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Deprecating the Datacenter?
m0smithslash writes "The blogging CEO asserts that that datacenters are doomed. Computers are showing up in everything from drill bits, to cargo ships to tracking devices in stuffed animals at Disneyland. With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network, do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"
How many drill bits will I need to buy for the company toolbox to run our email service? And does anyone know where I can get a toolbox with redundant power and cooling? Thanks.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
So where are they going to put the WoW servers?
Execute? [Y/N] _
While it is true that computers and microcontrollers are showing up everywhere, that doesn't mean that stringing together a line of cubes with built-in ARM-9 controllers will replace that beefy database server in the data center. While the promise of 'the network is the computer' is coming true (to an extent; thank you Google), it will not end in a meshed network of small computers all talking to one another. At least I hope not, god what a security nightmare that would be!
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With more and more embedded computers, and easier and faster networks, datacenters could become more important than ever. Many trends today require expanding and larger datacenters -- how do you think Web 2.0 applications manage their data.
I wouldn't find it terribly surprising to find things like drill bits and their "computers" relaying performance data which eventually ends up in some manufacturers datacenter. What better way to determine the use, reliability, and performance of a product?
I also could imagine the information in datacenters spawning meta-datacenters where data mining and other analysis is performed.
Distributed computers and distributed computing are different animals. Datacenters will go away much like the disappearance of the world of mainframes (which, btw, was predicted and discussed as early as 1983 (by my experience)).
With more and more small clients communicating wirelessly you really need a datacenter to keep things organized, as well as backed up. So we have lost a Disney Stuffed animal, now we need to find its last location. With it communicating with a data center until it lost communication we can check the datacenter and see were it was last, and then we can check out the last spot and see that it has A. Broke down and still there or B. gone but there is a rouge kid dissecting Mickey's head. C Gone for ever. But now we know that it is gone and we record that it has been stolen and adjust the inventory accordingly. Without the datacenter we see that the mouse is gone but with no central data location finding the data is much more complex. Also in a normal business model it is easier for programmers and the business to connect to a single Database server (Or clustered but they are logically in the same place) vs. having hundreds of separate excel or access files, in which when a program needs the data it needs to hunt for the file and if the persons computer crashes chances are that it hasn't been backed up. Just Peer to Peer communication is a not a robust method because it looses a central point of administration leading to problems in the future.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It was the same kind of comments that heralded the capabilities of central servers. I've read science fiction stories where there's one gigantic mainframe, to which every citizen connects. Alas, no such thing.
Similarly, it's never going to be pc's only. There's always a need for much computing power and secure storage arrays you just can't do in an ordinary box.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Just like everything under the sun having a processor and a piece of storage space, so too will the data center evolve and get better at what it does. There will always be a need for a centralized place with higher than average processing and storage capacity. Just because todays technology runs well on your cell phone/pda (which for the most part, as an avid mobile user, things are not exactly "great") does not mean the next generation will.
Adding intelligence to small items has benefits - in that it enables you to make decisions close to the center of activity.
Adding intelligence in a centrallised location has benefits - in that it enables you to lower the cost per flop (support, redundancy etc).
None of this will change unless instant point to point communications of infinite bandwidth are invented - ironically exactly what you would require to make *both* perfect centralisation and decentralisation a reality.
In the mean time we will stumble on with a mix depending on the job, just as we have done for the last 20+ years.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
As long as you're not concerned about minor issues like physical security, data and communications security, maintainability, scalability, and availability.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Security requires control and restriction of physical access. Unless and until you can secure those drill bits, security will always be an issue.
Although there is much to be said for putting computing power where it is needed, there is most certainly a need for security for machines and the data contained on them that necessitates if not an entire data center at least a secure area for most companies/institutions.
No, data centers aren't doomed. They are only doomed if they fail to see this change and don't adapt to it. Sure, the types of data centers we saw 10 or 20 years ago may be rare relics in 2020; that doesn't mean data center businesses will be gone. Current centers need to focus on security, ease of storage, or whatever else is important to their customers. These values will go beyond the spec sheet of what type of servers you have. In two years or in ten years, the servers and technology will be different. The value you provide, hopefully, will not.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I don't know what sort of Mesh he envisions here, but I doubt a vital e-commerce site will be running off of some guy's pen in China... Datacenters fill the role of redundancy and reliability. When you (or your customers) need to be able to access a computer system at any time, under almost any condition, a rag tag group of computers scattered everywhere simply will not do.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Information Security
If you don't care about physical security, then...
-mls
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datacenters also have a lot more bandwidth to the internet then you can get at home. It cheaper and easier to have a lot of bandwidth in one place. Then it is to string it out to lots of homes.
I'd love to see how.
do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"
It depends on the purpose of the computer(s) in question, and on the value of the (combined) data they contain. Money has been small enough to carry around for a long time, but we still have banks to house large sums of them. Ironically enough, banks may eventually be nothing more than a data center one day.
--something witty
Archangel Michael Asserts that Blogging CEO should stick to blogging, and not pontificate and prognosticate about computer and data centers.
1)Data centers are not drill bits, and Disneyland Toys.
2)Data Centers are for centering Data (central location).
3)Data Centers are for Centralization of Management.
Herding Cats is fun in the beginning, they are so cute and all, but after a while, you just wish they would bunch up and be like the sheep.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Until our bandwidth catches up to our storage capacity, we'll need centralized data storage.
It's rather odd that the end of the datacenter is supposed to be brought about by ubiquitous, small computers, since a few years ago everyone was looking forward to "thin clients" - these very same ubiquitous, small computers that would serve as *interfaces* to ... the mighty, on-demand power of the datacenter. The latter vision still makes more sense to me, at least for the foreseeable future.
"I am just a customs officer; but I, too, wish to understand what is going on" -- Bertold Brecht
From what I've seen in the datacenter sector is growly rapidly. More and more data is being stored online in server farms. Online apps are more prevalent than ever (eg Gmail).
With ever increasing network capacity data storage on the PC will become redundant.
I bitched for weeks when the idiots at AT&T broadband forced all of us to ship our servers to the new data center. Taking a distributed system that worked great and putting it all on one spot is incredibly stupid.
What happened? every time you have a network leg go down that office ore offices are 100% dead. no printing, no files , no services. network problems went up 50 fold and all pipes had to be increased because instead of having a BDC, print server and file server local, it was now 1/2 way across the country.
Large Datacenters have always been a stupid idea. distributing your services to locations around your offices is far more efficient and significantly lowers the connectivity needs. that T1 to denver works far better with 90% of the traffic now local to the LAN.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Data centers provide both, where mobile solutions do not.
Need I say more?
As for people walking around in MY data center? LOL!!! Please. Everyone in here is wearing monkey suits. Key card on a plastic necklace and nothing in their pockets except maintenance equipment from the internal shed. Cords go under the floor or through protected pipes into the ceiling - if he ran a data center he'd know that. Our procedures for changing out a computer and making sure something is there to stand in its stead in the mean time is far too complex to discuss here, but "breaking something trying to fix it" is NOT a problem here.
