A Summary on Issues and Challenges in

Private Clouds
Sadish kumar MANOHARAN
Telecom ParisTech, Institute Telecom, France
msadish@gmail.com

Abstract – Cloud computing has become the say shortly, everything as a Service on-demand.
emerging solution for agility of IT enterprise Basically, any cloud computing comprises of 5
solutions and infrastructure. There exist already essential elements which are listed below [3]
lots of developments in Public clouds and now • On-demand Self Service – Automated
everyone starts looking for privacy (Security) in provisioning of IT resource of a particular
clouds. There are lots of issues and challenges in instance
private clouds. Our objective of this paper is to • Broad Network Access – Network to deliver
explain the basic terms which involves in building these computing resources over
private cloud architecture and the motivation heterogeneous platforms (mobile, PDAs)
behind it. Then, the benefits and Challenges over • Resource Pooling – Computing resources are
various cloud architectural elements, existing pooled to server multiple clients via
strategy will be discussed and a short forecast of Virtualization, which means the use could not
private clouds in the near future. Finally, the find the physical resource running their
conclusion summarizes the current trends precisely applications.
in private clouds. • Rapid Elasticity/ agility - Computing
resources can be scaled up or Down as per
Keywords – Cloud Computing, Private Cloud,
user demands
architecture, security, benefits, challenges, IT
• Measured service – There should be a way
management, legal issues.
measure the amount of resources consumed
by Users
I. EVOLUTION OF CLOUDS
A. Clouds: An Overview B. Delivery/Service Models
Cloud Computing is an emerging technology Based on the resource which is provided
to organize and manage the information technology as service, cloud computing can be put into 4 main
resources and services. It paves the way to consume categories of service models as follows. [3]
and put them to work in a flexible manner as when
needed. The agility in providing the service makes the 1) Software as a Service (SaaS): Cloud
Cloud Computing grow rapidly in the past few years. user release their developed applications or products
There is no doubt that it’s going to create a on a cloud environment (i.e., Hosting), which can be
tremendous market in the near future. accessed by multiple users of that product via
networks. Cloud user who hosted the application, do
We are focusing on finding the issues and not have the control over Cloud infrastructure.
challenges involved in internal or private clouds. To Examples of SaaS are GoogleMail, Docs etc.
make a clear view on challenges, we are starting with
the details of cloud computing and its functionalities 2) Platform as a Service (PaaS): Cloud
in public clouds Followed by private cloud user or consumer gets the environment to develop the
architecture with its benefits and challenges in cloud services or any applications throughout the
building them. software life cycle. Generally it provides the
programming environment OS, tools and
Cloud computing is defined as new way of configuration management etc, to develop the
designing the IT architecture towards the applications
virtualization of data storage, networks software. To

