The Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KESA) is hosting a National Math Competition for 4-11th graders. There is expected to be a total of 2,000 students participating in this competition. With COVID-19 affecting everything, the organization is seeking the services of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer the math competition in a virtual/online format. In order to execute this online there will be a number of services that will need to be offered, such as: compute services, networking and content delivery, storage services, as well as security services.
We will break these down into subtopics, emphasizing options and which options would be best for this online competition. Further, we will then break down the pricing model for each aspect of this and discuss total pricing as well as pricing for each component.
Compute Service
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) takes away any need to run servers on-premises. This takes away all expenses of purchasing, running and maintaining any of the hardware (which can be an expensive undertaking). Amazon EC2 provides virtual machines where you can host the same kinds of applications that you might run on a traditional on-premises server. It provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud.
You have full administrative control over the Windows or Linux operating system that runs on the instance. You can launch any number of instances of any size into any Availability Zones anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes. With this competition being a national competition, this would be beneficial because launching multiple instances to different availability zones would help to lower latency and will provide stability in case of outages.
When launching the instance, there are a few options to go through to create the instance – Amazon Machine Image (AMI), instance type, network settings, IAM role, User data, storage options, tags, security groups and key pair.
For the competition, I would suggest a Windows option for AMI, based on the fact that Windows is more widely understood, though it can be either. Further, for instance type, we would want to choose a type that gives enough memory, processing power and gives us the necessary networking performance. An instance that would be suggested would be a general-purpose instance, such as T3 instances. T3 instances provide burstable performance general purpose instances that provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the ability to burst above the baseline.
AWS also enables you to attach an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role to an EC2 instance. The IAM role grants permission to make application programming interface (API) requests to the applications that run on the EC2 instance. This is a free feature and would be beneficial.
User data script can also be specified at launch of the instance. This can be an automatic completion of installations, which could be create a script to automatically update the site with the top scorers of the exam after the exam as well.
Another beneficial aspect is the security group. This is a set of firewall rules that control traffic to the instance. We could set control to only allow participants of the competition to access.
Storage
Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the math exam will be held online. Different from face-to-face exam, online exam requires much more support than the original exam. For example, we need a reliable cloud platform to hold the exam. Also, all the information about the exam will be stored online, instead of stored in paper form. The organization is planning to use the AWS S3 storage to store exam data. For example, exam question blanks, exam reviews, exam records, or any other data which related to the exam activities.
This is the first time for the organization to held online math exam, so the organization has no experience about choosing the cloud storage services. There are about 2,000 students to attend the exam for now. But expecting to have more students in future. In order to optimize the cost, we will analyze the difference between storage classes and choose the most suitable storage plan for the online math exam. Firstly, the frequency of the exam is not decided yet. For example, it could be held once a year or once per month.
Secondly, we have not decided yet about how long does the online competition will be existing. For example, we are not sure that whether the competition will return to face-to-face format or not after the social distancing restriction.
Thirdly, the size of the competition is not predictable at the moment. For example, online competition is different from face-to-face competition. It is much more flexible. It is easier to hold an online competition for 10,000 students at the same time than holding a face-to-face competition. Thus, the size of the exam might be greatly expanded after the first online competition if we saw the success.
The Amazon S3 storage has several different classes for us to choose. They are listed below:
Amazon S3 Standard: Designed for high availability, high durability and performance for frequently access data. S3 Standard is appropriate for a variety of use cases because it provides low latency and high throughput. Such as data analysis or content distribution.
Amazon S3 Intelligent-tiering: Different from S3 Standard, S3 Intelligent-tiering is designed for data which is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when needed. It is better for data with unknown storage access patterns.
Amazon S3 Standard-infrequent Access: S3 Standard-infrequent access is similar to S3 standard. It provides high durability, throughput and low latency to the data access. But it has low per gigabyte storage price and per gigabyte retrieval fee. But S3 standard-infrequent access is designed for long-term storage and backups. It is a data storage plan for disaster recovery files.
Amazon S3 one zone-infrequent Access: Similar to S3 Intelligent-tiering, S3 one zone-infrequent access provides rapid access to the data, and it is designed for infrequent access data. But all of the data are stored in a single availability zone. It is good for customers who wants low cost and infrequently access data.
Amazon S3 Glacier: A secure, durable and low-cost storage for data archiving. S3 Glacier provides data retrieval options that range from minutes to hours.
Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive: lowest cost storage class. It is designed for data which might be accessed once or twice a year. It is good for companies or organizations who needs to retain their data for a long period of time.
Overall, we decided to choose the Amazon S3 Intelligent-tiering as the storage plan for the online math competition. Because S3 intelligent-tiering is designed for data sets with unknown storage access patterns (which meet our requirements about unpredicted competition frequency). It also has low latency and high throughput as the same as S3 Standard class to ensure the reliability of the competition.
