On 1/20/2012 4:34 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:
I see "cloud" as inherently implying leasing/renting access to other peoples' equipment. In some sense, it is an extension of outsourcing. Except you may only outsource pieces of a long chain of steps rather then the entire system and there is an implication that you can adjust your outsourcing on the fly.
No criticism of Bil, but if I were placed in charge of a system that depended on being able to adjust an outsourced component or process 'on the fly', the first thing I would do would me to test how quickly it could be transitioned to another vendor or an in-house backup. I have seen several instances where a salesman's assurances of quick recoveries came to a full stop on-the-fly-in-the-ointment.
In each case, the "root cause" was the fact that the System Administration team did not have the training needed to prepare them for a multiple-failure scenario: each vendor assumed that they were not responsible for /anything/ but the smallest possible interpretation of what /they/ were legally obligated to provide, with all questions of integration, presentation, security, recoverability of meta-data, and total-time-to-repower being left to the customer. In effect, they left the companies that had purchased their services holding the bag, looking for help, and facing questions from stockholders about how they got into the mess.
I liken computing in the "Cloud" to the process of flying in clouds: it demands careful preparation, extensive training, and well-maintained hardware /before/ it's a reliable way to get from "A" to "B". In the case of pilots who have "Instrument" certification, that training includes the use of basic instruments such as a compass and airspeed indicator to navigate without being able to see anything outside the aircraft, since advanced electronics and autopilots can't be relied on during systemic failures. In like manner, using "Cloud" computing requires well-trained operators and managers whom have practiced the needed steps to recover, and are prepared to deal with multiple failures at the same time: I have seen something as trivial as a clip-on utility lamp cause a server shutdown because it added just enough electrical load to be the "straw that broke the camel's back", and popped a circuit breaker which cast an entire room into semi-darkness, at the same time it revealed that an apprentice electrician had inserted a "Delta" breaker into a panel wired for "Wye" service, thus interrupting only two legs of a three-phase power system, and leaving the lights in series with the servers and CRT's. Some very interesting effects were visible on the monitors and lights during the time when the responsible parties waited in the almost-dark for me to dig a flashlight out of my case and then lead them to the door.
We recovered the data - at the time, the IS departement was a soup-to-nuts organization, responsible for /every/ aspect of the company's IT, including having nightly backups in the safe, and we took a lot of pictures of the electrical panel before the electricians arrived, just to avoid questions from the insurance carrier. The damage was limited to a few skinned fingers while we rushed around unplugging everything, and one failed ballast in an overhead fixture, plus (of course) some expensive server disks.
The moral of the story is that too many corporations switch to "Cloud" computing as a way to justify using junior-level employees in senior-level positions, and they tend to find out the hard way that managing a "Cloud-based" system requires /more/ expertise and training, not /less/.
FWIW. YMMV. Bill -- Bill Horne 339-364-8487 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
