>Utilization of cheap hardware is not the goal. Application service is.
>Minimizing costs while delivering application service is also a goal.
>If that means using a cheap disk as a boot and scratch device, that's
ok.
Hmmm. Agree completely with the first three sentences. But the last
one, no, it's not OK to use cheap disk as a boot and scratch device if
the goal is to minimize cost while delivering application service.
Unless, that is, you do not value your boot images, or care about I/O,
or have the time to shovel boot images around to get machines back up.
Given the intelligent and reliable small (3U or less) disk subsystems
today, there is no excuse to boot from cheap disk. Take one outage in
five years, and you've blown the TCO on the 'use cheap disk' method
because of the human intervention necessary. Using a human to crack the
tin on a server to replace or rip a blown disk is not cheap.
Rob
Dave very good analogy from the telecom space.
I think it all boils down to criticality of the service being provided and the value associated with it.
For instance, if a call is dropped due to non availability of resources on a telecom cloud, the criticality and the value generally may not be high enough to cause that much of a business problem unless the call is a call to 911. In which case you will have to pay all the lawyers in the world to settle the case…
Whereas if a business cannot fulfill the peak resource demand, the implications could be far more severe.
For instance, if say Amazon.com cannot fulfill the peak demand of online Christmas shoppers, they might go to some other site to purchase the gifts. This might result in substantial dollar amount of lost business.
Interesting to note that Walmart is "persuading" Microsoft to sell MS Office licensing by realtime use rather than per seat installation.
Will Walmart sell TV’s on a per-use basis?....I do not use a TV atleast 10 hours a day – 5 to 6 days a week.
I think it's more like the market for Airbuses and 747s vs. the SST.
Fast is all well and good, but bits per buck wins out in the end.
I like SSDs as much as the next fellow, but I don't think they will have
much effect on anything but portable devices in the long run. For as
long as there have been computers, there has been a memory hierarchy --
register, cache, main memory, virtual memory, disk. The speed of the
hierarchy is determined by the speed of the things at the top, not the
bottom. What the database world has learned about disks is to not make
database performance dependent on them. And we're getting smarter. The
more RAM you have in a system/cluster/cloud, the less you care about
disk speed. It's always faster to get data from another node than a
disk. Disks are useful for archival storage, but that's about it. For
everything else, RAM generously distributed around a very faster net is
a better way to spend money. If you want fast, use RAM. If you want
cheap, use disks. If you want both, pay for smart software.
The goal of a database designer is to exhaust CPU, memory, disk
bandwidth, and (now) network bandwidth simultaneously. This is getting
to be a very daunting problem...
> Also do the dataware housing applications have any problems because of the
> large datasets?...
>
Only the financial solvency of their owners?
Seriously, I don't know yet.
Chris, no question, the consumer application(s) that may fit cloud compute and cloud storage are many, most of them aimed square at the ‘convenience’ factor. There have been threads along those lines, with the realization that today’s cloud storage services are very expensive in terms of actual storage efficiency – you pay a big premium for the convenience of near-ubiquitous access.
But most of this thread is talking about enterprise utilization, comparing hosting from the like of IBM Global Services to roll-your-own. Still, I should have framed the context more clearly. Plus, very few DBAs today actually purchase storage – most of the time, they “recommend” only, which means they don’t sign the checks. At the end, in most datacenter cases, the buck stops with the CIO.
There aren’t too many folks out there that recognize the R/W performance asymmetry of SSD, yet. Yes, the cognoscenti do, but most of the CIOs – who sign the checks – don’t. They just see the price tag. I hear this constantly, “we’d love to use SSD, but it is too expensive.”
BTW, SSD includes more than just flash-based devices – so no, the write performance doesn’t “kill you”, if you use DRAM SSD. Plus, some forms of flash are doing a nice job of reducing the ‘write penalty’ these days – but YMMV, no question.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program on the definition of “cloud computing”.
Rob
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19:07:00
>This is how the major
cloud vendors will build out their architectures. They simply cannot use SAN
for storage as it is far too >expensive.
That is far too generalistic. _Some_ SANs are very expensive. Others are not. Plus, certain SANs have greater value over 5 years, for example, than direct attached JBOD or internal disk. Higher acquisition cost, maybe; better value over time, absolutely.
DIF alone is reason to use SAN. That is, unless the cloud providers believe data integrity is not of value.
Plus, the entire reason behind SAN is to share storage; you can’t move virtual machines around without shared storage, for example, unless you replicate everything, and that destroys the entire concept of trying to save money on storage.
Rob
Is that how Parascale is building out theirs?
Dan
Daniel P. Phillips
VP North American Sales
DS-Software, LTD.
It's all about the Recovery!
From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Peglar, Robert
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 10:58 AM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Value proposition for Cloud computing is
crystal clear...
>This is how the major cloud vendors will build out their architectures. They simply cannot use SAN for storage as it is far too >expensive.
Don't forget here, too, that SAN != Fibre Channel. I can have an iSCSI SAN as easily as I can Fibre Channel, and the infrastructure costs are significantly reduced due to not needing FC HBAs, switches, etc.
Matt
--
Matthew Zito
Chief Scientist
GridApp Systems
P: 646-452-4090
mz...@gridapp.com
http://www.gridapp.com
-----Original Message-----
From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Richard Elling
Sent: Fri 4/3/2009 11:33 AM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Value proposition for Cloud computing is crystal clear...
