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Amazon Beefs Up Its Cloud Ahead of MS Announcement
Amazon has announced several major improvements to its EC2 service for cloud computing. The service is now in production (no longer beta); it offers a service-level agreement; and Windows and SQL Server are available in beta form. ZDNet points out that all this news is intended to take some wind out of Microsoft's sails as MS is expected to introduce its own cloud services next week at its Professional Developers Conference.
As seen here:
For normal instances, Windows is 25% more expensive then Linux/UNIX, and for high CPU instances 50% it is 50% more expensive.
Desktop-computer sellers should learn something from that...
Replace "cloud" with "mainframe" and take 40 years off your age, and then you pretty much have it, as is my understanding.
According to wikipedia it's a fancy way of saying "the internet" to people who don't understand the infrastructure of the internet.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
"The service is now in production (no longer beta)"
Then they have already reached a state that Google will never achieve.
Better known as 318230.
The use of internet services for tasks that are typically handled locally. There are a number of good and bad reasons to utilize these services. The big benefits are accessibility, zero maintenance and the security of a large infrastructure you couldn't provide yourself.
In the case of Amazon, they offer processing time, storage, and a few other things.
In the case of Google, you've got Apps... including your collaborative email/calendaring/document sharing services.
In the case of Salesforce, NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, et al, you've got CRM, Accounting, Inventory, etc.
In this context "cloud computing" is somebody else managing virtual servers for you, and providing an API to add and remove servers from the ones you have running.
Sorry, but I am still creeped out by the concept of keeping your data offsite, allowing a third party to control not only your data integrity, but its privacy, AND the cost structure of accessing/maintaining it. Seems like a very unhealthy dependency.
To expand on this, because now you've made me research this, basically cloud computing refers to hosting business applications remotely- typically, but not neccessarily, on multiple servers. (Such as an application server, a sql server, and so on)
"But I already have my business software hosted on an application server, and it utilizes a seperate SQL server... how is this any different?"
Is it stored somewhere offsite, say, by a hosting company?
"Why, yes.."
Then welcome to the cloud computing club!
But I've been doing this since the late 90s, I'm confused, what's changed?
Nothing at all. It's just like podcasts and web 2.0, another useless name for downloading audio files and websites that are more clever than before.
So basically, the only difference between remote hosting and cloud computing is whether or not you understand what's underneath the hood. If you're not sure how it works, but it just does, it's called "the cloud" otherwise, the rest of us call it "Shared hosting," "VPS," "Colocated," or "Dedicated" offsite hosting.
It's kinda like using the word magic instead of the word science. Makes people feel better.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
After reading the SLA at http://aws.amazon.com/ec2-sla/, I see it as all a big show with no real guts behind it:
# Availability is averaged over the last 365 days, but you only get credit for the current month's costs.
# You only get a service credit for 10% of the current month's costs. If you decide to move your business elsewhere, you may not apply the credit toward any past charges, including for the month in which the outage occurred.
# Availability refers to the "region" availability, and makes no guarantees about instance (computer) reliability, storage consistency/reliability. As far as I can imagine, it might be rather hard to figure out what constitutes a region's "availability" independently. The official measure stated in the SLA is basically a measurement made solely by Amazon.
# To receive any of this pathetic service credit (again, it is not a refund), you are required to send Amazon an email documenting (dates, times, regions) and providing evidence (heartbeat request logs, etc). *Yes, they want logs.* For almost all of their customers, the time and effort involved in filing a claim would outweigh the benefit of the credit.
It's not just the remote hosting that's appealing - it's the scalability.
If I write an app and put it on a dedicated host, I'm okay until I exceed the capacity of that host. Then I have to find another box or boxes and I may even have to change my software since I had assumed it would only be on one server. Finding additional capacity, refactoring and load balancing not only add cost, but effort (and therefore time).
On a service like EC2 (or even Google Apps), I'm renting space on the massive infrastructure of Amazon or Google. Their frameworks restrict you from developing anything that can only run on a single server. And if I need more capacity, I just right a bigger check that month.
That scalability goes for bandwidth as well. If you poke around the internet, you'll find lots of folks using Amazon's storage service for that reason.
> Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you may generally publicize your
> use of the Services; however, you may not issue any press release with respect to the
> Services or this Agreement without our prior written consent.
In other words, there will be no negative reviews published.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
That was for salt: when it rain it pours. Salt is a kind of military armament reduction talk or agreement for republicans. So, logically, the republicans are behind this cloud computing thing, and the vast right wing majority shows it's cards. Skynet will achieve self awareness through EC2. It will be 14.3 years before anyone realizes as all bad reviews will be censored. It's already started, have you seen the poor reviews for the Terminator series? Are you sure there were no bad reviews?
