Stateless computing to become core to cloud computing?

August 5, 2008 12:23 PM PDT
Posted by Dawn Kawamoto



As companies glom onto cloud computing, stateless computing is likely to emerge as a core tenant within the cloud and one that can deliver cost savings, predicted the chief technology architect for Merrill Lynch.

But to get to the state of stateless computing, companies will need to change the way they view their hardware needs and how they store and access the information, said Jeffrey Birnbaum of Merrill Lynch, who served as a keynote speaker Tuesday at LinuxWorld in San Francisco.

"Stateless computing isn't about having no state. It's kind of a misnomer. It's about where that state is stored. Since the emergence of the PC in the early '80s, we have stored the state on the physical computer and that has presented a myriad of challenges that has driven IT costs through the roof," Birnbaum said.

With stateless computing, users' settings and data are automatically saved to the server, which could be run by their employer or outsourced. Cloud computing generally refers to technology that lets people use Web browsers to access applications running on central servers, though it also can refer to general-purpose server infrastructure that companies can tap into as needed.

"Stateless computing isn't about having no state. It's kind of a misnomer.
It's about where that state is stored."
--Jeffrey Birnbaum, chief technology architect, Merrill Lynch

Birnbaum noted that in stateless computing, as in cloud computing, companies need to ask themselves what they seek to achieve, how much capacity they expect they'll need, and whether those needs will change and when. And from there, a placement engine goes out and searches for capacity within a physical server or through a virtual machine (verses, for example, filling the need by buying an additional 20 dedicated servers on a network.)

But key to accessing the information and applications via stateless computing is placing them all in an organized name space file system.

• For example, Gmail.google.com is a name space, in which Gmail is the application and Google is the domain, which aids users in how to navigate to the site.

A similar method can be use with applications, said Birnbaum, who noted Merrill Lynch is in the process of building a name space, with a file system behind it and a set of tools to manage that name space.

Whether companies are using Windows or Linux, there is a root of a file system, a meta project, and version number.

"The key to this is the version. The idea is to put everything you view, whether it's an application or library, you put it into this file system. So, therefore, you never have this problem of an IT industry created problem of the software stack," Birnbaum said. "If you placed every little thing that you had, a config file, everything, into a version name space, and then you were able to build your applications against that and all the dependencies for applications were referable in this file system, there would be no need to ever build a stack because every application would inherently know what it's dependents were and would all be (retrievable) through this global file system."

He added that the advent of 10GB Ethernet will aid the move to cloudless computing, and also stateless computing.

As for cost savings via stateless computing, Birnbaum noted that the use of stateless computing will remove a lot of IT redundancies for companies. He added that 61 percent of computing systems are underutilized, because of these redundancies.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10007391-92.html?part=rss&subj=news

Cloud Computing: Anything as a Service

By Tony Kontzer
2008-08-05

In the future, it won’t matter where your software lives. “As a matter of fact, if you have it on premise, you’re short-changing yourself, because you’re throwing half of your resources at supporting that server infrastructure,” Menefee says.

Most CIOs continue to depend on those server infrastructures for a simple reason: They’re not convinced cloud computing is ready for prime time. If the ramblings of cloud computing user groups are to be believed, the real question isn’t whether the technology is reliable enough to pass muster with big corporate IT shops. The crucial question is whether it even matters.

For those weighing such concerns—and after the high-profile outages that hit Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Service (S3) and Apple’s first cloud computing effort, MobileMe, last month, many are—consider this posting of a Google user group member: “Anyone who thinks that the cloud, or even their own data center or infrastructure, should provide the reliability has it backward. If you want real reliability, write more resilient applications.”

Think of it as a Clintonesque take on the digital age: It’s not the infrastructure that matters, it’s the applications, stupid.

Regardless of one’s views on the readiness of cloud computing to meet corporate IT needs, it’s a development that cannot be ignored. Like it or not, the idea of renting applications, development platforms, processing power, storage or any other cloud-enabled services has emerged as a replay of the Internet’s rise as a business tool: It’s a potentially game-changing technology that’s expected to reshape IT over the next decade.

But IT executives are wary of cloud computing for reasons that go beyond the perception of unreliability. They’re fearful that their data won’t be safe in the hands of cloud providers; they’re convinced they won’t be able to manage cloud resources effectively; they’re suspicious of providers that won’t share details of the infrastructures supporting their cloud environments; and they’re worried that the technology could threaten their own data centers, or even their staffs. Collectively, these fears are helping to hold back a cloud computing market that Merrill Lynch estimates could be worth $95 billion in five years.

