With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what e...| By Billy Marshall | Article Rating: |
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| November 14, 2008 07:30 AM EST | Reads: |
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Billy Marshall's Open Source Blog
The problem with the notion of “Windows for EC2” is that it perpetuates the broken, legacy model of tying your application to the infrastructure upon which it runs. In the legacy model, applications became artificially tied to the physical server upon which they ran, and server utilization was low because it is very difficult to run multiple applications on a single instance of a general purpose operating system.
The reason it is difficult to run multiple applications on a single instance of a general purpose operating system is because each application has unique needs which conflict or compete with the unique needs of other applications. Virtualization technology, such as that provided by VMware or Citrix with XenServer, breaks the bond of the application to a physical server by placing a layer of software, called a hypervisor, on the physical hardware beneath the operating system instances that support each application. The applications are “isolated” from one another inside virtual machines, and this isolation eliminates the conflicts.
Amazon embraces this virtualization model by using Xen to enable their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. So what's the problem? If the OS instances are not tied to the physical servers any longer (indeed you do not even know which physical system is running your application on EC2, nor do you need to know), why am I raising a hullabaloo over a “broken model?” The reason this new model of Windows for EC2 is broken is because your application is now artificially coupled to EC2. When you begin with a Windows Amazon Machine Image (AMI), install your application on top, configure-test, configure-test, configure-test, configure-test, configure-test to get it right, and then save the tested configuration as a new AMI, the only place you can run this tested configuration of your application is on Amazon's EC2. If you want to run the application on another virtualized cloud, say maybe one provided by RackSpace, or Terremark, or GoGrid, or even your own internal virtualized cloud of systems, you have to install the application yet again, configure-test, configure-test, configure-test, configure-test, configure-test to get it right again, and then save the tested configuration on the other cloud service. Why don't we just stop the madness and admit that binding the OS to the physical infrastructure upon which it runs is a flawed approach when applications run as virtual machine images (or virtual appliances) atop a hypervisor or virtualized cloud of systems like EC2?
The reason that we are continuing the madness is because madness is all we have ever known. Everyone knows that you bind an operating system to a physical host. Operating systems are useless unless they bind to something, and until the emergence of the hypervisor as the layer that binds to the physical host, the only sensible approach for operating system distribution was to bind it to the physical host. When you buy hardware, you make it useful by installing an operating system as step one. But if the operating system that you install as step one in the new virtualized world is a hypervisor in lieu of a general purpose operating system, how do we get applications to be supported on this new type of host? Here's your answer -- what we previously knew as the general purpose operating system now needs to be transformed to just enough operating system (JeOS or “juice”) to support the application, and it should bind to the application NOT THE INFRASTRUCTURE.
Virtualization enables the separation of the application from the infrastructure upon which it runs – making possible a level of business agility and dynamicism previously unthinkable. Imagine being able to run your applications on-demand in any data-center around the world that exposes the hypervisor (any hypervisor) as the runtime environment. Privacy laws prevent an application supporting medical records in Switzerland from running in an Amazon datacenter in Belgium? No problem, run the application in Switzerland. Need to run the same application in Belgium in support of a new service being offered there next month? No problem, run it on Amazon's infrastructure in Belgium. The application has to support the covert operations associated with homeland security and it cannot be accessed via any Internet connection? No problem, provide it as a virtual appliance for the NSA to run on their private network. Just signed a strategic deal with RackSpace that provides an extraordinary level of service that Amazon is not willing to embrace at this time? No problem, shut down the instances running on EC2 and spin them up at RackSpace. All of this dynamic capability is possible without the tedious cycle of configure-test -- if we will simply bind the operating system to the application in order to free it from the infrastructure and let it fly into the clouds.
So why doesn't Microsoft simply allow Windows to become an application support infrastructure, aka JeOS, instead of a general purpose operating system that is bound to the infrastructure? Because JeOS disrupts their licensing and distribution model. Turning a ship as big as the Microsoft Windows licensing vessel might require a figurative body of water bigger than the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans combined. But if they don't find a way to turn the ship, they may find that their intransigence becomes the catalyst for ever increasing deployments of Linux and related open source technology that is unfettered by the momentum of a mighty business model. Folks with valuable .Net application assets might begin to consider technology such as Novell's mono project as a bridge to span their applications into the clouds via Linux.
