Unit-I.pdf

1
IT Infrastructure & Management
Unit 1: Foundation Concepts

3-Mar-23 Jahangir Alam 2
Information Systems
• An information system (IS) can be defined technically as
a set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve),
process, store, and distribute information to support
decision making and control in an organization.
• In addition to supporting decision making, coordination,
and control, information systems may also help managers
and workers analyze problems, visualize complex subjects,
and create new products.
• Information systems contain information about significant
people, places, and things (nouns) within the
organization or in the environment surrounding it.
• By information we mean data that have been shaped into
a form that is meaningful and useful to human beings.
• Data, in contrast, are streams of raw facts representing
events occurring in organizations or the physical
environment before they have been organized and arranged
into a form that people can understand and use.

• Three activities in an information system produce the
information that organizations need to make decisions,
control operations, analyze problems, and create new
products or services.
• These activities are input, processing, and output. Have
a look at following figure.
• Information systems also require feedback, which is
output that is returned to appropriate members of the
organization to help them evaluate or correct the input
stage.

Functions of an Information System
• An information system contains information about an
organization and its surrounding environment.
• Three basic activities—input, processing, and output—
produce the information organizations need.
• Feedback is output returned to appropriate people or
activities in the organization to evaluate and
refine the input.
• Environmental actors, such as customers, suppliers,
competitors, stockholders, and regulatory agencies, interact
with the organization and its information systems.
• Following diagram explains the functions of an Information
System:

Question???
•How IS differs from a
database system?

Are ISs Computers and programs??
• Although computer-based information systems use
computer technology to process raw data into meaningful
information, there is a sharp distinction between a
computer and a computer program on the one hand,
and an information system on the other.
• Electronic computers and related software programs are the
technical foundation, the tools and materials, of modern
information systems.
• Computers provide the equipment for storing and
processing information.
• Computer programs, or software, are sets of operating
instructions that direct and control computer processing.
• Knowing how computers and computer programs work is
important in designing solutions to organizational problems,
but they are only part of an information system.

Example: An Analogy
• A house is an appropriate analogy.
• Houses are built with hammers, nails, and wood, but these
do not make a house.
• The architecture, design, setting, landscaping, and all of the
decisions that lead to the creation of these features are part
of the house and are crucial for solving the problem of
putting a roof over one’s head.
• Computers and programs are the hammers, nails, and
lumber of computer-based information systems, but alone
they cannot produce the information a particular
organization needs.
• To understand information systems, you must understand
the problems they are designed to solve, their architectural
and design elements, and the organizational processes that
lead to these solutions.

IS Dimensions
• To fully understand information systems, we must
understand the broader organization, management, and
information technology dimensions of systems (refer to the
figure on next page) and their power to provide solutions to
challenges and problems in the business environment.
• We refer to this broader understanding of information
systems, which encompasses an understanding of the
management and organizational dimensions of systems as
well as the technical dimensions of systems, as
information systems literacy.
• Computer literacy, in contrast, focuses primarily on
knowledge of information technology.
• The field of management information systems (MIS)
tries to achieve this broader information systems literacy.

• MIS deals with behavioral issues as well as technical
issues surrounding the development, use, and impact of
information systems used by managers and
employees in the firm.
• In the following we examine each of the dimensions of
information systems—organizations, management, and
information technology.
• Organizations:
• Information systems are an integral part of organizations.
Indeed, for some companies, such as credit reporting firms,
there would be no business without an information system.
The key elements of an organization are its people,
structure, business processes, politics, and culture.

• Organizations have a structure that is composed of different
levels and specialties. Their structures reveal a clear-cut
division of labor.
• Authority and responsibility in a business firm are organized
as a hierarchy, or a pyramid structure.
• The upper levels of the hierarchy consist of managerial,
professional, and technical employees, whereas the lower
levels consist of operational personnel.
• Senior management makes long-range strategic
decisions about products and services as well as ensures
financial performance of the firm.
• Middle management carries out the programs and plans
of senior management, and operational management is
responsible for monitoring the daily activities of the
business.

• Knowledge workers, such as engineers, scientists, or
architects, design products or services and create new
knowledge for the firm, whereas data workers, such as
secretaries or clerks, assist with scheduling and
communications at all levels of the firm.
• Production or service workers actually produce the
product and deliver the service (see figure on previous
slide).
• Experts are employed and trained for different business
functions. The major business functions, or specialized
tasks performed by business organizations, consist of sales
and marketing, manufacturing and production, finance and
accounting, and human resources.
• An organization coordinates work through its hierarchy and
through its business processes, which are logically related
tasks and behaviors for accomplishing work.

• Developing a new product, fulfilling an order, and hiring a
new employee are examples of business processes.
• Most organizations’ business processes include formal rules
that have been developed over a long time for
accomplishing tasks. These rules guide employees in a
variety of procedures, from writing an invoice to responding
to customer complaints.
• Some of these business processes have been written down,
but others are informal work practices.
• Each organization has a unique culture, or fundamental set
of assumptions, values, and ways of doing things, that has
been accepted by most of its members.
• You can see organizational culture at work by looking
around your university or college.

• Some solid rock assumptions of university life are that
professors know more than students, the reasons students
attend college is to learn, and that classes follow a regular
schedule.
• Parts of an organization’s culture can always be found
embedded in its information systems. For instance, some firms
first priority is customer service, which is an aspect of its
organizational culture that can be found in the firms'
• Management:
• Management’s job is to make sense out of the many situations
faced by organizations, make decisions, and formulate action
plans to solve organizational problems.
• Managers perceive business challenges in the environment;
they set the organizational strategy for responding to those
challenges; and they allocate the human and financial
resources to coordinate the work and achieve success.

• But managers must do more than manage what already
exists.
• They must also create new products and services and
even re-create the organization from time to time.
• A substantial part of management responsibility is
creative work driven by new knowledge and information.
• Information technology can play a powerful role in
helping managers design and deliver new products and
services and redirecting and redesigning their
organizations.
• Information Technology:
• Information technology (IT) consists of all the
hardware and software that a firm needs to use in order
to achieve its business objectives.

• This includes not only computer machines, storage
devices, and handheld mobile devices, but also software,
such as the Windows or Linux operating systems, the
Microsoft Office desktop productivity suite, and the
many thousands of computer programs that can be
found in a typical large firm.
• All of these technologies, along with the people
required to run and manage them, represent
resources that can be shared throughout the organization
and constitute the firm’s information technology (IT)
infrastructure.
• The IT infrastructure therefore, provides the foundation,
or platform, on which the firm can build its specific

• It consists of a set of physical devices and software
applications that are required to operate the entire
enterprise.
• But an IT infrastructure is also a set of firm-wide services
budgeted by management and comprising both human
and technical capabilities.
• Each organization therefore must carefully design and
manage its IT infrastructure so that it has the set of
technology services it needs for the work it wants to
accomplish with information systems.
• In the rest of this unit we shall examine each major
technology component of IT infrastructure and show how
they all work together to create the technology platform for
the organization.

IT Infrastructure Components
• IT infrastructure today is composed of seven major
components.
• Figure on next slide illustrates these infrastructure
components and the major vendors within each component
category.
• These components constitute investments that must be
coordinated with one another to provide the firm with a
coherent infrastructure.
• In the past, technology vendors supplying these
components were often in competition with one another,
offering purchasing firms a mixture of incompatible,
proprietary, partial solutions.
• But increasingly the vendor firms have been forced by large
customers to cooperate in strategic partnerships with one
another.