1
 3) Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas): The cloud 8) Community Cloud: This cloud is a bit
consumer gets whole IT resources like processing different, it’s a kind of private cloud but the
servers, storage, networking etc, as an infrastructure to organizations that are performing the same kind of
do all kind of IT activities. Virtualization is main operations are gathered together as one enterprise and
theme of providing Iaas service to consumers. develop the cloud to satisfy all their needs. They
4) Data Storage as a Service (Daas): This is a organize themselves who willl manage which part of
special type of Iaas. Still, the delivery of virtual data the cloud infrastructure.
storage service on demand has become a separate
Cloud Service.
II. MOTIVATION TOWARDS PRIVATE
C. Deployment Models CLOUD AND ARCHITECTURE
Cloud community has defined 4 types of
deployment models to satisfy different type of users A. Drawbacks in Public Clouds
and their needs. [3]
5) Public cloud: The cloud Service provider 1) Cloud Computing concerns: Here, am listing
will have the full ownership with his own policy, down the various issues which relates to external
charging model, security standards
ds etc. and opened to cloud computing. [4]
general public users. Users who needs application
which they are using once in a while, not too critical, a) Privileged access: Who has privileged
and don’t want to spend much on creating the access to data? Who decides about the
environment, public clouds could be the best solution. hiring and management of such
administrators?
b) Regulatory compliance: Whether the
cloud service provide undergo any
security certifications?
c) Data location: As a cloud user, do you
get the access control over the location of
data?
d) Data segregation: Is encryption available
at all stages, and where these encryption
schemes designed and tested by
experienced professionals?
e) Recovery: What happens to data in the
case of a disaster, and does
do the vendor
offer full restoration, and, if so, how
Fig. 1 Private Cloud Characteristics [2] much time does this process will take?
f) Investigative Support: Does the vendor
6) Private Cloud: The cloud infrastructure is have the ability to investigate any
dedicated to the particular single organization and inappropriate or illegal activity?
managed by the same organization or a trusted third
party despite of whether it is located on the premise or 2) Security: Security has become the
off premise. Massive Data transfer,
ansfer, Security concerns, major challenge in the public clouds. As in the
customer’s critical operations, to maximize the Cloud environment, the organizations have to trust a
optimal utilization are characteristics of private cloud. third party called the Cloud Service Provider. No
But it requires an investment amount which is not doubt that putting our data, in someone else
really a characteristics of cloud computing. processor and in someone’s hard disk
di appears very
7) Hybrid Cloud: This is combination
combi of both risky.[5] Apart from normal security issues like data
public and private clouds. If the user wants to execute loss, phishing, botnet etc which are threats to
critical operations within their organization and want Organization’s data and software. There are new
to use the public cloud service for normal operations security Challenges that arise on clouds, “reputation
like webmail, this hybrid cloud could be the answer fate-Sharing
Sharing (criminal minded user sharing same
for them. data storage and network with other one will cause

2
problems)”, hackers using clouds for running attack. organization. The private or internal cloud includes
[3],[5] all properties as in external or public clouds. The
best thing in private clouds is, you just need to
In:
3) Interoperability and Lock-In: define the Service for the business units with
In the cloud infrastructure, any organization relevant SLAs. Then, leave the entire task to private
will be locked in to a cloud service provider and clouds i.e., the professionals running data centre and
could
uld not control their own IT. Scalable data ensure required service. [1]
storage in a distributed system is still an unsolved Private cloud can be defined as the realization
problem. There by exchanging data among the of improved
ved infrastructure maturity which supports
different cloud providers, worsen by the network’s sophisticated and robust virtualization through the
limitations. All these will cause the cloud users to be web portal. Now the enterprises need not worry
locked in with Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and about critical operations they need to do in their own
moving their data from one CSP to another. [3],[5] premises.

4) Absence of Service Level Agreements (SLA): 2) Need for Internal Clouds rather than
The lack of clarity in the SLAs by Cloud traditional IT: With external cloud computing, one
Service providers will raise so many issues has to follow the standards of the providers and
concerning the failure of Cloud service.
se The adheres to his compliances. If you are interested
guaranteed time and level of performance with external clouds because of security and issues,
(Performance instability) based on their cost, then you need to think of internal cloud
consequence of not meeting the standards, who is environment. Because
cause traditional IT disciplines and
responsible if the customer data has been other best practice framework which you were
compromised? The cloud users could not guess what following in your organization may not defined well,
he has to choose,
e, because CSP “X”, provides SLA-
SLA may not be adaptable to changes. This paves the
A and CSP “Y” provides SLA-B SLA of different chances of missing the shortcut to delivering them.
standards. This problem confuses the user while The good thing in most ost organization is they have
choosing the service provider, since there is no most of the required elements. So you just have to
standardization.[5] re-architect
architect it for cloud computing within your
firewall. [1]
5) Latency and Network limits: Due to the The architecture of the internal clouds should
limitations in the network,
work, it has become not a good supports basic cloud computing essential elements
option for organizations which need to transfer a which were described
ribed in the section I.
massive data. [5]

