Thing with linode is that they focus on infrastructure as a service in the sense they have 6 dc's globally and can easily deply redeploy migrate clone backup load balance with ease and very reasonably priced.
-----Original Message----- From: Joe Landman [mailto:land...@scalableinformatics.com] Sent: 21 March 2013 18:11 To: Jonathan Aquilina Cc: beowulf@beowulf.org Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Clustering VPS servers On 03/21/2013 12:15 PM, Jonathan Aquilina wrote: > I am venturing back to the cloud side again isn't cloud just a fancy > name for virtualized servers? Well, no. Think of cloud as "hardware and infrastructure as code". You instantiate what you "need" with some caveats. Completeness of API, breadth of product is nice, but at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters, is, does it do what you need at a price you are willing to pay. +1 to Chris for message going over these elements, though one has to be careful as Amazon isn't the only one out there. They are good for some things, but as many of our customers have discovered by trying them, not good for everything, nor even the majority of items. Clouds (public and private) have a definite (and growing) niche, and I see the entire "hardware and infrastructure as code" as a very good thing. It has a nasty tendency to create waves of fads though, and its important to be able to recognize such things. This said, not having a block, object, or other storage API when you don't need it really isn't a deal killer. Not having an end-to-end low latency fabric, and bare metal servers is (for our customers). But our customers are not necessarily the same as all customers, and the recursive joke I tell about this is "gross overarching generalizations tend to be incorrect". Basically being all things to all people means that none are done well. Focusing upon niches where people get what they need is IMO a good way to carve out a market. With all due respect to those whom advocate heavily for one thing or the other, our experience with this is that the joke is on the end user when things don't work well at all, and cannot be made to work well due to design/implementation issues. Especially if they've sold this to management/board of directors. This is true of internal as well as external resources. This is more of a generic business problem than a public cloud vs private resource issue. This said, a quick pointer over to an IDC paper is an interesting read: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23972413#.UUs7OqDYSlg is a good read. Also there are others as well. Public cloud is large and growing, and largely commiditized. Very non-HPC specific, though with careful marshalling/selection of resources (CycleComputing) it can be viable for some HPC. But its very hard to argue a single platform is all things to all people, when it clearly isn't. Moreover, Amazon itself just signed a nice sized deal with a government entity for a private cloud offering ... Basically, Chris is dead on right with his points on "there must be an API, and a broad array of services" for a good public cloud. A private cloud can get more specific on needs, and not worry about implementing things that are not needed right away. But cloud isn't always "virtualized". Amazon is largely para-virtualized which is great to maximize tenancy, but not so great for performance. Its APIed out the wahzoo. Other clouds are hyper-virtualized and run closer to the metal. Others still are bare-metal with provisioning magic atop them. What likely matters most with public clouds are the ability to move between them when one of your cloud providers decides to compete with you. This has been a thread of articles on The Register (which I wrote about here: http://scalability.org/?p=5898 ) This isn't an Amazon issue as much as it is a business dependency issue. Freedom to move is important. It would be nice to have a common API so as to make this work well. The very last thing any of us want is the Microsoft-ization of the cloud world. That would be, universally, and catastrophically, bad for all. <http://scalability.org/?p=5898> -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics, Inc. email: land...@scalableinformatics.com web : http://scalableinformatics.com http://scalableinformatics.com/siflash phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121 fax : +1 866 888 3112 cell : +1 734 612 4615 _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
