Clouds are still vapour, Grids are real

[Jonathan Davis]

Steve Hurford, Communications and Business Development Director at
DNS Europe, has penned a position statement on Cloud Computing. Here
is an excerpt:

=====

Grids are the building blocks of future clouds

Without knowing today exactly what the future of cloud computing will
look like, customers are faced with the decision of what choices to
make that give real commercial benefits today and greatest flexibility
for tomorrow. As we see it, future clouds will be formed from and
accessible by those customers which adopt grid hosting
infrastructures, develop multi-tennant applications and offer services
that are not tethered by specific location, operating system, physical
resources or other geographical constraints. Not only will they be
able to integrate with future clouds but they will be best placed to
take advantage of other cloud-enabled services and to offer their own
services to other cloud contributors.

Clouds should not and will not be “owned”

The term cloud computing is today being used by many providers who, in
fact, are actually offering Grid Hosting. Taking Google and Amazon as
examples, they have opened up their own infrastructure for customers
to deploy their own applications on their “clouds” and use their
compute resources for a measured service fee. More correctly, these
infrastructures should be called “grids” and the services called
“Utility Computing”. Where these offerings substantially differ from
our believe of what Cloud Computing will become is in their attempt to
own the cloud. Ultimately we believe that this is a futile effort due
to the pace of change of market requirements and their restricted
service platform development capabilities. Provided that they
eventually adopt the principles of open platform integration, they
will however become very serious components of the future of cloud
computing.

From grids to clouds

Under perhaps the simplest model for differentiating grids and clouds,
grids are essentially building blocks, or discrete physical resources
that will one day make up, or enable, clouds. One of the key drivers
for businesses must therefore be to invest in a technology which
facilitates the easiest transition from one to the other. A technology
which will enable real cost savings today with open opportunities for
tomorrow. A technology which provides a birthing ground for new
application and service architectures which will one day fly the nest
and reach full maturity in “the cloud”.

From: http://www.dnseurope.net/cloud_computing.html

====

Any input or feedback would appreciated.

Kind regards,

JD

[Moore, Eric]

"Clouds should not and will not be "owned""

Doesn't that seem... Wrong as a blanket statement?
Someone has to maintain the physical compute resources required to manage a cloud.

"Where these offerings substantially differ from our believe of what Cloud Computing will become is in their attempt to own the cloud."

Seems like this is an application of some kind of OSS / socialist view on enterprise computing, which does not honestly seem to jive with reality. I like the idea of p2p computing and think it has a place, but cloud computing as it is discussed on this list is very much an evolution from compute utility / grid computing type solutions to a solution that includes all processing use cases in the capabilities of the grid/cloud.

So I guess this inherently states the difference between a grid or compute utility and a cloud is the diversity of use cases met, and the flexibility of the cloud in terms to provisioning network/storage solutions.

Owning the cloud seems logical to me, as I can't imagine major enterprise ever relenquishing control of servers with critical data, or even allowing critical processes to be run on servers outside their data centers, even with strong encryption. I think the ubiquity of the cloud comes when these enterprises become so comfortable with the capabilities of their cloud solutions that they begin allowing third parties to submit jobs against them. That will require a major jump in security and virtualization of resources. That jump is where we go from grids to clouds, when instead of seeing "enterprise app A" running in a VM, you just see a bunch of highly extrapolated encrypted occurences of compute consuming applications tagged by customer to bill. Someone still owns each cloud, but from the customers point of view, the internet is full of different clouds to use interchangably, and I am sure meta-services will pop up that automatically move apps around to whichever service is cheaper at the moment, like we have seen with other services (multi-IM apps, meta search engines, etc...)

Interesting topic :)

[Utpal Datta]

Let's not start another Grid Vs Cloud war to prove who is better. We have had enough of that already.

 

Both Grid and Cloud are for real and they complement each other.

 

Many of us would rather watch our 401K vanish away minute by minute than spending time on Grid Vs Cloud discussion (again!!) :-)

 

--utpal

 

[Pietrasanta, Mark]

Okay, I’m really trying to give CC a chance.  The first big issue is pricing, but let’s assume there are some scenarios where it might make sense.