I can tell you that there are lots of folks asking lots of questions about how to enable Windows applications in the “cloud.” I do not believe the answer is “Windows for EC2” plus “Windows for GoGrid” plus “Windows for RackSpace” plus “Windows for [insert your data-center cloud name here].” If Microsoft does not find a way to turn the licensing ship and embrace JeOS, the market will eventually embrace alternatives that provide the business agility that virtualization and cloud computing promises.
Billy Marshall is part of a star-studded lineup of speakers at SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo. Between them, they'll be covering every aspect of the hottest IT topic for years, with not just Amazon but also IBM, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Intel, HP and a host of others all offering, using or developing high-end computing services typically described as “cloud computing” - through which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided as a service using Internet technologies.
Forrester Research analyst James Staten calls cloud computing "classic disruptive innovation - where the mainstream dismisses the product and small companies have time to create a real differentiated value." But there are so many offerings just now that what infrastructure architects are looking for above all is a set of organizing principles they can use to guide them in choosing between them all.
Such principles. and a host of associated topics, will be addressed in San Jose by a Top Speaker Faculty that includes:
- Dr Werner Vogels - VP & CTO, Amazon.com (Keynote)
- Mike Feinberg - Senior Vice President, Cloud Infrastructure Group, EMC
- Steve Herrod - CTO, VMware
- David Bernstein - VP & GM of Network Applications Infrastructure, Cisco
- Rob Weltman - Director of Grid Services, Yahoo!
- Peter Nickolov - President CTO, 3tera
- Kevin Haar - President & CEO, Appistry
- Songnian Zhou - Co-Founder & CEO, Platform Computing
- Patrick Harr - CEO, Nirvanix
- Gerrit Huizenga - Cloud Solutions Architect, IBM
- John Keagy - CEO & Co-Founder, GoGrid/ServePath
- Sajai Krishnan - CEO, ParaScale
- Reuven Cohen - Founder & Chief Technologist, Enomaly
- Mike Eaton - CEO, Cloudworks
- Jonathan Bryce - Founder at Mosso (Rackspace)
- Nati Shalom - CTO, GigaSpaces
- Don MacAskill - CEO & Chief Geek, SmugMug
- Billy Marshall - Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, rPath
- Dr Thorsten von Eicken - CTO & Founder, RightScale
- Jonathan Pyke - Chief Strategy Office, Cordys
- Jason Stowe - Founder & CEO, Cycle Computing
- David Young - Co-Founder & CEO, Joyent
- Dave Durkee - Founder, CEO & Technical Director, ENKI
- John Janakiraman - CTO, Skytap
- Stuart Charlton - Chief Software Architect, Elastra
- Lars Leckie, Principal, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
- Dr Rich Wolski - Professor, U.C. Santa Barbara
- Javier Soltero - Co-Founder & CEO of Hyperic
- Omer Trajman - Director of Field Engineering, Vertica Systems
- Rachel Chalmers - Senior Analyst, Enterprise Software, The 451 Group
and with a special Cloud Bootcamp on November 20 led by - Alan Williamson, Founder at Blog-City.com, Creator of BlueDragon
All breakout sessions are all listed in further detail here.
Speaker Faculty - SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo
Register Today for Cloud Computing Expo and Save $100 !
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Published November 14, 2008 Reads 11,158
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
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More Stories By Billy Marshall
Prior to founding rPath, Billy served as Red Hat's Vice President of North America Sales from 2001 until 2005.Billy conceived and oversaw the launch of Red Hat Network, the platform that enabled Red Hat's subscription revenue model. Billy also worked in IBM Global Services where he worked with global leaders such as Boeing, Ford, Eaton, Mercedes Benz, and Raytheon.
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what e...Feb. 16, 2012 07:30 AM EST Reads: 782 |
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We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else h...Feb. 16, 2012 05:30 AM EST Reads: 820 |
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"Having been in the IT field for many years, I believe the cloud computing chapter in the industry is an exciting one and I am proud to be a part of it," said National Reconaissance Office (NRO) Chief Information Officer Jill T. Singer Tuesday, as it was announced that she was one of 10 winners of the 2012 CloudNOW "Top Ten Women in Cloud" Awards.