THE IT INFRASTRUCTURE ECOSYSTEM

• For example, a hardware and services provider such as IBM
cooperates with all the major enterprise software providers.
• It has strategic relationships with system integrators, and
promises to work with whichever database products its
client firms wish to use (even though it sells its own
database management software called DB2).
• The seven components of an IT Infrastructure are:

1. Computer Hardware
• Firms worldwide are expected to spend $705.17 billion (at a
compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.1%) on computer
hardware in 2023, including servers and client devices.
• The server market uses mostly Intel or AMD processors in the
form of various servers namely tower, rack and blade, but
also includes Sun SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture
microprocessors and IBM chips specially designed for
server use.
• The marketplace for computer hardware has increasingly
become concentrated in top firms such as IBM, HP, Dell, and
Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle), and three chip
producers: Intel, AMD, and IBM.
• The industry has collectively settled on Intel as the standard
processor for business computing, with major exceptions in
the server market for Unix and Linux machines, which might
use Sun or IBM processors.

• Mainframes have not disappeared. The mainframe is still
the digital workhorse for banking and telecommunications
networks. However, the number of providers has dwindled
to one: IBM.
• IBM has also repurposed its mainframe systems so they
can be used as giant servers for massive enterprise
networks, cloud datacenters and corporate Web sites.
• A single IBM mainframe can run up to 17,000 instances of
Linux or Windows Server software and is capable of
replacing thousands of smaller servers.

Hardware: Servers
• When it comes to cabling huge network connections, Servers
are usually considered to manage these networks effectively.
• Coming to Servers, there are three types of servers classified
on the basis of their structure.
• These Servers are Rack servers, Tower servers, and blade
servers.
• We are going to talk about each of them and what are the
distinct features which differentiate them.
• Tower Servers:
- Tower servers are the most basic types of servers and are
often mistaken to be a traditional CPU of a desktop computer.
- On the outside, a tower server looks and feels much like a
traditional tower PC.
- These servers are designed to offer a basic level of
performance and are therefore on a lower-end even in terms
of price.

- However, there is currently a wide range of tower servers
which can go very costly and can handle large and multiple
tasks.
- Tower servers can consume a good amount of physical space
to be installed and used.
- Due to their big and bulky form-factor (most of the time), it
becomes difficult to physically manage them.
- Also, due to size, stacking them on top of one another or
rearranging them from place to place is difficult.
- If the number of servers to be used by an organization is up to
5 servers, it is recommended to use tower servers.
- Their advantages are: High Scalability, Low Cost, Easier
Cooling, Less Maintenance and No Need for Rack/ Cabinet.
- Disadvantages are: More space consumption, Provide only
basic level of performance and Complicated cables
management.

• Rack Servers
- Rack servers are smaller than that of tower servers and are
mounted inside a rack.
- These racks are similar to that of a normal rack, which we use
to stack up a set of files and folders.
- A rack server is designed to be positioned in a bay, by
vertically stacking servers one over the another along with
other devices such as storage units, cooling systems, SAN
devices, network peripherals, and batteries.
- The racks used for mounting these rack servers adhere to IEEE
standards and are typically measured in rack units, or “U’s”.
- Each U is around 19” wide and 1.5-1.75” tall. The size of the
rack server is adapted to the vertical multiple of the rack unit,
and its height may be 1U, 4U, 10U, or higher.
- The advantage of using these racks is that it allows the user to
stack up other electronic devices along with the servers which
is not possible with a tower server.

- A single rack can contain multiple servers along with additional
devices as mentioned above.
- Therefore, these rack servers are pretty much convenient to
use and consume lesser space than that of a tower server.
- Since a rack is housed with all the devices together, the cable
management becomes a little cleaner as they are relatively
easy to organize due to the presence of management tools in
the rack.
- Like the tower servers, most of the rack servers also needs to
be connected with KVM (Keyboard, Video and Mouse) switches
to operate.
- Rack servers are expandable in terms of processors, RAM, and
storage. However, you’d need to arrange the space in rack to
accommodate the upgrades.
- Their advantages are:
 Failure containment: In rack servers, it takes a very little effort to
identify, remove, and replace a malfunctioning server with
another.

 Simplified cable management: Management tools in the racks,
makes it easy and efficient to organize cables.
 Cost-effective: They offer a substantial amount of computing
power and efficiency at relatively lower costs.
- Disadvantages are:
 Power usage: Rack servers often needs to have additional
cooling systems due to their high overall component density, thus
consuming more power.
 Maintenance: Since multiple devices are placed in racks together,
maintaining them gets considerably tough with the increasing
number of racks.
- If an organization requires up to 25 servers for its computing
needs, it is recommended to use the rack servers.

• Blade Servers:
- A blade server is a modular server that allows multiple servers
to be housed in a smaller area.
- These servers are physically thin and typically only have
CPUs, memory, integrated network controllers, and
sometimes storage drives built in.
- Any video cards or other components that are needed will be
facilitated by the server chassis. Which is where the blades
slide into.
- Blade servers are often seen in large data centers due to their
ability to fit so many servers into one single rack and their
ability to provide a high processing power.
- As a general rule if an organization requires more than 25
servers for its computing needs, it is recommended to use
blade servers.

- In most cases, one large chassis (such as HPE’s
BladeSystem) will be mounted into a server rack and then
multiple blade servers slide into the chassis.
- The chassis can then provide the power, manage
networking, and more. This allows each blade server to
operate more efficiently and requires fewer internal
components.
- A blade system also meets the IEEE standard for rack units
and each rack is measured in the units of “U’s”.
- Instead of being installed in a rack, blade servers are installed
in server bays. This structure allows for more servers to be
installed in a smaller area.
- For example, you might only be able to install 10 rack servers
in a rack, but 20 blade servers could fit into blade bays.
- The blade encasing can still be mounted into a rack, but you
can fit more blade servers into the same space compared to
rack servers.

- They maximize available space by providing the highest
processor per RU availability.
- Blade Servers also provide rapid serviceability by allowing
components to be swapped out without taking the machine
offline.
- You will be able to scale to a much higher processor density
using the Blade architecture. The facility will need to
support a much higher thermal and electrical load per
square foot.
- Blade servers are often used for large processing clusters, but
they also generate a lot of heat.
- They’re usually more expensive than a rack or tower server,
and they require good humidity and cooling infrastructure so
that they can run efficiently without causing hardware
damage.
- Their advantages are:

 Power Consumption – In many cases the chassis for the Blade
Server will supply the power to multiple servers, reducing total
consumption.
 Hot Swappable – Blade servers can be configured to be hot
swappable so if one blade has a problem, it can be pulled and
replaced much more easily. This helps to facilitate redundancy.
 Less Need for Cables – Rather than having to run individual
cables for each server, blade servers can have one cable (often
fiber) run to the chassis, thus reducing the total cable
requirements.
 Processing Power – Blade Servers can provide an extremely
high processing power while taking up minimal space.
 Reduces Maintenance Costs: Blade servers consume less
power, occupy very little space, and can be scaled up easily
thereby immensely minimizing the maintenance costs
- Disadvantages are:
 Expensive configuration: Although upgrading the blade server is
easy to handle and manage, the initial configuration or the setup
might require heavy efforts in complex environments.