Oh, the ignorance. It's so great it has its own gravity field!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
tell that to the craploads of companies right now installing Citrix.
i'm working myself out of a job contract by contract.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
So swings the pendulum.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
This has got to be one of the lamest and most uninformed articles Ive read reacently. We have datacenters because no normal person or small business can afford things like huge internet connections from multiple providers, or afford to have network administrators and noc monkeys watching over the systems 24/7, or the expensive routing equipment used. While there is much more to a datacenter my point is already made so i dont need to delve into other reasons we need datacenters.
http://interserver.net/
With large increase in SF of both retail and residential spaces, and all the JIT methods of modern processesm, I foresee the end of central warehouses.
Oh, you mean they can't seem to build enough mini-storage sites? What, they're putting up enormous retail distribution centers for short term storage and efficient delivery?
Guess what, Einstein - central facilities will always be useful. The exact usage my shift, but the utility will still exist.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If my drill bit is running linux, can I install MySQL on it too? Do I really need a data center when I can just keep everything on the drill bit?
Hmm, I do have a set of 12 bits in my toolbox. Will I have a copy of my database on each one? Or maybe they will each download the data from the drill whenever I switch bits.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
An email went round from our syadmin group the other day, as they were clearing some crappy, redundant old boxes out to make some new rack space. And so now I have a (not very shiny, six year old) Sun Enterprise E4000 in my bedroom! Seriously... it's at the foot of my bed. Quad Sparc procs, only 20Gb system disks but I should be able to pick up some cheap RAID arrays on eBay, once I've got the bastard thing to either boot from the CD drive, or have worked out how to this "pixie boot" thing works.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
... with internal combustion engines so small and easy to implement, they're showing up in personal vehicles and even handheld devices like weed-whackers. There's no reason to build all that infrastructure of central powerplants any more -- anyone who wants electricity can just run a small motor to generate it locally.
Come on, get real folks.
Datacenters aren't about space. They're located where they can get cheap power and internet feeds. They're also about uptime, and infrastructure. Even when computers draw 1/4 the power and produce 1/4 the heat they do today you're still going to need to cope with the heat produced and feed them power. If you need a cluster, do you really want to build that infrastructure, or let someone else build and maintain it? Anyway the real point is that a company with a website that gets umpteen zillion hits can put a slower connection at their site to let their users get things done, and not need to get that kind of bandwidth at their site, which might require whole new fiber runs to the telco or other nasty things if one is outside a major metropolitan area.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Centralized databases are growing in importance. What is developing is all citizens are connected to these mainframes but not voluntarily; databases are collecting all their personal information and are monitoring their calls. In essence, many mini-gigantic mainframes are "connecting" to citizens, involuntarily.
There's also pseudo-"mainframes" (in function, at least) like MySpace, etc., which connect millions of people at once, voluntarily. I'm of course describing one major website digital community with a central database, as the modern equivalent of a mainframe...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I started out distributed in our area (rural county), we had POTS for connection and no networking in the begining, so I did what any lazy programmer would do, worked up a distributed DB system among tens of clients in two locations. And it is cool in some respects, but a pain to manage, especially if you have wide ranging changes (yes the updates are automated but updating the updater and other connection issues... ugh).
Now (within the last couple years) we have all the networking of the 21st century (intranet/DSL) as well as the best tools for the job (web based apps, thank the User!) all this reduces the problems of massive redudancy as well as the time and cost of doing/maintining the distributed system. I look forward to a day with a 'honkin huge server managing a bunch of simple thin clients (with the rouge laptop coming and going - replication is great too).
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I don't think the blogger understands what a datacenter is for. True, processors are turning up in all sorts of gadgets. By the are usually RISC processors designed for a very specific use. But even processors, don't store data. That is what a recordable media like harddrives or memory sticks are for.
A datacenter is for collecting large amounts of data, running operations on that data and providing that data to others. For instance, there is no way that a small handheld device at the loading docks can store the entire inventory for the company over the past 10 years. It can maybe keep a record of the last 30 days, maybe. And even if it were, how would that device let the main office, over 200 miles away know that the cargo has arrived at the docks? How would this CEO be able to find out how many widgets arrive annualy during the month of October and get the average price on them? The answer is that he wouldn't get it from a small handheld device.
This reminds me of when Scotty said "Hello computer" to the mouse. This guy clearly doesn't understand IT. I sure hope they have a good IT department to keep this guy from sinking the company.
Seriously - I am 26, and I use a pen to write something on paper perhaps once every 3-4 days. I also use the printer at my office or home maybe once every 3 weeks at the most.
Any time I have to do something over the phone or by mail, that I know as a programmer I could be easily be doing online, it pisses me off to no end.
I know I am not in an uncommon age group either. As I see my nieces and nephews go through school, they use less and less books. They hand in their assignments in USB keys.
The only people I know of who use paper in any amount are people who are 40+, the type of people who like to print off any website longer than a page because "it is easier to read". How is reading paper easier on the eyes than reading a TFT LCD? Answer? it isn't - it's all psycological.
The whole "myth" of the paperless world is not a myth, it was just misconstrued - you can't create a paperless world until all the people who are used to using the paper everyday are gone.
It's ironic that a CEO would have issues with considering a datacenter that is designed for centralization and management considered to be anachronistic. A datacenter will always be needed for centralization and management.
Hey, while we're at it, what do we need a CEO for? Overall intelligence has gone up over the years. I'm sure we're going to evolve to the point that we won't need a CEO anymore. After all, any one of us can do the job just as effectively, right? Let's hear it for true distributed management!
I think we'll see a lot of network-based applications. However, the data has to reside somewhere central, otherwise you're gonna have to replicate it a lot.
I think that as network availability and bandwidth increase we'll see larger computing centers with smaller (physically) and more ubiquitous clients.
No need for datacenter to go away -- just change a bit.
You know where servers are REALLY needed, close to the high speed Internet backbone in well controlled stable secure environments, not wirelessly roaming about the countryside. Hence datacenters.
There will always be a need for a secure area to house mission-critical applications. You will --NEVER-- never see an ERP system or core switch/router chilling out in a wiring closet down the hall, even if it's the size of a desktop PC. You need rock-solid infrastructure to support this stuff, and you can't get it outside a datacenter. The environment needs access control, fire supression, water detection, redundant HVAC, redundant power, all the other works. Datacenters may end up shrinking in size, but they will never go away.
All this means is that more of the data processing is handled on-site when needed rather than at a central location, which is a smart idea. However, central databases and backup systems could never be done away with, since there will always exist applications for computing require a central hub.
And anyway, it wouldn't destroy a lot of computer-related jobs because computers are still being used. It's foolish to put total faith in a computer without somebody there to be able to maintain/monitor/repair it.
Furthermore, when did drills with computers or stuffed toys ever require datacenters in the past?
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I think the article's a perfect one - just like electric motors got distributed; computers are too.
This reminds me of the prediction on /. last year that some day in the not-too-distant future we would be using ubiquitous public computer terminals and joking about the old days when people lugged around laptops. Both prophecies are anywhere from 90-100% foolish.
Where does that leave sun's very large server product line? Or should in 10 years will I be dropping a 'Thumper' into my kitchen to let me know how my groceries are doing (via an AJAX enabled watch I suppose)
:)
I'm not sure datacenters were ever *truly* built for people, I'm not that old. However, datacenters provide a clean, enviromentally controlled area for the VERY EXPENSIVE computing power to live. The way I see it, need for computing power is only going to increase (out on a limb, I know) and while prices trend down, the fancy server grade stuff is still going to cost lots of money.
