OpenStack holds a great deal of promise as a cloud platform built on open standards, and has support from the major players in cloud services. It has the potential for allowing organisations to set up their own private cloud services that are designed to inter-operate. Is it ready yet for companies that want the convenience of cloud solutions, but with more control, and without the large subscription fees? Robert Sheldon finds out.… Read more
In a bid to challenge Intel's dominance of high performance computing environments, IBM have introduced OpenPOWER, a flexible open-source framework based on their POWER processor architecture. Robert Sheldon looks at the potential of this new platform.… Read more
With Amazon Web Services, you might find that a large Amazon Machine Image (AMI) as with over 1 TB, taken as a snapshot can take two days or more. If so, it is time to change your backup strategy and manage your EBS volumes as efficiently as possib… Read more
When the Cloud was new, it was often presented as an 'all or nothing' solution. Nowadays, the canny Systems Architect will exploit the best advantages of 'cloud' distributed computing in the right place, and use in-house services where most appropriate. So what are the issues that govern these architectural decisions?… Read more
AWS's DNS service, called Route 53, is a reliable and cost effective service for managing your domain. It has a simple RESTful API for managing them in the command-line.… Read more
OpenStack is an open-source cloud platform based on Linux. It aims to allow organisations to run cloud services on standard hardware, with interoperability between cloud services such as Amazon AWS.… Read more
What's The 'Cloud'? nothing more than one or more of three different types of distributed service, conceptually similar to any other service such as telephone or gas. These services provide Infrastructure, Software and platform. Buck Woody cuts a trail through the jungle of marketing verbiage to reveal the technology behind the Cloud..… Read more