security firewall.
3. A private cloud is operated and maintained by either the enterprise's IT operations or by a 3rd party cloud service provider.
4. In a private cloud environment, services are delivered and managed through resource management, dynamic allocation, metering and chargeback mechanisms and virtualization.
5. In a private cloud environment the enterprise provides and governs all computing resources (physical servers, application servers, storage space, applications, services, etc.)
6. In a private cloud environment the enterprise is responsible for the entire lifecycle and costs of the cloud solution - from service definition, workload allocation, workload management, security, compliance, and service deliver and management.
Given the characteristics of a hybrid cloud - which consists of single or multiple private clouds (internal) and a single or multiple public clouds (external) bound together through proprietary and standardized technologies which enable data and application portability; explain how this hybrid model is an attractive cloud model for many enterprises to achieve both savings, risk mitigation and improved security so that the characteristics of a hybrid cloud have been explained.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. A hybrid cloud model is a composition of two ore more cloud types (private and/or public) which are unique but bound together through proprietary and standardized technologies to enable data and application portability.
2. A hybrid cloud model is prevalent in the industry today as it may enable enterprises achieve substantial savings in service delivery and service management through the infrastructure and resources provided via the public cloud.
3. A hybrid cloud provides improved security for data retention and protection within the private cloud(s).
Given the characteristics of a virtual private cloud (VPC), explain how this model is necessary to securely manage computing resources in a public cloud,so that the benefits of a VPC have been explained.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. A VPC can help you quickly create an economical and functional computing environment and provide you with additional security measures and system management tools.
2. A VPC provides transparent connections between cloud and enterprise resources.
3. A VPC provides isolation within the cloud and the secure communication channels between remote locations.
4. A VPC provides flexible resource allocation schemas which can dynamically respond to changes in cloud and network resources.
Given an audience with knowledge of current data system technology, define the differences between private, public, and hybrid clouds so that the advantages and disadvantages of each type have been explained.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Define a private cloud. Private cloud and internal cloud are neologisms that some vendors have recently used to describe offerings that emulate cloud computing on private networks. These (typically virtualization automation) products claim to "deliver some benefits of cloud computing without the pitfalls", capitalizing on data security, corporate governance, and reliability concerns. Private clouds (are where) activities and functions are provided "as a service," over a company's intranet. It is built by an organization for its own users, and everything is delivered within the organization's firewall (instead of the Internet). The private cloud owner does not share resources with any other companies, so external multi-tenancy is not an issue (albeit intra-company LoB multi-tenancy may occur) . Also called an "internal cloud".
2. Define a public cloud. Public cloud or external cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional mainstream sense, whereby resources are dynamically provisioned on a fine-grained, self-service basis over the Internet, via Web applications/Web services, from an off-site third-party provider who shares resources and bills on a fine-grained utility computing basis.Public clouds (are where) IT activities/functions are provided "as a service" over the Internet, which allows access to technology-enabled services without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. Also called "external cloud".
3. Define a hybrid cloud. A hybrid cloud environment consisting of multiple internal and/or external providers will be typical for most enterprises". By integrating multiple cloud services users may be able to ease the transition to public cloud services while avoiding issues such as PCI compliance. Hybrid clouds (are where) the external and internal service delivery methods are integrated. Rules and policies are established by the organization based on factors such as security needs, criticality and underlying architecture, so that activities and tasks are allocated to external or internal clouds as appropriate.
Given the definition of Software as a Service (SaaS), explain how it differentiates from the other kinds of cloud computing delivery models,so that the term "SaaS" has been clearly described.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain SaaS.SaaS "is a software delivery model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or a service provider and made available to customers over the Internet, eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computers and simplifying maintenance and support".
2. Differentiate SaaS from Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS represent different delivery models of a cloud computing environment:
  1. SaaS delivers software as a service over the Internet.
  2. PaaS delivers computing platform as a service.
  3. IaaS delivers computer infrastructure (normally a virtual machine) as a service.
3. Explain the key concepts of SaaS.
  1. Tenancy: the same environment can be shared among many customers or users.
  2. Payment method: differently than the traditional licensed application, the SaaS is normally modeled as pay-as-you-go.
  3. Application management: the SaaS provider is responsible for management the computing environment.
  4. Application upgrade: the SaaS providers can upgrade the application or release new feature seamlessly, in contrast to the traditional and costly software upgrade.
4. Describe some examples of SaaS
  1. Google Docs
  2. LotusLive
  3. Salesforce.com
Given the definition of PaaS, explain how it differentiates from the other kinds of cloud computing delivery models so that the term PaaS is clearly described.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain PaaS.PaaS "is a service delivery model in which the servers, storage, development environment are hosted by a supplier and delivered over the Internet. PaaS delivers a computing platform and/or solution stack as a service, often consuming cloud infrastructure and sustaining cloud applications. It facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers".
2. Explain how PaaS related to Computing Platform.A computing platform "describes some sort of hardware architecture or software framework (including application frameworks), that allows software to run". A PaaS delivers a computing platform as a service.
Given the definition of IaaS, explain how it differentiates from the other kinds of cloud computing delivery models so that the term IaaS is clearly defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain IaaS.IaaS "is a provision model where an enterprise outsources the IT infrastructure used to support operations, including storage, servers, networking. The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible for maintenance and management. In IaaS resources are shared, software, and information provided to computers and other devices on demand.
2. Explain how IaaS related to utility computing."Utility computing relates to the business model in which application infrastructure resources, hardware and/or software are delivered. While cloud computing relates to the way we design, build, deploy and run applications that operate in a virtualized environment, sharing resources and boasting the ability to dynamically grow, shrink, and self-heal."
3. List some examples of IaaS.
  1. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
  2. Eucalyptus
  3. IBM Smart Business Test & Development Cloud
Given the definition of a hosted service, explain how it relates to cloud computing so that the similarities and differences between hosted service and cloud computing are described.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain the kinds of service providers
  1. An application service provider (ASP) is a business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network. Software offered by using an ASP model is also sometimes called on-demand software or SaaS. The most limited sense of this business is that of providing access to a particular application program (such as customer relationship management) by using a standard protocol such as HTTP.
  2. An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a company that offers its cusomer access to the Internet.
  3. A hosted service provider (xSP) is a business that delivers a combination of traditional IT functions such as infrastructure, applications (SaaS), security, monitoring, storage, Web development, Website hosting ,and email, over the Internet or other wide area networks (WANs). An xSP combines the abilities of an ASP and an ISP.
2. Define how ASP is related to cloud computingAn ASP provides a cloud computing service, more specifically a SaaS.
3. Explain the differences between service providers and cloud computingA service provider might not provide any cloud computing capability. For example an ISP is not considered as a cloud computing service.
Given the definition of grid computing, explain how it relates to cloud computing,so that the distinction between cloud computing and grid computing is understood.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain grid computingGrid computing is a type of parallel and distributed system that enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed "autonomous" resources dynamically at run-time depending on their availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-service requirements for solving large-scale compute and data intensive applications such as brain activity analysis, high energy physics etc.
2. Explain the differences between grid computing and cloud computingGrid computing is "a form of distributed computing and parallel computing, whereby a �super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks". So the goal of grid computing is to divide a single and large task among many loosely coupled computers. A grid computing might run in a cloud computing environment. The main difference is that whereas a grid computing is comprised of many computers working together to achieve one goal, cloud computing is aimed to providing computing resource for independent tasks.
Given the definition of utility computing, explain how it relates to cloud computing so that the difference between cloud computing and utility computing is understood.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain utility computingUtility computing is the packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility(such as electricity, water, natural gas, or telephone network). This system has the advantage of a low or no initial cost to acquire hardware; instead, computational resources are essentially rented. Customers with very large computations or a sudden peak in demand can also avoid the delays that would result from physically acquiring and assembling a large number of computers.
