Ubuntu Desktop In the Cloud

jimjimovich writes "One new feature in Ubuntu 10.04 that caught my attention is the Desktop in the Cloud project. Ubuntu already has great EC2 support, and it's getting even better. Now you can launch Ubuntu Desktop instances on EC2 and connect to them with an NX client."

Comments

Cost prohibitive?

[bsDaemon]

EC2 charges based on CPU time and bandwidth usage, so this sounds like it'd end up eating up a monthly fee of ~$netbook per month. Why would anybody want to spend their money on this?

Re:Cost prohibitive?

[e2d2]

Checking the EC2 pricing scheme:

Small Linux install: $.085 per hour
Up to the First 10TB of data transfer: 0.15 per GB

And it goes down as you add more instances in. So the cost may be relatively small.

But I wonder, if you are remoting to this machine, won't you be charged for twice the bandwidth if you are using it as your desktop to surf the web? Incoming data has to go to that instance first and then route to you. AFAIK you'll be charged for total bandwidth usage.

 

Re:Cost prohibitive?

[Hatta]

I'm not sure what the use case for this would be anyway. Sure you can access your desktop from everywhere, but where are you going to go that has terminals set up for NX? If you're hauling around a netbook anyway, why not just run a local desktop?

Re:i never saw the point of cloud desktops

[ppanon]

Nope. What it is is the natural end-point after 10 years of outsourcing. When you get rid of the growth path for technical resources, eventually you get a profound lack of availability of senior technical resources. At that point you have no choice but to push everything IT-related out to external vendors because you can't hire internal resources to do it (or even just to manage the process) and must rely on external vendors who can maximize use of those types of resources across multiple clients. However you also no longer have the skills available to know if the vendor is taking you to the cleaners, or cutting corners on management/security to raise profits and significantly putting your data at risk. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Madoff-level disaster with a "cloud" provider sometime in the next 10 years.