More importantly, analysts say that if CIOs let these fears paralyze them, even temporarily, odds are they’re just delaying the inevitable. In the meantime, business executives, salespeople and even rogue IT workers are using their corporate credit cards to tap their expense accounts or departmental budgets to pay for subscriptions to cloud services.

“If you’re a large enterprise, somebody in your organization is using cloud computing, but they’re not telling you,” says James Staten, principal analyst at IT adviser Forrester Research. “So there’s a good chance that in the next five years, you’re going to inherit things that were born in the cloud anyway, and now you’ll have to manage them.”

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Strategic-Tech/Cloud-Computing-Anything-as-a-Service/

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) - Beta

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Amazon EC2's simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon's proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios.

Amazon EC2 Functionality

Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing you to use web service interfaces to requisition machines for use, load them with your custom application environment, manage your network's access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as you desire.

http://www.amazon.com/EC2-AWS-Service-Pricing/b/ref=sc_fe_c_0_15763381_3?ie=UTF8&node=201590011&no=15763381&me=A36L942TSJ2AJA

Cloud Computing Start-Up Creates PowerPC-Based Cloud Desktop

Promises the Same User Experience as A Traditional PC

By: Maureen O'Gara
Jul. 31, 2008 11:45 PM

Digg This!

There hasn’t been a PowerPC-based computer since Apple abandoned the dingus and bolted to Intel, a move that did wonders for Apple’s volumes.

Now a Mountain View start-up called CherryPal is about to introduce a $249 Debian-based desktop that’s about the size of a dime store paperback built around the 2W MPC5121e mobileGT PowerPC chip that Freescale usually sells to Detroit for navigation devices.

The thing promises the same user experience as a traditional PC even though the chip is only good for 400MHz, putting it roughly on a par with Intel’s newfangled sub-3W Atom chip.

However, CherryPal has collapsed a customized version of Debian and a tweaked version of the Firefox browser into a single patent-pending software layer, a technique that’s supposed to make the computer exponentially faster, and the chip supports graphics and audio so you should be able to dally to your heart’s content on YouTube.

The widget also works off of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) – which with virtualization should give you = access to Windows programs – and, since the computer has no moving parts, shouldn’t be subject to the traditional upgrade process every few years. The company claims it could last 10 years or more, which=20 should at least get you through school.

See, the ultra-green CherryPal cloud computer is designed to appeal to the idealism of the high school and college set. And the company’s backers also intend to give quantities of the thing to emerging countries like Uganda.

Naturally users will have to supply their own screen, keyboard and mouse.

CherryPal CEO and serial entrepreneur Max Seybold, himself a German import, says the little box, which consumes 97% less energy than the average PC, also uses 80% fewer components, which of course reduces the amount of resources it takes to make the PC.

The device is supposed to boot in 20 seconds and automatically take you to the part of EC2 called CherryPalCloud, secured by patent-pending proprietary encryption that is supposed to be “defense-grade” and so unhackable and virus-free.

The thing has no exposed operating system so all the applications and functions are managed strictly by its Firefox browser and CherryPal does all the software upgrades and installation so there’s no maintenance.

Most – but not all – of the information is processed and stored on the web and to defer the cost of using EC2 CherryPal plans to sell ads that the user sees only an application is opened. The ad campaign is supposed to start in Q4.

The device, however, is something of a hybrid because it comes pre-loaded with OpenOffice. It also supports iTunes and includes a CherryPal-made media player that Seybold says runs all the common file formats and a CherryPal-made instant messenger that supports all the common IM programs.

CherryPal intends to add more programs over time. The current storage limit is set at 50GB although Seybold said the limit should increase.

Now, since the gismo will be sold over the web CherryPal will depend on word of mouth but it’s not leaving anything to chance. It’s organizing 300 so-called “Band Angels” armed with free CherryPal PCs and a promotion code to blog the word.They’ll get a $15 commission for each CherryPal machine they move and the buyer will get a $10 discount.

Seybold wouldn’t disclose the landed cost of the widget, which is being made in China, but acknowledges that the margins are “razor thin.” Deliveries start at the end of the month in North America and Europe.

