Amazon, MS, Google Clouds Flop In Stress Tests

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Amazon, MS, Google Clouds Flop In Stress Tests

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 19, 2009 @11:57PM from the dark-clouds dept.

Eponymous writes "A seven month study by academics at the University of New South Wales has found that the response times of cloud compute services of Amazon, Google and Microsoft can vary by a factor of twenty depending on the time of day services are accessed. One of the lead researchers behind the stress tests reports that Amazon's EC2, Google's AppLogic and Microsoft's Azure cloud services have limitations in terms of data processing windows, response times and a lack of monitoring and reporting tools."

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First! by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 00:02 · Score: 3, Funny

Cloud free and lightning fast!
1. Re:First! by Hurricane78 · 2009-08-20 01:06 · Score: 1
  
  Somehow, when I read "cloud computing" I always think of that scene from "Luniz - I got 5 on it", where they pass out because of the smoke inside their car, but with a large geek in a basement. And veeeery sloooowly...
  Maybe we should foster that association. ^^
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
2. Re:First! by StripedCow · 2009-08-20 01:31 · Score: 1
  
  You forgot the word "post". No wonder you were fast.
  
  --
  If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
3. Re:First! by idlehanz · 2009-08-20 03:24 · Score: 1
  
  You can refer to the Internet as the "cloud" if you want to, as in "cloud computing". But I reserve the right to slap you silly for doing it. Right after I finish upgrading my browser to web 2.0
  
  --
  Changing the world... one research project at a time.
4. Re:First! by BrokenHalo · 2009-08-20 04:06 · Score: 1
  
  You can refer to the Internet as the "cloud" if you want to, as in "cloud computing". But I reserve the right to slap you silly for doing it.
  
  Well I don't much care what anyone calls it. I have not (yet) seen any implementation of "cloud computing" that is really worth looking at. Google Docs can be a sort of handy way for a group of people to work on a document, but that is pretty much it.
  
  Dog help you if you try to use it to create a document for presentation to anyone else.
  
  I can see why Google and Microsoft want to steer us in the direction of their web-based apps, but I can't see much in it for us. Workstation-based apps are here to stay.
what the fuck is services engineering? by Desler · 2009-08-20 00:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

Anna Liu, Associate Professor in services engineering at the UNSW School of Computer Science told iTnews she was excited by Cloud Computing as it could potentially enable organisations to "outsource a certain amount of their risks and costs and tap into new economies of scale."
Sounds more like she has a degree in buzzword engineering.
1. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by eldavojohn · 2009-08-20 00:18 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Anna Liu, Associate Professor in services engineering at the UNSW School of Computer Science told iTnews she was excited by Cloud Computing as it could potentially enable organisations to "outsource a certain amount of their risks and costs and tap into new economies of scale."
  Sounds more like she has a degree in buzzword engineering.
  From her homepage at UNSW, it seems to be the creation and study of services but her focus seems to be on cloud computing with the "services" being concentrated on these subjects. While a lot of her about page seems to be buzzwords and journal writing, I really wish they would release their "interoperable service software" and would be interested in seeing their final report for more specific metrics. Her blog doesn't say much about it. I'd give her the benefit of the doubt, she says in the article, "We saw a lot of hype and confusion, and decided to lead a team of researchers and actually get our hands dirty with this stuff." She also said:
  
  Using Google AppEngine, none of your data processing tasks can last any longer than thirty seconds, or it throws an exception back at you. This is very consistent with the Google business model - they want to enable simple web applications to thrive on the Internet. AppEngine is there to enable the rapid development of simple web applications that don't include intense compute at the back end. - Anna Liu
  Which I found interesting. Again, kind of hard to judge the merits behind this research without even a brief description of what the services were ... a singular value decomposition service? A return huge data sets from a database table service? A prime factorization service? A file intensive I/O service? I'm also curious as to what hoops one has to jump through to get those interoperable across all three systems ... after all Microsoft is just .NET, right? Is this rewriting something 3 times or making shared objects or what?
  
  --
  My work here is dung.
2. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by AndrewNeo · 2009-08-20 01:24 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I'm also curious as to what hoops one has to jump through to get those interoperable across all three systems ... after all Microsoft is just .NET, right? Is this rewriting something 3 times or making shared objects or what?
  Well, Microsoft's Azure is in .NET, and Google's AppEngine is Python, but Amazon's EC2 is basically a virtual machine (you load your image in from S3, can be Linux or Windows). I would assume you could just write a common object in Python, have a IronPython hook to Azure, a plain Python hook to AppEngine, and a hook to whatever method you use to host your service in EC2 (like mod_python or whatever, if you're using Apache). This is if you intended interoperability from the start, however. Otherwise you'd probably have to rewrite it at least once (since EC2 could run Python, or .NET/Mono).
3. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by AndrewNeo · 2009-08-20 01:36 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, correction. Azure also supports other languages such as PHP, Ruby, and Python, according to their site.
4. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by iperkins · 2009-08-20 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds more like she has a degree in buzzword engineering.
  
  Is that what they call marketing now?
5. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 02:15 · Score: 0
  
  Is she hawt? Her name sounds link a chinger.
6. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by Runaway1956 · 2009-08-20 02:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  "get our hands dirty with this stuff"
  I think you give the broad to much credit. Buzzwords throughout the article, but those really catch my eye. I see from real life experience a construction site. Bunch of ditzy broads and a couple old bastids who have never had a callous in thier life pick up a bunch of golden shovels for a "ground breaking ceremony". Oh, they look so rugged (in their own minds, at least), everyone gets their media exposure - Phhht. Disgusting creatures. If the author is getting her hands dirty with software, she probably grew up in a cave and missed out on education. Roasting a CD/DVD or floppy over an open fire doesn't do anyone any good.
  
  --
  "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
7. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by Desler · 2009-08-20 02:31 · Score: 1
  
  Apparently everything is now some form of "engineering" if "services" is now an engineering discipline.
8. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by julesh · 2009-08-20 03:30 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Well, Microsoft's Azure is in .NET, and Google's AppEngine is Python, but Amazon's EC2 is basically a virtual machine (you load your image in from S3, can be Linux or Windows). I would assume you could just write a common object in Python, have a IronPython hook to Azure, a plain Python hook to AppEngine, and a hook to whatever method you use to host your service in EC2 (like mod_python or whatever, if you're using Apache).
  You could do that, but if your intent is to get as much processing power out of each platform as you can (e.g. you want to benchmark them to see how they compare with each other), you'd want to use a compiled language for your EC2 version, and probably C# for your Azure version. But you're stuck with Python for AppEngine, so you're going to be doing at least 2 and probably 3 versions. Otherwise any conclusions you make are going to be unreasonably favourable to AppEngine, as you're intentionally crippling your other systems to bring them down to the same level.
9. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 03:47 · Score: 0
  
  Again, kind of hard to judge the merits behind this research without even a brief description of what the services were ... a singular value decomposition service?
  Seriously... you are looking for a Singular Value Decomposition service from Google AppEngine or any other "service"... Do you do something similar now? Let's say you want to do SVD on Wikipedia's 3 million plus document-term matrix--your talking about a terabyte for just for the matrix that provides the basis for the document space. Just the thought of using Google AppEngine for any reasonably sized SVD problem is ridiculous. Point understood... terrible example--way overkill.
10. Re:what the fuck is services engineering? by AHuxley · 2009-08-20 14:31 · Score: 1
  
  "Liu, a former Microsoft employee..."
  Work for Microsoft in the past :)
  From marketing buzzwords to grant buzzwords.
  
  --
  Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
no kidding by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 00:12 · Score: 1, Interesting

you get what you pay for - news at 11.
I'll be sticking with own servers in a colo thanks.
Wave? by tygerstripes · 2009-08-20 00:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

I wonder what the implications will be for Wave? Real-time updates across multiple servers present very similar challenges to cloud-computing. If the relevant protocols have the same problems then it raises doubts over the scalability of the Wave protocol.

