Reliability Aspect of Cloud Computing Environment

This book presents both qualitative and quantitative approaches to cloud reliability measurements, together with specific case studies to reflect the real-time reliability applications. Traditional software reliability models cannot be used for cloud reliability evaluation due to the changes in the development architecture and delivery designs. The customer–vendor relationship mostly comes to a close with traditional software installations, whereas a SaaS subscription is just a start of the customer–vendor relationship. Reliability of cloud services is normally presented in terms of percentage, such as 99.9% or 99.99%. However, this type of reliability measurement provides confidence only in the service availability feature and may cover all the quality attributes of the product.

The book offers a comprehensive review of the reliability models suitable for different services and deployments to help readers identify the appropriate cloud products for individual business needs. It also helps developers understand customer expectations and, most importantly, helps vendors to improve their service and support. As such it is a valuable resource for cloud customers, developers, vendors and the researchers.

Chapter 1 – Cloud Computing

Ø  Introduction

·         Characteristics

·         Service models

·         Deployment Models

·         Virtualization Concepts

·         Business benefits

Ø  Cloud adoption / migration

·         Merits and demerits of cloud adoption

·         Strategy for cloud adoption

·         Cost Benefit Analysis of cloud adoption

·         On-premise vs hybrid solutions

·         Risks and challenges for cloud migration

·         Case studies for adoption and migration

Ø  Issues and challenges of cloud adoption

·         Technology Perspective

·         Cloud Provider’s Perspective

·         Cloud Service Consumer’s Perspective

·         Governance and Regulatory Perspective

Chapter 2 - Cloud Reliability       

Ø  Introduction to Reliability

·         MTTR

Ø  Traditional Software reliability

Ø  Reliability in other distributed computing environment

·         Reliability of virtualized environment

·         Types of cloud service failures 

·         Reliability requirement perspective

o   Infrastructure

o   Platform

o   Software

Ø  Reliability need in business

·         Business continuity

·         Risk mitigation strategy

Chapter 3 – Reliability Metrics

Ø  Reliability of Service Oriented Architecture

Ø  Reliability in virtualized environment

Ø  Recommendations for reliable services

·         ISO 9126

·         NIST

·         CSMIC

Ø  Reliability metric categories

·         Standards based metrics

·         Usage based metrics

·         Expectation based metrics

Chapter 4 – Reliability Metrics Formulations

Ø  Infrastructure as a Service   

·         Reliability Metrics identification

·         Quantification formula

Ø  Platform as a Service   

·         Factors and sub factors categorization

·         Reliability Metrics identification

·         Quantification formula

Ø  Software as a Service   

·         Factors and sub factors categorization

·         Reliability Metrics identification

·         Quantification formula

Chapter 5 – Reliability Model

·         Analysis of existing reliability models     

Ø  Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)

·         Types of MCDM methods

·         Analytic Hierarchical Process

o   Weightage preference

o   Comparison Matrix

o   Eigen Vector

Ø  CORE Reliability Evaluation Model

·         Layers of the model

o   User Preference Layer

o   Reliability Evaluation Layer

o   Repository Layer

Chapter 6 – Reliability Evaluation

·         Standard based input

·         Usage based input

·         Expectation based input

Ø  Factors and Sub factors ranking

Ø  Reliability Computation of factors

·         Factor metric

o   Relative Reliability Matrix (RRM)

o   Relative Reliability Vector (RRV)  

Ø  Final Reliability computation   

·         Single product reliability

·         Multiple products reliability

Dr. Vikas Kumar received his M.Sc. in Electronics from Kurukshetra University, Haryana, followed by an M.Sc. in Computer Science and Ph.D. from the same university. His Ph.D. work was in collaboration with CEERI, Pilani and he has worked in a number of ISRO sponsored projects. Dr. Kumar has designed and conducted a number of training programs for the corporate sector and has served as a trainer for various Govt of India departments. Along with six books, he has published more than 100 research papers in various national and international conferences and journals. He was the Editor of the international refereed journal “Asia-Pacific Business Review” from June 2007 to June 2009. He is a regular reviewer for a number of international journals and prestigious conferences. He is currently a Professor at the Sharda University, Greater Noida and a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore and University of Northern Iowa, USA.

Dr. R. Vidhyalakshmi received her Master’s in Computer Science from Bharathidasan University, Tamil Nadu, India and Ph.D. from JJT University, Rajasthan, India. Her Ph.D. work focused on determining the reliability of SaaS Applications. She is a lifetime member of ISTE. She has conducted training programs in Java, Advanced Excel and R Programming. She has published numerous research papers in Scopus indexed international journals, and national and international conference proceedings. Her areas of interest include information systems, web technologies, database management systems, data sciences, big data and analytics and cloud computing. She is currently a faculty member at the Army Institute of Management & Technology, Greater Noida, India.