 

But now the “Terms of Use” (ToU) have come up.  Our lawyers reviewed the EC2 ToU, and they are completely unacceptable for anything other than R&D.  Amazon takes no responsibility for anything, and they can unilaterally change the ToU at any time.  And the “SLA” appears to be pure marketing, as they are apparently under no commitment to achieve that SLA in the ToU.  So there’s still no real SLA.

 

Has anyone negotiated a more commercial-friendly agreement with EC2?  Did I miss the menu option for commercial users?

 

This is really a very long way from becoming anything but a toy, between the pricing and ToU, unless again I’m missing something.

 

[Patrick J Kerpan]

Admittedly, quoting myself...
http://elasticserver.blogspot.com/2008/04/cloudy-weather-ahead.html

"Clouds don't care. Your complexity is not their problem!

Each of these two clouds (Amazon and Google) provide a lot if you are willing to be cheap, flexible, and creative. While complex types sit back and complain - those who take advantage are going to prevail. Look at evolution; big, fat energy inefficient organisms usually don't evolve to become nimble, energy efficient creatures. They go extinct and make way for the next wave of situationally optimal lifeforms. What do I mean by this sentence? One interpretation would be "don't expect ATT's Sterling Commerce to threaten either EC2 or AppEngine for cost, performance or speed."

In the post referenced above I give Pat's taxonomy of cloud types.  Mark, you want the "Dinosaur Cloud" which optimizes its legal documentation.  Those offerings will exist soon, if not already. 

Cheers,

pat k

[Brian Jones]

I don't see the point, to be honest. Your position statement defines
clouds and grids as distinct creatures. I agree with that, and don't
see why there needs to be anything more to say about it.

Generally different tools find different ways to be implemented, and
different (though perhaps overlapping) audiences to serve. The whole
ownership issue, as stated, is a throwaway in my mind. It's just not
clear what the point of that is, what your definition of cloud
"ownership" is, and it doesn't provide any proposed solution to the
alleged problem of cloud ownership.

brian

--
Brian K. Jones
Python Magazine http://www.pythonmagazine.com
My Blog http://www.protocolostomy.com

[Sheridan Porter]

Sharing our experience on EC2.

We (Catalytic Software) have used Amazon Web Service EC2 since February for two production servers in a commercial project. In that time we have had 0.0% downtime due to EC2 failures. The only problems we had were in the setup – it was a little difficult to figure out how to get our first instance uploaded. Once we crossed that barrier, we have had no problems due to AWS EC2.

AWS offers reasonable prices, scalability, secure storage as well as a number of other features we don’t use at this time, but potentially might use later. They have a web page dashboard which shows whether their systems are performing normally. Given our good experience, we think Amazon is suitable for commercial applications.

I’m sure their ToA is written to minimize liability if something does happen, but we now have almost 20 (combined) months of service with no disruptions.

 

-Sid Porter

 

---

[Chris Sears]

Pat is correct.

Amazon is bringing a commodity approach to CC. They have no interest in negotiating one-off special agreements with individual customers, and no one expects them to. Would you try to negotiate a more favorable return policy with Walmart? Of course not. You should bring the same expectations to Amazon web services.

And getting hung up on SLAs and legal agreements is generally not useful. This is not a supply chain, where vendors and suppliers sue each other when things don't go well. If you're not happy with AWS, stop using it and go somewhere else. That's your recourse... no lawyers needed.

Given your expectations and the nature of AWS, I'd have to say [waves hand] this is not the cloud you're looking for. Perhaps you'd be happier with the future cloud offering of AT&T, IBM or HP/EDS.

 - Chris

[Moore, Eric]

Just a note, today you could approach HP/EDS about hosting, and receive a flexible set of options for hosting with SLAs and the whole nine yards. There is a reason major enterprise customers use EDS and not Amazon, namely EDS has been around since loudcloud split into opsware and EDS, and has maintained large federal customers happily for years. Now that opsware and EDS have both been absorbed by HP you can bet we are only improving our enterprise architecture and dynamic hosting capabilities.

