What the heck is cloud?

What the Heck is Cloud?
Erik Carlin
Senior Architect, Rackspace Cloud Division
erik.carlin@rackspace.com
Prepared for: Rackspace Non-Profit Technology Conference
Date:April 16, 2010

EC2
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

GAE
Google App Engine

TRC
The Rackspace Cloud

Bonus…
Bing
But It’s Not Google 

Cloud Confusion
“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”
- Larry Ellison, 9/08
6

The Cloud is…
7
Utility Computing?
Grid?
Virtualization?
Usage-based billing?
On-demand?
Programmatic?
Scalable?
xaaS?

8
Understanding the Cloud

Cloud Forerunner
9
Edison dynamo, circa 1884

From Electricity to IT
“The bulk of business computing [will shift] out of private data centers and into the cloud.”
- Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch
10

11
Defining the Cloud

Cloud Computing According to the Analysts
“A pool of highly scalable, abstracted infrastructure, capable of hosting end-customer applications, that is billed by consumption.”
- Forrester
“A style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ across the Internet to multiple external customers.”
- Gartner
12

Cloud Computing According to NIST
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/
13

Five Characteristics of Public Clouds
Broad Access
Lightweight entry/exit
On-demand
Usage-based pricing
Highly scalable/elastic
14

Typical but NOT necessary…
15
Virtualization
Multi-tenant

16
Types of Clouds

Application Clouds (SaaS)
Ease of Use
Low Complexity
Flexibility
Minimal Control
Typical Consumers
End Users
Examples
Salesforce.com
TurboTax Online
Microsoft Online Services
Rackspace E-mail
17

Platform Clouds (PaaS)
Ease of Use
Medium Complexity
Flexibility
Medium Control
Typical Consumers
Developers
Examples
Rackspace Cloud Sites
Google AppEngine
Force.com
18

Infrastructure Clouds (IaaS)
Ease of Use
High Complexity
Flexibility
Maximum Control
Typical Consumers
Developers
System Administrators
Examples
EC2, S3
Rackspace Cloud Files, Cloud Servers
FlexiScale
GoGrid
19

20
Reasons to Use the Cloud

Cost Savings
From Fixed to Variable Pricing
Traditional: Buy enough compute to satisfy maximum anticipated demand
Cloud: Dynamically buy enough compute to satisfy actual demand
Cost savings particularly significant for transitory compute needs
21

Cost Savings Example
Problem
NY Times wanted to convert 11 million articles from 1851-1922 from raw TIFF images (4 TB) to PDF
Solution
Leveraging 100 EC2 instances and S3, all 11 million articles were converted to PDF in just under 24 hours
Compute Cost?
$240
http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/self-service-prorated-super-computing-fun
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/02/taking-massive.html
22

Time Savings
From Days/Weeks to Minutes
Traditional: Procure, receive, unpack, rack, cable, configure new server
Cloud: On-demand compute via programmatic call or mouse click
Essentially eliminate new server deployment latency
Significant time to market implications
23

Time Savings Example: New Server Deployment
Traditional
72,000 minutes or ~7½ weeks *
Cloud
2 minutes *
Percent Time Savings
99.997%
* Actual data from a pharmaceutical enterprise
24

Time Savings Example: Batch Processing
Assume a job has 100 units of work and 1 server can complete 1 unit/hr at a cost of $1/hr
1 server would take 100 hours to complete the job at a cost of $100
10 servers would take 10 hours to complete the job at a cost of $100
100 servers would take 1 hour to complete the job at a cost of $100
25
Limiting Factor?
Capacity

Increased -ilities
More Agility, Scalability, Flexibility…
Traditional: Capacity planning (maybe) to stay ahead of IT resource requirements. Generally unable to meet immediate increases in demand.
Cloud: Scale up (and down!) on-demand
Virtually unlimited compute and storage available
Enables “just enough” compute so you are only using what you need (green)
Enables “just in time” compute to auto-scale applications in response to spikes in demand
Generally, no commitments
Interesting implications for Dev/QA environments, upgrades, and troubleshooting
26

Increased Scalability Example
YouDecide2008.com
In January 2008, information was posted about the presidential debates resulting in an increase from 25,000 visitors to more than 300,000 – in one day.
Traditional Hosting = Site Crash!
27

Increased Scalability Example
Rackspace Cloud Sites = Auto-Scale
28
2nd Presidential Debate
1st Presidential Debate
3rd Presidential Debate
VP Debate

Lifestyle Impact
29

30
Reasons NOT to Use the Cloud

The BIGGEST objection…
Security!
The cloud is for everyone but not for everything.
(but remember, cloud doesn’t necessarily mean shared)
31

Other Reasons Not To Use the Cloud
Reliability?
Madden Syndrome: driving vs. flying
Performance/lack of isolation concerns
Latency
Need more control
Regulatory issues - HIPPA, SOX, PCI
Want a “managed” solution
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Some items derived from this IT Management & Cloud blog post
32

33
Cloud Demo

34
Closing Thoughts

Closing Thoughts
Cloud is still hosting and hosting requires trust
“As a Service” should come with service
Move one or more non-critical systems to the cloud to get experience
Consider hybrid solutions
Experiment with backup and archiving to cloud storage
It’s still early in cloud time, but...
35

The Future is Cloudy!
36

http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/

What the heck is cloud?

by Fran Stephenson on Apr 16, 2010

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What the heck is cloud? — Presentation Transcript