I can see the point : "someday" grid computing is going to be pervasive and the norm in terms of development. That will enable organizations to utilize the spare processing power of their "cloud of devices" (very scifi!). But honestly, if you need to add X power to that, are you going to buy 15 toy bunnies that talk? no, you'll buy a server and put it in your datacenter
His generator analogy is flawed to boot. They go outside because they are smelly and/or loud. Computers don't have to be either of those.
I don't think the datacenter is going to go away ever. However the form of the datacenter may change significantly. Imagine a virtual datacenter where instead of a centralized architecture, the storage and processing functions are distributed - decentralized - across multiple units. The only setting where this could be practical is if people allow their house systems (the Desktop is dead already ;) ) to host and process information with some small compensation offered for the bother like free net access. Of course there is some magical security module that prevents people from accessing any private information.
The kernal of the article is very valid however - computing is going to become ubiquitous - You won't have distinct units such as an XBox or a PC. Instead I believe the functions provided by said units will become as standardized as electrical sockets in a house. Your house will provide web browsing, gaming, productivity, entertainment, and everything else by standard.
Shh.
What a relief this is...I will just tell the boss we can deploy our new hosted application on the stuffed animals at Disneyland for free!
By this way of thinking, as more and more people get HDTV's, HDTV production studios will become obsolete because people will just watch HDTV wherever they are.
There are some really weird people out there, you know?
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
The reason is that while our data capacities doubled every year, our data needs tripled every year.
And I don't see it changing. As soon as people make data storage cheaper, we decide we can now afford to store more of it, for longer periods of time.
So no, I don't think data centers are going away. But I do seem them as becoming less of a vital, growing industry and instead turning into a slow growth business.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
With new complex applications running on platform architectures that are constantly changing (for such things as convergent applications), decentralizing your platform would be insane.
Your costs to change the system would go up. Your security would be exponentially more costly, and your telemetry and other time sensitive aspects of the management solution would go through the roof!
I would also hazzard a guess that removal of the datacenter would probably violate SOX (it would probably be a bad thing for Johnny in accounting to have physical access to the server housing his data).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I find that blog post to be amusing considering it is from the CEO of a company whose business has pretty much revolved around datacenters.
Datacenters are going to be even more important with Web 2.0 applications, and if anything I see the opposite happening - more features/services WILL be centralized for the various benefits a datacenter has to offer.
Some of the more appealing features of datacenters:
1. Physical Security
Most have some kind of physical security - alarms, bio-metric/proximity cards, multiple locks, surveillance cameras, etc. Some facilities are fortified to withstand the extremes of nature, and other facilities designed for mission critical purposes might even have case-hardened walls to withstand bomb blasts. I have even seen some facilities with gyroscopic racks to mitigate risks from seismic activity.
2. Redundant Power
Most of the datacenters I have dealt with have multiple layers of redundancy in their power systems. Many have power feeds from more than one sub-station, they have high-volume UPS systems, and as last resort diesel generators.
3. Redundant Bandwidth
Not uncommon for a datacenter to get it's bandwidth from two or more seperate backbone connections for fault tolerance.
4. Climate Control
Many have excellent air conditioning and air handlers to keep the air clean. One datacenter in Pennsylvania I had done work in even had moisture sensors so sensitive if you spit on them it would set off an alarm
The pros to centralized datacenters are just too numerous.
I agree, but I think at least right now, for every person who's like us, there's some asshole out there who insists on printing out 60+ pages of single-sided PowerPoint slides and distributing them to everyone in the audience at their presentation, because it's "the thing to do." Sure, 90% of them end up in the trash near the door within five minutes of the end, but they do it anyway. Somebody might want them, right? (And this is in an office where everyone -- down to the last clerk and secretary -- has a computer and an email address, and where the presenter probably sent the meeting invite via email and thus has the entire distribution list already.)
Computers made it easier to use up paper thoughtlessly. While going to the Xerox machine and photocopying a 100 page document at least requires you to stand there while it prints, you can print a 100-page Word document pretty much by accident. I know people that make a point of just printing entire 40+ page specification drafts when they only need a page or two, because "it's faster to just print it and pull the pages out later than figure out which I want." There no way they would be that cavalier about it, if printing required more than a "Control-P, Enter", and then picking up the sheaf of output the next time they're headed out to the water cooler.
People aren't logical. People are dumb. People are thoughtless. Computers make being thoughtless easier. When you make something wasteful easier, it happens more often.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Um, right.... The blogging CEO is way off base on this one IMO...
Hmm
:) ) :)
After reading the blog, I'm not really following his theories.
His networked drill bits, are sensors at the tip of HUGE deep sea oil rigs. That's not my happy 24 volt cordless drill. It's financially sound to stick a few thousand dollars of sensors on the end of something that can make you millions.
As for data centers going away? It sounds more like he's saying the large hoards of mainframe operators are going away?
True. Most of them have. Or have been centralized into ginormous data centers hosting boxes for tons of companies. (IBM's huge computer rooms come to mind. I know there are quite a few companies in the one I have to go to regularly)
But as for getting rid of centralized servers?
Insane. Thanks to SOX (bleh *#@(#(*@# etc etc) IT groups are being hit with requirements to control more and more data. We need to keep stricter tabs on everything. NOT farm more and more of the computing out. With things like the DAV laptops getting stolen, there should be a push for MORE centralized servers/file storage and FORCE the users to keep all the data up on controlled servers. I KNOW that my servers, inside of my network, behind my firewalls, etc etc are safer than Jimmy the sales guys laptop that he forgot sitting on the table at Starbucks for the 100th time. (Or the nifty Irish pub that has free wifi. But they're pretty good about remembering you and holding your lappie for you.
About all the data I keep on my local laptop is a contact list of phone numbers, and a pst file. My email might be amusing to someone? But if they REALLY want to see the 32423423423 backup notifications and all trouble ticket notifications, they have more free time than I have.
In summary, if the guy is saying centralized servers/file storage is going away, he's wrong. If he's just saying the hordes of mainframe operators are going away, then yea, he's probably close to accurate. Or at least getting congregated into larger facilities where fewer people manage more boxes.
(BTW sorry for the completely incoherent path this took, to much allergy medicine)
I am 31337 or something.
How do you distribute computers over a wireless network? It's a series tubes, not a dump truck.
Nothing in the article that I can see supports the supposition that datacentres will become obsolete.
At most it suggests that there ought to be fewer humans in datacentres and that money could be saved by not making them human-friendly environments.
This appears to be nothing more than a case of poor reporting by m0smithslash and CmdrTaco.
If the data center becomes extinct, so will most of Sun's revenues. Since Sun is busy "open sourcing" all of its software, what would it have left?
And data is what counts. Do you think Google bought YouTube's Computers, or were they after their data? Do you think the value of computer companies in general is based on their hardware? Or their data?
And data is fleeting. A head crash, a power switch thrown at the wrong moment and it's gone. So you need backups. Backups are hard to decentralize because, well, it becomes very uneconomic to decentralize backup systems.
Next, security. Data on a laptop is already a security headache. Sensitive data has to be stored where it remains under your control at every moment, something that is virtually impossible with mobile devices unless you go to grotesque lengths to protect it.
And the list goes on.
