RE: Pica8 - Open Source Cloud Switch

["George Bonser" <gbonser () seven com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brandon Kim 
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 7:58 AM
>
> Cc: nanog () nanog org
> Subject: RE: Pica8 - Open Source Cloud Switch
>
>
> Has our industry ever really fundamentally defined what is "cloud
> computing"?????
>
> Even though "MPLS" is sort of a buzzword too, we can define it, how it
> works, it's protocol and such...
>
> But cloud computing?

My take on "cloud computing" is simply the provisioning servers or
virtual servers (say, VMWare or KVM) on the fly as needed.  So you would
have a "pool" of servers.  When load for one application rises, more
servers for that application are taken from the pool and added to the
mix as needed.

When load drops, that instances are removed from the rotation handling
that application and returned to the pool of free (virtual) servers.

Providers of network gear have been working on applications that monitor
the gear in the application delivery path (e.g. metrics on load
balancers) and automatically deploy instances as needed to handle that
application. This would be more of interest to providers of "bursty"
applications where they might have high load sometimes but a relatively
low "base" load.  It could also be of interest to people who serve
customers in different time zones, such as the US and Europe where the
US application can be turned down at night and an application serving
Europe loaded up during their business day.

It could also be of interest for someone who is expecting a temporary
"surge" of activity.  It leads, though, to a completely different kind
of attack called the "denial of sustainability" attack where a
cloud-based provider is hit with a flood of "legitimate" transactions
causing the "cloud" management to kick in more servers to handle the
additional load.  If that cloud is rented, a content provider could be
hit with a huge bill.