Virtualization

[Jack]

Does somebody run Oracle database in virtual environment, VMWARE ?

How about "Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance", just to get that "Trusted
Partition"
-pricelevel for entrylevel? Any experiences?

"Current Oracle policy recognises three types of partition: (1) a hard
partition; (2) a software partition; and (3) an Oracle Trusted Partition."


Old severs are getting antiquet, and all new servers are nowadays virtual.
Or should we use Express/sqlserver??
Any good opinion/advice, thanks.

[Mladen Gogala]

As a consultant, I've seen my fair share of Oracle being run in the
virtual environment. On one hand, the performance is less than
impressive. None of the hardware acceleration aids, so readily used by
Oracle, can help in the VM environment. Oracle code exhibits fairly
decent locality of reference when checked by perf and systap, but this
doesn't really help in the virtual environment, since L1 cache is
virtual, not hardware. Huge pages are also pointless in the virtual
environment.
On the other hand, there are significant administration and license
savings. VMWare can be configured to be fault tolerant and clustered,
which will make your database highly available, without paying for an
additional standby license. Also, you can have "throwaway" development
databases which are backed up and extinguished if Oracle decides to do a
license audit. Resurrecting a virtual machine from VMWare snapshot is a
really quick operation.
So, what would I recommend? Nothing at all. It all depends on your
business needs. Virtualization is an ancient concept, from the time I was
working on something called VM/CMS, programming in COBOL things that were
called CICS and DL/I. The first part used to stand for "Virtual Machine".
Essentially, the company had a mainframe and was running a MVS virtual
machine and a DOS/VSE virtual machine for the older programs. These
machines were real virtual machines in the full sense of the word, as we
know them today. The time frame was mid-80's. How did all that work? For
some companies it didn't: they moved completely to MVS, ditching the
ancient DOS/VSE. For some companies, it worked great. The same holds true
today. VMWare is a great software and continually improves performance.
The virtual machine that you need to run Oracle will need to be
approximately 30% stronger than the raw iron. That means some more
licenses, because Oracle will count virtual CPU threads just as it would
count the real CPU threads. It all boils down to your business needs and
what are you willing to invest.
There is also a specific situation if you don't have the existing
applications but are going to develop the applications or if you have
applications developed using DB agnostic tools like Grails. Then, you can
experiment with DB2, which is an excellent database, more than 50%
cheaper than Oracle on Linux and can do everything that Oracle can do. DB2
runs well in the virtual machines. Again, the same thing applies as to
Oracle: the VM needs to be about 30% stronger than the raw iron.
The downsides of DB2 is that good DBA personnel is hard to come by, the
amount of literature is rather limited when compared with Oracle and IBM
sales force isn't doing a swell job pushing their product. This is as
much as I'm willing to write without asking for $120/hr. Such discussions
and advice are my bread and butter. Happy New Year.



--
Mladen Gogala
The Oracle Whisperer
http://mgogala.byethost5.com

[Drazen Kacar]

Mladen Gogala wrote:

> On the other hand, there are significant administration and license
> savings. VMWare can be configured to be fault tolerant and clustered,
> which will make your database highly available, without paying for an
> additional standby license.

Are you sure about this? I'm running Postgres in a cloudy environment and
haven't looked at Oracle pricing for that at all, but while I was looking
for my IaaS provider all candidates were telling me that I didn't want to
run Oracle in the cloud because the licensing schemes were a huge problem.

I don't remember the details because I wasn't going to run Oracle, anyway.

And now, here you come, the only person I've ever heard saying that fault
tolerance in VMWare doesn't have additional costs.

If it's not a big problem, could you give me an URL for Oracle's pricing
scheme which says that?

> Also, you can have "throwaway" development databases which are backed
> up and extinguished if Oracle decides to do a license audit.

Development databases were for free, the last time I checked. Which was a
few years ago, admittedly. Has anything changed in the meantime?

> This is as much as I'm willing to write without asking for $120/hr.
> Such discussions and advice are my bread and butter. Happy New Year.

Brother, I'm a poor student from an ex-commie land. Can you give me a
discount for old time's sake?

--
.-. .-. Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely
(_ \ / _) ceremonial.
|
| da...@fly.srk.fer.hr

[John D Groenveld]

In article <slrnlcjnn...@fly.srk.fer.hr>,

Drazen Kacar <da...@fly.srk.fer.hr> wrote:
>Development databases were for free, the last time I checked. Which was a
>few years ago, admittedly. Has anything changed in the meantime?

