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UC Berkeley Lab Examines Cloud Computing Obstacles

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the just-throw-money-at-it dept.

alphadogg writes "UC Berkeley researchers have outlined their view of cloud computing, which they say has great opportunity to exploit unprecedented IT resources if vendors can overcome a litany of obstacles. 'We argue that the construction and operation of extremely large-scale, commodity-computer data centers at low-cost locations was the key necessary enabler of Cloud Computing,' The paper outlines 10 obstacles to cloud computing [PDF]."

2 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. They forgot operational transparency by psydeshow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The list:

    1 Availability of Service
    2 Data Lock-In
    3 Data Conïdentiality and Auditability
    4 Data Transfer Bottlenecks
    5 Performance Unpredictability
    6 Scalable Storage
    7 Bugs in Large Distributed Systems
    8 Scaling Quickly
    9 Reputation Fate Sharing
    10 Software Licensing

    I'm surprised they don't mention my biggest pet peeve with cloud services: lack of operational transparency. You don't know who the admins are, what their policies are, and what code they are using to operate the system.

    It's a big black box and you're just supposed to trust that Amazon (or whoever) has sound policies, peer-reviewed code, and a reasonable level of accountability built-in. That's a bit like trusting your bank to only make good loans.

    I actually want to know who the admins are. I want to see the code. I want to read the policies. Is that so wrong?

  2. Re:RTFA by brian_tanner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Moreover, companies with large batch-oriented tasks can get results as quickly as their programs can scale, since using 1000 servers for one hour costs no more than using one server for 1000 hours." Is that a given? Is it that simple? I think that statement assumes too much... As an example, it assumes all servers are operating on the same grid, in the same environment. Last time I checked, the cloud was the epitome of vagary.

    Nonsense! I'm starting to get tired of all this "last time I checked" bullshit. You NEVER checked. My aggression is not leveled at you necessarily, but at all of the Slashdot posters who bring up the same arguments every time there is a cloud computing story.

    The truth is, Amazon's offering (for EXAMPLE), lets you start up multiple virtual machine instances, and you pay per minute per instance. Lots of (NOT ALL) academic and industrial research relies on running many independent experiments. Let's try algorithm X with parameter set [1...100]. If each parameter set takes an hour, then you can either invest 100 hours on 1 machine, or 1 hour on a 100 machines. Aside from a tiny bit of overhead to create scripts to start the virtual instances and upload the jobs, this works exactly as advertised. It is great for some of us, and it's that simple.