tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-156750302024-03-07T20:07:13.928-08:00West Coast GridGrid computing, West Coast style.Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.comBlogger265125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-16646699968405317202009-03-26T15:43:00.000-07:002009-03-26T16:19:33.257-07:00Is Online Gaming Cloud Computing's Killer App?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjd1yCPBNySnusfTaJK7FOzvo-wdGDi9M0zv2j6oocDsYvAIfvr6Pd6tOQJf2iZDm-hfKfqpl884pAK6bI56rCnRYiUbI3H0pzxos8LsbBVKBLvBHIybdidMjPuuiY0XNKxGdgbQ/s1600-h/onlive.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 114px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjd1yCPBNySnusfTaJK7FOzvo-wdGDi9M0zv2j6oocDsYvAIfvr6Pd6tOQJf2iZDm-hfKfqpl884pAK6bI56rCnRYiUbI3H0pzxos8LsbBVKBLvBHIybdidMjPuuiY0XNKxGdgbQ/s400/onlive.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317636164495129906" /></a><br />If you haven't seen the video showcasing <a href="http://www.onlive.com">OnLive's</a> online gaming platform from this year's <a href="http://www.gdconf.com/">Game Developers Conference</a>, you should check it out <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/03/24/onlive-the-end-of-seperate-games-platforms/">here</a>.<br /><br />OnLive's product is simple: deliver high-end gaming experience of multi-platform games (PC, XBox 360, PS3) through a browser. Supposedly, with very little porting, game developers can adapt their game to run on the OnLive server platform.<br /><br />Users connect a controller to their PC, open up a browser, and faster than you can saw "Lara Croft is hotter than the sun," they're playing real games via the internet. All of the controller's movements are sent via your high-bandwidth internet connection (at least 1.5MB for SD, 5 MB for HD) to one of the servers in OnLive's farms, where the game is actually running. Only the video itself is sent back to your screen -- you don't need a GPU, you don't need a high end system at all.<br /><br />For people who want to game on their TV without a PC, OnLive is manufacturing a small box (the size of paperback book) that plugs into your home network and can accept wired (USB)or wireless controllers.<br /><br />In addition to offering games from multiple platforms without investing in lots of expensive hardware, OnLive claims to have some value add on top of the games themselves: improved social networking, the ability to save "brag clips" of your best moves, and the ability to watch other people play games are all built in.<br /><br />It seems that latency would be a huge issue, even on those high bandwidth connections -- they claim that it's imperceptible, but only real game play will tell.<br /><br />If their product does everything that they say it does, though -- this could be the "killer app" that cloud computing has been waiting for. This could quickly turn a multibillion market on its ear. Why invest hundreds of dollars in a console when there is an option that requires none (and could potentially play more games)? Why invest $60 per title in games?<br /><br />While some industries (say, enterprise software) may have difficulty convincing customers to move data, try something new, and pay-per-use, the video game market will have no such hurdles. They're marketing to a generation who has never purchased a CD, who use more SaaS in the cloud, and who would love to avoid the sunk cost that a console represents (I myself have a PS1 and a PS2 gathering dust downstairs).<br /><br />OnLive has that rare opportunity to be groundbreaking in two industries (gaming and cloud computing) simultaneously.<br /><br />And if it is the killer app, there is a strange side effect: while many people have been assuming that <a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/02/is_the_server_i.php">servers</a> would be the first industry <a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/03/more_thoughts_o.php">killed by the move to cloud computing</a>, it would be the console manufacturers (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft) who get affected most.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Update 3/25/2009 4:16 - added the last paragraph</span><br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/cloud%20computing" rel="tag">cloud computing</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-63003559493779049542009-03-13T16:50:00.000-07:002009-03-13T16:57:54.226-07:00Look! It's a blog!I hadn't actually forgotten that I have a blog...but from the date since my last post, it certainly looks like I have.<br /><br />Certainly 2008 was a tough year, and I ended it by entering that fraternity known as "fatherhood" -- so I've spent less time blogging than I should.