El Reg guide to the Private Cloud Anyone researching private cloud runs up against a wall of definition and counter-definition. “Private cloud isn’t real cloud computing,” according to one vendor, in phrasing redolent of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. This debate will run and run, but much of the discussion about private cloud computing to date concerns the more …
It's an over-engineered mess. The cloud: a way to abstract DC resources and run multiple applications across an arbitrary cluster of hosts.
So, uh, like processes running on a kernel.
Virtualization solves a problem only Windows ever had: software co-existence. But not even DLL Hell is a problem anymore.
So why do the likes of BNP rate it a success?
1. The provisioning tools are really simple (this is why VMware beat Xen), and
2. It is really easy to describe to CIOs whose last hands-on was with COBOL.
As for chargebacks, the psychology and economics are disastrous. Shame on the register for even suggesting that internal markets are a solution, not a problem.
my first computing job - working on a vax cluster and all the individual projects the company ran were charged on cpu usage, storage and printing. (and first experience of something the size of a small car being replaced with a desktop unit with more power)
we *have* kind of reverted back there with corporate email/calender servers, gmail etc. instead of the vt100 clients we now have smartphones and chrome netbooks. the 'dumb terminals' might be 'smarter' but the centralisation is what we all really need to make the information available everywhere.
The network is the computer, greater than the sum of its parts, blah, blah. I did get a kick out of the differentiation between private and public. Talk about funny, it isn't a difference between public and private, it's a difference of which private entity owns the hardware but they are all private. Just because someone is willing to sell you some virtual cpu cycles doesn't make it any more public. A public zoo may charge admission fees but that goes toward running and preserving the place but fees collected by a "public" cloud go to running it and buying a nice Jaguar for the private owner of the "public" cloud.
Perhaps the cloud marketing drones could be a bit more honest and call them internal and external clouds rather than private and public. It might even be a better strategy as I'm sure a lot of people would have reservations if they thought they were putting their private data in a public space. Hell, most people actively avoid just that situation, granted we must make exceptions for pols who just don't get it and post embarrassing things in rather public places.
To me the beauty of it (as well as cloning, snapshots etc), is the ability to have this hybrid hardware whereby you could be running Windows 7 desktops on a piece of server hardware by day then flicking over to Linux/Windows server by night for batch runs. The fact that some consultant monkeys are now spouting cloud this and cloud that is irrelevant. IT shops have been using this since before the snakeoil salesmen came to town and still will after all the buzz and bullshit has died down.
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