Playing the Balancing Act

It is important to redistribute workload in a distributed system to ensure that no computing machine is overloaded or sitting idle. Here is how to handle the task.

By Raj Darji

With a drastic change in the work-life of all management and firms, irrespective of the volume, cloud system has emerged as the most magnified trend among all of the technologies by a larger margin. With this system at stake, as the most prominent market in the upcoming days, the advancement of the system has been increasing multifold. Observing this on the broader picture, the cloud system is just an abstraction to a much bigger phenomenon going on the backdrops.

The cloud infrastructure serves as the basic block of the much bigger chain. This block consists of several hardware and software components, which include servers, storage, networking, virtualization software, services, and management tools that support the computing requirements of a cloud computing model. There is also an abstraction layer for both the software and hardware ensuring that the process doesn’t mess with the working protocol of the subsystems and enhances proper flow in the algorithm. The greatest advantage of cloud computing is that a single-user physical machine is transformed into a multi-user virtual machine that can be inter-connected from any part of the globe based on the server establishment.

Balancing the Excess Load with Modern Solutions

As the number of users grew, one of the major issues that organizations face is cloud load unbalancing. This exists because of the excess traffic of user tasks which leads to degradation of performance and efficacy of the system. There is an utmost necessity to migrate tasks to another resource on other virtual machines. This is where the load balancing comes into the picture. This process easily redistributes workload in a distributed system, thereby ensuring no servers or computing machines are overloaded or idle.

Load balancing paces up the response time, execution time, and system stability, thereby improving the performance of the cloud. In order to efficiently implement this, we do need to provide a top-class upgraded infrastructure, which not just prepares the computing machines for workload or huge processes and also boosts up the virtual machine’s performances as well.

The whole load balancing procedure involves a multitude of abstract processes. To begin with, it identifies the users’ requirements for execution. It later identifies the details of the virtual machine from which the information is generated. The tasks or the user requirements are then scheduled and sorted as per the machine protocol, and later the resources are allocated for the speeding up of the execution and for resource management. Finally, the resources are migrated either to a different virtual machine or for a different task list on a different server.

The Next-Gen Solution

With generation of huge equipment for computing diminishing constantly, there is a rise in mobile applications and technology ruling the industry. This standard transformation not just enhanced the processes of information, but also made it more compact and durable. Mobile Cloud Computing stands out as the next step to the rise in cloud technology. The infrastructure to this peripheral has been drafted in such a way that it doesn’t disrupt the implementation of multiple users or task overload as well. The cloud services are usually based on utility computing, virtualization, and service-oriented infrastructure as the process for these compact devices is slightly complicated comparatively.

On observing the infrastructure for mobile cloud services, a major factor that enhances the performance on mobile is the Computing Offloading Procedure. This process enhances the applications performances by altering the necessary changes in the operating system of the device which includes reducing battery usage and executing applications that are unable to execute due to insufficient resources on the smartphone of the user. In short, the cloud protocol adapts and tunes itself as per the device’s specification to deliver effective performance. This infrastructure works on the principle of migration, where the resources are migrated from a mobile device to a resource’s rich server or nearby infrastructure which provides more space for the users to perform their desired task without any hindrance from the infrastructural chain.

Hypervisor and Cloud Security Enhancement

Talking about sharing and migrating, another important concept that acts as an underestimated part is the Hypervisor, the software that is capable of running several virtual machines (VMs), each with a separate operating system. Though the cloud provides several benefits, there are several loopholes through which the host computer and all the interconnected virtual machines can be compromised and this is called hyper jacking. Therefore, securing the hypervisor is the basic step that can maintain cloud security effectively.

Cloud security is the existential question that pops in the minds of both existing and new users who have hopped on this terrain. On observing some of the surveys and reports which talk about various issues caused due to inefficient cloud security, we see several identity theft and unauthorized accesses, insecure interfaces, and many more. This sounds small but this wave leads to greater consequences. According to a survey, 98% of the companies had witnessed at least one cloud data breach in the past 18 months, as compared to 79% in 2020.

There are multiple benefits that we obtain from cloud security solutions, which are not acknowledged much. For example, DDoS protection – the distributed denial of service protection – helps protect from attacks that usually flood the machine with random requests and spam data, which not just decreases the performance of the system but invites unwanted threats such as viruses and malware into the system. Thereby, DDoS protection stops this bulk traffic that targets servers. The security solutions also offer threat detection software that enhances the security of devices that are accessing the network or the servers as well.

The cloud infrastructure is complicated, as it is not just a single entity, but a collection of multiple entities, and thereby, the security concerns can be initialized with any of those entities being compromised. It is of utmost importance to secure each and every component that is being accessed. This includes accounts, servers, and storage as well. The cloud infrastructure does provide several amenities such as Encryption Protocols, Hashing, and Single Sign On (SSO) as well to safeguard their network and servers. There are other features such as control inbound and outbound communication that allows the servers to connect only to known network and IP addresses and identity and access management tools which provides the foundation for securing access to sensitive resources. This protects the servers and the users’ host systems from cyber attacks.

Cloud infrastructure and its applications opened a new portal in the world of tech. With more and more innovations and advancements in line, cloud technology is setting the bar high for the upcoming future prospects to achieve.

Darji is Founder and CEO, Aarav Solutions

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