--
Meta will eat itself
1. Re:Wave? by Thomas+Charron · 2009-08-20 00:34 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  The challenges for Wave don't rely on nearly the same challenges. Wave involves ONLY data transfer, not processing, storage, etc.. It's a protocol.
  Making the comparison you've made is the same thing as saying HTTP is flawed becouse Joes Web Shack servers are slow.
  
  --
  -- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
2. Re:Wave? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 00:58 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  The challenges for Wave don't rely on nearly the same challenges. Wave involves ONLY data transfer, not processing, storage, etc.. It's a protocol.
  Making the comparison you've made is the same thing as saying HTTP is flawed becouse Joes Web Shack servers are slow.
  Doesn't wave create thumbnails for images posted in a conversation?
  Sounds like processing and storage to me...
3. Re:Wave? by sardaukar_siet · 2009-08-20 01:08 · Score: 1
  
  I wouldn't believe Google's ability to have real time typing notification in federated servers, or even in their own...
4. Re:Wave? by sznupi · 2009-08-20 01:43 · Score: 1
  
  Jabber has typing notifications. Google Talk manages to support it... (and yes, it works across servers of course)
  
  --
  One that hath name thou can not otter
5. Re:Wave? by sardaukar_siet · 2009-08-20 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  Do you know what I'm talking about? Did you see the Wave demo video? It's *real time typing* - not just a notification like "dude is typing...", it's ACTUAL typing showing on your screen as it happens. Pardon me for not believing it will scale across federated servers or even Google's own ones.
6. Re:Wave? by sznupi · 2009-08-20 02:18 · Score: 1
  
  It's you who uses established term (typing notification) for something completely different (since this is Slashdot, you could say "unix talk-like")
  And generally - pardon me for not basing my expectations on some belief. You could otoh remember that, say, such things are technically doable, Jabber is already not a light protocol/has a lot of "chatter"/many services other than pure IM use it successfully & Google has quite some pipes/serverfarm/demonstrated similar capabilities (Gmail is quite network chatter-heavy, Google Search suggest, Google Voice; heck, Google pushes VoIP and video through XMPP, also via their servers)
  
  --
  One that hath name thou can not otter
7. Re:Wave? by Hognoxious · 2009-08-20 02:19 · Score: 1
  
  Doesn't wave create thumbnails for images posted in a conversation? Sounds like processing and storage to me...
  Sounds totally pointless to me...
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
8. Re:Wave? by sardaukar_siet · 2009-08-20 02:26 · Score: 1
  
  Mea culpa, I thought you knew what I meant. Hey, this happens to me a lot here... :D
9. Re:Wave? by dkf · 2009-08-20 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  Do you know what I'm talking about? Did you see the Wave demo video? It's *real time typing* - not just a notification like "dude is typing...", it's ACTUAL typing showing on your screen as it happens.
  You mean, like in the old school Unix talk program from 20 years or more ago?
  Real time as you write has never been much of a problem, but doing it with more than one person at a time is a bear in terms of user interfaces. Whole message-oriented chatrooms work better for many-to-many live discussion, and even they can get confusing.
  
  --
  "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
10. Re:Wave? by TheRaven64 · 2009-08-20 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  Even accounting for protocol bloat, it's not hard to imagine this scaling on Jabber. A fast typist can enter about 70 words per minute, but given the latencies involved I would tweak the transmission so that it only sent either every second or every word and then have the receiver add these to the UI with a fraction of a second delay between each character so it looked live. Assuming about 100 bytes for each XMPP message (varies depending on username and extra child elements on), we end up with the server needing to be able to process 100 bytes of client messaging per second per (conversing) client. This is well below the throttling limit of most Jabber servers in their stock configuration. The bandwidth difference between sending a message for every sentence and a message for every word is not very large - less than the difference between sending plain text and XHTML-IM, for example.
  That said, the most important question is 'why would you want to do that?' A big selling feature of most post-talk chat programs was that they didn't send unfinished thoughts to the other party. iChat lets you do this for local network chats, and everyone I've seen using it disables it quickly.
  It's worth noting, by the way, that the MSN messenger protocol doesn't send stateful typing notifications in the same way that XMPP does (MS actually patented their approach, which is a bit crazy because it's very stupid). The MSNM protocol sends a message every second during which the user typed something. The receiving client then displays the typing indicator for a second and then hides it unless it receives a 'still typing...' message. Adding the characters and style changes typed in the last second to this message would be a negligible change in total bandwidth usage. If MS could do this almost ten years ago, I suspect Google can do it now...
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
11. Re:Wave? by Thomas+Charron · 2009-08-21 00:20 · Score: 1
  
  ........
  Wow...
  Just..
  Wow..
  Yep, wave totally processing images, just like the web server your connecting to totally processes the images on this screen each time, custom, to fit your screen.. It's utterly amazing that the servers don't simply explode..
  
  --
  -- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Cloud Computing? Why? by Ralph+Spoilsport · 2009-08-20 00:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

I still don't get it. Terabyte drives cost as much as my bi-weekly beer budget, and less every day. Computing power is off of Moore's Law, but is still increasing with multicore and multiprocessors. My computer doesn't have to be hooked up to the interweb to work, nor does it require a subscription to some website to keep rolling. If I want access to the web, I can get it, but that's only a few times a day when I need it.
So, what exactly does "cloud computing" bring to the table for me?
Not much as far as I can see, other than a new crop of buzzwords.

--
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
1. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by pietromenna · 2009-08-20 00:16 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Actually, have you tried playing out with Google App engine? It brings to the table a host server for your Django application at very low cost. It also allows you to integrate your application with google user managment. Why to use? Well, for me, it is for low cost hosting for Django Applications, but for business it can be really interesting as there is somebody taking care of the infrastructure while they only need to care about the application itself.
2. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by FooBarWidget · 2009-08-20 00:20 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Cloud computing has the benefit that when you need to expand your server park's capacity, you don't have to wait for several weeks for the hardware vendor to deliver the hardware. Instead you outsource that job to the cloud vendor. You can more quickly respond to both increase and decrease in traffic. During peak hours you can spawn a few more servers and at night you can shut down a few without having to worry about the physical hardware and their associated maintenance burden.
3. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 00:20 · Score: 0
  
  If you live off-the-net, which you seem to be, then cloud is not for you. If you were highly mobile, working from multiple locations (or on the fly), the cloud would make sense.
  The cloud is not for every. But just because you dont see the value in it, doesnt mean it's just a buzzword.
4. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by alen · 2009-08-20 00:23 · Score: 1
  
  CDW usually takes 1-3 days to deliver a server. they ship the same day if you email the PO by 3pm.
5. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Desler · 2009-08-20 00:24 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Well, for me, it is for low cost hosting for Django Applications, but for business it can be really interesting as there is somebody taking care of the infrastructure while they only need to care about the application itself.
  So what exactly is supposed to be new about that? There have been companies providing exactly such services as that for decades.
6. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by moon3 · 2009-08-20 00:29 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Cloud = "Hosting for the noobs"
  
  The provider is managing everything for you automatically, the Cloud service takes care of pretty much everything including security so it is manageable even for non-technical dudes.
7. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by lena_10326 · 2009-08-20 00:30 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  What about installation and software setup? How does 1-3 days beat launching a node in 5-15 minutes?
  
  --
  Camping on quad since 1996.
8. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Sockatume · 2009-08-20 00:31 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Essentially, it allows you to treat any net-connected computer as a dumb terminal with web services acting as your actual computer.
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
9. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Thomas+Charron · 2009-08-20 00:31 · Score: 1
  
  Server clouds. When you access the web with your computer, you're accessing these sorts of servers already. Specifically, applications run in parallel in dozens of locations, potentially across the globe. Toss in anycasting, and the guy in Boston ends up connecting to a server in boston, and a guy in San Fransisco connects to one in LA, but they're both connecting to the same server as far as their concerned.
  
