Your subject coordinator will be available for consultation. You will be informed of the consultation procedures via your Interact2 subject site; as well as the names, contact details and consultation procedures for any other staff teaching the subject.

Subject Overview

Abstract

This subject provides students with an in-depth study of cloud computing technologies and their use in business. It looks into various standards based cloud systems and architectures. It further discusses various cloud delivery models, planning for migration to a cloud model. It also discusses governance and security issues in a cloud model and managing the cloud infrastructure.

Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this subject, you should:
- be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different cloud computing architectures to meet a set of given business requirements;
- be able to evaluate a set of business requirements to determine suitability for a cloud computing delivery model;
- be able to identify and design an ICT Risk Management strategy for a cloud computing delivery plan to meet business requirements;
- be able to critically analyse business requirements to plan a migration to a cloud model;
- be able to compare and critique Service Level Agreements (SLA) that meet the business requirements for a cloud computing plan

Subject content

There are a number of topics in this subject which you will access through Interact. These topics are:

1. Cloud Basics.
2. Cloud Technologies.
3. Cloud Concepts and Models.
4. Cloud Architectures.
5. Cloud Application (Microservices) Architectures
6. Security in the Cloud.
7. Risk Management in the Cloud.
8. Management of services in the Cloud.
9. SLAs and their place in the Cloud.
10. Planning your Migration to the Cloud.
11. Governance in the Cloud.
12. Bringing it all together.

Assessment item 1

Concepts and Models

Task

MetaSoft Ltd is a software development company which works for clients across Australia and New Zealand. The company is considering moving some of its computer infrastructure into the Cloud. The MetaSoft Board is contemplating this move as a way to increase the company's flexibility and responsiveness, as well as to achieve some savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure.

MetaSoft has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 100 software engineering and support staff that work on different projects for clients in Australia and New Zealand. They have been advised that a move to using a Cloud based infrastructure would be an advantage to them.

Your task is to:

1. Prepare a PowerPoint briefing for the MetaSoft board. Your briefing should:

• 1. Explain the main concepts of Cloud Computing and why you think that a move to the Cloud could be good for MetaSoft;
• 2. Explain some of the Cloud Architectures that you think would be useful for MetaSoft to use as part of their Cloud infrastructure.
• 3. Each slide in the briefing must also include speaking notes in the notes section to explain the slide, and all images used in the briefing should be referenced.

2. One of MetaSoft's first undertakings is to provide all their staff with the ability to access office automation, such as email, word processing and spreadsheet capabilities, as well as online storage for their files, whether they are in the office, at home, or deployed on site in the field. The MetaSoft board is very concerned to learn about the critical issues, other than cost, that may affect the supply of Cloud based office automation to their staff. You will need to prepare a report on the best way to provide office automation for MetaSoft. Your report should:

• 1. Provide MetaSoft with TWO different approaches to providing office automation to their staff;
• 2. Outline the major benefits and issues with each approach;
• 3. Provide a summary of your advice to this company along with your recommendation about which option to choose. Your report should be no longer than 2 pages.

3. MetaSoft has data centres in Sydney and Melbourne. The Australian data centres are linked by a fibre based WAN, which is supplied and maintained by a local Telco, and data is replicated between the data centres daily. The two data centres each run x86 based servers attached to a HPE 3PAR SAN with 1PB of storage. They also have a series of RHEL 6 servers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux v6.0) that are used to host Web pages and various Web services. The RHEL 6 servers are located only in the Sydney data centre. MetaSoft is considering initially moving its Web infrastructure to a public Cloud, but they are unsure of whether they should migrate to an IaaS or PaaS solution. You are to write a report for the MetaSoft board that:

• 1. Describes the difference between infrastructure provided using an IaaS provider and a platform provided by a PaaS provider in a public Cloud. You will need to discuss the critical differences, issues and factors, other than cost, that MetaSoft will have to consider in choosing to migrate their Web infrastructure to either an IaaS or a PaaS service provider. Your report should take no more than two pages.

