Word on the Street

January 2010 - Posts

• Why are some Apps better in the Cloud?

  Some applications are more easily adapted or are just plain better running in the Cloud than they are hosted or running locally. Some people don't necessarily subscribe to this notion, however after looking as some of the reasoning behind this, it may make a bit more sense. Realizing that not only are some applications more easily put in the Cloud, others may be more difficult or nearly impossible to put entirely in the cloud (without substantial changes to code). Games, CAD, and other video intense applications are good examples of hard to move applications.  Non-web enabled video intense enterprise applications are becoming fewer today than compared to even 5 years ago, however they are still out there and the Cloud can only host the backend for applications of this sort, the rendering side has to be done locally. It is important to note that companies like Citrix have developed technologies that allow applications like this to render intense video remotely, but in the overall public Cloud there just isn't much traction for this (although there is a great deal of traction within the walls of the enterprise).  There are many applications that don't require this level of intense video, which is what is being focused on here. Business applications commonly have low rendering requirements, but have all sorts of other complex architectural requirements. Let's look at a few of these requirements and how the Cloud can help solve them. The Scaling Story Many successful business application implementations end up growing in the number of users and uses rapidly over time. This usually causes scalability issues and a great number of headaches for architects and administrators. In a Cloud based environment, it is trivial to throw a few additional resources at an application either on a temporary or permanent basis. This isn't so easy in a traditional environment giving the Cloud a distinct advantage in its flexibility and associated costs. By being able to leverage resources outside of the walls of the datacenter for specific needs on demand, a business application's response time SLA can be kept far easier than before. Data Storage Many SANs today are on a constant churn of storage space, changing partitions, hot and cold LUNs (for those unfamiliar with LUNs, think of specific chunks of space on the SAN), and a complex infrastructure to manage and secure. This is the reality of storage in data centers today. In a cloud storage scenario, these issues are left up to the cloud provider and the track record of cloud based storage is pretty good and steadily improving. Because of the ability to create storage grids under the covers, storage cloud providers can lower their costs, increase their storage space utilization, and easily add additional storage ahead of space and performance demands. Databases Commonly databases require complex and redundant systems with many systems either over utilized or underutilized. Most medium to large organizations use DBAs (DataBase Administrators) to managed and maintain their databases. Properly implementing and managing a database is not an easy task and with constant updates, patches, and performance tuning required, it is expensive. The cloud can provide a great alternative to running a database in house, the only drawback is your data doesn't reside on premise. For some companies, having their data locally is a must or in some cases required by law. Most companies have several databases that could be moved into the cloud without risking catastrophic loss or legal action. Network / Connectivity Some companies pay out high dollars for fast and reliable connectivity either from one location to another, whether that be an office to another office or from one datacenter to another. This scenario may or may not include internet connectivity. All of these network connections are pricey to implement and maintain, mostly due to the cost of the networking equipment and the network administration required to manage them. Performance and reliability for internet based applications can be very important to companies that rely on the web as a primary channel for revenue. Moving to a cloud provider can in many cases offer greater response times and availability than attempting to run a server either locally or co-located in a local hosting facility, all while not having to give up administrative control over the server (whether it be physical or virtual). Centralization By centralizing applications in the cloud, management applications can potentially become more uniform (this depends on what management application(s) are being used. The ability to spin up additional instances to provide better performance, greater concurrency, or redundancy for brief or long periods of time is a prime benefit to the centralization of the cloud. Other benefits of centralizing include the ability in some cases to replicate tiers in other geographic locations and to be able to control tiers through one centralized security policy.   Conclusion Applications that are running in the cloud have many distinct advantages especially as resources become scarce - (whether they are compute or personnel). Small to medium sized businesses can benefit from offerings in the cloud for mission critical applications more rapidly than enterprises, primarily due to the great expense that most enterprises have already invested toward building out data centers of their own and potentially privacy and regulatory requirements. There are however pockets within enterprises which have specific projects or needs which can easily (and in a non-disruptive way) leverage the cloud and its benefits without necessarily violating IT standards. For small and medium sized businesses, the classic example of an easily accepted need is that of cloud application provider Salesforce.com which has been highly successful and offers a feature rich solution completely in the cloud, giving sales groups easy collaboration, lead generation management, contacts management, etc.  Salesforce has been so successful with their sales application, that they branched into other applications such as support. Depending on what the needs are and what current applications are out there to meet those needs, the Cloud can be a powerful and cost effective tool to leverage no matter the size of the organization. Posted Jan 27 2010, 09:56 AM by Dave.McCrory with 1 comment(s)

