<2005>
“Web 2.0, it is the architecture that will solve our problem!” Pat announced.
“We have to be leaders in technology to stay ahead of our competition,” Rick added.
“They’re right! We have to live on the cutting edge of technology, ” Lee complemented.
“What is Web 2.0?” I asked.
Crickets chirped.
</2005>
Obscureonosis: a condition where someone employs a concept that cannot be well defined in order to hide his/her ignorance and/or lack of ability.
Is cloud computing the solution to tomorrow’s IT problems? If you
listen to Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, you’ll hear an earful that cloud computing isn’t the magic bullet of the future. Yet, the headlines continue to roll off magazine articles and blogs that cloud computing is the future – the next step of enterprise computing.
Suddenly, experts descend from the clouds. Products emerge and solutions abound. But is there substance to this vapory talk? Or is it just another case of obscureonosis.
We will start by looking at the difference between VPS (virtual private server), cloud hosting and cloud computing – we will even touch on cloud storage. After all, cloud hosting and cloud computing are implementations of the cloud technology.
VPS technology is basically subscription based server virtualization. You either pay a flat fee for a limited amount of resources or a fee per resources (CPU, memory, network, storage) per hour. Administration is done through the vendor’s web site, but once the server is up and running – it’s all up to you.
Cloud Hosting technology is basically subscription based server virtualization. You either pay a flat fee for a limited amount of resources or a fee per resources (CPU, memory, network, storage) per hour. Administration is done through the vendor’s web site, but once the server is up and running – it’s all up to you.
No, that wasn’t a cut and paste error. VPS and Cloud Hosting are the same thing! Basically, you end up managing the OS on up. Everything below the OS is managed by the vendor.
VPS (Cloud Hosting) is what I use to host this blog and my Ruby on Rails projects.
What is happening here is a form of infrastructure-encapsulation and abstraction. Perhaps it might be easier to think of it as “hardware-as-a-service”. The details of the hardware, network and storage are hidden. Your fee covers the management of these items. Additionally, specific attributes are exposed to provide you insight to performance and cost (typically utilization statistics).
There are a few vendors that provide “cloud” web hosting. Which is basically the same thing as regular web hosting. These vendors are using the word “cloud” to mean infrastructure-encapsulation and abstraction. So, if you’ve used any form of web hosting, you’ve been using cloud technologies. (Go ahead, put it on your resume, but don’t blame me if you get grilled in the interview.)
Cloud computing is something different – before we look at that, let’s take a look at grid computing. Grid computing (at a high level) is when transactions are processed between multiple computers. It’s basically distributed programming. In the same way, cloud computing is when transactions are processed between multiple “systems” (again, at a very high level).
For example, if you had a web page that sold paper clips, you might connect your site to Amazon and Paypal. Using these services over the Internet is a basic form of cloud computing.
Which brings me to my final point: the cloud is the network.
Andrew Hosting Cloud Computing, Cloud Hosting, Hardware, hardware-as-a-service, infrastructure abstraction, infrastructure encapsulation, Ruby on Rails, Servers, Virtual Private Server, Virtualization, VPS