 HVAC (Heating, Ventilation & Air-conditioning): Blade
servers are very powerful and come with high component density.
Therefore, special accommodations have to be arranged for these
servers in order to ensure they don’t get overheated. Heating,
ventilation, and air conditioning systems must be managed well in
the case of blade servers.

Hardware: Modern Computing Platforms
• The exploding power of computer hardware and networking
technology has dramatically changed how businesses
organize their computing power, putting more of this power
on networks and mobile handheld devices.
• Here we shall look at following eight hardware trends:
- The mobile digital platform
- Consumerization of IT
- Grid computing,
- Virtualization
- Cloud computing
- Fog & Edge Computing
- Green computing,
- High-performance/ power-saving processors
- Autonomic computing.
-

The Mobile Digital Platform
• Smartphones and tablet computers are becoming an
important means of accessing the Internet.
• They have emerged as alternatives to PCs and larger
computers. Smartphones such as the iPhone, Android, and
BlackBerry smartphones have taken on many functions
of PCs.
• These devices are increasingly used for business
computing as well as for consumer applications.
• The new mobile platform also includes small,
lightweight netbooks optimized for wireless communication
and Internet access.
• Tablet computers such as the iPad, and digital e-book
readers such as Amazon’s Kindle with Web access
capabilities have already become popular.

Consumerization of IT and BYOD
• The popularity, ease of use, and rich array of useful
applications for smartphones and tablet computers have
created a groundswell of interest in allowing employees to
use their personal mobile devices in the workplace, a
phenomenon popularly called “bring your own device”
(BYOD).
• BYOD is one aspect of the consumerization of IT, in
which new information technology that first emerges in the
consumer market spreads into business organizations.
• Consumerization of IT includes not only mobile personal
devices but also business uses of software services such as
Google and Yahoo search, Gmail, Google Apps, Dropbox,
and even Facebook and Twitter that originated in the
consumer marketplace as well.

• Consumerization of IT is forcing businesses, especially large
enterprises, to rethink the way they obtain and manage information
technology equipment and services.
• Historically, at least in large firms, the central IT department was
responsible for selecting and managing the information technology
and applications used by the firm and its employees.
• It furnished employees with desktops or laptops that were able to
access corporate systems securely.
• The IT department maintained control over the firm’s hardware and
software to ensure that the business was being protected and that
information systems served the purposes of the firm and its
management.
• Today, employees and business departments are playing a much
larger role in technology selection, in many cases demanding that
employees be able to use their own personal computers,
smartphones, and tablets to access the corporate network.
• It is more difficult for the firm to manage and control these consumer
technologies and make sure they serve the needs of the business.
.

Grid Computing
• Grid computing is a computing infrastructure that combines
computer resources spread over different geographical
locations to achieve a common goal.
• All unused resources on multiple computers are pooled
together and made available for a single task.
• Organizations use grid computing to perform large tasks or
solve complex problems that are difficult to do on a single
computer.
• For example, meteorologists use grid computing for weather
modeling. Weather modeling is a computation-intensive
problem that requires complex data management and
analysis.
• Processing massive amounts of weather data on a single
computer is slow and time consuming. That’s why
meteorologists run the analysis over geographically dispersed
grid computing infrastructure and combine the results.

Why Grid Computing is Important?
• Organizations use grid computing for several reasons:
• Efficiency
- With grid computing, you can break down an enormous,
complex task into multiple subtasks. Multiple computers can
work on the subtasks concurrently, making grid computing an
efficient computational solution.
• Cost
- Grid computing works with existing hardware, which means
you can reuse existing computers. You can save costs while
accessing your excess computational resources. You can also
cost-effectively access resources from the cloud.
• Flexibility
- Grid computing is not constrained to a specific building or
location. You can set up a grid computing network that spans
several regions. This allows researchers in different countries
to work collaboratively with the same supercomputing power.

How Grid Computing Works?
• A Grid computing network mainly consists of these three
types of machines
1. Control Node:
- A computer, usually a server or a group of servers
which administrates the whole network and keeps the
account of the resources in the network pool.
2. Provider:
- The computer contributes its resources to the network
resource pool.
3. User:
- The computer that uses the resources on the network.

Control Node
Node
(OS: Ubuntu)
Node
(OS: Windows)
Node
(OS: IOS)
Node
(OS: Unix)
Node
(OS: Android)
Node
(OS: ChromeOS)
Any node can become provider/ user according to its use.

• When a computer makes a request for resources to the control
node, the control node gives the user access to the resources
available on the network.
• When it is not in use it should ideally contribute its resources to
the network. Hence a normal computer on the node can swing in
between being a user or a provider based on its needs.
• The nodes may consist of machines with similar platforms using
the same OS called homogeneous networks, else machines with
different platforms running on various different OSs called
heterogeneous networks.
• This is the distinguishing part of grid computing from other
distributed computing architectures.
• For controlling the network and its resources a
software/networking protocol is used generally known as Grid
Middleware.
• This is responsible for administrating the network and the control
nodes are merely its executors.

• As a grid computing system should use only unused resources of
a computer, it is the job of the control node that any provider is
not overloaded with tasks.
• Another job of the middleware is to authorize any process that is
being executed on the network.
• In a grid computing system, a provider gives permission to the
user to run anything on its computer, hence it is a huge security
threat for the network.
• Hence a middleware should ensure that there is no unwanted task
being executed on the network.
• Advantages of Grid Computing are:
- It is not centralized, as there are no servers required, except the
control node which is just used for controlling and not for processing.
- Multiple heterogeneous machines i.e. machines with different
Operating Systems and architectures can use a single grid computing
network.
- Tasks can be performed in parallel across various physical locations
and the users don’t have to pay for them.

• Disadvantages are:
- The software of the grid is still in the involution stage.
- Licensing across many servers may make it prohibitive for
some applications.
- Many groups are reluctant with sharing resources.

Virtualization
• Virtualization enables the hardware resources of a single
computer—processors, memory, storage and more—to be divided
into multiple virtual computers, called virtual machines (VMs).
• This way it allows for more efficient utilization of physical
computer hardware and is the foundation of cloud computing.
• Virtualization uses software (called hypervisors) to create an
abstraction layer over computer hardware that allows the
hardware elements of a single computer—processors, memory,
storage and more—to be divided into multiple virtual computers,
commonly called virtual machines (VMs).
• Each VM runs its own operating system (OS) and behaves like an
independent computer, even though it is running on just a portion
of the actual underlying computer hardware.
• It follows that virtualization enables more efficient utilization of
physical computer hardware and allows a greater return on an
organization’s hardware investment.

• Hypervisors:
- A hypervisor is a program for creating and running virtual
machines.
- There are two main hypervisor types, referred to as “Type 1”
(or “bare metal”) and “Type 2” (or “hosted”).
- A type 1 hypervisor acts like a lightweight operating system
and runs directly on the host’s hardware, while a type 2
hypervisor runs as a software layer on an operating system,
like other computer programs. .
- The most commonly deployed type of hypervisor is the type 1
or bare-metal hypervisor, where virtualization software is
installed directly on the hardware where the operating system
is normally installed.
- Because bare-metal hypervisors are isolated from the attack-
prone operating system, they are extremely secure.
- VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle VM Server and
Citrix Hypervisor are type 1 hypervisors.

