Meghraj: GI Cloud

In news : Ministry of Shipping has revamped its website recently and the new website is based on open source technology and is deployed on NIC cloud Meghraj

What is Meghraj Cloud?

In order to utilise and harness the benefits of Cloud Computing, Government of India has embarked upon an ambitious initiative – “GI Cloud” which has been named as “MeghRaj”.

More about Meghraj

• The focus of this initiative is to accelerate delivery of e-services in the country while optimizing ICT spending of the Government. 
• This will ensure optimum utilization of the infrastructure and speed up the development and deployment of eGov applications. 
• The architectural vision of GI Cloud encompasses a set of discrete cloud computing environments spread across multiple locations, built on existing or new (augmented) infrastructure, following a set of common protocols, guidelines and standards issued by the Government of India. 
• Two Policy reports viz., “GI Cloud Strategic Direction Paper” and “GI Cloud Adoption and Implementation Roadmap” were prepared by Meity in this direction

Services offered as part of this Cloud

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is providing National Cloud services under the initiative MeghRaj. The services offered are as follows.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):

• IaaS provides you basic virtual computer infrastructure resources like CPU, Memory, Disk Storage attached to blank VMs with allowing you to install OS, using ISOs, from scratch and customization. 
• However you have to use your own licenses for OS and Application software.

Platform as a Services (PaaS):

• PaaS provides pre-installed web and database servers so that you can publish and run web application without worrying about server setup. 
• The servers are pre configured ready with basic security hardening. 
• Use PaaS service to quickly deploy servers and publish your web applications. 
• The OS & Application Software licenses are provided by us as part of offering.

Software as a Services (SaaS):

• This provides on demand software service. 
• SaaS is a software delivery model where users are not responsible for supporting the application or any of the components. 
• The server infrastructure, OS and software is being managed by cloud services. 
• If you are having a web application and want to distribute it to users, use our Cloud Service to deliver through Software as a Service.

Storage as a Service (STaaS):

• STaaS provides a need based storage solution
• It provides an excellent alternative to the traditional on-site and dedicated storage systems and reduces the complexities of deploying and managing multiple storage tiers.
• One can use it to mitigate risks in disaster recovery, provide long-term retention for records and enhance both continuity and availability.

Hosting Environments:

• NIC Cloud Services provides 3 different types of environment for creating virtual machines i.e. Production, Staging and Development so that you keep your VM segregated and manage them properly based on the business need for both PaaS as well as IaaS service model.