2011 was a year of rapid adoption for public and private cloud services. Instant and on-demand server provisioning was the driving force behind the massive growth. On top, cloud server templates and script automation simplified application installation for simple and pre-defined application stacks, but have not targeted more complex enterprise application environments.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, John Yung, CEO of Appcara, will discuss how 2012 will be the year for app...
As more enterprises are adopting clouds, the nature of cloud computing is changing. Previously, clouds were used to test applications or for non-mission critical applications. Today, enterprises are using clouds for cost-saving advantages and launching more mission critical applications that have defined performance needs.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Shepcaro, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Telx, will discuss how distributed computing has many advantages. It wou...
Building a cloud computing environment with on-demand access to compute, network, and storage resources requires an elastic infrastructure at multiple levels. Virtualization combined with x86 servers has transformed the way we scale out compute resources. Unfortunately, legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage architectures are rooted in rigid mainframe-era designs, and are fundamentally mismatched with the dynamic, shared modern data center.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, ...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else h...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what e...
With Big Data Expo 2012 New York (co-located with 10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where ...
With Big Data Expo 2012 New York (co-located with 10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
Can you bring services from the cloud to your customers faster and have them adopt it with ease of use or bring the power of bundled services to the fingertips of your clients without creating new rigid ‘apps stove pipes'? Do you want to prevent your business running away to public and unmanageably immature cloud services?
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Hans van de Koppel, Sr. Enterprise Architect at Capgemini, will take Cloud Expo delegates to the developing world of clou...
Is Big Data destined for only the top 3,000 companies worldwide? What about medium or small companies who are equally as data-driven? Is there a place for Big Data in SMB markets? When I talk to SMB companies about their use of public cloud services, it’s a no-brainer. Pay as you go, lower costs up...
Israel-based startup Porticor launches this week with technology aimed at giving enterprises a way to encrypt data held in cloud computing services, including those from Amazon and Rackspace.
Porticor Virtual Private Data is focused on protecting data at rest in cloud-based computing centers where ...
Statistics matter, not only in business, but increasingly also in our social life - well, at least in our social media life. Some of the statistics I noticed this week were round numbers, like 1000. With 1000 representing both the number now showing under "followers" in Twitter and the revenue numbe...
Let's face it right now the cloud is pretty immature. The level of automation and management of these environments are analogous to the early assembly lines, but it won't be this way long. This is not the industrial revolution and it moves at a wicked fast pace. Before we know it the next generation...
In previous posts such as Cloud Computing: Hype, Vision or Reality?, Hyped Cloud Technologies, PAAS is not Mainstream yet, SaaS is going Mainstream, Future applications: SaaS or traditional? I discussed Cloud Computing.
Recently I read Joe McKendrick's interesting article titled:Cloud Computing Mar...
Having covered Cloud Foundry, Force.com, Google App Engine and Red Hat OpenShift, we now take a look at Microsoft’s PaaS offering, Windows Azure.
Microsoft Windows Azure Platform is a Platform as a Service offering from Microsoft. It was announced in 2008 and became available in 2010. Since then Mi...
Many virtualization vendors offer certifications. With that in mind, is there really any value in pursuing these certifications from Microsoft and VMware? Is one more "valuable" than the other?
First, let me say that I am a big proponent of technical certifications. That is the reason why I have my...
There are – according to about a bazillion studies - 4 billion mobile devices in use around the globe.
It is interesting to note that nearly everyone who notes this statistic and then attempts to break it down into useful data (usually for marketing) that they almost always do so based on OS or dev...
What are some good reasons to adopt cloud storage? Cost, durability and flexibility.
So let me talk about performance, instead.
As part of our daily testing, we do routine performance measurements across a broad swath of cloud storage providers. It gives us a check to ensure that the various Cloud...
They all automatically combine disaster recovery with backup, since the backups are stored offsite at the cloud provider’s data center.
The better cloud backup options completely automate both backup and restore, removing what historically has been a complex, order-and process-intensive, manual tas...