<br /><br />I have still been following the grid and cloud spaces quite closely, though, and plan to start crystallizing more of my thoughts here.<br /><br />In the meantime, some Digipede-in-the-news: Penny Crosman at Wall Street & Technology wrote an article called <a href="http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/data-latency/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=215801334">Adapting Legacy Applications to Multicore Servers</a> that featured Digipede very prominently.<br /><br />I was glad to see it, because it's one of the benefits we've been touting for quite a while now: many enterprises have a decade (or more!) of legacy code that they run, and any multi-core/multi-machine strategy (whether it is internal to their data center or external in a cloud) absolutely has to address the issue of how to adapt that code to take advantage of newer hardware.<br /><br />A Digipede customer is quoted in the article quite extensively, but my favorite quote by far is this one:<br /><br /><blockquote>...staff have become almost obsessed with throwing applications on the grid because it's so easy to do.</blockquote><br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/grid%20computing" rel="tag">grid computing</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-70434316667721989672008-09-22T10:41:00.000-07:002008-09-22T11:27:43.169-07:00HPC Server 2008 RTM!Congrats to Kyril Faenov, Ryan Waite, and the rest of the HPC team up in Redmond.<br /><br />Today at the HPC on Wall Street show in New York, Microsoft announced that the second version of their high performance computing tool has been released to manufacturing.<br /><br />I got to sit down with Kyril (who runs the HPC team) back at Super Computing. He talked about some of the new features coming in the latest version, and broke them into four categories:<div><div class="Tags"><ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Scalability</span>: They really want to address the top end of the market, which meant adding features to ensure that Windows clusters can scale as large as the big Linux clusters. That included addressing issues all over the place, from their MPI stack (by the way, they're seeing a 30% improvement in LINPACK) to their management tools.<br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Ease of use</span>: More is available out of the box, including better management tools, improved diagnostics, and reporting capabilities.<br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Integration with other applications</span>: The HPC team worked overtime to improve integration with all sorts of stuff, from Microsoft's own tools (like System Center and Active Directory) to shared storage from other vendors (like Panassas, Ibrix, and IBM) and standards groups (HPC Basic Profile, GGF, etc).<br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span>: Kyril mentioned that more and more "traditional" ISVs are now running on Windows. By "traditional," of course, he meant "traditionally running on Linux or Unix clusters."<br /></li></ol><div>What's interesting to me is what Kyril didn't emphasize (and, indeed, what's barely mentioned in today's press release): their new .NET tools for load balancing SOA applications using the WCF Router, and their integration with Windows Clustering to provide head-node failover for high availability. </div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe they're not important enough to emphasize in the PR, but they address some needs that many users have wanted (better development tools, including their first real foray into .NET development tools, and a good strategy for high-availability applications).</div><div><br /></div><div>Following on <a href="http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/impulse-buyers.html">last week's announcement</a> of a partnership with <a href="http://cray.com/">Cray</a>, it's clear that Microsoft is working to expand the footprint that they've created with the first version of this product, which was called Compute Cluster Server.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure if they've announced anything official about prices, but Kyril said that CCS's price point (as much as 80% off a full Server 2003 license) had been "very well received." So I don't expect a price change.</div><div><br /></div><div>By the way, I asked Kyril about the name change -- did the words "high performance" mean that they were ready to take on the upper echelons of the Top 500 list?<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Kyril smiled. "We've earned our stripes."</div><div><br /></div><div>With an entry at number 23 in the <a href="http://top500.org/list/2008/06/100">latest list</a>, I guess that's starting to be true.