OT: Cloud Computing is coming to ...

[Matthew J. Roth]

--- On Tue, 7/20/10, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:

> Say, since you have hands-on experience with this, would
> you mind helping me understand the idea itself?
> 
> Specifically, assuming that I have my own hardware to set
> the whole thing up, what is the difference between having
> a server (possibly virtualized), and having a server "on
> the cloud"? And what is the main benefit of the latter
> over the former?
> 
> If the server is running on your own hardware, it runs on
> your own hardware.  How does the idea of a "cloud" come
> about then, and why is it any better than ordinary
> virtualized set of servers?
> 
> Antonio Olivares wrote:
>> 
>> This was exactly the purpose of my question, to
>> ultimately ask what you have asked here.  Now to await
>> patiently the responses :)

Antonio,

Clearly, you are just playing devil's advocate since the answers to your questions are contained in a document that has already been quoted once in the replies to your initial post.  In fact, that document is a mere two clicks away from the article that you referenced.

Once again, from Red Hat's Cloud 101 Whitepaper <http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/cloud/101_whitepaper.pdf>:

  These private clouds are often the evolution of a virtualized
  infrastructure into something that’s more dynamic and automated...

  ...a private cloud that builds on a virtualized foundation will be
  the strategic choice that helps IT bring on new business services
  more quickly...

  In a cloud environment, resources can be rapidly and elastically
  provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out
  based on pre-set policies and the demands of an application. Just
  as importantly, resources can also be rapidly decreased when they
  are no longer needed, avoiding the familiar situation of unused
  servers sitting idle after the task they were initially purchased
  for ends.

It all really boils down to another layer of abstraction that can allow you to leverage your virtualized infrastructure to deploy services rapidly and get the most out of your hardware.  I understand Richard Stallman's concerns about storing private data on a public cloud, but that is just one aspect of the technology.

However, I really don't understand your concern about whether or not Fedora is involved with the Red Hat Cloud Foundations.  No matter what, you're not going to be forced to store your /home filesystem on a public cloud, just as you are not forced to run a VM.

Regards,

Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer