Re: OT: Cloud Computing is coming to ...

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On Mon, 2010-07-19 at 22:27 -0700, Antonio Olivares wrote:
> Dear fellow Fedora users,
> 
> In light of the other(s) Big Distro makers, Red Hat is also taking a look at not staying behind.  Here's an article that might be of interest:
> 
> http://press.redhat.com/2010/07/12/red-hat-introduces-cloud-consulting-services-as-part-of-cloud-foundations-edition-one/
> 
> Hope that is is not offensive and is not taken against anyone in particular.  The cloud computing is a topic that I believe should have more input and while I am opposed to it, I like for others to take a look at this lively topic.
> 
> See more and other topics of interest at Distrowatch Weekly
> 
> http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100719


My personal view is that I see cloud computing on several levels.

On the top level, there is the ability to easily move your data and/or
computing/networking needs around in the cloud. If your users are
allowed to host services in the external cloud you should strive to also
offer an internal one. The cloud starts in your own server room.

One example is an app we run that gets feeds from multiple webcams
around town, processes them, and streams them to web browsers. The web
portal runs on our own servers. The streaming of all those camera feeds
would put a load on our internet connection, so we moved that
application to the amazon cloud. The service running on that VM is
public. Anyone can see the data live anyway, so there is no security
implication. We get that load moved away from our own networks and
firewalls.

On a lower level, I see cloud services as API's and ABI's that enable us
to manage resources in vendor-independent manners.

For storage, this may finally give us what Sun tried to do many years
ago with java-based management services for storage. One interface? One
that is focused on provisioning, and not on technical details of the
back-end? Still sounds too good to be true. But if it works and it means
we (the back-end admins) can continue to override the users wishes and
provide what they need instead of what they ask for, I'm all for it
(like when DBA's come with very specific orders detailing raid type and
stripe width for their data and log volumes and we give them everything
from our standardized raid 5 pools)

There are tools today that enable me to move data around between
different storage systems without the user noticing. This enables
migration of old data to cheaper storage and so on. The problem is that
I then have to handle several storage systems potentially from different
vendors and with completely different interfaces. On top of that we get
yet another service that remaps the logical view of the storage. There
is a limit to how many different systems I can grok. The software also
gets expensive. If the cloud services will help me do this with one
interface at a reasonable price I will be very happy. If the cloud
interface has to sit on top of all this it will just add expenses.

For VM's this is great. More openness would mean that it would become
more feasible to run multiple physical farms. One VMware farm
(production servers, HA and/or FT support, etc), one farm based on free
software for development and testing, perhaps one hyper-v if you have a
volume agreement with m$ that makes this cheaper for your windows
vm's... If I can have one console to manage them all, move vm's around
and so on I would be very happy.

For networking it seems a bit cloudy yet how this will work out. There
are so many security implications.

If I open up the possibility for my internal customers to host computing
services in the external cloud, I would like to make sure everything
they order has to be verified against company security policies. Those
security policies will also need a rewrite to accommodate these new
services.

Conclusion? Cloud services are very interesting. The potential
implications on interoperability within my own server room? That's the
big one. Will it just add to the complexity, or is this so hyped up now
that everybody will support new standards at a low level so we can
actually simplify internal operations? Will it ever become what the hype
promises? Nobody believes that, I think...

-- 
birger


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