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August 28, 2008
Benefiting from Cloud Computing Technology Trends
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The emergence of cloud computing as a way to build and deliver always-on, pay-by-the-drink IT services has emerged as one of the hottest topics this year. Major players -- including Amazon, EMC, Google and IBM -- have promoted offerings that proclaim near infinite-scale computing, storage, database and related Web services that can be easily leveraged by talented developers with a browser.
This paper will specifically focus on how Web-scale and commercial enterprises can benefit from current cloud computing technology trends to build a new class of datacenters that are more autonomous and dynamic than traditional implementations. It also will examine how new cloud computing models enable the rapid scaling and reallocation of resources to a wide variety of customers, delivering core cost and agility benefits to purveyors of cloud computing services. And, specifically, we will explore how the change in application workloads is driving a need for accelerated file services to maintain optimized performance.
First, we’ll look at the most frequently mentioned companies and implementations around cloud computing, the latter of which generally fall into three cloud categories: applications, platforms and infrastructure.
In the applications category, Salesforce.com shines as the premier example of delivering a use-specific service over the Internet. On the platform side, Google’s App Engine represents developer-level access to a range of compute, database and storage functions within a specified framework. In the case of Google, that framework relies primarily on the Python programming language, but other options at different service providers also exist. On the infrastructure side, Amazon offers a complete set of offerings from raw CPU horsepower (EC2) to chunks of data storage (S3) through its Web services unit.
Of course, the lines between these companies and categories can easily blur. Salesforce.com offers its version of a platform through its Force.com initiative. And Amazon offers more than just CPUs and storage with services like SimpleDB, essentially providing database functionality as a platform. But the basic categories work to define the functionality, even across companies.
Figure 1: Cloud Computing Segments
Common Characteristics of Cloud Purveyors
All of the major players offering cloud services (including applications, platforms, and infrastructure) share common architectural approaches that benefit any Web-scale or enterprise datacenter. These include the ability to:
- Scale -- Rapidly increase workloads and concurrent users while sustaining solid, non-stop service.
- Mix multiple workloads -- Adapt to varying types of workloads across multiple instances of a single application or multiple applications.
- Drive low costs and small footprints -- Keep costs down through common hardware platforms and increased rack density to minimize power, space, and cooling charges.
- Deliver service reliably -- Sustain service non-stop so that businesses relying on cloud offerings can provide uninterrupted operations.
- Stay data-ready -- Be equipped to handle enormous spikes and volumes of storage, along with the ability to rapidly search, locate and retrieve this data.
- Flexibly deploy resources -- Assign and re-assign hardware and software resources through the use of virtualization technologies or a build-block approach that enables simple re-use.
Adopting Cloud Computing Architectural Approaches
There are several approaches to building cloud computing datacenters. One approach is to architect everything from the ground up, including the file systems, clustering technology and application software, as in the case of Amazon or Google. These companies have made scaling their compute infrastructures a top business priority and invested heavily in technology research and development.
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