3.4+Internet

3.4 Syllabus Content

Doing everything on the cloud is efficient in a way that we can work on from anywhere anytime as long as we have internet connection. However, when we don’t have good internet connection, there is nothing we can do since everything we have done is stored on the cloud. . Internet data storing plans might also be an obstacle while operating on the cloud because the costs increase as more data is wanted to be stored on the cloud. Moreover, The cloud is not invincible to attacks so your data is not 100% safe. Having a backup saved on a physical hard drive is a must, cause you can’t rely too much in the cloud (look what happen to Amazon and Sony). || 1.1_reliability 2.1_business 3.1_hardware 3.2_software 3.4_internet || Egyptian citizens, especially for the protesters, have organized the initial protests against the government online, through social media such as Facebook groups. The restored Internet would allow them to use to do so again and other citizens are now back to their computers and can have regular socialization online. A main ways of communication with the outside world as well as with themselves, Internet would allow the citizens to join together through websites on the internet to create groups that support what they think is best for them. In this case, they want a reelection from their current leader.
 * Strand 3.4 Internet Articles ||
 * Date || Article || Comments || Tags ||
 * May-11 || [|How Google Chromebook Will Feel for Music Fans | Epicenter | Wired.com] || 1) What are the problems with doing everything on the cloud?
 * Feb-11 || Egypt, Internet access: Egyptian government restores Internet service - latimes.com || 1. How might the internet be useful for the Egyptian citizens?

2. What does it mean "bring down Egyptian websites"? “Bring down Egyptian websites” means to stop access to those Egyptian websites through means such as having a DoS attack on the website. Also hackers can hack into the website and destroy the coding and content of the website and thus “bring down” the websites. Bringing down Egyptian websites can also mean that they are blocking all access to Egypt because there wouldn’t be any portal into Egypt if all the Egyptian websites are brought down. || 1.11 People and Machine, 2.5 Social Networking 3.4 Internet, || This article is about the potential significance of mobile and cloud computing. IBM proposes that there will be more software for Smartphone and tablets than traditional office system in 2015. They say that it is important to be able to adapt new technology, especially cloud computing, computing in which services and storage are provided over the Internet instead of in-house networks, which will eventually play a key determent in all profession in the future. IBM people claim that "A lot of companies we work with today are not only taking advantage of mobile but are putting IT (Information Technology) skills in the hands of all kinds of professionals," and predict that necessary job skills will include ability to handle software applications. Mobile and cloud computing were also ranked the hottest technology career opportunities next year, in a survey. Mobile applications sales are predicted to expand from 6.2 to 30 billion dollars by 2013. || 2.1 Online business, 3.3 Network, 3.4 Internet || Doing everything on the cloud is efficient in a way that we can work on from anywhere anytime as long as we have internet connection. However, when we don’t have good internet connection, there is nothing we can do since everything we have done is stored on the cloud. . Internet data storing plans might also be an obstacle while operating on the cloud because the costs increase as more data is wanted to be stored on the cloud. Moreover, The cloud is not invincible to attacks so your data is not 100% safe. Having a backup saved on a physical hard drive is a must, cause you can’t rely too much in the cloud (look what happen to Amazon and Sony). || 1.1_reliability 2.1_business 3.1_hardware 3.2_software 3.4_internet || One of the issues is that Amazon need to reconsider the contracts that cover cloud services such as how much to pay for backup and recovery services, including paying extra for data centers in different locations. The reason for this is because small businesses are less apt to pay for extensive backup and recovery services. The second issue would be many companies are relying too much on remote computers that are beyond their control. So they need to reconsider that also. The technical problem that interrupted computer services provided by Amazon told its customers and users that there may be a reliability problem with Amazon’s service in online computing in the cloud. Companies and businesses operation network now revolves a lot around these remote network systems, so this also affects how companies will reconsider their use of exporting their files and data as opposed to keeping them within the company walls.
 * Oct-10 || NDTV Gadgets: Mobile and 'cloud' computing key future job skills: IBM || 1. Summary
 * May-11 || How Google Chromebook Will Feel for Music Fans | Epicenter | Wired.com || 1) What are the problems with doing everything on the cloud?
 * Apr-11 || Amazon Malfunction Raises Doubts About Cloud Computing - NYTimes.com || 1) Describe the two issues that came up from the technical problems that interrupted computer services provided by Amazon.

2) Why is the cloud model gaining popularity? Because owning a data center is high maintenance and therefore expensive. By using the cloud model, companies are avoiding the costs and headaches of running their own data centers. They just simply tap in, over the Web, to computer processing and storage without owning the actual machines or operating software. Businesses can also save their time by outsourcing to the cloud to save having to keep track of running their own data centers.

3) List the problems that companies reported.