  --
  -- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
10. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by thisnamestoolong · 2009-08-20 00:32 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  For the most part, I agree. I can certainly see the benefit in using remote processing capabilities (I really hate buzzwords) for things like smartphones, as it enables the user to tap into a far greater amount of processing power than could be crammed into a little handheld. For the home, however, I have a hard time imagining that it is more feasible to do your computing through the network rather than doing it locally. What about things like audio editors and games, that require latencies in the low milliseconds to be usable? Maybe we can provide that sort of speed in the future, but common sense tells me that these sorts of things will always run better off of a local machine. The processing power and hard drive space needs to be payed for one way or another, and I for one would rather pay more up front and own my hardware, rather than rent access.
  
  --
  To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
11. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 00:33 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  oh yeah, because if you are a huge service provider, say 500 cloud server, and you have a spike of traffic (at least 50%) they give you 250 servers already replicated and working in one day, using the replication fairy?
12. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Desler · 2009-08-20 00:35 · Score: 1
  
  How does 1-3 days beat launching a node in 5-15 minutes?
  Because for any sufficient volume of processing you're going to be spending many times more using these cloud services than running your own server.
13. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by should_be_linear · 2009-08-20 00:35 · Score: 1
  
  Backup and sharing. Easy for you and me, difficult and annoying for Joe Sixpack.
  
  --
  839*929
14. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by lena_10326 · 2009-08-20 00:41 · Score: 1
  
  Because for any sufficient volume of processing you're going to be spending many times more using these cloud services than running your own server
  And running your own server means keeping an admin guy on staff. It's no more stupid than throwing your box into a colo and having it managed by colo admins or purchasing a virt from a webhost. If you're running a small business, its stupid to host your own these days. A large business has the benefit of economies of scale--small businesses do not.
  
  --
  Camping on quad since 1996.
15. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by fluffernutter · 2009-08-20 00:43 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  If you were highly mobile, working from multiple locations (or on the fly), the cloud would make sense.
  I thought that was what laptops were for??
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
16. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 00:53 · Score: 0
  
  + Nothing to install
  + Updates to apps done for you
  + No local machines to buy/upgrade/patch/power
  + Economy of scale for app provider
  - Network needs to be available 100%
  - Centralised data privacy concerns
  - App is as reliable as service provider.
17. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by LordNimon · 2009-08-20 01:03 · Score: 1
  
  It's pretty obvious that cloud computing doesn't really work that well (as the article shows), so what difference does it make how much less it costs?
  
  --
  And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
  To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
18. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Uksi · 2009-08-20 01:07 · Score: 1
  
  Cloud computing must work terribly, which explains why services like Amazon EC2 are totally going out of business, making no money and have no customers.
19. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Attila+Dimedici · 2009-08-20 01:08 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  During peak hours you can spawn a few more servers and at night you can shut down a few without having to worry about the physical hardware and their associated maintenance burden.
  Right, but what does it cost, because guess what, just about everybody else wants more servers at peak hours and wants to shut down a few at night. What does the "cloud" service provider do with all of those servers when nobody wants them? How do they cover their maintenance costs for the time when their servers are idle?
  That's right, by charging more for them when you want to use them. The big problem with the cloud concept is that it assumes that the need for servers is spread out evenly across the day and the year. The fact of the matter is that it isn't, most businesses need/want more servers at the same time.
  
  --
  The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
20. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by jarocho · 2009-08-20 01:08 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  At this stage, you the individual don't benefit tremendously from cloud computing. But your company, at *almost* any head count, might be able to leverage what's also known as utility computing today. Depending on what it does or doesn't want to bother hosting internally.
  
  Hosted Microsoft Exchange is a concrete example of a cloud (cloud-like) service that's been gaining ground for a while now.
  
  Wired had a read-worthy piece on Azure's principal architect Ray Ozzie last year, Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode. Hyperbole aside, anyone who's directly interfacing with Microsoft sales people and engineers these days will tell you, Azure is a big part of Microsoft's next money grab.
  
  However, it's amusing that the definition of "cloud computing" continues to mean different things to different vendors, as evidenced by Amazon, Google and Microsoft offering fairly distinct and non-overlapping services. Until they come into direct competition with one another, I think this is going to continue to be seen as a novelty by many CTOs and IT decision-makers.
  
  Is cloud computing the future? I don't know, but I think it's safe to say it's *a* future. Even if it isn't yours. :)
21. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 01:29 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  It depends on your application. My application is a genetic algorithm. I want lots and lots of computers some of the time, and no computers some of the time. So, it's perfect for me.
  I was recently at a Hadoop user's group. There were lots of people with applications that needed lots of compute time some of the time, and really don't need very much at all some of the time. There was a talk by a guy from Data Wrangling where he's pulling in lots of data every night and doing some runs. He really should not be paying for computers during the day when he's not using them, and EC2 allows him to just use what he wants.
  If you have a web site and are using a computers 24/7, then go with a hosted solution. If you have highly critical applications or sensitive data, then use internal servers. But, there are lots of users and applications where cloud computing works great.
22. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by FriendlyPrimate · 2009-08-20 01:32 · Score: 1
  
  To your typical user, cloud computing is not very interesting. However, it's very interesting for business users. One of the big things that cloud computing gives you is instant access to preconfigured virtual machines. For example, what IBM is doing with cloud computing is offering virtual machines where their enterprise software is already installed and configured. Some of that software requires lots of prerequisite software to be installed (e.g. DB2, WebSphere Application Server, etc...). Installing, configuring, and tuning that software can be quite labor intensive and prone to mistakes. Hardware might be cheap, but labor still isn't. By offering virtual machines in the cloud, businesses can avoid all of that up-front cost. If they want to try out an IBM product, IBM can give them a trial virtual machine to work with for a limited amount of time. If they like it, then they can purchase the software and put it on a real machine. Or if they plan on using it for a limited amount of time, they may decide it's cheaper to 'rent' the virtual machine.
23. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by segedunum · 2009-08-20 01:32 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  People who ask this have generally never hosted anything major before. The attraction is that it decouples your applications and server instances from real hardware and even from the specific virtualisation platform you would otherwise be sitting on. This means that a hardware failure will certainly not affect you in the same way and neither will a failure in a comparable virtualisation platform. It's on a completely different scale, and certainly with Amazon you can spread yourself across different geographic locations. I've seen many Xen VPS platforms have to be rebooted periodically for things like kernel updates and if you're dealing with real hardware then you start getting into failover and drdb, which is far too much of a pain for most development companies to worry about. You just want to host your applications somewhere. Trust me. You start worrying about this stuff very quickly otherwise.
  
  Additionally, what makes it a 'cloud' and not just a vanilla virtualisation platform is that your storage itself is then decoupled from your machine instances themselves, as well as the hardware, in an easy way without having to faff about with clustered storage set ups yourself or through a hosting company. This makes your machine instances easily disposable and allows for pretty easy recreation of production environments as a failover or for testing and development.
  
  Essentially, that's what's attractive about it in layman's terms. It makes it far cheaper and far less hassle to get hardware and storage redundancy when you start having to worry about it, but large companies are not going to be outsourcing their critical stuff off site with it. That's just insane. It's just a pity the whole thing has become filled full of shit by people who don't know what they're talking about like that Services Engineering nutcase in the article who is probably being paid way too much money. The article doesn't even tell you what limitations they found in any detail.
24. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Lord+Ender · 2009-08-20 01:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I'm developing a JRuby app for Google App Engine. I'm doing it because as a lone developer, I don't have to worry about anything but my code. I will never have to wake up to troubleshoot a network problem, OS issue, Apache oddity. I won't have to hire networking, DBA, or systems administration staff. And if my app hits off big, I won't have to re-engineer anything to make it scale. It will scale automatically.
  I've played the role of network engineer, DBA, and sysadmin in the past. Now I can focus on my application.
  That said, appengine is certainly not for all sorts of apps. It only supports a subset of SQL (no joins), I'm sure it won't meet the requirements for payment card processing or anything like that, and my APIs are limited. But for a good chunk of web apps, developing for the google cloud has huge advantages.
  
