Just out of curiosity; Cloud Computing?

I’m one of those guys that enjoys knowing random facts and, of course, working in the cloud computing industry. On one of those spur of the moment type things, I decided to dig deeper into where the term “cloud computing” came from. For the most part, many people are still asking what cloud computing is, and the answers ranged based on current technological advances, who you speak to and which industry you are in. What many are unaware of is where this all started. I figured that if I could pinpoint the origins, I could, at least, understand it better and be able to explain it to others in a more clear and concise way. 

As for the “who coined the phrase cloud computing”, I came across a famous cloud computing blogger, John Willis (johnmwillis.com) who had received some research on this exact topic from Atlanta based cloud enthusiast, Chris Sears. The actual term, from what I understand and from what I have read is not exactly straightforward. The argument rather, is when did this all come about.  I’ll let you read it for yourself as it’s quite an interesting read (Who Coined The Phrase Cloud Computing) and the comments are even better.

Summarizing, the John Willis blog begins at cloud computing and ends at the term cloud. Many of us have heard or know that in 2006, Eric Schmidt of Google made the term popular. However, contrary to popular belief, this is not when the term “cloud computing” came into existence.

I can’t state specifically when the term came to be, but the consensus is some time in the early to mid 90s. However, the term Cloud, without the “computing,” seems to have existed for far longer. In fact, research suggests that the term was initially used by IBM to describe how “cloud and mainframe release management for applications are different. Update a mainframe mission critical application that runs on a single box and your enterprise is up-to-date across all 256 CPUs.” In today’s world, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense; by definition, it does. Cloud computing is, by and large, a collection or conglomerate of technologies available to do what you need it to do.

It’s difficult to make a clear definition because some infrastructures, platforms, software etc. are built to handle certain criteria. For the most part, if you want to utilize technology to save you money, give you better privacy and security, utility model, scalability, flexibility and so on, then customize it to your needs; all of this is cloud computing. Through my research, I have literally gone through hundreds of cloud vendors and nearly each one has a different specialization. To summarize, it’s not how much technology you utilize, it’s what you do with it or what you want to achieve with it.

Roles in The Cloud – From Physical to Virtual

In a previous blog – Understanding the cloud as a web hosting company – I ended up stating that while cloud computing is largely a positive move into innovative hosting services, it also increases micromanagement and really changes the way we think. The roles people have in a web hosting business is a great example of this. Roles are different in the cloud… bear with me and I’ll try to explain.

To start with let’s assume that you are not using cloud technology. You would have your server administrator and network administrator, and there would be a clear distinction in those roles. The server admin manages servers; the network admin is in charge of switches and routers. Pretty simple, huh? This, however, is a distinction based on physical infrastructure. When you adopt cloud computing technology you’re moving into the realms of virtual infrastructure, so how does this impact the roles you find in a traditional web hosting business?

One of the main features of cloud computing infrastructure is integrated virtual routing. Inside your cloud you can create VLANs – virtual LANs – which are usually a mixture of firewall rules and IP tables. You have the ability to break up a physical LAN, that originated from a port on a switch, into smaller VLANs. In most cloud management tools this network configuration is usually controlled from a management interface. Where is this interface?  You guessed it: on the server!

Do you see the problem? Who is supposed to operate, manage and control these VLANs?  By default, the server admin will inherit the new job description. However, I would prefer to leave the server admin to maintain servers, not the network. Here’s another example. You have people taking care of standard administrative tasks in the company, such as the folk in your accounts receivable/billing department. By default, most cloud management tools give you predefined roles like “administrator,” “reseller” and “user.” In most cases, if a billing person needs access to the system – perhaps to see customer details, pricing and so forth – they would be given administrator access. That could cause havoc if the wrong button is clicked or some other human error takes place…  It can also increase the risk of a system breach, which is a topic I will cover in a future post. 

As you virtualize you’re bringing a wide range of physical technologies together in a single virtual infrastructure, and at the same time you’re combining roles and responsibilities that were previously separate. You’re losing that traditional separation of duties. What that means, quite simply, is that when you consolidate and virtualize your infrastructure, you need to rethink your strategy for servers, networks and client management for ALL roles in your company.

Basically, you put someone out of a job unless you break things down even further to establish and reinforce how network, server, admin and other roles work in the cloud environment. Unfortunately, from what I have seen, that is not the way it’s done in most cases today. At the very least, you need to look at role-based access control for who can do what inside this virtual infrastructure. This should become part of your virtual platform evaluation.

Ask yourself:

- Which group can do what?

- What permissions do you want to give them?

- On which workloads can they set permissions?

- Let’s go an additional layer below the hypervisor: who has access to VMs, and the software running inside the VMs?

- Who has access to the HV or the VM monitor that controls all of these settings?

I hope you see what I’m getting at. It’s not just about the way you configure your physical or virtual infrastructure – it’s also about how you organize the roles and responsibilities of the people you need to manage it. Your strategy will have to change to ensure you have a smooth-running cloud computing company.

