quartz/content/notes/16-cloud-security.md
2022-09-21 14:54:30 +12:00

2.5 KiB

title aliases tags
16-cloud-security
comp210
lecture
  • what is cloud computing
  • what is service virtualisation
  • security issues

what is cloud

  • largely a marketing term
  • vague - doesn't mean much
  • slowly replacing the word 'web'

implies

  • large cluster of networked servers acting as hosts
    • usually virtualised
  • large number of users
  • complexity of infrastructure hidden from devs
    • and users

cloud platforms

SaaS

  • provider has an actual product
    • they host it (or delegate the hosting)
    • customer doesn't need to host anything
  • thin client
    • usually web based
    • maybe also mobile app

examples

  • customer realtions (salesforce)
  • accounting (xero)
  • PoS (vend)
  • dropbox, gmail, google docs

PaaS

  • provides a solution stack
    • tools, environment, services, libraries to run a system
      • storage services / libaries / tools
      • email libraries
      • web app libraries
      • admin tools: deployment, scaling, logs, billing, quotas etc
  • extensible
    • devs can add their own libraries

examples

  • google app engine
  • elastic beanstalk
  • azure cloud services
  • heroku

IaaS

  • virtual hosting
    • allows custome to run own VM
      • linux or wiindows server
      • customer can install whatever on the VM
      • barebones or canned VM images are available
      • customer can provide own images
  • virtual networking
    • public facing IP addresses mapped to virtual network interfaces for load balancing, and fault tolerance
  • virtual storage
    • file storage
    • exampkes
      • amazon S3
      • google cloud storage
      • azure storage
    • hot storage for frequently access data
      • higher performance, higher cost
    • cold for infrequent access

primary selling points

  • agility/elasticity
  • reduced cost
    • multitenancy
    • economies of scale
    • usage based billing
  • reliability
    • massive redundancy
  • low capital expenditure
  • greener
    • low power hardware, virtualisation, centralisation of cooling, environmental cooling, sharing of resources

potential problems

  • Saas
    • need to train staff
    • importing and exporting data may be difficult
    • dependent on provider health
    • vulnerable to price changes
    • provider may be aquired by another company with different goals
  • Paas
    • use of common APIs libraries and services mitigate the lock-in problem
    • avoid using vendor specific APIs, or wrap them with facades
  • IaaS
    • mitigated by sticking to the standard services (MySQL & nginx for example) and standard libs
    • avoid vendor specific interfaces to proprietary services