Cloud Computing Class : Lesson 1

Welcome to Marcel's Cloud Computing Class, Lesson 1. Over the course of the next few posts, I'm going to teach you a thing or two about cloud computing [ insert appropriate smiley here ]. Seriously, I plan on giving you the basics, introducing you to various tools, frameworks, and technologies with the intention of turning you into a cloud computing guru. Or at the very least, someone who can manage their own cloud. I will, throughout this series of posts, start with the assumption that you do know something about computers, networks, and of course, Linux. So let's get started with the introduction.

Cloud computing brings with it the promise of manageable, quickly deployed, virtual machines in large networks. The idea is to take advantage of your existing hardware infrastructure (or someone else's) to deploy additional systems without deploying additional hardware. All it all, it seems like a gift from tech heaven. Of course, cloud computing carries a lot of hype along with the promise, including plenty of people sparring on whether cloud computing is inherently safe, unsafe, reliable, unreliable, oversold, or just plain evil. Hearing business people talk about cloud computing,  however, makes you realize that whatever your perception of the reality concerning what is at the core, a  technological issue based on virtualization, cloud computing is here to stay. Your job, as a systems administrator, is to find ways to deliver and work with the technology.

Whenever the subject comes up, I enjoy dispensing with the mystique behind cloud computing as a matter of course, so here goes. A cloud is just a fancy word for somebody else's network or network resources. Those resources generally refer to as all the servers (or hardware) that an organization owns. That means processors, memory, and so on. Of particular importance, if you're going to deploy virtual machines, is disk space. Your network may not be on par with Google or Amazon, but many organizations have plenty of extra hardware and spare CPU cycles. That's why you'll hear a lot of talk about private clouds as well.

There are several virtualization frameworks and services. When I use the term 'framework', I am talking about the software that makes virtualization possible. Services are the business end. In terms of framework, we have KVM, Xen, Virtualbox and others. Services refers to the companies that provide cloud resources.

The best known cloud computing service out there is probably Amazon's EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). This isn't a free service, but Amazon has made it frightfully easy to use, and relatively inexpensive if you want to deploy a machine quickly for testing purposes. If you need an Internet accessible machine to test something and you need it fast, it's a service worth checking out. I'll show you how it's done the Amazon way, then I'll show you a couple of ways to do it in your own private cloud, on your own hardware. And that's where Lesson 2 will begin. 

Until then . . .