Parascale users will frequently just utilize cpu/disk building blocks. For instance, processor/blades w/4 drives each and build across CPU/DAS-like bricks like that. But they can work w/anything in terms of storage – iSCSI, SAN, DAS- that is attached and visible to the Linux FS on any node they bring/add into the system.
rs
Rollie Schmidt
530-888-9690 (office)
530-613-2984 (mobile)
530-885-1151 (fax)
Skype: rollieschmidt
Brad,
Thanks for your comments too, but I don’t think so.
You are correct for legacy SANs – but I didn’t say “legacy SAN”, did I? I am referring to modern SAN technology, not that of yesteryear.
But it isn’t about $/GB at acquisition. It’s about $/GB, utilization of those GB, usable space (not raw), effective usable space (i.e. without performance degradation), W/GB, $/IOP, $/MB/sec, $/repair event, MB/sec/U, IOPS/U, access density, $/human being required, a veritable plethora of things over time, including all things like failure rates, maintenance, inputs required (W, BTU, etc.) and most of all, humans. Look at the recent study by Wikibon, for example.
Once again, you shouldn’t buy storage like ground beef and expect good results. Making money using storage is about value, not just one-time cost.
As for RAM, SSD, JBOD – of course, topologies will be built around those. But if that JBOD or SSD, holding the data at rest, does not support DIF, you have no assurance that your many TB or PB of cloud data has integrity. Why do you think DIF is a standard now, anyway?
From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brad Hollingshead
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 10:31 AM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Value proposition for Cloud computing
is crystal clear...
Robert,
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I agree with Tarry, it is dangerous to confuse a marketing ploy designed to extract money with a strategy to empower the masses. Also, in world terms, this has a limited ability to reach the majority of those masses, and the masses it does reach are already well developed technology markets.
However it worked with mobile phones, so if the marketing companies in that market can sell the concept of being always available and constantly contactable as being a good thing, maybe it is not so hard to sell it to the home Facebook “must-have” crowd who want something trendy that is mentioned on television even though they are unsure of the actual value. Is this cloud computing, or just web-based computing which has been around for years and has grown a new moniker?
Mark
From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tarry Singh
Sent: Saturday, 4 April 2009 8:25 AM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Millions more (if not billion) will be
on the cloud very soon.....
Netbooks, which I like for what
they can do in terms of empowering the "undocumented" new audience,
the next 5.5 Billion. It will also be a trap where a lot of folks will get
stuck in 1/2 yr deals where you end up paying a lot more. At&T charging $60
pm for a data connection!?! In europe we have fiber for Euro 19.99 pm.
20up/20down.
On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 10:52 PM, Rao Dronamraju <rao.dro...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Microsoft is nervous!!.
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=12802041&ch=4226
721&src=news
Yes, I agree with both of you….
If AT&T drops the price of the monthly subscription to say $25 or $30 and add Voice (VoIP and/or Cellular) this could capture some of the growing/existing mobile markets.
About your question whether this is cloud computing or web-based computing, it depends on what exactly is cloud computing?....
My understanding based on my research, I define cloud computing as follows:
Cloud Computing = Internet/Web + Grid Computing + Utility Computing + Managed Services (assuming that Grid and/or Utility Computing cover the dynamic autonomic resource elasticity and pay-per-use requirements of cloud)
From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mark Mackaway
Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009
6:19 AM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re:
Millions more (if not billion) will be on the cloud very soon.....
I think it's a little odd to claim that with public clouds the CIO is the "competitor". Every CIO I know is looking for the intersection of:
- business performance
- cost
- risk
It's worth noting that many companies have already outsourced things to third-parties that they don't consider core to their backups. Note the success of Akamai as a content delivery network, arguably an earlier generation of cloud platforms, or the success of rackspace as a managed hosting provider. If moving certain functions out of IT was a negative to them, no one would ever outsource anything.
Instead, most CIOs are going to look for areas where they can get quick, clear wins at a low risk. As they get more comfortable, they'll consider moving more things on to the cloud. Look at VMWare - started out in sandbox lab environments, then people starting porting their dev boxes, then began moving production second-tier boxes, and we're starting to see a very small number of organizations consider moving databases onto VMWare. The same model will probably apply in cloud environments.
Thanks,
Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com on behalf of ademello
Sent: Sun 4/5/2009 11:05 AM
To: Cloud Computing
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Value proposition for Cloud computing is crystal clear...
> V = B - P
>
> Value = Benefits - Price
>
> As we live in a relative world, full of competitors, the equation
> should be written as:
>
> RV = RB - RP
> Relative Value = Relative Benefit - Relative Price
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1352540,
00.html?track=sy160
If you measure it as $/TB per year, the cost is well under $1,000 per TB per year, and that is full operational costs (acquisition price + full cost of ownership). You can also read/write the data as much as you want J
Rob
From:
cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of Chris Richardson
Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 3:07 PM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Value proposition for Cloud computing
is crystal clear...
And, what is the cost of the storage solution you are comparing S3 to?
Chris
On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Peglar, Robert <Robert...@xiotech.com> wrote:
Hmmm. S3 prices are not low, they are quite high, for what you get.
You pay a very large premium for convenience. $150 per TB per month
($1,800 per TB per year) is way high.
Their "large" (over 500 TB) rates of $1,200 per TB per year is
still very high.
Even with their recent promotion of $30 per TB of storage per month, for 3
months, that's still high.
Oh, and that's just storage. You want to read that TB? That's more
... if you read that TB, it's another $170.
So, storing 1 TB and reading it once per month is $320, or $3,840 per year.
Like I said, you pay a very large premium for convenience and access.
Rob
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