World Hosting Days 2011 – a “Rust”y Farewell

Having attended this event for 6 years straight, I have to say that there were as many improvements as there were disappointments. It’s really not my place to comment on accommodation as it doesn’t have anything remotely to do with web hosting, so I’ll continue along and blog about the show itself. 

For those of you that don’t know, World Hosting Days, formerly Web Hosting Day, stands out as being “the conference” to go to in Europe and maybe the world?  I say this because this isn’t it.  There’s more to come in June, where Bangkok will be the location of their APAC conference as well as a fierce roadshow of events throughout Europe in October and November of this year. We’re talking 10 cities in as little as 6 weeks.  Now, that’s a lot of traveling.

The event moved from its original location near Cologne to yet another theme park locale closer to the Swiss border, not far from Strasbourg, France, but still in Germany.  Rust, Germany is now on the map!  My memory is horrible these days, but I think this show is also a day longer, probably due to the increase of exhibitors and event attendees.  The main topic?  What else, but Cloud Computing. 

The biggest complaint?  I think the attendees will all agree with me on this – the internet access, or lack thereof.  Previous events offered less than stellar connectivity, but at least vendors were able to show their wares, however this time, even they suffered from the rolling outages which frequently happened.  Other than that, only minor details affected the show like the prompt details of each scheduled event over the loud speaker as they occurred.  Lets just say it was a little too loud.

What I did like though, were the actual social events like the networking participation, VIP show and after conference party which all were a definite enhancement.  The last 6 years became rather uneventful and quite predictable.  With it, came boredom and that of course led people to high-tail it out of there promptly as the stands were being torn down. 

I must say, the shows, dinners and last day party were nothing like the past and created a new generation of WHD’ers that even went so far as to get up and show off their skills on the dance floor, but hey, we all gotta let our hair hang down sometime. 

Have a safe trip home everyone.  See you next year and some of you again very soon.

Cloud Expo Europe (London)

It’s been a little over a month since the last Cloud Computing conference that I had attended, so the search was on.  The cloud computing itch doesn’t seem to stop until I find an event to check out.  This time, I was in luck.  Not so far from my London office, I find a second year trade show called Cloud Expo Europe (London) which was held at some place called the Barbican.  I had really only been to that Olympia Hall place and that was for Ad-Tech, so this was definitely a new experience for me. 

When I first look for a conference, I judge the quality of it by checking out the antendees.  This time, many of them were impressive.  It had the likes of Amazon Web services, Peer1, Rackspace, Ubuntu, Savvis etc.  This time, I was really looking forward to learning something new.

I finally arrived and went inside.  My first impression was that this place is a little “squishy”.  It was probably the low ceilings and the fact that the booths were close together, however there was a second floor where many presentaions were being held. 

I’m the curious type, so I scoped out the actual owner of the conference and asked her (Maggie) a few questions about the show.  I’ve learned that this is it’s second year and the show has grown so much so that the 2012 event will have to move….guess where?  Olympia Hall!  Now that place is big!  You could tell that she was a little upset because she had to turn away a few people (sponsors) because there wasn’t enough room. 

Oh Growing pains.  Fear not, I remember when Webhosting Day in Germany only brought in 150 people!  Now they are about 3000 visitors and a truckload of sponsors.  Anyway, I’ll be blogging about that next month in March.  I feel this event will be one of the major ones in Europe within the next 2-3 years (Cloudexpoeurope.com).

As for this event, what I learned was that there is A LOT more for me to know about the industry I am in.  I realized that I need to open my thinking and embrace, not only technology, but how OTHER people view cloud computing.  Coming from a hosting background, I know only one side of things; one way that people ask questions and one way they like to get them answered etc. 

For example, one person asked me a question regarding over-provisioning of resources when creating virtual machines (can I have resources more than the physcial machine/hypervisor can handle) and stupid me, thought; is this guy asking about rendering?  Actually, no, he was talking about what we hosters know as overselling.

Some photos of the Cloud Expo Europe event are located here.  I’d also like to here your feedback if you were at the event and or another cloud relation event that was a learning experiece for you.

Cloud Expo Netherlands

Since about 2008, cloud computing has seen more doors open and momentum started to increase which I guess was pushed a little buy the economic climate and the sales pitch of cloud being more financially viable.  Now, we are seeing new conferences and event emerging that are cloud related.  Many take place in the US, but are increasingly growing on a global scale.

Myself, having lived in Europe for the past 6 or so years has seen this go from something of just talk to real interest and implementation.  We, as North Americans have always envied Europe on their relaxed lifestyles, great beaches, cultured cuisine and much more. 

Lately, I’ve noticed a grass root approach whereby there seems to be a lot of localization when it comes to providing cloud oriented services.  Lets take Cloud Expo which was held around the beginning of the second week of December 2010.  The location was Utrecht (about 30 min train ride from Amsterdam).  As I arrived, the first thing I noticed was that it was kinda small.  You could zip around the tradeshow in under 5 min, but there still was enough to keep you busy for a little while. 

One main issue was that all copy/material was in Dutch, but the good thing was that even if I could not understand any of it, about 90%+ of the Dutch population speaks English.  Wonderful news!  The big names were there of course like Cisco and Microsoft and a few other booths offering PaaS and IaaS services.  I guess the highlight of my time there was being able to speak with Ajax.org and to find out what others had to offer. 