B. Major concerning issues

Information Security, Availability and
Performance these are the top 3 issues concerning
public clouds. There are lots of problems will
because of no standardization in cloud security.
Anyway, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)
working towards the security standards for clouds.
[3]
In order to protect the cloud environment
from risky threats, hacks and data loss, we need to
ensure Cloud
oud Computing policies and procedures.
Fig. 2 Positioning Private Cloud
This makes sense that we need privacy within the
cloud environment. This makes the enterprises to
D. Step by Step process to realize Private Clouds
push into the creation of their own clouds “The
Private” where the user will have full control over it.
The necessary steps which needs to be
analyzed carefully during the transition from
C. Why we need private clouds?
tradition IT data centers to internal Cloud computing
1) Overview: The private cloud is similar
to public clouds except that it is dedicated to single

3
are listed. I have listed only the major decisions need
to be concerned. [1]
1. Defining a service catalogue based on
business requirements from your
IT function
2. Identify the SLAs for each service
3. Categorize the service which should be
internal to your organization and which can
be given to outside third party
4. Measure the resources required to satisfy
internal services with defined SLAs
5. Review current infrastructure and find the
ways to simplify & Standardize
tandardize how you are
going to support the services.
6. Find public service provider, if you have any
Tab. 1 Private Cloud in IT [19]
that can be hosted outside the organization
7. Virtualizes all the elements which can be
provided virtually
2) IT Business: IT has overall understanding
8. Create a common user portal where all users
of the fine elements of business operations. By
can access all services, Whether it is
having the internal clouds, it paves the way to
provided internally or externally (third party)
harvest the hidden knowledge to get better
9. Implement internal Charging mechanisms so
utilization of the systems and it will improve end
that all users will know about the cost of
customer satisfaction by means security
secur policy. [1]
the services they are using
10. Compare the cost of internal service
3) Clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs):
provision against the commercial public
SLA is a contract between the consumer and
cloud providers with same level of SLAs. If
provider, which states the quality, availability,
cost effective and safe move to it to public
security levels, performance and various parameters
else keep the service private. Brings it back
which can be expected from the provider’s service.
or give it to another public cloud provider if
Before
fore going to the external clouds, most clouds
the existing one does not meet the SLAs in
users worry for this SLAs, because there is no
future.
standard and no guarantee over that. If at all
something bad happens to your privacy, who is
III. BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES IN going to be responsible? How much is the level of
PRIVATE CLOUDS expectation for availability?
ilability? Etc. In external cloud if
you have not met SLAs you might be convinced
A. Benefits of Private Clouds with some cut-price
price refund. But in case of internal
So far, we have seen the architecture details Cloud, you have the influence over the group, cost
and motivation behind the private clouds. Here are effective delivery of high quality, guaranteed service
various benefits of a private cloud
loud in addition to the levels and in general it satisfies what the
normal external cloud. organization expects from cloud computing. [1]
1) Existing Data centers: In order to
incorporate the facilities provide by public cloud 4) Inspiring IT employees: This may happen if
into a dedicated internal environment, the first thing your organization does not use any of the cloud
one has to think about the existing infrastructure i.e., facilities just because of the potential secure
the data centers
enters should be made cloud-capable.
cloud This customer service; the new cloud computing computi
method has become smart by finance-wise
finance and IT- technology will attracts the employees as its latest
wise. It will help the organization to move to the trend in IT. So people will start moving to
next level of IT support in their business goals with organizations where they can gain the knowledge on
the benefits of normal cloud computing along with cloud computing. If there is an in-house
in initiative for
security Concerns. [8] cloud computing, it will raise the employee’s

4
satisfaction and it may open the path for long term over headed management of running separate
career growth. [1] disaster recovery environment. [1]