So yes, computers become very portable. But what data centers are for, i.e. data, is something that's hard to make portable, safe and secure. So my bet would be that they're here to stay. They may not be interesting for some, certainly not for home users (they never were, seriously), but companies will not do without in the forseeable future.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There goes that theory..."as early as 1983"...I have a green MVS console right next to my PC right this second...
how many bytes to a bit?
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
I used to be a big sun supporter. They hardly seem relevant any longer.
Sun needs something, I am pretty sure Jonathan Schwartz is NOT it.
An interesting question would be "Hey Sun, do YOU still have a data center?" Of course they do.
So I RTFA (first mistake). What Jonathan seems to be blogging is not that the centralized data storage would go out the window, but the glass walled, polished showcase data center on the main floor. You know, the impressive early Hackers datacenter. Already, at many companies, the servers are utilities like the generator or the PBX--stowed away in a room somewhere.
Now if 20 connected server racks in 20 rooms is better than the big room might be a good question. But I don't think anyone seriously suggests to link all the wireless drill bits from the Gulf of Mexico to Siberia in real time.
What Jonathan is describing is the slow move towards ubiquitous computing that was put forward by Mark Weiser (the 'father' of ubicomp) in 1991.
But the move to ubicomp does not necessarily call for an end to the datacenter as we know it. The underlying systems that will make Weiser's vision a reality is the availability of computing devices that range from 'inches', 'feet' to 'yards' (mm, cm, m for us metric kids). What Weiser is saying here is that there isn't going to be one major form factor for computing (as was the case with the mainframe, the desktop PC and the laptop), but multiple form factors.
Some devices will be measured in inches and be able to perform a specific task, and others will be measured in feet and perform various other tasks and so on. And yes, all of these devices will be networked. However some devices will be better at certain things like sensing information and others better at things like processing the sensed information to make a decision. As a result, there will be room for the drill bits, the Disney dolls and the datacenter. And as pointed out by others, the networked world will likely require even more centralized computing.
Savio
Yeah lets get rid of the datacenter. Put the servers/switches and routers in the department offices where they can get abused daily. retard
Computers are processors, and they are and should be in everything. Data centers are places where related data is physically in the same place. I don't want my AR tables on my salesmens blackberries and my ap data on my purchasers desk. I want them both in the same place, with very tight security and tons of backups.
Not to put words in his mouth, but I think Google is providing that "network is the computer" concept when it provides web-delivered applications that replace things currently done on the desktop. E.g., Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheet, Writely, etc. In those cases, you're moving the application into the datacenter instead of the end-user's PC, so it's a net centralization and not decentralization, but to the user it seems as though "the network is the computer."
If taken to the extreme -- and I'm not sure that it will -- a user might actually use applications which reside in any number of large datacenters. So while there is a lot of centralization, during the course of a day, a single user might request data from several locations. I.e., use GMail from Google's datacenter, then Flickr from Yahoo's, then some Citrix-delivered stuff from a coloed blade system that their company pays for...they're using datacenters, but from their perspective they're less centralized than they were before, when all of their work would be done locally.
So it's sort of as if we're centralizing some things while decentralizing others at the same time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
There is talk about decentralized data and in some applications that might make sense. But a Data Center is about data and controlling the data. All those little mobile, embedded drillbit computers will be interacting with web based services in some manner either to get or post data. Those web services will be in a data center.
Some others mentioned that the mainframe is dead. Well that may be true for the most part, but the function that the mainframe provided is being provided now by a mix of Windows, Linux and Unix machines but the function remains, just a different machine form factor.
Julian was here
I go out of my way to complicate the simple things, so that I can simplify the complicated things.
[jonathan@sun ~] more crack | $
I
Google runs a data server farm in nearly 30 locations (some not on line yet) with 700,000 servers? If thats not the largest data center in history, then I dont know what is. Plus MicroSoft, Yahoo and others are building these too.
ISPs and phone line companies with underground lines could distribute a set of servers across the area.
In Portugal, buried lines for the fixed network are distributed in a network across the country owned by the biggest telco in the country (Portugal Telecom) which bought it from the state a few years ago. They do have datacenters and instead of having one huge datacenter, they could, in the junction boxes around the country, place "small" servers and distribute+replicate the data across the country. I believe this could cut costs and be more productive in terms of "damage control".
Onda Technology Institute
The idea that the centralized data storage location will go away in favor of distributed storage is, frankly, ridiculous.
Asset management is already a challenge in organizations of any significant size - it's bad enough when your employees lose their laptops; if the loss of the physical asset also means the actual loss of company data, the situation is orders of magnitude worse.
Distributed devices, moreover, are inherently less reliably available. While you may store all the data you commonly use locally, there could always be a need to access a piece of data from quite a distance across the org chart.
The legal ramifications are also overwhelming: data retention policies are hard enough to implement on a central filestore, they'd be impossible to reliably enforce across a myriad of differing devices. Not to mention the gaping liability hole introduced by subpoena: if the court subpoenas all the records you have for the last fifteen years regarding a specific client, they expect all the records, not just the ones you were able to find on the two hundred laptops you think were the only ones involved in the transactions (and this isn't a flight of fancy; I'm the DBA for a medium-sized accounting firm, and we get these sorts of requests almost weekly).
His comparison to power generation is equally ridiculous. Power is fungible, data aren't. Besides:
We certainly don't put power generators in precious city center real estate, or put them on pristine raised flooring with luxuriant environmentals, or surround them with glass and dramatic lighting to host tours for customers. (But now you know why we put 5 foot logos on the sides of our machines.)
We absolutely centralize power generation; they're called power plants. We put generators on the roof and in the basement to provide redundancy in the event of failure at the central location - but that's, if anything, analogous to having local copies of data on the device in question, not analagous to replacing the power plant with thousands of CO4-burning generators.
And that's not even getting into defining where this "most useful" place for data is - if you've got a company with offices around the country (much less the world), and you have one corporate website contributed to by people in each office, where "should" that information reside, if not in a single location? And if it does, guess what - you've got a data center.
I'm thoroughly unimpressed.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
So to get on Slashdot these days you just have to write some moronic IT-related column? Who's running this site? Honestly, the guy might have a point, but there's no insight as to what the alternative to the data center might be, just "Computers are ubiquitous, so data centers are dinosaurs." And the Slashdot editors lap it up. I took the bait, so I guess they know what they're doing.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The Internet is not a truck. It's a series of tubes connecting drill bits?
. . . are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?
He's mistaking computation power for data management. Sure, you will have computers all over the freakin' place, where they are needed most: in churches and small pebbles and dentures and flatulent old men and chocolate chip cookies and goldfish. But what are those computers going to do? They're going to monitor things and feed that data back to a, well, central repository of data, where the data can be managed.
I might have a computer that is a part of me, that displays information through my contacts, and listens to the environment around me, bringing up the data I need real-time. Where's that data going to come from? I imagine some sort of central repository, in most cases. The searches will certainly execute on a central computer somewhere, most likely at a Google datacenter. Searches don't perform themselves.
The more distributed computers there are, the more information they generate. The more information that is generated, the greater the need for a datacenter to manage that data. I don't see that changing any time soon.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
How does the ability to distribute some of your computing mean that other types of computing are deprecated. If anything, distributed computing doesn't take away from centralized computing but augments it. In fact, I would expect an increase in distributed computing to require even more centralized infrastructure to maintain the network.