• Universal Cloud APIs Examined

  With the recent announcement of the vCloud API SDKs for both Java and Python, it seemed as though it might be relevant to investigate the available Cloud APIs, what they do, where they come from, and how they work. There are four Cloud APIs that are abstraction APIs (at least four of which that seemed to have a relevant amount of information around). Each of these APIs has its own take on how Clouds should be provisioned and managed through their API. All of the APIs do appear to have a common goal in creating an abstraction from specific cloud implementations so that a developer can create an application that will work on many different clouds while making a single API call. What relevance does this have to a Virtualization Administrator? Today, probably not very much, but in the future, a great deal. Cloud APIs make it possible for developers and even applications themselves to generically interact with the infrastructure without having to interact with the infrastructure owner or administrator directly. This automation has many advantages in the speed at which applications can be developed and deployed because of the elimination of many manual processes and ties to specific operating systems and infrastructure specifics. This means that Virtualization Administrators will eventually be more of Infrastructure Security and Maintenance and less of Application Implementation and Support. Each of the four Cloud APIs were briefly examined along with source code check-ins and whatever documentation was available. The tables below are not guaranteed to be perfect or error free, however they do provide a good idea as to which API provides what capability in addition to providing guidance as to where each is headed and how quickly it may get there. (Click Image to Enlarge) (Click Image to Enlarge) Amazon EC2, Cloud, dasein, deltacloud, Google, Java, jcloud, libcloud, Python, vCloud, VMware Posted Jan 25 2010, 10:35 AM by Dave.McCrory with 1 comment(s)

• Is Cloud Computing Really New? (The History Behind the Cloud)

  Is Cloud Computing Really New? Where did it come from? These are questions that are often unanswered or not covered in all of the buzz that companies like Google, VMware, and Microsoft are putting out there around the Cloud. Let's step back and look at where the Cloud actually came from. In the beginning, there were great big hulking monstrosities that took up rooms of space, these were called mainframe computers. Mainframes brought us many of the terms used in computing today, along with a model that we are in essence moving back toward because of the efficiencies that it gave us. Out of the Mainframe Era, came the Mini Era. Mini Computers were smaller and less expensive than Mainframes and gave us a more practical approach to compute ownership for businesses and Universities. The PC Revolution hit following this and people became interested in doing more with their workstation than simply using it as a terminal to run applications on the Mainframe or Mini. Enter the Client/Server Era, as more people had PCs placed on their desktop and more applications were written for Windows, people became interested in networking these machines together. Enter the Client/Server model from Large Enterprises to Small Businesses, companies were wiring their resources together to leverage PCs and have them jointly use File Servers, Printers, and the like. The Internet had already been around a long time at this point and many University/Government Computers had been linked to the Internet. Now some companies were providing businesses and consumers with the ability to dial-up and use the Internet. As broadband became more popular and more companies began to leverage the Internet as a resource as well, the web became relevant and companies began to need a web presence. Around this time, a group of providers started to offer desktop applications as a service. The Application Service Providers (ASPs) as they were called began to offer applications using remote access technologies such as Citrix Metaframe (now XenApp) and Microsoft Terminal Services. These technologies worked reasonably well, but weren't adopted for a number of reasons. These reasons included ownership of data, concerns over SLAs, and Licensing/Costs. As the ASPs were in decline, there was a fledgling company introducing a technology that they had been working on for PCs to allow them to run other operating systems in software. That company was VMware and the product was VMware workstation. Interestingly, VMware wasn't the first company to provide virtualization capability, that honor goes to a company once known as Connectix (they created VPC, the Connectix QuickCam which was sold to Logitech). Connectix created VPC a software package for Macintosh computers to allow them to run Microsoft Windows in a Virtual Machine, which ultimately allowed Windows and OS/2 Computers to run Microsoft Windows in a Virtual Machine as well. Another thread of the story is around Service Oriented Architectures (SoA). The idea of exposing resources as web services making them more easily and uniformly accessible has been around for a while, but building the components, tools, and an infrastructure to support it has been tougher. VMware's push of Virtualization into the Enterprise allowed Applications to be coupled with Operating Systems and become highly portable. This was the push that was needed to make the idea of the Cloud actually function the way it was envisioned. SOAs were now something that could be built and torn down dynamically providing the last component technically to create an efficient cloud model. Enter Amazon EC2, the first commercial grade public cloud. Why does Amazon have this distinction? There were other companies doing Cloud Computing before Amazon (Salesforce.com on the SaaS side and ProTier/Surgient on the Dynamic Infrastructure Provisioning Side), however none of them brought the web community (including Developers and Admins that needed resources) into the picture the way Amazon did. Amazon promoted an architecture and services, while creating a realistic model for charging for its Cloud Resources (a granular consumption model). Today, there are many Public Cloud providers and companies offering solutions to create and manage Private Clouds. Public Cloud providers include: Amazon AWS and EC2 Google Web Apps and App Engine Microsoft Azure RackSpace Private Cloud Enabling software providers include: VMware Citrix Microsoft Surgient The Cloud is the old reinvented as new based on all of the technological advancements from the proliferation of Virtualization and broadband Internet to the ubiquity of Web Services in a Web 2.0 based Applications. What makes the Cloud likely to be a permanent reality? Companies continue to shift from seeing Servers and IT as a strategic resource to viewing them as another type of facilities based service (this harkens back to Utility Computing). Another important note is that Cloud moves towards the vision that IBM mentioned several years ago (but at the time wasn't practical to implement and still has some significant hurdles, but moves closer and close), that being Autonomic Computing. The idea behind Autonomic Computing was (or for that matter, still is) that systems will become self-healing and will be able to fix, tune, and adjust themselves. This is where things will head, it is just a matter of how long till we get there. What isn't being said, but many are thinking is that this sounds a lot like HAL9000 or Skynet from (The Terminator Movies). Let me put those fears to rest, there is little doubt that there will still be a human somewhere in the loop checking policies or providing approvals and checks. These are exciting times for the Cloud Computing space and what is happening in that space. Cloud Computing will be the hot place for Application and Infrastructure for the next 5 years at least.   Cloud, Amazon EC2, Google, Salesforce Posted Jan 20 2010, 02:45 PM by Dave.McCrory with no comments Filed under: Hyper9, vmware