Seybold said the company the company has pre-orders for upwards of a thousand units and since it’s using open source it intends to disclose its patent-pending widgetry.

CherryPal, now 30-odd people, has raised $5 million in backing from a private equity house in Hong Kong called Tri-State and some private individuals in the UK.

The 10.5 ounce device includes 256MB of DDR2 DRAM, 4GB of NAND Flash, WiFi 802 11b/g, two USB 2.0 ports, 10/100 Ethernet, a VGA display jack, headphone stereo audio jack and AC-DC adapter power supply. There is supposed to be a 24/7 help line.

Published Jul. 31, 2008— Reads 4,265 Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.
About Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara is the Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/614371

Cloudworks Offers Cloud Computing Tips for Going Green

Solutions for a Tight Economy

By: Cloud Computing News Desk
Jul. 31, 2008 04:15 PM
Digg This!

Mike Eaton, the founder and CEO of Cloudworks, provides five tips for companies watching their bottom line in a tight economy to enhance the remote access for mobile professionals through cloud computing. Small to mid-size businesses watching their bottom line in a tight economy can enhance the remote access for mobile professionals and still save money over traditional IT solutions, according to Eaton. The key is cloud computing, which gives businesses the ability to outsource the entire desktop computing experience for their employees.

Files and software can now be accessed through any computer with Internet access, completely replicating the employee's desktop.

"The model for delivering IT services for small to mid-size businesses is evolving," Eaton said. "The improvements are dramatic, and there is no need to sacrifice quality to cut costs. Through cloud computing, companies can quickly increase their current IT capabilities, feel good about using greener, more environmentally friendly technology and cut costs substantially."

Eaton offers the following tips for companies with mobile professionals:

1. Feel free to buy the smallest, coolest looking laptops, regardless of computing power. In fact, cloud computing means you can lighten your load and forgo the traveling businessman's staple laptop completely. Laptops are always a year behind desktops in computing power but that no longer matters. You can log in to your desktop from any machine, anywhere and tap into the computing horsepower of the cloud.

2. Don't be afraid to outsource your server. That server you saved a bundle on may be close at hand -- in the next room or even just a few feet from your desk -- but proximity doesn't always mean peace of mind. Cloud computing takes the worry out of server management by putting the task in the hands of experts who safely oversee your files and software, assuring your network is up and running with the latest patches and other enhancements always installed.

3. Stop fretting about security. Security can be configured with varying degrees of protection depending on your needs. Data hosting in multiple data centers -- and standard and custom disaster recovery services -- are available for businesses that need extra protection. Through economies of scale, cloud computing offers more powerful security programs and devices than the typical small to mid-size business could afford.

4. You bought a bamboo floor for the conference room. Now, carry that green theme into your IT department by consuming less power and using less equipment. Cloud computing is one of the greenest technologies available and is considerably more efficient than the solutions it replaces, saving businesses 30 to 50 percent over traditional IT offerings.

5. Improve performance with pain-free remote software and hardware upgrades. Forget about having to manually install the latest Microsoft plugin on all of the computers in your network just so you can read documents written in the most recent version of Word. With cloud computing, you will always have current applications with all applicable plugins running on remote servers equipped to get the best performance possible out of the software packages.

"Businesses that use cloud computing don't have to know or care about whether their version of Windows is updated with the latest service pack. They don't need to know the code name for Apple's next operating system or any other inside industry information that doesn't have anything to do with their core business," Eaton said. "Companies want their information technology to do what they need it to do, reliably and affordably."

Published Jul. 31, 2008— Reads 767 Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.

About Cloud Computing News Desk

Cloud Computing News Desk brings the latest industry news related to the Cloud paradigm of massively scalable IT resources and capabilities delivered as a service using Internet technologies.
http://www.sys-con.com/node/607997

Earth-Friendly Computing: Case Study

Rockhurst University Implements Earth-Friendly Computing

Kansas City, Missouri. Rockhurst University is taking a giant leap to reduce its environmental impact through earth-friendly computer labs. When classes resume this fall, Rockhurst students will sit down in front of workstations that use 90 percent less energy than traditional PCs. Traditional CPUs are replaced with devices called thin clients, which are slightly larger than VHS tapes.

