Enough of the "cloud" computing crap. ENOUGH!

[mimic58]

The ability to use any application and any document from any location has been the holy grail of business forever. Cloud computing allows them to do that, which is why it works. It also saves a lot of money:

- No need to buy in house servers
- Less energy consumption
- Less IT costs
- Less chance of data loss
- convenience
- cross platform compatibility
- no software upgrading

The list goes on and on. Cloud computing is a terrible buzzword, but the concept is right on the money of what people need today.

Not being Funny,, But anyone with any real I.T experience has been able to and has been doing so for the last ten years without any need for this "cloud" crap

I like the way they say Client/sever is Old and cloud is the way forward... When Cloud is Plainly and simply Client/sever computing which is almost as old as the internet.. PCanyware.. Vertual machines in data centers ssh Ftp , Remote work non of this is new They are just taking out all the big words that scare people away an calling everying "cloud" its the same old shit repackaged for dummys

 

[Doppel]

Cloud Computing basically doesn't mean anything. It's a natural progression of the internet. We've been pushing more off to remote servers for years, that's all this is. "Web 2.0" also means nothing.

So, so true. Our IT department (20k+ employees) again tried to demand that they custom program SP to do what our department needs when we have an existing app that does it for <$5k/year. The great part is that the app we have is 250k lines of code, so just imagine the cost involved in making SP do all that.

SP can become a huge monster, or it can be kept streamlined. As long as aspirations are kept in check, no custom work at all, site-owners are responsible for everything and use it mainly just to share documents it can grow quite large with very little intervention or maintenance by IT.

 

[dwell]

2004 -- We're growing too fast!

1. Get purchasing approval from IT
2. Order hardware
3. Wait weeks for it to arrive
4. Wait for hardware installation
5. Wait for software installation
6. Wait for networking/firewall/security config
7. Configure sharding of Oracle/MySQL/PostgreSQL data across new instances
8. Deploy apps

2011 -- We're growing too fast!

1. Spin up 30 new EC2 instances.
2. Run deploy scripts

Yeah, the cloud sucks.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I not even clear on how the cloud is supposed to work beyond being able to access documents and files from multiple devices. Seems like something you could easily accomplish with a home server. The best implementation I've seen is steam's ability to sync saves and settings with their cloud server.

 

[her209]

2004 -- We're growing too fast!

1. Get purchasing approval from IT
2. Order hardware
3. Wait weeks for it to arrive
4. Wait for hardware installation
5. Wait for software installation
6. Wait for networking/firewall/security config
7. Configure sharding of Oracle/MySQL/PostgreSQL data across new instances
8. Deploy apps

2011 -- We're growing too fast!

1. Spin up 30 new EC2 instances.
2. Run deploy scripts

Yeah, the cloud sucks.

You could do the latter if you have the virtualization infrastructure in place at your company. It doesn't have to be provided to you by a "cloud" service company. But the advantage of using those companies is that you don't have to pay for costs like electricity, licensing to do the virtualization, staff to support the system, etc. The downside is security.

 

[ShawnD1]

2004 -- We're growing too fast!

1. Get purchasing approval from IT
2. Order hardware
3. Wait weeks for it to arrive
4. Wait for hardware installation
5. Wait for software installation
6. Wait for networking/firewall/security config
7. Configure sharding of Oracle/MySQL/PostgreSQL data across new instances
8. Deploy apps

2011 -- We're growing too fast!

1. Spin up 30 new EC2 instances.
2. Run deploy scripts

Yeah, the cloud sucks.

Your company is a huge pile of failure. The company I worked for in 2006 didn't have real computers; everyone had a terminal just like the 1980s. The terminals log into the building's server (just 1 server, not a cloud), and all of Windows is run through Citrix.

 

[her209]

Your company is a huge pile of failure. The company I worked for in 2006 didn't have real computers; everyone had a terminal just like the 1980s. The terminals log into the building's server (just 1 server, not a cloud), and all of Windows is run through Citrix.

What if you run software that needed 3-D hardware acceleration?

 

[manlymatt83]

Oh, I just go to the cloud! What the fuck are you thinking? Just like "I just go to the intarweb and it will take care of it for me!". WTF is wrong with this message? The cloud in computing terms is "I don't know or care WTF is behind it, not my problem or responsibility"

I know "cloud computing" is the big buzzword these days and I'm OK with where it's going in terms of load balancing applications, virtualization and data center bridging to try to eliminate geographical limitations of resources.

This kind of application virtualization has been pushed for over a decade. I feel like we've done this before. Mainframe -> distributed computing -> centralized -> geographically centralized -> geographically distributed.

But just stop this fucking marketing nonsense of "just go to the cloud! It's so easy!"

You know what? Your gmail is geographically distributed with a 2nd tier of central and it's still down. Same with ebay, amazon, all the big sites.

Cloud computing is great for the relative proper uses.

EC2/Rackspace Cloud alone are great for dynamic scalability/processing. They are *not* good as permanent infrastructure for a website that either needs to be secure or stable, which most website owners want.

I agree with you -- too many people say "just put it in the cloud" and forget that there is STILL heavy machinery and human beings powering the technology, and things will break.

