Programming
Cloud storage lives up to the hype
Aug 23rd
Very Interesting Report By Tom Henderson and Brendan Allen, at Network World
In our continuing series of groundbreaking tests of cloud computing services, we take a look at what enterprises can expect if they decide to entrust data to a cloud storage provider. We found that cloud storage lives up to its advance billing in two key areas: cloud storage can be fast and the pay-as-you-go model can be a real cost saver. We also found that security could be an issue for enterprise shops, and the formulas for trying to predict overall costs can be complex.
The services that we tested were Amazon S3, Rackspace’s CloudFiles, Egnyte’s On Demand File Server, Nasuni Cloud Storage, and Nirvanix‘s Storage Delivery Network. Amazon, Rackspace and Nirvanix represent the containerized/object-oriented model. Egnyte embodies the file/folder metaphor, while Nasuni offers a different twist – it’s a front-end that simplifies cloud storage for enterprise customers and connects to other cloud storage vendors on the back end.
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9 Great Open Source Cloud Services to help build your business
Aug 17th
DuraSpace
The DuraSpace organization unveiled the open source code for the new DuraCloud platform, a hosted service and open technology that makes it easy for organizations and end users to use cloud services. DuraCloud is an open source platform that is built upon commercial cloud infrastructure. The platform itself deploys into a cloud server environment and is integrated with multiple cloud storage providers, including Amazon AWS and RackSpace.
OpenStack
What the software does: The goal of OpenStack is to allow any organization to create and offer cloud computing capabilities using open source 
software running on standard hardware. OpenStack Compute is software for automatically creating and managing large groups of virtual private servers. OpenStack Storage is software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of commodity servers to store terabytes or even petabytes of data.
Enomaly
Elastic Computing Platform (Enomaly ECP) has often been described as the world’s first true IaaS platform. Enomaly is the leader in empowering telecom, IDC and managed hosting operators to deliver the benefits of Cloud Computing to their 
customers As one of the earliest pioneers of cloud computing, Enomaly has the experience to help you monetize the cloud.
Cloudera
offers enterprises a powerful new data platform built on the popular Apache Hadoop open-source software package. We unlock the storage and processing technologies of the world’s biggest Web companies, allowing our growing list of global customers to use Hadoop to solve problems and achieve their particular business needs.
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is an open source solution that originates from an NSF funded research project at University of California, Santa Barbara. The open source model is generally considered a superior way of creating infrastructure software. Innovation is faster, users and customers have more freedom and flexibility, lock-in is avoided, and secondary benefits accrue from the massive ecosystems that naturally evolve around the most prolific open source products.
Hibari
Gemini Mobile Technologies (“Gemini”) announced at “Wireless Japan 2010″ in Tokyo that it will release Hibari (meaning “Cloud Bird” in Japanese) as open source. Hibari is a database optimized for the highly reliable, highly available storage of massive data, so-called “Big Data.” Hibari can be used in Cloud Computing Applications such as web mail, Social Networking Services (SNS), and other services requiring storage of tera-bytes and peta-bytes of new daily data.
Globus Nimbus
Nimbus is a set of open source tools that together provide an “Infrastructure-as-a-Service” (IaaS) cloud computing solution. Our mission is to evolve the infrastructure with emphasis on the needs of science, but many non-scientific use cases are supported as well.
Nimbus allows a client to lease remote resources by deploying virtual machines (VMs) on those resources and configuring them to represent an environment desired by the user.
OpenNebula
OpenNebula is an open-source toolkit to easily build any type of cloud: private, public and hybrid. OpenNebula has been designed to be integrated with any networking and storage solution and so to fit into any existing data center.
With OpenNebula you can transform your data center into a flexible and agile virtual infrastructure which dynamically adapts to the changing demands of the service workload.
Joyent
Joyent’s Smart Technologies provide application virtualization, which is different from all other major cloud vendors who are focused on hardware virtualization. Joyent’s approach provides applications with better performance and cost effectiveness, due to higher application density and hardware utilization in our Smart Technology stack.
By CloudTweaks
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How to Setup Amazon Web Service Account: Beginner Cloud Tutorial
Aug 12th
Amazon–EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) is a leading cloud Service provider.
You can use this service to do your cloud computing tasks. The web service provided by Amazon enables you to access cloud network without having your own set of hardware. It is a PAYG (Pay As You Go) service which means you need to pay for the service as you use them. You have to setup an account before using Amazon web services and access cloud network.
The following steps illustrate how to setup an Amazon-EC2 account:
Open the Amazon Web Services site using following URL http://aws.amazone.comTo create a new account, select “Create an AWS account” link at the right corner of the Amazon Web Services web site.
Continue Reading More >
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Cloud Web Hosting Services Powered by Amazon EC2
Aug 3rd
Web host SiteCloud.com (www.sitecloud.com) is entering the cloud hosting market with its proprietary cloud hosting platform built on top of Amazon’s Elastic Cloud, and featuring cPanel/WHM.
SiteCloud advertises twelve packages scaled within the cloud hosting architecture for the equivalent of shared, virtual private servers, dedicated hosting and reseller hosting services.