Can I host some sites on your drill bit? Wait... What are you using for security? Do you have an ISA drill bit? What about DNS? Are we talking Static or Dynamic IP bits? Can I get VOIP on it? Heck can it replace my cell phone, cuz I am getting tired of carrying around a drill and a cellphone. Having so many devices is ruining the creases on my slacks, it is getting in the way of my driving. Speaking of which, I find it inconvenient to answer my drill whilst driving, can I get bluetooth for it? Or would I just use a driver/drill? Also, if you are using your drill will that affect the wireless signal? If I break my drill bit will my site go down?
Yes Jonothan they are making and using more computers in different places. .
:%s/Sun/<their company name>/g
:%s/Jonathan/<their name>/g
But centralizing your maintenance makes more sense doesn't it.
Yes having computers close to the use makes sense in some cases, but what makes more sense is having a controlled area where you can manage the computers.
If I had the money and time I would replace most of our computers with terminal servers. Terminals are cheaper. $400 dollar terminal is cheaper than a $2000 workstation to replace. Oh this doesn't make sense. Well how about when manufacturing equipment fails catches on fire and water (pick any number of chemicals here) damages all the little workstations on the manufacturing floor.
What you need to be thinking of is centralized solutions. Gigabit data connections to terminals capable of running equipment interface cards. All this connected to a centralized server. Take out 50 $2000 Workstations replace with 50 $400 terminals connected to $40000 dollars of redundant hardware and we have a solution.
Jonathan you need to be thinking about solutions that can be realized now and provided now with computer system you sell now or can be modified to adapt to what we need now. Put down the quad venti latte and come to the real world. Your blog seems to be ignoring the problems we have today and jumping off to the problems of tomorrow. Quit worrying about what Sun can do for the future and worry about what Sun can do to fix the present problems. We'll be more likely to listen to your future problem solutions then. And I don't mean a $500,000 fix for a $40,000 problem. We need a $20,000 fix for our $40,000 problems.
Datacenters are going to get bigger not smaller. Non of my users has gotten any better at maintaining a computer, just because they have one on their desk or they carry one with them wherever they go. In fact the opposite is true. Every user has his own quirks about setting up his computer (where he wants his files stored) and the more freedom he gets the more diverse the differences. How do you handle such chaos. Either clamp down on computer procedures. or just copy all the information.
How do we store all of the information from all these little gadgets that are must haves. Dump all the data to a central location and let god and the IT staff sort it out.
Pass this on to any of your other fellow CEO's
Just tell them to open it in a vi editor and run
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
It's drill bytes. Brace yourself, turns out you're going to need to hammer in gigabytes of these. That could put you in the hole. Don't chuck that data center quite yet.
At least, that's the spin I wood put on it.
"With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network, do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"
Yes. Duh. *Plonk.*
My usual consulting fees will apply for this call. Thank you.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
An excellent post putting an overrated corporate exec in his place.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Trump: Your team was tasked with setting up a datacenter containing the sales database. So where is the datacenter?? ... ...
Apprentice: Uhh, Mr. Trump - we read this article that said datacenters were unnecessary.
Trump: OK, so where's the database stored?
Apprentice: It's stored on fifteen drill bits somewhere in India.
Trump: (Angrily) Drill bits!!
Apprentice: (Sweating profusely) But we saved a lot of money
Trump: (Looking at laptop) So how come I can't access the sales database.
Apprentice: Well, someone used one of the drill bits and it broke
Trump: You're fired!
[Insert pithy quote here]
Are these guys still in business?
This guy is trying to pull a steve jobs, reality disortion field, to influence who and how his servers are bought. Im sorry CEO's blogging, is strickly a cheap (as in free) marketing device, dont buy into this BS.
"When they invent bitch slaps that can go through a monitor you better f'ing duck" --deft (253558)
You mean the thin clients that Scott McNealy was on NPR just the other day discussing? As usual Sun has two visions of the future, just in case they're wrong.
My pocket does not have an SLA.
Yes, but where do you store the data produced by these small sensors (which in reality is what he's calling "small computers")?
Surely, you won't want to rely on the remote sensors for data storage. What happens to your data when your smart drill-bit is destroyed?
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Touche as far Sun goes. But the meme has spread a lot wider, I think. As I said, it seems like a sensible idea, given that bandwidth is developing faster, in relative terms, than battery or display technology, two things one wants to think about before tossing out the desktop, let alone a datacenter, and relying on a PDA for one's daily bread ...
"I am just a customs officer; but I, too, wish to understand what is going on" -- Bertold Brecht
i'd love to observe small computers being distributed wirelessly.
m@
Pin : So Haj, what do you think about deprecating the datacenter? ...a question about the long term... : My Turn?!?! Now?!? ...the long term viability of datacenters in the face...t ,iloveroasts... hisjokeislong... ...of ubiquitous computing.
Haj : I love roasts! Is it my turn to go now? Is Carlin here?
Pin : It's not a roast, Haj, it's a question...
Haj : Whose turn is it? Is it my turn now?
Pin :
Haj
Pin :
Haj : [in a robot voice] Is... it... my... turn...
Pin : FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, HAJ, IT'S NOT A ROAST!! IT'S A QUESTION ON SLASHDOT,
POSTED BY CmdrTaco. NOW LET ME FINISH!!!
Haj : stupidpin,alwayspretendingtobesosmart,itsnotaroas
Pin :
Haj : isitmyturnnow?!?
Pin : yes, Haj. It's your turn.
Haj : Ok, Ok, I got one: man this data center is small, what are they storing, nanobytes?!?!
CROWD: HA! HA! HA! HA!
Pin : That's not even funny!
Where did all these people come from? Where did you get that microphone?
Haj : Dude. It's a roast. And by the way, you won the Biggest Doofus Award. Congratulations.
Pin : [grabbing the microphone from Haj] Listen to me everyone, this is not a roast. It's a discussion. About datacenters.
Perhapa you misread the article title, but let me repeat, THIS IS NOT A ROAST.
Haj : HA HA!! Put your hands together for my buddy Pin ladies and gentlemen.
CROWD: [Applauds madly]
[as they walk off stage, in the distance someone else begins speaking]
And now, in the interest of equal time, here is a message from the National Institute of Datacenters...
Haj : Carlin IS here...
Pin : I hate everyone.
I'm 63 and I've been working with computers for 45 years. I often print out long emails or Web sites. It's not because of habit or lack of familiarity with computers, it's because my eyes are old and I don't see as well as all you youngsters.
Centralized computing and data storage for compact and/or mobile devices; reliability, availability, backup (as many other posters have mentioned); professional management; consolidation via virtualization; etc. If I buy my own hardware and deal with all the above issues, only to have it underutilized, that's an incredible waste when a data center can consolidate many services on the same hardware and consolidate management across all these services using the same staff.
Who ever Jonathan is ... of Jonathans Blog, the root source of the article has apparently noticed (for the first time?) the other world of computers and electronics. He cites the marvels of sensor and controls technology. Johnathan needs to get out more and while his eyes have been exposed to a larger world, I would caution Johnathan not to extrapolate to much from his new found understanding.
Distributed and decentralised? We have had that since the advent of computers assembled from integrated circuits some thirty years ago. Johnathan, my man... where have you been?