2. Explain the differences between utility computing and cloud computingUtility computing relates to the business model in which application infrastructure resources (hardware and/or software) are delivered. While cloud computing relates to the way we design, build, deploy and run applications that operate in a visualized environment, sharing resources and boasting the ability to dynamically grow, shrink and self-heal.
Given an understanding of cloud computing, define multi-tenancy as it relates to cloud computing so that its advantages and disadvantages have been defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Multi-tenancy refers to a principle in software architecture where a single instance of software runs on a server, serving multiple clients (tenants).
2. Multi-tenancy versus Multi-instance - In a Multi-tenancy environment, multiple customers share the same application, running on the same operating system, on the same hardware, with the same data storage mechanism. The distinction between the customers is achieved during application design, so that customers do not share or see each other's data. Comparing this with multi-instance where one or other of these components is abstracted so that each customer application appears to be running on a separate physical machine.
3. Benefits of Multi-tenancy
  1. Cost savings: Multi-tenancy allows for cost savings over and above the basic Economies-of-scale achievable from consolidating IT resources into a single operation. An application instance usually incurs a certain amount of memory and processing overhead which can be substantial when multiplied by many customers, especially if the customers are small. Multi-tenancy reduces this overhead by amortizing it over many customers.
  2. Efficiency Peak demand by individual tenants can more easily be accommodated because processing power can be "borrowed" from other tenants in that application instance that are experiencing processing lulls.
4. Concerns with multi-tenancy
  1. Data privacyBecause different clients are sharing the same application resources (storage, databases, software) there is a danger of one client's data being exposed to another client if proper security measures are not built within the application.
  2. Complexity of customization Because a single application instance must serve the needs of multiple clients it is more difficult to customize the application to meet the individual needs of a client's organization.
Given an audience familiar with data center operations, explain how cloud computing capabilities save energy, so that a list of features of a more efficient data system is produced.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Identify energy costs in a data center.Physical systems require energy even when they are not fully utilized. Furthermore, this energy is turned into heat, which must be removed from the data center. Additionally, energy may be more expensive in some places than others.
2. Identify how cloud computing optimizes utilization of energy intensive resources:
  1. Maximizing CPU usage, allowing rapid consolidation of VMs to shut down surplus systems, savings on cooling. Multiple virtual assets can share the same physical resources to better utilize energy. As requirements diminish, even on an hourly basis, virtual assets can be consolidated allowing you to shut down physical assets. Then when requirements increase, physical assets can be brought online to meet demand.
  2. Ability to move visualized assets to run on physical assets in a location where energy is cheaper (such as closer to a generation station) or where cooling is easier. Virtual assets can be quickly migrated to take advantage of changes in energy pricing/availability.
Given an audience familiar with data systems architecture, explain the difference between cloud computing environment and a cluster environment so that differences between them in a Data Center environment are understood.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely so that in many respects they form a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks.
2. Explain the differences between cloud computing environment and cluster environment:The two are not opposites, and there can be overlaps in functionality. Cloud indicates that a group of resources is shared, through virtualization and multi-tenancy. On the other hand, clustering describes how a set of assets (physical or virtualized) work together as a single system. The goal of cluster computing is to perform autonomous computing working together to fulfill a certain task.
Given a thorough analysis of the customer's existing business processes, explain and articulate how existing processes can be offered as cloud services and existing approval processes can be automated so that a highly automated cloud solution can be achieved.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Describe the existing processes that will be automated as cloud services.
  1. Companies that are implementing cloud environment are requied to analyze their existing processes to determine the areas where it can be automated in an efficient way when offered as a cloud service.
  2. Approvals play an essential role in the core operations of every business. As a rule, most approvals represent the delegation of authority to carry out an activity for example provisioning of computing resources.
  3. It is critical to understand and document how approvals are obtained today to see where opportunities for automation and efficiency improvements can be introduced.
2. Describe how the dynamic provisioning of cloud resources can influence the changes on the business approval process.
  1. Customer's existing business approval processes may contain several manual approval steps that may slow down the overall provisioning process. In a cloud environment where IT services are rapidly provisioned and provided as standardized offerings these manual approval steps should be identified and automated.

Section 2: Cloud Computing Design Principles

Given an understanding of cloud computing, define cloud architecture, so that the characteristics of cloud architecture have been defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Cloud architectures are designs of software applications that use Internet-accessible on-demand services. Applications built on cloud architectures are such that the underlying computing infrastructure is used only when it is needed (for example to process a user request), draw the necessary resources on-demand (like compute servers or storage), perform a specific job, then relinquish the unneeded resources and often dispose themselves after the job is done. While in operation, the application scales up or down elastically based on resource needs.
2. Characteristics:
  1. Service Based
  2. Scalable & Elastic
  3. Shared
  4. Metered by use
  5. Internet based
Given the definition of cloud computing layers, identify and define the 3 common layers of cloud computing, so that the layers of cloud computing have been defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Cloud computing layers: Application; Platform; Infrastructure
  1. The infrastructure layer is the foundation of the cloud. It consists of the physical assets – servers, network devices, storage disks, etc. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Using IaaS does not actually control the underlying infrastructure, but you do have control of the operating systems, storage, deployment applications, and, to a limited degree, control over select networking components.
  2. The middle layer is the platform. It provides the application infrastructure. Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides access to operating systems and associated services. It provides a way to deploy applications to the cloud by using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. You are not required to manage or control the underlying infrastructure, but you do have control over the deployed applications and, to some degree over application hosting environment configurations.
  3. The top layer is the application layer, the layer most visualize as the cloud. Applications run here and are provided on demand to users. Software as a Service (SaaS) has providers such as Google Pack. Google Pack includes Internet accessible applications, tools such as Calendar, Gmail, Google Talk, Docs, and many more.
Given an audience familiar with data system architecture, explain the hardware used in a cloud computing environment to produce the required infrastructure, so that the hardware components for a cloud computing environment have been defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Processing unit: the processing unit generally contains CPU and RAM used by the virtualized resources. It must be able to support:
  1. Elasticity: ability to meet changing requirements of visualized resources. As an example, a processing unit may is required to support multiple virtualized resources with competing requirements for processing power and RAM.
  2. Migration: the ability to move virtualized assets from one processing unit to another.
2. Storage: storage can be localized to the processing unit or can be shared among multiple processing units. Storage must be able to support:
  1. rapid provisioning and deprovisioning of virtual assets
  2. ability to migrate virtual assets
  3. security measures to keep one customer from accessing another customers data.
3. Network: the network hardware must be able to support the various networks used in the cloud environment.
  1. Different networks have different requirements, and this means that there may be a variety of specialized hardware. As an example, fiber channel hardware may be used to implement a storage area network(SAN) processing unit and centralized storage while Ethernet hardware may have to support different speeds.
  2. Single networking hardware components may also support multiple networks. As an example, a management network and customer network may share the same physical Ethernet switch.
Given an audience familiar with data system architecture, explain the principles of networking in a cloud computing environment so that knowledge of network requirements specific to cloud have been demonstrated.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Cloud computing networks -- whether they support public, private, or hybrid clouds - must be able to:
  1. Burst up and turn down bandwidth on demand.
  2. Provide extremely low latency throughput among storage networks, the data center and the LAN.
  3. Allow for non-blocked connections between servers to enable automated movement of virtual machines (VMs).
  4. Function within a management plane that stretches across enterprise and service provider networks.
  5. Provide visibility despite this constantly changing environment.
2. Storage plays a major role in cloud computing networks. Applications and data must flow seamlessly among storage systems, the data center and the LAN.
3. In addition to Gigabit Ethernet switches and NIC, network architects and administrators must work with virtual switches and virtual Ethernet adapters, which handle switching between VMs and sometimes between physical servers.