 

I was part of opsware, and after being acquired by HP our product offering has really strengthened I feel. I think any professional in the data center automation field was aware of opsware before and now that we are HP Business Services Automation we are working with multiple large clients to enable cloud style internal management solutions.

Sorry for the pitch, but you know, I see others pushing their companies and honestly we are not some fly-by-night operation so if you are seriously looking in this space you should be aware of the HP Software offering not only for BSA style solutions for managing compute resources, but the EDS offering of complete hosting and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) style outsourced application management.

 

-Eric

 

---

From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Sears
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 3:19 PM

To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Amazon EC2 terms of use - seriously?

[Jake Kaldenbaugh]

I think what we're seeing is that the SLA piece of the contract will change with competition.  We're barely out of the gates with this stuff and we're already seeing a turn on the model evolution.  But this is also about demographics, EC2 is a hit with the fast-moving web-dev crowd (in general) and these guys set-up first and read terms after.  Part of it is because they are launching concepts that have no value to defend through traditional risk management methods (at least in the beginning).  The use case for the enterprise will be slightly different, they will be seeking lower cost base platforms for existing applications which means they will pay more attention on mechanisms on how to protect that value (SLAs, terms, guarantees, etc...).  Their lawyers will be involved and I think Eric's post demonstrates that there will be vendors who appreciate and are willing to serve this market.  It will be interesting to see if Amazon makes adjustments/creates another offering to meet this new demo.
Jake

[Randy Bias]

No offense, but it's silly to get into this discussion of 'grid' vs.
'cloud.' It's a truism that there is nothing 'new' in IT. Most
trends are usually a rehash and re-spin of something that came
before. This doesn't mean the the two trends are the same, although
they are certainly related. Arguing semantics is a waste of time and
energy better spent on solving problems.

I'm very much reminded of the hijacking of the term 'hacker' from back
in the day. For those who recall, a 'hacker' simply meant a
programmer, but the term was hijacked by the media and hence the
mainstream to refer to malicious attackers. Despite all attempts,
'hacker' still has a clear connotation.

Whining about how 'clouds' are 'grids' isn't helpful. Next topic
please.

--Randy

On Nov 12, 2008, at 8:48 AM, Jonathan Davis wrote:

> The term cloud computing is today being used by many providers who, in
> fact, are actually offering Grid Hosting.

Randy Bias, Founder, The CloudScale Project
BLOG: http://neotactics.com/blog

[Ramy Moftah]

I definitely agree with that. Competition will bring both terms and
prices to more usable levels, also corporate confidence will improve
as technology develops towards the concepts. We are still at the
beginning of this industry development cycle and that is why people
will will be able to come in at the bottom and make their calls will
make some serious money once concepts catch on

>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:
>> cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Chris Sears
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 12, 2008 3:19 PM
>> *To:* cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
>> *Subject:* [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Amazon EC2 terms of use - seriously?

[Chris Sears]

True, but as of today, it's unreasonable to expect EDS-style enterprise-grade services at Amazon-style commodity prices. Perhaps that will change someday, but I doubt it will be anytime soon.

Regarding EDS's history, they were around long before Loudcloud and Opsware ever existed (EDS was founded in 1962). The story goes that Loudcloud customized it's own home grown data center automation software for EDS, and that eventually become Opsware.

I actually manage a fairly large install of Opsware. It's a good solution for large, traditional data center environments, but I don't see it as a viable option for managing systems in public clouds. It will be interesting to see where HP goes with EDS and the excessive number of software companies they've purchased. I suspect they will have some kind of cloud offering in the near future that Mark's lawyers will be quite happy with, but at EDS/HP prices, of course.

 - Chris

[Moore, Eric]

Yeah to clarify, loudclouds managed services business was sold to EDS, and the rest became opsware, and now the two are re-combined in HP :).

 

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/hp-buys-my-comp.html

Awesome post by Marc Andreesen about the purchase, describing loudclouds fate, including some neat insights into the automation industry.

