OT: Cloud Computing is coming to ...

Phil Meyer pmeyer at themeyerfarm.com
Fri Jul 23 20:23:53 UTC 2010


On 07/23/2010 12:59 AM, JD wrote:
>
> Can you describe the hardware of the private cloud
> and the hardware of the non-cloud machine in the
> location where you were involved in the installation
> or configuration?
> I would like to  know what is being compared to what
> when claims of doubling the performance are made.
>
> For example if the cloud has a total of 400 cpus,
> 100 TB of mirrored raid 5, 200 ports of 10GigE, and
> 1600 GB ram,...etc...etc
>    


You are missing several key points here:

Cloud Storage products from Amazon and/or Google do not need to, and 
seldom does, contain a file locking mechanism, and therefore, a real 
file system.  As such, cloud storage has no need of RAID X.

Could storage is not always, necessarily, concurrent, but usually 
allowed to 'drift' across WAN links as necessary and prudent.

Also, if every physical compute system runs a hypervisor on the 
hardware, you can't count CPUs as in: 2 Quad Core Xeons; you count them 
as computation units per system, where the system could include 
available hardware from hundreds of physical computers, without using 
all of the resources of those physical computers.

Look at the Cloud Harmony benchmarks for your favorite cloud provider here:

http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/06/cloud-server-benchmarking-part-4-memory.html

Consider that you can get (on paper) more throughput from an Isilon 
platform than you can from the largest EMC or Hitachi RAID based device.

The IT world is moving fast, away from fixed hardware specifications, 
towards modular nodes that offer storage, cpu, or whatever.

Isilon is not the only example, but an easy one to find and assess for 
yourself.

I do not represent them, or anyone else in this reply.  Just trying to 
open a door here and there.

Good Luck!


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