  --
  A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
25. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by DrXym · 2009-08-20 01:44 · Score: 1
  
  Scalable computing is the answer. In theory, if you write a cloud app, it can serve from 1 to a million users without you having to lift a finger to make it happen. If more users hit your app, the "cloud" dedicates more instances to serving them. Amazon, Google, MS or whomever take care of it all. Of course in practice it probably doesn't scale that seamlessly and you have to pay the host based on CPU / disk / database /whatever consumption but you get the idea.
  As for why you might choose cloud over your own solution, the answer probably depends on what you're trying to do. Paying for bandwidth, administration, storage etc. isn't cheap and if demand bounces all over the place then you're either going to end up paying too much or not enough.
26. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by hey · 2009-08-20 01:54 · Score: 1
  
  You obviously don't drink enough beer.
27. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by JWW · 2009-08-20 02:04 · Score: 1
  
  I think EC2 was wrongly included in this study. Its a different breed of animal that "services on the web" like the google and microsoft stuff.
  In my experience, its also pretty reliable and extremely useful.
28. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by wbren · 2009-08-20 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  Saying cloud computing is "hosting for noobs" is like saying automatic transmissions are "transmissions for noobs." Sure, automatic transmissions are inherently less efficient than manual transmissions, but they save you from having to worry about shifting gears. Similarly, cloud computing might not perform as well as traditional hosting solutions, but they save you the hassle and expense of scaling up and down with demand. It's a trade-off, like everything else in life...
  
  --
  -William Brendel
29. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Chees0rz · 2009-08-20 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  we're off of Moore's Law?
30. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by gtbritishskull · 2009-08-20 02:54 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  The fact of the matter is that it isn't, most businesses need/want more servers at the same time.
  Do you have a citation for that? I would think that there would be a lot of different services which need servers at different times. Most business services would peak during the day, but I would think most consumer based services (entertainment, shopping) would peak in the evening. And then you have to consider that there are other countries in the world and their day is different than yours. So, their peak times would probably be different. I am not saying that cloud computing is the way to go, but there are definitely the potential for a much better server utilization with it. And, the result will probably be that there will be time based pricing, with peak times costing more. But, it will still be more cost effective because they will still be making money on the non-peak times when individual servers would normally be idle. Also, services that would normally run at peak time, but don't need to, would be able to take advantage of the cheaper non-peak times. This is how a market works. Scarcity of resources results in efficiency. And the overall cost of the system decreases.
31. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by blueskies · 2009-08-20 02:55 · Score: 1
  
  The ability to use $10 million dollars worth of hardware for a month without spending $10 million dollars?
  Let alone the fact that since, like you say hardware prices are constantly going down, you don't eat the 30% depreciation a year. Also, what good does your terabyte drive do you when it dies?
  If you aren't looking for rapid scalability, saving money on huge capital investment, large amounts of CPU and data, then the Cloud might not be for you. It's stupid in the same way that buying millions of dollars of NetApp or EMC hardware is if you are only going to run a blog off of it.
32. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by gtbritishskull · 2009-08-20 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  Are you saying that is a bad thing??? You seem to make an argument for cloud computing, but you also use a derogatory term (noob). I think it is an amazing feature that companies using cloud computing can use their employees for doing more company-specific tasks (like managing the services) rather than doing generic IT work that any nerd-monkey could do.
33. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by ukyoCE · 2009-08-20 03:07 · Score: 1
  
  they give you 250 servers already replicated and working in one day, using the replication fairy?
  Yes, they do - that's why they're special. Maybe you're using some new definition of cloud that isn't what I'm thinking of, but they do this by making you engineer your software as basically read-only. Any outputs go to another (equally scaleable) output service.
  They aren't sitting there replicating a full OS install to a dedicated server. They're running the same read-only software image and executing it from an extra 250 virtual servers.
34. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Laxitive · 2009-08-20 03:09 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Really? I see traffic rising on my site. I have 6 servers up and running. I need 6 new servers to come up within the next 10 minutes to service my estimated needs for the next hour.
  ...half hour passes
  Wow, access rate is going up faster than expected. I need 6 more servers.
  ...half hour passes
  Phew. That was over. I just need 6 in total now. Why am I paying for 18? I'd like to take those down, please.
  So, tell me.. who has been providing this service for decades?
  -Laxitive
35. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Attila+Dimedici · 2009-08-20 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  Do you have a citation for that? I would think that there would be a lot of different services which need servers at different times. Most business services would peak during the day, but I would think most consumer based services (entertainment, shopping) would peak in the evening. And then you have to consider that there are other countries in the world and their day is different than yours. So, their peak times would probably be different.
  Absolutely, the problem is that the consumer services actually have a pretty high demand during the day, even though it peaks in the evening.
  The problem with using cloud computing around the globe is that relying on servers that are in Japan to get business done in Europe or the U.S. puts one at significant risk of regular inability to access the servers due to communication disruption.
  It's not that cloud computing serves no purpose, it's just that it is not the "world changing" idea that its proponents keep claiming.
  
  --
  The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
36. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by dkf · 2009-08-20 03:26 · Score: 1
  
  For the home, however, I have a hard time imagining that it is more feasible to do your computing through the network rather than doing it locally. What about things like audio editors and games, that require latencies in the low milliseconds to be usable?
  For businesses, there's a lot of things they do where latency is less critical and where the flexibility of a cloud is a good win. Not having to worry so much about scaling out physical server facilities is a really big win, as is the fact that clouds are damned easy to handle as a customer in accounting terms.
  Of course, they have to worry about data security. But trust me on this, they have to worry about that anyway. Really. The cloud doesn't change that very much.
  
  --
  "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
37. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by vertinox · 2009-08-20 03:27 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  If I want access to the web, I can get it, but that's only a few times a day when I need it.
  I don't know about you but I need internet access 24/7.
  Secondly, cloud computer is not for nerds.
  Its for non-tech types who want to outsource things.
  Actually "cloud computing" is a euphemism for "outsourcing".
  Well I suppose its for nerds if you are the administrator of a "cloud" but for end users not so much.
  
  --
  "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
  -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
38. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by dkf · 2009-08-20 03:35 · Score: 1
  
  Of course in practice it probably doesn't scale that seamlessly and you have to pay the host based on CPU / disk / database /whatever consumption but you get the idea.
  
  Where did you get the idea that scalable is free? Resources cost. What's nice about the cloud is that (with well-designed apps on top) you scale almost linearly, especially in terms of cost. There's far less of a problem with non-linearities as you increase in scale (well, not until you're getting up to the size where it might be an idea to build your own server facility...)
  
  --
  "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
39. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by DragonWriter · 2009-08-20 03:37 · Score: 1
  
  I still don't get it. Terabyte drives cost as much as my bi-weekly beer budget, and less every day. Computing power is off of Moore's Law, but is still increasing with multicore and multiprocessors. My computer doesn't have to be hooked up to the interweb to work, nor does it require a subscription to some website to keep rolling. If I want access to the web, I can get it, but that's only a few times a day when I need it.
  So, what exactly does "cloud computing" bring to the table for me?
  