Not AFAICT.
<URL:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/licenses/standard-license-152015.html>
| LICENSE RIGHTS
| We grant you a nonexclusive, nontransferable limited license to use
| the programs only for the purpose of developing, testing,
| prototyping and demonstrating your application, and not for any
| other purpose. If you use the application you develop under this

John
groe...@acm.org

[Mladen Gogala]

On Sun, 05 Jan 2014 22:38:25 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:

> Are you sure about this? I'm running Postgres in a cloudy environment
> and haven't looked at Oracle pricing for that at all, but while I was
> looking for my IaaS provider all candidates were telling me that I
> didn't want to run Oracle in the cloud because the licensing schemes
> were a huge problem.

I wasn't talking about the cloud, I was talking about running Oracle on
VMWare. My assumption is that VMWare is running in the local server room.
Cloud changes the calculation.

>
> I don't remember the details because I wasn't going to run Oracle,
> anyway.
>
> And now, here you come, the only person I've ever heard saying that
> fault tolerance in VMWare doesn't have additional costs.

It does have an additional cost, much smaller than the Oracle
implementation. Oracle instance is an extremely expensive beast and, by
the new policy, the user has to pay even for a standby instance VMWare
fault tolerance is normally a part of the implementation. Did I mention
that VMWare is not a free software?

>
> If it's not a big problem, could you give me an URL for Oracle's pricing
> scheme which says that?

There is a misunderstanding. The phrase "throwaway database" means
license hiding, which is something that many people do. As a DBA I was
asked to do just that. The virtual machine was simply destroyed when
Oracle came checking for the licenses. After that, VMDK files were
restored, and the DB came back to life, without developers having lost a
beat. Basically, what you do is to extract a logically consistent portion
of the production database using Net2000 DataBee or something similar to
it and create yourself a small database, used by a single group of
developers. When the project is done, the database goes away.
Provisioning development databases becomes easy.
Something similar can be done with Simpana 10 backup suite, on NetApp
filers, provided there is NetApp FlexClone license. Simpana 10 will
create an exact copy of your database and throw it away after the
retention expiration. You have a development database and yet you don't
pay the license. The same trick is performed by Delphix.

[Mladen Gogala]

I was working for the company which was hit by an additional $250k in
license fees because of the development databases. That much for "free
development databases". Also, standby instances used to be included into
the enterprise license. Now, you have to pay for the instance. I've seen
that too.

[Jack]

"Mladen Gogala" wrote in message news:pan.2014.01...@gmail.com...

On Sun, 05 Jan 2014 22:38:25 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:

> Are you sure about this? I'm running Postgres in a cloudy environment
> and haven't looked at Oracle pricing for that at all, but while I was
> looking for my IaaS provider all candidates were telling me that I
> didn't want to run Oracle in the cloud because the licensing schemes
> were a huge problem.

>I wasn't talking about the cloud, I was talking about running Oracle on
>VMWare. My assumption is that VMWare is running in the local server room.
>Cloud changes the calculation.

VMWARE = cloud
http://vcloud.vmware.com/

"Moving to IaaS
Bill Fathers, VMware Senior Vice President and General Manager, Hybrid
Cloud, discusses the benefits of true hybrid cloud."



It is cloud, even when it is privat cloud.

[Mladen Gogala]

On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:10:39 +0200, Jack wrote:


> VMWARE = cloud

VMWare is a virtualization software which allows you to create, maintain
and administer virtual machines, just like KVM, VirtualBox or Hyper-V.
Cloud also includes a third party provider which creates and maintains
virtual machines for you. In other words, the notion of the cloud
combines virtualization and outsourcing. There are things that companies
readily entrust to cloud providers, the largest of which is Amazon.com,
but the company databases are usually not among them. I've discussed that
numerous times, with some people which were directors and even CIO's and
there have always been grave security concerns about entrusting the
company's critical business data to the 3rd party. Also, with Oracle,
there are licensing considerations. Cloud providers want to do things
properly, so everything must be licensed. There are no hide and seek
games with the databases, as in the case when the server(s) running VMWare
are in your own server room.
Please note that the idea of the virtual machines is much, much older
than the cloud itself and that the authorship goes to IBM. IBM virtual
machines were all the rage around 1985. The sky was clear then, there
were no clouds. Cloud is a modern marketing catchphrase, just like
"workgroup" was in the mid-90's. Everything was "workgroup" or, at least,
"collaboration edition". IT industry is prone to fads, just like fashion.
Not only does the devil wear Prada, it also runs everything in the cloud.