 

 

 

---

From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Sears

Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 12:24 AM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Amazon EC2 terms of use - seriously?

[Ioan Raicu]

Hi all,
I have enjoyed the discussions of the group for the past few weeks since I have joined. Sometimes, people talk about Clouds or Grids and compare them, when in fact they are only using buzz words they have heard, as they are not immersed in either of these two technologies to know them intimately. My advisor (Ian Foster, aka "Father of the Grid"), some colleagues (one from Microsoft), and I have written an article on comparing Clouds and Grids side by side. Having been working in Grid Computing for the past 6 years, I can safely say that Clouds do have new things to bring to the table. These new things could have been classified under the Grid umbrella, but they are quickly taking shape under the new umbrella of Clouds. These are exciting times, and it will be interesting to see the two domains of Clouds and Grids evolve over the next 5 years!

Within our group at University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, there are people that are involved in many projects on Grids (Globus Toolkit, http://www.globus.org/toolkit/), and others who have repositioned their work to encompass both Grids and Clouds (Nimbus, http://workspace.globus.org/). Just to emphasize with an example how Clouds have evolved from Grids, the Nimbus project was originally started back in 2003, with the paper "Dynamic Creation and Management of Runtime Environments in the Grid, Keahey, K., M. Ripeanu, and K. Doering. Workshop on Designing and Building Web Services (GGF 9), Chicago, IL. October, 2003". Up to about a year ago, the project was aimed at Grids, but with the advent of Clouds, it has repositioned itself to cater to both Clouds and Grids.

I hope you will find our article a good read:
Ian Foster, Yong Zhao, Ioan Raicu, Shiyong Lu. “Cloud Computing and Grid Computing 360-Degree Compared”, to appear at IEEE Grid Computing Environments (GCE08) 2008
and can be downloaded from: http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~iraicu/publications/2008_GCE08_Clouds_Grids.pdf

Cheers,
Ioan

-- 
===================================================
Ioan Raicu
Ph.D. Candidate
===================================================
Distributed Systems Laboratory
Computer Science Department
University of Chicago
1100 E. 58th Street, Ryerson Hall
Chicago, IL 60637
===================================================
Email: ira...@cs.uchicago.edu
Web:   http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/~iraicu
http://dev.globus.org/wiki/Incubator/Falkon
http://dsl-wiki.cs.uchicago.edu/index.php/Main_Page
===================================================
===================================================

[Jim Starkey]

Commodity prices? Have you actually looked at their prices? The annual
cost of a four core instance is five times the cost to buy a more core
capable physical server. Toss in the co-lo costs and it's still many
times the cost of buying a server. And they give no service on the
instance whatsoever -- none.

I just don't get it. Their prices are whacko for 24/7, their service is
less than minimal (consisting a virtual reboot on demand), and their
terms of use let them kick you off for "for any reason or for no reason"
with 60 days notice on a fully paid up account.

Yet the people of this list think it's the bees knees. Why? No one has
answered Marks post of about costs (and no one answer mine earlier in
the summer). And no one has answered why a company would put investment
in as service that could be canceled "for any reason or for no reason"
in 60 days.

(My next batch of servers, each more capable than Amazon's SLA and not
subject to additional compute charges, are $1,152 each. Hardware is
cheap, friends. Service is expensive. But Amazon doesn't provide
service...)

[Pietrasanta, Mark]

Except Amazon pricing is not even close to commodity.  For Co-Lo service levels, they're charging managed services level pricing.

So it's completely reasonable to expect at least Co-Lo level terms of use, but they're far from that.

So between the excessive pricing, and the sever terms of use, it's impossible to use EC2 for anything but well funded R&D.

 

---

From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Sears [cse...@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 12:23 AM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Amazon EC2 terms of use - seriously?

[Stuart Charlton]

Chris,

Interesting post. A few questions if you don't mind....

What, in your experience, makes OpsWare unviable in public clouds?

Does that carry into private clouds (ie. Utility-style Capacity on the
floor, Provisioning whole applications instead of just VMs), or do you
think enterprises will use OpsWare to build their private clouds?

