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The Risk of a Meltdown In the Cloud
zrbyte writes "A growing number of complexity theorists are beginning to recognize some potential problems with cloud computing. The growing consensus is that bizarre and unpredictable behavior often emerges in systems made up of 'networks of networks,' such as a business using the computational resources of a cloud provider. Bryan Ford at Yale University in New Haven says the full risks of the migration to the cloud have yet to be properly explored. He points out that complex systems can fail in many unexpected ways, and he outlines various simple scenarios in which a cloud could come unstuck."
At some point, there is going to be a massive failure. Someone big is going to lose *all* of their data. I still don't trust virtualization despite it being years old. It's still nascent in the grand scheme.
Someone wake me when they invent the holodeck.
What are the bets on the first cloud-company meltdown?
I don't understand the intent of the article other than to provide a knee-jerk chicken-little response to cloud processing and storage.
Not one of the items mentioned is unique to the cloud. It can happen to any data center with more than two nodes involved in a cluster.
But that's not surprising, because "the cloud" is just a distributed collection of cluster servers, the same as large multi-nationals have been running pretty much since their customer loads exceeded the ability of one server to span the global community.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The TLDR version of the article is that load balancers can oscillate.
Its spun into a cloudy-thing because thats trendy, but the basic argument is nothing new.
Perhaps there's more "meat" in the original paper?
One common thread is that nothing is ever really "new" in computer science / IT. Clouds are just a rehash of ye olde mainframe outsourcing from decades ago. I worked at a place that was doing that in the early to mid 90s.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I think the safest bet is to have local copies in addition to copies in the cloud, even if all the processing and computing is actually done in the cloud. Companies should set stuff up to keep a local copy of critical services on a good old fashioned tape drive or backup server. This is sort of a reverse of the cloud based backup solutions, where local processing and databases took place on local servers, but had backups in the cloud in case of a local disaster. Same idea: Have a local backup in case of the meltdown of the cloud. You may find your primary app is temporarily useless, but you at least have all your critical data (hopefully in a format that can be transferred.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Well, it's funny to me. But I was thinking that what you've got is a bunch of like computers operated by a single organization, connected by management networks, and depended upon by thousands of other organizations. If there was ever a sweeter target for a virus I don't know what it would be.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...you can't see clearly. One of the Hackers Ethics is Mistrust authority — promote decentralization.
Now there is a reason for this and one the cloud shouldn't be hiding its centralized authority.
What if someone trips on it?
Emergent behavior in a complex system of networks? Who knew?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I think the best metaphor for cloud computing is banking. There are risks for doing it yourself and risks in trusting a bank. If you hold your money in a safe then you may be robbed by a family member, employee, or petty theif. If you keep your money in the bank you may be robbed by the goverment, bankers, or by proffesional bank robbers. This same dynamic is true of storing data. The big difference between cloud computing and banking is regulation. Federally insured banks are heavilly regulated. There are laws about home much money they can lend, who they can hire, and what rates they can charge.
A coworker discovered when he upgraded from Kindle 1 to Kindle 2, many of the items he had purchased were no longer in the cloud (as amazon had promised). Most of what he lost was periodicals like magazines, but also some books. He was not a happy camper and asked for a refund for those books he could no longer acces, but Amazon simply told him they are not responsible.
That was back in 2009 if I recall correctly so maybe some of the bugs have been worked-out, but I stored it in memory as a reason why I won't trust the cloud to store any books I might purchase (or anything else). I try to back up these things to USB drive and googlemail storage.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Complex systems almost always exhibit surprising behavior. Cloud computing is no exception, and it is new in addition. This leads to a high level of risk of such events emerging without warning. Of course, people with a stake in the business side will never admit the risk. For examples of this happening in other fields, look at TEPCO, BP, RSA, ... All save and risk-free. Until things blow up.
Put simple: "The Cloud - where other peoples servers can crash yours."
Also appropriate:
"A distributed system is one in which I cannot get something done because a machine I've never heard of is down." --Leslie Lamport
This holds even more for the cloud.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Surfing along on the information superhighway when your tubes get a flat tire and the cloud has a meltdown. Checkmate.