[Drazen Kacar]

Mladen Gogala wrote:
> On Sun, 05 Jan 2014 22:38:25 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:
>
> > Are you sure about this? I'm running Postgres in a cloudy environment
> > and haven't looked at Oracle pricing for that at all, but while I was
> > looking for my IaaS provider all candidates were telling me that I
> > didn't want to run Oracle in the cloud because the licensing schemes
> > were a huge problem.
>
> I wasn't talking about the cloud, I was talking about running Oracle on
> VMWare. My assumption is that VMWare is running in the local server room.
> Cloud changes the calculation.

I fail to see the difference. If you have local VMWare with 3 CPUs (let's
abstract core factors out, if possible) how is that different from using
that same VMWare with 3 CPUs when it's not running in the local server
room?

> > I don't remember the details because I wasn't going to run Oracle,
> > anyway.
> >
> > And now, here you come, the only person I've ever heard saying that
> > fault tolerance in VMWare doesn't have additional costs.
>
> It does have an additional cost, much smaller than the Oracle
> implementation. Oracle instance is an extremely expensive beast and, by

Only Enterprise Edition instance. Standard edition looks affordable.
Licensed per socket, RAC included.

> the new policy, the user has to pay even for a standby instance VMWare
> fault tolerance is normally a part of the implementation.

Sorry, I didn't understand. How are you counting CPUs when VMWare fault
tolerance is in effect?

> Did I mention that VMWare is not a free software?

Not that I recall. Do you mean free as in free speech or in free beer?
There is free beer VMWare hypervisor limitted to one physical machine and
32 gigs of RAM (or thereabouts, I'm not quite sure about the details).

> > If it's not a big problem, could you give me an URL for Oracle's pricing
> > scheme which says that?
>
> There is a misunderstanding. The phrase "throwaway database" means
> license hiding, which is something that many people do. As a DBA I was
> asked to do just that. The virtual machine was simply destroyed when
> Oracle came checking for the licenses. After that, VMDK files were
> restored, and the DB came back to life, without developers having lost a
> beat.

Yes, but my point was that the free database download from the OTN comes
with the license for development. And only development. So why would you
have to hide a perfectly legal Oracle instance before the Oracle
inquisition?

Last time I had them in the house I didn't hide the development instances
and they didn't have any complaints.

In case you wonder, the instance in question was really used for the
development only. Although it might have been not used at all by anyone.
But it was ready to service the human developers in case they decided to
do some development.

:-)

> retention expiration. You have a development database and yet you don't
> pay the license. The same trick is performed by Delphix.

Amazing.

[Drazen Kacar]

Mladen Gogala wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:10:39 +0200, Jack wrote:
>
>
> > VMWARE = cloud
>
> VMWare is a virtualization software which allows you to create, maintain
> and administer virtual machines, just like KVM, VirtualBox or Hyper-V.

Sort of. There's a bunch of additional products on top of or beside the
hypervisor. All of that together is a bit more than KVM or VirtualBox. (I
don't know anything about Hyper-V).

> Cloud also includes a third party provider which creates and maintains
> virtual machines for you. In other words, the notion of the cloud
> combines virtualization and outsourcing. There are things that companies
> readily entrust to cloud providers, the largest of which is Amazon.com,

There is a contradiction here. If I'm reading you correctly, if I host
something at Amazon's EC2, then I'm using the cloud because there is a
third party provider which maintains VMs for me.

But, if Amazon itself hosts something for its own purposes in that same
EC2 infrastructure, then it's not in the cloud because there just isn't a
third party provider that would maintain VMs for Amazon the company.

I'm sure that Amazon can do some really fabulous things, but I'm not sure
they can outsource to themselves. Or mabe they can, with enough creative
accounting?

Anyway, it seems to me that "a third party provider" isn't particularly
useful feature if we want to determine whether something is or is not a
cloud.

> there are licensing considerations. Cloud providers want to do things
> properly, so everything must be licensed.

Cloud providers ask you to sign that they are not responsible for the
software or anything else on your virtual machines.

> There are no hide and seek
> games with the databases, as in the case when the server(s) running VMWare
> are in your own server room.

And cloud providers also sign that they are not going to peek at my
virtual machines and data unless there is a court order compelling them to
do so.

