What is cloud?

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as per the title, we seem to have a debate going regarding what a true cloud server is. I am of the opinion that a true cloud server is hosted in a redundant virtual environment where the other parties believe that moving a local server into a DC transforms it into a cloud server.

What do you guys think?
 
As far as I am concerned, the Cloud means doing all the processing and storage in a secure/redundant location separate from the user's interface. So accessing your email through a web browser when the server is two floors below you is considered the cloud. The environment need not be virtual per se (like logging into a VPS).
 
cloud also means scaling processing and storage on demand - elastically.
 
agentrfr said:
So accessing your email through a web browser when the server is two floors below you is considered the cloud. The environment need not be virtual per se (like logging into a VPS).
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the idea of something being in the cloud is the ability to access it from multiple locations, having the exchange in your building or even at a different site in your VPN is still a local resource. If the power fails or telkom goes down everyone losses access.
 
How times have changes - back in the day my R50 a Month Education taught me this , Well not in the exact words lol

a cloud is a visible mass of liquid droplets or frozen crystals made of water or various chemicals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of a planetary body
 
I agree with agentr and in addition it is important that these are viewed as on-demand services. The provisioning of the service must provide some latitude in licensing. So the service offered is often done on a bill in arrears basis. For example if I offer a cloud service to accountants to record their timesheets, I may invoice the client based on the number of persons submitting timesheets rather than just invoicing based on the number of users.
You can also look at Wikipedia (not a referenceable source of course) they have a bit of history about it as well as different types of cloud models and in reality this is nothing desperately new.

Regards

Tim
 
Tim the Techxpert said:
For example if I offer a cloud service to accountants to record their timesheets, I may invoice the client based on the number of persons submitting timesheets rather than just invoicing based on the number of users.
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The number of persons submitting timesheets apposed to number of users? The amount of users is defined by the total amount of concurrent connections allowed ie we have RDS licenses for our pastel server, two are used by members of our accounts department at the same time and a third is used by members of the executive staff to access at random. We can only have 3 users logged into the system at once but have a total of 6 staff making use of the service. This results in us only paying for 3 users as the max usage at any point in time is 3.

This example involves licensing based on SPLA, there the users matter. Custom software on the other end may make use of a totally different licensing structure and even and opensource OS which will also run on all 4 options below, so in essisance licensing shouldn't have anything to do with cloud?

The above is all SPLA related which is a discussion on its own. My question relates to the following:

A) I host my server locally and access it via our fixed IP from anywhere
B) I host my server in IS's datacentre, this server is dedicated server I rent from an ISP
C) I host my server in a virtual environment provided to me by an ISP.
D) I host my server on the following package : http://www.afrihost.com/site/product/cloud_hosting?src=nav

Where they are branded as follows : A) local with remote access B) Dedicated server C) Virtual private server D) "Cloud" server

So why is D labeled as cloud as apposed to C which is an identical solution and what sets A and B apart from D? For the sake of the argument we can assume that I will be installing Ubuntu server and using it as a proxy, that means licensing will have no effect on the options above.
 
Hi There,
With option C you are providing the hardware and you need to change it as the requirements increase. With optioon D Afrihost is required to provide sufficient processing and capacity to meet your requirements. The same is true for A and B vs D.

With the cloud environment you are entering into an agreement with the provider that they will be able to deliver to you services within an agreed response time to transactions. They are also providing backup and expansion capabilities that you would have to provide with options A,B and C

Hope that helps

Regards

Tim

Follow me on @TechXperTim
 
Funny enough I asked myself that question yesterday and did some research on it, Well I kinda thought I knew what it was all this time, But I said I must find the real definition of "cloud based services" what is the cloud...

Basically what I've learnt and what it means to me is, cloud computing is a single point of access for a number of apps that
(i.e Google Apps- email, document (word, excel power point), Maps etc.) You can access anywhere in the world provided
you have a internet connection, be able to edit it and collaborate. It doesn't stop there,

The point of the cloud is to limit or eliminate the need for any software or high end hardware to be used on the users side
I.e you do not need to install Microsoft office to be able to use Google Apps Email, Excel, Doc etc...
Its all web based....

With this being said, Soon we shouldn't have the need to be sitting at our old brown wooden desks and slaving away, But rather we will/can be anywhere in the world and do our daily job function. well of cause that's if you don't do manual labor or anything like you, (you know what I mean)

:D
 
The above response relates to saas, you are correct in defining google aps as cloud.
 
I've read all of the responses and all of them are wrong. Anyone mentioning that the cloud allows you to access "apps" from an internet connection etc... well, before the cloud, that's what web apps do. And the reason why the shift was made from windows/desktop applications to hosted, web applications.