Security
Cloud Computing is form of distributed computing in which a specific application may run on different linked computers simultaneously. Cloud computing has provided with various extraordinary facilities like doing complex calculations with ease, mass storage, ubiquitous computing, low storage cost, ease of access etc. To use this facility the easiest and known security provided for access in our organization seems to be static passwords. But the cracking of these passwords is easy as users don’t use complicated passwords, or don’t change their passwords on and off, or may use same password to access multiple services. National Conference on Recent Trends in Computer Science and Information Technology (NIST) defined cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of computing resources which can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management efforts or service provider interaction. NIST as a part of their efforts related to standardization for cloud interoperability have developed use cases for cloud computing. These use cases are divided into cloud management, cloud interoperability and cloud security.
Here since we are concentrating on interoperability among cloud servers and user related issues for our non-profit organization, we would consider the interoperability use cases which are as follows:
User Authentication
Workload Migration
Data Migration
Workload Management
The use case for user authentication corresponds to a user or program that needs to be identified in the cloud environment. It is important to differentiate between two types of users of cloud environments i.e. end users, students, and cloud-resource users, software engineers, instructors, etc. End users are users of applications deployed on cloud resources. Because these users register and identify with the application and not with the infrastructure resources, they are usually not aware that the application is running on cloud resources. Cloud-resource users are typically administrators of the cloud resources. These users can also set permissions for the resources based on roles, access lists, IP addresses, domains. The second type of user is of greater interest from an interoperability perspective.
REFERENCES
AWS (2018). Overview of Amazon Web Services: AWS White Paper.
AWS (2020). AWS Well-Architected Framework.
AWS (2020). How AWS Pricing Works: AWS Pricing Overview.
KSEA. (n.d.). Retrieved February 01, 2021, from https://ksea.org/us/about-us/#vision-mission
Piper, B. & Clinto, D. (2019). AWS Certified Cloud Practioner Study Guide. Sybex.
Presentation: The worldwide budgetary emergency of 2008-2009 started in July 2007 when lost certainty by speculators in the estimation of securitized contracts in the United States brought about a liquidity emergency that provoked a significant infusion of capital into monetary markets by the United States Federal Reserve, Bank of England and the European Central Bank. In September 2008, the emergency extended, as financial exchanges overall slammed and entered a time of high unpredictability, and a significant number of banks, contract moneylenders and insurance agencies flopped in the next weeks. Extension The emergency in land, banking and credit in the United States had a worldwide achieve, influencing a wide scope of money related and financial exercises and establishments, including the: Generally fixing of credit with money related establishments making both corporate and customer credit more earnestly to get; Money related markets (stock trades and subsidiary markets) that accomplished soak decays; Liquidity issues in value assets and flexible investments; Debasement of the benefits supporting protection contracts and annuity finances prompting worries about the capacity of these instruments to meet future commitments: Expanded open obligation open money because of the arrangement of open assets to the budgetary administrations industry and other influenced enterprises, and the Downgrading of certain monetary forms (Icelandic crown, some Eastern Europe and Latin America monetary forms) and expanded money instability, Foundation In the years paving the way to the emergency, high utilization and low funds rates in the U.S. added to huge measures of remote cash streaming into the U.S. from quickly developing economies in Asia and oil-creating nations. This inflow of assets joined with low U.S. financing costs from 2002-2004 brought about simple credit conditions, which powered both lodging and credit bubbles. Advances of different sorts (e.g., contract, Mastercard, and auto) were anything but difficult to acquire and purchasers accepted an uncommon obligation load. As a component of the lodging and credit blasts, the measure of budgetary understandings called contract upheld securities (MBS), which get their incentive from home loan installments and lodging costs, enormously expanded. Such money related development empowered organizations and financial specialists around the globe to put resources into the U.S. lodging market. As lodging costs declined, major worldwide money related foundations that had obtained and put intensely in subprime MBS revealed huge misfortunes. Defaults and misfortunes on other advance sorts likewise expanded altogether as the emergency extended from the lodging business sector to different pieces of the economy. Absolute misfortunes are assessed in the trillions of U.S. dollars comprehensively. While the lodging and credit bubbles assembled, a progression of components made the budgetary framework become progressively delicate. Policymakers did not perceive the inexorably critical pretended by money related foundations, for example, speculation banks and multifaceted investments, otherwise called the shadow banking framework. A few specialists trust these organizations had progressed toward becoming as essential as business (storehouse) banks in giving credit to the U.S. economy, yet they were not expose to similar guidelines. These organizations just as certain controlled banks had likewise accepted critical obligation loads while giving the advances portrayed above and did not have a money related pad adequate to retain extensive credit defaults or MBS misfortunes. These misfortunes affected the capacity of money related establishments to loan, moderating financial movement. Concerns in regards to the strength of key money related organizations drove national banks to make a move to give assets to urge loaning and to reestablish confidence in the business paper markets, which are basic to financing business tasks. Governments likewise rescued key budgetary foundations, expecting critical