While novel at the time, I was part of a team that brought a completely automated manufacturing center into existence. From raw material in, to finished product out, inspected and packaged with no human intervention in process except for maintenance and repairs. Automotive air conditioner compressors no less. I've been involved in a similiar vein with automatic transmission manufacture complete with a robotic trains and rail yards for delivery to the automotive assembly plant. Again, no people. All interacting distributed computer guided sensor and control technology complete with built in diagnostics and reporting. This was twenty years ago. Its more pervasive now. You just noticed? Man, look at the technology in Fanuc control systems some time.
As to the demise of the data center? No.. they aren't going anywhere. We still need points of aggregation and centralization for a whole host of logistics issues where the data center makes the most sense. Nothing has changed except a new found realization in Johnathans world.
There's lots to see here. Keep moving.
cmdrtaco, do you even think about what you're posting anymore? this article is the farthest thing from news as you can get. its a blog, from someone who is obviously retarded and plays with their bluetooth headset all day, and probably doesn't do a very good job at it. additionally, from the "only-a-matter-of-time-dept"????? what the hell? april fools day called, it wants its article back, dingus.
how philosophical. how non article worthy
The power of networks was very well described in Kevin Kelly's book, "New Rules for the New Economy."
My guess, is that the article doesn't get specific enough about what datacenters will be like in the future. As long as it is incredibally expensive to attach multi-sourced, very high bandwidth connections, datacenters will have a place as server farms. (The attacks on net neutrality will prolong this.) As long as it's economically preferable to have people servicing multiple servers, there will be a necessity for clustering those servers together. Until we can economically dynamically allocate physical and human resources, static allocation will still prevail. This leads me to suspect that both types of alolocation will co-exist for quite a while.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
The network is the network, and the computer is the computer.
Frankly, the "network is the computer" slogan is just that - total marketing bullshit. People are fully aware that applications run on computers. Nobody I know, from kids to senior citizens, thinks that "the network is the computer." If anything, they can't tell the difference between a remote application and a local application, and get confused thinking that they "downloaded google" to their local machine. The applications look local, and in fact, the UI IS local. So I TOTALLY disagree that to the user it seems as though "the network is the computer." From my observations, it's the opposite. The network is invisible to the end user.
The funny thing about his blog is that I used to work in IT for a large energy company that happened to be a SUN customer who I am almost certain is the company he's referring to. Yes, we did have oil rigs that used sensors on the drill bits to help determine how and where to drill. The funny thing is that the data gathered from the drill bits was sent back to a server in the data center, which was a SUN E4000. Data from that server was then fed into another SUN E4000 running Oracle and an application which read seismic data and was used to guide the drill. They were both in what I would easily describe as a traditional datacenter in Houston, TX
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
Power and cooling aside, I've yet to see a toolbox equipped with a biometric scanner.
Physical security is as important as electronic security.
Isn't this simply the enternal cycle we see so often? centralize, decentralize, centralize, decentralize, centralize,...
The company I work for has many young engineers. I am 50. When a problem needs to be resolved, I prefer to talk with people and determine the solution. My coworkers, have said things to me like "Don't ask me a question, just send me an email." In the old days, the way people communicated was by talking. These days it's email only. Maybe in a few more years, young people won't even know how to speak with their parents, they will only communicate via email. :-(
Think of the new opportunities for excuses around the office: "I'd love to run your query, but I left the database server in my other pants!"
I call first Beowolf Cluster joke!
"System Maintenance in Progress
The blogs.sun.com team is currently working on some system improvements which require us to briefly disable our normal blogging services. We are working quickly and expect to resume services very shortly.
Thanks,
The Blogs Team."
This would only be a problem if data centers were still relevant. Sheesh.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
The proliferation of computers is making datacenters more important, not less. Who needs standalone computers? Of course there are uses for them, but most systems are moving to be more connected, not less. And what do they connect to? Odds are they're tied back to central servers somewhere that need to have high availability, hence the need for datacenters. It's cheaper than every company buying their own redundant power, backup systems, diverse fiber paths and 24/7 support staff.
Amen to that.
I'd just like to add that I wasn't ranting against paper in general -- I take lots of notes on paper during presentations. I use either spiral-bound notebooks or legal pads, generally, and I find them both essential parts of my organizational/creative process. I'm still waiting on an electronic note-taking system that's as versatile as a spiral-bound notebook and a 0.07mm pen or pencil, in terms of quickly inputting high-resolution text and graphics.
However, in general I've found that each PP slide, which done according to the seemingly near-universal business-template "style" (which only has a few words of text on it!), only boils down to about one line of written notes. Thus, a 60-slide presentation might only take up a page or two of notes, plus diagrams and editorial comments as appropriate.
There's so much wrong with PP presentations that I don't even want to get started on it; most people who use them are really using them like a backwards-facing teleprompter, rather than a visual aid, and giving out tons of handouts encourages people to not take notes, meaning less retention of information. Powerpoint is a service by the lazy (presenters) for the lazy (audience).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The draw of a datacenter aren't the computers but the aggregation of and redundancy of bandwidth (power and technicians are important, too, but BW rules). That's even why they're called datacenters I bet.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Why should I have to deprecate data centers? With today's technology, data centers should be self-deprecating.
I'm 28, I'm a software engineer, and I think that you are wrong. You also probably would make a terrible engineer. (At least you refer to yourself as a programmer, and not an engineer)
Whenever you have a problem you should choose the solution with the best combination of simplicity, cost, and reliability. For many tasks, a piece of paper wins all three. It generally wins for durability, size, and weight too. Quick grocery list? Paper. Quick (circuit diagram|woodworking drawing w/dimensions|flowerbed layout|connector pinout) for reference during implementation? Paper. Web based directions to somewhere you've never been in a format you can take along in the car? Paper. Notes from a 5-minute meeting (even if you are going to digitize them later)? Paper. Keeping static information (headers, a page from the API docs, a quick reference card) in your field of view while you are writing software without the added costs of an additional display? Paper. Note to the (mailman|gardner|etc...)? Paper. Temporary sign to post on the wall? Paper. Getting the picture?
Don't be so infatuated with technology that you lose sight of how good the old ways to do things are. All things are good with the proper level of moderation.
I tried to read the TFA but their server (drill bit?) was slashdotted. Maybe they were a little too quick to deprecate their datacenter?
Data centers serve two purposes.
They store data. They provide processing power to aggregate that data so you get what you need, and only what you need, on your local system.
The data center as described, where the aggregation is done at the edge of the network instead of at the datacenter, implies a quantity and quality of bandwidth we don't have now. And when we get there, there will still need to be some central repositories for data. And those repositories will also have to function as security and payment clearinghouses.
The data center may turn into nothing more than a glorified SAN, but it'll still be there. Because with all the ubiquitous computing we have, the cell phones, the PDA's, the laptops, it's all got one very simple thing in common: it's easy to lose, break, have stolen and otherwise destroy. And the backups have to be somewhere, or the system doesn't work. And that's what data centers will become. Places where data is stored, centrally.
Huh. Maybe the name's a little more forward thinking than we thought?
Slashdot will be doomed if it continues to permit the posting of bollocks like this.
From the site:
j^2
Computers may be getting smaller, but applications keep getting bigger and more bloated at an even faster pace. As long as there is the bloat, datacenters will keep growing under the planet is covered with them.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
When the world works in a way where it truly is paperless...the the next Manhatten Project will be a Explosion that wipes out all Magnetic data/etc... for given radius. Who cares if no people are harmed, given that every piece of data in that location is wiped out with no recovery...unless they are backedup up elsewhere in say redundant datacenter maybe?
