Managing Cloud Computing Infrastructure
When asked what tools were they using to manage their cloud infrastructure, nearly 50.8 percent said none, while 33.3 percent said that they were using web-based tools from the hosting provider. New, specialized, cloud/virtualization tools had 9.8 percent of the total share.
This might explain the reason why many thing the cloud is the ultimate solution.
Cloud Computing Use Cases (pdf)
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 Releases Fusion 3
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).
The Best Cloud Computing Definition
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:
Definition of Cloud Computing
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:
- on-demand self-service
- broad network access
- resource pooling
- rapid elasticity
- measured service
The definition would not be complete without also talking about the different service models:
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
- Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
and also the different deployment models:
- private cloud (on-premise)
- community cloud (nb: this deployment model is new to me and is basically a hybrid model applied or used for a specific field)
- public cloud
- hybrid
I would strongly encourage you to download the document and read it.
DoD Has the Best Cloud?
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.
Patterns for Cloud Computing
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 ☞
Above the Clouds A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing
GridEcon: An European Cloud Platform
Interesting project funded by EU:
GridEcon project has created a commodity market platform that enables users to bid on available computing capacity, or put out a tender for a specific computing time slot
The part that caught my attention is that the GridEcon platform allows users to both buy and sell computing capacity. Anyways, I’m not sure yet how this solution has addressed concerns like vendor lock-in, privacy or SLAs considering the bidirectional model.
Amazon EC2 vs. Colocation
Maybe a bit old, but definitely worth the read. Make sure you are checking the comment thread too, as it adds a lot of details.
In case you are reading Romanian (or you’d like to test the Google Translator service), here is another analysis done for a Ruby on Rails app ☞.
Microsoft Azure Pricing: More Expensive Than Alternatives
I assume BusinessInsider editors were a bit confused when they wrote that the Azure prices are on par with those of Amazon and Google.
As you can see in the attached graph
I haven’t seen all the pricing plans — and I’d be interested to hear more about Azure SQL offering —, but I think it is safe to assume that there will be smaller fees for ‘fidelity’ plans.
Update: I have found more details about pricing here. There is a .NET services price measured at 100k ops (you can think of it as API price) and there are also more details about SQL Azure pricing (done in terms of storage space)
Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft Azure
Short but good coverage of Microsoft Azure
