Research On Private Cloud–based E-learning Infrastructure

Cloud computing provides a better platform for e-Learning. Most existing e-Learning platforms are rarely shared between the public or private cloud platform and private infrastructure network, and normally need additional cost to deploy the environment. This thesis presents a new e-Learning framework based on the virtual private network and private cloud, which could help the student to easily setup and configure own e-Learning environment with less cost for efficiently sharing resources in universities. The research work can be classified into three broad streams.(1) The architecture of e-Learning based on the private cloud is proposedThe architecture consists of the private cloud, e-Learning, the campus network and VPN, of which the private cloud is implemented by open source software and can run efficiently on the virtual machine; e-Learning system mainly includes three parts: virtual machines for computer science courses, backup system and role based authentication system develop for user account management; and it uses Eucalyptus and virtual tunnel to complete the interaction.(2) Using VPN to integrate campus network and the private cloud.VPN provides the private network for communication between the campus network and the private cloud. The cloud operator can permit customers to access resources by any range of IP address without concern about the conflicts. Virtual private cloud uses VPN to create a secure channel, eliminates the complex configuration problems in cloud computing and enterprise components; the secure VPN link extends to cloud architecture of virtual machine, The e-Learning platform also becomes capable and scalable to interconnect with other multi-platform developed in different locations; it describes that the proposed architecture allows the communication between the local network and the private cloud based on Eucalyptus with VPN tunnel.(3) Implementation of the proposed architectureThis section shows the hardware and software environment needed by architecture and makes the overall deployment policy; presenting the private cloud infrastructure setup by showing all the configurations of the node controller, cluster controller and cloud controller. Then it describes image management, instance creation and volume, snapshot creation in private cloud infrastructure. Role based authentication system is implemented in the e-Learning platform. User accounts are stored in centralized database implemented by using lightweight directory access protocol. Different users can access this e-Learning system on any computer with an Internet connection and a web browser. Finally it demonstrates the architecture that allows an inter communication between local area network to a virtual private cloud hosted on Eucalyptus with a private VPN tunnel. The tunnelling technology used is Open VPN. VPN server is implemented in private cloud domain running Open VPN in server mode. Client machines which run Open VPN in client mode are connecting to the server; get a route pushed to them to an internal network within the private cloud, then able to access servers on that internal network over a VPN tunnel.