Cloudy Computing…
With the amount of information and subjective interpretations surrounding cloud computing – Cisco’s recent announcement has started to force vendors to stop talking in code and start leveraging all of these technologies in a pragmatic fashion.
Thankfully, there are quite a few tangible benefits to integration, but the ramifications to the datacenter world are huge. Cloud computing is a concrete step toward truly outsourced internet infrastructure (utility computing). You outsource (via technology partner) your computing infrastructure and the business can focus on the application and staff productivity.Given the economy, improving processes is a simple way to increase profit and ready the business for its next growth phase.
So now that virtualization is becoming more accepted in various environments – what is next? By abstracting the hardware platforms that cover connectivity, storage and processing, technology vendors have made some serious headway in integrating the pieces. By tying together key vendors, I am hopeful to see some standards emerge from this to address performance, management and scalability. The one key ingredient that remains the same? The OS.
So what’s next…I say increase efficiency and remove the conventional OS from the equation. Run your application on the Hypervisor and call it a day. I have to give props to netbooks/laptops for shining the way here*. There are plenty of opportunities to wring performance out of machines by consuming less power and not sacrifice the user experience. Similar to computing only a few years ago, the solution was to simply throw hardware at the problem and not address/optimize the underlying architecture. With datacenters now getting incented to provide power efficient solutions, these costs will affect customers. Now efficiency is the name of the game in the datacenter. I look forward to seeing how the industry adjusts to balancing power consumption and performance…
* For example, companies like DeviceVM/Splashtop provide unique uses for embedded OS choices. It’s cool to be lean!
Jensen-Healey Restoration – Getting started
Part 1 of the ongoing saga of the 1974 Jensen-Healey that I am attempting to restore.
First - Why the Jensen-Healey? I was looking for an interesting car with some history. Preferred a convertible, but mainly looking for a lightweight chassis with a decent engine. I have no plans to swap in anything in quite yet, but I have seen everything from electric conversions to a shoehorned V8. With a curb weight of about 1850 lbs and stock HP of about 140, this thing is a blast. Wikipedia has a great entry that gives the background on the short-lived Jensen-Healey
Next – Acquisition…$600 on Craigslist (running but beat-up). There was standing water in it from it being stored outside, so I knew that some panels would need some help. Google “rust+british+1970s” and you will find a myriad of examples as why this is no surprise. If you prep for this before hand, it helps when you see bubbled metal and you won’t freak out…
Next time – “What the heck am I in for…?”
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