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This is a pet peeve of mine, but when you are running your own servers in a datacenter, that is not "your own cloud", it's just your own servers. I realize the

This is a pet peeve of mine, but when you are running your own servers in a datacenter, that is not "your own cloud", it's just your own servers. I realize the cloud is just a marketing term and it doesn't really mean something, but if I move my single heroku dyno app to my own dedicated server sitting in my basement, did I just move it to my own private cloud?

mgkimsal 13y ago
I think you just rained on your own parade, that's all.
dpark 13y ago
If you have a server farm that allocates VMs dynamically on demand, you have something much different than a dedicated server, and it is quite reasonable to call this a private cloud.
- asdasf 13y ago
  Except people were doing that long before the "cloud" marketing nonsense started,
  - sp332 13y ago
    Well they needed something to counteract the dusty image of the term "mainframe".
  - dpark 13y ago
    You just don't like the word "cloud" at all, and that's fine, but that is a different complaint from the original, which was basically that the term is being misused when combined with the term "private". If we are going to use the term "cloud" and assign it a meaning, we can certainly use it to refer to private clouds. If EC2 is a cloud for me, is it not also a cloud when Amazon builds services on it?
    - michaelt 13y ago
      If we're going to assign a meaning to the term 'cloud', shouldn't we assign it to something we don't already have a word for, so it actually describes something? If I start two VMs on my desktop and we call that a 'cloud' then the word 'cloud' isn't terribly useful in describing anything.
      - arethuza 13y ago
        Worth noting that "cloud" was also used to describe private MPLS networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiprotocol_Label_Switching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiprotocol_Label_Switching
      - dpark 13y ago
        I don't think the accepted definition of "cloud" is just "group of VMs". Your two VMs does not constitute a cloud. You can set up ten thousand VMs on a thousand servers and not have anything that would reasonably be considered a cloud if you did it manually. "Cloud" generally implies simplicity and automation. You could build a cloud with physical machines instead of VMs so long as you have automatic ways to allocate and manage the machines' lifecycles.
    - asdasf 13y ago
      I have no problem with the word cloud. I have a problem with it being used to mean "anything I call cloud". If we are going to use the term and assign it a meaning, then lets assign it a meaning instead of using it for everything from "webmail" to "virtual machines" to "paying someone else to do something for me".
  - dspillett 13y ago
    People were making out of band HTTP requests long before the irritating term AJAX was coined too. The name being made up after the method started being used does not mean the method can't be called the name if the properties fit (likewise as much as the marketers think otherwise, making up a new name doesn't make a thing technically revolutionary!)
- dec0dedab0de 13y ago
  Agreed, except that your internal documentation can't abstract away all the infrastructure. At least for the company as a whole.
- revelation 13y ago
  No, thats ridiculous. You are still paying for all the servers in the server farm, even if you have decided to waste another year of Moores law to add a bulky abstraction layer on top. The whole point of a cloud to a business is that you can adapt to changing needs without having to pay for all the infrastructure all the time. (You didn't think the suits talk about "the cloud" all the time because they fancy the technology, right?)
  - dpark 13y ago
    > You are still paying for all the servers in the server farm Amazon is paying for all the servers in the EC2 server farm. Does that stop EC2 from being a cloud? TestingBot is spinning up VMs dynamically to scale out test infrastructure on demand. Their use case is basically the ideal cloud use scenario. They've built a system of servers that enables them to do all of the things typically associated with clouds, which means they've built a cloud. You're stuck thinking of TestingBot needing a bunch of servers, and seeing the tradeoff as dedicated servers vs cloud servers. In reality, it's TestingBot's customers who need a bunch of servers. So TestingBot built a cloud for their customers. They aren't setting aside N servers for each customer. They're building a cloud with the capacity for X servers and carving out of that on-demand.