Don't worry, there isn't enough oxygen in clouds to start a fire.
Skynet
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
"Yo Dog" meme in there somewhere
http://www.google.com/search?q="Yo+Dog+Meme"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Just wait 4 years for the next leap year.
Seriously , what clueless idiots at MS didn't take leap years into account when writing certificate code that used dates?
"...at Yale University in New Haven..."
... it was called an ftp server then. If only I'd known then just what a cool technorati I was when typing "put" or "get" on a remote system.
As for using telnet , woah , I mean , being able to use another system As If You Were There! How cutting edge and amazing is that! (for 1988).
I can't wait for when the dribbling HTML 5 webwonks rediscover remote shell login and start dribbling how its "just like so totally ultimate clooowwwd , no, wait dude , not clooowwwd , thats like so 2012 , I mean its so totally out there just like .... Spaaaace, yeeeah, its In Space".
My boss signed up for a certain accounting software and quickly found out that it wouldn't work for our company because we do business internationally and the cloud version is not set up to handle different currencies. I don't know the details, but I thought that was pretty lame considering how much business is transacted internationally. So, whether a 'meltdown' is likely to happen or not, for our company it will be some time before the cloud version of this particular software is ready for us to find out!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
This sounds more than a little bit like the financial industry meltdown over subprime mortgage derivative "products" that were crafted by PhD's in finance.
Wouldn't it be something if these same banks were the customers victimized by the cloud meltdown? I bet they'd be plenty mad.
Yes, the cloud is not much different than the current server world. How often are the back-ups and where are the back-ups? But if your data and your back-ups are all off-site, you have absolutely NO CONTROL because the basic questions didn't ask "where is the transport back-up?". A back-up is useless if you can't get to it. The political and corporate leaders are simply dumb and there is nothing we can do about it because the people are also technically dumb and won't vote out the incompetence. Society is going to melt down because we live in a dumbocracy - the most technically ignorant people rule. Heck, Obama has his Blackberry and only China can hack it!
This article just in from the department of "no duh".
I learned as a sysadmin the best way to protect my interests in running and maintaining servers is that now everything I am responsible for is referred to as our organization's "private cloud". The best part about our private cloud is that now I don't have to explain how anything works to anyone. It's "the cloud" and "it just works". Best development in job security ever.
I've always thought that the problem would be when companies start using cloud services that rely on cloud servers that rely on cloud services and one of those cloud services has an outage.
A problem at one cloud provider can trickle up and affect your service that's running on a completely different cloud service, so for example, your website running on EC2 depends on order fulfillment software running on Rackspace's cloud, which uses back-end software on MS's Azure cloud.
If Azure has a hiccup, then your web store goes down, and if enough sites are affected, it can make real changes in the load (maybe less load because people can't shop, maybe more load because users keep hitting "reload" to try to place their order) on EC2 and Rackspace which could cause additional problems as load balancers try to shift load around as they respond to the sudden and huge change in load.
I do not know how broadband will be able to cope with this. No thanks, I try to keep independent and use good old rsync to keep my machines in sync. If things continue as they are we soon have bandwidth caps. Relying then on the cloud could become very expensive. Not only because of prize hikes in the cloud once the public is hooked, but also because faster internet service is needed.
Maybe the network of networks won't melt down but instead become self aware... ;-)
When it rains, it pours. I've noticed there's a lot of aversion to cloud based software, due to not having control over the platform and pricing at the pleasure of the vendors.
Can I place my bet on Microsoft please?
T-Mobile Sidekick Disaster: Danger's Servers Crashed, And They Don't Have A Backup
Microsoft Red-Faced After Massive Sidekick Data Loss
Or just google for Microsoft Sidekick/Danger
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I've been working in the cloud since July. The company I work for really likes the idea of it. But I'll tell you something. As a programmer and systems administrator responsible for something that lives in the cloud, I'm just not seeing the value of it. At least the way it's implemented at Rackspace. We've had problems that are absolutely bizarre, that seemingly have no explanation, that take weeks to resolve, that don't originate on our side. We've had issues with data integrity that don't happen on regular servers, and while we're able to "scale," we're very limited in the ways we're allowed to do it. Maybe this kind of set up works for other companies and groups, but I can't see myself choosing a cloud provider over traditional collocation and the standard three tier server model for 99% of what I need to do.