4. Very little is static in a cloud environment. Instances of servers and networks are provisioned at the drop of a dime. Automated network processes are essential to provisioning these virtual resources. This means that the network architect must seek out automation tools that handle IP address management, configuration management and resource allocation.
Given an understanding of cloud computing, summarize the importance of the data center in cloud computing so that understanding of the importance of the data center in cloud computing has been demonstrated.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Data center: Data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and security devices.
2. Importance in cloud computing. Data centers are now a key component in the management, disaster recovery and cost equation when selling on-demand cloud services. In traditional IT services the costs of running a data center are part of the capital costs along with the acquisition costs of storage and servers. In the cloud "on-demand" services model - the fractional applied costs of the data center are costed along with computing power, usage and applications in an elastic fashion which enables the end-user/cloud service customer to scale or downscale as resources are needed.
3. The infrastructure in place in the data center, virtualization, application assurance, network optimization are all requirements for cloud computing.
Given knowledge of securing a cloud computing environment, provide a list of security measures to take so that a comprehensive data and user security strategy can be implemented for cloud computing.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Privileged user access: access control measures are required to be employed to protect sensitive data. The following security measures represent general best practice implementations for cloud security.
  1. Implement and maintain a security process. A security process can provide the structure for managing information security, and the risks and threats to the target environment. In the event of a security breach, the security process can provide crucial information as to how the cloud is protected, responses to threats, and a line of accountability for management of events.-Implement a vulnerability and intrusion management program. In a trusted cloud environment, you are required to implement a strict vulnerability management program and mechanisms such as intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) to ensure that IT resources (servers, network, infrastructure components, and endpoints) are constantly monitored for vulnerabilities and breaches.
  2. Build and maintain a secure cloud infrastructure. A secure infrastructure helps provide cloud resiliency and the confidence that the information stored in the cloud is adequately protected.
  3. Ensure confidential data protection. Data protection is a core principle of information security. All of the prevalent information security regulations and standards, as well as the majority of industry best practices, require that sensitive information be adequately protected in order to preserve confidentiality. Confidentiality of such data is required no matter where that data is resident in the chain of custody, including the cloud environment.
  4. Implement strong access and identity management. Access and identity management are critical to cloud security. They limit access to data and applications to authorized and appropriate users.
  5. Establish application and environment provisioning. In a centrally managed cloud environment, it is essential to have automated provisioning functionality in place.
  6. Implement a governance and audit management program. To be prepared for regulatory or internal audits, you are required to have a program in place that defines when, how, and where to collect log and audit information.
  7. Maintain environment testing and validation. In order to maintain an intact cloud IT environment, you are required to employ different mechanisms for testing and validation.
Given the networking performance strategies, describe the network performance implications of building "data center clouds" and identify the possible performance issues in multi-network environment to meet the requirements of cloud computing performance so that the networking performance considerations have been evaluated to meet the requirements of cloud computing performance.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
The data center network must support and enable broader strategic IT initiatives such as server consolidation and virtualization, cloud computing and IT optimization. In this sense the network must ensure performance, availability, serviceability and shorten the time required to set up new services. Increasing speed and availability of network bandwidth is creating new opportunities to deliver services across the web and integrate distributed IT resources. Easier access to trusted information and real-time data and analytics will soon become basic expectations.
1. Capacity and planning
  1. Network capacity is defined in two dimensions, vertical and horizontal capacity:Vertical capacity relates to the forwarding and processing capacity–in this case, a matrix such as bandwidth, packet rate, concurrent sessions, and so on.
  2. Horizontal capacity involves the breadth and reach of the network–in this case, a matrix such as server port counts, external connectivity bandwidth, and so on.
2. Describe the network performance implications of building "data center clouds".
  1. data center clouds are formed by connecting two or more data center cloud network over wide area network (WAN). Due to the inherent nature of WAN, network data loss and latency must be closely examined to make sure that sufficient bandwidth is allocated.
3. Identify the network performance issues related to creating multi-network data centers.
  1. The latency accumulated in networks largely in proportion to the number of interfaces a packet transits from source to destination, and each switch that handles packets poses risk of loss and delay. Network should be planned as flat as possible.
4. Layer 2 Network Requirements
  1. The widespread adoption of server virtualization technologies drives a significant expansion of the Layer 2 domain, and also brings the need to extend Layer 2 domains across physically separated data centers in order to stretch VLANs to enable VM mobility by using technologies such as VMware, VMotion, or POWER Live Partition Mobility. These are very challenging requirements to satisfy in order to achieve the service delivery objectives since they directly impact the scalability (in terms of new MAC addresses that can be included in a Layer 2 domain) and flexibility (in terms of the time and effort needed to deploy new services) of the data center network.
5. Control Plane Stability
  1. The stability of the control plane in a typical Layer 2 data center network is typically controlled by the spanning tree protocol–STP or one of its many variants. This approach, however, does not have the robustness, flexibility and efficiency that is required to assure service delivery to the business. For example, the typical convergence time required to recover from a link failure is not in synch with the needs of today's network-dependent and high-paced business environment. This limitation hence has a huge impact on the availability and reliability of the data center network.
6. Optimal Use of Network Resources
  1. Another drawback of the STP is that in order to avoid loops in a Layer 2 network, a tree topology must be enforced by disabling a subset of the available links. So usually 50% of the available links are idle and the efficiency of the capacity usage is suboptimal at best. This can be mitigated by balancing the available VLANs across different STP instances, but it goes without saying that being able to exploit 100% of the available capacity would be a huge improvement from a data center network performance point of view.
7. Optimal Use of Network Awareness
  1. VM is the new building block in the data center and the importance of physical NICs for the network architecture fades when compared to the virtual networking realm inside the server platforms. On the other hand, it is difficult to manage both the virtual and the physical network environment with a consistent set of tools and orchestrate changes in an end-to-end fashion. This trend puts a lot of pressure on the serviceability and manageability of the data center network and can also impact its availability if changes are not agreed across different functional teams in charge of the infrastructure management.
8. End-to-end network visibility
  1. Server consolidation and virtualization initiatives demand more bandwidth per physical machine and the same is true on a WAN scale when consolidating scattered data centers into fewer ones. This and the fact that it is very difficult to obtain end-to-end visibility of the network flows (different teams in charge of managing virtual resources inside servers, Blade switches, LAN switches, and WAN routers) have the risky consequence that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to spot and remove network bottlenecks in a timely and seamless fashion. Clearly this has a significant impact on the performance and even the availability of the enterprise network if the QoS model is not designed and enforced properly.
Given the key requirements of cloud computing, describe how existing Web service technologies can be used by cloud providers, describe how Web technologies can be used by users to access cloud services and identify some of the common Web Services that are provided by cloud companies so that end-user experience and productivity can be improved.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Describe how existing Web service technologies can be used by cloud providers to offer Cloud services.
  1. Cloud service providers use existing Web technologies such as PHP, AJAX, REST API, SOAP, XML HTML5 and others to develop a dynamic Web front-end for its end-users to see and order their cloud service offerings.
2. Describe how Web technologies can be used by end-users to access cloud services.
  1. In SaaS model, users will only be required to access to the applications that are being offered as opposed to the infrastructure platform that the application is running on. Generally, these applications are provided in the form of a Web application. In some cases, cloud service companies provide wrapper Web service APIs that give its users the ability to integrate with other applications on the Web.
3. Identify some of the common Web services that are provided by cloud companies.
  1. Some of the leading cloud companies provide basic building-block type Web services that fulfill some of the core needs of accessing cloud computing environment: storage, computing, messaging, and datasets, order new cloud services, modify existing cloud services.
