Posts Tagged ‘amazon’

Beta: Greek for Better?

While perusing forums and blogs, I’ve noticed a trend that seems to be happening, though I can’t quite put a finger on it. We know from a lot of articles that have been written recently that a good chunk of Google’s products are still listed as being in beta. A piece of software that I particularly enjoy, Zimbra, has a number of new features coming down the pipe that are also in beta and have been for some time. Other companies such as Amazon have had products in place such as EC2 that they want others to rely upon, yet they are still marked as beta.

There are two things that I take away from this phenomena. First, people are relying upon beta or otherwise unsupported software seemingly with their lives. This was especially apparent to me (I tend to follow more open source products than anything) with the Zimbra Desktop and the earlier releases of Firefox 3. People (IT admins sometimes!) don’t seem to understand that unsupported means unsupported. The second thing that stands out as a bit ridiculous given the first point is that some of these companies want their users to depend upon their software. For instance, Google released Chrome some time ago in beta form. It’s completely unsupported and definitely an immature release. Yet, at the same time, Gmail has been in beta for years with no end in sight that I’m aware of.

Having people want to depend upon software that hasn’t had a supported release yet doesn’t surprise me. People tend to do some dumb things. Now, it’s all fine and dandy to have the latest and greatest even if it’s still a bit buggy. In fact, I want to be running on the bleeding edge of technology and can sympathize. It’s fun and exciting. Unfortunately, they call it the bleeding edge for a reason. Sometimes even mature software fails or has new bugs that crop up, let alone a product that’s not even been deemed release-able by its maker! Most in the software development industry will have no sympathy for people who have lost data or had productivity crippled by relying on software that is released under the ‘beta’ badge, and for good reason. I’ve watched countless unfortunate souls in the Zimbra forums download their email to Zimbra Desktop via POP and then have no where to go with it (a remedy to come soon!). So why is this an issue?

Given the definition of beta software and the warnings above, I’d never use Gmail. Yet, here I am, using Gmail. Why? Unfortunately I have no answers, only questions and observations. We’ve come to rely upon applications like Gmail. Google Docs, and a whole host of other Google products. We have servers that run on Amazon’s EC2 platform that whole businesses are relying upon. It would seem that some of the largest computer and Internet companies in the world want no liability for anything that could possibly go wrong, yet in the same breath want us to depend upon their services. Google News (not a beta product) suffered from this same crossroad just a few months ago. We saw an article get published to Google News via an automated crawler get pushed to Wall Street and cause some real damage. Google wants us to rely upon them as a reliable source to get our news, yet it’s going to blindly add stories from years past? Granted all of the blame doesn’t fall on them, but where’s the line? Gmail is another prime example. During the past summer months, Gmail was plagued with downtime issues, yet here we are, dependent upon Gmail. Plus, Gmail is a great source of revenue with ads on the interface (I’ve clicked on a few myself!) for Google, yet for whatever reason they want to avoid responsibility and supporting it. I’m a fan of Google products myself, don’t get me wrong, but let’s get some consistency here.

Like I mentioned before, I have no solutions, only questions. I think, though, that there are some serious questions that need answering from some of the larger providers of Internet services. Or perhaps it’s a simple misuse of beta. Could be ‘beta’ be the next ‘cloud’? Could it be the most undefinable, yet attacked and loved idea? Okay, so maybe not. But, for real, which is it? Can we depend upon Gmail, EC2, etc. or not? If so, we need a new label.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Oct 7th, 2008

Windows on EC2

Amazon has announced support for Windows Server and MS SQL Server running in EC2 coming this fall. The announcement came the same day that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the coming of Windows ‘Cloud’. This functionality was available before using a bit of a hack, but will be fully supported coming before the end of the year. There’s no solid word from Amazon on what the costs will be nor how the licensing will work, though they have said “of course the actual price will be higher than Linux-based instances, due to the cost of Windows licenses”. The more traditional licensing style from Microsoft would be a bit difficult given the elastic nature of EC2, but they apparently have worked out something with Microsoft even with the recent news of Windows ‘Cloud’ on its way (somehow related?). You can read the original announcement here.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Oct 6th, 2008

Fog Computing

Cloud computing and virtualization has been all the hype over the last few years in the technology industry. The idea of being able to start up hundreds of servers (or even one or two, for that matter) nearly instantly and having them ready to start handling loads is life-changing for systems administrators around the world. Having to trust a cloud computing provider with critical data and systems is also life-changing for systems administrators. I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Just like any new technology, there’s those who are ready to jump aboard and never look back and there are those who are more cautious and not wanting to jump only to have nothing to catch them. Both have valid points. On one hand, you don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to leverage new technology to gain an advantage over your competitors. On the other hand, there’s a reason we call it the ‘bleeding edge’ of technology. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart.

Moving infrastructure out into a cloud environment offers tremendous flexibility, but it also comes at a cost since machines have to run all the time. Amazon’s EC2 instances (which are among the cheaper ones I’ve seen) cost about $.10 an hour.. for a small instance. Let’s say, though that I have a fairly resource-intensive application. I’m going to need an extra large instance to make my application work which costs $.80 an hour, still not bad. That means I need to run my instance 24×7. To provide software redundancy for high availability, now I need to have two of those instances. Suddenly, my $.80 an hour turns into $1152 per month. This cost comes before bandwidth going into and out from your instance. Now, I know that there’s other considerations such as networking equipment, rack space, etc. but I’m pretty sure a good lease on some hardware will come under that cost.

Naturally, a good compromise has become common in IT circles. Given the cost of running the instances 24×7 and trust concerns, a lot of shops have been utilizing cloud services as a hybrid alongside their existing infrastructure. Creating new instances during peak traffic times to handle loads or using it for running batch jobs is where the real cost savings comes into play. If you can use 25 servers for 5 hours a day rather than spending money on 25 physical (or space for 25 virtual servers) in your environment and spend (25 machines x 5 hours x $.8) $100 a day, you’ve just saved yourself a ton of money and now you don’t have to deal with the headaches of managing the extra under-utilized hardware.

Employees at Amazon have called this hybrid implementation of cloud computing ‘Cloudbursting’, but I’d like to throw out my own term: ‘fog computing’. There, I said it. I’ve been watching others play on the term cloud computing in their blogs for months and wanted to join in on the action. I couldn’t resist. We can have a cloud but keep it close to the ground, thus the fog. This trend makes perfect sense, and you can see real cost savings right up front rather than having to buy additional servers to accommodate additional temporary or cyclical loads. There’s definite value in the cloud, but a nice balance can be struck by using a hybrid approach and keeping your cloud ‘close to the ground’.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Sep 12th, 2008