> Please note that the idea of the virtual machines is much, much older
> than the cloud itself and that the authorship goes to IBM. IBM virtual
> machines were all the rage around 1985.

Wasn't that in 1965 or 1966? See pages 8 & 9 of:

http://www.pgcon.org/2012/schedule/attachments/256_pg-aws.pdf

> The sky was clear then, there
> were no clouds. Cloud is a modern marketing catchphrase, just like
> "workgroup" was in the mid-90's. Everything was "workgroup" or, at least,
> "collaboration edition". IT industry is prone to fads, just like fashion.
> Not only does the devil wear Prada, it also runs everything in the cloud.

Used to be hype and a fashion and all that, but these days the features
that make something a "cloud" are more or less agreed upon by those who
care. And it's more than just virtualization.

These days a lot of people are using NIST definition of cloud computing:

http://www.profsandhu.com/cs6393_s13/nist-SP800-145.pdf

The main difference between virtualization and the cloud (for me, at
least) is that the cloud is a self-service infrastructure. Meaning that I
don't have to call my cloud provider to create virtual machines for me
(contrary to what you wrote above), because there has to be a way for me
to do it on my own. Via an API or a web interface, for example (preferably
both). Ditto for storage and networking.

If there is no self-service, then it's not a cloud, but it probably is
a virtualization environment.

[Mladen Gogala]

On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 18:53:45 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:


> Yes, but my point was that the free database download from the OTN comes
> with the license for development. And only development. So why would you
> have to hide a perfectly legal Oracle instance before the Oracle
> inquisition?

Because on that instance you cannot legally apply patches. As soon as you
start patching the instance, you have to pay for support. And without
patches, the software is pretty much useless. 11.2.0.1 was almost
unusable without the first few quarterly patch sets. As soon as you apply
a PSU, the license conditions change.

[Mladen Gogala]

On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 19:24:32 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:

> There is a contradiction here. If I'm reading you correctly, if I host
> something at Amazon's EC2, then I'm using the cloud because there is a
> third party provider which maintains VMs for me.
>
> But, if Amazon itself hosts something for its own purposes in that same
> EC2 infrastructure, then it's not in the cloud because there just isn't
> a third party provider that would maintain VMs for Amazon the company.

There is no Russell's paradox here. You are precisely right: if Amazon
itself hosts something in the EC2, that isn't a cloud since that is in
their own data center.

>
> I'm sure that Amazon can do some really fabulous things, but I'm not
> sure they can outsource to themselves. Or mabe they can, with enough
> creative accounting?

There is no outsourcing in this case, therefore, no cloud.

>
> Anyway, it seems to me that "a third party provider" isn't particularly
> useful feature if we want to determine whether something is or is not a
> cloud.

Well, would you like to share your definition with me? I am all ears
(actually screen).

[Drazen Kacar]

I tried to share NIST's definition because I'm not very good in inventing
things. But you deleted that part of my post. I'm not sure if you've read
the document:

http://www.profsandhu.com/cs6393_s13/nist-SP800-145.pdf

Page 2, Essential Characteristics.

[Drazen Kacar]

Mladen Gogala wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 18:53:45 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:
>
> > Yes, but my point was that the free database download from the OTN comes
> > with the license for development. And only development. So why would you
> > have to hide a perfectly legal Oracle instance before the Oracle
> > inquisition?
>
> Because on that instance you cannot legally apply patches. As soon as you
> start patching the instance, you have to pay for support.

Unless you have a contract with Oracle which says you can patch it for
free. Or almost free.

But you're absolutely right otherwise.

[Mladen Gogala]

On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 20:35:18 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:

> Mladen Gogala wrote:
>> On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 19:24:32 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:
>
>> > Anyway, it seems to me that "a third party provider" isn't
>> > particularly useful feature if we want to determine whether something
>> > is or is not a cloud.
>>
>> Well, would you like to share your definition with me? I am all ears
>> (actually screen).
>
> I tried to share NIST's definition because I'm not very good in
> inventing things. But you deleted that part of my post. I'm not sure if
> you've read the document:
>
> http://www.profsandhu.com/cs6393_s13/nist-SP800-145.pdf
>
> Page 2, Essential Characteristics.

