B.

E VI Sem
Sub: Cloud Computing (19KBCS64)
QUESTION BANK

MODULE-1:
(2 MARKS)
Q1. What is Cloud Computing
Ans.A cloud is a type of parallel and distributed system consisting of collection of interconnected
and virtualized computers that dynamically provisioned and presented as one or more unified
computing resources based on service level agreement establishedthrough negotiation between
the service provider and consumers.
Q2. List the characteristics of cloud computing
Ans.characteristics of cloud computing
1. No up-front commitments
2. On-demand access
3. Nice pricing
4. Efficient resource allocation
5. Energy efficiency

Q3. Define Virtualization

Ans. Virtualization technology is one of the fundamental components of cloud computing ,it
allows creation of secure, customizable and isolated execution environment for running
applications
Q4. Define Hypervisor
Ans. A fundamental element of hardware virtualization is the hypervisor, or virtual machine
manager (VMM). It recreates a hardware environment where guest operating systems are
installed. There are two major types of hypervisor Type I and Type II
Q5. Whatis full virtualization
Ans. Full virtualization refers to the ability to run a program, most likely an operating system,
directly on top of a virtual machine and without any modification, as though it were run on the
raw hardware
Q6. List the characteristics of virtualized environments
Ans. The characteristics of virtualized solutions are:
a. Increased security
b. Managed execution

c. Portability
Q7. List the different hardware virtualization techniques
Ans. Hardware assisted virtualization techniques are
a. Full virtualization
b. Para virtualization
c. Partial virtualization
(8 marks)
Q1. With the help of diagram explain the cloud computing reference model
Ans: A fundamental characteristic of cloud computing is the capability to deliver, on demand, a
variety of IT services that are quite diverse from each other. This variety creates different
perceptions of what cloud computing is among users. Despite this lack of uniformity, it is
possible to classify cloud computing services offerings into three major categories:
 Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS),
 Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and
 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

These categories are related to each other as described in above figure. The model organizes the
wide range of cloud computing services into a layered view that walks the computing stack from
bottom to top. At the base of the stack, Infrastructure-as-a-Servicesolutions deliver
infrastructure on demand in the form of virtual hardware, storage, and networking. Virtual
hardware is utilized to provide compute on demand in the form of virtual machine instances.
These are created at users’ request on the provider’s infrastructure, and users are given tools and
interfaces to configure the software stack installed in the virtual machine. The pricing model is
usually defined in terms of dollars per hour. Virtual storage is delivered in the form of raw disk
space or object store. Virtual networking identifies the collection of services that manage the
networking among virtual instances and their connectivity to the Internet or private networks.
Platform-as-a-Servicesolutions are the next step in the stack. They deliver scalable and elastic
runtime environments on demand and host the execution of applications. These services are
backed by a core middleware platform that is responsible for creating the abstract environment
where applications are deployed and executed. It is the responsibility of the service provider to
provide scalability and to manage fault tolerance, while users are requested to focus on the logic
of the application developed by leveraging the provider’s APIs and libraries. This approach
increases the level of abstraction at which cloud computing is leveraged but also constrains the
user in a more controlled environment. At the top of the stack, Software-as-a-Servicesolutions
provide applications and services on demand. Most of the common functionalities of desktop
applications—such as office automation, document management, photo editing, and customer
relationship management (CRM) software—are replicated on the provider’s infrastructure and
made more scalable and accessible through a browser on demand. These applications are shared
across multipleusers whose interaction is isolated from the other users. The SaaS layer is also the
area of social networking Websites, which leverage cloud-based infrastructures to sustain the load
generated by their popularity.
Q2. With the help of neat diagram explain the VMware workstation architecture
Ans: VMware Workstation is a host-based type-2 hypervisor that runs on top of a conventional
operating system (like Windows or Linux). It allows users to run multiple virtual machines on a
single physical machine—mostly used by developers, testers, and IT pros.
Architecture of VMware Workstation
1. Host Operating System
This is the OS installed on your physical machine (e.g., Windows 10, Ubuntu). VMware
Workstation runs on top of this OS.
2. VMware Workstation Application (Type-2 Hypervisor)
This is the core application that provides virtualization functionality. It translates the VM's
instructions into something the host OS and hardware can understand.
 Provides the GUI to create, manage, and run VMs.
 Allocates CPU, memory, disk, and I/O to VMs.
 Emulates hardware for the guest OS.

3. Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)

This component provides the interface between the guest OS and the physical hardware.
 Handles CPU instruction translation (binary translation or hardware-assisted)
 Manages memory isolation for each VM.
 Controls access to I/O devices.