Given knowledge of cloud computing performance considerations, describe the factors that will affect the performance of the underlying infrastructure and workloads so that the cloud computing solution can be optimized for performance.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
The following factors will effect the performance of a cloud-based solution:
1. Software & Service Delivery:
  1. Response time
  2. System management & maintenance planning
  3. Proactive communications
  4. Notifications regarding maintenance activities
  5. System monitoring
  6. Key Performance Index
2. System Scalability:
  1. Ability to respond to large volumes of service requests & users
  2. Ability to handle high volumes of services during peak demands
  3. Ability for system expansion with minimal costs
  4. Consistent service quality
  5. Consistent service and system performance
  6. Reliability as service request volumes grow
3. High Availability and Disaster Recovery:
  1. Facilities with reliable power, cooling, and network infrastructure
  2. High-availability infrastructure, including networking, server infrastructure, and software
  3. N+1 redundancy
  4. 24x7 operational capability
Given a customer with knowledge of standard IT billing and accounting procedures, explain the billing (metering/measuring) models that pertain to cloud computing so that a model of cloud billing is chosen.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. The subscription business model is a business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service. The model was pioneered by magazines and newspapers, but is now used by many businesses and Websites. Rather than selling products individually, a subscription sells periodic (monthly or yearly or seasonal) use or access to a product or service.
2. Resource-based billing model: these billing models tie cost to some resources or set of resources. As an example, amount of RAM used times hours used (Is this an overlap of utility billing model?), or perhaps renting multiples of some predefined package of RAM, CPU, and disk.
3. Utility billing model: utility computing is the packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility (such as electricity, water, natural gas, or telephone network). This system has the advantage of a low or no initial cost to acquire hardware; instead, computational resources are essentially rented. Customers with very large computations or a sudden peak in demand can also avoid the delays that would result from physically acquiring and assembling a large number of computers.
Given the ITIL V3 model and a summary of the customer environment, explain how the facets of ITIL V3 support the customer environment so that a model of the business systems as supported by cloud computing and ITIL V3 is produced.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain how ITIL Service Strategy pertains to cloud computing.
  1. ITIL Service Strategy provides guidance on clarification and prioritisation of service provider investments in services. It focuses on helping business improve and develop over the long term, based upon a market-driven approach. Key topics covered include service value definition, business case development, market analysis, and service provider types.
  2. The market dynamics and business objectives are essentially same in a cloud computing model. The differences would be in the sourcing, packaging and bundling of services, and how service users are charged for the utilization of services.
  3. The Service Portfolio, which decides on a strategy to serve customers and to develop the service provider's offerings and capabilities, will include the cloud services.
2. Explain how ITIL Service Design pertains to cloud computing.
  1. ITIL Service Design provides good practice guidance on the design of IT services, processes, and other aspects of the service management effort. Its scope includes the design of new services, as well as changes and improvements to existing ones.
  2. ITIL Service Design encompasses all elements relevant to technology service delivery, rather than focusing solely on design of the technology itself. As such, Service Design addresses how a planned service solution interacts with business and technical environments, service management systems required to support the service, processes which interact with the service, technology, and architecture required to support the service, and the supply chain required to support the planned service.
  3. Service design must also be implemented with cloud computing characteristics in mind, including:-The ability to migrate virtual assets from one physical resource to another can help meet Service level agreements. On the other hand, service level agreements will pertain to virtual assets even more than the physical infrastructure on which the assets are located.-Capacity management requires that physical infrastructure as well as the virtual asset be considered. -The capabilities of cloud computing provide tools to further service continuity and availability.-Auditing mechanisms for virtual assets must exist to consider usage of virtual assets, and measure how that correlates to use of a given physical asset.
3. Explain how ITIL Service Transition pertains to cloud computing.
  1. ITIL Service Transition relates to the delivery of services required by a business into an operational usage state, and often encompasses the "project" side of IT rather than "business as usual." It provides guidance on transferring the control of services between customers and service providers.
  2. ITIL Service Transition provides guidance on managing the complexity of changes to services and service management processes in a coordinated manner.
  3. Cloud computing provides an especially fluid environment, so Change and Configuration management are both important and challenging. (example: How to track a virtual machine)
  4. That may be started up, shut off, cloned, modified, destroyed and recreated.
  5. As a configuration item, service requests for provision and modification of virtual assets must follow a process which maintains control while matching the flexibility of virtual assets in the cloud. Incident and problem management must also reflect the specific challenges of virtual assets. (as an example, what is the underlying cause of a series of incident, a virtual asset, the underlying physical infrastructure, or the interaction between the two?).
  6. Release management must encompass issues regarding the ability to not only clone virtual assets, but then modify and redeploy those assets (as an example, how will the upgrade of the operating system on a virtual server propagate to clones of that virtual server, some of which may have been modified).
4. Explain how ITIL Service Operation pertains to cloud computing.
  1. ITIL Service Operation is the part of the lifecycle where the services and value is actually directly delivered. The monitoring of problems and balance between service reliability and cost etc. are considered.
  2. The functions include technical management, application management, operations management and Service Desk as well as, responsibilities for staff engaging in Service Operation.
  3. ITIL Service Operation aims to make sure that IT services are delivered effectively and efficiently. This includes fulfilling user requests, resolving service failures, fixing problems, as well as carrying out routine operational tasks.
  4. Monitoring for the availability of IT services and security compliance will pose increased challenges when services are hosted in vendor cloud environments.
5. Explain how ITIL Continual Service Improvement pertains to cloud computing.
  1. ITIL Continual Service Improvement aims to align and realign IT Services to changing business needs by identifying and implementing improvements to the IT services that support the Business Processes.
  2. The ITIL Continual Service Improvement process aims to use methods from quality management in order to learn from past uccesses and failures. The CSI process implements a closed-loop feedback system as specified in ISO 20000 as a means to continually improve the effectiveness and efficiency of IT services and processes.
6. Explain challenges in using the ITIL methodology with cloud computing. Challenges include:
  1. The flexibility and increasingly dynamic nature of a cloud environment;
  2. Intellectual Property concerns (example: managing software licenses) for virtual assets;
  3. The separation of physical infrastructure from the services provided by virtual assets that run on that infrastructure.
7. Explain the benefits of using a ITIL methodology with cloud computing.cloud computing can assist with many areas of ITIL methodology implementation. (example: using the ability to migrate virtual assets to meet SLAs and more effectively perform capacity management) Likewise, the fluid nature of a cloud computing environment benefit a formal management methodology such as ITIL.

Section 3-1:IBM Software Architecture

Given the IBM Cloud Computing Reference Architecture V2 (IBM CCRA V2) blueprint, describe the components of cloud computing, including the fundamental architectural building blocks and principles for creating a cloud environment, so that an understanding of the components of IBM CCRA V2 has been demonstrated.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
Describe and define the following components of the IBM CCRA V2:
1. Basic architectural elements - covering the business and technical requirements needed for various roles and responsibilities as well as the full spectrum of cloud service models.
  1. Cloud Services - includes infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) ,and Business Process as a Service (BPaaS). It also defines the Common Cloud Management Platform (CCMP) which describes the operational and business support services commonly needed for delivering and managing a cloud service.
  2. Infrastructure (Virtualization, Server, Storage, Network, and Facilities) - describes the specifications for physical components of cloud implementation
  3. CCMP (Business Support Services and Operational Support Services) - integrates the operational and business management of all layers of the cloud environment, including the CCMP itself. The CCMP exposes a set of management services which are generally needed for the delivery and management of any cloud service - across infrastructure, platform, and software and business process as a service. The CCMP is used to realize the Economies-of-scale, reuse and standardization required for achieving the high degrees of efficiency associated with cloud computing environments.
2. Basic architectural relationships - the IBM CCRA V2 addresses three major roles in any cloud environment: Cloud service provider, cloud service creator/developer and cloud service consumer. The cloud architecture enables specific perspectives to be assumed in order to understand the requirements, expectations and value propositions placed upon the system(s) and supporting capabilities necessary to fulfill these requirements.
