Cloud Computing

From Consultancy.EdVoncken.NET

Contents 1 The Cloud: hype, or ... 2 Cloud Formations 3 Cloud Infrastructure Providers 4 Cloud Computing Blogs 5 Amazon EC2 6 See Also

[edit] The Cloud: hype, or ...

Although much-hyped, Cloud Computing is a logical evolution in hosting: just add virtualisation, flexible (hourly) payment models, advanced self-service provisioning and hey presto! It's a Cloud! (more specifically, an Infrastructure cloud - see below).

[edit] Cloud Formations

Essentially, there are 3 layers in the Cloud Computing pyramid:

SaaS

Software as a Service. This layer directly delivers software applications - think of webmail, salesforce.com etc.

PaaS

Platform as a Service. This layer delivers a software development platform for your own applications - think of Google Apps

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service. This layer delivers "raw" compute power and storage in the form of (virtual) machines that can run predefined images, or even your own images. Think of Amazon EC2, GoGrid and FlexiScale.

[edit] Cloud Infrastructure Providers

• Amazon Web Services - EC2, S3, SimpleDB etc.
• GoGrid

[edit] Cloud Computing Blogs

There's quite a number of weblogs on Cloud Computing. Just to name a few:

• Amazon Web Services Blog
• All Things Distributed, Werner Vogels' Blog
• RightScale Blog
• GoGrid Blog
• ElasticVapor, Reuven Cohen's (Enomaly) Blog
• Cloudscaling
• CloudSecurity
• CloudPundit
• Plug Into The Cloud - Information Week

Other must-read blogs:

• DataCenterKnowledge

[edit] Amazon EC2

• Creating a new EC2 AMI from within VMware

[edit] See Also

• Amazon Web Services (EC2, S3, SQS)
• Eucalyptus
• StarCluster