5) Adoption to the business Changes: B. Challenges in Building Private Clouds

If there is a sudden transition required in the
organization, one can easily incorporates these 1) Your private cloud may not be a cloud:
business innovations and new business capabilities, The term Private cloud is defined by
instead of doing changes in the ‘every existing everyone based on their needs. In general, it looks a
process’ as traditional IT. Because, having the bit ambiguous because still the private clouds incurs
service offered by cloud computing one can do these high fixed cost and lacks the few benefits of cloud
changes in few steps by considering private clouds computing. The organization need to own all
in a box. [1] capital initial investments, on data centers. It’s not
as in general clouds computing. “Pay-as-you-go”
6) Utility Billing & Cost Structure: Making this implies it’s not truly flexible on the company
an internal cloud, you will be able to measure charge because the company owns the infrastructure still.
consumed by each employee and you will be able to [11]
organize the tasks in a proper way to reduce the
consumption as much as possible. The cost of well Some organization feels that they are
designed internal cloud is less than the cost having private cloud just by having their own
dedicated servers on a per service basis. This can be virtualized data center and providing business
achieved by cluster of cloud servers by eliminating solutions on charge-back mechanisms with some
the idle time of the dedicated servers defined service levels. But in reality that is not the
case, the key difference is they need to ensure the
The private Clouds include not only cost agility, flexibility in providing the services on-
reduction but also ‘Cost Avoidance’ and improving demand basis and consolidation of services etc. In
‘Cost Structure’. As we know, cost reduction comes short they need to optimize the way they are doing
by consolidating the hardware and implementing the virtualization to enjoy the full benefits of cloud
virtualization. This gives 40 percent reduction in computing.
data center costs, 30 percent in power consumption
2) General Challenges involved:
and cooling costs. Since clouds service enables
a. Consolidation of IT business:
technology for automotive resource management it
Consolidating the business units and IT resources
improves the productivity and efficiency by being
are really the first challenge in building the private
dynamic and “Zero-Touch” resource management
clouds. The challenge is to take the initiation,
can save the cost up to 30 percent. Unused
proving the concept and gain the benefits. This can
Software license and maintenance cost can also be
be done by finding the unmet business needs and
eliminated by focusing on the dynamic requirements
shortfalls in the existing business, then replace them
and its uses. [9][2]
with cloud based business service. The key factor is
leadership; someone has to start with vision and
7) Resilience and disaster Recovery:
influence of capturing the benefits.
Resilience and disaster Recovery should be
considered as part of the private clouds.
b. Improper Roadmap: Establishing the
Virtualization manages automated scripts for
criteria for moving the resources from existing to
failover and full service recovery achievable in
cloud architecture, ensure that you have the enough
minutes of time. Making private cloud fully virtual
excellent tools and methods for functioning the
you can access your corporate desktop from
virtual environment and clear orchestration to
anywhere with network connectivity.
continue the journey of cloud computing
Standardization assures that each data center are
identical as per standards, thereby you can replicate
c. Virtualized but not optimized solution:
entire data centre to any organization that offers
Once the virtualization achieved and significant cost
similar facilities. The virtualization of all the
benefits have been realized, you have optimize the
elements and standardization will support during
cloud environment by providing catalog based
disaster. This will save your investment from the
access, flexibility, innovation, security and