- In addition, they generally perform better and more efficiently
than hosted hypervisors.
- For these reasons, most enterprise companies choose bare-
metal hypervisors for data center computing needs.
- Oracle VirtualBox, Vmware Workstation Player and
Vmware Fusion are type 2 hypervisors, and must also be
installed on the underlying host OS.

Cloud Computing
• Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT
resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.
• Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data
centers and servers, clients can access technology services,
such as computing power (servers), software, storage,
databases, network equipment etc. on an as-needed basis
from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• It doesn’t store any data on client’s personal computer. It is
the on-demand availability of computer services mentioned
above.
• Clients typically pay a monthly or annual service fee to
providers, to gain access to systems that deliver required
services.
• The main purpose of cloud computing is to give remote
access to data centers to many users on payment basis.

• The term "cloud" simply refers to the internet. Computing is
the architecture and techniques that allow a computer to
execute, create, distribute, and interact with data.
• This means that, rather than hosting infrastructure,
systems, or programs on your hard drive or on an on-site
server, you host them on virtual/online servers that
connect to your computer via secure networks.
• Following figure illustrates cloud computing:

(Servers)
(A container is a unit of
software that packages code
and its dependencies so the
application runs quickly and
reliably across computing
environments.)

Cloud Infrastructure
• Cloud infrastructure refers to the hardware and software
components that support the delivery of a cloud-based
service.
• A typical cloud infrastructure is located off-premise and
accessed via the internet.
• The hardware resources are virtualized and abstracted, to
allow for resource scaling, sharing, and provisioning among
end users located at disparate geographic locations.
• Cloud vendors are therefore able to sell computing
functionality as a service to end users who do not own,
manage, and operate the IT infrastructure in the same way
as their on-site data centers.
• In a cloud environment client-side systems such as PCs,
tablets, and other devices are connected with the backend
data center components over the network.

• The components that constitute a cloud data Centre are:
- Network
- Hardware
- Storage
- Virtualization (Already discussed)
- Power and cooling infrastructure (will not be discussed)
• Network:
- The network is the communications channel that enables
information to travel between backend cloud systems and
front-end client devices.
- The computing process takes place at the off-premise cloud
data center.
- The network consists of physical electrical components such as
routers, wires, and switches as well as software apps and
hardware firmware that enable data communication as per
the applicable data model (TCP/ IP or DOD Model).

• Hardware:
- Cloud computing is accessed by a set of virtual hosts that
represent a preconfigured set of physical hardware
components.
- While end users don’t control, manage, and operate hardware
at the physical level, underlying the software-defined
hardware (through virtualization) is a range of actual hardware
assets common to any cloud data center.
- These hardware components include servers, processing units,
GPUs, power supply, memory, and other components.
- Allocation of these hardware resources can be scaled across
users and IT workloads through virtualization depending on
the model of the cloud service.
- Redundancy and flexibility are built into the hardware systems
to ensure that the performance, security,
and availability issues pertaining to cloud infrastructure
hardware do not impact end users.

• Storage:
- Cloud data centers store data across a variety of storage types
and devices, keep backups, and scale storage allocation
among users.
- The underlying hardware stack that supports the storage
infrastructure is abstracted through virtualization or
a software-defined architecture.
- This allows users to use storage as a cloud service that can be
added or removed as without manually provisioning the
hardware at every server when required.
• Common cloud storage formats include:
- File Storage
- File storage stores and organizes data into folders.
- To locate a piece of data, you’ll need to know the correct path
to find it.
- Over time, searching and retrieving data files can become
time-consuming as the number of files grows.

- While scalability is more limited, it is a simple way to store small
amounts of just about any type of data and make it accessible to
multiple users at once.
- NFS (NFS ( an acronym for Network File System ) is
a distributed file system initially developed by Sun
Microsystems , Inc., in order to share files and directories
between networked computers) is an example of file storage.
- Benefits of file storage are simplicity, shared files, cost effective,
familiar protocols and easy backup/ recovery.
- Familiar protocols means file storage relies on common protocols
used throughout computing, such as Network File System
(NFS), Common Internet File System (CIFS), and Server
Message Block (SMB).
- Block storage:
- File storage has a complexity. To understand that, imagine a
setup where a network is not restricted to a few computers only;
rather, it is connecting thousands of computers, and the data in
sharing is not in KB size but in GB size.

- That much heavy data management over one network will take
a few seconds, if not less, to bring the whole network down.
- Cloud-based NAS file storage solutions address this complexity
of traditional file storage systems to some extent, but the proper
solution is cloud block storage.
- The trademark of block storage is its lowest latency. Latency
means the time of retrieval, i.e., how fast the storage system
can retrieve the data files when someone requests to access
those.
- Block-storage low latency makes it the most efficient storage
system. So, what causes low latency in block storage.
- Suppose there is a file of GB size; the block will break it into
small blocks of equal size. These broken blocks are called
chunks.
- So the data in the block storage doesn't exist as a single piece,
unlike that in file storage; rather, it exists as small size chunks.

- Now that is not all about the low latency of the block storage
system.
- Now that is not all about the low latency of the block storage
system.
- There is more to it. To understand, try to picture this. Your
computer's OS is busy processing many other things, and at the
same time, you want it to save or retrieve a file from the
storage.
- That will be an extra load on your OS. But block storage doesn’t
let this happen.
- It adds a middle layer between your computer OS and the
storage system. This middle layer is called SAN (Server Area
Network).
- SAN is nothing but one single server or a group of servers,
which are operating systems; it can be Windows OS, Linux OS,
or multiple OS.

- The purpose of the SAN-OS is to take over the responsibility of
data processing; everything happens in the SAN-OS and not in
your computer OS. This keeps your computer off the load.
- Now, come to the data storing part. Block storage is not a
single entity. It is a collection of independent volumes;
volumes can be pictured as hard drives in the server.
- These volumes are not connected to each other but connected
to the servers or the OS in the SAN. In a nutshell, the block
storage mechanism is something like this:
 The computer OS makes a request to save a file to the storage or
retrieve the file
 SAN receives the request, breaks the data file into small and same
size chunks or blocks
 Does the indexing of the blocks and randomly distributes it among
the Volumes in the storage.
- Block storage is considered a highly efficient storage system
because storing and retrieving data is not dependent on the
user OS.

- The SAN identifies the connected blocks through indexing and
puts them together to retrieve the data in its original form.
- Block Storage in the cloud (Examples):
- Azure Premium Storage: This allows 32Tb of volume for the
storage. It delivers high performance and low latency in I/O
intensive workloads running on Azure Virtual Machine.
- AWS elastic block storage: This allow up to 16Tb of storage
in size. It is like a hard disk that can be attached to the EC2
instances and can access the storage.
- Rackspace Cloud lock storage: It allows up to 10GbE of
storage for the internal connection.

- Object Storage:
- Object storage, often referred to as object-based storage, is a
data storage architecture for handling large amounts of
unstructured data.
- This is data that does not conform to, or cannot be organized
easily into, a traditional relational database with rows and
columns.
- In object storage, data is stored as distinct objects. Each
object has a unique identifier number and metadata.
- Object storage is flat, meaning it isn’t based on a hierarchy.
It’s also API-friendly, which makes it easy to use with existing
applications and systems, and extremely scalable.
- It’s the storage type of choice for many public cloud storage
providers, such as AWS S3, as well as organizations with on-
premises storage solutions.

