Reference no: EM132345491

Cloud Computing Assignment -

Learning outcomes -

• be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different cloud computing architectures to meet a set of given business requirements;
• be able to evaluate a set of business requirements to determine suitability for a cloud computing delivery model;
• be able to identify and design an ICT Risk Management strategy for a cloud computing delivery plan to meet business requirements;
• be able to critically analyse business requirements to plan a migration to a cloud model;
• be able to compare and critique Service Level Agreements (SLA) that meet the business requirements for a cloud computing plan.

Assessment item 1 - Concepts and Models

Task Scenario -

VideoDev Ltd is a video and production development company which works for clients across Australia and New Zealand. The company is considering moving some of its computer infrastructure into the Cloud. The VideoDev Board is contemplating this move as a way to increase the company's flexibility and responsiveness, as well as to achieve some savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure.

VideoDev has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 100 video production, engineering and support staff that work on different projects for clients in Australia and New Zealand. They have been advised that a move to using a Cloud based infrastructure would be an advantage to them. VideoDev have a number of application servers in their Sydney and Melbourne datacentres that provide video processing capabilities for their staff. These servers are quite heavily customised and run reasonably heavy workloads while doing video processing. There is often a considerable queue of jobs waiting to be processed, which causes backlogs in getting jobs completed on time. The Board hopes that a move to a cloud based operation may help to relieve these backlogs.

Another of VideoDev's initial projects is to provide all their staff with a Standard Desktop Operating Environment (SDOE) on their desktop. This would include providing a standard desktop to any device that their staff may be using, as well as access to office automation, such as email, word processing, spreadsheet capabilities, as well as online storage for their files. The Board want the SDOE to be available on any device that their staff use, whether they are in the office, at home, or deployed at a customer's office in the field. VideoDev is considering the use of either Amazon WorkSpaces or Windows Virtual Desktop as a replacement for their existing desktop environment.

Your task is to: Prepare a PowerPoint briefing for the VideoDev board. Your briefing should:

1. Explain the Cloud Computing to the Board:

1. What are the main cloud computing concepts that the Board should understand before committing to move to the Cloud?

2. Why you think that a move to the Cloud could be good for VideoDev.

2. Explain how you think that VideoDev could move their video processing to the cloud. You will need to discuss:

1. Explain the differences between the service models IaaS and PaaS.

2. What type of service model you would recommend?

3. What are the advantages of, and the issues with, the service model that you recommended for VideoDev's video processing?

4. What other types of architectural patterns could be used in this deployment?

5. How that move would assist in removing backlogs?

3. Which would provide the best SDOE for VideoDev - Amazon WorkSpaces or Windows Virtual Desktop?

1. Briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each possible SDOE.

2. Briefly discuss how the SDOE could be delivered to a staff members laptop.

Your presentation is to be completed in either PowerPoint or Google slides. Your presentation must not exceed 30 slides of content.

• The presentation should be a maximum of 30 slides, including introduction, conclusions and recommendations.
• You are required to record your presentation as a Voice over Presentation (VoP) with your commentary on each slide.
• Each slide should have speaking notes in the Notes section which expand on the information in the slide.
• Images and quotations used in slides must be referenced on that slide.
• The slide deck does require a reference list. References are to be included on a Reference list slide(s), but these are not counted as part of the slide deck limit.

Your presentation should highlight the significant points of your argument, but you should include the detail in the speaking notes section of your slides.

Rationale - This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:

• be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different cloud computing architectures to meet a set of given business requirements.
• be able to evaluate a set of business requirements to determine suitability for a cloud computing delivery model.

Assessment item 2 - MicroService design and re-factoring

Task -

VideoDev Ltd is a video and production development company which works for clients across Australia and New Zealand. The company is considering moving some of its computer infrastructure into the Cloud. The VideoDev Board is contemplating this move as a way to increase the company's flexibility and responsiveness, as well as to achieve some savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure.