Let's see:
"Essential Characteristics:
On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision
computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as
needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each
service provider.
Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the
network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by
heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones,
tablets, laptops, and workstations).
Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled
to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different
physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned
according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence
in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact
location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at
a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter).
Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, and network
bandwidth.
Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned
and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and
inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities
available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be
appropriated in any quantity at any time.
Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and
optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability1 at some level
of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage,
processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be
monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the
provider and consumer of the utilized service. "

This seems to speak of service provider and a service consumer, which is,
as far as I understand things, about the same thing as an outsourced
virtual machine, which is what most of the cloud implementations boil
down to. So we are talking about the same thing. As for the security
concerns, those are real. There are, at least in my experience, very few
companies that would outsource their databases, which contain the
critical business data. Things that are outsourced to the cloud usually
include application servers or business functions like payroll, time
sheets and alike.

[Mladen Gogala]

On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 20:39:27 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:

>> Because on that instance you cannot legally apply patches. As soon as
>> you start patching the instance, you have to pay for support.
>
> Unless you have a contract with Oracle which says you can patch it for
> free. Or almost free.

Or if Larry Ellison is your brother in law. Contracts like that are not
something I've seen in my meager 25 years of a DBA career. But yes, you
are perfectly correct: if Oracle allows you to patch for free, without
paying for support, you can do it.

[Jack]

"Mladen Gogala" wrote in message news:pan.2014.01...@gmail.com...

On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:10:39 +0200, Jack wrote:


>> VMWARE = cloud

>>It is cloud, even when it is privat cloud.

>VMWare is a virtualization software which allows you to create, maintain
>and administer virtual machines, just like KVM, VirtualBox or Hyper-V.
>Cloud also includes a third party provider which creates and maintains
>virtual machines for you. In other words, the notion of the cloud
>combines virtualization and outsourcing. There are things that companies
>readily entrust to cloud providers, the largest of which is Amazon.com,

No. Have you ever heard term "privat cloud"
Surely Amazon would like to be the only real cloud, and witch it actually
insisted to be.

Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single
organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted
internally or externally.
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf

>Please note that the idea of the virtual machines is much, much older
>than the cloud itself and that the authorship goes to IBM. IBM virtual
>machines were all the rage around 1985.

Actually, concept of cloud computing dates back to the 1950s.
Known as "Remote Job Entry" and "time-sharing".
But narrowminded migth not foresee it.


Regards
Jack, from seventh cloud ( aka heaven aka nirvana aka vmware v 7.0 ;)

[Drazen Kacar]

Mladen Gogala wrote:

> This seems to speak of service provider and a service consumer, which is,
> as far as I understand things, about the same thing as an outsourced
> virtual machine, which is what most of the cloud implementations boil
> down to.

I beg to differ about outsourcing. Service provider could be the IT
department and service consumer could be the HR department. Both within the
same company.

> So we are talking about the same thing.

If we stretch the term "outsourcing". :-)

> As for the security concerns, those are real. There are, at least in my
> experience, very few companies that would outsource their databases,
> which contain the critical business data.

Yes, I completely agree about security concerns being real.

> Things that are outsourced to the cloud usually
> include application servers or business functions like payroll, time
> sheets and alike.

Well, that's something as well. :-)

[Drazen Kacar]

Mladen Gogala wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 20:39:27 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:
>
> >> Because on that instance you cannot legally apply patches. As soon as
> >> you start patching the instance, you have to pay for support.
> >
> > Unless you have a contract with Oracle which says you can patch it for
> > free. Or almost free.
>
> Or if Larry Ellison is your brother in law. Contracts like that are not
> something I've seen in my meager 25 years of a DBA career. But yes, you
> are perfectly correct: if Oracle allows you to patch for free, without
> paying for support, you can do it.

Oh, come on. If you are a developer company, or an integrator company or
any other kind of company which is actually selling software or services
that require Oracle's database to run, then you're eligible for entry in
Oracle's developer program. I'm not sure how's it called these days.

They charge for it a bit, somewhere around 1000-2000 EUR per year (but
don't quote me on that, I have never been in charge of finances). That
buys you the right for all the patches for all editions and add-ons on an
unlimited number of development instances. It doesn't buy you the right to
log support requests. But patches and knowledge base articles from
Metalink are included.

I've been there in two of my previous companies, one software developer,
the other software integrator. I've never met Larry Ellison.

I'm not sure whether a software development department within some non-IT
company (a telco, for example, or a bank) would be eligible, but I'd try
to get in that program if I were them. It's just that I have never worked
for a company whose core business wasn't IT[1], so I didn't have to try.
But then, that shouldn't be a big problem. It is a way for Oracle to sell
more Oracle software to parts of the company that will actually be running
the application in production.