The technology, called thin-client computing, not only requires less energy to run, but the smaller equipment requires significantly less material to produce. Traditional CPUs are replaced with devices called thin clients, which are slightly larger than VHS tapes. That equates to less energy spent on transportation and less material to eventually recycle. Each unit is expected to work effectively for five to six years, nearly double the life span of traditional PCs, and its low heat output means less power needed for air conditioning.

In addition to environmental benefits, the new system is a valuable IT management solution and will provide significant cost savings for the university. The system calls for moving the software and storage from each individual computer to five powerful servers located in the data center in Conway Hall. This Virtual Desktop Infrastructure will speed processing times, provide instant desktop recovery and lessen the time spent on upgrades and repair.

Users may not even notice the changes, as they will encounter the same familiar Windows experience. If anything, students will detect much faster logon and processing times. And should one of the new workstations go down, users can logon to another lab machine to instantly recover exactly where they were without losing any data – even without saving.

Centralizing the management of more than 230 desktop computers – in all 18 labs across campus – will reduce the downtime for individual upgrades and repair. Computer Services will be able to download the latest software updates one time in the data center instead of individually on each machine, and most repairs will be made remotely.

“This is a good solution for Rockhurst," said Matt Heinrich, associate vice president of facilities and technology. "It's the responsible thing to do and a perfect fit with our mission. I feel good that this is one way in which we can help make God's good world better.”

Once the system is fully implemented, Rockhurst plans to donate more than 200 CPUs to local nonprofit organizations, including Cristo Rey Kansas City.

Thin-client technology is catching on in businesses across the nation. While not the only university in the area to use this green technology, Rockhurst’s large-scale implementation currently puts it ahead of the curve among schools in the region.

To learn more, visit Rockhurst Computer Services. Please feel free to contact vdi@rockhurst.edu for more information. Your questions and feedback are encouraged.
(816) 501-4357 - Conway Hall, 4th Floor - 1100 Rockhurst Road - Kansas City, Missouri

HP, Intel and Yahoo team up on cloud computing

July 29, 2008 by Kevin Allison

‘Cloud computing’ is fast becoming this year’s ‘green data centre,’ if the recent excitement about technologies that allow people to perform increasingly complicated computing tasks over the internet is any guide.

Compared with some other recent announcements, however, the cloud computing project announced on Tuesday by Yahoo, Intel and Hewlett-Packard appears to pack a particular punch.

In a joint press release, the companies said they would create a “test bed” of six data centres designed to promote open-source collaboration around intensive cloud computing. The array will allow companies, academics and other instiutions to conduct cloud computing experiments on a global scale.

In a further sign that the initiative is more than just PR pap, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the top US computer science schools, is among the institutions that will host the project, along with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority. HP Labs and Intel Research will also contribute, with the assistance of software tools from Yahoo.

Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Research, summed up the effort thusly: “With this test bed, not only can researchers test applications at Internet scale, they will also have access to the underlying computing systems to advance understanding of how systems software and hardware function in a cloud environment.”

As GigaOm points out, the effort can also be seen as an attempt by HP, Yahoo and Intel to create a sandbox for researchers to rival a similar offering from Google, which laid down its marker in cloud computing in partnership with IBM in October. Microsoft has also recently declared its intention to become a superpower in cloud computing.

A world in which companies and people can ‘plug in’ to computing resources just like they do electricity is still a long way off. But Tuesday’s initiative looks like it could be useful to researchers looking for ways to move beyond the relatively simple tasks that can be performed in the cloud today - like sales force management and other types of productivity applications - to bigger, more resource-intensive processes.

July 29th, 2008 in Digital media Permalink

http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2008/07/hp-intel-and-yahoo-team-up-on-cloud-computing/

CherryPal Cloud Computer

The CherryPal is billed as a cloud computer - basically, a PC that is powered by a low-power Freescale processor, helping keep costs low and the overall size small. Of course, you do get the other computing staples such as two USB ports, a monitor port, 4GB of flash storage and a measly 256MB RAM. Good thing it runs on a tweaked version of embedded Linux though, as even Windows XP would have brought this little computer to its knees. It takes just about 20 seconds to boot up, and thanks to the tri-core 400Mhz Freescale processor, it ain't no slouch when it comes to performance. Don't expect Doom 3 to run on it anytime soon though. There is no word on availability, but CherryPal has touted a dramatically low price tag - even lower than the $400 Eee PC.

