Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications
    • Networking
    • Servers
    • Storage

    Big Storage ‘Clouds’ Much Less Manageable

    By
    Chris Preimesberger
    -
    July 21, 2008
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      People are talking about the Amazon S3 fiasco of the evening of July 20 and what the long- and short-term implications of this breakdown might be for this popular storage service.

      Amazon.com’s Amazon Simple Storage Service was beset by unexplained outages for anywhere from 2 to 6 hours Sunday night.
      Users of Amazon S3 and Amazon Simple Queue Service in Europe and the United States were out for various windows of time. It was a lucky break that wasn’t a high-transaction business day here in the United States, or it might have elicited a great many more complaints.
      eWEEK’s Michael Hickins was one of the first to blog on this subject. Here is Amazon.com’s own report.
      These online storage services are like electricity or water supplies: When there’s an outage, there’s nothing a consumer or enterprise can do about it, and all activity comes to a dead halt. A growing number of businesses now depend fully on the Amazon S3 service to store data and to run applications.
      The outage, like a similar one at Amazon.com in February 2008 and a big one that hit the 365 Main co-location center in San Francisco in July 2007 that knocked Craigslist, RedEnvelope and Charles Schwab off the Web for several hours, bruises the trust that enterprises place in these companies’ services. None of those customers left 365 Main, however, because the co-location center came clean with an explanation of what happened the very next day.
      365 Main’s backup generators didn’t function as they were supposed to after a transformer explosion cut off power to the downtown San Francisco data center. 365 Main has made major upgrades to its system as a result and has not had even a minor outage in the past 12 months.

      Keeping the Faith

      These incidents haven’t happened often enough for companies to turn away completely. Accidents happen, and generally companies have been forgiving. But how many incidents like this will it take for enterprises to lose faith in the cloud? After all, as storage farms get up into the thousands of nodes, the software and networking get very, very complicated-and the possibility of a breakdown becomes greater as the I/O burdens get heavier.
      Sajai Krishnan, CEO of ParaScale-a startup that makes software that connects siloed servers into cloud-type computing architectures using Red Hat Linux-told me that Amazon.com is doing “great” with its new service overall but that it has “undertaken a degree of difficulty even higher than what Google has done.”
      Krishnan continued, “Google has been pushing the envelope of technology, but everything is inside, so no one gets to see this. Amazon, on the other hand, is opening up their system for more general-use service so more people can use it. So the challenge they have undertaken is not a simple task.”
      These kinds of outages, frankly, don’t surprise people because companies like Amazon.com and Google are pushing the envelope in terms of scale, Krishnan said. Accidents are going to happen, no matter what.
      What people need to know is that you don’t need to have a cloud that spans the globe to realize the benefits of it, Krishnan said.
      “One of the key takeaways [from this event] is that you can get the economies of scale with much more deployment, without really have to take on the challenges of this kind of scale,” Krishnan said. “The curve eventually starts flattening out in terms of benefits … you really don’t have to be Google- or Amazon-scale to realize the benefits [of the online storage service].”
      Enterprises can even build their own IT system “clouds” by pooling resources and not have to worry about relying on an outside service to handle their business data.
      Krishnan said he believes that over time we’ll be seeing many more online service providers, but their offerings will be on a much smaller scale than the huge cloud services whose infrastructures might be beginning to crack under the strain of billions of transactions per day.

      One Size Doesnt Fit All

      “You don’t have to have a one-size-fits-all cloud,” Krishnan said. “A company can have a cloud for archival [data] and another one for video streaming, for example. Each of those two services have very different characteristics, as far as the individual nodes are concerned.”
      These small clouds are not simply a mashup of a bunch of amalgamated in-house and outside Web services. “You should be able to scale out your own cloud by simply adding more nodes of commodity servers as you need them,” Krishnan said.
      Smaller providers can offer more hands-on service and more differentiated services, using smaller cloud networks. The same can happen for a company that builds its own cloud. If you’re going to do something along the scale of Google Apps or Salesforce.com, for example, those have R&D aspects that are enormous.
      But if you have a much smaller service provider, say a regional one, or build one in your own data center, you can get the same value and possibly even better service. Certainly you must be careful who to pick if the decision is made to go outside.
      What about the trust factor here? After all, we’re talking about giving the family jewels to strangers to keep for us.
      “Nothing is as secure as having all your data within the firewall,” Krishnan said. “But now, the [storage] hardware is becoming very affordable; you can start a cloud with 4TB [of capacity]. You don’t even need to start with a petabyte.
      “If you’re looking at a [smaller] service provider, yes, it [trust] is a challenge. You can encrypt the data and whatever, but ultimately you are going to trade off some level of performance and latency for that [peace of mind]. If you really have reservations about putting your data out there [especially for financial companies], then you should look at building your own cloud.”

      Chris Preimesberger
      https://www.eweek.com/author/cpreimesberger/
      Chris J. Preimesberger is Editor Emeritus of eWEEK. In his 16 years and more than 5,000 articles at eWEEK, he distinguished himself in reporting and analysis of the business use of new-gen IT in a variety of sectors, including cloud computing, data center systems, storage, edge systems, security and others. In February 2017 and September 2018, Chris was named among the 250 most influential business journalists in the world (https://richtopia.com/inspirational-people/top-250-business-journalists/) by Richtopia, a UK research firm that used analytics to compile the ranking. He has won several national and regional awards for his work, including a 2011 Folio Award for a profile (https://www.eweek.com/cloud/marc-benioff-trend-seer-and-business-socialist/) of Salesforce founder/CEO Marc Benioff--the only time he has entered the competition. Previously, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press since 1983 and resides in Silicon Valley.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Applications

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      IT Management

      Intuit’s Nhung Ho on AI for the...

      James Maguire - May 13, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nhung Ho, Vice President of AI at Intuit, about adoption of AI in the small and medium-sized business market, and how...
      Read more
      Applications

      Kyndryl’s Nicolas Sekkaki on Handling AI and...

      James Maguire - November 9, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nicolas Sekkaki, Group Practice Leader for Applications, Data and AI at Kyndryl, about how companies can boost both their AI and...
      Read more
      Cloud

      IGEL CEO Jed Ayres on Edge and...

      James Maguire - June 14, 2022 0
      I spoke with Jed Ayres, CEO of IGEL, about the endpoint sector, and an open source OS for the cloud; we also spoke about...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2022 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×