Do you see HP building their cloud stuff out of OpsWare or something
all-new?

I have my own opinions to these questions, but then again I don't run
an OpsWare installation. :-)

Cheers
Stu


Sent from my iPhone

[Daniel Ciruli]

Chris makes a good point--I'm not sure if it was meant to be dismissive or not, but I think the sentiment points to one type of cloud in the future:

 
>Given your expectations and the nature of AWS, I'd have to say [waves hand] this is not the cloud you're looking for. Perhaps you'd be happier with the future cloud offering of AT&T, IBM or HP/EDS.

There will certainly be room in the future for clouds with high SLAs and stringent legal agreements. Imagine a bank that decides to move all of its electronic trading infrastructure into a cloud, or a retail chain that wants to use the cloud for dynamic, real-time tracking of sales and inventory. Think about a large health care company moving their computing infrastructure into a cloud.
 
In each case, having strict SLAs will be a requirement (in some cases a legal requirement--not just a "nice to have").
 
Right now, none of the cloud offerings (from EC2 to GoGrid, from AppEngine to Azure) offer the type of assurance that can lure these applications into the cloud. But I think Chris has predicted correctly: in the future, the likes of HP, IBM, et. al. will have offerings that will permit these apps to move to the cloud.
 
They certainly won't compete price-wise with the offerings we're seeing today. And they may not compete on feature set, either--the smaller, nimble crowd will probably always get the best features.
 
But I do believe that the "five nines" crowd will be moving toward the cloud just like the rest of us.
 

---

Get 5 GB of storage with Windows Live Hotmail. Sign up today.

[Chris Sears]

Since OpsWare SA just came up for a second time on the list, I'll risk boring the rest of the group. Apologies to anyone not interested in this stuff.

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Stuart Charlton <stuartc...@gmail.com> wrote:

What, in your experience, makes OpsWare unviable in public clouds?

OpsWare/HP Server Automation (SA) suffers from similar limitations as server management solutions like Altiris or Microsoft SMS/MOM/System Center XXXX. They're designed around the traditional paradigm of long-lived, non-virtualized assets that require substancial care and feeding at the OS level. The solutions often depend on things like a common Active Directory domain/forrest, dedicated networks/VLANs for management/backups/imaging/deployment, or ubiqutious firewalls to provide "security". These are common in enterprise data centers, but they're frequently either not available or not practical in public clouds, at least as a CC consumer (more on as a provider below).

Opsware SA specifically just feels too big and clunky for the cloud. The latest install media is around 25GB. It doesn't handle concurrency nearly as well as it should to deal with the hundreds or thousands of simultanious operations that might be required for larger cloud use cases. Eventing and model data management (built on Oracle and the TIBCO bus) leave much to be desired. Developing custom extensions / add-ons is not a pleasent experience. I could go on...
 

Does that carry into private clouds (ie. Utility-style Capacity on the
floor, Provisioning whole applications instead of just VMs), or do you
think enterprises will use OpsWare to build their private clouds?

I expect OpsWare will continue to be a good fit for traditional enterprise data centers, especially with companies that are service providers and IT departments that want to act like service providers. The problem with OpsWare SA is that it is now and will probably continue to be 6 - 12 months behind the first party vendor tools/systems they manage. For example, they can't and don't recreate all the features of VMWare Virtual Center or MS System Center VMM. Patching Windows systems with Opsware is on par with WSUS 1.0 and Solaris patching isn't supported at all.

To answer your question, yes, I expect enterprises to use OpsWare to manage servers in what they may consider private clouds, but primarily because it's what they're already using and/or already comfortable with - not because it's a great solution for cloud environments.

 

Do you see HP building their cloud stuff out of OpsWare or something
all-new?

I expect they will use OpsWare for a few reasons... One, it would look bad if they didn't. Two, any cloud would likely leverage EDS's existing systems/experience. Three, it's likely their cloud will not have the same expectations of agility and simplicity as EC2 (remember Mark's lawyers), so they can get by with using Opsware. Four, with direct access to the developers, they can get things changed/customized so it's a better fit.