</div><div><br /></div></div><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/microsoft" rel="tag">microsoft</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/hpc%20server" rel="tag">hpc server</a></div></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-65226217353927830392008-08-28T11:06:00.000-07:002008-08-28T11:21:32.562-07:00Is my blog named wrong?Somehow I found a link to <a href="http://wordle.net/">Wordle</a>, a very cool tool that creates word cloud graphics based on text or URLs. Naturally, I ran <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com">http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com</a> through it to see what my grid cloud would look like...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuGw8PQPP6bB1tYvNcjwLk2rCgZoqYopJEbqmbQb1zRDhxRvjuGvrFQX0EQFwAJZ996cozrddO8mrlb2mC7M6HyKzreWJ_JIDxklJZ4Nd73unZc5lJiRq_6zatkBj4tpRJ2GTsUA/s1600-h/wordlecloud.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuGw8PQPP6bB1tYvNcjwLk2rCgZoqYopJEbqmbQb1zRDhxRvjuGvrFQX0EQFwAJZ996cozrddO8mrlb2mC7M6HyKzreWJ_JIDxklJZ4Nd73unZc5lJiRq_6zatkBj4tpRJ2GTsUA/s400/wordlecloud.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239632289239270962" border="0" /></a><br /><br />...and promptly found out that my "grid cloud" is actually more of a "cloud cloud."<br /><br />That last sentence points out several things I've noticed lately:<br /><ul><li>Those of us who have been writing about Grid Computing are increasingly writing about cloud computing, and of course that's no surprise. While clouds are opening up the prospect of distributed computing to a much wider audience than ever, using a cloud effectively means possibly managing many machines effectively. Alternatively, it may mean writing software that effectively runs on many machines simultaneously. In either case, the grid computing industry has been thinking about (and solving!) these problems for years. If you want a firsthand look at the expertise these "grid" folks have in "cloud" efforts, hop onto the Google Cloud Computing group and check out Rich Wellner's contributions. As I said, the grid folks have been thinking about these problems for years (albeit in a slightly different implementation).</li><li>The term "Cloud" already has far too many meanings in the marketplace (another parallel to <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2005/10/grids-clusters-distributed-computing.html">grid</a>, come to think of it)</li><li>If I'm writing more about cloud computing than grid computing, is it time to rename my blog?<br /></li></ul>I've got a few posts I've been thinking about in terms of the intersection of cloud and grid (and where cloud is going) -- I'll try to get back on the blogging bandwagon and pump some of those out.<br /><br />In the meantime, I'm not changing the name of the blog. It may be an antiquated name, but at least people know where to find me.<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/cloud%20computing" rel="tag">cloud computing</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-12166260290542724412008-08-01T10:22:00.000-07:002008-08-01T12:16:33.163-07:00I'm all for scalability<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih7C8HcP5PLmQC9FA01qp8AvxJC1ZqPR5g39TBAbyGa27ko7_pU3eP9VfWssNTVBviOmQ2X4exWBhvHYeTa9nv_-gkJMR1km83isRchhFwbD7Kd7OX4BQ29ioIzvEpP4g8pmyBkQ/s1600-h/twitter-whale.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih7C8HcP5PLmQC9FA01qp8AvxJC1ZqPR5g39TBAbyGa27ko7_pU3eP9VfWssNTVBviOmQ2X4exWBhvHYeTa9nv_-gkJMR1km83isRchhFwbD7Kd7OX4BQ29ioIzvEpP4g8pmyBkQ/s320/twitter-whale.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229629670549149474" /></a>I love being quoted by that coffee-roasting, free-diving, Hawai'i living, .NET expert <a href="http://www.knowing.net/">Larry O'Brien</a>, so I was quite please to read my name in his <a href="http://sdtimes.com/FAILWHALE_VS_TIME_TO_MARKET/By_Larry_O_Brien/About_QA_and_TESTINGTROUBLESHOOTING_and_TWITTER/32550">latest SD Times column</a>. He quoted a tweet (yes, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/oaktowner">I love Twitter</a>) where I quoted a fellow CloudCamp attendee saying "Designing your app to scale is guaranteed failure—it will take too long to write."<br /><br />Unfortunately (and due primarily to the 140 character Twitter limit), Larry didn't realize that I didn't <span style="font-style:italic;">agree</span> with the guy I was quoting -- I just found it amusing.<br /><br />I've actually blogged quite a few times about designing scalability into an app. In a 2005 post (<a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2005/12/of-course-scaling-matters.html">Of course scalability matters!</a>), I said this:<br /><blockquote>Most importantly, [designing scalable software] means acknowledging the possibility, however remote, that you <span style="font-weight:bold;">may actually succeed</span> and build something that people eventually use. Many people.