Unable to access data Service interruptions Sites being shut down || 1.1_reliability_integrity 2.1_online_bus 3.4_internet || AWS- The Amazon Web Services (AWS) are a collection of remote computing services (also calledweb services) that together make up a cloud computing platform, offered over the Internet byAmazon.com. The most central and well-known of these services are Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3.
 * Apr-11 || Learning The Right Lessons From The Amazon Outage || 1) Define:

Iaas – infrastructure-as-a-service; a way to deploy a less reliable server, quickly and without human intervention.

2) Define and describe:

Free redundancy- re-deploying your application in another data center or cloud service using on-demand resources instead of having an idle redundant data center.

Rapid scalability- Scalability approach that doesn’t require access to AMIs that is stored on S3 or EBS. Instead, it uses the on-demand resources. This is when the system can withstand changes in transaction volume without major changes.

Server failover- Virtual servers fail more frequently that physical servers, and when they do, there is less ability to recover them. Treat server failover the same way as scalability, just bring up a new server.

Maintainability- Use a fully automated deployment and not a server configuration that is created manually to make it maintainability. Since, when a server configuration that is created manually and saved to a “golden image” has numerous problems such as: only the person who built it knows what is there, so if that person is gone, it can be time consuming to re-configure it. On the other hand, a fully automated deployment is not only a maintainable process, it also serves as documentation.

3) Explain each lesson and determine whether you agree or not with each one.

Wrong lesson #1 The lesson where the infrastructure of the cloud is either not ready for its time to shine, or never will be. This is the lesson that explains that the infrastructure is still carried out on physical servers, just in remote areas where they are held in the physical data center in large numbers. These physical servers are still prone to downtime, so the infrastructure is just as ready as the physical servers are, just out of your reach to control properly. I agree with the lesson because the virtual servers run on physical servers inside a physical data center and all physical data centers have glitches and downtime.

Wrong lesson #2 Amazon is not to be trusted. This is implying that from this one incident, Amazon cannot be trusted. However, Amazon is actually a very reliable cloud, the AWS cloud has been running for many years since 06, and there have been downtimes in the past, just not as big as the current one. So it can’t be said that they shouldn’t be trusted from this one incident. Agree. Just because of one major outage, doesn’t mean that Amazon is not to be trusted. Some data centers are run better than others, but they all have outages.

Right lesson #1 Nobody is secure, infallible. This means that Amazon is not completely perfect, and will have no glitches whatsoever. I agree with this, because nothing is infallible. Everything is fallible. With all the complex system coding, there will be glitches here and there, but it just depends on whether there will be a failure large enough for the public to notice.

Right lesson #2 Amazon is not the only IaaS provider, don’t be limited to just using Amazon’s service. Your applications will be able to run on many different cloud providers, and you can move it easily and quickly. Therefore, since no data center is infallible and outages are inevitable, use more than one cloud providers for risk mitigation.

Right lesson #3 Cloud deployments must be automated and should take cloud server reliability characteristics into account to decrease the probability of server failover and increase maintainability. This means that when start-ups are moving to the cloud, or Amazon, and having their deployment process be automated, so it wouldn’t require any manual actions to carry out the process. This can be done through the scripts for the process. || 1.1_Reliability_and_Integrity 2.1_business 3.3_networks3.4_internet3.7_databases || -- Leisure, Business
 * 18/11/2010 || The changing landscape of online fraud: Long life spam | The Economist || 1. Identify the area of impact the scenario relates to.

2. Identify all ITGS terminology and phrases (IT and Social/Ethical) -- Twitter, Trojan, Facebook, E-mail spamming, Botnet, messaging service, social inbox, spam, e-mail, networks, online-security firms, junk e-mails, blacklisted addresses, output, domain names, .cn, internet registrars, fraud, web-hosting, cybercrime, hard drives.

3. Describe one ITGS social/ethical concern in the article. --Security is a concern in this article where users and spam is concerned. The security of the users' sensitive information is at risk when users click on spam links no matter from what source, from e-mails (which are decreasing now) to Twitter tweet links. By clicking onto these harmful links, users set free spam that can infiltrate the user's hard drive in search for sensitive information for example bank account numbers.

4. Describe the relationship of the main stakeholders to the IT system. ---The main stakeholder will be hackers and people who are using e-mail and social networking. The relationships between them are, normally hackers used spam mail to spend virus or hack their computer with Trojan horse, but as the email security develop hackers slowly moved to social network which is Facebook, and other many programs. They know that people are currently using social networking a lot and their privacy is open and they could easily get people's email too. Therefore by using Koobface, they could hack people's computer and information

5. Explain the relationship between the IT system and the social/ethical issue identified in question 3. -- The problem with the security is that the security of the users of their personal and public communications are at risk where spam is concerned. Spam is nowadays being planted in almost every corner of the internet, no matter where, in order to try and trick users into clicking on the harmful links in order to spread malware, such as Trojans. Spam is common || 2.1_bus_emp, 3.4_internet ||