Grid University Update: My First Week of Classes

I announced last week that I was heading off to attend 3tera's Grid University. And I'll admit, I slacked off a bit. But I spent some time reviewing some of the introductory courses (archives of past sessions can be viewed online).

The courses are an unabashed advertisement for 3tera's AppLogic application platform. No surprise there. The whole project is intended to get people like you and I interested in 3tera's products, and so far, I'd say it's doing a decent job.

Class: Introduction to Grid and Utility Computing

This one's about as basic as you'd expect. It's sort of the long-form AppLogic sales pitch. A nine-minute explanation of the model 3tera uses to enable service providers to work with software as a service and Web 2.0 companies by providing them with use of a scalable, shared grid of resources.

I've explained the basic AppLogic outline in the past, and I'm probably better off not doing it again here. So I'll skip right to more of the informational sessions.

Class: AppLogic Applications

The demonstration discusses how to design, provision and back up grid applications ranging from simple control panels such as cPanel (specifically cPanel, in the case of this demonstration) to complex e-commerce implementations.

During the demonstration, the instructor builds a two-tier SugarCRM Web application (out of simple, AppLogic-packaged "catalog parts") with an input gateway, a load balanced Web tier, a data tier with databases and virtual NAS storage devices.

The process of building a simple (or complex, for that matter) applogic architecture is very similar to the process of creating a diagram of what one might build in the physical data center. Aesthetically, that's exactly the process.

An interesting security note - the only parts of an applogic architecture that has a publicly accessible IP is the user-facing gateway. Everything else is invisible (on account of its not existing in the physical world), and very difficult to attack as a result.

At about midway of this particular presentation, the instruction veers off into things like using command-line controls to assign resources to application components. Admittedly, things are starting to get a little bit over my head at this point, as my specialty is not the building and administering of application architectures.

So it's at about this point that I began to reconsider whether I wanted to remain in attendance here at Grid U. It didn't take long to figure out that I'm not going to stick around. But to be perfectly honest, the parties were lame.

Just don't tell my folks.

I think the speed with which classes did me in actually speak to the value of the content - that is, it's not a lot of PR or marketing talk. The sessions dive right into the technical details of operating the platform, which is probably what you're looking for, and exactly what would be lost in the translation if I were to repeat it here.

I don't think there's anything I can synopsize or communicate any better the sessions themselves can, except to assure you that, depending on your relationship to the architecture behind Web applications, AppLogic is pretty fascinating, either as a possible addition to your operations, or as a curiosity.

TAGS: 3tera, grid university