<br /><br />This point applies equally to those designing web sites and those planning on deploying SaaS. <span style="font-weight:bold;">If you are going to make it available on the web, and you're not designing for scalability, then you just aren't planning for success</span>: you're planning for failure.</blockquote>I followed that up with a <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2005/12/web-20-companies-need-to-scale.html">post a month later</a>, and I was quite pleased to learn that <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2006/04/vogels-on-scalability.html">Werner Vogels's viewpoint</a> coincided with my own.<br /><br />So I wholeheartedly agree with Larry's sentiment:<blockquote>However, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of dealing with scaling only when it becomes a problem. While laissez-faire attitudes have come to dominate code and design approaches, I still resist the idea of abandoning upfront architectural work. </blockquote>In fact, when I overheard the comment at CloudCamp, my first reaction was this: the only reason building scalability into your product would hurt you is if your idea is so unoriginal that someone else is 5 minutes behind you.<br /><br />So: thanks for the mention, Larry. I'm on your side.<br /><br />(And I really am going to ride over to <a href="http://sweetmarias.com/">Sweet Maria's</a> next week, so send me an e-mail)<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/scalability" rel="tag">scalability</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-23077566635234482752008-07-29T09:01:00.001-07:002008-07-29T09:23:30.445-07:00Sarah Perez Looks at Microsoft's CloudSarah Perez at <a href="http://readwriteweb.com">ReadWriteWeb </a>has a <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/peering_into_microsofts_cloud.php">pretty darn good post</a> up about Microsoft's cloud efforts (at least the publicly announced cloud efforts).<br /><br />While it's not terribly in-depth, it does highlight the breadth of Microsoft's efforts in cloud computing: the Connected OS, the Software Stack, the Developer Tools, and the Datacenter effort. I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to say that Microsoft is taking a broader approach to cloud than any other vendors out there. <br /><br />Their vision of a "connected OS" is deeper than anything I see from any vendor. Their software stack spans consumer apps and enterprise apps. <br /><br />Their development tools (many of which have yet to be announced) are broad and varied, and will continue to become richer. Always remember: Microsoft is a tools vendor first and foremost.<br /><br />And, of course, they're building data centers at a pace that only they and Google can.<br /><br />As with many efforts from Microsoft, I expect this to be ragged at times. It's a big company, and they are making this a huge effort. There may be conflicting offerings. There will definitely be failures.<br /><br />But as Sarah points out, Ray Ozzie's Microsoft 2.0 is focused on this. So, mark my words: there will be some major successes.Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-66529508786692864122008-07-28T15:34:00.000-07:002008-07-28T16:18:27.605-07:00Robert continues to nail Cloud Taxonomy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT8oYV-M5lXqDNp24Vzq8kdqIyxX8nEUBVkxqaqQurozwPLBlK0aXtV3tAI2yhBqw0aQYU9wHn-YOvhGHeZbgdTUd-NaXESHhTmpHx7QJHNa6TNWjCzbdjbxFQ89inghGOWIj6Tg/s1600-h/Carl_von_Linn%C3%A9.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT8oYV-M5lXqDNp24Vzq8kdqIyxX8nEUBVkxqaqQurozwPLBlK0aXtV3tAI2yhBqw0aQYU9wHn-YOvhGHeZbgdTUd-NaXESHhTmpHx7QJHNa6TNWjCzbdjbxFQ89inghGOWIj6Tg/s320/Carl_von_Linn%C3%A9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228200160855232274" border="0" /></a>Perhaps partially inspired by Matias Wolsky's <a href="http://blogs.southworks.net/mwoloski/2008/07/10/saas-taxonomy-map/">SaaS Taxonomy Map</a>, my friend, co-worker, and colleague <a href="http://et.cairene.net">Robert W. Anderson</a> has written a great post called <a href="http://et.cairene.net/2008/07/28/the-cloud-services-stack-infrastructure/">The Cloud Services Stack -- Infrastructure</a>. In his breakdown of the varying forms of services being offered in the cloud today, he proves himself to be the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolus_Linnaeus">Linnaeus</a> of the XaaS products on the market today.<br /><br />With so many "What is Cloud Computing" posts and articles on the net that have only served to blur rather than sharpen distinctions, I think his post should be required reading. Building on his earlier post (<a href="http://et.cairene.net/2008/07/03/cloud-services-continuum/">Cloud Services Continuum</a>), he's accurately analyzing the landscape, providing a context that allows us to group (and therefore, ultimately, compare) the differing cloud offerings.