    - revelation 13y ago
      Yes, EC2 is not a cloud for Amazon. If tomorrow everyone moves away from it, they will be stuck with many millions in sunk costs for hardware, rack space, datacenters, paid peerings.. they didn't rent that stuff by the hour. Feel free to replace Amazon with TestingBot in this description as you see fit, because right now you are confused as to what is a cloud to whom. (Mind you, I'm still only discussing the financial side here, as this was the reason the original post cited. In technical terms, of course they are still a cloud, but so is the mainframe emulator on my Raspberry)
      - hhw 13y ago
        Somebody somewhere always has to pay for the infrastructure. I fail to see how the parent is confused between Amazon having infrastructure which they provide cloud services on, and TestingBot having infrastructure which they provide cloud services on. What's your point of distinction on the 'financial side' between the two exactly?
AznHisoka 13y ago
I hear ya. I think cloud should only be pertinent to PAAS like Heroku.
jayvanguard 13y ago
Exactly, a key attribute of "The Cloud" has always been offloading the risk and costs of scaling. You get linear elasticity in scale without step functions in cost. Once you plunk down all the money for networking and hardware yourself you've lost elasticity and will have a step function in cost the next time you want to scale. When you turn off VMs, you aren't saving anything at all. You just have expensive idle computing resources.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  There's a maturity cycle -- risk shift with time. On day one, buying equipment, labor and software to stand up a computing environment is a risk. You don't truly understand your needs. After a couple of years of operations, you should have a better idea of your typical run state and growth patterns. At that point the risk may shift. If I can deliver compute with AWS for $X, but can also deliver that compute through some other means for $X-Y, you have a new risk/cost evaluation to do. The key is continuing to use the cloud thought process.
- dpark 13y ago
  You're looking at this wrong. You're thinking of TestingBot as the customer, so you see one customer replacing AWS with dedicated servers and calling it a cloud. That's not the actual scenario, though. TestingBot built a cloud for their customers. They built a way for their customers to offload the risk and costs of scaling their test infrastructures. They built a simple[1], automated way for their customers to easily scale. They built a way to share the same hardware among many customers and thus lower costs and improve utilization. This is a cloud. I also don't really agree with your claim that the key attribute of "the cloud" is offloading the risk and cost of scaling. From my perspective, "the cloud" is primarily about simplifying and automating scaling, thus reducing the human and time costs. It's not just about dumping the cost of physical machines onto someone else. I see taking less risk on machine purchases as a nice benefit, but not the core purpose. [1] I haven't actually used TestingBot, so this isn't an endorsement. I have no idea if they actually do a good job or not.
  - onli 13y ago
zwily 13y ago
I heard once: "'Private Cloud' is like calling your house a 'Private Hotel'".
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  That's not at all the case. "Cloud" isn't about external hosting, its about using virtualization to allow dynamic provisioning of resources. Outsourced external hosting was around a long time before cloud computing. Its a key application of cloud computing, but they are no more equivalent than "internal compustion engine" is equivalent to "wheeled land vehicle".
  - asdasf 13y ago
    >"Cloud" isn't about external hosting Yes it is. You represent the internet as a cloud on shitty visio diagrams. That is where putting stuff "in the cloud" comes from.
  - zwily 13y ago
    I think that's the problem - there are differing opinions on what "cloud" actually means.
- grey-area 13y ago
  Like an hôtel particulier? That's the origin of the word hotel.