  Cloud computing lets you leverage all those things you mention on your own computers by separating the logical "computers" from the physical CPUs (e.g., using the cloud computing software available with the most recent Ubuntu Server release); remotely hosted cloud computing services like those from Google, Amazon, and others do that, too, but with the usual trade-offs of remote hosting. Some remotely hosted cloud computing services also include custom cloud applications, access to which is either exclusive to, discounted with or leveraged specially by the cloud computing service, (Google's login, storage, and other services with AppEngine; Amazon SQS and S3 with EC2, etc.)
  None of those may not be relevant for the things you need, and so maybe it doesn't bring anything to you. And, guess what, no one is forcing you to use them.
40. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by TheRaven64 · 2009-08-20 03:37 · Score: 1
  
  just about everybody else wants more servers at peak hours
  The theory is that your peak hours won't be the same as everyone else's. A company that caters to businesses will have peak hours during the day, while one that caters to consumers will have them in the evening. Companies that do business in different time zones will have different peak hours too. If a suspended water vapour computing company has enough clients then the demand spikes should even out. They can help this by taking business from things like university research labs which have very processor-intensive workloads that are not even slightly latency sensitive (e.g. they will need a few thousand hours of compute time in total, and want the result in the next day or two - using spare capacity on someone else's cluster is cheaper than maintaining their own).
  For most companies, however, I doubt that the potential cost savings are real. Given how cheap it is to set up a server and a hot spare, and how much work you can do with even one modern server, I can't see that there is a sweet spot where the cost of maintaining the infrastructure is greater than the cost of adding a middleman you have to pay.
  That said, I wouldn't be surprised if ad-hoc clouds were a sensible idea. If two companies enter into something like a peering agreement, where each is allowed to spill their VMs onto the other's systems at times of high, unexpected, demand then they may both save money on their total infrastructure costs.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
41. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by julesh · 2009-08-20 03:56 · Score: 1
  
  So what exactly is supposed to be new about that? There have been companies providing exactly such services as that for decades.
  Indeed. Most people miss the point of these services, which is that you can turn capacity on and off, and only pay for what you use. Imagine, for a moment, that you run a vaguely popular web site. Most of the time it copes well enough with a single server, but every so often it grinds to a halt as more users hit it for some reason or another (e.g. you get slashdotted). With a so-called "cloud" service you can fire up another server instance, configure it to load balance, wait until the traffic tails off and then kill the extra instance. You only pay a few hours worth of hosting charge. Traditional hosting providers would have taken several hours (at least) to get the new instance configured, and wouldn't be interested in selling the service to you for any period shorter than a month, leaving you with substantially more expense.
42. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by mobby_6kl · 2009-08-20 04:11 · Score: 1
  
  > Saying cloud computing is "hosting for noobs" is like saying automatic transmissions are "transmissions for noobs."
  To be fair, that's exactly what automatic transmissions are.
  Cloud computing, on the other hand, doesn't just dumb everything down for the end user, but give a huge amount of flexibility in terms of how you can use it. I think one of the most useful aspects is painless scaling, which just isn't possible if you just keep the server in your closet. Of course it's not the solution to every problem, but I think cloud computing is extremely useful for startups or setting up various test projects, among other things.
43. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by bobcat7677 · 2009-08-20 04:34 · Score: 1
  
  What I don't seem to see mentioned anywhere is what happens when some event happens that causes everyone to go running to their computers to visit the latest fat "web 2.0" sites and suddenly 1000 or 10,000 different users are asking for massive additional capacity from the cloud? I can't imagine they can accurately plan for, much less afford to have on hand, the capacity to respond to that kind of event without everyone suffering poor service. Having inexpensive, instant scalability is great until you need to scale badly and the service is unavailable/crappy and you have locked yourself in to it. And don't get me started on security/audit compliance concerns. IMHO, clouds deserve a big flashing neon "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag.
44. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Attila+Dimedici · 2009-08-20 04:44 · Score: 1
  
  I agree with your point, there are uses for the "cloud" idea, just not nearly as much as the hype suggests. "Cloud" computing is just an update of an idea that has been around as long as computers. There are always people who want to put the genie back in the bottle and centralize control of computing.
  There will always be a place for centralized computing services, but there will always be a need for distributed computing services as well.
  
  --
  The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
45. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by ducomputergeek · 2009-08-20 04:56 · Score: 1
  
  I call it Time Sharing 2.0. I'm young enough to have skipped those days, but old enough to have heard the war stories from the "old timers". Two years ago when I was sitting down to design our product I stuck with what I knew. We started by having our own in house server for development, but as soon as we moved to production I called up Pair Networks and got a couple managed dedicated servers. Why Pair? I've used them for big projects since 1999. They had always been reliable and their servers are managed. Order an SSL, it's installed within 30 minutes. Something needs updating, they take care of it. It costs us about $2500 a month for all our servers. However, it is still cheaper than hiring a network and systems admin people not to mention having to build and equip a datacenter.
  
  --
  "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
46. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 05:30 · Score: 0
  
  Travel much?
47. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by SanityInAnarchy · 2009-08-20 05:34 · Score: 1
  
  Especially given App Engine, if I recall, does all of this for you.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
48. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by nacturation · 2009-08-20 05:51 · Score: 1
  
  Google App Engine gives you enough resources to serve approximately 5 million users per month at no cost. See: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/quotas.html
  Google will automatically scale up the number of instances of your application to handle any additional load. Beyond that, the pricing is extremely reasonable. See: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/billing.html
  The cool thing is that you're running on Google infrastructure. You don't need to worry about keeping 3 copies of your live data around for redundancy (in case a node goes down, for example) because that's handled for you. You don't need to worry about network topology and so on, or writing code to scale up and down your application with additional nodes as traffic increases (as you'd have to with Amazon EC2).
  If you run a very large site with high demand needs, you might be better off developing your own infrastructure. But if you run a small to medium traffic site, you're better off letting someone else deal with the overhead.
  
  --
  Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
49. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by KnownIssues · 2009-08-20 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  What does cloud computing bring to your table? Probably not much. What does it bring to the corporate/enterprise table? Potentially significant savings. Supporting an internal datacenter has costs beyond your Best-Buy hard drive. A terabyte of disk on a SAN with RAIDx backed by tape backup, the space, power, cooling to house it, the software (monitoring, anti-virus, security) to support it, and the human staff to support all that... those costs grow to very large numbers.
  Bring in the "services" beyond the storage--database, computation, programming frameworks--and "Software as a Service"--email, IM, collaboration, office productivity--and now you have something that even if a company can afford to do it themselves, maybe they'd like to avoid that headache and devote their energy into supporting their actual business.
  I'm not saying this is always a success. But this is the "why". There's doubtless a lot of buzzwords and snakeoil going on at this time, just like the dot com bubble in the 90's. But just like the dot com bubble, there are valuable things that can come out of cloud computing, and it's almost certain that just like the dot com bubble burst, there will be a cloud computing bubble burst, where the 90% of business that didn't make their decisions based on reason will collapse.
  And we'll say cloud computing was a failure.
50. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Attila+Dimedici · 2009-08-20 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, I thought we were talking about my business documents, not my web site. Sure, if I wanted to run apps in my website, I would consider Google apps. But there is no way I am using Google apps on the "cloud" for my business documents.
  
  --
  The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
51. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by jafac · 2009-08-20 06:55 · Score: 1
  
  What does it give you?
  It puts your IP in someone else's hands.
  For safekeeping.
  Kinda makes you feel all comfortable and warm inside, doesn't it?
  
  --
  
  These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
52. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by FooBarWidget · 2009-08-20 07:04 · Score: 1
  
  The point is that the cloud provider has so many customers, the cloud is so big that 10k simultaneous users are just a drop in a big bucket. Website A may have a sudden 10k increase in traffic, but website B and C are idle at this time and will see spikes at different times.
  It's certainly more likely that a provider with 10k customers can maintain a larger data center than you ever can, unless you're Google.
  You say that it scales badly and that the service is crappy. What makes it more likely that you can do a better job by yourself? It's like saying that bakers *might* sell rotting bread so you should bake all bread yourself.
53. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Jay+L · 2009-08-20 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  The big problem with the cloud concept is that it assumes that the need for servers is spread out evenly across the day and the year.
  Or, more accurately, that it assumes the need for servers is spread out more evenly among multiple customers than it is with only one. And that seems likely.
  "Peak" hours have flopped back and forth over the years. I'd guess the PSTN first peaked during the day, as businesses opened. Later, as PBXes spread, maybe peak moved to residential callers at night. Meanwhile, data circuits were built for daytime business use, and services like AOL, CompuServe and GEIS piggybacked on the unused nighttime capacity.
  As online services grew, night use eclipsed the daytime use, and the spread of modems meant that PSTN CO's were undersized for night use. In the 1990s, network TV schedules had a huge impact on AOL's peak hours; every Thursday, the US would sign off to watch Friends, Seinfeld and ER. (Today, I'm sure there's a reverse effect, as people live-tweet their favorite shows.) And so on. And that's just in the US; obviously, there's a follow-the-sun advantage to serving multiple countries from one data center.
  Cloud computing's just the next step in outsourcing your data center management. Instead of hiring tech-temps to install servers and IronPort to make backups, you pay the cloud provider to build you 1/nth of a data center. Virtualization means that there's no loss of functionality as with shared servers. It's just a financial bet - you think that the cloud costs are lower than the TCO of having your own data center or leased colo space.
54. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by rts008 · 2009-08-20 10:12 · Score: 1
  
