What exactly is Cloud Computing ?

Ok, I will let the cat among the pigeons.

Have been hearing & trying to read/understand about Cloud computing but getting more & more confused. Could anyone guide me in simple language "What exactly is Cloud Computing ? "

Is it just when you goto internet & store your data over there [internet is Cloud] or when you have a big iron server sitting in your data centre and you run virtual machines on it or something else ?

 

Try...

clicking on this link for a wiki-definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

 

Rsinfo;

Your in good company, Larry Ellison is asking the same question.

Larry Ellison - What The Hell Is Cloud Computing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0


Jake

 

RoyalT, have been banging my head against wall to understand only those things which are referenced to in the article. I know cloud computing is internet based computing but what next ? Who owns the infrastructure but more importantly who owns the data ?

 

Jake,

I would go through the video ASAP. Thanks.

 

There is good article to read.

 

Thats one of the better definitions that I have seen of Cloud Computing. But the security & ownership of data still remains a grey area.

 

Does it mean my in house data center is also a cloud ?

 

It's my understanding that Cloud Computing in the Enterprise world meant the hard drive on the local machine would go away and it would be a terminal with no moving parts.

 

Sort of like the Star Trek computers?

 

or like dumb VT100 terminals we had ages ago ?

 

Arie, then how does virtualisation fits into it ? I have read that virtualisation is a part & parcel of the cloud computing & is aggressively being marketed by all the players.

 

Then what is Private Cloud ?
Definition , Ubuntu Cloud, Private Cloud resource website [whatever that means].

 

Clouds are just groups of computers that respond to a simple request for data.

The point of a cloud is that you don't need to care where the data or processing is happening. You just send your request to "the cloud" and you should get the data you require in the response from the cloud.

So for example, in the past if you wanted a web page you'd send a request to a particular computer. So http://www.mydomain.com would send a request to the single server assigned to www for the mydomain.com domain. That server would respond by returning data in the form of an html document.

With a cloud, the http://www.mydomain.com request would be sent to a device(s) that makes the decision as to where to send the request. Typically that device will hunt round servers assigned to handle such requests and fine the one with the least load. It will then send the request to that one. That computer then returns the html document (either directly to requester, or via some routing device).

The advantages of using clouds are:

You can set up multiple servers to handle requests, and these servers can be anywhere. This makes it straight forward to give similar performance globally. Also the systems can usually handle individual servers failing (the request is just sent to another server) so you get excellent resilience.

You can also simplify your systems because you don't have to care what device is handling the request. It could be unix, windows, mac, mainframe, or anything. You just send it the request and grab the response.

Clouds are typically hosted on the internet, but you could create one inside a local network. That would be a local cloud.

 

ok Reggie, got the basic point. But who owns the data on these "clouds" ? If I outsource my storage needs to someone who owns a "cloud ", what happens to my data if they go bust ? A "cloud" could use failover servers but needn't. What about security ?