networking-info

Joab Jackson, in his " Cloud computing leaving relational databases behind " article, makes some pretty interesting points on the incompatibility of relational databases with cloud-based infrastructures. He first list the various cloud optimized databases: Google's Bigtable , Amazon's SimpleDB , 10Gen's Mongo , AppJet's AppJet database, and Oracle open-source BerkelyDB . And then notes that they all have cloud computing-specific characteristics. They can be run in distributed environments, None of them are transactional in nature, and They all sacrifice some advanced querying capability for faster performance. Since the national security community literally lives and dies by the information in their relational databases, what does that mean if the community adopts cloud technology in order to benefit from the scalability and economy? The key issue here is that in cloud implementations, database material is spread across different locations. Executing complex ...

From Sam Johnston's Taxonomy post Clients ( examples ) are computer hardware and/or computer software which rely on The Cloud for application delivery, or which is specifically designed for delivery of cloud services, and which are in either case essentially useless without it. Services ( examples ) (aka Web Service ) are "software system[s] designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network " [36] which may be accessed by other cloud computing components, software (eg Software plus services ) or end users directly. Application ( examples ) leverages The Cloud in software architecture , often eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computer, thus alleviating the burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Platform ( examples ) (aka Platform as a service ) (the delivery of a computing platform and/or solution stack as a service ) facilitates deployment of applications wi...

In this month's Editor's Perspective, Mr. Harrison Donnelly announced the new KMI Media Group collaborative effort. Military Information Technology will be using the blogosphere to get their government and industry partners to talk about future products and services on-line. For the next two month's, they are "asking government and industry to discuss the cloud issue on the Web, via a pre-established cloud computing blog hosted by subject-matter expert Kevin Jackson. I want to publicly thank Mr. Donnelly, Dean Sprague and KMI Media Group for their interest in cloud computing and their trust in "Cloud Musings" as an unbiased forum for this industry discussion. I look forward to working with them on this project and supporting their future efforts.

Last week, VMware and Cisco announced their latest collaboration for the virtual datacenter of the future. The Cisco Nexus® 1000V distributed virtual software switch is expected to be an integrated option in VMware Infrastructure . "In this highly agile environment, the new Cisco Virtual Network Link (VN-Link) technology on the Nexus 1000V will integrate with VMware’s vNetwork Distributed Switch framework to create a logical network infrastructure that will provide full visibility, control and consistency of the network." If you pair this virtual networking capability with VMware's VDC-OS' capability to manage virtual infrastructures over the on-premise and off-premise cloud the cloud-based datacenter of the future, is now a reality today.

In an interview reported on in this month's Military Information Technology magazine, David Mihelcic, DISA Chief Technology Officer, has laid out his goal for the agency's cloud computing initiative. As CTO, he serves as the agency's senior authority on scientific, technical and engineering matters. Mr. Mehelcic wants the DISA cloud to be able to "enter a piece of software into a cloud, and have that automatically provisioned on servers globally, close to the customers who need the service". DISA's CTO clearly wants to move well beyond the current RACE infrastructure. In the interview, he states that the current stretch goal for provisioning computing capacity is 24 minutes. I say keep pushing. It's good to see that DISA plans to expand their cloud computing activities. What other goals do you think DISA should lay out for itself?

On September 9 th , Bob Lozano posted his kudos to GeoEye for a successful launch of GeoEye -1. (Hey Bob! Where's that post on your "cloud failure" last week?) According to their press release , GeoEye -1 will be able to collect images with a ground resolution of 0.41-meters or 16 inches in the panchromatic, or black-and-white mode, and collect multi spectral , or color imagery, at 1.65-meter resolution. (Under current government rules, the company can only offer the public half-meter images.) I would like to add my congratulations as well, but the thing that immediately comes to my mind is the GeoEye deal to provide "the highest quality satellite imagery available" to Google and the (you know it too) coming Android-powered mash-up between those images, GPS location services and Google-Earth. All you need now is some real-time queuing from a Twitter-powered ad- hoc information network and you really got something going. Isn't the cloud a wonderful thin...

Over the weekend, Maureen O'Gara of SYS-CON media reported that RightScale is now offering a "first in industry" capability to provide application management across multiple cloud infrastructures. It now offers application deployment options on Amazon EC2, GoGrid and Flexiscale. For mission critical applications, this capability could provide enhance fault tolerance and what I would call "cloud redundancy". When I've discussed cloud deployments with some Government customer, they have cited concerns about vendor lock-in. While this cross cloud capability doesn't really address that issue immediately, it does give hope that, in the near future, many vendors will be offering transcloud hosting solutions. According to their website, RightScale is also "working with Rackspace to assure compatibility with their cloud offerings, including Mosso and CloudFS".