- Metadata is very important in object storage. Users can
include a lot of details in the metadata, such as creator
information, keywords, and even security and privacy policies
and rules of access.
- Although objects are stored in a large pool, the unique
identifiers and metadata make it simple—and speedy—to
access any amount of data when it’s needed.
- Object storage, more than any other type, is well-suited to
today’s massive volumes of unstructured data.
- Scalability is object storage’s main strength. Even when data
grows to petabyte and exabytes, all of the objects are located
in one namespace.
- Block storage volumes can only be accessed when they’re
attached to an operating system. But data kept on object
storage devices, which consist of the object data and
metadata, can be accessed directly through APIs or
http/https.

- You can store any kind of data, photos, videos, and log files.
The object store guarantees that the data will not be lost.
- Object storage data can be replicated across different data
centers and offer simple web services interfaces for access.
- Benefits of object storage are:
 Data analytics – with so much metadata, object storage gives
organizations tight control over how and when data is parsed
 Data integrity – erasure coding is a feature of object storage
systems that can run integrity checks on data to identify
corruption and then rebuild damaged objects as needed
 Cost-effective data on demand – with object storage, you can
pay only for the capacity you need, then scale up over time as
data volumes grow
- Weakness is that it’s slower than file and block storage.
Traditional object storage has been called “cheap and deep” in
comparison to block storage because while it is less expensive
overall, it can’t match the speed and efficiency of block
storage.

- Its lack of speed also makes object storage a poor choice for
write-intensive workloads.
- Object Storage in the cloud (Examples):
- Amazon S3: Amazon uses a bucket for storage and ensures
99.9999% durability and high performance, cross-region
replication, versioning, encryption, and flexible storage.
- Google cloud storage: It allows storing data in Google cloud
and allows the users to store individual objects in terabytes in
size. It provides strong read-after-write consistency for all
upload and delete operations.

Cloud Service Delivery Models
• There are three types of cloud service delivery models:
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Software as a Service
- Also known as cloud application services, represents the most
commonly utilized option for businesses in the cloud market.
- SaaS utilizes the internet to deliver applications, which are
managed by a third-party vendor, to its users.
- A majority of SaaS applications run directly through the web
browser, which means they do not require any downloads or
installations on the client side and IT staff is free from all these
hassles.
- With SaaS, vendors (service providers) manage all potential
technical issues, such as data, middleware, servers, and
storage, resulting in streamlined maintenance and support for
the business.

- SaaS provides numerous advantages to employees and
companies by greatly reducing the time
and money spent on tedious tasks such as installing,
managing, and upgrading software.
- This frees up plenty of time for technical staff to spend on
more pressing matters and issues within the organization.
- SaaS Characteristics
- There are a few ways to help you determine when SaaS is
being utilized:
 Managed from a central location
 Hosted on a remote server
 Accessible over the internet
 Users not responsible for hardware or software updates
- When to Use SaaS
- SaaS may be the most beneficial option in several situations,
including:
-

 Startups or small companies that need to launch ecommerce
quickly and don't have time for server issues or software
 Short-term projects that require quick, easy, and affordable
collaboration
 Applications that aren't needed too often, such as tax software
 Applications that need both web and mobile access
- Examples of SaaS
- Popular examples of SaaS include:
- Google Workspace (formerly GSuite)
- Dropbox
- Salesforce
- Cisco WebEx
- SAP Concur
- GoToMeeting
-

• Platform as a Service
- Cloud platform services, also known as Platform as a Service
(PaaS), provide cloud components to
certain software while being used mainly for applications.
- PaaS delivers a framework for developers that they can build
upon and use to create customized applications.
- All servers, storage, and networking can be managed by the
enterprise or a third-party provider while the developers can
maintain management of the applications.
- The delivery model of PaaS is similar to SaaS, except instead
of delivering the software over the internet, PaaS provides a
platform for software creation.
- This platform is delivered via the web, giving developers the
freedom to concentrate on building the software without
having to worry about operating systems, software updates,
storage, or infrastructure.
-

- PaaS allows businesses to design and create applications that
are built into the PaaS with special software components.
- These applications, sometimes called middleware, are scalable
and highly available as they take on certain cloud
characteristics.
- PaaS Advantages
- No matter the size of your company, using PaaS offers
numerous advantages, including:
 Simple, cost-effective development and deployment of apps
 Scalable
 Highly available
 Developers can customize apps without the headache of
maintaining the software
 Significant reduction in the amount of coding needed
 Easy migration to the hybrid model.

- PaaS Characteristics
- PaaS has many characteristics that define it as a cloud service,
including:
- Builds on virtualization technology, so resources can easily be
scaled up or down as your business changes
- Provides a variety of services to assist with the development,
testing, and deployment of apps
- Accessible to numerous users via the same development
application
- Integrates web services and databases.
- When to Use PaaS
- Utilizing PaaS is beneficial, sometimes even necessary, in
several situations.
 For example, PaaS can streamline workflows when multiple
developers are working on the same development project.
 PaaS is particularly beneficial if you need to create customized
applications.

 This cloud service also can greatly reduce costs and it can simplify
some challenges that come up if you are rapidly developing or
deploying an app.
- Examples of PaaS
- Popular examples of PaaS include:
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- Windows Azure
- Heroku
- Force.com
- Google App Engine
- OpenShift
-

• IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service
- Cloud infrastructure services, known as Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS), are made of highly scalable and automated compute
resources.
- IaaS is fully self-service for accessing and monitoring computers,
networking, storage, and other services.
- IaaS allows businesses to purchase resources
on-demand and as-needed instead of having to buy hardware
outright.
- IaaS Delivery
 IaaS delivers cloud computing infrastructure, including servers,
network, operating systems, and storage, through virtualization
technology.
 These cloud servers are typically provided to the
organization through a dashboard or an API, giving IaaS clients
complete control over the entire infrastructure.
 IaaS provides the same technologies and capabilities as a
traditional data center without having to physically maintain or
manage all of it.

 IaaS clients can still access their servers and storage directly, but
it is all outsourced through a “virtual data center” in the cloud.
 As opposed to SaaS or PaaS, IaaS clients are responsible for
managing aspects such as applications, runtime, OSes,
middleware, and data.
 However, providers of the IaaS manage the servers, hard drives,
networking, virtualization, and storage.
 Some providers even offer more services beyond the virtualization
layer, such as databases etc.
- IaaS Advantages
- IaaS offers many advantages, including:
 The most flexible cloud computing model
 Easy to automate deployment of storage, networking, servers, and
processing power
 Hardware purchases can be based on consumption
 Clients retain complete control of their infrastructure
 Resources can be purchased as-needed
 Highly scalable

- IaaS Characteristics
- Characteristics that define IaaS include:
 Resources are available as a service
 Cost varies depending on consumption
 Services are highly scalable
 Multiple users on a single piece of hardware
 Organization retain complete control of the infrastructure
 Dynamic and flexible
- When to Use IaaS
- Just as with SaaS and PaaS, there are specific situations when
IaaS is most advantageous.
 Startups and small companies may prefer IaaS to avoid
spending time and money on purchasing and creating hardware
and software.
 Larger companies may prefer to retain complete control over
their applications and infrastructure, but they want to purchase
only what they actually consume or need.

