OT: Cloud Computing is coming to ...

[Les]

On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 09:25 +0200, birger wrote:
>  But if it works and it means
> we (the back-end admins) can continue to override the users wishes and
> provide what they need instead of what they ask for, I'm all for it
> (like when DBA's come with very specific orders detailing raid type and
> stripe width for their data and log volumes and we give them everything
> from our standardized raid 5 pools)
This is one of the issues.  You have decided on what they need.  You may
be right from the viewpoint of storage, but from the access point you
could be way off the mark.  A database's access speed is directly
related to the disk locations of the various fields and structures.
True you have given them storage at minimal cost to you, but what have
you cost the customer?  Do you even have a way of benchmarking the
search times you have impacted?  Do you truly understand the DBA's tasks
and the amount of data they have to search?
> 
> There are tools today that enable me to move data around between
> different storage systems without the user noticing. This enables
> migration of old data to cheaper storage and so on. The problem is that
> I then have to handle several storage systems potentially from different
> vendors and with completely different interfaces. On top of that we get
> yet another service that remaps the logical view of the storage. There
> is a limit to how many different systems I can grok. The software also
> gets expensive. If the cloud services will help me do this with one
> interface at a reasonable price I will be very happy. If the cloud
> interface has to sit on top of all this it will just add expenses.

When you are moving data around, do you examine the lifetime of the
storage, or do you know the level of urgency when when that particular
piece of data is needed or how it should be accessed?  These parameters
are the areas I have had to deal with in corporate settings when some IT
person decided I didn't know what I was doing, and was sure they knew
better.  
> 
> For VM's this is great. More openness would mean that it would become
> more feasible to run multiple physical farms. One VMware farm
> (production servers, HA and/or FT support, etc), one farm based on free
> software for development and testing, perhaps one hyper-v if you have a
> volume agreement with m$ that makes this cheaper for your windows
> vm's... If I can have one console to manage them all, move vm's around
> and so on I would be very happy.
What happens in a parallel processing situation when you move the VM?
If the IP address changes, the tight binding of resources will be
disturbed, and that will result in a web search to find the new
location, rebuild the linkages, and what happens to the computation
while that is going on?

> 
> For networking it seems a bit cloudy yet how this will work out. There
> are so many security implications.

Precisely!!  Not to mention the transfer of responsibility and
accountability.

> 
> If I open up the possibility for my internal customers to host computing
> services in the external cloud, I would like to make sure everything
> they order has to be verified against company security policies. Those
> security policies will also need a rewrite to accommodate these new
> services.
> 
	Like private pipes, SVM services, encrypted RPC links etc??? Oh and my
personal favorite (retired military, you know) bureaucracy and red tape.

> Conclusion? Cloud services are very interesting. 
There is a common misconception that what you find interesting users
will love.  I really doubt that that is a good basis for this drive to a
known bad technology with poor history.

> The potential
> implications on interoperability within my own server room? That's the
> big one. Will it just add to the complexity, or is this so hyped up now
> that everybody will support new standards at a low level so we can
> actually simplify internal operations? Will it ever become what the hype
> promises? Nobody believes that, I think...
> 
	And now we introduce IP V6, soon to be followed with IPV6A or IPV7.
What happens then?

	What costs will this pass on.  If you put my systems in the cloud will
I be paid for their processing time?  At what par value?

I know that I am such a boor for pointing these things out, but without
boors like me, where would we really be?