cloud

What is a "Cloud OS"?

The term is getting 'hotter' with Microsoft Azure and Windows 7. What are the benefits + how does the status quo of desktop computing now change? Does the machine no longer need an OS installation (or a highly stripped down version of a typical OS)... what is needed to interact with the 'Cloud' ? Update: Received my first RTFM on SO to...

Book recommendation for running ASP.NET/SQL Server on AWS

Are there any good books out there on the topic of using Amazon Web Services with good content related to running windows web applications and SQL Server on Amazon's cloud platform? I am most interested in books that go into some detail about configuration and best practices regarding running SQL Server, IIS, and AD on EC2. ...

Can I set the expires header on all objects in an Amazon S3 bucket all at once?

I've got about 200k images in a bucket. They all have expires headers of 2050 but I've read you shouldn't send an expires header older than a year. I want to schedule a script to run every month and set the headers to 6 months away. Anything out there? Obviously I'd like to avoid iterating 200k objects. ...

What is a good pricing model for Windows Azure?

Windows Azure looks like a promising cloud platform. The big unknown right now is the pricing model. Microsoft says that they are still working on that, but it will be competitive. What do you think would make a good pricing model? Let's hope that Microsoft will take note of what a bunch of programmers want. Update: Azure Pricing:...

Hosting, deploying and running web applications in the cloud

So far I've read some blog articles about cloud computing and services for hosting applications in the grid. If I'd wanted to have a web application running in the cloud for as little cost as possible, what would be the best solution? Let's assume the following configuration: J2EE web application Any free database (MySQL, PostgreSQ...

Automount EBS volume in Amazon EC2 Windows Instance

Does anyone know how to auto-mount an Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volume when starting a Windows 2003 instance in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)? ...

Will web applications replace desktop applications?

Will everything go to the cloud? If so, in which direction? Google-Gears? Flash,AIR,JavaFX? See also: Does desktop development matter? ...

Ex-manager looking for advice from developers

I have been a SW developer for some 10 years, and then I was promoted to a Management position for the last 3 years. Not quite happy with my Management role, I looked for job alternatives, and accepted a software development position in a small company. In short, in my new role I will be responsible for SW architecture decisions, lead o...

Average Amazon EC2 Instance Price for WEB HOSTING

Our company is thinking about switching IT hosting strategy for the long run. We have been playing with some EC2 instances and we are interested in looking at a possible switch over cloud computing. Our only option is not amazon but is definitely one of the famous. I know that there are different instance options in terms of pricing...

Is Cloud Computing really here?

I have been hearing this term quite a lot. I have a bunch of mini questions that I would like to ask. Are business really ready for cloud computing? Do consumers have the appropriate resources to consume services from the cloud? Is this technology prone to more attacks? Some think cloud computing is just another over hyped term thats g...

Buying Cluster/Grid/Cloud Time?

I've used clusters in industrial and academic settings, but they were owned by the organizations I worked for. I've never purchased time from a company that sells cluster/cloud/grid time. Suppose I want to run some compute intensive program like as a large simulation or a data mining application. Or maybe I want to optimize a complete b...

How to outsource a periodic task (i.e., in the 'cloud')?

Say a client is happy with the work you've done creating a script to accomplish a task that gathers some information and outputs a hefty database file. Then, they're interested in having the task run periodically (approximately monthly) without human intervention. The client is not interested in running the task locally, so you're forced...

Categorising EC2 instances

Is there a way to distinguish between sets of EC2 instances? My use case is that I have a bunch of web tier machines and a bunch of search tier machines; currently the only way to track what each instance is doing is in a roll-your-own asset directory, like LDAP or a database. Ideally, I'd like to be able to determine the role of a mac...

Cloud Computing need some regulations???

I was involved in couple of cloud computing platform recently. First of all please note that I am not trying to criticize any platform. Cloud computing is large area but to make my point simple and understandable. Let me come up with very simple scenario and that is data storage services hosted on the cloud. If you take any storage se...

Is there any scenario where an application instance runs across multiple computers?

We know that a single application instance can use multiple cores and even multiple physical processors. With cloud and cluster computing, or other special scenario, I don't know if a single stance can run across multiple computers, or across multiple OS instances. This is important for me because, besides being considered as bad progra...

Is a cloud service suitable for this application?

I'm looking for details of the cloud services popping up (eg. Amazon/Azure) and am wondering if they would be suitable for my app. My application basically has a single table database which is about 500GB. It grows by 3-5 GB/Day. I need to extract text data from it, about 1 million rows at a time, filtering on about 5 columns. This ext...

Why should I send my website to "cloud"?

I develop asp.net websites, and I read about cloud computing, windows azure, etc. But in the end, I cannot see any pratical reasons to change/move/etc my services to the "cloud". What the benefices? Cloud computing is some kind of "evolution" of web farms? Thanks, and sorry my ignorance.... ...

Will consultants be moved into the cloud as well?

I have a theory. There is a definate shift towards cloud computing, and the big players believe there is marketshare worth having in this space. But how long before organisations start downsizing their internal development teams? Is it more cost effective to hire a consultant for a period of time for a project as opposed to keeping staf...

Simplest way to get access to a remote server for computing tasks

I'm working on some academic research projects involving scraping large data sets from the web using Python. It's been inconvenient to work on my academic institution's Linux server because (1) I don't have superuser access, meaning I'm dependent on the IT staff to install my packages, and (2) my disk quota is somewhat limited (I would i...

Can one have a career in cloud computing without DB?

For some or other reason I have never liked to learn or program with Databases (ok nothing more than average SQL queries). Are there any programmer jobs in cloud computing that won't need involve working with DB on a day to day basis. I did try to look around some job sites but that did not help much. Edit notes: going by the down ...