Project 3: Cloud Provider Evaluation University of Maryland Global Campus CCA 610 9040 Cloud Services and Technologies (2208) Professor: Dr.Saafein

Proposed Cloud Architecture Introduction Cloud computing platforms and their services play a key role in the successful running of organization’s IT infrastructures. Before an organization migrates to the cloud, it is important that all factors essential to its infrastructure are carefully evaluated, so as to make the choice of the provider that is best suited for the organization. A detailed comparison analysis of two major cloud vendors, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure architectures. Their architectures, capabilities, services, deployments, and pricing will be explored prior to making a recommendation. A cloud computing architecture consists of front end-users, back end-storage, network(s), delivered through the cloud to form a system (“Understanding Cloud Computing Architecture”, n.d.). The choice of an organization’s architecture in the cloud environment is generally implemented based on principles of scalability, performance, security, availability, ease of management, all which would ultimately optimize cost. After review of various cloud deployment architectures, the architecture deemed most fit for Ballot Online is the 3-tier architecture with Load Balancing, two application servers, and two database servers forming a Master-Slave Database duo. Users can access the cloud resources through the public internet, meanwhile databases would be accessed through a private Local Area Network (LAN) and Virtual Private Network (VPN) gateway to ensure. The best strategy BallotOnline can use to migrate to a suitable cloud architecture is through system imaging. When porting to a cloud environment, this method is able to mirror the exact applications, operating system, and data found on the disk storage, as well as its