Posts Tagged ‘cloud computing’

Microsoft Enters Cloud Computing Game

In true Microsoft style, Microsoft has finally (almost) entered the cloud computing arena with its new Windows Azure services. Azure’s offerings are similar to the Google App Engine in that they are storage and processing services rather making the costumer manage the instances at an OS level such as the Amazon EC2 cloud. Of course, this lack of responsibility and management also means a loss of control and customization. Azure will offer on-demand versions of Exchange, Microsoft CRM, Sharepoint, Microsoft Office Live services as well as the .NET and “Live” application platforms for web developers. Ballmer talked of these new services just a month ago saying it would be announced towards the end of October.

Microsoft’s new offerings come just a few weeks after Amazon announces plans to enable Windows in its EC2 cloud which allows customers the ability to manage its machines fully by running them on top of Xen and giving customers full “root” access. Since Microsoft apparently doesn’t call its pre-release products beta anymore, you can now check out a “technology preview” here.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Oct 28th, 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

Ballmer Talks of Rumored ‘Windows Cloud’

Steve Ballmer talked yesterday in London about a new ‘Windows Cloud’ OS that will be announced later this month. The OS has been alluded to in the past as being code named ‘Red Dog’. The OS will be based upon the Windows Server offering replication across multiple sites, ‘management modelling’, and an ‘SOA model’. If we’re lucky it’ll be a spin-off of zones in Solaris offering multi-tenant Windows environments. If we’re not lucky, we’ll get Windows with built-in HA clustering on top of Hyper-V.

Ballmer took the opportunity to take a shot at Google. He became yet another calling Google Chrome a web operating system. He too said that Chrome was aimed at competing with Windows. I won’t divulge into my opinion on people who think that.. What’s odd is that Linux has been around for well over 10 years and finally just a few years ago Microsoft actually acknowledged it as a competitor. Google Chrome isn’t even a similar product, let alone as mature and Ballmer claims it’s going to compete.

Ballmer also confirmed the rumors of another OS in the works from Microsoft codenamed Midori. Midori is rumored to not be based upon the Windows kernel at all, though Ballmer stated, “It’s merely a research project”.

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Filed under News : Comments (1) : Oct 2nd, 2008

Stallman Rips Cloud Computing

GNU and Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman last week was quoted in an interview saying that cloud computing was “beyond stupidity”. Stallman has cited potential price increases, loss of control, loss of privacy, and vendor lock-in as concerns. Stallman is a free software purist and a huge privacy advocate so naturally he has problem with giving up control. ‘Cloud computing’ in whatever form it takes removes control of data from the user and places it in the hands of the vendor. However, does it really restrict our freedom?

I think Stallman was partly right, but he’s missing a key component that I think could turn his idealism around. Given the lack of a definition for ‘cloud computing’, let’s start with a little context to get a feel for what Stallman meant:

The concept of using web-based programs like Google’s Gmail is “worse than stupidity”, according to a leading advocate of free software … Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign … whenever you hear somebody saying … this is inevitable … it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.”

Using his example of Gmail, we can see that Stallman is really talking about SaaS, not the utility computing service type of products such as the Amazon EC2 service. Also, given his example of Gmail and the nature of the discussion, it’s important to point out what Stallman sees as “free”. Yes, Gmail is free for a personal account, but they also offer a pay-for service for a business, but that’s not even what he’s talking about. His view (at least the foundation that he started surrounding free software) is that software should be free.. as in it’s your software and your data so you should be free to do with it what you want. This is not to say that the software is free in price, though this is often the case. At the end of the day, Stallman and everyone else knows that software companies have to make money to survive so they can’t offer everything with no fees involved.

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Since Stallman is a huge privacy advocate, he also takes a shot at privacy and recommends that we keep our data only on our systems. This is true to a point, but most everyone puts money in a bank, so where’s the line? I’m going to ignore this part, but wanted to bring up this other concern that Stallman talks about as well.

Stallman’s comments bring out a very important matter in choosing a cloud provider, but if you make a wise choice, a cloud (SaaS) provider can save you time and also provide a way for you to live more freely. There are those vendors who lock-in your data and have no API’s, thus no way of export except through the vendor themselves. However, following standards (in his example, in email) we can use our data much more effectively for a lower cost.

We have all read about and know the benefits of using a SaaS provider — no up-front investment, no staff training (to manage systems), and of course having the privilege of being able to just call your provider when something break. I’m over-simplifying, but we could go on for days about the benefits and drawbacks. Gmail (or whoever you want your provider to be) is going to manage all the headaches that come along with managing those servers for you. This emables SMB’s especially to launch themselves into their market with high tech systems whether or not they have the time, resources, or money (is there a difference?) to provide those services on their own. These services can allow businesses to have their email on their phones and laptops. They can have their contacts from their CRM system on their phones and accessible 24/7 without worrying about losing a contact because the phone breaks or their laptop loses its hard drive. Except for having control over the source code, that’s what the Free Software Foundation is all about.

The second piece of the puzzle is over freely distributed code. Since SaaS and open source software have been leaning on each other, finding an open source hosting company is easy. (In fact, I’ll recommend one.) To borrow the line from Captain Planet, by their power combined, we now have ‘free’ software.

Since big-name nerds like to make dramatic statements about things they don’t like, it’s no surprise to hear something like this from Stallman. However, given a little practicality and by avoiding a little bit of extremism, we can find the best of both worlds. Using an open source hosting provider, we have software that we can modify and data that’s portable and still be able to leverage those shared resources that come from a ‘cloud’ provider.

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Filed under News, Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Oct 1st, 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 (2) : Sep 12th, 2008

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