[ Cloud Computing ] Re: why virtualization?

Hi Dan,

Perhaps the following is of some use.

Cloud, grid, utility computing, virtualization and mainframe are buzzwords that come and go with the wind.  It's how services are sensibly constructed for usable interoperability with solid managing processes and support that persists indelibly.

From gate-level ASIC EDA to search algorithms to UI design to captology, there's a host of specialized complexity most people don't want to delve into, nor should they for most applications.  Most solutions are very easy and repeatable.

To maximize business value of assets, it is necessary to reconsider what absolutely matters and where duplication exists and can be removed practically.  Hence, the idea of a soon-to-be-accepted notion of secure, self-optimizing cloud server and storage appliances for the enterprise reducing silos and providing a comprehensive platform of shared/hosted infrastructure service solutions.  

 

The case for virtualization is simple: 

1) Make better use of existing resources without altering system software, e.g., idle servers are wasted assets.

2) "Food Groups" Scalability, Isolation and Policy, i.e., mainframe-like resource limits in Vmware ESX

• Processing
  
• Memory
  
• Network I/O
  
• Disk I/O
  

3) Ease of deployment, reconfiguration.

The possible consequences are:

4) Concentrated risk - most software and applications are not truly distributed and fault-tolerant, less experienced IT staff are able to break more systems faster.

5) Theoretical security risks of shared memory reading from other VMs or phantom VM guests.

6) Debatable overhead of virtualization, paravirtualization.

7) Increased complexity: more resources to monitor and manage.

8) Overuse due to ease of additional deployments, reconfiguration.

9) Inappropriate application of virtualization, i.e., high load systems: hi-cap database, email and hpcc.

The risks may seem numerous, but the benefits generally outweigh risks unless the IT staff are completely clueless, the task is highly-specialized or the scale is massive.  You should see the racks of systems carted away from virtualization migrations!

Delving deeper into CS and futurism: there's no theoretical need for more than one conceptual system if it is perfectly capable of secure partitioning (read: mainframe).  Practically, software is no where near as good as it could be because it grew organically and because people put up with it.  Try shared hosting of multiple https domains with apache on one ip address.  Good luck!

The key is making hybrid clusters of many individual computing assets function like one single appliance.  Rocks clusters, vmware esxi, vdi are moving in the right direction.

No one wants to change the underlying software or make computing more difficult because that would be too much change, too soon.  What is needed is smart languages and compilers that automatically parallelize and distribute ACID & RESTful loads appropriately to available capacity with minimum overhead and assuring compliance to the SLA.  The algorithm is related to effective freight forwarding or newtonian packing of circles.

Reimplementing architectures for fault-tolerant, distributed "griddy" local clouds and shared/hosted SaaS is the most necessary goal.  Windows, Apple, Linux; PHP, Ruby, Python apart from politics or features, they're all of equivalent Turing power.  The suite of effective capability delivered to the user is what truly matters.

Many systems are refactorable in terms of just a few services within a robustly distribute architecture:

• web services
  
• application / business logic
  
• database
  
• file storage

Core infrastructure, including architecture management, dhcp, dns, ldap, email, etc. could be done with open standards ERP style as appliances to reduce data duplication and integration issues. 

Barry Allard, VCP

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Cloud Computing" group.
To post to this group, send email to cloud-computing@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
cloud-computing-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
To post job listing, send email to jobs@cloudjobs.net (position title, employer and location in subject, description in message body) or visit http://www.cloudjobs.net
To submit your resume for cloud computing job bank, send it to resume@cloudjobs.net.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.ca/group/cloud-computing?hl=en?hl=en
Posting guidelines:
http://groups.google.ca/group/cloud-computing/web/frequently-asked-qu...
This group posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/
Group Members Meet up Calendar - http://groups.google.ca/group/cloud-computing/web/meet-up-calendar
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---