<br /><br />It's not just a useful exercise, it's a necessary exercise. So many posts (and even articles in mainstream publications) say things like "You've got lots of choices, including Amazon EC2 and Google's AppEngine." Those two offerings are so very different that they can hardly be considered competitors--yet because they're lumped into the very broad category of "Cloud," people keep mentioning them in the same breath.<br /><br />Rob's diagram breaks out three main parts to the cloud services stack: SaaS (or, as he sometimes calls it, Applications as a Service), Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure as a Service. It's just as useless to try to compare an IaaS offering to a PaaS offering (e.g., <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/">AppEngine</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011">EC2</a>) as it is to compare GMail and <a href="http://www.gogrid.com">GoGrid</a>--they simply occupy different niches in the ecology.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://et.cairene.net/2008/07/28/the-cloud-services-stack-infrastructure/"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://et.cairene.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/image.png" alt="" border="0" /></a>But, interestingly, Rob's Venn diagram makes it clear that unlike the Linnaean taxonomy of the the biological kingdom, these groups that make up cloud offerings are overlapping rather than heirarchical. For instance, several offerings that started as SaaS (NetSuite, FaceBook, and SalesForce.com) have added PaaS functionality to their suites.<br /><br />Similarly, <a href="http://twitter.com">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://identi.ca">Identi.ca</a> have SaaS offerings that are being pushed all the way down to the Infrastructure as a Service level, being used to provide a messaging layer in the cloud. <a href="http://biztalk.net/">Biztalk Lab</a>'s Workflow Services sits astride the PaaS/IaaS boundary. That's not to say that all offerings can be compared, but rather that an offering can have multiple facets.<br /><br />The other thing I think that is quite interesting is the fragmented nature of the IaaS market -- Rob separates it generally into three submarkets: Storage, Virtual Hardware, and "Other." (The same could be said, I suppose of the SaaS market, but that's a much more mature, well understood, and less interesting topic). I'll have more to write about this particular market later, because I think there is lots of room for analysis here.<br /><br />Public domain image from the <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikimedia Commons</a>.<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/cloud%20computing" rel="tag">cloud computing</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/SaaS" rel="tag">SaaS</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/PaaS" rel="tag">PaaS</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/IaaS" rel="tag">IaaS</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-426998540763888942008-06-17T10:30:00.000-07:002008-06-17T10:49:50.562-07:00News flash: .NET runs on XP and VistaI was surprised to read the <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9969231-16.html">post that Matt Asay</a> (of CNET) wrote (that hit <a href="http://www.techmeme.com/080616/p41#a080616p41">TechMeme in a big way</a>), touting <a href="http://www.evansdata.com/press/viewRelease.php?pressID=135">Evans Data's report</a> that claimed that only 8% of developers are targeting Windows Vista, while 49% are targeting XP.<br /><br />It showed an astounding ignorance of how software is developed for the two operating systems -- without having read the report, it certainly calls into question whether Evans Data and Asay have any idea what developing software for these platforms is like. <br /><br />In almost every case, it's not an either/or situation: .NET runs perfectly on both OSs, and almost all software written in .NET runs on both. If Evans and Asay don't know that, they're not qualified to be writing reports like these (or writing about reports like these).<br /><br />If the survey forced developers to choose XP or Vista-- it was either designed by someone who doesn't understand the platform, or it was designed to try to make developers make a choice that would result in a controversial headline. <br /><br />And for Asay to blindly quote the survey shows a predilection for Microsoft-bashing (and ignorance as well). The comments on his post, however, make it clear that many of his readers <i>do</i> understand the software world, and understand that the dichotomy is a false one.