Welcome to the Cloud

Recently wee attended a conference with over 6,000 IT professional- the Cloud Computing Expo. There was certainly a buzz with all sorts of professionals tauting new products and services. As we attended sessions, we found it interesting that most of the speakers took the time to 'define' what Cloud Computing is. There was some conisisty, but with a number of standards and with no single, 'over-seeing' organization, the best way to define Cloud Computing is to say that Cloud Computing is the next generation of server and internet technologies being combined to offer superior services for far less money.

When you consider that the average server will only use about 10% of it's resources on any given day, the promise of the cloud allows these duties to be combined, so that that 'wasted' power is available to any of the servers in the cluster when they need that extra 'bolt of lighting'. More power, less waste with the security of being supported by a collective of resources as opposed to a single machine. There no wonder the industry is full of excitement, the question isn't if the cloud is the future, it's a question of how to get there and what will your cloud look like.

Below we have gathered some of the critera we consider to be key components of Cloud Computing:

Portability

Most professionals realize that if you have an old Mac mini hosting your database, and you choose to move to a brand new xServe or even an IBM BladeServer- you can just 'copy' the files and be done with it. Utilizing traditional technology, there are Operating System concerns, IP address, licenses, drivers, and a host of other issues that have to be addressed every time there is a hardware change. As a result, many client will 'over-buy' on their server purchases in an attempt to delay/reduce future changes.

Another scenerio is that as a professional developer, you have a local 'testing' server and a 'production' server in a datacenter somewhere. In most cases, the exact versions of the Operating System (Windows Server 2008 Web Edition vs. Windows Server 2008 Enterprise) will be different, and even if they are the same one system will have different updates than the other and/or one system or the other will have unique software.

By using modern virtualization techniques, we can make your server enviornment an 'appliance' that can run on most any hardware. Your test enviroment can be hosted on an old Mac mini and your production environment can be a modern 16 core Xeon BladeServer. This portability allows the same 'virtual machine' to be portable. This trend in the industry will going to permit hardware manufactures to offer new products and services at an even faster rate. This portability keeps you from being 'locked-in' to any specific service or hardware.

Scalability

Now that we have established that a 'Cloud' service is portable, that becomes the foundation of the next criteria, scalability. We have a client which has a FileMaker Pro solution which is used for parent-teacher conferences for a large school system. Normally, the system sees very low volumes; however, after mid-term grades are released the system sees a huge spike for a week or two. Utilizing modern 'Cloud' technology, we can scale the servers to have up to 16 times their 'normal' CPU power for those two weeks. Another scenerio is that if your company is hoping to grow, we can add 'resources' to you Cloud instance as you grow.

Companies like ELi Lilly are using these technologies for their drug trials. After data is collected, they need huge amounts of computing power for a week or two. The servers to compile this data would cost millions of dollars; however, for a few thousand dollars that can 'scale' their computing needs accross a private cloud and only pay the resources they actually need.

We have the ability scale your network, CPU, and drive resources. We also have advanced options for load balancing and other tools to optimize your experaince.

Accessibility

If there is one critera for 'Cloud Computing' which is most common, this has to be it. Most people think of the internet as 'in the cloud' when in reality there are Private Clouds, Public Clouds, Hybrid Clouds, Composite Clouds, and Rogue Clouds. The reality is that you can utilize Cloud Computing principles without making your 'cloud' accessible beyond your own network. Although we support Private Clouds, most of our client will utilize a Public Cloud.

The realitiy is a common network between cloud resources is just one piece of the accessibility equation. In order to provide cloud services, multiple machines (both physical and virtual) most share common drive systems. At this time, this means expensive fibre channel drive systems which provide speeds which standard drives can not hope to achieve.

Elasticity

One of the problems with 'traditional' servers is that it anything goes wrong, the service is down. A cloud service is designed to be elastic in numerous ways. If you utilizing BladeServer A in one of our clusters and that machine fails for any reason. The controller will automatically move your service to BladeServer B. Since both BladeServers are connected to the same SAS Drive array, no data is lost and in most cases; you will never even realize that a server failure has occurred.

Similar controls are also in place on are redudant SAS Drive Array, if a drive or power fails; then an alert is triggered, but no the drive system remains 'up' and no data is lost. The same is true with our network connections, we have multilpe trunk lines from different providers coming into our datacenters. Our datacenters have a GSA rating and are protected from fire, theft, power loss, or most any scenerio. They are manned 24 hours a day by staff who monitor and service our 'clouds'. In most cases, they are automatically notified before a user ever knows there was a problem.

The final part of elasticity is backup. Since we have all this technology, we can offer backup services to another 'cloud', so if an entire datacenter goes down; then your data can be syncronized with a redundant cloud, so will very little effort your services can move from one cloud to another in a matter of minutes. The reaility is that we can offer you the same technology which are used by Google, Amazon, and many of the 'huge' web providers.

Affordability

All this technology is no relevant if you have a to have a budget the size of NASA to purchase and maintain it. The promise of 'Cloud' services is that resources are 'pooled' in the cloud and you have the option to 'rent' a very small part of a larger cloud. We offer both fixed rate and metered plans. We also handle all the maintainance and licensing of your servers. The reality is that you can start moving towards the cloud for as little as $10/month.