Tag Archives: data centers

VMware realizes it doesn’t rule the cloud, boosts support for Amazon

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VMware has long had an aversion to supporting virtualization tools other than its own, even as rivals like Microsoft and Citrix happily built management software that could control the deployment of virtual machines using both their own hypervisors and VMware’s. VMware always had a plausible excuse in that its own vSphere virtualization platform was so widely used that supporting anything else was unnecessary—although Hyper-V’s advances are making that argument less convincing.

via VMware realizes it doesn’t rule the cloud, boosts support for Amazon | Ars Technica.

A database that knows what time it is

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Google has made public the details of its Spanner database technology, which allows a database to store data across multiple data centers, millions of machines and trillions of rows. But it’s not just larger than the average database, Spanner also allows applications that use the database to dictate where specific data is stored so as to reduce latency when retrieving it.

via Google’s Spanner: A database that knows what time it is — Data | GigaOM.

Spanner is cool as a database tool for the current era of real-time data, but it also indicates how Google is thinking about building a compute infrastructure that is designed to run amid a dynamic environment where the hardware, the software and the data itself being processed is constantly changing.

As Microsoft gains, VMware insists that it maintains the upper hand

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“Everybody has a hypervisor today and everybody gives it away for free,” Maritz continued. “What it’s all about are the automation layers on top of it,” and extending the benefits of virtualization from servers to the entire network.

How is VMware achieving that? The company today explained it wants to make “virtual data center” a phrase just as commonly uttered as virtual machines. Instead of merely virtualizing CPU capacity, a virtual data center brings CPU, storage, network services, security, load balancing, and other characteristics together into a single profile that can be easily reproduced and provisioned.

via As Microsoft gains, VMware insists that it maintains the upper hand | Ars Technica.

Google Compute Engine rocks the cloud

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Google took its sweet time entering this corner of the cloud. While Amazon, Rackspace, and others started off with pay-as-you-go Linux boxes and other “infrastructure” services, Google began with the Google App Engine, a nice stack of Python that held your hand and did much of the work for you. Now Google is heading in the more general direction and renting raw machines too. The standard distro is Ubuntu 12.04, but CentOS instances are also available. And you can store away your own custom image once you configure it.

via Review: Google Compute Engine rocks the cloud | Cloud Computing – InfoWorld.

Is 5.3 cents per GCEU a good deal? It depends upon what you want to do with your machine. Rackspace prices its machines by the amount of RAM you get. It has stopped selling the anemic 256MB RAM VMs, but rents its 512MB boxes at only 2.2 cents per hour or $16.06 per month. If you want a machine with 4GB from Rackspace, it will cost you 24 cents each hour, about $175 per month.

And one more tidbit that needs emphasizing however this entire article is loaded with the ins and outs of renting servers in the cloud.

Keep in mind that the file system that comes with your cloud computer — be it on Amazon, Rackspace, or Google — is not backed up in any way unless you code some backup routines yourself. You can run MySQL on your cloud box, but the database won’t survive the failure of your machine, so you better find a way to keep a copy somewhere else too.

Very interesting.  Here is more about pricing.

AOL Gets Small With Outdoor Micro Data Centers

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What might the outer limit for modular data centers look like? It could resemble the micro data center prototype unveiled this week by AOL. The rack-sized enclosure, which will live outdoors, is the first step in AOL’s ambitious plan to reshape its infrastructure using small, unmanned IT facilities that can be managed remotely.

via AOL Gets Small With Outdoor Micro Data Centers » Data Center Knowledge.

OVH Deploys “Container Cube” Data Center

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The French firm OVH is one of the world’s largest hosting companies, with more than 120,000 servers. It has also earned a reputation for its innovative data center designs. DCK readers may be familiar with OVH for the innovative Cube-shaped data center it opened last year in Roubaix, France, which houses servers in an exterior corridor built around an open center, allowing for easy airflow through the facility.

via OVH Deploys “Container Cube” Data Center » Data Center Knowledge.

Amazon cloud outage takes down Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest, & more

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An outage of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud in North Virginia has taken down Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram, and other services. According to numerous Twitter updates and our own checks, all three services are unavailable as of Friday evening at 9:10 p.m. PT.

via Amazon cloud outage takes down Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest, & more | VentureBeat.

With the critical Amazon outage, which is the second this month, we wouldn’t be surprised if these popular services started looking at other options, including Rackspace, SoftLayer, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google’s just-introduced Compute Engine. Some of Amazon’s biggest EC2 outages occurred in April and August of last year.

Is OpenStack the new Linux?

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OpenStack is an evolving mountain of Apache 2-licensed code billed as a “cloud operating system” for the data center. At the same time, OpenStack is a movement, confirmed by the high-energy jabber in the air around me. As with the early days of Linux, the buzz around OpenStack has risen to a roar, with thousands of community members flocking to conferences from Paris to Seoul. The level of interest and growth is phenomenal.

via Is OpenStack the new Linux? | Cloud Computing – InfoWorld.

How Open Compute is a Win for Rackspace

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Rackspace is one of the fastest-growing cloud computing providers. The San Antonio company spent $202 million on servers and storage for customers over the past year, adding more than 12,000 servers in its data centers.

via How Open Compute is a Win for Rackspace » Data Center Knowledge.

To put this in perspective, Amazon EC2 has over 450,000 servers according to this article.

At the Open Compute Summit earlier this month in San Antonio, both Dell and HP showed off server hardware that will work with the new Open Rack design, which features 21-inch wide equipment slots rather than the traditional 19 inches. Roenigk says Open Rack will play a key role in Rackspace’s cloud computing infrastructure in its next-generation data center design.