If you are not familiar with all (buzz) terms related to cloud computing, you might start with this set of definitions and then read through the use cases in the linked paper produced by the Cloud Computing Use Case Discussion Group.
GigaOM has also published an article on ☞ strategic motivations for the cloud.
VMWare has announced the release of a new version of its desktop virtualization for Mac OS: ☞ Fusion 3. The list of new features available in Fusion 3 can be found ☞ here.
VMWare Fusion is probably the most well known and also the best desktop virtualization solution for Mac OS. While Fusion has a couple of competitors, like ☞ Parallels, ☞ VirtualBox or even ☞ HXen (nb Xen’s strongest point is not desktop though), I’d say that overtime VMWare’s long experience in virtualization has been visible and also made the difference.
I am looking forward to testing the new version. I’ll start with the trial version, but I’ll definitely try to get a free license ;-) (wink).
Update: You can also download for free the book ☞ Take control of VMWare Fusion 3 (direct download link: ☞ here).
While not as confusing as the web 2.0 term, cloud computing has been defined in many different ways and everybody felt like they should contribute their own version.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is proposing some definitions that are better than many others I have read so far:
Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
The document also details on the 5 main characteristics mentioned in the definition:
The definition would not be complete without also talking about the different service models:
and also the different deployment models:
I would strongly encourage you to download the document and read it.
I am reading that DoD through the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has launched in production their cloud solution called RACE which is assuring a ☞ 5 nines (99.999%) availability SLA. As a comparison both Google and Amazon SLA’s are just 3 nines (99.%), the difference being from 5min/year downtime to 8.76hours/year.
RACE runs on top of HP hardware with a VMWare virtualization layer and can accommodate both Windows and Linux OSes.
I just found a 192 slides long presentation (I’m wondering how long did that take) analyzing different cloud computing scenarios and the conclusion is that there are 5 patterns:
- Using the Cloud for Scale: How are people using cloud computing to achieve scale using provisioned machines in the cloud vs. physical machines on-premise?
- Using the Cloud for Multi-Tenancy: How are people using the cloud to create multi-tenant applications, serving thousands of customers using the same code base?
- Using the Cloud for Compute: How are people using the cloud to solve computationally intensive problems across a number of machines?
- Using the Cloud for Storage: How are people using the cloud to store massive amounts of data, in a way that is “infinitely” scalable?
- Using the Cloud for Communications: How are people using the cloud to make peer-to-peer and asynchronous communications easier?
— Simon Guest: Patterns for Cloud Computing ☞
