Cloud Management and Security

2 Cloud Structure

This chapter presents the main components constituting the Cloud infrastructure. It also discusses relations and interactions between its components. Understanding the Cloud structure is vital to understanding Cloud properties, challenges, and the differences between its deployment types. This chapter also helps when discussing solutions for addressing Cloud problems.

2.1 Introduction

The Cloud infrastructure hosts various types of applications which could be simple, mid-range, or even highly complex. In addition, the Cloud infrastructure is accessed by a huge customer base. The huge number of applications hosted at the Cloud infrastructure, their variations, and the large customer base results in a highly complex and heterogeneous structure. Also, the differences in application requirements and the complexity of the infrastructure require Cloud components to be provided by different vendors. All these factors result in complexities in understanding the properties of the Cloud infrastructure and the relations between its entities. It gets even more complicated when considering the collaboration within a Cloud and across federated Clouds.

This chapter clarifies the structure of the Cloud and federated Clouds. Specifically, it focuses on the nature of Cloud resources, their grouping, types of data, and data flow across Cloud entities. Subsequent chapters of the first part of the book build on this chapter and clarify Cloud properties and management services. ...