• VMware GO - VMware Officially Enters the Hosted / Cloud Application Business

  With Yesterday's announcement of the launch of VMware GO, VMware has finally entered the Hosted (Cloud/Web) Application market. Providing services to small and medium businesses to more easily manage their ESXi implementations. On the management side, VMware GO provides a guided installation, ESXi Media Download and CD Burn (from ISO), VM Provisioning (P2V , Manual Creation, or Virtual Appliance - via the VMware Marketplace), Console Application Linking is Provided (the VMware Remote Console can be Launched from the VMware GO interface), Patch Scanning and patching to one or more Guest OSs and ESXi Itself, and Reporting rounds out the capabilities (very rudimentary patch and configuration reporting, but it is free). Many questions remain as to what finally tipped the scales for VMware to pull the trigger at this time (Amazingly just days after the news of the Zimbra acquisition hit). This move may be an attempt by VMware to begin experimenting with ways of creating Hybrid Cloud environments in a future iteration of VMware GO (Interesting to note that GO was apparently created in partnership with VMware Partner Shavlik). How would this work and how does GO work today? The video embedded below is an Overview of How VMware GO works. Where do you think VMware will take GO from here? Leave your comments... Posted Jan 15 2010, 01:50 PM by Dave.McCrory with no comments Filed under: vmware

• Will Cloud Computing help 2012 become the end of IT as we know it?

  The year 2012 is surrounded in a shroud of mystery, with many believing that some sort of cataclysmic or transformative event will take place December 21st or 23rd of that year.  Predictions of impending doom stem from interpretations made about the Mayan and other ancient civilizations and the Long Count calendar which is said to "end" sometime around that same date in 2012. IT folks aren't strangers from thinking about facing doom and gloom in the future.  While we may not be following the Mayan calendar at work, our own calendar has certainly put misplaced fear in many of our hearts.  Remember the "Year 2000" problem or Y2K?  I for one was certainly glad the Millennium Bug didn't end my career like it was supposed to. But Gartner recently announced a bit of prognostication that got me thinking.  Yesterday, the analyst firm launched their 2010 and beyond predictions which spanned some 56 markets, topics and industry areas, with around 250 predictions in total. The one that quickly caught my eye stated: "By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets." What?  No IT assets in one out of every five companies in as little as two years from now?  Wow!  That's a pretty powerful statement and quite a bold prediction.       Gartner says this will be the result of virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees bringing in their own desktops and notebooks to work. Gartner writes, "The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an employee's desk, will not go away. However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry. For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or reskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points." This prediction is not entirely a surprise, however; as we have witnessed this change happen over the last seven years to hosted Websites and e-mail.  Most companies are using outside providers for these types of services today rather than burdening their internal IT staff. Virtualization has definitely done its part thus far in shrinking down the data center footprint of server equipment.  But this latest prediction has one in five companies with a zero footprint - NO IT assets!!!  That seems like an awfully heavy burden to place on the cloud community.  It means that cloud technology will need to mature a lot faster than has virtualization in order to reach those goals.   If we plan on getting to a zero footprint of IT assets, cloud technology definitely seems to have the best chances to get us there; but that would also assume we are talking public cloud technology, and not private.  In the interim, many may choose to attempt a hybrid cloud in order to help bridge the gap.  But the clock is ticking, so people need to get moving if we are going to meet a 2012 time frame.     As we enter 2010, 2012 no longer seems to be that far off into the future.  So if you live in the world of IT, make up your mind.  Which will it be... the end of IT as we know it?  Or will it be the end of the world itself?  I saw the movie... so I'm voting that we change IT if we have to! Posted Jan 14 2010, 02:38 PM by David Marshall with 1 comment(s) Filed under: cloud