Posts by PJ 3

Take SNAT, says Microsoft, to improve Azure load balancing

Me too

Yeah, I seriously bristled at this article too. Then did some quick research. In Azure, Microsoft recognizes ports seemingly in 2 ways -

1. Standard port service definitions - it would be pretty hard to run a cloud without them, eh?

2. Ports. As in ephemeral ports that are more like virtual network ports in a router.

I think SNAT is based on #2 .

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-load-balancer-to-become-more-efficient/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-balancer/load-balancer-outbound-connections#snat

I could take the usual and predictable shot at Microsoft for renaming things that are already standards, but its 4 in the morning and I don't quite care. It won't make me feel any better and it sure as hell isn't going to change them.

VMware and SoftLayer teleport workloads across oceans

Re: Come on MS

"Unfortunately VMware are locked in a weird world where they aren't acknowledging the world around them and are pushing 2005 style solutions which are getting less and less relevant in the modern world."

This seems to be true and it is a weird situation to watch. They simply waited too long to get into cloud and can probably never catch up. Great technology and all but will they be the next DEC? DEC had fantastic technology and tons of customers and simply got run over by a fast-moving reality and was bought by HP. Only legacy customers actually "need" VMware. For new environments, there are many, many choices that are less expensive. Oh, wait, isn't VMware in the process of being bought?

And I agree a vMotion solution for something that has myriad, built-in ways to accomplish seems like pure, time wasting folly. The months spent architecting and testing the thing will negate any supposed cost savings. Same may be true for any "follow-the-moon" cloud implementation that transforms a legacy solution. Greenfield solutions might have good bang for the buck though.

VMware: Amazon's cloud calculator a load of flatulant FUD

Shocker

All cloud costing calculators are "error prone", um inaccurate. None of them from anyone are accurate for a wide variety of reasons. The Uncertainty Principle of Cloud Computing is one attempt to explain why.

As for vmWare making assertions about AWS costing, pot, meet kettle.

Concerning Microsoft's Azure pitch to cloud service providers

Good Article

There are a couple realities here -

1. All public clouds have issues. I have used RS, HP, IBM, AWS and Azure and have researched as many as I could find - cloudcomputeinfo dot com. They all have their positives and negatives and which one you use for your solution is a really big "it depends".

2. Using a public cloud is outsourcing and the outsourcer provides a set of features at a price and you build a solution to meet your needs on their platform offering. Now, from a proprietary software licensing perspective what you do with a public cloud and what you do on-prem has not changed. In many ways, the proprietary operating system you license on your desktop or server could technically be considered "outsourced". You don't own it, you are paying for the right to use it and it is ultimately supported by someone else. If you want, you can use it as is or build applications on it to meet your needs. Exactly like the public cloud. So, what Microsoft is doing is expanding the scope of their software offering. It is still theirs, you don't own it but you can use it on their hardware, or your hardware - just as long as you pay.

Free cloud server self-destructs in 35 minutes

Could be useful

Sometimes I just want to crank up a server, install the latest cooly cooly server app, root around to check it out and move on .. If I think I need it for a day, I'll pay the 6 bucks .. If it truly spins up these instances quickly, it will be kind of nice. If the spin up time is a come on and it is really doggy, it's a gonna suck. Today, none of the brokers improve spin up time - none - and a couple are flippin abysmal .....

Clash of the Titans: Which of you has the greatest home lab

CriKit

I got tired of the loud, hot rack in my office and built CriKit. I routinely run 5 - 30 virtual machines and I can gen up any Private Cloud software I want because that is my interest right now. It doesn't do everything however, live migration of large VM's kinda sucks over 1 Gbe, but the compute nodes have enough compute power and memory to do a lot and the SSD's make things snap nicely. I use the same proc as SeaMicro did in their first release - Intel Xeon E3-1260L with 8 MB of cache and it is an awesome combination of compute horsepower and low-wattage. Cheap, cool, quiet, compact and fast enough is all I was looking for. Gotta admire the guy with the 47 U kit though.

Ray Kurzweil to become Google's top engineer

Re: I wonder if ...

Conceptually, it would be similar to any other cloud environment relative to Amdahl's Law. However, it would initially be "slower" in the aggregate because of mobile bandwidth constraints compared to existing cloud infrastructure that uses high-speed networking. That said, if you understand virtualization and PaaS it is easy to see use cases where Amdahl's Law concepts are less relevant and moves more in the direction of Gustafson's Law. What if the Billion Node Cloud were one monstrous PaaS environment? Plop an application on a humongous grid and let it run cheaply. In the end, yes, the entire concept is large and complex with a wide variety of intersecting points of applicability for use cases where some applications are not suitable for the environment, but a very broad range of uses are applicable. Further, since this is a futuristic view of computing, software will be developed that takes better advantage of the overall compute environment and makes it more efficient. It will happen. The major two unknowns are when and how?