4. MetaSoft is also considering whether to use PaaS or SaaS to provide services to its employees. MetaSoft has deployed Microsoft SharePoint 2013 from its data centre as a collaboration and document management tool for its 100 employees. The SharePoint 2013 instance has been extensively customised to suit MetaSoft's needs and also runs Project Central, their Project Management tool as a separate application from within SharePoint. All employees have the Microsoft Office 2013 suite of office automation products installed on their respective desktops or laptops. MetaSoft would like to move its SharePoint 2013 instance to the cloud to make it more accessible, particularly to its users in remote or overseas locations. MetaSoft want you to report on:

• 1. What are the major differences between the models IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?
• 2. Recommend the model that you consider most appropriate for this service and discuss why this model is the most appropriate for the SharePoint service.
• 3. What are the most likely problems that MetaSoft will encounter with the model that you recommend? How would you advise MetaSoft to deal with these issues?
• 4. Your report for this question should be no more than 3 pages.

Presentation

Your report MUST be presented in MS Word format. Your report should:
- Use Calibri, or a similar font, in 11 or 12 point type.
- All diagrams and images are to be embedded in the document. Diagrams and images that are suppliued separately will not be marked.
- All text should be left-justified.
- Each page must have a header or footer with your name and student number.
- Page numbers must be shown in the footer of each page, except on the title page.

Assessment item 2

Applied Cloud Concepts in AWS

Task

Complete the online quiz on Applied Cloud Concepts in AWS in the Interact Test Centre.

Rationale

This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:
- be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different cloud computing architectures to meet a set of given business requirements.
This assessment covers the following outcomes for this subject:
- Be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different Cloud Computing Architectures to meet a set of given business requirements;

Assessment item 3

Security Management and Migration

Task

MetaSoft Ltd is a software development company which works across Australia and New Zealand. The company is considering the following strategic proposal:

- They plan to close down the Melbourne data centre rather than update or replace the older infrastructure. The existing data and services in that data centre would be moved to the Sydney data centre, which has the most up to date infrastructure, as well as capacity to expand.

- They plan to move all their Web Services into the Cloud in order to provide an increased level of HA (High Availability) as well as a better degree of flexibility in supplying data to their customers and employees. This would entail changing their current web software architecture to take advantage of the flexibility and scalability that can be gained by moving to a Microservices model (this would entail the use of such services as AWS Lambda or Azure Functions, Containers, Data Services, and Cloud Edge capability and monitoring).

- They also plan to use the Cloud Infrastructure to increase flexibility and availability for some of the LoB (Line of Business) applications that will continue to run on their own internal infrastructure. However, they are hoping to take advantage of the Cloud infrastructure to help manage and balance demand on internal resource use.

The Board of MetaSoft is contemplating this strategy as a way to increase the company's flexibility and responsiveness, particularly for its overseas operations. The Board also expects to achieve significant savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure by closing the oldest existing data centre. This would entail retiring the infrastructure in that data centre rather than having to update it.

MetaSoft has again approached you to advise them on this strategy. You have already advised MetaSoft that this strategic approach will mean that they will need to design and operate a "Hybrid Cloud" methodology, where part of their data centre is "on premise" and another part in a Cloud.

MetaSoft also plan to run a Risk and Security Workshop to assess the risks, security issues and possible methods of control that will be required with this "Hybrid Cloud" approach. Your team will be required to organise, run and facilitate this workshop.

The Board is also concerned about how this strategy will affect their BCP (Business Continuity Plan) and their backup and disaster recovery strategies.

Tasks

Your team has been engaged to provide a risk assessment for MetaSoft in their planned move to a Hybrid Cloud strategy.

Team Setup

This assignment is a team assignment. The rationale for using a team approach is that most IT risk management assessments are normally done by teams of between 2-5 Architects, Information Security experts, Operations and Business leaders for each problem. You will be assigned to a team and the team, as a whole, will be responsible for the development of the risk assessment.