 Companies experiencing rapid growth like the scalability of
IaaS, and they can change out specific hardware and software
easily as their needs evolve. Anytime you are unsure of a new
application's demands, IaaS offers plenty of flexibility and
scalability.
- Examples of IaaS
- Popular examples of IaaS include:
 DigitalOcean
 Linode
 Rackspace
 Amazon Web Services (AWS)
 Cisco Metacloud
 Microsoft Azure
 Google Compute Engine (GCE)

Cloud Deployment Models
• The cloud deployment model identifies the specific type of cloud
environment based on ownership, scale, and access, as well as
the cloud’s nature and purpose.
• The location of the servers you’re utilizing and who controls them
are defined by a cloud deployment model.
• It specifies how your cloud infrastructure will look, what you can
change, and whether you will be given services or will have to
create everything yourself.
• Relationships between the infrastructure and your users are also
defined by cloud deployment types.
• Different types of cloud deployment models are:
- Public Cloud
- Private Cloud
- Hybrid Cloud
- Community Cloud
- Multi-Cloud

• Public Cloud
- The public cloud refers to the cloud computing model in which
IT services are delivered via the internet.
- As the most popular model of cloud computing services, the
public cloud offers vast choices in terms of solutions and
computing resources to address the growing needs of
organizations of all sizes and verticals.
- The defining features of a public cloud solution include:
 High elasticity and scalability
 A low-cost subscription-based pricing tier
- Services on the public cloud may be free, freemium, or
subscription-based, wherein clients are charged based on the
computing resources they consume.
- The computing functionality may range from common
services—email, apps, and storage—to the enterprise-grade
OS platform or infrastructure environments used for software
development and testing.

- The cloud vendor is responsible for developing, managing, and
maintaining the pool of computing resources shared between
multiple tenants from across the network.
• Private Cloud
- The private cloud refers to any cloud solution dedicated for use
by a single organization.
- In the private cloud, you’re not sharing cloud computing
resources with any other organization.
- The data center resources may be located on-premise or
operated by a third-party vendor off-site.
- The computing resources are isolated and delivered via a
secure private network, and not shared with other customers.
- Private cloud is customizable to meet the unique business and
security needs of the organization.
- Offer greater visibility and control into the infrastructure as it
is shared among the users of a particular organization only.

- In light of above organizations can operate compliance-
sensitive IT workloads without compromising on the security
and performance which previously could only achieved with
dedicated on-premise data centers.
• Hybrid Clouds
- The hybrid cloud is any cloud infrastructure environment that
combines both public and private cloud solutions.
- The resources are typically orchestrated as an integrated
infrastructure environment.
- Apps and data workloads can share the resources between
public and private cloud deployment based on organizational
business and technical policies around aspects like:
 Security
 Performance
 Scalability
 Cost
 Efficiency

- An example of hybrid cloud usage is: Clients use the public
cloud for workloads and data that aren’t sensitive to save cost,
but opt for the private cloud for sensitive data.
- When do the customers pursue a hybrid cloud, they may have
another decision to make: whether to be homogeneous or
heterogeneous with your cloud.
- That is—are you using cloud services from a single vendor or
from several vendors?
• Community Cloud
- It allows systems and services to be accessible by a group of
organizations.
- It is a distributed system that is created by integrating the
services of different clouds to address the specific needs of a
community, industry, or business.
- The infrastructure of the community could be shared between
the organization which has shared concerns or tasks.

- It is generally managed by a third party or by the combination
of one or more organizations in the community.
• Multi-Cloud
- It’s similar to the hybrid cloud deployment approach, which
combines public and private cloud resources.
- Instead of merging private and public clouds, multi-cloud uses
many public clouds.
- Although public cloud providers provide numerous tools to
improve the reliability of their services, mishaps still occur.
- It’s quite rare that two distinct clouds would have an incident
at the same moment. As a result, multi-cloud deployment
improves the high availability of your services even more.
- With multi-cloud, customers can mix and match the best
features of each cloud provider’s services to suit the demands
of your apps, workloads, and business by choosing different
cloud providers.

Fog and Edge Computing
• We know that almost all of the processing which takes
place in a cloud environment is carried out within the cloud
data centre.
• Fog Computing is the term coined by Cisco that refers to
extending cloud computing to an edge of the enterprise’s
network.
• Fog computing is a decentralized infrastructure that places
storage and processing components at the edge of the
cloud, where data sources such as application users and
sensors exist.
• More specifically fog computing can be defined as
technological platforms that brings computing processes
closer to where data is generated and collected from.
• According to Domo’s ninth annual ‘Data Never Sleeps’
infographic, 65% of the world’s population — around 5.17
billion people had access to the internet in 2021.

• The amount of data consumed globally was 79 zettabytes,
and this is projected to grow to over 180 zettabytes by
2025
• The internet of things (IoT) drives data-intensive customer
experiences involving anything from smart electric grids to
fitness trackers.
• This data explosion has, however, left organizations
questioning the quality and quantity of data that they store
in the cloud.
• Cloud costs are notorious for escalating quickly, and
selecting through petabytes of data makes real-time
response difficult.

An Example for Better Understanding
• Let’s consider the data sent by a temperature sensor in a
factory line.
• The temperature recording can be pushed to the cloud
every second with a service checking for fluctuations.
• But, a more intelligent way of storing this information
would be to check if there have been any temperature
changes in the last few seconds.
• When a temperature change is noticed, the data is pushed
to the cloud for storage to verify the proper operation of
the production line.
• The temperature may take up little space, but this kind of
scenario is also common with devices such as CCTV
cameras that produce large video and audio data.
• This small storage and computation of data before
sending it over to the cloud is fog computing.

• Fog computing involves the usage of devices with lower
processing capabilities to share some of the cloud’s load.
• The goal of fog computing is to use the cloud only for long-
term and resource-intensive analytics.
• These devices at the ‘edge’ of the cloud, i.e., where the
organization’s system interacts with the outside world, take
care of short-term and time-critical analytics such as fault
alerts, etc.
• Edge computing is a subset of fog computing that involves
processing data right at the point of creation.
• Edge devices include routers, cameras, switches, embedded
servers, sensors, and controllers.
• In edge computing, the data generated by these devices
are stored and computed at the device itself, and the
system doesn’t look at sharing this data with the cloud.

Cloud
(Cloud Layer)
Fog
(Fog Layer)
Edge
(Terminal Layer)

• As the name implies, edge computing occurs exactly at ‘the
edge’ of the application network.
• In terms of topology, this means that an ‘edge computer’ is
right next to or even on top of the endpoints (such as
controllers and sensors) connected to the network.
• The data is then either partially or entirely processed and
sent to the cloud for further processing or storage.
• However, edge computing can lead to large volumes of
data being transferred directly to the cloud (consider above
figure without fog layer). This can affect system capacity,
efficiency, and security.
• Fog computing addresses this problem by inserting a
processing layer between the edge and the cloud.
• This way, the ‘fog computer’ receives the data gathered at
the edge and processes it before it reaches the cloud.