It is the "future", no doubt, but I actually see things scaling back a bit. People will realize cloud hosting, at least, can only take them so far. I already see companies pulling themselves out of public virtualization providers (like ec2) and moving to their own hardware again (which is the right move for larger companies).

 

[Possessed Freak]

It is such a huge buzzword right now that whenever I hear it at work I point toward the sky and say in my best super hero voice "To the Cloud!!!"

 

[dwell]

You could do the latter if you have the virtualization infrastructure in place at your company. It doesn't have to be provided to you by a "cloud" service company. But the advantage of using those companies is that you don't have to pay for costs like electricity, licensing to do the virtualization, staff to support the system, etc. The downside is security.

Yeah but you would still need to purchase the hardware, install the OS, install VMware. EC2 is so much easier and if you don't use S3 or any of their other data services there's not much lock in. It really pays off when you go international where you can spin up local instances overseas just as easy as domestic instances.

 

[Fox5]

Unless you don't have a network connection ;^)

A little planning can go a long way in IT costs. The cloud is great for flexibility, but paying per hour for your computer equipment really only makes sense if you can have high peak loads but your average is very low. If you're fairly constant in needs, you'd be much better off after a relatively short time frame of building your own infrastructure. Any medium sized business probably should build their own, but the cloud is highly appealing to small businesses that want to compete with the big boys.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fritzo View Post
The ability to use any application and any document from any location has been the holy grail of business forever.
Citrix has been doing that for the better part of 15 years.

And unix + x windows has been doing it longer. (I expect microsoft to make a strong play with remote desktop connection and windows 8 in this direction as well)

Personally, I don't understand it, computer hardware is cheap, high bandwidth connections are relatively expensive. Companies roll out thin clients that cost as much as thick, and reduce productivity of all their employees just to 'save' on it.

 

[ShawnD1]

What if you run software that needed 3-D hardware acceleration?

Citrix works fine with 3D stuff. Rendering is done by the server and the final picture is sent to your terminal.

Think of it like the difference between you playing Crysis and you watching a video of someone playing Crysis. To play Crysis and create new images, the computer needs to be unbelievably fast and have a good graphics card. To play a 1080p video of someone playing Crysis you only need a crappy Netbook from Walmart. The rendering is done by the server. What you see on your terminal receives is a bunch of pre-rendered images that are more similar to watching a movie on youtube or netflix.

The idea behind Citrix and terminals is similar to the idea behind fractional reserve banking. You can write out more checks than your ass can cash as long as they are not all cashed at the same time. The office might have 30 terminals but the server only needs the processing power of 10 computers. Most of your computer time is just idle, like right now my CPU is doing nothing while I post this. Some other guy in the office could try to create a zip file and it would zip unbelievably fast because all of that idle time on terminals like mine means he can take up all 10 computers worth of processing power.

 

[her209]

Citrix works fine with 3D stuff. Rendering is done by the server and the final picture is sent to your terminal.

Think of it like the difference between you playing Crysis and you watching a video of someone playing Crysis. To play Crysis and create new images, the computer needs to be unbelievably fast and have a good graphics card. To play a 1080p video of someone playing Crysis you only need a crappy Netbook from Walmart. The rendering is done by the server. What you see on your terminal receives is a bunch of pre-rendered images that are more similar to watching a movie on youtube or netflix.

The idea behind Citrix and terminals is similar to the idea behind fractional reserve banking. You can write out more checks than your ass can cash as long as they are not all cashed at the same time. The office might have 30 terminals but the server only needs the processing power of 10 computers. Most of your computer time is just idle, like right now my CPU is doing nothing while I post this. Some other guy in the office could try to create a zip file and it would zip unbelievably fast because all of that idle time on terminals like mine means he can take up all 10 computers worth of processing power.

I was thinking more along the lines of 3D CAD software. Especially if you're working with large complex models.

 

[ShawnD1]

I was thinking more along the lines of 3D CAD software. Especially if you're working with large complex models.

Citrix would work fine with autocad. Actually the main limitation is how much bandwidth is available. 1080p blu ray quality images stuff streaming across the network chews bandwidth like mad. Wireless is out of the question.

 

[Fritzo]

Not being Funny,, But anyone with any real I.T experience has been able to and has been doing so for the last ten years without any need for this "cloud" crap

I like the way they say Client/sever is Old and cloud is the way forward... When Cloud is Plainly and simply Client/sever computing which is almost as old as the internet.. PCanyware.. Vertual machines in data centers ssh Ftp , Remote work non of this is new They are just taking out all the big words that scare people away an calling everying "cloud" its the same old shit repackaged for dummys

You're not getting it. All that stuff you described requires client and server software. The idea of the cloud is everything works everywhere without having to install anything. You us a web browser as a universal tool, log into your account, and start working.

It sounds more like you're set in your ways and hate something that may take away your power. All I know is businesses around our area are slashing their IT depts and our cloud and managed services are selling like crazy.

 

[Patranus]

You're not getting it. All that stuff you described requires client and server software. The idea of the cloud is everything works everywhere without having to install anything. You us a web browser as a universal tool, log into your account, and start working.