Team Member Responsibilities
Each team member will be assessed on:
- The final risk assessment presented by the team;
- The individual contributions that they have made to the risk assessment. This will be shown by the entries that they have made in the Team forum;
- Team members should note that:
A total of 20% of the total marks for this assignment are for individual contributions to the team task;
A team member without any individual contributions in the Team Forum will be regarded as having not contributed to the risk assessment. This will result in either reduced marks or no marks being awarded to that team member for this assignment.

The tasks:

The team's task is to prepare a report for MetaSoft that discusses the following:
1. Describe which Cloud architectures you would employ to assist MetaSoft to meet the Board's strategy?

• 1. Describe each of the architectures that you would use, along with your reasons for deploying it.
• 2. Describe the benefits and issues that would be the result of your deployment of these architectures.

2. Describe the risks that you see associated with this new Hybrid Cloud and Microservices strategy. You should name and describe each risk that you identify, and then describe a possible control for the risk. This should be presented in a tabular form.

3. Describe the general Information Security steps and controls that you would recommend to the Board to secure the Hybrid Cloud. You will need to explain to the Board your reasons for recommending these particular security steps.

4. Discuss briefly what you would recommend should be included in MetaSoft's BCP as a result of their adoption of a Hybrid Cloud and Microservices approach. You will need to consider, as a minimum, the issues of application resilience, backup and disaster recovery in a Hybrid Cloud environment. This section should be no more than 2 pages.

5. Discuss the requirements that MetaSoft will need to consider in order to conduct remote server administration, resource management and SLA management for its proposed IaaS and PaaS instances (it may be useful to consider Morad and Dalbhanjan's operational checklists for this section). This section should be no more than two to three pages in length.

6. The MetaSoft board has decided, as an initial step, to move their SharePoint instance and their SQL Server 2012 Database servers to the AWS cloud in order to begin the migration process, and test their strategy.

• 1. Describe the steps that you would include in the plan to migrate these services.
• 2. What are the critical points and issues that you see occurring at each of these steps? Explain why you see these points or issues as critical.

Presentation

The team is to provide a written report with the following headings:
- Proposed Architectures for a Hybrid Cloud

- Risk report for Hybrid Cloud and Microservices
- Proposed Information Security controls
- BCP Changes
- Hybrid Cloud Administration and SLA Management
- SharePoint Migration Planning
As a rough guide, the report should not be longer than about 6,000 words. The report is to be loaded into the Team Resource area in Interact.
All risk assessment discussions in the team forum should be exported into a single document and loaded into the Team Resource area in Interact.
It is suggested that the report should be written using Google Docs using MS Word format. Google Docs allows multiple authors to contribute to a single document, and their individual contributions can be more easily assessed.

Assessment item 4

Requirements

The final examination is worth 50% of the total course grade. It will be of two (2) hours duration and is a closed book examination. Please note that no electronic dictionaries will be permitted to be brought into the exam.
The basic format of the exam is:

- A series of Fill in the Blank questions;
- Eight (8) short answer questions;
- A case study that sets out a scenario for an Cloud Services problem, justifying your decisions according to the principles of Cloud Computing that have been studied.

It is your responsibility to ensure that you are aware of the requirements for completing the exam and that you complete the exam during the 24 hour window provided to you. The School of Computing and Mathematics will not accept misreading the exam window as misadventure.Rationale

This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:

- be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different cloud computing architectures to meet a set of given business requirements.
- be able to evaluate a set of business requirements to determine suitability for a cloud computing delivery model.
- be able to identify and design an ICT Risk Management strategy for a cloud computing delivery plan to meet business requirements.
- be able to critically analyse business requirements to plan a migration to a cloud model.
- be able to compare and critique Service Level Agreements (SLA) that meet the business requirements for a cloud computing plan

This is an online exam based on the content covered in this subject designed to demonstrate your understanding of all concepts (objectives) covered in the subject.