Khawaja Rizwan

BRIEF ON NUST PRIVATE CLOUD FEASIBILITY Reference: Rector’s IHD on the subject, dated 02 Sep 2022 1. Background Important terminology is briefly described below: a) Physical Servers vs Virtualized Servers i. In a traditional way, individual servers are assigned to particular application. During inactivity periods of applications, the server is idle, hence it is not an optimized way of usage. ii. In case of cloud, through the use of virtualization technology, multiple applications are run on a server farm. This allows real-time allocation of computing resources depending upon the requirement put forth by the running applications. This leads to maximum utilization of computing power of physical machines. b) Private Cloud vs Public Cloud i. There are companies which offer cloud services so that small to medium level users don’t have to have their own server machines/ datacenters. These services are called public clouds (e.g. AZURE, AWS, Google etc). ii. A private cloud is owned by the organization which already possesses pre-requisite datacenter infrastructure to support cloud. Top universities around the world practice on the same lines like Stanford, MIT, Oxford and Heidelberg. c) Cloud Requirements i. Cloud is a software which is used to manage the server hardware efficiently. Existing physical servers are already obsolete and are required to be replaced. ii. NUST existing IT infrastructure is sufficient to host a cloud environment. This infrastructure includes datacenter with multiple power sources, temperature and humidity control, physical access control and locking mechanism, high speed network, Internet bandwidth and network security systems like firewalls. 2. Direct and indirect benefit to University community? Multifold benefits are associated with having private cloud facility at NUST. It includes: a) Reduced Service Delivery (Benefits: NUST Community) It generally takes 03 to 04 months in hardware procurement whenever an application is to be hosted. Cloud setup provides flexibility of providing resources instantly. 1 b) Commercial Aspect (Benefits: NUST Cloud Commercial Offering) NUST has invested in automation/ application development like ERP, e-Office and web applications. Same may be commercially offered to other universities/ organizations with most cost-effective price. c) Cost Saving (Benefits: NUST Cloud Commercial Offering, Students and Faculty) The cloud setup ensures maximum utilization of the computing and storage resources hence increasing the capacity of number of users/ applications. Since, a cloud is not bound to any specific hardware, it always has room of accommodating the latest and cheaper component instead of buying an expensive rare component. For example, cost of 01x Virtual Machine of NUST cloud is far cheaper, i.e., $55 per month, than the lowest offered by Google Cloud, i.e., $180 per month. Details are in next section. d) Social Benefits (Benefits: NUST Community) Many universities and organizations cannot afford managed IT services with the quality offered by NUST. Cloud shall enable them while increasing their dependency on NUST IT services. e) Mobility (Benefits: NUST Community) Cloud computing allows mobile access to academics via smartphones, considering an increased trend of smartphones usage. Employees, students and researchers will remain up-to-date and work from anywhere and anytime around the world. f) Increased Collaboration (Benefits: NUST Community) Research groups, committee members, employees in the same cadre may work on the same set of files, share engagement schedule etc in a more effective way. 2 g) Backup Storage for Disaster Recovery (Benefits: Students, Faculty and NUST Cloud Commercial Offering) Not only computing power, storage space may also be offered on-demand to backup critical data and recovery from disaster. h) Competitive Edge (Benefits: University Rankings) Top universities of the world have already hosted private cloud setup. Launching private cloud in NUST as first Pakistani university will further enhance ranking internationally and in local education sector. i) Increased Market Acceptability (Benefits: Students) Market acceptability of IT students would be increased being already equipped with the basic understanding. j) Performance (Benefits: Students, Faculty and NUST Cloud Commercial Offering) It is quite often when any researcher needs computing resources higher than generally available on desktop/ laptop. Moreover, at times, a computeintensive task sometimes demand additional resources already not catered for. Cloud setup can automatically change size of computing power and storage during the execution of a simulation program. k) Scalability (Benefits: NUST Community) Hardware modularity and adding computing resources of altogether different hardware is one of the greatest features of cloud technology. 3. Comparison of public vs local vs NUST hosting charges? For the sake of understanding, following table is presenting showing cloud hosting comparison of 01x Windows Server hosting charges among world top three cloud service providers and top 02 in Pakistan, whereas, last 02x columns present recommendation for NUST Cloud charges (charges are kept competitive): Virtual Machine 04 CPU, 16GB RAM, 01 TB HDD NUST Cloud Duration Amazon Azure Google Nayatel PTCL Own Commercial Monthly 281 280 180 236 320 110 165 Annual 2545 3355 2364 2829 3840 1320 1980 For the sake of understanding, following table is presenting showing cloud hosting 01x Virtual Machine cost incurred to NUST = USD 55 / month (USD 661 / annum) 3 4. How many number of Virtual Machines are Possible in NUST Cloud ? Virtual Machine 04 CPUs, 16GB RAM Total Number of Virtual Machine Possible in NUST Cloud 120 5. How much capacity shall be available for various categories? Following table presents proposed allocation of cloud resources for various categories: Category NUST Own Use (Production Applications) NUST R&D Use Commercial Use Contingency 35% Cores 478 167 RAM (TB) 4.2 1.5 Storage (TB) 80 28 25% 30% 10% - 1.0 1.3 0.4 20 24 08 Utilization 4