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
I think slashdot overloaded the one he has now.
It's true that technology allows us to reduce our usage of paper. (And in turn, it follows that the older generation is more set in their ways of using paper where the younger crowd feels more comfortable using one of the alternatives instead.)
BUT - there are good, valid reasons for paper printouts. The "easier on the eyes" argument has merit, simply because you can't easily pick up your monitor and comnfortably read it at different angles and positions. You're generally forced to look at it from a specific distance away from the screen, in a relatively fixed position in your desk. The eyes get tired of focusing on something at only one focal length after a while. With sheets of paper, most people tend to do things like stand up and carry them around, continuing to glance at them as they go into another room, or perhaps turn around in their chair and read the paper sitting on their lap while they're facing away from their desk.
Also, paper is lit up by light reflecting off of it, vs. being backlit. You're not "staring into the light" to read paper, like you do an LCD or CRT display.
It recently struck me that as we strive to move to digital vs. paper, it's interesting that the whole question of "backup" and "longevity" becomes more critical too. We know we can properly store a book and expect it to be perfectly readable in 200 years, but the promise of CDs and DVDs lasting anywhere near that long is questionable at best. Tape backups degrade over time, slowly becoming demagnetized as they sit around. Hard drives are doing good to last 10 years before failing. So far, the best answer for ensuring your document (photo, video, etc.) sticks around is posting it to the Internet. Then your "backup" becomes everything from Usenet archives to Google caches to individuals who found it useful enough to make their own copies at home or at work. If a work becomes "lost", someone can post to message forums begging for a copy and usually, someone out there has one they can repost. But our legal system discourages using the net in this way, citing copyright violation, in many cases.
I agree whole heartedly. In fact, my windows network manager is evaluating thin clients to replace PCs for all employees. The idea of replacing 1 $20k server every 5 years is much nicer than 100 $500 desktops every 3 years. Yes, those numbers aren't exact, but they give an idea of the sort of savings that are possible if your environment is a candidate for thin clients.
I won't even get into how cool it is to pull your access card out of your desktop in San Jose, hop a plane to NYC, grab a spare desk at the head office, plug your card in and be right where you left off with all your documents open, apps open, and xmms picks up in the middle of the mp3 it was playing.
Agreed..
Consider this; if one thinks that looking at a monitor all day doesn't hurt the eyes, have them go and stare at a lamp for about an hour. Not the same you say? Turn off all of the lights in a room and fire up that LCD and tell me it's not.
of working in an organization where you have little interdependancy between offices.
Our teams are spread out over the eastern seaboard, and our employees are often on travel at customer sites, so we have to centralize as much as possible to keep everything accessible and to keep everyone in touch. We have to cluster/failover critical resources and intra-campus links.
I know a lot of large organizations have these issues, so sometimes you really do need a datacenter prima donna if you want to keep your employees and customers happy.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I don't pay my datacenter for tiny or cheap computers or connections.
I pay my datacenter for reliable computers and connections.
As long as centralized datacenters can provide more reliable PCs and connections (You're expecting me to put my entire livelihood behind a WIRELESS connection? Fat chance!) than what I can put on my desk, lap, or hand, there will be a demand for it.
Now, if you can get those drill bits (and their connections) to work as or more reliably than datacenters, you'll have something. But that's a pretty tall order.
Datacenters don't exist because it's difficult to get or run computers. The purpose of datacenters is to provide a safe, secure place for servers, with redundant uplinks and backup generators. The reason I don't run my company's servers out of my house is because the cost of making a reliable base for computing is stratospheric except in bulk. It's much cheaper for me to rely on level three's infrastructure than it is to create my own.
It's the same reason we don't build our own streets or refine our own water. We could. It's not cost effective as an individual. Datacenters don't have home PCs. They have servers that can't afford to go down.
I don't foresee datacenters going away until the reliability of home services has changed dramatically.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Data won't reside perminantly on any computers, they will all be interfaced with the 14TB superweb, and all data will be travling all over the place so fast that it will remain perminantly in limbo ON TEH INTARWEB. This will make harddrives completely obsolete, as the data capacity for the fiber can be easily determined by complex algorythms, the basis of which is the speed of light multiplied by the total distance of fiber, and Pi is thrown in there somewhere for good measure (fiber is round right?..) Everything will be floating in the public domain and all you need to do is reach out and grab it.
The only reason why anyone would deploy Citrix is to deploy a Windows application on a large scale. It's rather trivial with Unix (pick from one fifty different approaches, with varying levels of cost, complexity, scalability, and done-for-you-ness)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
the cost of the power to run that thing is more than its computing throughput is worth.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
JS's Def of a datacenter:
The original intent of the datacenter was to accomodate not computer equipment, but the people who managed it. Operators who needed to mount tapes, sweep chad, feed cards, and physically intervene when things went wrong. Swap a failed board or disk drive, or reboot a system.
What he is talking about is not "datacenters" where you keep servers and network gear. He is talking about "datacenters" where there are offices with tons of staff.
That said....who the hell works where their servers are? I run pando with a couple hundred servers and I often go weeks without seeing it(the hardware) since I console everything. Before that a bank where I never went to the hardware but once a month, and before that a whole year and a half at a major auction house where I never saw the hardware ever. Its been this way for a long time.
It sorta seems to me he is either really overstating the obvious.....or he is a decade or two behind the times.
dimes
They've always wanted reports printed out from systems that I've built, even though it would be easier to have them get their reports by email or directly from the system online. Then they can filter, correct, annotate, etc. right in the same place that everyone else is looking, or keep it secure if it's that type of information.
I think it has something to do with their process of dealing with tasks.
I'm with you about the email, but I'm not so sure I agree when the option is getting the report from the system online. Let's say I get a phone call and need to discuss a report. Let's even assume I already have a browser launched, and it's in the foreground of the current desktop already. Ok, I just need to Ctrl-N a new window, find and click a bookmark, and wait for the login page. I need to enter my username and strong password first, then I have perhaps 4 or 5 clicks just to generate the default report. Now I need to select the date range, set my filtering and sorting options back to how I like it, and then I can scroll one screen at a time. Now, that all wastes a lot of time, and I still have a very limited viewport on my data. Humans are good at scanning for patterns and discrepancies; scrolling necessarily makes this unintuitive, and until filters can read our minds, this is going to be important in real-world decision-making.
If I had a folder of printouts near my desk, I just need to grab the folder, flip through until I find the exact report, and pull it out. I can layout the pages on my desk and scan several hundreds of lines; far more than could possibly fit on the screen at a legible resolution.
One large problem here is that most systems don't allow you to readily bookmark or save one or more reports, with arbitrary settings, where they are quickly retrievable. Further, I still have to login and wait for the report to be generated, even if I could just select a bookmark. And, perhaps worst of all, I can't exactly take these down the hall to the conference room, as I can with a folder of paper reports. Even if there is a machine there, it's almost definitely off, so I need to boot, login, launch the browser, and then proceed with the steps outlined above. This can easily take 10 minutes or more, and typically falls into the "not worth it" bucket. Sure, you might have a laptop, but I would argue the convenience factor is still working against you.