It sounds more like you're set in your ways and hate something that may take away your power. All I know is businesses around our area are slashing their IT depts and our cloud and managed services are selling like crazy.

Huh?

They had this shit in the 70s and 80s.

 

[her209]

Citrix would work fine with autocad. Actually the main limitation is how much bandwidth is available. 1080p blu ray quality images stuff streaming across the network chews bandwidth like mad. Wireless is out of the question.

AutoCAD or Inventor?

 

[dwell]

Some of you guys don't really get it. If you are using the cloud to run your small office file server, uh, fail.

The cloud is important when you need massive computing power at your disposable. It's really no different than the VAX and Cray / rent mainframe time models of the 70's and 80's, just on a much larger scale and distributed.

If you're running a high-volume site with heavy functionality (like a Facebook, Twitter, Amazon) you need the ability to scale up servers on-demand. Combined that with distributed data stores like Cassandra and the old school client -> server -> database model looks obsolete.

Also, if your are dealing with petabytes of data you need massive computing power to aggregate or run reports on it. Technologies like MapReduce are able to do things that would almost be impossible to do with a traditional architecture with relational databases, monolithic datastores, etc.

Then again if you're running blog you really don't need a dozen servers and distributed datastore. It's not the answer to everything.

 

[Leros]

Some of you guys don't really get it. If you are using the cloud to run your small office file server, uh, fail.

The cloud is important when you need massive computing power at your disposable. It's really no different than the VAX and Cray / rent mainframe time models of the 70's and 80's, just on a much larger scale and distributed.

If you're running a high-volume site with heavy functionality (like a Facebook, Twitter, Amazon) you need the ability to scale up servers on-demand. Combined that with distributed data stores like Cassandra and the old school client -> server -> database model looks obsolete.

Also, if your are dealing with petabytes of data you need massive computing power to aggregate or run reports on it. Technologies like MapReduce are able to do things that would almost be impossible to do with a traditional architecture with relational databases, monolithic datastores, etc.

Then again if you're running blog you really don't need a dozen servers and distributed datastore. It's not the answer to everything.

I work for a rather large website. We prefer to run our own servers, but it isn't always feasible or practical.

For example, we allow people to run reports at a scheduled time of their choosing. We need two servers 95% of the time, but a lot of people like to run reports early Monday morning, so we need to scale up to about 30 servers for that 6 hour period. Instead of owning and maintaining 30 servers, we dynamically spin up some extra instances whenever we need them.

The other good example is when your website starts to get large amounts of traffic from a new location. For example, say we suddenly started to become really popular in China. Eventually, we would want to put some servers throughout China, but in the meantime we need to get their load off of the Europe data centers and onto a local data center. If we can just launch some instances in China, we can achieve this. Its not ideal and its also more expensive, but its a good temporary measure.

 

[HeXen]

if it works, i really don't give a crap if its cloud or not.

 

[bfdd]

lols the cloud buzzword is so funny. i seriously get a good chuckle in meetings whenever someone brings it up.

 

[Fritzo]

Huh?

They had this shit in the 70s and 80s.

...and they got away from it because the bandwidth and infrastructure wasn't available. It is now and it works beautifully.

 

[mimic58]

You're not getting it. All that stuff you described requires client and server software. The idea of the cloud is everything works everywhere without having to install anything. You us a web browser as a universal tool, log into your account, and start working.

It sounds more like you're set in your ways and hate something that may take away your power. All I know is businesses around our area are slashing their IT depts and our cloud and managed services are selling like crazy.

Ok so you use a web browser... Clearly you dont get it a Web browser is a CLIENT!!!

And i hate to point this out but it is connecting to a server lol....

There is no difference they just dressed it up with a new word and sold it to idiots... If you wana buy it thats fine but it doesnt change the fact that you are just being sold rebadged 10 year old tech

Browser based Remote admin/user control has been around since atleast 1998!!! Yes you can log in with a browser anyware in the world and do what you need to do? Seriosly this stuff is new to you???

What kind of computing have you been doing for the last ten years?

 

[ShawnD1]

Huh?

They had this shit in the 70s and 80s.

lol. Truth. I remember describing the Citrix system to my dad and he said something like "We had that in the 80s. They were called dummy terminals and they fucking sucked."
They're a lot better these days. Citrix is basically the same idea as Remote Desktop (NOT VNC!!) but with a few extra gimmicks. Remote Desktop will just show black when trying to do anything with hardware acceleration such as playing a movie. Citrix will go the extra step of transcoding it to a streaming video so the client can still see things like movies or autocad.

I'm guessing those "dummy terminals" from the 80s were as shitty as trying to use VNC over a 56k modem. It would work..... but it would suck. A lot.

 

[dwell]

Holy shit people. Maybe the problem with the term "cloud" is that people are misusing it to apply to anything. Citrix is not a cloud solution; it's dumb terminals revisited.

IMO, cloud at its core means letting someone else deal with your physical data center. Bake in virtualization and high/instant-scalability for good measure.

The generalization of the term may be the problem with it.