... is what we may see if we don't educate our lawmakers now! That seemed to be one of the main point at last week's Google workshop in DC. Berin Szoka's post accurately outlines the challenge using a matrix and the Wuala backup service as an example. "[R]egulations imposed on companies storing users’ personal data may stymie peer-to-peer backup applications like Wuala , which distributes each user’s backup data to other users, but uses encryption to prevent users from accessing the data they’re storing for others. Wuala might be forced to close down if regulations requiring companies to keep records for a set period of time or follow separate procedures for minors were interpreted to apply to each Wuala user." Let's heed the warning because we all know how dense Congress can be !!

Yesterday the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) had a very good session on cloud computing during their plenary session in Falls Church, VA. Led by NCOIC's Bob Marcus, speakers included: Susanne Balle, Architect, Hewlett Packard Scalable Computing and Infrastructure Organization on "Emergence of Cloud Computing" Lauren States, VP, IBM Cloud Computing, and David Lindquist, Cloud Computing Chief Architect/IBM Fellow on "IBM's Perspective on Cloud Computing" Todd Wiseman, Manager, Google's Federal Enterprise Team on "Cloud Computing from Google" Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist for Amazon Web Services on "Amazon Web Services: Cloud Computing in Action" Attendees included representatives from many government agencies including: DISA, US Air Force, US Army, NATO, and National Science Foundation. Their were also serious discussion about forming an "Enterprise Cloud Computing Group". The five hour program, attended...

Today, we're happy to announce what we believe to be an industry first. " Military Information Technology Magazine ", as the publication of record for the defense information technology community, is collaborating with "Cloud Musings" in an exploration of cloud computing technologies within the defense community. This effort will leverage both print and Web 2.0 technologies to set the conditions for a substantive discussion on the business trade space bounded by physically consolidated data centers and the virtually distributed nature of cloud computing. We will also use this effort to explore how Web 2.0 technolgies could be used in the furture to augment and enhance the standard "Request for Information" process. Using a simple online survey , this 60 day effort will gather information from both government and industry on their views about cloud computing technology. MIT correspondents will also conduct in-depth interviews with selected government d...

According to Reuven Cohen in his recent post, Cloud Failure: The Myth of Nines , the whole concept of reliability may be meaningless. "In the case of a physical failure such as Flexiscales recent one, the hardware downtime might be small, but the time to restore from a backup might be considerably longer. A minor cloud failure could cause a cascading series of software failures causing further application outage of hours or even days for those who depended on the availability of the given cloud. Meaning your cloud may achive five nines, but your application hosted on it doesn't." I agree. When dealing with a system of systems, like the cloud, component and function SLA's are meaningless. The cloud architect must brush up on their Bayesian probability theory, plan for failure and ensure that no matter what happens, the users can complete whatever workflow is requested. "One of the major benefits to using cloud computing is that you can make these types of failove...

56% of internet users use webmail services such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail. 34% store personal photos online. 29% use online applications such as Google Documents or Adobe Photoshop Express. 7% store personal videos online. 5% pay to store computer files online. 5% back up hard drive to an online site. And you do so because it's easy. 51% of internet users who have done a cloud computing activity say a major reason they do this is that it is easy and convenient. 41% of cloud users say a major reason they use these applications is that they like being able to access their data from whatever computer they are using. 39% cite the ease of sharing information as a major reason they use applications in cyberspace or store data there. Even in light of your personal concerns. 90% of cloud application users say they would be very concerned if the company at which their data were stored sold it to another party. 80% say they would be very concerned if companies used their photos or ot...

Nikita Ivanov of GridGain offers some excellent insight into the nuts and bolts of getting the cloud to work. Definitely worth a read. To summarize: Most likely you do NOT need cloud computing The best way to think about cloud computing is “Data Center with API” You will spend weeks and months fine tuning your cloud based application You are about to deal with 100s and 1000s of remote nodes You cannot rely on the fact that environment will be homogeneous Debugging problem on a cloud scale requires deep understanding of distributed computing IP multicast will likely not work or work with significant networking limitations. Traffic inside is very cheap or free – but traffic outside is expensive and can “get you” very quickly If you have to use cloud all the time, the economics change and it may be cheaper to traditionally rent in a data center Up time and per-computer reliability is low – comprehensive failover support on grid middleware is a must Static IPs are not guaranteed Almost al...

Many of you would have read the Google Chrome comic-strip and also would have test driven the browser. I have been following few blog posts that have been discussing the technical and business impact but let's take a moment and look at some of the fundamental architectural design principles behind this browser and its impact on the ecosystem of web developers. Embrace uncertainty and chaos: Google does not expect people to play nice. There are billions of pages with unique code and rendering all of them perfectly is not what Google is after. Instead Chrome puts people in charge of shutting down pages (applications) that do not behave. Empowering people to pick what they want and allow them to filter out the bad experience is a great design approach. Support the journey from pages to applications to the cloud: Google embraced the fact that the web is transitioning from pages to applications. Google took an application-centric approach to design the core architecture of Chrome an...

Last week, 3Tera has announced the availability of global cloud services , based on their AppLogic grid operating system. 3Tera is currently running data centers in seven countries (United States, Japan, Singapore, Argentina, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Serbia) and four continents (North America, South America, Asia, and Europe) with additional resources in South America and Australia soon to be available as well. Learn more about how this infrastructure could be used to support national security mission requirements at the next SOA-R Cloud Computing event on October 8th. Peter Nickolov, President and COO of 3TERA, is scheduled to speak.