  What I don't seem to see mentioned anywhere is what happens when some event happens that causes everyone to go running to their computers to visit the latest fat "web 2.0" sites and suddenly 1000 or 10,000 different users are asking for massive additional capacity from the cloud?
  That's why I'm developing "Storm Cloud 3.0 ®" technology.
  It leverages the power of botnets and other online zombied PC's for a synergistic value added service for distributed computing.
  Here at Storm Cloud 3.0 ® Central Ministry, our motto is:
  "All your box belong to us"
  You can trust us. Really! ;-)
  
  --
  Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
55. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by cbraescu1 · 2009-08-20 13:57 · Score: 1
  
  I'm sure they are a Ponzi scheme or something
  
  --
  Catalin Braescu
  Ofaly.com
56. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by cbraescu1 · 2009-08-20 14:04 · Score: 1
  
  Trust me, it's for nerds too. The incentive for cloud computing / utility computing / buzzword computing is financial then it's about frictionless scalability. Since it's a "utility" way of consuming processing power, yes, it's easily reachable for non-techs, but that's not the thing (especially since the usage of AWS, for example, is much more generated by nerds then by non-techs, for example).
  
  --
  Catalin Braescu
  Ofaly.com
57. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by elnyka · 2009-08-20 15:05 · Score: 1
  
  I still don't get it. Terabyte drives cost as much as my bi-weekly beer budget, and less every day. Computing power is off of Moore's Law, but is still increasing with multicore and multiprocessors. My computer doesn't have to be hooked up to the interweb to work, nor does it require a subscription to some website to keep rolling. If I want access to the web, I can get it, but that's only a few times a day when I need it.
  So, what exactly does "cloud computing" bring to the table for me?
  Not much as far as I can see, other than a new crop of buzzwords.
  Have you ever run a data center?
58. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by nacturation · 2009-08-20 16:10 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, I thought we were talking about my business documents, not my web site. Sure, if I wanted to run apps in my website, I would consider Google apps.
  Run apps in your website? You really have no idea what App Engine is. Google Apps != Google App Engine.
  
  --
  Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
59. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by PAStheLoD · 2009-08-20 21:54 · Score: 1
  
  You really don't want to manually shift gears above a certain amount of horsepower and torque involved.
60. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-21 02:04 · Score: 0
  
  If your laptop is the extent of your computing universe (which I would argue is fundamentally impossible to claim at this point in human development), then cloud computing brings exactly jack squat to your table. However, it's appeal for businesses, especially when combined with virtualization at the server, desktop and application levels, is so self-evident as to be well, you know, self-freaking-evident.
  Done right (which still happens only rarely in smaller "private clouds" IMO, and absolutely has NOT happened at Google, Amazon, or Microsoft so far), it's about being able to buy LESS excess capacity and power, while getting what you need at any point in time delivered with levels of business continuity and resource availability that are beyond the practical reach of any commercial entity.
61. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-21 04:32 · Score: 0
  
  No, it doesn't mean keeping an admin guy on staff, not if you've set your systems up correctly. As for your idiotic comment:
  "If you're running a small business, its stupid to host your own these days. A large..."
  I don't even know where I want to begin rebutting that; it's not worth my time. Let's just say that you wont EVER be hired by my firm, because you show zero knowledge of the business cases for self-hosting.
62. Re:Cloud Computing? Why? by jesset77 · 2009-08-21 09:29 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, TFA doesn't show anything of the sort.
  The only negatives mentioned are lack of business-level report generation (the icon apparently is not corn-flower blue) and the observation that response times increased 20 fold depending on time of day.
  "20 fold" doesn't mean much without base numbers. They could be comparing 10ms with 200ms. Since they had to do extra measurements to make sure their US/OZ link wasn't tainting the results, it couldn't have been that egregious. For example, just loading TFA does take 20 seconds on my machine, compared to 4 seconds for cnn.com; and TFA is NOT hosted on cloud architecture.
  I call "sensationalist summary and headline".
  
  --
  People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
"Cloud" be bollox, dude. by EWAdams · 2009-08-20 00:15 · Score: 1, Interesting

Yeah, I'm going to allow my computing and data storage to be dependent on large numbers of strangers, some of them hostile to me. No thank you. The Internet is handy for looking things up on and sending messages to people. Low-importance collective activity like SETI? Fine. But it is dangerously vulnerable for critical operations. I hope the people in charge of things like national electrical infrastructure are aware of that...

--
I piss off bigots.
1. Re:"Cloud" be bollox, dude. by PhilHibbs · 2009-08-20 00:20 · Score: 1
  
  Why would a cloud computing service provider such as Microsoft, Google, or Amazon be hostile to you? Cloud computing is not the same as SETI or Folding@Home, it's run in professional data centres.
2. Re:"Cloud" be bollox, dude. by Thomas+Charron · 2009-08-20 00:28 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Small suggest, next time, read the article before you comment. Your comment has *0*% bearing on what this is talking about.
  
  --
  -- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
3. Re:"Cloud" be bollox, dude. by jo42 · 2009-08-20 01:12 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe because your "Cloud" running at Amazon/Google/Microsoft competes with one of their other online services?
4. Re:"Cloud" be bollox, dude. by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 21:11 · Score: 0
  
  Small suggest, next time, read the article before you comment. Your comment has *0*% bearing on what this is talking about.
  You must be new here.
I'm Shocked! SHOCKED! by jabjoe · 2009-08-20 00:16 · Score: 1

Well, not that shocked....
1. Re:I'm Shocked! SHOCKED! by xplinuxmac · 2009-08-20 00:27 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Of course this is not surprising if you assume most of its users are in same timezone and do their work between 9-17. Clouds only work if the work of its clients is distributed over time, you can then aggregate dedicated resources for tasks. A cloud can not (never) properly deal with socalled peak load without making sufficient investments into hardware. Peak load occurs when everybody start using the system at the same time for intensive processing or data transactions. This is more likely to occur if your users are in the same timezone. So if your are looking for a 'good' cloud I suggest also looking at the user list. If the users are sufficiently distributed over different time zones it might scale better (this is of course not the only criteria for a good cloud). I myself prefer 'Thunder clouds' :)
2. Re:I'm Shocked! SHOCKED! by jabjoe · 2009-08-20 00:52 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I can't help thinking this is just thin-client + mainframe again, and just like every other time the model has come around, it's being pushed as the future.
3. Re:I'm Shocked! SHOCKED! by Mad+Leper · 2009-08-20 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  Indeed, the thin-client + mainframe solution is the perpetual zombie of enterprise IT, just when you think youve beaten the damn thing to death it rises from the grave yet again to eat the brains of the living
4. Re:I'm Shocked! SHOCKED! by Bob9113 · 2009-08-20 03:29 · Score: 1
  
  I can't help thinking this is just thin-client + mainframe again, and just like every other time the model has come around, it's being pushed as the future.
  Indeed. But there is money to be made in that observation -- get in early on the next wave of "In-house dedicated hardware is the perfect answer to every problem!" Should be rolling in about two years after the cloud becomes mainstream and people realize it isn't the perfect answer to every problem. :)
  
  --
  Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
5. Re:I'm Shocked! SHOCKED! by dkf · 2009-08-20 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  I can't help thinking this is just thin-client + mainframe again, and just like every other time the model has come around, it's being pushed as the future.
  The thing is, it's good for some things (e.g., plain old web pages) and the thin-client model is much easier when it comes to deployment. If only there weren't idiots about who insist on using it for everything; some stuff just works better with thick clients or standalone.
  