The cloud is simple. It's autonomous of hardware, regardless of what software it runs. Thus a CPU or a hard drive can kak, or an entire server for that matter, it shouldn't affect the cloud because the cloud is spread across several servers. Compared to a VPS that is hosted on 1 physical server. Even though you can run multiple VPS on 1 server and reduce your overall server hardware requirements, this isn't cloud.

That being said, I can understand why people are confused to what the cloud actually is. Any web app you've ever used is (according to you guys) "the cloud", but I'm saying it's more related to the technology/hardware and the term comes from there. Your web app running on the cloud = awesomeness.
 
AcidRaZor said:
I've read all of the responses and all of them are wrong. Anyone mentioning that the cloud allows you to access "apps" from an internet connection etc... well, before the cloud, that's what web apps do. And the reason why the shift was made from windows/desktop applications to hosted, web applications.

The cloud is simple. It's autonomous of hardware, regardless of what software it runs. Thus a CPU or a hard drive can kak, or an entire server for that matter, it shouldn't affect the cloud because the cloud is spread across several servers. Compared to a VPS that is hosted on 1 physical server. Even though you can run multiple VPS on 1 server and reduce your overall server hardware requirements, this isn't cloud.

That being said, I can understand why people are confused to what the cloud actually is. Any web app you've ever used is (according to you guys) "the cloud", but I'm saying it's more related to the technology/hardware and the term comes from there. Your web app running on the cloud = awesomeness.
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Agreed, a true cloud is 100% redundant, if one of the nodes goes down a second simply steps in without the end user knowing. Google is an example of cloud, the service is load balanced over the world in a network of nodes that are ready to pick up the slack if another one goes down.
 
Store data on clould servers, and you can edit and visit it anywhere has a cumputer
 
Have you ever seen the rain on a cloudless day?

Cloud storage such as Dropbox is yet another impractical and unsafe cloud storage. Your data on someone else's server in some foreign country. Legally, you forsake ownership once property leaves your premises. Your host and his friendly neighbourhood hacker and their industrial spy friends can do with your life what they like. Oh, not to mention large parts of SA where there are no landlines and gsm only good enough for sms. How do those in favour of the cloud see this?
 
Dutchuncle777 said:
Cloud storage such as Dropbox is yet another impractical and unsafe cloud storage. Your data on someone else's server in some foreign country. Legally, you forsake ownership once property leaves your premises. Your host and his friendly neighbourhood hacker and their industrial spy friends can do with your life what they like. Oh, not to mention large parts of SA where there are no landlines and gsm only good enough for sms. How do those in favour of the cloud see this?
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Depends on the cloud.

Generally the clouds floated by the Big Players are reliable, secure, and won't quickly dissipate. Look for those who've invested more than a billion dollars in their cloud. They have the systems disciplines, management, redundancy, skills and security measures to keep your data safe, or at least as safe as things can be this side of the grave.

Low-level clouds that spring up in the morning quickly dissipate in the noonday sun.

Remember, even on-premise data is at risk as machines can suffer catastrophic failure through human error, theft, natural disaster, &c, &c. It happens every day. One set of backups is seldom enough. Oh, and encryption is a good idea if your have valuable business data.
 
Arthur said:
Look for those who've invested more than a billion dollars in their cloud. They have the systems disciplines, management, redundancy, skills and security measures to keep your data safe, or at least as safe as things can be this side of the grave.
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The thing is, even with amazon's cloud being _probably_ the biggest and best yet, users still had to shut down and migrate their instances from the east coast to the west coast when hurricane sandy hit - this shows that no matter how big you go, redundancy isn't always guaranteed. I guess redundancy is also subjective, since your data can really only be in one place at any one time while it's in use. While connectivity might be redundant, access to storage might not.
 
aquadog said:
The thing is, even with amazon's cloud being _probably_ the biggest and best yet, users still had to shut down and migrate their instances from the east coast to the west coast when hurricane sandy hit - this shows that no matter how big you go, redundancy isn't always guaranteed.
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It was only the biggest natural disaster in New York's history. 60 Hudson Street (mother of all peering points) went down 24 hours in because they ran out of gas for the backup generators. That's how bad it was.
 
Natural disaster and the cloud. Backup your backups elsewhere

https://heavenawaits.wordpress.com/natural-gas-basins-as-a-danger-during-earthquakes/

https://heavenawaits.wordpress.com/parting-the-land/

The owner of that forum is American, a scientist and of the opinion that America may split. I told her of a dream I had (many such in the past did transpire more or less as shown) and she sent me the links above in response. This is what I "saw" in the same way that I "foresaw" the 1996 Worcester bombings, the air crashes at Bredasdorp and Windhoek in January 2008, etc. Oh, also the 2011 floods up-country was posted on the internet months prior.
 
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