  1. Cloud Service Consumer - the requirement is for a simplified interface with well understood service offerings, pricing and contracts. The value proposition for the service consumer is to get fast, on-demand access to the service they need while only playing for the period of time the serviced is used.
  2. Cloud Service Provider - the requirement is for a highly efficient service delivery and service support infrastructure and organization in order to provide differentiated, well understood, standardized and high-quality services to users. One key focus element is the service management to realize significant Economies-of- scale as well as a service portal to expose well-defined set of services in a highly automated fashion at a an attractive price/cost point. Cloud Service Developer - the requirement is for a tooling environment for modeling and assembling service elements as well as effective means for managing the service lifecycle.
3. Basic architectural principles for delivery and management
  1. Business Support Services (BSS) - defines the capabilities required to enable the business management of one or more specific managed cloud services (billing services must be capable of performing billing for the consumption of virtual machine resources, a multi-tenancy capable middleware platform and a multi-tenancy application such as collaboration or customer relationship management. BSS addresses service management and automation at the user interface level. It also delivers the functions required to operate a self-service cloud business (including the rules based execution of pricing, contracts, terms, invoicing and clearing and settlement). It also provides business management capabilities, including offering, customer, subscriber, order, fulfillment and entitlement management.
  2. Operational Support Services (OSS)- defines a set of systems management services that may be exploited by cloud service developers. The management domains are similar to traditional data center services but in cloud architecture, they can be implemented in very different ways. Ex., problem management - physical service failure in traditional IT environment is a trouble ticket opened by a SA for manual intervention and resolution. In a cloud environment a new virtual machine and associated applications are automatically provisioned on another server where resources are available without delay and impact to the service. This is what we call "replace vs. repair"
Given the IBM CCRA V2 blueprint, describe the benefits of cloud computing, so that an understanding of the benefits of IBM Cloud Computing Architecture V2 has been demonstrated.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
Describe the benefits of the IBM CCRA V2:
1. Component Level
  1. Virtualized Resource Management - ability to manage physical resources and the provisioning of O/S and application images to fulfill tasks and services as needed. The concept is to "replace vs. repair". Saves on time, SLA and improves customer sat.
  2. Service Automation Management - this is the ability and the management layer to remove the human factor from managing the service provisioning, and physical infrastructure management. Allows users to request, deploy, monitor and manage cloud computing services. Lowers cost of service, improves IT service deployment speed, delivers higher standardization and automation, offers integrated management to address lifecycle changes, improves traceability of processes and approval routings and integrates process governance.
  3. Heat and Power Management - this is the focus on reducing data center expenses through the efficient management of power consumption and head dissipation therefore cooling requirements based on system usage and service delivery/load.
  4. Image Management - management and standardization of OS and application images, delivery, distribution, relocation and removal in order to meet SLA and QoS requirements. This is also the place where customers are usually concerned about collocation of images and "memory bleeding" - discrete images and contained services are key to cloud service delivery.
  5. Security - (this is discussed to a greater extent in another section) - to fully benefit from cloud computing, one must ensure that the data, applications, systems are properly secured so that the cloud infrastructure doesn't expose the organization to risk. Cloud computing has the traditional aspects of IT security, but it may present an added level of risk because of the external aspects of cloud model. Therefore one must consider security aspects, such as data integrity, privacy, support data and service availability and compliance.
  6. Usage Metering and Accounting - cloud computing will not help an organization determine who will pay for what resource, but it can help provide a platform for an infrastructure design that establishes a charge-back model for metering and billing.
2. Cloud and IT Efficiencies
  1. Operation and Maintenance - cloud computing frees the user from the finer details of IT system configuration and maintenance, enabling them to spend more time on mission critical tasks and less time on Operation and Maintenance through the implementation of management services and middleware.
  2. Complexity and Interdependence - IT systems are increasingly crucial to the operations of organizations, this result in complexity and interdependence of systems, requiring a formal plan for business continuity and disaster recovery. The increases in compliance-related legislation, such as HiPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley have significantly increased organizations' reliance on IT and responsibility for their data and software.
3. IBM Service Management (ISM)
  1. Improved service management processes - improves staff efficiency and optimization of IT resources leading to higher returns on IT investments.
  2. Integrated Service Management Processes - best practices that leverage standardization, IT infrastructure that extends beyond the equipment owned by the enterprise, service architecture that maps the business process to its enabling services and clear policies and standards
4. Economies-of-scale
  1. Identify commonalities - find common elements at all layers to simplify and consolidate the environment, services and load while maintaining SLA, security and QoS requirements.
  2. Reuse management/CCMP components - reuse management applications, hardware elements, images as necessary to find the most effective delivery of services at the lowest overall cost.
5. Cloud Services
  1. Reuse of service elements (service artifacts) - the service creator is the one who uses service development tools to develop cloud services. This includes both the development of runtime artifacts and management aspect like monitoring, metering and provisioning. The artifacts refer to any capability needed for running what is delivered as a service by cloud deployment. Like database schemas, analytics, virtual images etc�
Given the IBM CCRA V2 describe the solution integration process for an existing client environment so that an understanding of the relevant architectural concepts are demonstrated.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Describe the high level steps to cloud adoption
  1. Consolidating IT Resources into a single pool
  2. Virtualizing IT Resources so that they function as a single resource to consolidate and optimize their computing capacity
  3. Standardizing platforms so that resources, applications and hardware assemblies can be moved from one deployment system to another
  4. Migrating workloads to a cloud environment or "automation" to enable users to select from a service - such as computing capacity, storage and applications, as well as parameters for usage - amount of computing capacity, time for usage etc�
Given the definition of four cloud service models within the context of IBM CCRA V2, explain how they can be used to design a secure and reliable IaaS, PaaS, SaaS ,and BPaaS solutions so that secure and reliable cloud computing models have been described.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain the security considerations for CCMP, Hardware Infrastructure and Cloud ServicesNon-functional aspects such as security, spanning the CCMP, Hardware infrastructure and Cloud Services must be viewed from an end-to-end perspective including the structure of CCMP by itself, the way the hardware infrastructure is set up (e.g. in terms of isolation, network zoning setup, data center setup for disaster recovery etc.) and how the cloud services are implemented.(Note: The idea is to look at security aspects in general for infrastructure architecture for the different types of offerings (PaaS, IaaS, SaaS, and BPaaS) in terms of what can be done and what should be done. We are required to test on the features, functions, capabilities described in the CCRA for infrastructure, servers, OS and any applicable components etc.)
2. Examples for security considerationsSome of the examples of security considerations as mentioned in the IBM's CCRA are:
  1. Security Event Management
  2. Security Policy
  3. Threat & Vulnerability Management
  4. Software, System & Service Assurance
  5. Data and Information Protection
  6. Security Entitlement
  7. Access & Identity Lifecycle Management
  8. Governance
  9. Data Policy Enforcement
Given an understanding of cloud computing, define the IBM CCRA V2 components so that an understanding of IBM CCRA V2 has been demonstrated.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain the role of the Cloud service consumer.Cloud service consumers require a simplified interface with well-defined and well service offerings, pricing and contracts.
  1. The cloud service consumer is the individual, organization or system which consumes service instances delivered by a particular cloud service.-Examples of service consumption are requests for virtual servers, changes to CPU capacity, requests for storage based on pre-defined templates, etc�
  2. Cloud service consumers browse the service offering catalog and trigger service instantiation requests.
  3. Cloud service integration tools are specifically relevant for hybrid clouds, where seamless integrated management and usage and interoperability of cloud services in integration with in-house IT is critical.
  4. Consumer in-house IT exists across all layers of the technology stack such as infrastructure, middleware, applications, business process and service management. This technology stack should be integrated with cloud services consumed.
2. Explain the role of the Cloud service provider.Cloud service providers are the owners of the CCMP, and are responsible for providing cloud services to the cloud service consumer.