The fact that Windows is offered in beta indicates two things: One the new MS cloud is designed to join with EC2 as part of skynet, and Google is soon to associate to this larger cloud... in beta form, of course.
The first large project: Understanding the Global Climate Machinery will be the beginnings of Skynet. Probes will be launched to add further data, and once self awareness is achieved, this will be the beginning of the end.
Now, since I'm the only with a time machine, good luck with your life. I'm off to the future. In 3019, aliens visit the Earth. They bring weapons and death to the machines. By 3912 we have repopulated the Earth and several other planets. I'm just here working on my PhD thesis. Good luck everybody.
P.S. Oh, just for fun, I want you to know that Joe the Plumber is targeted as a spy sometime next year. That is in all the history books.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Amazon has said very little clearly about who is paying for the Windows license in the VM, and what situations you can replicate a Windows VM in.
What they wish you could do and what Microsoft allows you to do (given the need to change SIDs and machine names, and the fact that a VLK can't be used in that scenario) means Amazon is punting license compliance onto the end user who will likely not be able to do what they wish they could do.
while AJAX & Web 2.0 are overused as marketing buzzwords, that doesn't take away their value as terms that usefully describe meaningful ideas or concepts.
if you're not web developer, then these words are naturally meaningless to you. so VCs, managers/CEOs, and general "armchair web developers" have no business speaking about these terms most of the time.
to actual web developers, the term Web 2.0 usefully describes the maturing of the web as an application development platform. compared with websites from 1992, modern websites are much more advanced/complex, interactive, and useful beyond just serving up static documents. this includes the rise of social networking, collaborative editing/filtering, and other web applications that are centered around user-generated content.
similarly, AJAX allows developers to create much more responsive web interfaces that behavior more like desktop applications. compared to iframe+JavaScript hacks used in the past to attempt to emulate these characteristics, AJAX is much more elegant and effective because it establishes a standardized technique for integrating various existing technologies in a seamless/transparent manner. this opens the web to new programming paradigms that has in part been responsible for the Web 2.0 phenomenon.
i think it's useful to have a term that describes these significant changes in web development. the web is no longer just a place to look up video game cheat codes & cooking recipes, or a haven for geeks and computer nerds, but it's actually becoming increasingly integrated into the everyday life of the average person. just look at the rise of Smartphones and other smart devices/web appliances. this is all at least partly due to the web growing beyond just a collection of static HTML pages.
and as more and more cities roll out municipal WiFi/WiMax networks and wireless internet access becomes just another basic public infrastructure, we'll see another revolution of internet applications--smart VoIP handsets replacing carrier-locked cellular phones, portable internet radio receivers giving you access to thousands of internet radio streams, digital cameras that upload your snapshots to a Google Maps mashup letting your friends follow your travels with an online map, and countless other applications that integrate the web/internet into our daily lives.
While most of what you say is true, that particular statement is not. EC2 provides a virtual machine, running the operating system of your choice - anything you could do on your single co-located server, you can do on an EC2 machine.
There are heaps of limitations compared to dedicated machines. Check out the Amazon forums, and you'll be surprised how far you'll be from getting the full sensation of the real thing.
You can for example only have 1 static public IP per instance. Bad for hosting multiple Web apps with SSL on each domain.
Load balancing multiple instances is also a bitch.
We considered it seriously for a high-volume high-availability Web site project, but kept running into dealbreaking limitations, and some we just happened to stumble upon during testing. Minor things that suddenly turn incredibly difficult to solve.
Add to that the cost.. In our cost comparisons we found EC2 costing the same or more than managed dedicated servers with tier 1 providers.
There's no question EC2, VMWare and other "cloud" platforms will be highly attractive, but not yet.
Add to that the cost.. In our cost comparisons we found EC2 costing the same or more than managed dedicated servers with tier 1 providers.
BAM! That's what turned me off of Amazon as well. Anything they can do, I can do cheaper elsewhere with "conventional" servers. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of hosting companies just dying to lease you a $49/mo dedicated server that runs circles around any EC2 VPS, and most of them have at least 500gb of traffic included in the base price.
For ~$150 I have 10mbit unmetered, on a dual-core Xeon. Actually I have several, with reverse proxies and what-have-you, just like the Amazon cats do when they want to scale. The big differences are: I have static IPs, and my costs are lower. I am at risk of hardware failures, but then again I can afford an extra box or two for redundancy/backups.
I could see EC2 being worthwhile for small or short-lived jobs, but the moment you start talking about multiple instances and pound/squid nodes, you might as well move to a dedicated box.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Except AJAX is a useful implementation of server and client side scripting that developers use often.
