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Thread: True clouds

  1. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    AF / HA works great on Onapp - what kind of weaknesses did you note with the SAN structure (or just a weakness in terms of cost of deployment?)
    More or less the huge initial investment in a top notch SAN and actually having to have a secondary SAN as failover if it has to be done right, but in general big $$$ to get a SAN to work optimally, not an easy proposition to get done performance-wise to outperform Local storage, also OnApp Storage will move in right direction with Local Storage and the implementation with SSD this will be huge for the industry the next few years slowing outfacing SAS with SSD

  2. #52
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    I'm confused - I thought the thread was about 'true cloud' - the cost to the provider isnt relevant in this? Surely it's just about the functionality and features being right?

  3. #53
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    I'm confused - I thought the thread was about 'true cloud' - the cost to the provider isnt relevant in this? Surely it's just about the functionality and features being right?
    That's fair it's a bit off topic but you asked for weak links since no else is biting at this yet so I gave you a few maybe from the wrong perspective as provider cost... none of them are true Clouds yet but some are very close at accomplishing this during 2012 there's lots of exciting stuff happening now!

  4. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Henrik Holben View Post

    4. VMvare with their idiotic outrageous pricing structure is slowing pricing themselves out of the market and no longer a dominant monopoly player
    while VMWare certainly doesnt have a monopoly, they are absolutely a dominant player in the market. We are launching VMWare pools in the near future to compliment our existing xenserver pools. Its a different market segment though. The enterprise cloud market is still dominated by vmware and looks like it will be that way for the forseeable future. They price themselves accordingly and the customers who want that platform are willing to pay for it.

  5. #55
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    Quote Originally Posted by Henrik Holben View Post
    That's fair it's a bit off topic but you asked for weak links since no else is biting at this yet so I gave you a few maybe from the wrong perspective as provider cost... none of them are true Clouds yet but some are very close at accomplishing this during 2012 there's lots of exciting stuff happening now!
    What features do you think are missing from current cloud offers that make them not 'true' clouds?

  6. #56
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    What kind of weak links have you guys experienced?
    Flaws are always in design and/or in management/policy.

    I quit using VMWare-based solutions after watching them first virtually neglecting, and finally discontinuing VMWare Server and doing the same on most free products.

    AWS is historically first cloud platform I used and still use, although I will most probably move my remaining EC2 servers onto truer clouds.

    AWS has fundamental flaw of being unable to construct desired instance type (select RAM, CPU etc. as required for the task - no real scalability, no real flexibility.

    Other cloud hosting providers have their flaws as well. Being close in pricing, they are also close in awkwardness.

    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    I'm confused - I thought the thread was about 'true cloud' - the cost to the provider isnt relevant in this? Surely it's just about the functionality and features being right?
    Cost to the provider is related to the cost to customers.
    If the cloud platform is built for corporate use,it's of no interest to me.

  7. #57
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    Is there a difference between a 'corporate' cloud and a 'true' cloud?
    If a cloud looks like a cloud, acts like a cloud, meets all the definitions of a cloud and is priced as a cloud - is it not a true cloud?

  8. #58
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    Is there a difference between a 'corporate' cloud and a 'true' cloud?
    If a cloud looks like a cloud, acts like a cloud, meets all the definitions of a cloud and is priced as a cloud - is it not a true cloud?
    I suppose the question is incorrect.

    Corporate means different market segment. Cost-performance might be significantly better than those cloud solutions aimed at individual users.

    True corporate cloud is just for big users, that's the only difference.

  9. #59
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    There is a difference between Private and Public cloud and I guess those terms are self explanatory for fellow hosting members

  10. #60
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    So a corporate cloud is just a very expensive one?

    Perhaps some offerings from IBM / HP could be considered such? (or even AWS, which is not really aimed at individuals either)

  11. #61
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    What features do you think are missing from current cloud offers that make them not 'true' clouds?
    Quote Originally Posted by masterbo View Post
    Flaws are always in design and/or in management/policy.

    Other cloud hosting providers have their flaws as well. Being close in pricing, they are also close in awkwardness.

    Cost to the provider is related to the cost to customers.
    If the cloud platform is built for corporate use,it's of no interest to me.
    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    Is there a difference between a 'corporate' cloud and a 'true' cloud?
    If a cloud looks like a cloud, acts like a cloud, meets all the definitions of a cloud and is priced as a cloud - is it not a true cloud?
    You know the whole Cloud spectrum is pretty large and it's not easy to write about the whole industry as a whole, I've given a few examples so far the ones I've researched and used, but I do agree with Konstantin on his points... the cost has to trickle down to consumers... my Beef is with alot of providers who use the cloud as a Marketing plot because nowadays all you have to do is add the word "Cloud" and you're hip... "Cloud-this" Cloud-that" alot of false advertising. When you closely examine alot of these so called Cloud providers open up the hood and look inside the machine room you find in reality they are noting but a glorified VPS operation...

