What is the "cloud"?

[HeXen]

its heaven for poor people who can't afford powerful hardware or for people who have small devices. It enables people to do things that requires high end hardware to perform. Instead you let the servers do all the work.

No doubt in the future, all OS's and even running games with be cloud, theoretically it should thwart most piracy, at least how its done today, but wont stop hackers and also could potentially be more dangerous to your privacy since you would have no real physical security control.

 

[her209]

A real "cloud" service should be flexible, a single server is not flexible. A single server has a physical limitation where it can only serve "X" number of request. With a real cloud service, whether its 10,000 request or 100,000 request, the performance should be the same - you can not say that about a single server.

With a single server, if it goes down, the site / service goes down. With a cloud cluster, if a single server goes down, so what, all of the other servers make sure the site / service is still available.

However, regardless of how "big" a cloud is, its still going to be limited. So you just plug in some more servers, balance the load, and expand the capacity. Where with a single server, you have to install more memory, upgrade the CPU, install SSD drives - which means down time.

That's like saying a single server running Apache or IIS isn't a web server because its not flexible and cannot handle a large number of requests without performance degradation. There are technologies that you can employ to ensure the website's performance and reliability but a web server is a web server is a web server.

 

[spidey07]

It's nothing more than marketing and a push by microsoft/vmware to generate buzz. Sadly, it's working on the uninformed.

 

[spikespiegal]

VMware, Citrix and MS aren't pushing Cloud computing as much as it's being demanded by corporate and enterprise clients.

If you're in the apparel, bakery or any other non-IT centric business you probably don't want to see your budget wasted on data centers and geeks studying their CCNA's on the company dime. However, according to the above comments it would seem every small - medium size business should be forced to house their own Exchange and SQL servers because gee, guess who makes money supporting them.

With the exception of data critical entities like banks, etc., Corporate America wants *out* of the IT business, and nobody is forcing anybody to de-centralize data or processing. If you check your Yahoo or Gmail acount at work, well, guess you're guilty of it as well.

 

[Texashiker]

That's like saying a single server running Apache or IIS isn't a web server because its not flexible and cannot handle a large number of requests without performance degradation.

I dont even know what to say about that statement - a web server is just that, a web server

There are technologies that you can employ to ensure the website's performance and reliability

Like what? I have a dual quad core Xeon server running an active forum, and its about reached its capacity. Even with caching, more memory, and everything else, the server is about due for an upgrade. So maybe you can tell me something to help performance?

but a web server is a web server is a web server.

All web servers are not the same.

A couple of weeks ago I moved my forum to a cloud based service, and the site went down with a big crash. Instead of getting 3,000 - 4,000 post a day, the forum only got 125 post a day. After 3 days the DNS was changed and we went back to the old server. The new hosting provider was told in detail about the amount of traffic the forum got, number of database queries, number of page loads, unique ip addresses daily,,,,,, everything.

I was told this was a real cloud service that could grow with the needs of the site. Instead of having to change servers, we just add more resources. Well guess what, it did not work. But things did not work as described and the service was canceled.

When someone mentions "cloud service" or "cloud hosting", a lot of hosting providers are trying to jump on those buzz words to get customers. And its the customers that are paying the price with downtime.

Single web server - does not make a cloud
Virtual private server - does not make a cloud
Clustered services - makes a cloud

But just as someone else said, the term "cloud" is abstract and means different things to different people.

To me, the term "cloud" means that my websites and online businesses can grow, and without the worry of server downtime for repairs, or upgrades.

 

[Sadaiyappan]

Cloud means online. When people talk about cloud they usually mean apps and data that are stored online instead of on your devices memory storage.

 

[Nothinman]

VMware, Citrix and MS aren't pushing Cloud computing as much as it's being demanded by corporate and enterprise clients.

If you're in the apparel, bakery or any other non-IT centric business you probably don't want to see your budget wasted on data centers and geeks studying their CCNA's on the company dime. However, according to the above comments it would seem every small - medium size business should be forced to house their own Exchange and SQL servers because gee, guess who makes money supporting them.

With the exception of data critical entities like banks, etc., Corporate America wants *out* of the IT business, and nobody is forcing anybody to de-centralize data or processing. If you check your Yahoo or Gmail acount at work, well, guess you're guilty of it as well.

And those clients are starting to feel the pain of being under someone else's thumb. We just had a client call and tell us they're canceling their BPOS account because of constant email and calendaring issues and the fact that Sharepoint is gimped beyond belief.

 

[CloudMike]

Thanks for creating this discussion. As somebody who works in the "cloud" industry, I think I can help share understanding on what cloud computing is.

The term "cloud" has become a very confusing term for even technology analysts because it has become a bit of a buzz word and is used by so many people in a variety of different ways. Simply put, "cloud" refers to computer resources that are accessible via the Internet. Some benefits include that you don't have capital expenditure (no hardware), no hassle with maintenance or upkeep, you can scale to however much computing power you may need and you only pay for what you use.

There are a lot of different companies that offer "cloud" solutions including providers of Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). SaaS, PaaS and IaaS companies all use the term "cloud" to describe their offerings but they often mean very different things. This is where a lot of the confusion comes from. Having a clear understanding of the technology behind cloud computing and the context of which the term is used can address a lot of the confusion.

Let me know if you have any other cloud questions. I'd be more than happy to answer them for you.

 

[spidey07]

Yes. It's the whole "application service provider" model that was pushed over a decade ago and failed because of lack of demand. It's going to fail again because the costs/benefit don't work out.

 

[Nuwave]

As a networking professional the term cloud to me "usually" means hardware or service whose details are unimportant for this particular diagram, application or solution.

 

[her209]

All web servers are not the same.

Just like not all clouds are not the same! You're stuck on the idea that a cloud has to do x, y, and z, and if it doesn't do all of them, then its not a cloud.

 

[ITJunkie]

It's just the latest buzzword for the Internet and hosted solutions.

Couldn't have said it better!
If you want to dig in a little more go here: http://www.techange.com/blog/ and look at the 3rd entry from the top.