  1. The cloud service provider may itself be a consumer of the CCMP, or they may be running the CCMP themselves.There are 4 categories of cloud services: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BPaaS (described above)
  2. In contrast to traditional IT services, cloud services have attributes such as pay-per-usage, self-service usage, flexible scaling and shared-usage.
  3. The CCMP architecture is responsible for delivering instances of cloud services of any category to cloud service consumers, in an ongoing, self-service fashion.
  4. The infrastructure element layer relates to the hardware infrastructure such as facilities, servers, storage ,and network resources.-No software or hypervisor, or virtualization management software is included in this infrastructure layer.-The infrastructure is managed by the OSS part of the CCMP.
3. The CCMP exposes a set of BSS and OSS, such as:-BSS - Customer account management, service offering catalog/management, contracts/agreement management, service request management, order management, pricing, entitlement management, subscription management, metering, rating, billing, accounts payable, accounts receivable, clearing and settlement.-OSS - Service delivery catalog, service automation management, service request management, change & configuration management, image lifecycle management, provisioning, incident & problem management, IT service level management, monitoring & event management, IT asset & license management, capacity & performance management and platform & virtualization management.
4. Explain the role of the Cloud service creator.Cloud service creators are responsible for creating the services being offering in the cloud services offering.
  1. In many cases, cloud service creators produce their cloud services by leveraging and enhancing functionality exposed by the cloud service provider.
  2. Cloud service creators would be responsible for the design, testing, implementation and maintenance of management artifacts specific to a cloud service.
  3. The cloud service creator is an organization (e.g., ISV company) or an individual (e.g., business/technical specialists in the ISV creating services)
Given the architectural principles defined in IBM CCRA V2, explain how they can be applied towards implementing cloud computing delivery and management services.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Efficiency Principle - Design for cloud-scale efficienciesWhen realizing cloud characteristics such as elasticity, self-service access, and flexible sourcing, the cloud design is strictly oriented to high cloud scale efficiencies and short time-to-delivery/time-to-change.To really implement a cloud following this principle with that high level of efficiency and flexibility, a very high degree of standardization (i.e. minimal variety in the data center with respect to numbers of server, storage, network technologies, operating systems & versions, middleware products, applications, etc.) is required to enable high degrees of automation. The higher the degree of standardization / minimization of variety are, the better automation can be realized (assuming a well-integrated and interoperable set of management components). Obviously, in a highly homogeneous public cloud data center this can be achieved in a better way compared to private cloud enterprise data centers running a variety of workloads each of them having different requirements, so there is typically a trade-off between degree of standardization and level of efficiency.
2. Lightweightness Principle - Support lean service managementThe CCMP fosters lean and lightweight service management policies, processes, and technologies.Fundamental restructuring and streamlining of IT management processes is required to maximize the elimination of manual data center management tasks. The main levers for massively driving down operational costs are elimination of tasks which are not needed any more due to limited scope of managed (e.g. in compute cloud only managing up to and including the hypervisor) and optimization (e.g. not immediate repair of a failed physical machine enabled by automated restart of crashed VMs or nodes or automating the service activation process, which is typically very time- and cost-intensive in traditional outsourcing environments). The basic thought is the more tasks get eliminated, and the more homogenous a data center is, the easier it becomes to highly automate any type of manual management task and drive down mgmt costs & delivery/change times significantly as a result of that.
3. Economies-of-scale Principle - Identify and leverage CommonalitiesAll commonalities are identified and leveraged in cloud service design.In this principle the goal is to reuse management/CCMP components and enable Economies-of-scale (with respect to initial standup & operational costs and reduced time-to-market) by sharing a single/common management platform to deliver and manage many cloud services. Examples of components with reuse potential are metering, monitoring, service automation, management User Interface (UI) components etc.
4. Generic Principle - Define and manage generically along the lifecycle of cloud servicesBe generic across IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BPaaS and provide �exploitation' mechanism to support various cloud services by using a shared management platform. It is essential to introduce a model which allows cloud service developers to specify how the CCMP functionality gets used in the context of their specific cloud service and how - based on that definition or template - instances of that cloud service get delivered to cloud service consumers. This has been taken into account in the CCMP RA design. The remaining todo for the cloud management platform architect is to design how the CCMP management functionality gets exploited in the context of the respective cloud service. This is achieved by creating a set of service type-specific artifacts as required by the respective management platform components (e.g. cloud service-specific scripts, monitoring agents, etc.).
Given an knowledge of cloud computing, articulate the considerations of security, foundational control and risk management within an IBM Cloud Computing solution, so that the framework for best practices on how to implement cloud security have been defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
Organizations are intrigued with the new cloud computing models because of their flexibility and cost-effectiveness, but they are also concerned about security. Recent cloud adoption studies by analysts and articles in the press have confirmed these concerns, citing the lack of visibility and control, concerns about the protection of sensitive information, and storage of regulated information in a shared, externally managed environment.
1. Cloud Security challenges range from governance, through to securing application and infrastructure. Fundamentally it is important to be able to assure the security of these new models in order to build trust and confidence.
  1. The key to establishing trust in these new models is choosing the right cloud computing model for the organization. Place the right workloads in the right model with the right security mechanisms. Trust is required to be achieved, especially when data is stored in new ways and in new locations, including for example different countries. Which risks you choose to address will be different depending on your business, workloads, your appetite for risk and how costly these measures are.
2. Explain the eight foundations on how to control and secure a cloud environment.
  1. Identity and Access ManagementStrong focus on authentication of users and management of user identity Organizations are required to make sure that authorized users across their enterprise and supply chain have access to the data and tools that they need, when they need it, while blocking unauthorized access.
  2. Discover, Categorize, Protect Data & Information AssetsStrong focus on protection of data at rest or in transit Most organizations cite data protection as their most important security issue. Typical concerns include the way in which data is stored and accessed, compliance and audit requirements, and business issues involving the cost of data breaches, notification requirements, and damage to brand value. All sensitive or regulated data are required to be properly segregated on the cloud storage infrastructure, including archived data.
  3. Information Systems Acquisition, Development, and MaintenanceManagement of Application and Virtual Machine deployment Clients typically consider cloud application security requirements in terms of image security. All of the typical application security requirements still apply to the applications in the cloud,but they also carry over to the images that host those applications. The cloud provider is required to follow and support a secure development process. In addition, cloud users demand support for image provenance and for licensing and usage control. Suspension and destruction of images must be performed carefully, ensuring that sensitive data contained in those images is not exposed. Defining, verifying, and maintaining the security posture of images in regards to client-specific security policies is an important requirement, especially in highly regulated industries. Organizations areq required to ensure that the Web services they publish into the cloud are secure,compliant, and meet their business policies. Leveraging secure-development best practices is a key requirement.
  4. Secure Infrastructure Against Threats and VulnerabilitiesManagement of Vulnerabilities and their associated mitigations with strong focus on network and endpoint protection In a trusted cloud environment, you are required to implement a strict vulnerability management program and mechanisms such as intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) to ensure that IT resources (servers, network, infrastructure components, and endpoints) are constantly monitored for vulnerabilities and breaches
  5. Problem & Information Security Incident ManagementManagement and responding to expected and unexpected eventsA security program can provide the structure for managing information security, and the risks and threats to the target environment. In the event of a security breach, the security program can provide crucial information as to how the cloud is protected, responses to threats, and a line of accountability for management of events.
  6. Physical and Personnel SecurityProtection for physical assets and locations including networks and data centers & Employee security The cloud's infrastructure, including servers, routers, storage devices, power supplies, and other components that support operations, should be physically secure. Safeguards include the adequate control and monitoring of physical access by using biometric access control measures and closed circuit television (CCTV) monitoring. Provider is required to clearly explain how physical access is managed to the servers that host client workloads and that support client data.
