>I also like the AC chiming in that he can have his support staff run it on a private cloud locally when we're talking about streaming a movie. That's cloud efficiency in action.

Stop being obtuse.

>How do you install a highly available cluster on a single machine ? And if you mean you can have part of a cloud on a single machine with a hybrid solution, you don't really mean a single machine at all. And probably a really dumb design.

Actually it is useful for software testing (and no a single machine would not be 'highly available') but it could simulate.

> Internet is a place tied together by DNS on the TCPIP (and other protocols).

GFY, this is not an untrue statement. Without name resolution, reliable packet transfer there is no Internet.

The cloud is NOT something new, it is tools can capabilities that have matured for commodity hardware and naturally follow matured virtualized environments.

You sound like a crusty old sysadmin out of a job.

You are right. These are not defining features, they are capabilities. But I defined what marketing is actually talking about when they refer to the cloud and I described the promise of it.

Actually I run a build farm, let me tell you how the cloud is different: its just another tooling on top of what we already have. The cloud allows us to scale builds rapidly and to meet actual demand. It allows developers to deploy very specific sandboxes automatically and have them disappear. This can be further automated in to the build cycle so that the build or test itself requests and destroys a very specifically defined resource when its done. That is the difference.

I did. The Cloud tools do not care what platform you are on and can be built to be *agnostic*. I'm not talking about the OS or middleware it sets up. I'm talking control and command agnosticism here.

Sorry for over simplifying the thermodynamics of the matter, I was talking about waste heat. Not heat that disappated because of actual calculations. I should have been more specific.

Youre not wrong the cloud is just a tool for the right job. Don't have time yo discuss deeper but you def know what you are talking about.

The cloud tooling builds the stack on demand for the platform of choice. Obv you arent going to be running AIX on x86.

Exactly. It's nice to see someone on /. gets it rather than spout dated uninformed rhetoric.

You are absolutely right and I take back what I said as being overly simplistic. Back in ARPAnet days there wasn't much an application layer. It really depends if you are looking at it from a transport layer or not. But since we're talking about cloud it's not useful or even particularly helpful to either argument to be overly broad about defining the Internet. I do suppose one could argue the cloud is definitely capable of exploiting favorable packet flows to exist wherever on the network- but it doesn't have to which is precisely my point..

I classify your comment as interesting. But it doesn't say one thing or another of the merits (or lack thereof) of cloud technology.

It just really pisses me off to hear people who think they know what they are talking about dismiss cloud as some revist of technology that has existed since the 70s. In a manner of speaking it is, but it is yet another layer of abstraction with new possibilities and conveniences and fewer disadvantages.

At the end of the day, pretty much (although not quite the same). To answer your question.... think of the cloud as next gen mainframe. Mainframes were very locked to the platform and specialized software. Consider this utilitarian agnostic computing.

Agreed, I call this the IT Pendulum.

Centralize ....... Decentralize ........Centralize .........Decentralize

I've seen it swing personally at least 4 times in my career.

Me either. You are wise to recognize this.

I totally agree with most of what you said?

Firstly, I did not miss what RUSS said. Lag and stutter is not a characteristic of a cloud it is characteristic of an inappropriate network connection.

Secondly, I still think you are too narrow. The Cloud is just as likely to be private as public. Virtualization alone doth not a cloud make you point out rather correctly. The cloud is automation layers to manage virtualization solutions and baremetal as a whole, automate management and deployment. It is about efficiency and accesibility for the enduser. It's about the possibility of exposing resources direct to users on demand.