5
dashboard for monitoring and managing your private The organization need to weight the pluses and
cloud. Otherwise, you may not obtain the full minuses of a management tool before taking the
benefits of cloud computing. [2] decision on tools they are going to use. Because,
when you buy some “X” company product to
3) Security – a real twist: The motivation manage your cloud and you have modified all your
behind this private cloud for business lies with application to adapt to that product. What will
security concerns. But one must think the way how happen if there is a new product “Y” Which is cost
the private clouds do security, which should analyze effective and better than “X”. On the other side if
before doing private clouds. There really a twist you create a stack of products from different vendors
concerning security in private clouds because the say “X”,”Y” &”Z”. Whom do you call if there is a
security in virtual environment is not exactly we do problem occurs?; So far there is no single product in
with data center security. In fact, recently some the market which does everything for private clouds.
issues have risen that public cloud security is better The issues should be handled carefully while
than private security. Hence the necessity of installing the private clouds. [10]
implementing the virtualization in firewalls arises,
because multiple VMs may be connected using 5) Integration with public clouds: In the
virtualized network switches and other Virtualized deployment of private clouds, you may think why
components. Moreover, Virtualization in firewalls is we need public clouds when we have everything in
not an easy task and it’s difficult to predict the our hands. Okay! The answer is here, Consider a
behavior in virtual environments. situation, when you are planning for internal clouds
In any virtualized environment, servers are you have to decide on the capacity of resource
grouped into different security levels and security required, for example you may need 100 servers
level of the target host (the server) may not be now, so by forecasting the future demands you may
satisfactory for a virtual machine which is being think 30 more servers needed. Finally you plan the
migrated to it. So, we need verify these things while entire system for 130 servers. But keeping these 30
planning for security in private clouds. [10] servers in idle mode, do you think it is satisfactory to
manage extra capacity (only if less number of excess
4) Budget on Tools: Smaller business servers) or it’s too much to have it. It’s very difficult
should decide carefully while implementing the to predict the capacity and more over there are
private clouds. Because it takes large amount of chances of wasting cost over here. The solution is,
initial cost to install private clouds and more over Hybrid clouds, i.e., expand your capacity only at the
most of the business ends up in hybrid clouds necessary times with external clouds. Otherwise you
managing potential applications in private and rest in can manage with internal clouds.
public clouds.

IV. DIFFERENT VIEWS ON CHALLENGES

A. Private Cloud Users
From the client perspective, their basic
expectations will be the private clouds should
provide all services and benefits as the external
clouds which were discussed earlier. From the IT
employees, if your organization not going for
external clouds because their drawbacks, it makes
your employees shifting to other companies where
they can find their growth to the latest technology.

B. Clouds Service Providers

The Management of private clouds
overcomes lot of drawback in public clouds. But in
the management perspective, the first thing comes
Fig. 3 Budget Planning in Private Clouds into the picture when building the private clouds is
Consolidation and Standardization. The
Management should consider that both physical and

6
virtual assets are intact within the organization and it able to build a business case for private cloud.
meets all security regulations within the enterprise. Private is a good choice for big enterprise if they
want to start cloud service. As they are having huge
1) Standardization: This enables the sharing number of business services and requirements, they
of services without any conflicts. Standardization can build their internal cloud which really profits the
of private clouds does not strict to a single vendor. It organization. "75% of all organization who decided
should also include developing standard set of to go for cloud computing said they wanted private
policies and processes and adhering to them over a clouds first and public clouds later or not at all". It
long term. Frameworks like ITIL v3 can be the certainly sounds like it will be an enterprise world
starting point, adding and modifying best practices dominated by private clouds, between 2010 and
as per internal requirements. Thereby the 2015, according to the latest survey by Enterprise
organization can maintain consistency across end to Management Associates. So it has become
end application life cycle. It facilitates greater necessary that every organization to adapt the
advantages in automation and a reliable approach to private clouds to compete with their competitors. If
manage business services. [6] not, you will be forced to go out from the market as
the cloud dominations increases in the market. The
2) Security: The change has become leading competitors in the market are Amazon, IBM,
unavoidable in any IT organization. But apart from Eucalyptus, Open Nebula, and Dell VMware.
maintaining physical security, in virtual environment Google, HP etc. Already some these organizations
how the security is going to be managed. The IT have released their private cloud computing tool.
management needs to automate the security for But still there is no perfect tool which manages all
private cloud model. The firewall should be an the activities in the virtualized environment.
impenetrable and ensures the access to resources by
the right people, at right levels and at the right times.
VI. CONCLUSION
C. Legal implications In this paper we have discussed the basic
The legal issues involved in external clouds fundamentals behind the cloud computing and its
like security of data, no standardized SLAs, Cross- categorization. After that, we have seen the reason for
Border legal issues, transparency in the location of moving towards Private Clouds. The architecture of
data, Security level over data, performance level of the private clouds has been reviewed with necessary
the service etc., are putting the risk towards the steps. Then the benefits provided by private clouds in
clouds user. But if you have the internal clouds, you addition to public clouds and the challenges in
can ensure all these issues and the private cloud building private clouds are elaborated in detail from
provider will be the whole responsible for any different perspectives. I conclude that, any
mishaps as it can hold the traditional IT contracts organization can start the implementation of private
except that the services are automated. cloud in the future keeping in mind the security twist,
When we go to private cloud we think that it that they should be able to ensure the virtualization of
is more secured than public since all are under our security levels in the cloud environment. Private
control and we follow traditional security levels. cloud has the potential to dominate the traditional IT
But if you don’t analyze the security issues in and most of the future progress will be in private
private cloud it gives more threats than in public cloud computing.
clouds. This happens because the security
enforcements with data center virtualizations are not
same as we do in our traditional data centers. [12] REFERENCES