    And to answer your last question yes sometimes it's a damn Duck lol a really Hyped up Marketed Shiny Super-Spun Glazed Duck QUACK

  12. #62
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    ROFL :0 Put very well

    Look at Rackspace - they buy slicehost (a vps company) - call it cloud - and hey! They are hip again! (it's still VPS tho)!

    Clouds the market hugely, and distracts from 'real' clouds imho

  13. #63
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    ROFL :0 Put very well

    Look at Rackspace - they buy slicehost (a vps company) - call it cloud - and hey! They are hip again! (it's still VPS tho)!
    Oh that one you can add to the Black list... Rackspace Cloud is definately nothing but a Shiny VPS Duck that's been proven here on WHT...

  14. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    So a corporate cloud is just a very expensive one?

    Perhaps some offerings from IBM / HP could be considered such? (or even AWS, which is not really aimed at individuals either)
    Certain clouds of that types aren't sold to individuals.
    And if they are, they're just an overkill.

    I use Micro EC2 instance at AWS for many years. It's reliable, quick enough and stable. I simply do not need larger instances - they are an overkill.

    Corporate solutions are aimed at massive deployments. I see no need to buy that much resources, that's all. I would either have to sell those to someone else, or just leave them idle.

    Talking of prices. Back in XX century, when hosting was in its stone age, I spent hundreds of dollars monthly, since even shared hosting was extremely expensive.

    Now I pay 15 GBP for hosting that cost me 200 or more USD ten years ago. Current hosting is 2 orders of magnitude as powerful as that from the past, and order of magnitude less expensive.

    Hence I see no sense in buying a hosting that is significantly more expensive than the mentioned sum. Since I like managing my servers myself, that's my hobby - optimize and secure - I just don't need managed solutions.

    I'd better spend those funds on several new DVDs monthly.
    Last edited by Master Bo; 05-18-2012 at 11:55 AM. Reason: typos

  15. #65
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    Quote Originally Posted by masterbo View Post

    Talking of prices. Back in XX century, when hosting was in its stone age, I spent hundreds of dollars monthly, since even shared hosting was extremely expensive.

    Now I pay 15 GBP for hosting that cost me 200 or more USD ten years ago. Current hosting is 2 orders of magnitude as powerful as that from the past, and order of magnitude less expensive.
    Exactly! We don't have to wait until the next century, sometime around end of 2013 and 2014 after this whole "buzz" wave Cloud will die down, prices will consolidate, pricing pressure just like any other industry, what you pay $20 today will cost you half in two years time, sure it's Golden times now ca$hing in on it's infancy, that's why alot of providers have to look forward start thinking about getting mean and lean to survive and prepare for this because it will happen... then we'll talk about density, profit margins, over saturation etc... but it will change the whole way we're doing things now it will all be somewhat Cloud based... then we'll be riding the next wave with Saas PaaS or what ever else they can add a large "S" to the end that'll be the next "big" thing...

  16. #66
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    While some clouds charge more than others, building and operating a 'real' cloud is much more expensive than shared, vps, or even dedicated server provision.

    Take the 'average' shared hosting account now runs to 5-10$ a month. You can put maybe 1,000 accounts on a generic server with 32GB ram. That's Up to 10,000 a month in revenue.

    Take a cloud 'average' of $40 per GB of ram - with hypervisor overhead and space , that's about 1,000 a month in revenue for the same server. Now factor in SAN, failover and spare capacity, etc....

    I honestly don't think cloud is going to get much cheaper in time.

  17. #67
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    Take a cloud 'average' of $40 per GB of ram - with hypervisor overhead and space , that's about 1,000 a month in revenue for the same server. Now factor in SAN, failover and spare capacity, etc....

    I honestly don't think cloud is going to get much cheaper in time.
    Nope you're wrong, just to give you an example with On App, before you needed a large big $$$ SAN to even consider deploying a Cloud, you don't need that anymore, basically "barriers to entry" are being lowered overall for most so let's say a typical Controller and Hypervisor will not be big deal for most to get into the Cloud hosting space... I wouldn't be surprised that the $40 GB price now will be about half in two years time... it will happen as the market gets more and more saturated more competition more choices etc it's a natural market progression it will happen to the Cloud industry too...

  18. #68
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    ... I honestly don't think cloud is going to get much cheaper in time.
    There are many things adding to the cost.
    I think clouds will go less expensive, it just won't be too quick.

    Shared hosting could finally become a set of hosted applications and also move into clouds.
    "Resistance is futile".

  19. #69
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    You still need a SAN, OnApp vSAN is 'some way' away from production release. The point remains that a cloud server will make a tenth of a shared hosting server, and you still need to have spare hypervisors to cover failover, as well as lots of capacity on tap.

    Cloud, compared to VPS, dedicated is very competetively priced (from most providers)

  20. #70
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    I want to address a couple of comments about AWS.First, while it is not HA, AWS is very elastic. Yes you do not have fine-grained control of the server specs, but enough for most people. More importantly, you can easily move and clone EBS volumes, store efficient delta snapshots, replicate those between regions and instantly turn them into machine images. This is a very powerful capability, and one the other large-scale retail clouds do not have any answer to.