According to SiteCloud’s Monday announcement, its cloud hosting packages provides added flexibility for growing businesses.
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How To Install and Run WordPress on AWS EC2?
Jul 23rd
Here is a fantastic illustration I’ve come across on how to get your WordPress site up and running in the cloud in 15 minutes. Very helpful!
Introduction
One thing we often hear from Web developers, especially those who offer Web site design and consulting services, is the need to get a Web site up quickly, which runs fast and gives them total control of the server for maximum flexibility and scalability. Today’s post offers a quick walkthrough on how to run WordPress on Amazon’s EC2 Cloud and the Microsoft Web Platform. After you followed the steps in this walkthrough you will have a live production WordPress blog on the Internet.
Here are quick summary of the steps you have to follow:
- Sign up for Amazon EC2
- Start an “Microsoft Web Platform – WordPress ” instance via the Amazon Web Services Management Console.
- Retrieve the Administrator password and connect to the instance via RDP.
- Finalize the WordPress installation.
- Enter blog posts and browse to your blog.
1. Amazon EC2 Sign-up
Signing up for Amazon EC2 is a straightforward process. All you need is
- a valid e-mail address,
- a valid phone number you can be reached at (make sure the phone is nearby, you will be called during sign-up!),
- and a valid credit card number
The sign-up URL is http://aws.amazon.com/ec2. It’s even easier if you are already an Amazon customer because you can use your existing credit card information and e-mail address.
Note: Billing data verification usually happens within minutes. It might take a couple of hours though. Currently (April 2010) the error message you get is not very meaningful:
“It looks like you don’t have an EC2 account*. To use the Amazon EC2 Console you must first sign up for Amazon EC2. It’s quick & free to sign up.”
Just be patient and wait for a little longer.
2. Starting an “Microsoft Web Platform – WordPress” Instance
Once you are signed up successfully you will have access to the Amazon EC2 Management Console. The URL is https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/home.
Once you are logged in make sure you switch your region to “US West”. The Microsoft Web Platform images are currently only available in the US West region. Before we do anything lets set up the firewall rules (called Security Groups in Amazon lingo) for your WordPress instance.
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Akamai Appoints Chuck Neerdaels as Vice President of Engineering, Cloud Platforms
Jul 14th
Industry-renowned expert to lead Company’s focus on cloud optimization
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud optimization services, announced today the appointment of Chuck Neerdaels as Vice President of Engineering, Cloud Platforms. A pioneer in the field of Internet technologies, Mr. Neerdaels possesses nearly two decades of experience building Internet caching, streaming, storage and content acceleration solutions. Neerdaels re-joins Akamai having most recently served as a vice president in the cloud computing group at Yahoo!. He will be based out of Akamai’s San Mateo, CA office, where he will lead the company’s Cloud Platforms engineering team.
Earlier in his career, Neerdaels held senior engineering roles at Netscape, Inktomi (now owned by Yahoo!) and Akamai, where he led the research and development of numerous product launches. Neerdaels is also one of the original authors of the federally-funded Harvest Information Discovery System, or “Harvest Project,” which evolved to become today’s popular Squid caching server.
“For over a decade, Akamai has helped companies leverage the power of the Internet by transforming it into a secure and reliable place for transacting business. Now, the same underlying technologies and solutions are needed to drive successful enterprise adoption of cloud computing,” said Harald Prokop, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Akamai. ”Chuck’s proven engineering expertise, combined with his reputation for innovation, makes him a tremendous asset to Akamai as we evolve our offerings in this dynamic and growing market.”
An alternative to centralized cloud infrastructure, Akamai’s cloud optimization services are built on top of an intelligent network of more than 65,000 servers distributed across 1,000 Internet service providers worldwide. This distributed network runs at the edge of the cloud, striving to transform the Internet into a high-performance platform where companies can confidently develop and deploy business-critical applications within a cloud computing environment.
“As more and more enterprises deploy applications on cloud platforms, the need for advanced optimization services has become critical to the success of their cloud initiatives,” says Neerdaels. ”I’m excited to be part of the Akamai team again and I look forward to leveraging my experience to advance Akamai’s mission of enabling enterprises around the world to pursue hybrid or full cloud strategies.”
Neerdaels received a B.A.E.M. in Aerospace Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Minnesota and completed extensive coursework toward a Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Southern California.
For more information about Akamai’s cloud optimization services please visit www.akamai.com/cloud.
About Akamai
Akamai® provides market-leading, cloud-based services for optimizing Web and mobile content and applications, online HD video, and secure e-commerce. Combining highly-distributed, energy-efficient computing with intelligent software, Akamai’s global platform is transforming the cloud into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, transact and collaborate. To learn how the world’s leading enterprises are optimizing their business in the cloud, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.
Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai Technologies, Inc.’s management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by hackers or others, failure of our cloud-based services to perform as expected, and other factors that are discussed in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.
| Contacts: | ||
| Liz Bradley | Noelle Faris | |
| Media Relations | Investor Relations | |
| 617-444-2938 | 617-444-4676 | |
| ebradley@akamai.com | nfaris@akamai.com |
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The cloud job market: A golden opportunity for IT pros
Jul 1st
With the market heating up for cloud computing talent, many are rushing to learn more and updating their résumés — and a few are lying
We’re seeing a lot of strategic and well-publicized hires in the cloud computing world these days, such as Cisco Systems grabbing up cloud computing mainstay and former Sun Microsystems executive Lew Tucker to oversee its cloud computing initiatives. But most of the brokering of cloud computing talent is done behind the scenes. Most companies are considering or actually moving to cloud computing, and they’re seeking their own experts to make the move. Can you cash in?
However, there are far too many positions chasing far too few qualified candidates these days, and that’s causing some organizations to hire less-than-qualified people. It’s also causing the cost of those people to go way up. I’m interrupted daily by a headhunter looking for “cloud people,” offering executive-level comp packages for very technical and tactical gigs. Who says unemployment is still a problem?
So how do you take advantage of this spike in need for cloud computing ninjas?
First, read all you can get your hands on. With the hype raging around cloud computing, there are actually only a handful of books that do a good job teaching about the cloud. Make sure to purchase books that work through the requirements and the architecture first, and then learn specific cloud computing technologies. You need a good context. Also, read all of the better cloud blogs: Having current knowledge is key these days.
Second, learn by doing. One of the great things about cloud computing is that the services are often free for a trial period. Even if there is a cost, it’s nominal. So get that Google App Engine account or play around with Amazon Web Services to see how this stuff actually works. Build a few prototypes to undertand the skills along with the concepts.
Finally, don’t “cloudwash” yourself. Many people seeking to take advantage of the need for cloud computing people are “cloudwashing” their résumés to make themselves seem more relevant. This is pretty transparent to anybody in the know, and it nearly guarantees your stuff tossed will be tossed in the trash. Instead, focus on relevant, real skills and knowledge. Most employers understand this is new stuff, and it shouldn’t count against you if you don’t have two decades of cloud computing experience. After all, who does?
Full Credit to: David Linthicum at InfoWorld.com
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Cloud Tool Of The Week – Develop ASP.NET, php and Ajax applications in your browser
Jun 29th
CodeRun Studio: A free, cross-platform browser-based IDE
Test and debug code in the cloud
CodeRun Studio is a cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE), designed for the cloud. It enables you to easily develop, debug and deploy web applications using your browser.
CodeRun Studio can be used instead or alongside your existing desktop IDE. You can upload existing code in order to test it in the cloud or for sharing with your peers. CodeRun Studio also enables you to instantly compile, package and deploy your code to the CodeRun Cloud.
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Why Cloud Computing Will Never Be Free
May 27th
The last time the IT industry delivered outsourced shared-resource computing to the enterprise was with timesharing in the 1980s when it evolved to a high art, delivering the reliability, performance, and service the enterprise demanded. Today, cloud computing is poised to address the needs of the same market, based on a revolution of new technologies, significant unused computing capacity in corporate data centers, and the development of a highly capable Internet data communications infrastructure. The economies of scale of delivering computing from a centralized, shared infrastructure have set the expectation among customers that cloud computing costs will be significantly lower than those incurred from providing their own computing. Together with the reduced deployment costs of open source software and the perfect competition characteristics of remote computing, these expectations set the stage for fierce pressure on cloud providers to continuously lower prices.
This pricing pressure results in a commoditization of cloud services that deemphasizes enterprise requirements such as guaranteed levels of performance, uptime, and vendor responsiveness, much as has been the case with the Web hosting industry. Notwithstanding, it is the expectation of enterprise management that operating expenses be reduced through the use of cloud computing to replace new and existing IT infrastructure. This difference between expectation and what the industry can deliver at today’s nearzero price points represents a challenge, both technical and organizational, which will have to be overcome to ensure large-scale adoption of cloud computing by the enterprise.
The Essential Characteristics of Cloud Computing
This is where we come full circle and timesharing is reborn. The same forces are at work that made timesharing a viable option 30 years ago: the high cost of computing (far exceeding the cost of the physical systems), and the highly specialized labor needed to keep it running well. The essential characteristics of cloud computing that address these needs are:4
- On-demand access. Rapid fulfillment of demand for computing and continuing ability to fulfill that demand as required.
- Elasticity. Computing is provided in the amount required and disposed of when no longer needed.
- Pay-per-use. Much like a utility, cloud resource charges are based on the quantity used.
- Connectivity. All of the servers are connected to a high-speed network that allows data to flow to the Internet as well as between computing and storage elements.
- Resource pooling. The cloud provider’s infrastructure is shared across some number of end customers, providing economies of scale at the computing and services layers
- Abstracted infrastructure. The cloud end customer does not know the exact location or the type of computer(s) their applications are running on. Instead, the cloud provider provides performance metrics to guarantee a minimum performance level.
- Little or no commitment. This is an important aspect of today’s cloud computing offerings, but as we will see here, interferes with delivery of the services the enterprise demands.
Continue… Credit to: Communications of the ACM