[1] Paula Banfield , Richard Blanford, “A white paper on Cloud

V. NEAR FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES Computing – Private Cloud” September 2010.

[2] EMC Corporation, “Private Cloud Means Business: Costs

Private cloud is not a choice for SMBs
Down and Agility Up”, 2010
because the key benefit in cloud computing
“Economies of Scale”. SMBs don’t have enough [3] Tharam Dillon, Chen Wu, Elizabeth Chang, “Cloud Computing:
resources to share which drives the cost savings. Issues and Challenge.” In Proceedings of AINA'2010,
Australia. pp.27~33, 2010
However, there are midsize businesses that will be

7
[4] Ramgovind S, Eloff MM, Smith E. “The Management of
Security in Cloud Computing” , School of Computing,
University of South Africa, Pretoria, IEEE, 2010

[5] Paul Hofmann, Dan Woods, “Cloud Computing: The limits of

Public Clouds for Business Applications”, IEEE Internet
Computing, 2010.

[6] HP - Business white paper, “Private Cloud: management pre-

requisites” August 2010.

[7] David F. Carr “Five Challenges with Private Clouds”,Oct 2010.

http://features.techworld.com/sme/3241825/five-challenges-
with-private-cloud/

[8] Bernard Golden, “Case for Private Clouds”,2009.

http://www.cio.com/article/493519/The_Case_for_Private_Clo
uds

[9] Yan Ness, “Benefits of Private Clouds”,June, 2010

http://resource.onlinetech.com/what-are-the-benefits-of-virtual-
private-cloud-computing-hosting/

[10] Bill Claybrook, “The Challengesof moving to Private Cloud”,

Nov,2010. http://www.computerworlduk.com/in-
depth/cloud-computing/3248821/the-challenges-of-moving-
to-a-private-cloud/?pn=2

[11] Arron Tan, “Private Cloud myth or reality”, Aug, 2010.

http://www.techgoondu.com/2010/08/28/the-private-cloud-
myth-or-reality/

[12] James U,“Cloud security depends on law”, Nov, 2010.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19413_3-20023507-240.html

[13] Kamesh Pemaraju, “Leaders in the Cloud”, Jan, 2010

http://www.sandhill.com/opinion/daily_blog.php?id=71&pos
t=595

[14] Andrew Hillier, “Analytics for Internal Cloud Management”

2010.

[15] Mary Johnston Turner, “Automated, Standardized, and

Private Cloud Management”, August 2010

[16] Pankaj Goyal, “Enterprise Usability of Cloud Computing

Environments: Issues and Challenges”, Workshops on
Enabling Technologies, IEEE, 2010.

[17] Balachandra R K, RamaKrishna P V, Atanu R ,”Cloud

Security Issues”, IIT- Pune,India IEEE, 2009.

[18] Hyunjoo Kim, Shivangi Chaudhari, Manish Parashar,

Christopher M, “Online Risk Analytics on the Cloud”,
IEEE/ACM Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid,
2009.

[19] Bechtel Technology Journal “Cloud Computing – Overview,

Advantages, and Challenges For Enterprise
Deployment”,Dec 2009