Open-source cloud frameworks: A work in progress Computerworld - When IT consultancy OpenCredo set out to launch three new applications within seven months for a major insurance underwriter, it had three goals in mind: Trim development time from the usual years-long pace, allow for frequent changes from the client, and build a system that can handle unpredictable traffic spikes. By using the Cloud Foundry open-source framework along with other open-source software, OpenCredo eliminated "heavy lifting" such as configuring virtual machines and adjusting the size of storage volumes, says CEO Russell Miles. The framework allowed developers to write code locally, share it with the client, and automate the integration, testing, and deployment of application components. Among other advantages, Cloud Foundry makes it easier to scale an application by adding more instances without downtime, Miles says. Because of the way it works with other open-source software, new features can be added in minutes rather than hours. Understanding the Basics 1.
This Startup Could Literally Change The Entire Software Industry Google downshifts App Engine to infrastructure cloud The Importance of Reputation Google I/O Microsoft just downshifted its Azure platform cloud so it could support raw virtual machines and any old applications companies want to cram into them, and now Google has followed suit with Compute Engine. Announced today at the Google I/O extravaganza in San Francisco by Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of infrastructure at the Chocolate Factory, Compute Engine gives Google customers what they have been asking for: Virtual machines that run on Google's vast infrastructure. To illustrate the power of Compute Engine, Hölzle talked about the Cancer Regulome Explorer application created by the Institute for Systems Biology, which used to run its genome-matching algorithms, used in cancer research, on an internal cluster with 1,000 cores. "Anyone with large-scale computing needs can now access the same infrastructure with Compute Engine virtual machines," said Hölzle. Compute Engine is in limited preview right now, and you can sign up for it here.
AWS: the good, the bad and the ugly | awe.sm: the blog Here at awe.sm we have been hosted from the beginning on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Over the past 3 years we’ve learned a lot about what it’s good at, what it’s not so good at, and have formulated our own set of best practices for running a high-availability, high-performance system, which differ in some important ways from Amazon’s own advice. We’re going to talk about two related things: For people who have heard of AWS but haven’t started using it yet, we thought we’d lay out both the benefits and the challenges we’ve encountered.For those already using AWS, we go into some detail of the best practices we’ve picked up for running a high-performance service like ours, where uptime is one of the highest priorities. It’s not an exaggeration to say that AWS has radically changed the economics of running a technology startup, but so slowly and gradually that it crept up on the industry. EC2 is a new way of running software we can deploy major upgrades on new hardware. Lessons learned