4. Guest Operating Systems

Each VM you run inside VMware Workstation has its own guest OS (Windows, Linux, etc.).
These run independently and think they’re on a real machine.
5. Virtual Hardware Layer
VMware emulates a full set of hardware components for each VM, including:
 Virtual CPU (vCPU)
 Virtual memory (vRAM)
 Virtual network adapters
 Virtual hard disks
 Virtual BIOS/UEFI

6. VMware Tools
This is a suite installed inside each guest OS to improve performance and usability.
Includes:
 Enhanced graphics and mouse control
 Clipboard sharing
 Time synchronization
 Improved network and disk performance
(10 marks)
Q1. Explain xen architecture in detail
Ans: Xen is an open-source initiative implementing a virtualization platform based on
paravirtualization. Initially developed by a group of researchers at the University of Cambridge in
the United Kingdom, Xen now has a large open-source community backing it. . Xen-based
technology is used for either desktop virtualization or server virtualization, and recently it has
also been used to provide cloud computing solutions by means of Xen Cloud Platform (XCP).
Guest operating systems are executed within domains, which represent virtual machine instances.
Moreover, specific control software, which has privileged access to the host and controls all the
other guest operating systems, is executed in a special domain called Domain 0. This is the first
one that is loaded once the virtual machine manager has completely booted, and it hosts a
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server that serves requests for virtual machine creation,
con-figuration, and termination. This component constitutes the embryonic version of a
distributed virtual machine manager, which is an essential component of cloud computing
systems providing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions. Many of the x86 implementations
support four different security levels, called rings, where Ring 0 represent the level with the
highest privileges and Ring 3 the level with the lowest ones. Because of the structure of the x86
instruction set, some instructions allow code executing in Ring 3 to jump into Ring 0 (kernel
mode). Such operation is performed at the hardware level and therefore within a virtualized
environment will result in a trap or silent fault, thus preventingthe normal operations of the guest
operating system, since this is now running in Ring 1.This condition is generally triggered by a
subset of the system calls. To avoid this situation, operating systems need to be changed in their
implementation, and the sensitive system calls need to be reimplemented with hypercalls, which
are specific calls exposed by the virtual machine interface of Xen. With the use of hypercalls, the
Xen hypervisor is able to catch the execution of all the sensitive instructions, manage them, and
return the control to the guest operating system by means of a supplied handler. Paravirtualization
needs the operating system codebase to be modified, and hence not all operating systems can be
used as guests in a Xen-based environment. Open-source operating systems such as Linux can be
easily modified, since their code is publicly available and Xen provides full support for their
virtualization, whereas components of the Windows family are generally not supported by Xen
unless hardware-assisted virtualization is available.
Q2. List & explain the various cloud computing platforms and technologies
1. Amazon Web services
2. Google AppEngine
3. Microsoft Azure
4. Hadoop
5. Force.com and Salesforce.com
6. Manjrasoft Aneka

Computing platforms and technologies:

1. Amazon web services (AWS):

AWS offers comprehensive cloud IaaS services ranging from virtual compute, storage, and
networking to complete computing stacks. AWS is mostly known for its compute and storageon-
demand services, namely Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3). EC2
provides users with customizable virtual hardware that can be used as the base infrastructure for
deploying computing systems on the cloud. It is possible to choose from a large variety of virtual
hardware configurations, including GPU and cluster instances. S3 is organized into buckets; these
are containers of objects that are stored in binary form. Users can store objects of any size, from
simple files to entire disk images, and have them accessible from everywhere.
2. Google AppEngine:

Google AppEngine is a scalable runtime environment mostly devoted to executing Web

applications. AppEngine provides both a secure execution environment and a collection of
services that simplify the development of scalable and high-performance Web applications. These
services include in-memory caching, scalable data store, job queues, messaging, and cron tasks.
Developers can build and test applications on their own machines using the AppEngine software
development kit (SDK), which replicates the production runtime environment and helps test and
profile applications. Once development is complete, developers can easily migrate their
application to AppEngine, and make the application available to theworld. The languages
currently supported are Python, Java.
3. Microsoft Azure:

Microsoft Azure is a cloud operating system and a platform for developing applications in the
cloud. It provides a scalable runtime environment for Web applications and distributed
applications in general. Applications in Azure are organized around the concept of roles.
Currently, there are three types of role: Web role, worker role, and virtual machine role. The Web
role is designed to host a Web application, the worker role is a more generic container of
applications and can be used to perform workload processing, and the virtual machine role
provides a virtual environment in which the computing stack can be fully customized, including
the operating systems.
4. Hadoop :

Apache Hadoop is an open-source framework that is suited for processing large data sets on
commodity hardware. Yahoo!, the sponsor of the Apache Hadoop project, has put considerable
effort into transforming the project into an enterprise-ready cloud computing platform for data
processing. Hadoopis an integral part of the Yahoo! cloud infrastructure and supports several
business processes of the company. Currently, Yahoo! manages the largest Hadoop cluster in the
world.
5. Force.com and Salesforce.com :

Force.com is a cloud computing platform for developing social enterprise applications.

Force.com allows developers to create applications by composing ready-to-use blocks; a
complete set of components supporting all the activities of an enterprise are available. The
Force.com platform is completely hosted on the cloud and provides complete access to its
functionalities and those implemented in the hosted applications through Web services
technologies
6. Manjrasoft Aneka:

Manjrasoft Aneka is a cloud application platform for rapid creation of scalable applications and
their deployment on various types of clouds in a seamless and elastic manner. It supports a
collection of programming abstractions for developing applications and a distributed runtime
environment that can be deployed on heterogeneous hardware (clusters, networked desktop
computers, and cloud resources). These platforms are key examples of technologies available
for cloud computing. They mostly fall into the three major market segments identified in the
reference model: Infrastructure-as-aService, Platform-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service.