mgkimsal 13y ago

I think you just rained on your own parade, that's all.

dpark 13y ago

If you have a server farm that allocates VMs dynamically on demand, you have something much different than a dedicated server, and it is quite reasonable to call this a private cloud.

asdasf 13y ago
Except people were doing that long before the "cloud" marketing nonsense started,
- sp332 13y ago
  Well they needed something to counteract the dusty image of the term "mainframe".
- dpark 13y ago
  You just don't like the word "cloud" at all, and that's fine, but that is a different complaint from the original, which was basically that the term is being misused when combined with the term "private". If we are going to use the term "cloud" and assign it a meaning, we can certainly use it to refer to private clouds. If EC2 is a cloud for me, is it not also a cloud when Amazon builds services on it?
  - michaelt 13y ago
    If we're going to assign a meaning to the term 'cloud', shouldn't we assign it to something we don't already have a word for, so it actually describes something? If I start two VMs on my desktop and we call that a 'cloud' then the word 'cloud' isn't terribly useful in describing anything.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      Worth noting that "cloud" was also used to describe private MPLS networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiprotocol_Label_Switching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiprotocol_Label_Switching
    - dpark 13y ago
      I don't think the accepted definition of "cloud" is just "group of VMs". Your two VMs does not constitute a cloud. You can set up ten thousand VMs on a thousand servers and not have anything that would reasonably be considered a cloud if you did it manually. "Cloud" generally implies simplicity and automation. You could build a cloud with physical machines instead of VMs so long as you have automatic ways to allocate and manage the machines' lifecycles.
  - asdasf 13y ago
    I have no problem with the word cloud. I have a problem with it being used to mean "anything I call cloud". If we are going to use the term and assign it a meaning, then lets assign it a meaning instead of using it for everything from "webmail" to "virtual machines" to "paying someone else to do something for me".
- dspillett 13y ago
  People were making out of band HTTP requests long before the irritating term AJAX was coined too. The name being made up after the method started being used does not mean the method can't be called the name if the properties fit (likewise as much as the marketers think otherwise, making up a new name doesn't make a thing technically revolutionary!)
dec0dedab0de 13y ago
Agreed, except that your internal documentation can't abstract away all the infrastructure. At least for the company as a whole.
revelation 13y ago
No, thats ridiculous. You are still paying for all the servers in the server farm, even if you have decided to waste another year of Moores law to add a bulky abstraction layer on top. The whole point of a cloud to a business is that you can adapt to changing needs without having to pay for all the infrastructure all the time. (You didn't think the suits talk about "the cloud" all the time because they fancy the technology, right?)
- dpark 13y ago
  > You are still paying for all the servers in the server farm Amazon is paying for all the servers in the EC2 server farm. Does that stop EC2 from being a cloud? TestingBot is spinning up VMs dynamically to scale out test infrastructure on demand. Their use case is basically the ideal cloud use scenario. They've built a system of servers that enables them to do all of the things typically associated with clouds, which means they've built a cloud. You're stuck thinking of TestingBot needing a bunch of servers, and seeing the tradeoff as dedicated servers vs cloud servers. In reality, it's TestingBot's customers who need a bunch of servers. So TestingBot built a cloud for their customers. They aren't setting aside N servers for each customer. They're building a cloud with the capacity for X servers and carving out of that on-demand.
  - revelation 13y ago
    Yes, EC2 is not a cloud for Amazon. If tomorrow everyone moves away from it, they will be stuck with many millions in sunk costs for hardware, rack space, datacenters, paid peerings.. they didn't rent that stuff by the hour. Feel free to replace Amazon with TestingBot in this description as you see fit, because right now you are confused as to what is a cloud to whom. (Mind you, I'm still only discussing the financial side here, as this was the reason the original post cited. In technical terms, of course they are still a cloud, but so is the mainframe emulator on my Raspberry)
    - hhw 13y ago
      Somebody somewhere always has to pay for the infrastructure. I fail to see how the parent is confused between Amazon having infrastructure which they provide cloud services on, and TestingBot having infrastructure which they provide cloud services on. What's your point of distinction on the 'financial side' between the two exactly?

AznHisoka 13y ago

I hear ya. I think cloud should only be pertinent to PAAS like Heroku.

jayvanguard 13y ago

Exactly, a key attribute of "The Cloud" has always been offloading the risk and costs of scaling. You get linear elasticity in scale without step functions in cost. Once you plunk down all the money for networking and hardware yourself you've lost elasticity and will have a step function in cost the next time you want to scale. When you turn off VMs, you aren't saving anything at all. You just have expensive idle computing resources.

Spooky23 13y ago
There's a maturity cycle -- risk shift with time. On day one, buying equipment, labor and software to stand up a computing environment is a risk. You don't truly understand your needs. After a couple of years of operations, you should have a better idea of your typical run state and growth patterns. At that point the risk may shift. If I can deliver compute with AWS for $X, but can also deliver that compute through some other means for $X-Y, you have a new risk/cost evaluation to do. The key is continuing to use the cloud thought process.
dpark 13y ago
You're looking at this wrong. You're thinking of TestingBot as the customer, so you see one customer replacing AWS with dedicated servers and calling it a cloud. That's not the actual scenario, though. TestingBot built a cloud for their customers. They built a way for their customers to offload the risk and costs of scaling their test infrastructures. They built a simple[1], automated way for their customers to easily scale. They built a way to share the same hardware among many customers and thus lower costs and improve utilization. This is a cloud. I also don't really agree with your claim that the key attribute of "the cloud" is offloading the risk and cost of scaling. From my perspective, "the cloud" is primarily about simplifying and automating scaling, thus reducing the human and time costs. It's not just about dumping the cost of physical machines onto someone else. I see taking less risk on machine purchases as a nice benefit, but not the core purpose. [1] I haven't actually used TestingBot, so this isn't an endorsement. I have no idea if they actually do a good job or not.
- onli 13y ago

zwily 13y ago

I heard once: "'Private Cloud' is like calling your house a 'Private Hotel'".

dragonwriter 13y ago
That's not at all the case. "Cloud" isn't about external hosting, its about using virtualization to allow dynamic provisioning of resources. Outsourced external hosting was around a long time before cloud computing. Its a key application of cloud computing, but they are no more equivalent than "internal compustion engine" is equivalent to "wheeled land vehicle".
- asdasf 13y ago
  >"Cloud" isn't about external hosting Yes it is. You represent the internet as a cloud on shitty visio diagrams. That is where putting stuff "in the cloud" comes from.
- zwily 13y ago
  I think that's the problem - there are differing opinions on what "cloud" actually means.
grey-area 13y ago
Like an hôtel particulier? That's the origin of the word hotel.