[1] With the exception that in my current company IT isn't core business,
but I'm not running Oracle. We're cheap. :-)

[joel garry]

On Wednesday, January 8, 2014 11:52:12 AM UTC-8, Drazen Kacar wrote:
> Mladen Gogala wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 07 Jan 2014 20:39:27 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:
>
> >
>
> > >> Because on that instance you cannot legally apply patches. As soon as
>
> > >> you start patching the instance, you have to pay for support.
>
> > >
>
> > > Unless you have a contract with Oracle which says you can patch it for
>
> > > free. Or almost free.
>
> >
>
> > Or if Larry Ellison is your brother in law. Contracts like that are not
>
> > something I've seen in my meager 25 years of a DBA career. But yes, you
>
> > are perfectly correct: if Oracle allows you to patch for free, without
>
> > paying for support, you can do it.
>
>
>
> Oh, come on. If you are a developer company, or an integrator company or
>
> any other kind of company which is actually selling software or services
>
> that require Oracle's database to run, then you're eligible for entry in
>
> Oracle's developer program. I'm not sure how's it called these days.
>
>
>
> They charge for it a bit, somewhere around 1000-2000 EUR per year (but
>
> don't quote me on that, I have never been in charge of finances). That
>
> buys you the right for all the patches for all editions and add-ons on an
>
> unlimited number of development instances. It doesn't buy you the right to
>
> log support requests. But patches and knowledge base articles from
>
> Metalink are included.
>

Sounds like you are talking about the Partners program http://www.oracle.com/partners/campaign/specialized-benefits-036151.htm http://www.oracle.com/partners/campaign/specialized-requirements-1915749.html

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/08/benioff-were-still-an-oracle-but-not-just-an-oracle-shop/

[Mladen Gogala]

On Wed, 08 Jan 2014 09:27:03 +0200, Jack wrote:

> No. Have you ever heard term "privat cloud"
> Surely Amazon would like to be the only real cloud, and witch it
> actually insisted to be.
>
> Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single
> organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted
> internally or externally.
> http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf

Basically, with the cumulonimbus, you have a bunch of virtual machines
and a service provider, providing infrastructure and frequently also the
maintenance of that infrastructure. If your server is in the sky with
diamonds, that means that the cloud provider also has to take backups
since it would be exceedingly expensive to backup a few TB over the
internet. Bandwidth is cheap, as long as somebody else is paying for it.
Also, it would probably cost you a pretty penny to get 300 GB/hr backup
throughput to the local equipment. 300 GB/hr translates to 1GB connection
with de-duplication.

Besides the backup, the provider may optionally handle upgrades,
especially if you select provider specific Linux image or database
version. Amazon, for instance, offers both a special Linux version and a
special Postgres version (Drazen has mentioned Postgres) which are
adjusted to their cloud and cheaper to utilize than your own vanilla
version of Linux.

Cloud is primarily a marketing term which describes software and the
infrastructure as a service. There are plenty of service providers:
Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Red Hat and a bunch of smaller ones, like the
British Go Cloud. It's a revival of an ancient concept from the times of
the mainframe computers. How successful will that be will eventually be
decided based on the money. How much will it cost companies to host the
infrastructure with Lucy in the sky with diamonds, compared with
maintaining their own infrastructure. So far, the cost savings are less
than spectacular, that's what I hear. There are very real concerns about
intelligence gathering from the cloud and data protection in the cloud,
while the financial savings are not all that great. In other words, I
believe that the cloud will not fly very high this year, although the
concept itself is logical: leave the cooking to the cooks. If the
companies like Amazon and IBM make the "cloud" a bit cheaper, then it
will start making sense. The indicator of severe problems with the cloud
is the fact that companies in Manhattan, with the most expensive office
space in the world, are still maintaining their own infrastructure,
rather than moving it to the cloud. Square foot of the office space on
the 5th Avenue, overlooking the Central Park is very, very expensive.
Now, why would these companies elect to maintain their own staff and
infrastructure, rather than to "move it to the cloud"?
Oracle Corp. has an entire building on the 54th Street, between Broadway
and Park Ave., in Midtown Manhattan, with the servers in the building.
Their building is probably worth $100M. Why are they keeping the servers
in the building, in the most expensive office space in the world? They
might be attached to their red Swingline staplers, but I doubt it.