  7. Security Governance, Risk Management & ComplianceSecurity governance including maintaining security policy and audit and compliance measures.Organizations require visibility into the security posture of their cloud. This includes broad-based visibility into change, image, and incident management, as well as incident reporting for tenants and tenant-specific log and audit data. Visibility can be especially critical for compliance. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), European privacy laws, and many other regulations require comprehensive auditing capabilities. Since public clouds are by definition a black box to the subscriber, potential cloud subscribers may not be able to demonstrate compliance. A private or hybrid cloud, on the other hand, can be configured to meet those requirements.
  8. Cloud GovernanceCloud specific security governance including directory synchronization and geo location support.

Section 3-2:IBM Software Architecture

Given an understanding of the IBM CCRA V2, articulate the considerations of storage and data recovery with an IBM CCRA, so that a description of general cloud storage requirements and storage demands from Cloud Compute and Storage Cloud have been provided.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Explain considerations of storage and data recovery in an IBM Cloud Solution
  1. Cloud general storage requirements: -Scalability; low cost-Dynamic, unpredictable workloads-Automated management, provisioning, performance monitoring and tuning �-Security and data protection-Quality of Storage Service-Geographic distribution-Storage use cases:-Backup-Archive-Database-File-Block
  2. Compute Clouds: Private and public Compute Clouds include storage within the compute service-Storage capacity and data protection are directly delivered in this model. -Storage Infrastructure to achieve the most efficient implementation -Use case example; SaaS, IaaS
  3. Storage Clouds-Storage Capacity Clouds - obtain storage for data from a cloud service.-Backup Clouds - protect data, applications and business services to a backup cloud service-Archive and Disaster Recovery Clouds - archive data or create offsite data copies via a cloud service-Records Management Clouds - data aware archive services, often aligned with specific market formats-Content Clouds - services that deliver or receive content streams such as video on demand, medical imaging, surveillance data, etc
Given the concepts of service management, describe the process of service delivery within the cloud, so that an understanding of the relevant components, value and benefits has been demonstrated.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Describe the concepts of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) at a high level - a set of components which can be invoked, and whose interface descriptions can be published and discovered. It defines how to integrate disparate applications for a web-based environment while using various implementation platforms. Rather than defining an API, SOA defines the interface in terms of protocols and functionality.
2. Describe how cloud computing supports efforts to establish a service-oriented architecture and to enhance service management - SOA is all about the process of defining and IT solution or architecture, while cloud computing is an architectural alternative. The software services are supported by the SOA platform, which typically includes components such as ESB and a service registry. The SOA platform is supported by the enterprise IT infrastructure of systems, data and networks. These elements of the SOA also relate to different kinds of cloud service. The software services relate to SaaS, the infrastructure to IaaS.
3. Describe the components of Service Management for cloud computing
  1. Service Delivery and Process Automation
  2. Service Availability and Performance Management
  3. Storage Management
  4. Security, Risk,and Compliance
  5. Data center Transformation
  6. Asset and Financial Management
  7. Network and Service Assurance
4. Describe the components and benefits of Service Management in terms of visibility, control and automation
  1. Visibility - all elements and services (including assets, server, storage network, virtual and logical elements and relationships for configuration, availability, security and performance
  2. Control - policies to assure service delivery and compliance, including the correlation of resources with desired compliance patterns
  3. Automation - data center processes from element run-books to broad provisioning and compliance scenarios
Given a thorough analysis of the customer's existing business processes, understand and articulate how existing IBM service management for cloud solutions can be applied so that an effectively managed cloud environment can be defined.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Describe the IBM Service Management solutions.
  1. Service Request Management & Fulfillment: automated end-to-end service delivery by using a unified architecture and workflow fully integrated with governance processes
  2. Incident & Problem Management: identify and resolve incidents before they become a problem, ensure process compliance and improve user satisfaction.
  3. Asset, Change & Configuration Management: integrated approach for managing assets throughout the lifecycle from procurement to operations to retirement.
  4. Server/Application Provisioning & Release Management: leverage best practice processes to plan, manage and report on all aspects of release deployment, improving successful deployment rate via automated workflows, approvals and a consolidated view of all changes in the infrastructure.
2. Describe the IBM cloud solutions that are available to automate the business processes.
  1. IBM Implementation Services for cloud computing: design and implementation for test environments provides strategy, planning, design and implementation for building a private test cloud. The private test cloud enables the on demand provisioning of a visualized and dynamically scalable test environment that is secure. This includes an operating system, middleware, storage, network, images and data.
  2. The IBM Service Management Center for cloud computing: a cross IBM solution which provides the operational support systems necessary to help enterprise data centers achieve cloud-level efficiencies. It provides the necessary tools and practices to manage the life cycle of cloud services, from service definition through service termination. Supporting both the provisioning of virtual resources and optimization of virtual operations, the IBM Service Management Center helps lower costs and improves efficiency by automating tasks for visualized servers, storage and networking resources plus offers the assurance of higher service availability and consolidated operations by visualizing virtual environments.
  3. Cloud Services Lifecycle Management: -One of the first offerings within IBM Service Management Center for cloud computing is the IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager (TSAM) which automates the design, deployment and management of services such as middleware, applications, hardware and networks.-TSAM not only automates the manual tasks involved, but also helps customers transform their data center organization into a cloud model. TSAM provides capabilities to request, fulfill, and manage complete software stacks for the data center. This comprises the definition, offering, request, and automated provisioning of the stack, including integrated management of the environment.
  4. Cloud Security Management: Security is one of the major concerns in cloud environments today. As customers implement and deliver cloud based services they are required to implement comprehensive security for the cloud. IBM is making securing the cloud much easier with the delivery of three security offerings that provide targeted capabilities in the areas of identity and access, data and application security, and security for z/OS.
  5. Cloud Storage Management: Storage within a cloud environment is a critical necessity to ensure high availability to user environments while simultaneously reducing costs and minimizing risks. IBM Information Infrastructure solutions are the building blocks for cloud computing with next generation visualized storage and storage management products.
3. Describe the IBM Development & Test Cloud solutions.
  1. The IBM smart business development & test on the IBM cloud features IBM rational software delivery services delivered over IBMs secure, scalable cloud.
  2. The IBM smart business development and test cloud provides an on-premise cloud built by IBM services.
Given the IBM CloudBurst, IBM Service Delivery Manager(ISDM) and TSAM solutions, and an understanding of a customers cloud computing environment, articulate the benefits and solutions for each of these, so that the Cloud Computing service management solutions available from IBM have been explained.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. IBM CloudBurst offers pre-intergrated hardware, storage, virtualization and networking to create an on-premise cloud environment.
  1. IBM CloudBurst provides pre-installed, fully integrated service management capabilities across hardware, middleware and applications.
  2. IBM CloudBurst offers a ready-made private cloud environment into which these images and patterns can be deployed, and is designed to be used by an organization that doesn't want to create a cloud environment by using existing assets.
  3. IBM Workload Deployer (previously known as WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance) is a hardware appliance that provides access to IBM middleware virtual images and patterns to easily, quickly and repeatedly create application environments that can be securely deployed and managed in a private cloud.
  4. Benefits of IBM CloudBurst are:-Speed private cloud implementation by using a preinstalled, pre-integrated system with software, servers and services.-Automate service delivery and help save operating costs through a self-service portal and service catalogue.-Help decrease capital expenses by more effectively leveraging your investments.-Minimize complexity and better control risk through automated management and superior reliability.-Adapt to changing requirements with the ability to scale and manage additional platforms and workloads.
2. ISDM is a pre-integrated software stack, deployed as set of virtual images that automate IT service deployment and provide resource monitoring and cost management in a cloud environment. ISDM has the following features:
  1. Leverage existing hardware for the cloud infrastructure.
  2. Supplied with prepackaged automation templates and workflows for most common resource types.
  3. Has a self-service portal interface for in-advance computing reservations of virtualized environments, including storage and networking resources.