Just to add a footnote: it's interesting to note the differences for this search term using google vs. bing.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I look at it differently.
You can harden against malware to some significant extent. (Even if using Microsoft products.)
Think of all that data in the cloud. If there was ever a sweeter target for a buyout by a Chinese company, I don't know what it would be.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPpkQBCPbMI
Strange behaviors = Skynet / Matrix Human Battery.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
I think the key here, which seems like common sense to me, is to not put all your eggs in one basket. I think its perfectly fine to rely on cloud computing for process intensive purposes, a high traffic website for example, but any critical data should also be stored locally and backed up using traditional methods. In general it seems more likely that your personal data center would fail before the "cloud" would, but nevertheless it would make good business sense to maintain both. I think the article pretty much states the obvious possibility that something "might" fail, at some point, for some reason, but that's not a good reason to consider abandoning it.
. . . until it does. No one with a vested stake can afford to speak the unspeakable of the greatest boon to the networking industry in the 21st century. This is the goose that is laying golden eggs, and the entire industry is cashing in on it. Before it is over, the bulk of all data will have shifted to the cloud at a cost of over a trillion dollars. The only people who can speak ill of this are those who have not learned to profit from it. Someday, there will be a great business in getting everyone out of the cloud. The marketing slogans can be easily predicted, "Get you head out the clouds and data out of the storm . . . don't let lightning strike . . . why is your precious corporate information floating away in the cloud?" Until then, everybody rides the train.
Of course, it may eventually fail in a spectacular way, but it will weather the occasional failure (see Amazon's). Then again, California will have a 9.x earthquake someday, too. However, you make notice that the land values correlate closely to the major fault zones, too. Ironic, but such is life.
Anon.Coward wrote:
>>>Warning: The post above me was made by a homosexual. Stay back so you don't catch the gay.
There are some things that should be an automatic banning of the poster's IP address. Using the N-word for example. Or saying victims of genocide "deserved it". And comparing being gay to an illness. Just because someone has a right to free speech, doesn't mean that right extends to this privately-owned website.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
How'd my three year old get up there?
Sounds more like a Fog. Caption says it all... "What you can't see won't hurt you... IT'll Kill You!"
I am awesome!
Contrast that with my being moderated Offtopic and Troll for committing the social crime of trying to be sociopolitically funny (which it's accepted is always at the expense of someone else because that's the point, to use humor to criticize behavior). Should I be banned for poking a stick at Glenn Beck? Clearly some people think so.
"Put your Cloud's feet back on the ground with New FogBank LocalServers(tm)!
Your all new revolutionary In-House Cloud"
"the cloud" is just dumb terminals all over again. After businesses make a bunch of money on the cloud they will then start selling local solutions again to try and mitigate problems with being on the cloud.
"All your data are belong to ME! Give cookie NOW! Or I RANDOMIZE!"
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
"Unexpected side effects of some new code that tries to keep data geographically close to its owner caused another data center in Europe to become overloaded, and that caused cascading problems from one data center to another. It took us about an hour to get it all back under control."
[...]
"Posted 24th February 2009 by The Gmail Team"
From: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/update-on-todays-gmail-outage.html
Let's see, Amazon lost entire businesses. Google burped as I recall. Seems to me there have been others. No backup at all in most of these cases. You're screwed. Nothing magical about "Cloud". Just a buzz word for utility computing of a few years ago, only Microsoft is claiming they have a cloud. It's not really. Just a bit of fog. You know, you get all wet and it's very humid (panties in a bunch). Just like you'll be explaining it to a customer when they show you a real cloud.
This is idiotic. To say that unexpected problems can occur within a massive system is pointing out the obvious. This is why cloud systems are being built with full redundancy so that these unexpected problems don't effect data or uptime.