• Fog computing also differentiates between relevant and
irrelevant data. While relevant data is sent to the cloud for
storage, irrelevant data is either deleted or transmitted to
the appropriate local platform.
• As such, edge computing and fog computing work in unison
to minimize latency and maximize the efficiency associated
with cloud-enabled enterprise systems.
• IT personnel commonly view the terms edge computing and
fog computing as interchangeable.

Fog Computing Architecture
• The Fog computing architecture consists of physical and
logical elements in the form of hardware and software to
implement IoT (Internet of Things) network.
• It is composed of IoT devices, fog nodes, fog aggregation
nodes, remote cloud storage and local data storage
server/cloud.
• Let us understand fog computing architecture components.
- IoT devices: These are devices connected on IoT network using
various wired and wireless technologies. These devices produce data
regularly in huge amount.
- There are numerous wireless technologies used in IoT which include
Zigbee, Zwave, RFID, 6LoWPAN, HART, NFC, Bluetooth, BLE, NFC,
ISA-100.11A etc. IoT protocols used include IPv4, IPv6 etc.
- Fog Nodes:
- Any device with computing, storage and network connectivity
is known as fog node. Multiple fog nodes are spread across
larger region to provide support to end devices.

- Fog nodes are connected using different topologies. The fog nodes are
installed at various locations as per different applications such as on
floor of a factory, on top of power pole, along side of railway track, in
vehicles, on oil rig and so on.
- Examples of fog nodes are switches, embedded servers, controllers,
routers, cameras etc. High sensitive data are processed at these fog
nodes.
- Fog aggregate nodes:
- Each fog nodes have their aggregate fog node. It analyzes data in
seconds to minutes. IoT data storage at these nodes can be of
duration in hours or days.
- Its geographical coverage is wider. Fog data services are implemented
to implement such aggregate node points. They are used to address
average sensitive data.
- Remote Cloud:
- All the aggregate fog nodes are connected with the cloud. Time
insensitive data or less sensitive data are processed, analyzed and
stored at the cloud.

- Local server and cloud:
- Often fog computing architecture uses private server/cloud to store
the confidential data of the firm. These local storage is also useful to
provide data security and data privacy.

How Fog Computing Works?
• Step One: Data is collected from various devices and
sensors connected to the internet.
• Step Two: That data is then sent to a fog node, which can
be anything from a smartphone to a smart thermostat.
• Step Three: The fog node processes the data and sends it
back to the devices or sensors.
• Step Four: The fog node sends the data to a central cloud
server.
• Step Five: The data is then processed by the cloud server
and stored in a database.
Here, instead of all data and processing traveling to a
centralized cloud platform, part of the processing and
storage happens at the network’s edge in local devices
or nodes.

Energy Efficient (Green) Computing
• Green computing, also known as green technology, is the art of
using computers and other computing devices and equipment in
energy-efficient and eco-friendly ways.
• Organizations that use green computing methods often deploy
energy-efficient central processing units (CPUs), servers,
peripherals and power systems.
• They also focus on reducing resource use and properly disposing
of physical and electronic waste (e-waste).
• One of the early green computing initiatives in the United States
was the Energy Star labeling program.
• This voluntary program was developed by the Environmental
Protection Agency in 1992 and implemented by manufacturers to
promote energy efficiency in computing hardware and other types
of appliances.
• The Energy Star label is common, especially for laptop computers
and displays. European and Asian countries have implemented
similar programs.

Driving Factors of Green Computing
• IT managers typically focus energy efficiency efforts
on data centers, equipment rooms, storage areas and other
elements that use energy or are affected by energy use.
• Saving money is one driving factor.
• Government regulations dealing with energy conservation
also drive green efforts.
• Concern about climate change, along with internal and
external pressure to be environmentally responsible, is a
third factor behind the green movement.

Organizations GC Strategies
• Remote Work (Work from Home): Cut number of
employees present at workplace which leads to energy
saving.
• Smart technology: Organizations can use internet of
things sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) monitoring
tools to collect and analyze information about the data
center and create a power usage model.
• Upgrade and rearrange the data center: Older
equipment often uses more energy and puts out more heat
than newer devices.
• Power down. CPUs and peripherals can be powered down
and turned off during extended periods of inactivity.
• Strategic scheduling. Do computer-related tasks in
dedicated blocks of time, leaving hardware off at other
times.

• Display selection: Liquid crystal display monitors use less
energy and give off less heat than cathode-ray
tube monitors.
• Computer selection: Laptops use significantly less energy
than desktop computers.
• Power management: These features can be set to
automatically power down hard drives and displays after
several minutes of inactivity.
• Temperature check: Newer IT devices can safely run at
higher temperatures than older ones, so the data center may
not need to be as cool as in the past.
• E-waste: Dispose of e-waste according to federal, state and
local regulations.
• Alternative energy: Investigate alternative energy sources,
such as geothermal cooling and wind and hydroelectric
power.

High Performance Computing (HPC)
• HPC is technology that uses clusters of powerful computers or
servers (computer servers), working in parallel, to process massive
multi-dimensional datasets (big data) and solve complex problems
at extremely high speeds.
• HPC systems typically perform at speeds more than one million
times faster than the fastest commodity desktop, laptop or server
systems.
• An HPC cluster consists of hundreds or thousands of compute
servers that are networked together. Each server is called a node.
• The nodes in each cluster work in parallel with each other, boosting
processing speed to deliver high performance computing.
• One of the best-known types of HPC solutions is the supercomputer.
• A supercomputer contains thousands of compute nodes that work
together to complete one or more tasks. This is called parallel
processing.
• Computer servers are much more powerful than the conventional
PCs and laptops and use optimized H/W meant for performance.

How does HPC Work?
• A standard computing system solves problems primarily using
serial computing—it divides the workload into a sequence of tasks,
and then executes the tasks one after the other on the same
processor.
• In contrast, HPC leverages:
- Massively parallel computing
- Parallel computing runs multiple tasks simultaneously on multiple
computer servers or processors.
- Massively parallel computing is parallel computing using tens of
thousands to millions of processors or processor cores.
- Computer clusters (also called HPC clusters):
- An HPC cluster consists of multiple high-speed computer servers
networked together, with a centralized scheduler that manages the
parallel computing workload.
- The computers, called nodes, use either high-performance multi-core
CPUs or, more likely today, GPUs (graphical processing units), which
are well suited for rigorous mathematical calculations, machine
learning models and graphics-intensive tasks.

- A single HPC cluster can include 100,000 or more nodes.
- High-performance components:
- All the other computing resources in an HPC cluster—networking,
memory, storage and file systems—are high-speed, high-throughput
and low-latency components that can keep pace with the nodes and
optimize the computing power and performance of the cluster.

HPC System architecture at Marquette
University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
The system is named as ‘Raj’ in honor of
Prof. Rajendra Rathor who managed
grant for the system.

Details of Above HPC System

Automatic Computing
• Autonomic computing is a computer's ability to manage itself
automatically through adaptive technologies that further computing
capabilities and cut down on the time required by computer
professionals to resolve system difficulties and other maintenance
such as software updates.
• The move toward autonomic computing is driven by a desire for cost
reduction and the need to lift the obstacles presented by computer
system complexities to allow for more advanced computing
technology.
• Autonomic computing was implemented by IBM in 2001.
• There are four areas or characteristics of Autonomic Computing as
defined by IBM. These are as follows:
• Self-Configuration
- The system must be able to configure itself automatically according to the
changes in its environment. It should be able to add new components,
configure its components, get rid of old or faulty components, and
reconfigure them by own its own, without needing human interference or
intervention (or with very little human assistance).