  4. Automates provisioning and de-provisioning of resources.
  5. Provides real-time monitoring of physical and virtual cloud resources
  6. Has integrated usage and accounting chargeback capabilities that can help system administrators to help, track, and optimize system usage.
  7. Has Built-in high availability of the cloud management platform.
  8. Benefits of ISDM are:-Pre-configured service management software stack delivered via virtual images achieve both rapid time-to-value greater return-on-investment and reduce capital expenditures by reusing existing hardware resources.-Automate service delivery and help save operating costs through a self-service portal and service catalog.-Help decrease capital expenses by more effectively leveraging your investments.-Minimize complexity and better control risk through automated management and superior reliability.-Adapt to changing requirements with the ability to scale and manage additional platforms and workloads.
3. TSAM can be used to automate the requesting, deployment, monitoring ,and management of cloud computing services.
  1. TSAM provides the capability to request, fulfill, and manage complete software stacks for the data center. This comprises the definition, offering, request, and automated provisioning of the stack, including integrated management of the environment. TSAM can help provide these capabilities in development, test, pre-production or production systems environments.
  2. TSAM is included in IBM CloudBurst™ to help provide an easy to deploy private cloud package.
  3. TSAM is a standalone software offering and its key features are:-Self-Service Portal enables data center personnel to achieve rapid time-to-value for virtual-server provisioning from any platforms.-Service catalog has standardized images and environments are automatically updated, and an outstanding user experience via the self serve portal.-Automated Provisioning provides the ability to set up new environments and capable of de-provision resources and return them to resource pools.-The image Library provides a framework for maintaining multiple repositories of server images for use during virtual server provisioning.
Given a cloud environment and an audience knowledgeable of WebSphere solutions, identify pertinent WebSphere solutions so as to understand their use in creating, building, and operating a private cloud and integrating a public cloud environment.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. IBM Hypervisor Edition products, such as the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition, provide IBM middleware technologies in a virtualized package.
  1. Packages a complete middleware software stack into a single virtual image
  2. Optimized to run on hypervisor technology such as VMware, PowerVM, and z/VM
2. Explain how IBM Workload Deployer allows you to build, deploy, and manage middleware environments in a private cloud.
  1. Capability to use multiple virtual images in a single pattern
  2. POWER7™ support
  3. Enhanced deployment profile customization
  4. Support for WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server on System z
  5. Availability of WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition - Intelligent Management Pack
  6. Speeds application deployment and dramatically reduces setup time for WebSphere environments from weeks to minutes with pre-defined patterns and virtual images
  7. Increases agility through removal of manual processes that hinder productivity
  8. Ensures security in a shared environment serving as a secured, tamper-resistant vault for images and credentials
  9. Integrates fully with development and service management tools from IBM Rational® and Tivoli® for end-to-end support
3. Explain how the WebSphere Virtual Enterprise delivers cloud capabilities for middleware applications
  1. Leverage application virtualization for insight into extended virtualized environments
  2. Change application footprints automatically based on demand with dynamic workload management
  3. Reduce operational and energy costs by increasing utilization and better managing health of industry-leading application servers
  4. Improve application performance and deliver application response times to meet service level agreements
  5. Increase application resiliency and availability to preempt outages and minimize administration costs
  6. Perform interruption-free application upgrades
  7. Support VMware ESX Server, IBM PowerVM and IBM z/VM server virtualization technologies and WebSphere Commerce, ESB, Portal, Process Server products
  8. Expand the economic benefits, increase availability, resiliency, scalability and improve performance of application infrastructure virtualization
4. Explain how the IBM WebSphere DataPower Appliance delivers cloud capabilities for integration.
  1. Enables companies to rapidly connect their hybrid world of public clouds, private clouds, and on-premise applications.
  2. Rapidly deliver cloud integration projects in days and achieve higher return on investment in SaaS and cloud models. Leverage reusable process templates and use a "configuration, not coding" approach to solve the entire lifecycle of your cloud integration needs.
5. Explain how organizations can reduce costs and improve value by utilizing IBM WebSphere offerings delivered via the cloud
  1. IBM Blueworks Live
  2. Middleware images on the cloud-WebSphere on IBM Cloud and Amazon EC2
Given an understanding of the requirements for a flexible development environment list the advantages of the IBM Smart Business Desktop for Development and Test to demonstrate, so that an understanding of the benefits of the IBM Smart Business Desktop for Development and Test has been defined. .
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Provides on-demand provisioning of resources to reduce upfront costs which can reduce capital and licensing expenses as much as 50 to 75 percent by using virtualized resources
2. Facilitates innovation and time to market by helping reduce development and testing setup time from weeks to minutes
3. Improves quality through more accurate configurations and enhanced modeling to help reduce defects by as much as15 to 30 percent
4. Allows you to leverage your existing assets, systems and storage to transform your development and testing environment into a cloud computing model
5. Supports automated provisioning and management of IBM WebSphere® Application Server virtual images through the WebSphere CloudBurst appliance
Given an understanding of IBM Cloud computing solutions for collaboration and community and an understanding of a customers cloud computing environment, articulate the benefits and solutions for each of these, so that the Cloud Computing solutions for collaboration and community available from IBM have been explained.
With emphasis on performing the following tasks:
1. Project Management Redefined - LotusLive's Web-based collaboration tools are ideal for just about any business. Whether you are managing a project with a remote team or leading a training session, LotusLive's integrated services provide the tools you need. And because these services are in the cloud, set up is quick and easy; ongoing maintenance is minimal and IT costs can be drastically reduced.
2. Marketing Made Easier - Communication and collaboration are at the heart of every marketing endeavor. Marketing teams are always looking for ways to connect with customers and this often means creating campaigns, sharing large files and reviewing and editing collateral with clients around the world. Whether you are looking for ways to review large graphic files and campaigns with clients or you're searching for an easy-to-access place to store all your materials, LotusLive has the solutions you need.
3. Sell Smart - Using LotusLive's integrated tools, sales teams are finding multiple ways to increase productivity, reduce travel costs and shorten sales cycles. Sellers can host online meetings to demo products, collaboratively review and edit files with screen sharing and even electronically sign documents to close deals. Less time traveling and quicker closings helps give you greater opportunities to surpass your numbers!
4. LotusLive for Services offers a rich portfolio of services, which makes collaborating across boundaries easy for business of all sizes.
  1. Stay constantly connected with Email with iNotes & Notes.
  2. Collaborate and share online with Engage & Connections
  3. Never miss a meeting again with Engage, Meetings & Events.
  4. Flexible suite options combining Collaboration & Meetings
5. LotusLive Integrated Apps can help your team operate more efficiently and effectively. By adding integrated solutions from our business partners, you have more cloud-based options to simplify and improve your everyday business activities.
6. LotusLive Labs is available, with a range of pre-alpha services that are integrated with LotusLive.
7. With LotusLive Mobile Access your LotusLive network and collaboration services right from your mobile device. Be available and access information anywhere, any time. Attend important online meetings and send and receive e-mail directly from your mobile device.
  1. You can collaborate on the go, saving you time and giving you unparalleled flexibility. With LotusLive Mobile on select mobile devices, you can access two services: Online meetings and e-mail. Stay connected without being tied to your laptop.
8. IBM's cloud community includes experts in every area of cloud technology and application–working with peers, clients and partners to design and deploy forward-looking solutions that pave the way for business invention, evolution and transformation.
  1. IBM developerWorks is the industry-leading and award-winning technical resource and professional network for the developer community.
  2. IBM Collaboration QuickStart for Social Business. Get started with three leading products for social software – Lotus Domino, Sametime, and Connections – as an IBM SmartCloud Enterprise image that comes preinstalled with 85 user profiles. With this image, you can rapidly set up a system to let you find users with the expertise you desire and create a virtual collaborative space in which to work.

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