VideoDev has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 100 video production, engineering and support staff that work on different projects for clients in Australia and New Zealand. VideoDev uses a monolithic application for video development and post production services.

This application has been developed in house. This is used by a large number of videoDev staff to plan, script and to complete post-production services on videos. The application has a number of modules as shown in Figure 1, below. Some of these modules may not need any development work done on them for long periods of time a their functions and outputs are relatively stable. Other modules though can be modified quite frequently as changes occur in the Industry. Other modules experience great peaks in workload which often slows services to VideoDev staff and customers.

1. You are to assess each of the modules shown in Figure 1 above, and determine:

a. Which modules are likely to be relatively stable, a together with the reasons for this categorisation.

b. Which modules are likely to require frequent modification, together with the reasons for this categorisation.

c. Which modules are likely to experience workload peaks, together with the reasons for this categorisation.

2. VideoDev wants to transition to a microservice approach with the video processing application. But they want to move in a phased approach so that they can handle the workload peaks first.

a. Which modules should be refactored first to achieve this?

b. Discuss how a move to a microservice approach for these modules would resolve issues around workload peaks?

3. Discuss how a move to a microservice approach will improve VideoDev's ability to maintain high availability for this application.

4. Draw a diagram that shows the architecture of the video processing application after the transition to a microservice approach.

Report Presentation - The report should be submitted as a single MS Word (.doc or .docx) document with all images embedded in the document. Submissions in in *.zip, *.rar , .pdf or any other format will not be marked.

The report presentation structure is:

Cover page

• Title of Report
• Student Name and Student ID
• Student Email address

Main Report - This section should contain main body of the report. It should discuss all tasks / challenges asked in the case study. You should have sub-sections that answers each task. Support your answers with solid literature (in-text citations), diagrams and figures (if applicable).

Reference List - You must cite your references using the APA 6th edition referencing style for all material you have used as sources for the content of your work.

Rationale - Subject learning outcomes - This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:

• be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different cloud computing architectures to meet a set of given business requirements.
• be able to evaluate a set of business requirements to determine suitability for a cloud computing delivery model.
• be able to critically analyse business requirements to plan a migration to a cloud model.

Graduate learning outcomes - This task also contributes to the assessment of the following CSU Graduate Learning Outcome/s -

• Information and Research Literacies (Knowledge) - CSU Graduates demonstrate that disciplinary knowledge is developed through research and evidence.
• Information and Research Literacies (Skill) - CSU Graduates demonstrate the skills required to locate, access and critically evaluate existing information and data.
• Digital Literacies (Knowledge) - CSU Graduates understand professional, social and cultural implications of the global use of technology.
• Digital Literacies (Skill) - CSU Graduates use, create, communicate and share multimodal information in digital environments.
• Digital Literacies (Application) - CSU Graduates ethically, legally, safely and critically use technology to select, create and share information and participate in online learning, professional and social communities.
• Professional Practice (Knowledge) - CSU Graduates possess the knowledge and understanding of the discipline and the nature of professionalism required for the given profession or discipline in contemporary societies.
• Professional Practice (Skill) - CSU Graduates demonstrate discipline-specific technical capabilities and self-appraisal required for a beginning practitioner or professional.

Assessment item 3 - Risk, Security and Management

Task Overview -

VideoDev Ltd is a video and production development company which works for clients across Australia and New Zealand. The company is considering moving some of its computer infrastructure into the Cloud. The VideoDev Board is contemplating this move as a way to increase the company's flexibility and responsiveness, as well as to achieve some savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure.

VideoDev has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 100 video production, engineering and support staff that work on different projects for clients in Australia and New Zealand. You were recently engaged to advise on re-factoring their video processing application to use a microservices approach. The VideoDev Board is keen to start to move to this direction as it sees the possibilities that it will open up for VideoDev in the future. They have also decided to start planning to migrate their existing web services from their two on-premise data centres to a public cloud.

