The "Open" Cloud is Coming
Posted on Apr 28, 2009 by Randy Bias
The rhetoric from open source pundits about the ‘closed’ cloud has already started. From Richard Stallman to others there has been nay-saying related to the cloud being ultimately closed and proprietary. This is a fundamentally misguided understanding. Where ever you stand on ‘free markets’, there is no doubt that market...
Cloud Application Architectures
Posted on Apr 25, 2009 by Randy Bias
George Reese’s new book, Cloud Application Architectures, is finally out. I’m probably biased, but I think it’s pretty good as a handbook for building web applications on Amazon’s EC2. I contributed an appendix that describes GoGrid and it’s differences to EC2. There is also a good interview on CloudAve with George Reese...
Infrastructure in the Cloud Era
Posted on Apr 24, 2009 by Randy Bias
Great deck from Ezra Zygmuntowicz of EngineYard and Adam Jacob of OpsCode giving a high level overview of how to manage infrastructure for clouds. The mantra of “program your infrastructure” continues to gain momentum. There isn’t going to be a place for systems admins and operators who cannot write code...
Cloud Standardization Like Internet Standardization?
Posted on Apr 12, 2009 by Randy Bias
One of my favorite and very opinionated folks is Benjamin Black. He just posted a presentation he gave last year that mirrors some of my earlier thoughts about the parallels between the advent and standardization of Internet+TCP/IP and Cloud Computing. On a related note George Reese has a well thought...
Scalable Web Site Resources
Posted on Mar 3, 2009 by Randy Bias
In doing some research for a new GoGrid whitepaper I needed a list of references and resources for folks to get more information on building scalable web applications and infrastructure. Reached out to my twitter network and got a lot of great responses. Thought I should share. Here’s the list:...
Overcast Interviews GoGrid
Posted on Feb 10, 2009 by Randy Bias
Great new cloud computing podcast, Overcast, interviews myself and Michael Sheehan. In this latest episode, #6, we cover cloudcenters in detail. Lots of good talk about why standards matter if done right. I really enjoyed it, although I think there are a couple of editing errors in the beginning. I...
Robert Scoble Interviews GoGrid
Posted on Feb 6, 2009 by Randy Bias
Great interview by Robert Scoble with myself and John Keagy, CEO of GoGrid. We get a good opportunity to explain why GoGrid is different and about cloudcenters in particular, which are an interest of mine.
Defining Infrastructure Clouds
Posted on Jan 28, 2009 by Randy Bias
Unsurprisingly there is still a lot of confusion around ‘cloud computing’ and it’s definition. This even trickles down into attempts by the cloud community to create standards and/or a ‘cloud taxonomy’. The fundamental problem is that we’re still trying to ‘boil the ocean’ when pursuing these exercises. ’Cloud’ covers so...
EngineYard uses Chef, a Puppet Alternative
Posted on Jan 23, 2009 by Randy Bias
Last week two pretty interesting things happened in cloud land. The first was the release by Opscode of Chef a new open source alternative to Puppet. Both are terrific tools for configuration management setting the bar progressively higher in an area that has been woefully neglected by open source software....
Challenges for Cloud Storage
Posted on Jan 22, 2009 by Randy Bias
I had a great time presenting on the challenges for cloud storage today at the SNIA Winter Symposium ‘09 event. It was my first GoGrid-related presentation and it went very well. A very technical audience though, so there is actually quite a bit of content that was given orally in...