So, I just don't think you're necessarily correct that the underlying reason is that a pile of papers will help motivate some people more than an inbox full of urgent or unread messages. I It certainly might, and I absolutely don't mean to accuse you of anything, but if I were you I'd take some time to reflect on the systems I'd designed, and question whether there might be some reason that your system doesn't make it quite as user-friendly as you expect. Complex system navigation without shortcuts, combined with the inherent need for portable ubiquitous connectivity to said system, may well make a compelling case for the convenience of paper reports.
I've worked in 2 datacenters in the last 3 years and both were growing and needing qualified technicians. The idea that people don't want their terabytes of data backed-up, secured, supplied with power and TLC 24x7 is totally contrary to reality. Both datacenters were getting more densely packed and running into power and cooling issues. Small 1U servers only made it easier to pack more of them in and do ever more things.
I'm quite convinced that Jonathan Schwartz exists to be the counterpart to Steve Ballmer. Bill Gates was an economist and a monopolist standing against Scott McNealy, a technologist. Now we have a Ballmer, the psychotic sociopath, facing down Schwartz, the insane dreamer.
Nothing he says makes much sense. Whether or not it helps Sun, I don't know.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
We used to hear the same with mainframe computing, that smaller PCs outperform, are cheaper, etc. The problem is levels of redundancy, sourcing of compatible components, etc. Along those lines, I loved the comment made (I can't remember by whom) with regard to that: "You cannot replace a bull with 10,000 chickens."
Data Centers offer: conditioned power, redundant power, (almost) instantaneous access to increased bandwidth needs, connectivity redundancy, less dusty air, cooling, physical security, network operation centers, remote hands, etc. (the list goes on).
Click here or here.
I guess sun is going to host their fancy new grid out of their employees bedrooms.
Yes, we'll still need data centers. Data centers will always be necessary because people will always want to store more and more data.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I once thought up an alternative to the current datacenter model. In my model, a collective pool of data (i.e. all the sites on the net, minus files over a certain size, probably 10MB or so) would be distributed across the internet dynamically. In this model, every computer on the internet would serve as both a server and a client. Each terminal would connect to a core set of servers (which would more than likely be dispersed in several different geographical locations, in a similar fashion to the 13 DNS root servers used now) would be able to determine the total number of systems on the internet. From there, it would calculate how much of the net each system would need to store if all of them stored an equal amount of data, and then do some basic balancing based on CPU, RAM, HDD, and Connections measurements. In short, you'd have one core set of servers which organize stuff so that every system pulls an equal load.
For example, if the entire internet had 10 hosts with 100GB of data to be served, and 5 of the 10 hosts were twice as fast as the other 5, you might have a breakdown like this: 5 systems have 66GB spread amongst them, with the other 5 having 33GB spread amongst them. The first 5 would then have around 11GB while the slower 5 would have 5GB to 6GB. Then, whenever a request was made for example.com, the big routing servers would say "ok, right now that data is on x system at x IP address." and so on and so fourth.
In effect it was like bittorrent for HTTP, where these theoretical root servers served like trackers, and every system was both a client and a server (or leecher and seeder, respectively.)
The theory works fine, but after 5 minutes of bliss spent marvelling at my own idea, the problems flowed like a river. For one thing, where does a web designer upload to? Does he or she simply FTP files to this root server and it hands stuff out? No, because then you could FTP whatever you want with no restrictions and my AVI Movies would be on a computer with Google. What about domain names? Does the person who owns google.com own my computer if the root server just happens to send stuff my way? If it does send it my way and then my computer crashes, can google sue me for their downtime? Can they win?
In short, I determined that you MUST have systems set aside as servers, not because the technology wouldn't work if everything was both a client and a server, but simply because of the way people use clients and servers. Technologically this entire idea is possible. It's not practical though, since computers are here to serve people, and people don't live on other people's schedules. This idea is like an on-demand public transit system. In the real world, you have to be at a bus stop at a set time and that bus runs a set route on a set schedule. Sure, we could have a bus system where you call up the bus driver any time you want to, tell him to go straight to the doorstep of anywhere you want to, and then he's free for the next person, but we don't (that's called a cab, not a bus). A bus on a schedule works fine until 2 people have to be at work at the same time on different ends of time and both must ride the same bus. Using a sort of decentralized, distributed internet is a great idea, however there is no practical way to implement it.
I don't see datacenters dying off any time soon. Peer-to-peer serving has yet to be perfected on a mass scale with HTTP, and even if I can IM people over bluetooth peer-to-peer I can't google search over it peer-to-peer. Having dedicated servers is a manditory component of HTTP, and I don't think we'll see an end of datacenters as whole until HTTP can be run out of everyone's garage, peer-to-peer. As long as it works off a client/server model, HTTP will require dedicated servers, and therefore datacenters.
When computers doing a simple role the OS will become a wasted.
datacenter should at least provide:
precision cooling
redundant power
backup power (ups and generators)
security
connectivity
access
structural protection
fire protection
in disasters, all the stuff out there go out while computers in the datacenters keep on running
just recently, a storm struck the capital city (Manila, Philippines) and knocked power and communications in most areas for days (loss of mobile phone, difficult communications, no internet in residential areas, no cable tv, no technology.) that place that i worked for had everything running inside the datacenter at least (though internet connectivity was intermittent.) our datacenter kept running as it was designed to do.
well i guess that the ceo just looks at computational requirements that can be divided in smaller chunks (ala seti@home and other similar projects.) but what about those applications that cannot be done like big databases and simulations. i guess the computing part is easy. the question can we connect everything more efficient? how can we move data across all the island of computing devices?
as i sidenote, sun has built their business in servers hosted in datacenters. i guess they should stop selling them and focus instead in embedded computing and other non-datacenter related items. they could also focus on communications for those embedded devices.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
As long as renting a root server including some amount of traffic etc. is way cheaper than the electricity bill for an additional machine at home, let alone costs for a static IP and so on, I don't see why I should not host just about everything in the datacenter.
What company does this guy run? I think now is an excellent time to short some stock...
-Can i see your datacenter?
-Our dat..? Sorry, we don't have such think!
-urh! You don't? Where are your servers then?
-Servers?
Excuse, me! Are you from the past?
Sure technology scales, but so does the rate of data consumption. You can miniaturize your devices all you like, but "enough" (in terms of what's "enough" for the data usage of the day) reliable, redundant, backed up data storage has certain requirements which have remained pretty consistent for the past couple of decades.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
That's actually quite an interesting idea (apart from the perpetual motion bit ;). You'd never be able to generate steam but there is definitely a lot of waste heat from your datacenter (well 100% waste as virtually all the electricity that goes in is converted to heat). This could form the basis of a Combined Compute and Heat scheme where the heat is used to provide background heat (under floor heating say) to surrounding homes and offices.
It wouldn't handle the summer months where the demand for cooling is greatest. The cooling system could "charge up" a giant heat reservior during the summer for use during the winter. I guess the infrastructure would be somewhat complex and it would suffer from the same problems that blight CHP schemes...getting different organisations to cooperate on captial projects.
Maybe when energy gets to cost 5x what it does at the moment.
fud, no, yes, notfud
Love the new tagging system
This sounds like another lecturer wanna be. He'll collect the big fees talking to CEOs about the future that won't happen.
Besides, get rid of data centers and you have no one to lay off for a quick cost cutting measure and then rehire two years later when that India thing didn't work.
The usual CEO bullshit