The company is considering the following strategic proposal:

• They plan to retain the Sydney data centre for data storage. This would entail updating their Active Directory and data storage infrastructure, and moving all other infrastructure into the Cloud.
• They plan to move all their Web Services into the Cloud in order to provide an increased responsiveness to customer demand as well as an enhanced level of HA (High Availability) in supplying data to their customers and staff.
• They are considering changing their current web software architecture to take advantage of the flexibility and scalability that can be gained by moving to a Microservices model (this would entail the use of such services as AWS Lambda or Azure Functions, Containers, Data Services, and Cloud Edge capability and monitoring).

The VideoDev Board is contemplating this strategy as a way to increase the company's flexibility and responsiveness. The Board also expects to achieve significant savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure by closing one of their existing data centres. They appreciate that this would entail retraining for their existing ICT staff so that they can manage the new Cloud based infrastructure.

You have also advised the VideoDev Board that their Threat and Risk Assessment (TRA) needs to be updated as a result of these architectural changes. The Board has asked you to update the TRA as a matter of urgency.

The Board is also concerned about how this strategy will affect their BCP (Business Continuity Plan) and their backup and disaster recovery strategies.

Tasks -

Your team has been engaged to provide a report for the VideoDev Board on their proposed strategy.

Team Setup

This assignment is a team assignment. The rationale for using a team approach is that most IT risk management assessments are normally done by teams of between 2-5 Architects, Information Security experts, Operations and Business leaders for each problem. You will be assigned to a team and the team, as a whole, will be responsible for the development of the risk assessment.

Team Member Responsibilities - Each team member will be assessed on:

• The final risk assessment presented by the team;
• The individual contributions that they have made to the risk assessment. This will be shown by the entries that they have made in the Team forum;
• Team members should note that:

A total of 20% of the total marks for this assignment are for individual contributions to the team task;

A team member without any individual contributions in the Team Forum will be regarded as having not contributed to the risk assessment. This will result in either reduced marks or no marks being awarded to that team member for this assignment.

The tasks: The team's task is to prepare a report for VideoDev that discusses the following:

1. Describe which Cloud architectures you would employ to assist VideoDev to meet the Board's strategy of moving their web services to a MicroService approach?

a. Describe each of the architectures that you would use, along with your reasons for deploying it.

b. Describe the benefits and issues that would be the result of your deployment of these architectures.

2. Describe the risks that you see associated with this new MicroServices strategy. You should name and describe each risk that you identify, and then describe a possible control for the risk. This should be presented in a tabular form.

3. Describe the general Information Security steps and controls that you would recommend to the Board to secure these MicroServices. You will need to explain to the Board your reasons for recommending these particular security steps.

4. Discuss briefly what you would recommend should be included in VideoDev's BCP as a result of their adoption of a Microservices approach. You will need to consider, as a minimum, the issues of application resilience, backup and disaster recovery. This section should be no more than 2 pages.

5. Discuss the requirements that VideoDev will need to consider in order to conduct remote administration, resource management and SLA management for its proposed MicroService approach. This section should be no more than two to three pages in length.

6. The VideoDev board wants to know what you recommend as the best migration strategy and process for the migration of their web services to a MicroService approach.

a. Describe the steps that you would include in the plan to migrate these services.

b. What are the critical points and issues that you see occurring at each of these steps? Explain why you see these points or issues as critical.

Rationale - Subject learning outcomes - This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:

• be able to compare and evaluate the ability of different cloud computing architectures to meet a set of given business requirements.
• be able to evaluate a set of business requirements to determine suitability for a cloud computing delivery model.
• be able to identify and design an ICT Risk Management strategy for a cloud computing delivery plan to meet business requirements.
• be able to critically analyse business requirements to plan a migration to a cloud model.
• be able to compare and critique Service Level Agreements (SLA) that meet the business requirements for a cloud computing plan.

Attachment:- Cloud Computing Assignment File.rar