Cloud Computing Architecture For Education System

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

ABSTRACT

Innovation in Education is necessary to ride the inevitable tide of change and one such hot recent area of research is cloud computing. Cloud computing is a technology of distributed computing offering required software and hardware through Internet. It also provides storage, computational platform and infrastructure which are demanded by the user according to their requirement. Due to the growing need of infrastructure educational institutes, organizations have to spend a large amount on their infrastructure to fulfill the needs and demands of the users. Cloud computing is a next generation platform that allows institutions and organizations with a dynamic pools of resource and to reduce cost through improved utilization. This paper addresses various aspects of computing requirements in general, and as applied to university settings in specific, and will attempt to tie these aspects to typical decision criteria to move to cloud computing, such as to improve teaching, agility and have a cost-effective infrastructure which can bring a revolution in the field of education. It also tries to bring out its benefits and limitations.

Keywords: Saas, Paas, Iaas, MUC, SUC.

INTRODUCTION

Cloud Computing is emerging paragon in current scenario to facilitate the virtualization technology and providing powerful storage and computing capacity of PC's and servers. It gives a better choice and flexibility to the IT departments by building multipurpose

computational infrastructure once and then uses it for several purposes for several times.

At present, as many universities are trying to update their IT infrastructure and data, but they are facing few challenges which can be solved by cloud computing.

The challenges are;

Cost: choose the subscription or PAYGO plan.

Ease to invest: cloud computing allows to dynamically scale the investment in infrastructures as demand fluctuate.

Accessibility and Availability: making the data and services available publicly without losing the sensitive information.[1]

BACKGROUND

The different requirements of educational resources are hardware, software, study materials etc. Government is giving maximum priority to impart education for all people over the country. But, improper distribution of educational resources such as teaching tools, teaching stuffs and lack of monitoring as well as inefficient administrative procedure, growth rate seems to be very slow. To bind the resources into a single domain, we believe cloud computing technology can be a prominent solution for solving these educational problems.

CLOUD SERVICES

Universities and the institutions have to first define their requirements and has to take a special attention for the privacy and critical issues.[2]

There are several cloud services as follows:

1) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): can be used to satisfy the infrastructure needs of the students, faculties or researcher globally or locally.

2) Platform as a Service (PaaS): certain application platforms to permit customers to build their own application without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers.

3) Software as a Service (SaaS): the application service provider is hosting the application which runs and interacts through web browser, hosted desktop or remote client. It remove the need to install and run the application on customer own computer and simplifying maintenance and support.

EDUCATIONAL CLOUD ARCHITECTURES

Following figure shows the cloud architecture for education:Fig.1 Single University Cloud Architecture

Fig. 2 Multi University Cloud Architecture

Fig. 1 and 2 shows the Single University Cloud(SUC) and Multi University Cloud(MUC) architecture for education. Institutes can develop their own cloud called as ‘Single University Cloud’ by making use of their existing resources or multiple universities can come together and can develop a hybrid cloud called as ‘Multi University Cloud’, in which they can share all the resources from the various universities. Following table shows the differences between Single and Multi University Clouds:

TABLE I: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SUC AND MUC

CLOUD FEATURES

SUC

MUC

Owned and

managed by

Single university

Service Provider

(many universities)

Access

Only to employees

& students of single

university

By subscription

Control and

Customization

Yes (By university)

None

In this architecture each individual PC in the various universities acts as a cloud partner which offers the necessary resources available in the cloud system. However these individual PC is the property of a particular university and educational institute whereas the institute own those cloud partners from the amount given by the government for that particular institute. Every individual institute have their own individual PC who monitors everything ranging from PC status to individual requests for that institute. Via the local server, the users of the particular local server submits their request to the cloud. The local server collects the entire request from the clients in its local area within a specific time limit and forward those request after verification. In addition there are various cloud providers who offer these services at different pricing plans.

Fig. 3 Steps for communication

The steps of the procedure are summarized below:

1. First all local user request is sent to local server and server check the request by validating username and password.

2. The authentication module of local server validates username and password, sends the appropriate GUI to the user.

3. Service specifications are provided by users through the user interfaces. After receiving the exact specification from user the current available resources are verified by local server, policy to the cloud like pricing policy, encryption system and other data security etc.

4. If the pricing policy mismatches or if the user does not have an agreement to receive the requested services or, the alternatives are immediately informed by the local server like immediate payment or payment through credit card etc.

5. If the user agrees it sends an acknowledgment to the local server.

6. The local server provides resources as requested by the user from cloud system.

Fig. 5 Cloud Control System Architecture

1) The Upper Sub-layer

Security is a big issue in cloud system where the services are accessed over the network through internet. The Authentication and Credit Verification sub-layer associated with the upper sub-layer checks for the validity of the local server as soon as a request for resources is received from the server end.

2) The Lower Sub-layer

The lower part of the architecture gives access to the specific resources requested by the user. Once the upper layer sends positive acknowledgement to the lower layer it offers the respective services to the user.

This panel contains a script based tools for constructing, configuring, maintaining, controlling and monitoring the clusters. This tool is generally known as Extreme Administrator Toolkit (xCAT).

BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Due to the recent development in IT technologies, infrastructure and continuous upgrades in software and hardware has put a great deal of pressure on the budgets and expenses of universities and educational institutes. Cloud computing development provides many universities with an opportunity to take advantage of new IT technologies at an affordable cost. Following are the benefits;

A. Cloud Computing To Prepare Lecture

With the development of private and educational cloud, new web applications such as LectureTools, Slideshare etc allows the lecturer to get their work done in their web browsers rather storing and carrying it on the hard drive. Its gives the benefits such as; [3][4][5]

1) Access the files from anywhere

2) Create a backup of your data

3) Stop worrying about additional software licenses

4) Share content more easily

5) Get things done without software hassles

B. Economic feasibility

Software free or PAYGO.

C. Data Portability

Access to applications from anywhere.

D. Other Benefits Are

1) Support for teaching and learning

2) 24 X 7 access to infrastructure and content

3) Opening to various universities and advanced researches

4) Protection of environment by using green technologies

5) Increased exposure of new IT technologies to students

7) Increased functional capabilities

8) Offline usage with further synchronization opportunities

C. Limitations

Cloud computing has the potential for improving the efficiency, cost and convenience for the universities and educational sectors, but it has few limitations such as; [6]

1) Not all application run on cloud

2) Risk related to data protection and security and its integrity

3) Organizational support

4) Dissemination politics, intellectual property

5) Security and protection of sensitive data

6) Maturity of solutions

7) Lack of confidence

8) Standard adherence

9) Speed and lack of Internet can affect work methods

CONCLUSION

Cloud computing is an emerging computing paradigm and next generation platform that can provide tremendous value of information of any size. The shift towards cloud computing would enable the universities and educational institutions to save money and take benefit of the developing technology. Both private and educational cloud can provide the necessary computational facility on demand of the user without any expense and can create a common platform for sharing the various resources from the various institutions.

The main objective of the paper was to identify the essentials of cloud computing which can be considered as a new dawn to the higher education.