Ultimate Virtualization: Cloud Computing
Submitted by Matt on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 23:53
"Cloud computing" potentially offers the ultimate in virtualization: computing resources provided as a dynamically scalable service over the Internet. The hardware and system software exists as "cloud" from which one can buy measured services for application software based on changing needs and loads. The best known service is the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). For more information, read the Wikipedia overview, check out IEEE Spectrum's quick spin through the terminology, and watch the video:
Private Cloud Virtualization
Tech Target has published a definition of Private Cloud computing along with links to related articles and a discussion of implementation issues.
Cloud Computing and Media Services
I had a good discussion with Al Kovalick of Avid at the HPA Technology Retreat about the role of cloud computing in delivering SaaS (Software as a Service) for media applications. Al addresses cloud computing in his book about IT in media tech and I look forward to hearing more from him as his work progresses.
Cloud Computing Paper from UC Berkeley
"Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing" is a new paper on the topic.
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.pdf
"Provided certain obstacles are overcome, we believe Cloud Computing has the potential to transform a large part of the IT industry, making software even more attractive as a service and shaping the way IT hardware is designed and purchased. Developers with innovative ideas for new interactive Internet services no longer require the large capital outlays in hardware to deploy their service or the human expense to operate it. They need not be concerned about over-provisioning for a service whose popularity does not meet their predictions, thus wasting costly resources, or under-provisioning for one that becomes wildly popular, thus missing potential customers and revenue. Moreover, companies with large batch-oriented tasks can get their results as quickly as their programs can scale, since using 1000 servers for one hour costs no more than using one server for 1000 hours. This elasticity of resources, without paying a premium for large scale, is unprecedented in the history of IT. The economies of scale of very large-scale datacenters combined with ``pay-as-you-go'' resource usage has heralded the rise of Cloud Computing. It is now attractive to deploy an innovative new Internet service on a third party's Internet Datacenter rather than your own infrastructure, and to gracefully scale its resources as it grows or declines in popularity and revenue. Expanding and shrinking daily in response to normal diurnal patterns could lower costs even further. Cloud Computing transfers the risks of over-provisioning or under-provisioning to the Cloud Computing provider, who mitigates that risk by statistical multiplexing over a much larger set of users and who offers relatively low prices due better utilization and from the economy of purchasing at a larger scale. We define terms, present an economic model that quantifies the key buy vs. pay-as-you-go decision, offer a spectrum to classify Cloud Computing providers, and give our view of the top 10 obstacles and opportunities to the growth of Cloud Computing."
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