extra money related responsibilities. Reason for The Financial Crisis Different causes have been proposed for the emergency, with specialists setting diverse loads upon specific issues. The proximate reason for the emergency was the turn of the lodging cycle in the United States and the related ascent in misconducts on subprime contracts, which forced considerable misfortunes on numerous budgetary organizations and shook financial specialist trust in credit markets. Nonetheless, despite the fact that the subprime fiasco set off the emergency, the improvements in the U.S. contract advertise were just a single part of an a lot bigger and all the more including credit blast whose sway rose above the home loan market to influence numerous different types of credit. Parts of this more extensive credit blast included far reaching decreases in guaranteeing benchmarks, breakdowns in loaning oversight by speculators and rating offices, expanded dependence on intricate and dark credit instruments that demonstrated delicate under pressure, and bizarrely low pay for hazard taking. The unexpected end of the credit blast has had boundless monetary and financial consequences. Budgetary organizations have seen their capital drained by misfortunes and compose downs and their monetary records stopped up by complex credit items and other illiquid resources of questionable esteem. Rising credit dangers and extraordinary hazard avoidance have pushed credit spreads to exceptional dimensions, and markets for securitized resources, aside from home loan securities with government ensures, have closed down. Increased fundamental dangers, falling resource esteems, and fixing credit have thusly negatively affected business and purchaser certainty and hastened a sharp moderating in worldwide financial action. The harm, regarding lost yield, lost positions, and lost riches, is as of now significant. Starting with disappointments brought about by misapplication of hazard controls for terrible obligations, collateralization of obligation protection and misrepresentation, expansive money related foundations in the United States and Europe confronted a credit emergency and a stoppage in monetary movement. The emergency quickly formed and spread into a worldwide financial stun, bringing about various European bank disappointments, decreases in different stock lists, and huge decreases in the market estimation of values and products. Also, the de-utilizing of money related organizations further quickened the liquidity emergency and caused a lessening in global exchange. World political pioneers, national clergymen of money and national bank chiefs composed their endeavors to diminish fears, yet the emergency proceeded. Toward the finish of October a cash emergency created, with financial specialists exchanging immense capital assets into more grounded monetary standards, for example, the yen, the dollar and the Swiss franc, driving numerous emanant economies to look for help from the International Monetary Fund. Eventually, searching for a reason for the momentum money related emergency, it is basic to recollect that associations neglected to complete various things: Really receive an undertaking hazard the board culture. Grasp and exhibit proper endeavor chance administration practices, or traits. Create and reward interior hazard the executives capabilities, and Use venture hazard the board to educate the board basic leadership in both going out on a limb. Undertaking hazard the executives to be compelling must generally change the manner in which associations consider chance. At the point when undertaking hazard the board turns out to be a piece of the DNA of an organization's way of life, the notice indications of a market roamed can't go inconspicuous so effectively. At the point when each worker is a piece of a bigger hazard the board procedure, organizations can be substantially more flexible notwithstanding dangers. It is an essential exercise to adapt now, before the cycle reestablishes itself and organizations end up confronting the following cycle of business disappointments, slips by in hazard the board and weaknesses in administration. The cycle does not need to rehash itself as it generally has previously. Venture chance administration is a vital key to anticipating it. Venture chance administration, when planned and executed thoroughly and foundationally, can change future results. When it is rehearsed completely, venture hazard the executives does not simply help shield organizations from mishaps, it empowers better in general business execution. Impacts Of The Financial Crisis Financial Effects And Projections Worldwide Aspects Various pundits have proposed that if the liquidity emergency proceeds, there could be an all-inclusive subsidence or more regrettable. The proceeding with improvement of the emergency provoked feelings of dread of a worldwide financial breakdown. The budgetary emergency is probably going to yield the greatest financial shakeout since the investment funds and-advance emergency. The United Kingdom had begun foundational infusion, and the world's national banks were presently cutting financing costs. Administrative Proposals And Long-Term Solutions An assortment of administrative changes have been proposed by financial specialists, lawmakers, columnists, and business pioneers to limit the effect of the present emergency and counteract repeat. In any case, as of April 2009, a significant number of the proposed arrangements have not yet been actualized. These include: Ben Bernanke: Establish goals techniques for shutting grieved money related organizations in the shadow banking framework, for example, speculation banks and mutual funds. Joseph Stiglitz: Restrict the influence that monetary foundations can expect. Require official pay to be increasingly identified with long haul execution. Re-instate the partition of business (safe) and speculation banking set up by the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933 and revoked in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Simon Johnson: Break-up establishments that are "too enormous to come up short" to constrain foundational hazard. Paul Krugman: Regulate organizations that "demonstration like banks " correspondingly to banks. Alan Greenspan: Banks ought to have a more grounded capital pad, with graduated administrative capital necessities (i.e., capital proportions that expansion with bank measure), to "demoralize them from ending up too enormous and to balance their upper hand." Warren Buffett: Require least up front installments for home loans of in any event 10% and salary verificatio>