Ambient Awareness : the ability to acquire, process, and act upon application specific contextual information, taking the current user preferences and state of mind into account. In the September 5 th New York Times article, " Brave New World of Digital Intimacy ", Clive Thompson really got me thinking about how cloud computing, social networking sites like Facebook and adhoc information networking tools like Twitter are combining to mold our future social interactions. This social transformation may also provide new tools to address situational awareness requirements within the national security community. While a Twitter stream of consciousness may, on the surface, seem useless, the paradox of ambient awareness may make such technologies incredibly useful. As Clive Thompson says in his article: "Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets ...

Little did I know that while I was watching the Republicans cheer their standard bearer inside the Xcel Energy Center that the cloud infrastructure was outside defeating the forces of civil obedience! From " The revolution will be Twittered ": "Riot police were dressed in black body armor from head to toe, equipped with advanced communications systems and the latest in crowd-control weaponry. However, the greatest advancement in the age-old grudge match between an angry citizenry and the state was not found on the side of the police and it did not come from the millions of taxpayer dollars. A free and public social-media website called Twitter , which publishes brief messages sent in from cell phones and computers, was a game-changer for protesters, organizers, and journalists covering the event. ....What developed was an ad hoc information system that provided a vast amount of first-hand accounts, insight and the opportunity for rumors and misinformation. By the end ...

Yesterday, Reuven Cohen in ElasticVapor , provided an excellent post on the title subject. I'd like to "second his emotion" and, for my audience, add that cloud computing technologies and techniques are all about netcentricity. As Reuven put it "... cloud computing is about the move away from the desktop to a network centric software model". The SOA-R architecture, that I'm associated with, also leverages virtualization. In fact, the SOA-R approach virtualizes storage, servers and the network. It also virtualizes the individual applications through mission specific workflows on a service oriented architecture. Isn't mash-up technology nothing more than using the drag-and-drop approach to create virtual applications on the fly? Isn't this is how our community needs to access data and create information in an event-driven world?

Recommendation on the cloud from Government Technology : No. 1: Educate your team about cloud computing. Don't just ignore this topic as hype - the future is in this direction. Go to Cloud Security and other reputable online resources to learn more about cloud computing security implications. No. 2: For now, the cloud consists of your outsourced vendor relationships. The required security and trust comes in terms of good contract language, the payment card industry and the National Institute of Standards and Technology 800-53-compliant solutions, and ensuring data privacy. You can do this by always knowing where your data is, encrypting when needed, knowing who has access and who doesn't, and ensuring good management of your outsourced vendors - which isn't easy. No. 3: Try new technologies but be careful with new startups and know who you're really dealing with "in the cloud." Get compliance guarantees with your data - even on short-term pilots. The recent...

John Edwards (not the Senator) of Computerworld sees cloud computing as a "...pay-by-consumption scalable service that's usually free of long-term contracts and is typically application- and operating system-independent". His recent article discusses AT&T, 3Tera, Google, IBM, Sun, Terremark Worldwide, XCalibre and Amazon.

Geva Perry will be presenting at the October 8th SOA-R event. Before attending, you may want to visit his cloud computing dictionary to catch up on the current cloud computing terminology. As the Chief Marketing Officer at GigaSpaces Technologies, Geva is seen as a leading expert and evangelist on cloud computing. His presentation promises to be both exciting and informative.

According to Nicholas Carr, "Chrome is the first cloud browser". If you're not familiar with Chrome, this application is Google's entry into the browser wars. In his blog , Mr. Carr describes it as " the first browser built from the ground up with the idea of running applications rather than displaying pages". For the national security community this event really highlights the current shift from a desktop-centric world to the network-centric world. Words from Google. "All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applic...

Last week a Flightglobal article reported on the softening of Boeing's stance on the need to establish standards for networking protocols across the US and global defence industry. Citing the company's 2004 efforts in creating the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium "to create a body of standards for defence and aerospace firms", their position has apparently changed because open source information is sufficient to meet the objectives of most simulations and the value added by a network's density is not nearly as great as previously believed. I personally believe that the ability to connect network through internet protocols, the rise of open systems and the viability of cloud computing technologies have just made industry specific networking protocols obsolete. I also see the inclusion of a cloud computing session in the NCOIC September Plenary speaks volumes for the future of this approach.

Yes Cisco ! Red Herring's report on Cisco's acquisition of PostPath last week presents a strong case for this. If finalized, PostPath would become Cisco's fifteenth acquisition in less than two years and its eleventh software application and services company. Cisco has bought its way into many application software-dominated markets, including cloud computing, social networking, collaboration, and now email. With cloud computing and social networking blurring the lines between networking hardware, application software, and services, many other traditional IT equipment companies have moved into the software application business. According to analyst, the emergence of cloud computing is changing the economics of networking hardware and software markets