ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the significant reliance of cloud computing architectures on server and storage virtualization as a layer between applications and distributed computing resources. It also discusses Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an evolutionary step because cloud initiatives do not move to cloud computing from SOA or replace SOA with cloud computing but rather use SOA to enable cloud computing or as a transit point to cloud computing. The chapter describes what it takes to build a cloud network, evolution from the managed service provider model to cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service and from single-purpose architectures to multipurpose architectures, the concept and design of data center virtualization. Cloud service providers such as Amazon, TheWebService, Force.com, and others have evolved from the typically poorly designed SOA service models and have done a pretty good job in architecting and delivering their services. Cloud-based server farms can achieve high scalability and availability using server load balancing.