• Self-Healing
- IBM mentions that an autonomic system must have property by which it
must be able to repair itself from errors and also route the functions away
from trouble whenever they are encountered.
- It should have the ability to identify faulty components, diagnose them
using a corrective mechanism, and heal itself without damaging or harming
any other components of the system.
• Self-Optimization
- According to IBM an autonomic system must be able to perform in an
optimized manner and ensure that it follows an efficient algorithm for
all computing operations. This capability is also known as the self
adjusting or self tuning property of an autonomous system. Resource
utilization and workload management both happen to be aspects of
these characteristics.
• Self-Protection
- IBM states that an autonomic system must be able to perform
detection, identification, and protection from security and system
attacks so that systems’ security and integrity remain intact.

2. Operating System Platforms
• Microsoft Windows Server comprises about 35 percent of
the server operating system market.
• 65 percent of corporate servers using some form of the
Unix operating system or Linux, an inexpensive and
robust open source relative of Unix.
• Microsoft Windows Server is capable of providing enterprise
wide operating system and network services, and appeals
to organizations seeking Windows-based IT infrastructures.
• Unix and Linux are scalable, reliable, and much less
expensive than mainframe operating systems. They can
also run on many different types of processors.
• The major providers of Unix operating systems are IBM,
HP, and Sun, each with slightly different and partially
incompatible versions.

• At the client level, 90 percent of PCs use some form of the
Microsoft Windows operating system (such as Windows
10 or 11) to manage the resources and activities of the
computer.
• However, there is now a much greater variety of operating
systems than in the past, with new operating systems for
computing on handheld mobile digital devices or cloud-
connected computers.
• Google’s Chrome OS provides a lightweight operating
system for cloud computing using netbooks. Programs are
not stored on the user’s PC but are used over the Internet
and accessed through the Chrome Web browser.
• User data reside on servers across the Internet.

• Android is an open source operating system for mobile
devices such as smartphones and tablet computers developed
by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google.
• It has become the most popular smartphone platform
worldwide, competing with iOS, Apple's mobile operating
system for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.
• Conventional client operating system software is designed
around the mouse and keyboard, but increasingly becoming
more natural and intuitive by using touch technology.
• iOS, the operating system for the phenomenally popular Apple
iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, features a multitouch interface,
where users employ one or more fingers to manipulate objects
on a screen without a mouse or keyboard.
• Microsoft's Windows 10, which runs on tablets as well as PCs,
has a user interface optimized for touch, but also works with a
mouse and keyboard.

3. Enterprise Software Application
• Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application
software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the
needs of an organization rather than individual users.
• Such organizations include businesses, schools, interest-based
user groups, clubs, charities, and governments. Enterprise
software is an integral part of a (computer-based) information
system; a collection of such software is called an enterprise
system.
• These systems handle a number of operations in an
organization to enhance the business and management
reporting tasks.
• The systems must process the information at a relatively high
speed and can be deployed across a variety of networks.
• To better explain what an enterprise application is, let’s look at
some examples you may be familiar with:

- Accounting and Billing Systems (Example: Tally)
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (Example:
Salesforce)
- Point-of-Sale Software (POS) (Example: Vend POS)
- Supply Chain Management (SCM) (Example: Oracle SCM)
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) (Example: SAP ERP)
- Business Intelligence Systems (Example: Funnel)
- Human Resource (HR) Systems (Example: UKG Dimensions)
- Project Management System (Example: JIRA, MS Project)
• As we just saw, many off-the-shelf enterprise solutions
support a wide range of business processes and needs.
However, a lot of companies prefer to build their enterprise
applications in-house.
• This is particularly true if they have unique needs or if they are
using digital technology to generate business advantage.

4. Networking/ Telecommunications
• Companies worldwide are expected to spend $408 billion for
telecommunications equipment in 2013 and another $1.7 billion on
telecommunications services (Gartner, 2012).
• Information Technology Infrastructure enterprise networking environment,
including the Internet. Windows Server is predominantly used as a local
area network operating system, followed by Linux and Unix.
• Large, enterprise wide area networks use some variant of
Unix. Most local area networks, as well as wide area enterprise networks,
use the TCP/IP protocol suite as a standard.
• The leading networking hardware providers are Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent,
Nortel, and Juniper Networks.
• Telecommunications platforms are typically provided by
telecommunications/telephone services companies that offer voice and
data connectivity, wide area networking, wireless services, and Internet
access.
• Leading telecommunications service vendors include Reliance Jio, BSNL
and Airtel.
• This market is exploding with new providers of cellular wireless, high-
speed Internet, and Internet telephone services.

• Internet platforms overlap with, and must relate to, the firm’s general
networking infrastructure and hardware and software platforms.
• They include hardware, software, and management services to
support a firm’s Web site, including Web hosting services, routers,
and cabling or wireless equipment.
• A Web hosting service maintains a large Web server, or series of
servers, and provides fee-paying subscribers with space to maintain
their Web sites.
• The Internet hardware server market has become increasingly
concentrated in the hands of IBM, Dell, Sun (Oracle), and HP, as
prices have fallen dramatically.
• The major Web software application development tools and suites are
supplied by Microsoft (Microsoft Expression Studio and the Microsoft
.NET family of development tools).
• Plus by Oracle-Sun (Sun’s Java is the most widely used tool for
developing interactive Web applications on both the server and client
sides), and a host of independent software developers, including
Adobe (Creative Suite) and Real Networks (media software).
5. Internet Platforms

6. Data Management & Storage
• Enterprise database management software is responsible for organizing
and managing the firm’s data so that they can be efficiently accessed and
used.
• The leading database software providers are IBM (DB2), Oracle, Microsoft
(SQL Server), and Sybase (Adaptive
Server Enterprise), which supply more than 90 percent of the U.S.
database software marketplace.
• MySQL is an open source relational database product now owned by
Oracle Corporation, and Apache Hadoop is an open source software
framework for managing massive data sets.
• The physical data storage market is dominated by EMC Corporation for
large-scale systems, and a small number of PC hard disk manufacturers
led by Seagate, Samsung and Western Digital.
• In addition to traditional disk arrays and tape libraries, large firms are
turning to network-based storage technologies.
• Storage area networks (SANs) connect multiple storage devices on a
separate high-speed network dedicated to storage.
• The SAN creates a large central pool of storage that can be rapidly
accessed and shared by multiple servers.

7. Consulting & System Integration Services
• Today, even a large firm does not have the staff, the skills, the
budget, or the necessary experience to deploy and maintain its entire
IT infrastructure.
• Implementing a new infrastructure requires significant changes in
business processes and procedures, training
and education, and software integration.
• Leading consulting firms providing this expertise include Accenture,
IBM Global Services, HP, Infosys, and Wipro
Technologies.
• Software integration means ensuring the new infrastructure works
with the firm’s older, so-called legacy systems and ensuring the new
elements of the infrastructure work with one another.
• Legacy systems are generally older transaction processing systems
created for mainframe computers that continue to be used to avoid
the high cost of replacing or redesigning them.
• Replacing these systems is cost prohibitive and generally not
necessary if these older systems can be integrated into a
contemporary infrastructure.

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