  --
  "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
6. Re:I'm Shocked! SHOCKED! by TheRaven64 · 2009-08-20 03:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  Not really. A mainframe gives you:
  
  Control over your data.
  
  Very high availability with multiple redundancy at every level and hot-swappable parts. Most modern mainframes can have a CPU fail in the middle of a job and no one notice except the operator who is paged to plug in a new CPU if he wants the machine to return to full capacity.
  
  Insane I/O throughput rates, with dedicated I/O controllers so you can keep the CPU saturated with data at all times.
  
  A big fat support contract which lets you wake someone up in the middle of the night and make them fix your problems.
  
  I don't really see how this is similar to the cloud at all.
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
7. Re:I'm Shocked! SHOCKED! by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-21 02:15 · Score: 0
  
  Until the data storage and computing power requirements of the applications we write catch up to the capabilities of hardware - which has never happened in the PC age - the question of what can or should be done with all of the excess capacity in our hosts (servers and end user devices) will continue to be asked and answered, occassionally well, and often poorly. It's that disparity that generates the centralized computing wave which seems to wash over us every decade or two.
Re:Quite interesting, actually by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 00:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

IMO the entire cloud thing is nothing more than a hype. Noone ever got asked if he wanted to have all apps running as webservices. Google, MS and others just race each other without really having a look whether the customers will buy. And i don't even want to think of the bad choice of standards they base their services on...
o NO! by ae1294 · 2009-08-20 00:18 · Score: 2, Funny

I foresee a unplanned and totally random 'Software Audit' at the University of New South Wales in the near future!!!
1. Re:o NO! by cbraescu1 · 2009-08-20 14:05 · Score: 1
  
  Why not RIGHT NOW?
  
  --
  Catalin Braescu
  Ofaly.com
No Tools? by Thomas+Charron · 2009-08-20 00:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

Google AppEngine has data reporting to a ridiculous level. This article doesn't even publish any REAL data.
I really HATE commercicles, small articles which make a claim, and then say, 'stay tuned!'.
Someone fire the author. The last paragraph reads:
"Liu will present the findings and offer developers advice on how to build robust applications to withstand the cloud's limitations at the Australian Architecture Forum in Sydney on Monday, August 24."
Wow, I at least they admit that this article has no REAL data in it, and THAT data will be released on Monday.

--
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
1. Re:No Tools? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 00:34 · Score: 0
  
  Not to mention the article calls it Google AppLogic. Hah!! The rest of the article must be very credible if they can't even get the name right!
Apple has its response time issues, too by grolaw · 2009-08-20 00:35 · Score: 2, Informative

I only have 5 Apple .mac/.me accounts and even Apple knows that the rollout was so flawed that they gave us extra time on our contracts for the deficiencies.
Apple is getting better, but ISPs are choking upload speeds (even my business account that I pay $200/Mo for 6 megabits up and down) shows far slower data rates up over down to/from Apple.
1. Re:Apple has its response time issues, too by steelfood · 2009-08-20 08:23 · Score: 1
  
  You bring up another very real problem with "cloud" computing. Somebody is going to have to pay for all that data to be shuffled between your terminal and the app server.
  
  --
  "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
AppLogic? by Roguelazer · 2009-08-20 00:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

Buh? As far as I can tell, Google doesn't have a platform called "AppLogic". Perhaps they were referring to App Engine? And it's not even the editors' fault this time -- TFA has the terms wrong too. That really inspires confidence...

--
My Systems
1. Re:AppLogic? by Lord+Ender · 2009-08-20 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, I'm wondering if the article was generated by some sort of AI in an attempt to take the human costs out of blogging. Google's cloud product is, in fact, called App Engine.
  
  --
  A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
2. Re:AppLogic? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 06:07 · Score: 0
  
  They are of course referring to AppEngine, and the cnet article got the name right http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10314021-62.html.
  AppLogic is 3tera's cloud computing platform.
if i ran slashdot by nimbius · 2009-08-20 00:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

it would be an offense punishable by ban if when referring to the cloud, members didnt roll their eyes and make fart noises.

cloud is becoming less and less of a "news for nerds" thing because its surrounded by nothing but business jargon instead of tech talk. outsource your risks?? I still manage the same servers, in the same datacenter, with the same network but for some reason its been abstracted to "cloud" computing. you aren't outsourcing any new. theres still a guy you call at 5 AM when the mysql servers arent replicating properly, or the amanda job is hung.

a PRIME example, this article has NO NUMBERS!! no quantifiers or methods by which they tested the aformentioned services. they only say things were bad when one group of university students half a world away tested them. the university doesnt even mention the study!

and at seven months of presumably unauthorized stress testing, i wouldnt be surprised if google and amazon network engineers met over a few pints of beer and decided your asinine experiment deserved a bit of traffic shaping.

--
Good people go to bed earlier.
1. Re:if i ran slashdot by aicrules · 2009-08-20 02:38 · Score: 1
  
  and at seven months of presumably unauthorized stress testing, i wouldnt be surprised if google and amazon network engineers met over a few pints of beer and decided your asinine experiment deserved a bit of traffic shaping.
  I think this has the highest likelihood of being the culprit. Perhaps not google and amazon doing the traffic shaping, perhaps not even their own ISP doing it purposely. But it's not a news flash that doing anything over the internet can have wildly different latency and bandwidth results throughout the day, let alone over a seven month period.
2. Re:if i ran slashdot by kamatsu · 2009-08-20 03:23 · Score: 1
  
  UNSW's ISP is AARNet which is run by... UNSW.
3. Re:if i ran slashdot by mhwombat · 2009-08-20 19:54 · Score: 1
  
  Well, in part. AARNet is Australia's Academic and Research Network, UNSW is a shareholder. Most univerisities here are part of it. It provides a big fibre backbone between them.
Good place to start by cryfreedomlove · 2009-08-20 01:00 · Score: 1

Yes, there are issues, and those companies are being driven by free market demand for their cloud products to continue to improve them. They have the resources and the will to make the clouds better and better over time. Would you be able to keep up if you decided to establish your own data center for your own needs? I don't think so.
1. Re:Good place to start by sznupi · 2009-08-20 02:25 · Score: 1
  
  And if "time of day" creates biggest issues, that's actually fairly good news, to some degree (when pipes with the outside world are good, for starters...), for those from some small country in totally different timezone?...
  
  --
  One that hath name thou can not otter
Really. I don't believe by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 01:17 · Score: 0

WOW. a study that shows that clouds are just as difficult to manage as enterprises. what a bloody surprise. its not like we havent been having the same problems since the dawn the distributed computing platform when the Mainframe model got completley whacked. and I've been hearing all sorts of things form executives recently about how we should move to cloud and how they been promised it'll be so much better and so much cheaper.
Incompetent testing, stupid article by dostick · 2009-08-20 01:19 · Score: 1

From the article:

The response times collated in Sydney were tested against measurement instruments loaded onto the cloud platform to isolate whether delays were attributable to the service itself or the latency involved with accessing US-based data centres from Australia.
.....
We all know that all of Australia share limited pipe to outside world.
Of course it will clog during the business peak hours! It's like reviewing the sports car by driving in traffic jams around city and then writing an article that sports cars are slow!
1. Re:Incompetent testing, stupid article by Beezlebub33 · 2009-08-20 01:37 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  In addition, there is absolutely no data presented in the article. When you say that there were problems, you should quantify the problems. How long was the response time. The article says
  
  Response times on the service also varied by a factor of twenty depending on the time of day the services were accessed, she said.
  Ok, so give me a friggin' number! Did it go from 1 min to 20 minutes? Or from 1 sec to 20 sec. Or 1 hr to 20 hrs? When did you experience these response times? Give me a graph showing the response time as function of time of day and day of week.
  
  I am learning to hate articles that give you a little bit of information and leave out the important data. If Ms. Liu hasn't released the data, then the article should not have been written. Or she should provide it on her web page. Or provide a link to some journal where it's being published. This whole thing stinks of spin and MS FUD.
  