Hope that helps clarify. Feel free to contact me if you like to talk further off list.

 - Chris

[Moore, Eric]

Couple things, sorry to bore people further:

 

1) solaris patching is supported via a couple different mechanisms, especially in the new release, in earlier releases we supported solaris patching via a custom extension developed by our professional services team

 

2) no AD is required at all, or even recommended? We have LDAP integration for customers using SSO infrastructure, and AD hooks for generating group perms

 

3) virtualized resources are our primary focus in the latest release, and lots of our customers manage virtual resources via HP SA

 

4) high concurrency is a core competency, and our capabilities meet the needs of our customers, who could be considered the most demanding in the world :)

 

Dedicated systems like the microsoft solutions, where the OS developer is writing the management tool, will always be a step ahead for that platform but they don't address most virtualization platforms or UNIX at all...

 

Also when discussing automation, it's important to mention storage and network automation, along with process automation, which we have broken out into dedicated products.

 

The general feel that enterprise management tools are too "heavy" for CC seems like an attempt to disparage applicable solutions for being comprehensive. Relating install media size to the overhead or memory usage of an app as you kind of try to do seems like a bad analogy. Most of the install media is supporting the fact we can install on solaris or RHEL, requiring 2 copies of a lot of the binaries, not to mention the database options we provide to clients taking up media space. We don't even end up using anywhere near half that 25G number on disk after the install is completed.

 

If you have any specific issues with the new release of SA, please let me know off list and I will put you in contact with the right people to get your concerns addressed. Also if you could clarify what you mean by private versus public clouds and an example of one of these public clouds you refer to where management infrastructure (recommended, not required) is unavailable? I find the idea of these public clouds interesting, but I don't know of any. Even EC2 is a private cloud by your definition near as I can tell, but I digress.

 

-Eric

---

From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Sears

Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 1:37 PM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Amazon EC2 terms of use - seriously?

Since OpsWare SA just came up for a second time on the list, I'll risk boring the rest of the group. Apologies to anyone not interested in this stuff.

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Stuart Charlton <stuartc...@gmail.com> wrote:

What, in your experience, makes OpsWare unviable in public clouds?

OpsWare/HP Server Automation (SA) suffers from similar limitations as server management solutions like Altiris or Microsoft SMS/MOM/System Center XXXX. They're designed around the traditional paradigm of long-lived, non-virtualized assets that require substancial care and feeding at the OS level. The solutions often depend on things like a common Active Directory domain/forrest, dedicated networks/VLANs for management/backups/imaging/deployment, or ubiqutious firewalls to provide "security". These are common in enterprise data centers, but they're frequently either not available or not practical in public clouds, at least as a CC consumer (more on as a provider below).

Opsware SA specifically just feels too big and clunky for the cloud. The latest install media is around 25GB. It doesn't handle concurrency nearly as well as it  1 should to deal with the hundreds or thousands of simultanious operations that might be required for larger cloud use cases. Eventing and model data management (built on Oracle and the TIBCO bus) leave much to be desired. Developing custom extensions / add-ons is not a pleasent experience. I could go on...
 

[Chris Sears]

Some brief responses...

On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Moore, Eric <eric....@hp.com> wrote:

1) solaris patching is supported via a couple different mechanisms, especially in the new release, in earlier releases we supported solaris patching via a custom extension developed by our professional services team

True, but patching is just one example of the lack of feature parity among OSs. And paying your consultants to put in an unofficial custom extension that the support organizaiton doesn't understand and which may well break in the next release isn't exactly an encoraging propisition.
 

2) no AD is required at all, or even recommended? We have LDAP integration for customers using SSO infrastructure, and AD hooks for generating group perms

I was speaking more about Altiris and the MS solutions with the AD comment. Yes, Opsware supports AD or LDAP for SSO on the admin side, but it basicly neglects AD for customer server environments. The agent is domain ignorant and there's no attempt to tap into Windows-specific feature such as SUS for patching or the MDT for deployment.
 