I wonder if ...

Google will pursue a concept like The Billion Node Cloud ? http://www.billionnodecloud.com

By actually paying people involved in their cloud architecture/infrastructure, it might make them less evil in the eyes of the world. Maybe. Ray would get the concept, but will others in the Googleplex ?

Intel prepping Atom bombs to drop on ARM microservers

MicroServers will change the game

Unless you have lived with MicroServers for a while, it is easy to miss the nuances and potential of their power. They are more than just small, powerful boxes. They are a new way at looking at computing. What would you do with a server that handles thousands of users and is the size of a chemistry text book and draws less than a car headlight on high beam? One answer - http://www.billionnodecloud.com

And there are many, many more applications just waiting to be discovered. In its own way, the entire MicroServer phenomenon is actually exciting because it opens up entirely new vistas of computing applications. Want a quiet, energy sipping, multi-node cloud platform on your desk that runs dozens of virtual machines ? http://www.crkit.info

Totally shameless promotion I must admit, but MicroServers will reduce energy consumption in huge ways if allowed to and I would think green techies would be all over that societally advantageous application of MicroServer technology. The electricity cost savings and reduction in coal and gas consumption could be substantial in the aggregate. How many old 1,000 watt servers are there out there sucking up electricity when they could be replaced with 50 Watt boxes that may have more compute power than what they replace? My guess is millions. That means billions of watts are being wasted right now because a lot of the MicroServer technology exists today.

VCE zaps vBlocks with shrink ray

yeah

and they'll still be really expensive, just less so. The low end cloud platform party has already started and they are in for a rude one when they get here -

http://www.nebula.com

http://www.crikit.info

http://www.intalio.com/cloud-appliance

http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/infrastructure/nuvola/

And a bunch of others...

Industry in 'denial' as demand for pricey PCs plunges

The big shift

Moore's Law has brought the market to a serious inflection point. How do traditional PC makers get the general public and small businesses to buy more stuff? Think totally outside the PC box. Add MicroServers to the mix, include cloud computing, and throw in revenue generating potential from owning the hardware and you won't be able to stop people from buying stuff.

http://www.billionnodecloud.com

That was easy ...

Fujitsu tosses VMware cloud-in-a-box at biz newbies

When are People Going to Notice

There is a Desktop Private Cloud that easily runs 30+ virtual machines and supports a variety of open source cloud offerings and others, like Nimbula. it is under 10 grand and supports thousands of web users on 4 compute nodes. It was created because the traditional offerings are still too expensive and by the looks of this latest offering from Fujitsu, they are going to stay expensive. How many small businesses really need 100-450 VM's? Get a CriKit - http://www.crikit.info

EU plans summer launch for Optimis cloud toolkit

This is fantastic !

What a coincidence, I have been working diligently to create a mini-data center platform specifically for this kind of solution. http://www.crikit.info . These types of systems will eventually be the small business computing platform of the future. Compact, quiet, powerful and ready today to run a cloud architecture. Despite how flippin difficult some of those solutions are. Optimus will combine with MicroServer-based CriKit Desktop Private Cloud-like solutions and spread like wildfire through the SMB community worldwide. It can't not happen. There is too much value in the combination. Compute power plus extreme energy savings plus software automation that is easy to use simply can't be ignored. Very cool stuff if I do say so myself.

Is private cloud the next step for the data centre?

Making inroads

Private Cloud is a blanket marketing term for where on-site computing is in its evolution. It is just like phases that have gone before it, so now its Private Cloud. Virtualized, automated, self-service products and architectures. This progression has been happening for years. A couple things that are new however, is the intersection of Moore's Law and high speed networks. Solutions can be accomplished much faster and in much smaller form factors than ever before. Case in point - CriKit Desktop Private Cloud http://www.crikit.info The application of low wattage micro-servers to run a Private Cloud ON your desk. Pretty damn sweet, if you are into that sort of thing ...

MICRORAPTOR dino-pigeon lured mates with glowing feathers

Right..

"However iridescence is only a quality that is useful to creatures active in the day,"

Yeah, moonlight does nothing on iridescent surfaces and all creatures had/have visual spectrums just like humans...

Everything you ever wanted to know about private cloud

Private Clouds are Getting small enough for all

Private Clouds are starting to make more sense as Moore's law and automation combine to make a potent combination. The recent CriKit Desktop Private Cloud is the first example of cool small Private Cloud solutions and more vendors will follow. CriKit is a compact, energy sipping Private Cloud platform that can run 32 virtual machines + on 4 nodes. That is enough compute power for a wide swath of the SMB market and it is expandable and cheap. If I can run Private Clouds on a desk in my organization and keep my data in my org to reduce risk, why would I even consider public cloud solutions? The truth is both will coexist for a wide variety of implementation requirements, but the key here is that Private Clouds no longer need to be expensive undertakings ... search on " CriKit Desktop Private Cloud " and see what I mean ..