  --
  The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
2. Re:Incompetent testing, stupid article by IBBoard · 2009-08-20 01:39 · Score: 1
  
  But that's one whole (incredibly obvious) problem with "cloud computing" and the like. As soon as you outsource to a remote site (especially one that is in some way shared) then you're at the whim of other traffic and can be slowed down at any moment.
  Why is this news?
3. Re:Incompetent testing, stupid article by hey · 2009-08-20 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, this info might be useful for Australians.
  It suggests there should be some (more) cloud servers in Oz.
4. Re:Incompetent testing, stupid article by nacturation · 2009-08-20 05:56 · Score: 1
  
  I am learning to hate articles that give you a little bit of information and leave out the important data. If Ms. Liu hasn't released the data, then the article should not have been written. Or she should provide it on her web page. Or provide a link to some journal where it's being published. This whole thing stinks of spin and MS FUD.
  The article is essentially an abstract for the real data that will be presented on August 24th at the Australian Architecture Forum. It's not their fault someone submitted it to Slashdot prematurely.
  
  --
  Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Why is this rated "insightful"? by davide+marney · 2009-08-20 01:28 · Score: 1

My computer doesn't have to be hooked up to the interweb to work...
Since you are not a candidate for Internet-connected, virtualized, on-demand scalable computing resources (aka "cloud computing"), you are not attracted to cloud computing's value proposition.
For those of us who need these things, vendors such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are building services we definitely want to buy. Amazon's simple storage service, for example, had 40 billion objects in its repository as of February, 2009.

--
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Yeah, but... by killmenow · 2009-08-20 01:29 · Score: 1, Troll

This is Google. Didn't you get that part? IT'S GOOGLE!!!! (swoon)
Re:Hey slashdot by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 01:34 · Score: 0

You forgot about Eric Raymond and Richard Stall (as in bathroom) man
Talking of handling load conditions ... by Mostly+a+lurker · 2009-08-20 01:35 · Score: 1

... I have yet to see any application based on any large "cloud" based service have response times as bad as their site right now. A 20x slowdown would under load would be orders of magnitude better than they are achieving. Hmmm ... could one of the reasons some companies prefer to outsource applications be that there is extra capacity to handle peak load conditions?
Age Before Beauty by stuffduff · 2009-08-20 02:05 · Score: 2, Informative

I'm not surprised that these 'Johnny-come-latelys' are having issues. M (Mumps) has had an integrated schemaless database for forty years now and has the tool chain to go with it. The language and the data structure are seamlessly integrated, a concept that was all but wiped out by the relational database movement of the 70's. It's a shame to see this emphasis on schemaless databases is so totally ignorant of both its prior history and the lessons that Mumps has to offer. Ignorance is bliss...

--
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
1. Re:Age Before Beauty by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 02:18 · Score: 0
  
  the issue is that mumps is that it is a fuckin' awful language that no sane person would want to use ever.
2. Re:Age Before Beauty by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 02:49 · Score: 0
  
  ROFL. You're a fucking idiot for mentioning MUMPS.
3. Re:Age Before Beauty by ClosedSource · 2009-08-20 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  You may be right, but linking to thedailywtf for anything informative? You've got to be kidding.
Re:Quite interesting, actually by timeOday · 2009-08-20 02:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

It just depends on the application. Webmail is an obvious success; why have every company re-creating this capability when everybody needs and wants the same thing? There is the issue of trust, but then, we do put our money in banks, so that is solvable.
Re:Quite interesting, actually by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 02:23 · Score: 0

Who is "Noone" and why should he have been asked in the first place?
Re:Quite interesting, actually by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 02:42 · Score: 0

Rofl, good troll, 100% bullshit, 100% hilarious. 10/10
Ad-free print version by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 02:44 · Score: 0

http://www.itnews.com.au/Tools/Print.aspx?CIID=153451
Re:Quite interesting, actually by lenehey · 2009-08-20 03:20 · Score: 3, Interesting

I dunno. If someone steals my money, it can be replaced by the bank whose security system failed. If someone steals my secrets, there is no remedy.
Re:Quite interesting, actually by CastrTroy · 2009-08-20 04:02 · Score: 1

However, the difference between banks and Google/MS/Amazon, is heavy government regulation. And we've all see lately what relaxed regulation in the banking sector can do. Also, businesses don't have the capabilities to set up the infrastructure to bank with every other company they do business with. They do however, because of standards on the web, have the capabilities to set up a data centre, and host their own web sites.

--

Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Single Point of Failure by Feyshtey · 2009-08-20 05:18 · Score: 2, Informative

There are a number of arguments both for and against cloud computing. Performance and cost aside, it just seems to be an introduction of more single points of failure in your infrastructure.

In a standard site infrastructure model if your mail server takes a dump, yeah, you're not getting mail. Same with routers, power, etc. We all get that.

Now introduce clouds for your services and add in firewalls, physical broadband pipes (T1, or whatever), broadband service provider and all their hardware/personel/etc, and any other broadband service providers that host traffic to your destination (and their hardware/service/personel/etc). There's a host of things that are added that, if broken, sever your business's ability to perform. And we havent even gotten to the company that has the hardware and services that actually host the cloud.

The bottom line is the argument between what is more efficient and cost effective. Unfortunately the accountants dont factor in downtime for every employee when things break. They only factor in the check they know with certainty that has to be written every month. Yeah, on paper you probably save a bunch of money to go with a cloud. In reality you're not making any money with all your employees sitting around with their thumbs in their asses a couple of times a week.

--
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Confusing terms by SanityInAnarchy · 2009-08-20 05:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

You're confusing two definitions of "cloud".
One is the idea of putting everything into a webservice. The other is the idea of utility computing. They often overlap, but plenty of web services run their own datacenters, and there are plenty of applications of utility computing beyond web services.
Specifically, your "scalability issues" are relevant to the "utility computing" part, but not so much to the "web services" part -- unless you were bringing up issues completely irrelevant to this article.
This is my main annoyance with the use of the word "cloud" -- even people with some technical knowledge still get fooled into thinking one kind of "cloud" has anything at all to do with another type of cloud.

--
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
1. Re:Confusing terms by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 07:36 · Score: 0
  
  even people with some technical knowledge still get fooled into thinking one kind of "cloud" has anything at all to do with another type of cloud.
  Yeah, sometimes, I mistake cirrus to be stratocumulus, and don't get me started on the differences between altostartus and nimbostraus. I mean, wait, what?
2. Re:Confusing terms by lazarusdishwasher · 2009-08-20 09:36 · Score: 1
  
  You're confusing two definitions of "cloud".
  Joni Mitchell came to that conclusion in 1967.
  
  I've looked at clouds from both sides now
  From up and down, and still somehow
  Its cloud illusions I recall
  I really don't know clouds at all
3. Re:Confusing terms by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-21 01:43 · Score: 0
  
  Spot on, and as if that's not enough to cause mass confusion, "cloud" is one of those throw-away consumer marketing department terms designed to reduce a complex set of ideas to a single word that looks cool in a product name. Flavors of centrallized, massive computing resources serving diverse user groups and applications have been with us since the 1960's.
  The whole "cloud" dust-up reminds me a lot of the healthcare debate at the moment.
RE: Amazon -- Google -- M$ -- dont hav a clue by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-20 15:55 · Score: 0

Yes indeed. Our breathern are wit-less and without clue to the cloud.
Serves them right.
May a 50 kilotonne nuclear blast at 600 m above them light their way.
Re:Quite interesting, actually by Thomas+Charron · 2009-08-21 00:22 · Score: 1

Sure there is..
Vow to never touch that sheep again!

--
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I think Wave's pretty scalable by Crazy+Taco · 2009-08-21 05:33 · Score: 1

I dunno, I've been able to rip thousands, maybe tens of thousands of songs off my CDs and store them on a single hard drive. I think that's fairly scalable :D.

--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Re: Insightful by Anonymous Coward · 2009-08-24 16:05 · Score: 0

Some of the data was discussed at the Artchitecture Forum, and updated in the story below.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/153819,more-data-released-on-cloud-stress-tests.aspx