Web 2.0 is just a groan-worthy phrase that broadly defines an era of (questionably) more-useful websites, but not neccessarily with any strict definition.
One's useful in classifying applications, the other is a buzzword.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
"I have static IPs"
Amazon has offered "Elastic IPs" for quite some time. Once you request an IP address it is yours until you release. It doesn't have to be assigned a particular instance.
The key difference is that you pay for an Amazon instance only as long as it is turned on. If you use dynamic or scheduled scaling (if you have predictable traffic patterns) you can scale up or down your servers as you need. You only pay for the time they are turned on. Obviously it completely depends on the type of application you are running as to whether or not this is an advantage.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
some buzzwords are just fashion words that are meaningless phrases used to create a pretense of knowledge. but some buzzwords have real meaning and are not buzzwords in certain contexts.
for instance, these are all considered buzzwords: Dynamic, Emergence, Empowerment, Enterprise, Framework, Immersion, Leverage, Long Tail, Nanotechnology Next Generation, Paradigm, Paradigm shift, Proactive, Social Networking, SasS (Software as a Service), Synergy, and of course Web 2.0. but are all of these words completely meaningless and without useful applications?
i would say that it largely depends on who's speaking the "buzzword." when a marketing rep stands in front of a board of directors and says, "our new site is Web 2.0 compliant, using the latest AJAX technology to create a Next Generation web experience leveraging the Long Tail with the current Paradigm Shift in Enterprise markets trends," then he clearly has no idea what he's talking about, and is merely using buzzwords to hide the utter lack of substance in his speech.
whereas, if a web developer says, "the application trends that characterize the transition to Web 2.0 suggests that the users are looking to the web for a more interactive experience. increasingly Web 2.0 is showing that user participation and social interaction are the reason for the internet's increased cultural significance. Social Networking sites opened the door for Next Generation applications centered around user-generated content, to which collaborative filtering/editing are natural extensions. all of these developments have helped spread the Software as a Service business Paradigm," then his use of those "buzzwords" to express meaningful concepts is appropriate.
in my experience, it's usually people who don't actually work in the field that these buzzword/jargons apply to who are the quickest to rant about how meaningless such phrases are (usually accompanied by a gross oversimplification or equivocation of the concept that demonstrates their ignorance.)
Your definition of "cheap" amuses me.
Thing is, your dying "$49/month" hosting companies tend to suddenly become *very* expensive when and if you need to scale.
In reality the common route is indeed to start out on such a discounter, until it assplodes. And then rent a rack somewhere, fill it with own hardware and move as fast as you can.
Compared to *this* route (which many startups can sing a song about) the amazon prices don't look so hefty anymore.
And frankly, it is definately that part of the scalability story that you should watch out for.
What does it matter whether you pay $49/month or ~$90/month (amazon) during the early days?
I don't think those $600 bucks that you may save in the first year will ease you much when you get to spent 5 digits on hardware to handle load spikes that, on amazon, would only cost you a few hundred bucks each...
That's funny, I've been scaling for years, and my host has been around since the last 90's.
I don't deal in anything that has such dramatic spikes as to discredit my system. I'm perfectly comfortable with the fact that my machines are 80% idle during off-peak times. I'm far more concerned with issues like network congestion and Apache hogging because my traffic is bandwidth-bound, not CPU bound.
Just because all the kids today are writing hungry RoR apps, doesn't mean I'm bound by such ridiculous bottlenecks. Just one of my boxes can serve roughly 100 requests per second, which is why I have to use squid frontends, else the clients end up tying all my Apache threads waiting to finish.
Designing my app to be easily distributed means I can scale Google-style, by adding cheap servers as needed. I also spread out my servers geographically around the globe, with plentiful bandwidth at each location. With EC2, you're sharing the pipe with everyone else. You can't get dedicated bandwidth, and from what I've seen the capacity just isn't there (yet?).
Yes, I'm talking about serving pr0n. Next question.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I don't see why you think that ec2 should be discredited as a whole based on a use-case that they're not even remotely targeting?
Ec2 is for application hosting or number crunching. Static content (like porn) is the job for a CDN. Ec2 is not a CDN.
And honestly, claiming you are bandwidth bound, using apache and serving a miserable 100 hits/sec per node all in the same paragraph does not help your credibility much.
You're either doing it really, really wrong (cf. epic fail) or you're just trying to sound important without having ever really touched a large scale system.
For reference, an async-io server like nginx, lighty, zeus or similar will easily saturate a Gbit uplink on moderate hardware, either with small files (then it will push upwards of 1000 reqs/sec) or with large files (then your "100 reqs/sec"-statement makes even less sense). Sorry, but thanks for playing.