Getting back to grassroots.  95% of the companies there were local and the ones that weren’t, were larger companies with offices in the Netherlands.  The approach felt more personal as the Dutch still do business face to face and the comfort and security of knowing that if they need something, all they have to do is call or go to the office.  It made me think, with all this remote talk going on, are we becoming more distant from physically interacting.  Well, that’s something to discuss for another day. 

I just wanted to add that it was an enjoyable conference and it was a unique experience, though it did feel more people were trying to sell you rather than buy from you. 

For some photos on Cloud Expo Netherlands!

Understanding the cloud as a web hosting company

Over the course of the 2010 year, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with many owners of web hosting companies around the world.  There are a few things (topics) that keep on popping up, one of which is cloud computing and how a hosting company can harness that to make it an actual viable solution for their current client base. 

Most of us, if not all, have heard of cloud computing, but from what I have gathered is that very few have a clear understanding as to what that is, what it can do for the company, for the customers and above all, does the hosting company actually need it.  Usually, large corporations are early adopters of new technologies because of the larger budgets and the human resources to make a case for it.  This helps the firm know in which direction to proceed, technologically speaking.  If you are running a smooth operation and overhead is low with not so many employees, you’re ahead of the game.  Why break it?  Why fix it, if it ain’t broke?

Here is why you should at least take a look at what is out there and understand why this would be a very solid investment into the future of your hosting business.  Sure, at this point, no, you won’t need it and if you run a tight ship with top service so the support issues are limited, there may not be a reason at this point to invest into new technologies. 

FYI, Cloud computing is for your future, not for the present.  Already, you see new pricing features for cloud-based services on a “utility” business model, which are hourly costs for resources instead of a flat rate billing option.  The message I received from other owners is that, “I don’t charge per hour, why do I need it?”.  Now, you may not need it, but this is a gradual implementation into the industry and has a few very positive points to it.  Resources based on the customers needs and not limited to a predefined hosting package.  The applications of this business model are still being defined and I suggest that you, as a hosting company, not ignore this.  You may be successful now, but the industry is changing, especially now, by more than leaps and bounds.  It’s changing so much so that a whole new set of computing jargon is being invented and in my case (old guy), sometimes they are the same as age old acronyms and buzz words, so I’m learning a new language (almost).

A hosting company stepping into the cloud computing world needs to evaluate their business model and apply a new way to run a business.  I’ll be adding more business oriented blogs later on, but I wanted to cover a few points of things to think about.

1.  Are you big enough to think about cloud hosting as an option?

You can actually invest into cloud technology at any size, however, it really depends on your business model and what your target market is.  For example, if you are an enterprise style business, your clients will be few, but pay quite a bit of money for services.  Cloud computing inherently consists of failover (HA or High Availability) and most have the option of Hot Migration as well, therefore you will need at least 2 servers for that and a separate data device(s) (without a mutually exclusive data store device, there is no HA (DRBD does not work very well and local storage defeats the purpose), plus whatever other hardware that you wish to attach, ie controller, management devices, load balancing etc.

*  I’ll write more on DRBD (Distributed Raid Block Device) in another blog.  It does have some promise, but it’s not ready yet for the market to embrace (just yet).

2.  Do I need to invest and if so, what am I looking at?

Yes, predominantly, you will need to invest into new hardware, but your new hardware will have better capacity, more energy efficiency on top of cloud computing’s inherent energy saving model and you can also utilise your legacy gear to enhance the new cloud infrastructure that you have built by increasing redundancy and failover.

3.   That sounds like a lot to try something that I am not familiar with.

It’s not a lot really, but it’s rather a different way of thinking and a different way to deploy your business model.  Cloud computing offers working technology to handle the problems of the past (like fail over and hot migration) which reduces downtime, if any and also it allows you to work more on the business, not trying to keep things up and have many sleepless nights.  I’m sure the majority of you have slept in the datacenter at least once in your life!  I know I have (a few times).  Don’t forget about automation as it is a key feature and will only get better as time goes on.  It’s not just clapping your hands and the lights turn on.  This goes deeper into network, server, client-side and beyond.  I’ll shed some light on this and go deper into detail in future blogs.

4.  How much is this all going to cost me? 

My suggestion is to ignore price and go for ease of use and functionality.  You might want to look at opensource like Openstack or the Nimbus project, but that just creates more work for you as you will need to completely configure and add code for it to work the way you want it.  IF you have the resources, then go ahead!  If not, then you have the option to look for proprietary IaaS or one of those hybrid companies that have taken an open sourced cloud platform and built proprietary technology around it.  The range for minimum deployment is anywhere from a few hundred per month to a few thousand.  Again, it all depends on what you are looking for.  I can’t even begin to tell you pricing models as there are hundreds of cloud providers out there and most have a completely different pricing models. 

Cloud computing does make the difference, but it also creates more micromanagement, so keep that in mind when planning your new business model.  If you have anything to add or want to contact me for specific questions, please leave feedback in the comments area.