The plane story of galactic clusters

I wanna go home ...

JP ... Actually looks more like a brain structure .... or a sponge. Cool stuff... and another

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

We live in amazing times ... Galileo, Copernicus, even Einstein would love what we are finding out about the universe. It is truly awesome sh*t !

Ex-Microsoft accountant jailed for $1.1m Redmond theft

Good thing ..

that he was "almost relieved" to tell his wife.. well, he fully relieved Microsoft of the money and fully spent what he spent ... how close to relieved is "almost" ? Is he also almost remorseful for the things he bought with the money ? I'll bet he is fully remorseful that he got caught.

Customers clobber Clearwire as execs jump ship

They Knew It Was Lies

I have talked to several people that have worked at Clear and the story was always the same. The place was a mess from stem to stern. Misplacing massive amounts of infrastructure hardware to lying about coverage to bullshag about speeds. It was a scam from day 1 and stayed that way and they all knew it. The biggest losers are the ones that sunk huge bucks into the thing. The Accounts Payable is massive and when this blows up, vendors won't get their money.

When this thing was first announced, Cramer said it was being run by "the great man, Craig McCaw" . In this case he is the "great swindler Craig McCaw". And Cramer is still a moron.

My lost Cobol years: Integrating legacy management

Fascinating

Someone's got to bring up Cloud here, so let me be the one.

I find it fascinating that Cloud is the current evolutionary state of IT and it arguably requires more management technology that any previous point on the IT evolutionary scale. Further, given Microsoft's recent paper on the benefits of using a Cloud service provider to truly get economies of scale from Cloud solutions, it is odd that the cost benefits of the most complex computing solution ever can't be fully realized by doing it in house( according to a Cloud service provider of course). To get the most benefit, you have to outsource it, which creates even more of a management nightmare.

Does increased management complexity ever end? Probably not, which means an increased spend on management solutions to deal with the entropy inherent in the evolution of IT.

Attachmate gobbles up Novell for $2.2bn

Whaaaat ???

This makes absolutely no sense at all on the surface. MS has to be very happy. In one move Novell is dead. Attachmate is now going to enter into a market they know nothing about and compete directly with the big boys and the biggest competitor lives across the lake. Wow ! Just Wow! Can't wait to watch this thing crash and burn. Do they actually think they can resurrect Novell? An dying emulator vendor? Wow! just Wow! Got to admit A'Mate is good at milking dimes out of dying technologies and that business model never runs out of possible acquisition targets...

Google sues US gov for picking Microsoft

Wow ..

Google suing the government because they got locked out of a deal. They evidently haven't been involved in many deals. Everybody gets locked out of some deals, it is how the world works and nobody is exempt. Are they going to sue everybody that keeps their unwanted products out of the organization? They will be very busy. Also, bad form to sue a potential customer with a long memory.

Will the cloud mean joblessness for you?

Discretely Managed Virtualization was too hard to say..

so they made it Cloud Computing. You are right that it adds a layer of complexity and required expertise to handle it. Once they get third parties all over the world to run your errant virtual machines, you'll have no flippin idea where your apps and data are. Unless of course they implement a Foursquare for virtual machines. "Hey, it's running right next door.. ohp, no, now it's in Bejing, I think." But it will all be secure of course and very well managed.

Intel lobs pork buns at world gone Google

Interesting, and tacky

I think this whole thing is very curious.

1. A hardware company trying to create a customer/hardware/software alliance. What are they afraid of? Sparc? Cmos? AMD? There is ALWAYS a self-serving reason for these types of things and with Intel operating in a paranoid fashion, what is their real motivation? Time will tell.

2. Hand written picket signs and 2 pork bun containers? That was actually someones "idea" ! THAT was pathetic and no amount of spin makes it othwerwise. It also shows this was done in haste. Why move so quickly you look like amateurish fools on the street. There was no characteristic Intel polish in that street scene and my guess is that upstairs it was a little questionable too.

3. The website is kind of nice and you can see the call for standards, but there is not much there, there. I'm sure it will be more populated over time, but again, a weak effort for Intel.

So, my guess is the number crunchers recently figured out that a wholesale move to mobile and cheaper desktop chips will kill a whole bunch of desktop revenue. So, they need to somehow make Intel server chips the standard for cloud computing to offset that revenue loss. It went something like this, " Holy SH%T ! We need to do something right NOW to try and lock in the whole cloud revenue thing before AMD, Oracle or IBM cut down our share !!!! " " I know, let's make an Alliance and declare us the standard hardware for the cloud. That'll do it. We can get a few employees to wear blue t shirts and carry small hand written picket signs and we'll give out pork buns on the street." .... Brilliant ...