URL: http://www.softwareheadlines.com/modules/planet/view.article.php/276473

CherryPal ‘cloud computer’ is cheap, offers online options

By Aaron Baker • June 22, 2008

Startup company CherryPal has launched their first computer, dubbed the ‘cloud computer.’ The computer is powered by a 400 Freescale mobileGT MPC5121e processor, has 256MB of RAM, 4GB of flash memory and WiFi 802.11 b/g. The specs aren’t amazing, but it’s what CherryPal has to offer that might be.

Rather than have hard drives in our computers, CherryPal thinks that we’d rather buy cheap, low-power mini-PCs and use any of the multiple online storage and Office apps. Then, all the data is available anywhere you go, as long as you have internet connectivity. CherryPal is shipping the machine with a version of the Debian Linux OS.

CherryPal hasn’t revealed the MRSP, however as a guess, we’d say that it will be pretty close to the Eee PC line.

http://www.digitalburn.com/index.php/2008/06/22/cherrypal-cloud-computer-is-cheap-offers-online-programs/

CherryPal ‘cloud computer’ promises cheap online utopia

Friday, Jun 20th 2008 by Chris Davies

Startup and cloud computing aficionados CherryPal have unveiled their first compact PC. Powered by a 400MHz Freescale mobileGT MPC5121e processor, the 10.5oz computer has a scant 256MB of RAM, 4GB of flash memory and WiFi b/g. So far, so meagre, but the CherryPal’s saving grace is the online software and storage suite the company is promising.

Rather than have huge hard-drives sat under our desk, CherryPal are betting that we’d rather buy cheap, low-power (and low-power-hungry) mini-PCs and use any of the multiple online storage and Office apps. The bonus is that all that data is then available anywhere you go, as long as you have internet connectivity. CherryPal are supplying the machine with a version of the Debian Linux OS.

Of course, we’ve seen something a little similar to the CherryPal PC before: Linutop’s compact solid-state desktop. Like the CherryPal, the Linutop uses a low-power computer and flash memory; the Linux OS ships on a removable memory stick, or alternatively can boot from across a network. And, like the CherryPal, the main stumbling block is the price. CherryPal are yet to reveal their MRSP, but a combination of a niche product and a weak dollar has forced the Linutop price to $410. Against that, an Eee notebook looks mighty appealing.

http://www.slashgear.com/cherrypal-cloud-computer-promises-cheap-online-utopia-2012169.php

CherryPal Cloud Computer

The CherryPal is billed as a cloud computer - basically, a PC that is powered by a low-power Freescale processor, helping keep costs low and the overall size small. Of course, you do get the other computing staples such as two USB ports, a monitor port, 4GB of flash storage and a measly 256MB RAM. Good thing it runs on a tweaked version of embedded Linux though, as even Windows XP would have brought this little computer to its knees.

It takes just about 20 seconds to boot up, and thanks to the tri-core 400Mhz Freescale processor, it ain't no slouch when it comes to performance. Don't expect Doom 3 to run on it anytime soon though. There is no word on availability, but CherryPal has touted a dramatically low price tag - even lower than the $400 Eee PC.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/06/cherrypal_cloud_computer.html

CherryPal's green cloud computer

“Today you can find green food…green power…so why on earth hasn’t someone created an inexpensive green computer?” So goes the flash ad on CherryPal’s website announcing the August 4th arrival of what CherryPal CEO Max Seybold calls “the most affordable, greenest computer on the market.”

Running on just 2W of energy the CherryPal utilizes a 400 Mhz Freescale processor (not to be compared to AMD or Intel chips since the whole platform is different). Many are skeptical about the speed of the computer, but Seybold promises that the 10.5 oz computer can boot in 20 seconds and speed through applications utilizing its cloud networked software delivery system.

The CherryPal folks have stripped 80% of the normal PC innards, resulting in a simple machine about the size of a paperback. The computer will run on a Linux based operating system and will include 2 USB ports,256 MB DDR, Wifi connectivity, 4GB of internal storage, and 50GB of online storage.

Some remain skeptical that the system will deliver the speed, storage, and functions that users want. The Register, for instance, asks how iTunes would work on a system that only has 4GB of internal storage. An important question since CherryPal is targeted to a young, environmentally conscious audience that may still be reluctant to give up their iPods.

Until CherryPal releases its demonstration models of the desktop in a few weeks all is speculation. For now this is certainly a product worth watching.


http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/cherrypals-green-cloud-compute-003249.php