Ideas….

A while back I thought about ditching my current web host (a.k.a. my friend Andrew) and using Amazon EC2 for my website.  I determined since Andrew is a great guy (and gives me a REALLY cheap rate) I will never do that.  Today though I rethink that decision (although I’ll prolly continue to go with Andrew cause he still is a great guy).

Why am I rethinking it?  Well today Amazon EC2 realeased three new features; Amazon CloudWatch, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing.

Amazon CloudWatch keeps a number of different metrics on how your AMIs are being utilized (CPU utilization, Network I/O, etc.).  And you can access the data either through the API or commandline tools (it would be nice though if this were built into the Management Console though).

Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing work in conjunction with Amazon CloudWatch to help you get the most out of your EC2 instances.  Auto Scaling allows you to define certain conditions that, when present, allow you to perform certain actions (like scale up your instances or scale them down).  Elastic Load Balancing automatically spreads the load of traffic amongst your EC2 instances based on the metrics provided by CloudWatch.

All in all pretty cool, however I would love to see it all built into the management console rather than just available through the API and commandline tools (I am lazy afterall Amazon).  If you want to read more check out Amazon Web Services’ Blog or follow the links above.

Now you too can watch the magic of code4lib2009 via the interwebs. Videos of the presentations can be found here: http://code4lib.org/conference/2009/schedule

Videos of the Lightning Talks can be found here: http://code4lib.org/conference/2009/lightning

And video of me can be found here 8min and 40s into the video.
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/code4lib/lightning_day3.html

Yes I am that vain.

It appears that the US Federal Government (oddly one of the leaders in cloud computing) is beginning to define cloud computing.  Last week Reuven Cohen posted on his blog the draft definition constructed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The definition outlines key characteristics, delivery models, and deployment models and then defines each options.  Below you can see a brief description of each.  Its a great definition that helps clarify things that weren’t so clear before.  And sadly there goes my grand vision to be the definer of cloud computing (like that was going to happen anyway).

Key Characteristics

• on-demand self-service
• ubiquitous network access
• location-independent resource pooling
• rapid elasticity
• pay-per-use

Delivery Models

• SaaS (software as a service)
• Paas (platform as a service)
• Iaas (infrastructure as a service)

Deployment Models

• private cloud
• community cloud
• public cloud
• hyrbrid cloud