3) virtualized resources are our primary focus in the latest release, and lots of our customers manage virtual resources via HP SA

Yes, you can do the basics of VM management through SA, but you haven't eliminated the need for any of the first party tools (VI Client, Virtual Center, SCVVM).
 

 4) high concurrency is a core competency, and our capabilities meet the needs of our customers, who could be considered the most demanding in the world :)

Even with the recent move towards virtualization, the average enterprise datacenter is still full of systems that are dramatically underutilized, oftend designed to support intranet or workgroup applications with dozens or hundres of users. Compared to the designs and demands of the Internet-scale systems supporting Amazon, Google and Microsoft's operations, most enterprise data center can hardly be considered demanding.

Also when discussing automation, it's important to mention storage and network automation, along with process automation, which we have broken out into dedicated products.

... products which (aside from OO) are basicly not integrated with SA at all.
 

 The general feel that enterprise management tools are too "heavy" for CC seems like an attempt to disparage applicable solutions for being comprehensive. Relating install media size to the overhead or memory usage of an app as you kind of try to do seems like a bad analogy. Most of the install media is supporting the fact we can install on solaris or RHEL, requiring 2 copies of a lot of the binaries, not to mention the database options we provide to clients taking up media space. We don't even end up using anywhere near half that 25G number on disk after the install is completed.

The size of the install media speaks to the complexity of the product itself.

People are not moving to the cloud so they can continue managing servers the way they for the past 10 years.
 

Also if you could clarify what you mean by private versus public clouds and an example of one of these public clouds you refer to where management infrastructure (recommended, not required) is unavailable? I find the idea of these public clouds interesting, but I don't know of any. Even EC2 is a private cloud by your definition near as I can tell, but I digress.

Private... meaning whoever owns the cloud hardware and infrastructure are the only ones using it (internal only). EC2, GoGrid, AppEngine, Force.com all make their systems available to external users/developers (outside of the company) as a service, so they are public clouds.

 - Chris

[Moore, Eric]

Wow, you have some pretty strong feelings, I can see where some of your comments come from, and I assure you feedback is always welcome.

 

Also when discussing automation, it's important to mention storage and network automation, along with process automation, which we have broken out into dedicated products.

... products which (aside from OO) are basicly not integrated with SA at all.

 

That's just wrong, NA (network automation) and ASAS (storage automation, now  combined with storage essentials) are part of the opsware suite, have been for years, and are fully integrated, along with OO, once iConclude.

 

custom extensions have been moved into base product, including solaris patching, in 7.5, so you no longer need consultants for that.

 

I don't want to sit here and go on and on, but I feel the need to counter incorrect statements, since they only contribute to the FUD already floating around. When a product has been in the market for nearly a decade some people will have had bad experiences, but it seems like it's better to focus on what a product can and does do for people interested in automation rather than trying to focus on weaknesses in prior releases.

-Eric

 

---

From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Sears

Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 4:18 PM

To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Amazon EC2 terms of use - seriously?

[wayne pauley]

Ioan,
 
Great article and very helpful. I am writing a survey paper for ACM that compares client/server, grid, p2p and cloud using ODP as a conceptual framework so this will provide me with some helpful concepts to reference. Foster and Kesselman's GRID2 book is also a great resource. IEEE Interviewed Russ Daniels and Franco Travostino and they had several telling comments about cloud computing [Milojicic 2008] one of which I find very useful in this discussion. They said that after 45 years of computing,  distributed computing has not done away with any plaforms except maybe the mini-computer. The mainframe is still being used, client/server, and most recently Internet computing. The worlkloads are running inside and external to IT. There is not going to a big switch thrown - instead we will integrate the cloud into the infrastructure choices.

Wayne

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Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:24:26 -0600
From: ira...@cs.uchicago.edu
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Clouds are still vapour, Grids are real

[Jan Klincewicz]

http://www.cio.com/article/457473/The_Google_ization_of_Bechtel

 

Here is an interesting article about a company attempting an "internal cloud" approach ...

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Cheers,
Jan