Cloud Computing & Green IT is it "ALL HYPE?"

You couldn't find two more hyped phrases in the world of IT if you tried. However, even with all the hype you should still be paying attention.

I've been in IT for over 20 years now and have seen technology become widely available that we wouldn't have dreamed about in 1989. I can remember thinking 1200 Baud on the modem was amazing and that a 1.2 Mb floppy disk was revolutionary. The first data center I worked in was about 1500 square feet and had a fairly large Unisys mainframe system that filled the entire room. This one computer did all the processing for our company of 1300 employees. Unfortunately all the work was scheduled and had to run in sequence, which meant customers would often have to wait a day or more for the results of their work. At the end of the week we would run a full backup of all the information and it would take the majority of a day to complete. Now I can get more compute power and twice the disk space in a hand held device that fits in my jeans pocket. That's right that huge (size) computer only had 16 Gbs of disk, you can easily get 2 to 4 times that much in a device that fits in the palm of your hand now.

In 1998 I can remember telling my workmates that one day we'd be able to treat the computers in a data center as one large computer, now 11 years later it's here in the name of "Cloud Computing". My naiveté of what it would take to make my little hope a reality notwithstanding, the hope was the right one. I have a personal perspective on what the cloud should be, but in the end it's about effective use of resources, better known as efficiency. Efficiency is also where "Green" comes in.

Now what sounds better "Cloud Computing" & "Green IT" or "Efficient, Cost Effective IT". I'm pretty sure I know which one you picked. I'm OK with the use of "Cloud Computing" and "Green IT" because these phrases help to galvanize our attention and interest, so in this case the ends justify the means!

Don't get me wrong there's much more to cloud computing than just efficiency and certainly there's more to it than I imagined when I first considered it in 1998. While there are many definitions of the "cloud", I'm going to focus on my version.

My high level definition of the cloud:
A platform of software that allows the user to utilize multiple computers and their assorted resources of disk, memory and CPU as one larger compute resource and to be able to access this resource from any location.

Why is cloud important in the above definition?

Today most applications are still run in hardware verticals, a defined, tiered set of servers, disk & network devices that support the different unique functions of an application (data base, app engine, web, etc). This configuration leads to very "inefficient" use of hardware resources, especially when you consider extra hardware needed for test and development or recovery. In general the average non-virtualized server in today's data centers is running at <6% utilization! If that's not enough to concern you, how about the other issues associated with this type of vertical architecture; - Lack of portability: Application instances can't easily be moved - Hardware dependence: Changes to the hardware platforms can force changes to the application - Difficulty in creating a new instance: In some cases the infrastructure to make one application work can take days to configure from scratch. Making recovery from failures or corruption time consuming and costly - Resiliency tends to be built into the hardare & data center, not the application - Maintenance of the application or server environment often times means down time for the customers - Each environment pillar/vertical is specific to an application If the cloud works the way it should you can solve all of the problems listed above and drammatically improve your efficiency!

- You'll potentially save millions on your data center infrastructure, while enabling higher availability, improved performance and increased scalability.

- You'll be helping to save the planet, while reducing your company's CapEx & OpEx overhead



If you're not currently looking into how you can leverage the cloud or be greener, then you should at least start by thinking about what you'd like your compute infrastructure to look like 2 - 3 years down the road. You'll probably find that the best place to start is with virtualization.