    The other innovation that improve's their elasticity and their cost structure is the spot pricing instances. As we've discussed, having excess capacity is absolutely critical to elasticity. This becomes a very capital intensive business, very quickly. The prices passed on to consumers, has to include their share of all the capacity that is not being used. AWS spot instances help address this, by generating some revenue from the extra capacity that would otherwise be idle and built into the costs paid for demand instances. Then of course, they have also the reserved instances which provide some of the best pricing in the industry, in exchange for some up-front capital and a loss of elasticity. Just like snap shot instances, many customers cannot take advantage of it but those who do help Amazon manage their capital and get the most paid utilization from their services, further reducing costs to on-demand instances.

    And of course, the on-demand instances are paid for hourly; very few outside the large retail clouds are offering this and it is simply because they cannot afford the capacity required to handle so much variable business. There is a very high-barrier to entry in this segment and I do not see that ever changing, regardless of innovations such as OnApp SAN.

    Amazon has now reduced their prices several times for EC2. I'm not aware of another provider doing that. This signals to me that Amazon is at a maturity level where most of the very risky variance now washes out in their enormous volume. Its not going to get easier for other companies to reach this same level of volume; the landscape is littered with completely unknown providers all offering the same services, at the same prices as each other.

  21. #71
    Quote Originally Posted by Henrik Holben View Post
    Nope you're wrong, just to give you an example with On App, before you needed a large big $$$ SAN to even consider deploying a Cloud, you don't need that anymore, basically "barriers to entry" are being lowered overall for most so let's say a typical Controller and Hypervisor will not be big deal for most to get into the Cloud hosting space... I wouldn't be surprised that the $40 GB price now will be about half in two years time... it will happen as the market gets more and more saturated more competition more choices etc it's a natural market progression it will happen to the Cloud industry too...
    granted, this is all true.. but, end of the day, hosting is a service - and what you will likely see, overtime, is a separation in pricing. I do believe you will see cheaper and cheaper cloud offerings, just like you did with shared hosting, dedicated server hosting, etc. but, when this happens, you will also see a separation in pricing, where there will be providers whos pricing is much higher then others. A service is not a commodity - lowest price doesnt win. We have been offering higher end, higher priced shared hosting for years and its a very stable offering and continues to have a high market demand - even though much cheaper options are available. I would speculate that something similar will happen in the cloud space over time..

  22. #72
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    I would agree with Andrew above.

    Also, Amazon can drop prices because they are already one of the most expensive clouds in the business!

  23. #73
    Quote Originally Posted by jroc View Post

    And of course, the on-demand instances are paid for hourly; very few outside the large retail clouds are offering this and it is simply because they cannot afford the capacity required to handle so much variable business.
    I would not equate hourly billing to an ability to afford or not afford capacity. We offer daily billing for example, but, its a systems limitation, nothing to do with capacity. In the new system we are launching, we are considering options with scaling price points per day, per hour and per minute usage model (discounts on longer commits). We do not expect to see any significant change to the utilization:capacity ratio between daily, hourly or by the minute resource billing... all more granular billing does is allow customers to be even more efficient and not pay for the day when they only need the resources for a few hours. But, people today will add those same resources if they need it regardless if its by the day or hour. the capacity equation doesnt change - you actually lose capacity flexibility, and need more of it on hand, with less granular utility billing as the capacity gets cycled less quickly
    Last edited by cartika-andrew; 05-18-2012 at 01:05 PM.

  24. #74
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    You still need a SAN, OnApp vSAN is 'some way' away from production release. The point remains that a cloud server will make a tenth of a shared hosting server, and you still need to have spare hypervisors to cover failover, as well as lots of capacity on tap.
    That's the beauty of the new OnApp Storage you don't need a SAN anymore when it comes out in Beta this Summer, I think OnApp has very smartly figured this one out with Local Storage... all this talk of "lots of capacity on tap" will be replaced with Density and I know you don't like to hear it but we'll be talking about over-commit even the average Cloud hard disk is currently only about a third used this will be consolidated and made more efficient... but I disagree with you comparing Shared hosting clients vs Cloud clients it's totally different customer base and dynamics in play it's really apples to oranges totally different ballgame and market...

  25. #75
    Quote Originally Posted by Henrik Holben View Post
    That's the beauty of the new OnApp Storage you don't need a SAN anymore when it comes out in Beta this Summer, I think OnApp has very smartly figured this one out with Local Storage...
    applogics has been offering local storage solutions for years. It does not dramatically lower the cost to deliver the service. There are advantages and disadvantages to both local storage and SAN storage models. Even if this new onapp solution is perfect and ready to go, it will not do away with SAN based solutions. The cloud of the future will have multiple storage options, and each one will be suited to a specific role, task and/or workload. The same way you have tier'ed storage options now, but, it will simply be expanded. There is no single magic solution out there - the answer is a flexible solution allowing deployment across all sorts of infrastructure, etc.. things will continue to evolve, but, nothing will do away with SANs forever.. just like 1U pizza boxes didnt do away with mainframes like intel promised us so many years ago..

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