Cloud Computing - What is it and what is its potential?

cloud is nothing but a fancy word for a server that hosts data/access software etc...

look into remote desktop.

 

I think its a bit more complicated than that. I use Splashtop Remote, a pretty decent remote desktop app, both on my HP TouchPad and on my Android phone, and while it does let me get access to my files and run Windows applications on my two devices (neither of which run the Windows apps natively), one challenge is that you need to "wake up" the desktop to run the remote desktop app. And I don't know of a simple way to do that remotely (perhaps smarter people than me can answer that?).

So a cloud-based app would seem both more accessible and more secure. Hence companies are all rushing to become "cloud" leaders. And most devices have apps like Box or DropBox as ways to store and access larger data files. And why large companies like SAP and Oracle are buying cloud-based app companies (eg SuccessFactors, Taleo).

 

You can send a "magic packet" over the Ethernet cable and if you had your bios configured you can wakeup via lan. I used to have an iphone app to do it, but it is kind of a security risk.

 

Cloud computing is a virtual computer on a server or cluster of servers somewhere with almost always uptime.

Pros:
Always On
Software Updates are handled in the background
Size/power is scalable
Automatic backups are standard
Hardware needs on your end are minimal
Portable to any device that uses the client

Cons:
Network issues on several fronts can bring you down entirely

If you have an ipad and want a free cloud PC, OnLive has a free 2gb storage Windows 7 / Basic MS Office desktop. Its also coming soon to other platforms.

http://desktop.onlive.com/

Remote Desktop isn't exactly the same as cloud computing as you're accessing a pc remotely. That PC may or may not be managed by you, so the ease of use and maintenance may be handled by you. Citrix pioneered Remote Desktop and they have cloud-based solutions.

 

The cloud used to be called online storage back in the day, now it has a fancy name.

DD

 

Or a hosted solution, am I right?

The "servers in a cloud" are really in someone's data center and they charge you on a consumption based model. You limit the Hardware you need to purchase, and the service they provide is availability, on-demand scalability, and (hopefully) security.

 

That's incorrect. And you're a programmer. Shame on you.

 

Well, I know it is not cloud computing per se, but it has been around a lot longer than it has been called "Cloud computing" I remember SETI using cloud computing to help search the skies for radio signals....

DD

 

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Am I the only one who can't trust cloud servers completely? I really like having everything in an external hard drive...

 

i'm currently doing a pilot test on cloud computing. the only thing is, it's slow.

 

That's a very ambiguous term for IT troubleshooting. Is it slow to respond, does it have a poor refresh rate, etc?

 

I think *cloud computing* means whatever you want it to.

 

Why not both? Having the external hard drive is good if your network is down. The cloud is nice if you need to access things away from home. Just don't put anything extremely important on the cloud if you're worried about it.

(and color me shocked that DD made hasty generalizations about something on this BBS. I think he's batting about .200 when it comes to knowing what he's talking about).

 

Yes - and where I think we're going is the elimination of computers/gadgets that each have limitations (size, heft, processor, graphics, etc)....to cloud-connected gadgets that only act as interfaces and displays. Sort of like remote operating via VPN.

You don't have to devote the same space/weight/cost to onboard hardware, you can just focus on the screen, radio and a few other things, and access "your" cloud computer to do everything else.

 

One word Mainframe ..

 

As one who builds and manages cloud solutions, I can tell you its not quite that simple as just storage. How the basic infrastructure works is you have hardware with a virtual hypervisor on top. This allows companies to build out lots of virtual servers and sell them out to customers. I've worked with pretty much all of them, Rackspace, Firehost, Amazon, Softlayer, etc. Cloud is not equal to hosting. Hosting you get a finite amount of space that you share with other people on the same server. You don't get your own server to manage, reboot, pretty much root anything you want. Clouds allow you to build an entire server, probably on hardware that hosts other servers, but split and managed through its own vlan. FYI, we are a linux only shop, and almost ALL cloud providers out there are running either Xen hypervisors which is linux only, and VMware.

How cloud services work is instead of paying the upfront cost of servers, you pay monthly for services. This allows a flexible budget, so instead of spending 100k on hardware, colo costs, networking equipment, bandwidth, maintenance, etc, you just pay a monthly fee for services. It's NOT really the storage you are paying for, its the redundant infrastructure that is setup for you. This infrastructure they build out is pretty much worldwide, so you can have servers in all parts of the US, as well as across Asia, Europe, etc. This allows you to scale as your business grows, and during peak times, you can load up server in an instant, and balance load across all your servers. You can choose how many cores you want, memory, hard drives, san drives, network, IP addresses, which can scale up which is what makes cloud so useful to us.

For example, not only do we host a private cloud IaaS for our backup location in OKC, we have a cloud solution up at Softlayer. This allows us to scale, and if we want a presence in Asia, we just pop up a server in asia with an image of our server and 10 minutes later it is there.

Clouds have completely revolutionized the IT infrastructure for small businesses. The large companies will always have datacenters. It gets to a point once you get large enough, that you will have to go to a datacenter, but for small to meduim sized businesses, that have a limited amount of resources they don't need an entire IT dept.

Clouds will have disadvantages, as in if they are down, your whole site is down, but it is the same as an offsite datacenter. They have a whole technical team to work with. You can mitigate this by having multiple servers in different zones if you want complete redundancy, which is what we have. We have netscaler load balancers proxied to 4 web servers spread across, dallas, houston, DC, and LA. Our replication databases lie in 2 different locations also. They can talk to each other through the private vlan they setup for us. You just have to mitigate your risk, as with anything.

I hope this gives a little insight into cloud computing. It's not just storage of stuff, its to run servers and a flexible environment where you can scale up or down according to need. If you need anymore info, just ask .

 

Cloud computing is a marketing term. If I have to hear words like cloud, agile, solutions, and mobilty much longer I'm gonna lose it.

 

"To the cloud!" -Taco