Project 2: Design the Cloud Deployment Architecture  Step 1: Develop User Stories From BallotOnline Employees  BallotOnline has decided to move for

Project 2: Design the Cloud Deployment Architecture 
Step 1: Develop User Stories From BallotOnline Employees 

BallotOnline has decided to move forward with the migration of the email, software development, and backups and archiving workloads to the cloud. You will need to have a good understanding of what users really need in terms of performance, capacity, availability, etc., in order to design an effective architecture and select the best cloud offerings.

In this step, you will write 

user stories
, brief high-level definitions of requirements that describe what the user wants to achieve in simple terms.

Watch the four 

user interviews
 of current BallotOnline employees describing their IT needs. You can record your user stories in the 

user stories template
. Upload them for Sophia’s feedback after reading the instructions below.

Project 2: Design the Cloud Deployment Architecture 
Step 2: Evaluate Available Cloud Service Offering Architectures for Email 

There is no one-size-fits-all cloud solution. You need to take workloads into account before deciding on a cloud deployment model. In order to make good design decisions, you have to understand the business, the cloud components, and the specific requirements involved.

In this step, you will be using the 
workload requirements for email to evaluate the available SaaS offerings.

Examples of Email as a Service Offerings

· Microsoft Azure’s Microsoft Office 360

· Zoho

· Gmail

· Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)

Review

·
Cloud Providers

·
Cloud Computing: A Review of PaaS, IaaS, SaaS Services and Providers

·
Considerations for Cloud Provider Selection

·
Best Practices for Cloud Implementation

As you did while preparing the Cloud Adoption Policy Addendum, you will focus your efforts on the market leaders in the cloud computing industry: 
Amazon AWS, 
Microsoft Azure, and 
Google Cloud Platform.

You will review the workloads based on the following criteria from the workload requirements for email and align the workload requirements with the appropriate cloud service offering. Your criteria should include:

· performance

· capacity

· cost

· availability requirements

Summarize your findings in a one-page document that describes your rationale for selecting the appropriate cloud service offering. This will be part of the overall cloud deployment architecture plan that you will present to leadership.

Submit your initial document for Sophia’s evaluation after reading the instructions below. Her early feedback will be valuable as you compile similar documents for software development and backup and archiving.

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Project 2: Design the Cloud Deployment Architecture 
Step 3: Evaluate Available Cloud Service Offering Architectures for Software Development 

Similar to the way you evaluated cloud architectures for email, in this step you will focus on the software development environment in 

cloud platforms
.

Traditionally, software development efforts follow the 

software development life cycle
. In the cloud, the core steps of the SDLC may take advantage of PaaS offerings, which provide development environments for different kinds of software applications.

In today’s organizations, development teams work together with IT operations teams to implement practices of 

DevOps
—seamless environments for rapid execution of software development life cycles along with automatic deployment and operation of systems in production.

You will use the information found in the 

workload requirements for software development
 to evaluate the available PaaS and DevOps offerings.

Again, you will review the workloads based on the following criteria from the workload requirements for software development and align the workload requirements with the appropriate cloud service offering. Your criteria should include:

· performance

· capacity

· cost

· availability requirements

Take detailed notes of your findings because the justification for your decision will be part of the final deployment architecture plan that you will present to leadership.

In the next step, you will complete a similar evaluation for BallotOnline’s backup and archival procedures.

Project 2: Design the Cloud Deployment Architecture 
Step 4: Evaluate Available Cloud Service Offering Architectures for Backups and Archiving 

Now you will consider the 
workload requirements for backups and archiving to evaluate the available IaaS offerings.

Examples of Backups and Archiving as a Service Offerings

· Amazon S3

· Amazon Glacier

· Azure Backup

· Rackspace Cloud Backup

Align the workload requirements with the appropriate cloud service offering. Your criteria should include:

· performance

· capacity

· cost

· availability requirements

Just as you did with the earlier evaluations, take detailed notes on your rationale for selecting the appropriate cloud service offering. This will be part of the overall cloud deployment architecture plan that you will present to leadership.

Now that you have completed your evaluation of the cloud service offering architectures and selected the appropriate service offering and the vendor for the three workloads, you can proceed to the next step.

There, you will begin designing the cloud deployment architecture, showing how everything will be connected.

Project 2: Design the Cloud Deployment Architecture 
Step 5: Design Cloud Deployment Architecture for Email 

Now that the evaluations are complete, you need to document your design of the various deployment architecture plans, starting with email.

In this step, you will produce a one-page document that shows the design of the cloud deployment architecture for BallotOnline’s email system. Using 
diagramming software such as Microsoft Visio or PowerPoint, you will create a professional diagram that will show a high-level architecture design of BallotOnline’s new email system deployed in the cloud.

Take Note

UMGC’s Information Technology and Systems department, in which the Cloud Computing Architecture program is housed, has the 
Microsoft Azure Dev Tools membership. Through this program, students in member departments can receive certain Microsoft software for educational purposes.

See the 
instructions for accessing Microsoft Visio for more information.

Submit your drawing to get Sophia’s feedback after reading the instructions below. Her input will be useful when you put together similar drawings for the plans for software development and backups and archiving procedures. The drawings will be part of the overall cloud deployment architecture plan that you will present to leadership.

Next, you will design the cloud deployment for BallotOnline’s software development architecture.