<br /><br />The study didn't mention Mac OS X at all, but Asay still finds reason to put in a good word for it. I wonder if it ever occurred to him that most software that runs in Leopard would still run in Tiger. Or possibly even Panther. And that developers can target the platform without targeting a particular version.<br /><br />Anand Iyer of Microsoft has a good post up <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/aniyer/archive/2008/06/16/how-to-get-techmeme-d-write-about-something-bashing-vista.aspx">here</a> that discusses this in more detail.<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/microsoft" rel="tag">microsoft</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/vista" rel="tag">vista</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/xp" rel="tag">xp</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-38468276514033473782008-06-13T08:30:00.000-07:002008-06-13T08:49:43.882-07:00Calling Early AdoptersOur customers range from the very pro-Microsoft to the quite agnostic--we've tried to walk a line that allowed the .NET-embracers to get the most out of technology, while letting non-programmers with a pile of desktops tap into their computing power quickly and easily.<br /><br />It's sometimes a difficult line to walk.<br /><br />Anyway, this post goes out to the former group: the .NET-lovers, the early adopters.<br /><br />Rob and I have posted (and he's done some twittering) about some of the technologies we've been investigating over the last couple of weeks: <a href="http://twitter.com/rwandering/statuses/833150536">Workflow Foundation</a>, <a href="http://et.cairene.net/2008/06/09/digipede-velocity/">Microsoft Distributed Cache</a> (Velocity), <a href="http://et.cairene.net/2008/06/06/digipede-on-mono/">Mono</a>. We've done some very cool, very interesting things here in the lab -- and we are interested to hear your perspective on them.<br /><br />We'd like to talk to you if you're using any of these, or if you're interested in using them. How are you doing it? How would you like it to interoperate with your grid?<br /><br />Drop me a line at dan at you-know-who-ipede dot net and we'll set up a LiveMeeting.<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/mono" rel="tag">mono</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/velocity" rel="tag">velocity</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/workflow" rel="tag">workflow</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-30759044398477714712008-06-10T09:38:00.000-07:002008-06-10T10:27:44.047-07:00In the Digipede Lab: Velocity and Mono<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWxyx3zj_YWjlOAYPNxuWEBl0CJ79ae3Cp8kjSUmrOx6GCUfVE2664dlAsNcYBZWR_x7TSzAQm9y1Xdi-q2S1Wwrvacfi5PDJGot6EvlFFput1itM56AnO_V_dYgPKVw3Q8I8Zcw/s1600-h/deatle_mono_logo.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWxyx3zj_YWjlOAYPNxuWEBl0CJ79ae3Cp8kjSUmrOx6GCUfVE2664dlAsNcYBZWR_x7TSzAQm9y1Xdi-q2S1Wwrvacfi5PDJGot6EvlFFput1itM56AnO_V_dYgPKVw3Q8I8Zcw/s200/deatle_mono_logo.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210294077891463026" /></a><br />I haven't been keeping up with the other Digipede bloggers...but in case you haven't seen it on <a href="http://powersunfiltered.com/2008/06/09/it-works-in-the-lab-now-what/">John's</a> and <a href="http://et.cairene.net/2008/06/06/digipede-on-mono/">Rob's</a> blogs, we've got some interesting stuff happening in the lab here at Digipede world headquarters.<br /><br />Rob talked about the work he's done playing with <a href="http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page">Mono</a>. He's pretty understated about how cool the work he did was. Of course, as Rob says, it can launch Linux specific binaries. But also:<blockquote>it is able to run our .NET development patterns.</blockquote> That, to me, is the real potential here (and it's also what makes Mono so cool) -- taking the awesome developer experience of .NET and making it available on <a href="http://www.mono-project.com/Supported_Platforms">multiple platforms</a>. We've said it over and over again: developer experience <i>matters</i>, and reducing the time it takes a developer to get his software running on the grid is extremely important. This could let people leverage our development tools even more.<br /><br />Rob's and John's caveats all stand: this is not a product, it's not slated for release, etc.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3INTC4XqmuAwTWEK7k5EhptV1NMAnh7rk9duBrmxQ34NQQny6_pPzIofmOP8TrEh5q65EeA24XTwWvEfHm0HfM82wC21VOxiN2DcRqAYHSLhtBA0pUiQz-FW6AslmGP1pqL4M4w/s1600-h/speedometer.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3INTC4XqmuAwTWEK7k5EhptV1NMAnh7rk9duBrmxQ34NQQny6_pPzIofmOP8TrEh5q65EeA24XTwWvEfHm0HfM82wC21VOxiN2DcRqAYHSLhtBA0pUiQz-FW6AslmGP1pqL4M4w/s320/speedometer.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210305433031409906" /></a>Running elsewhere in the lab: <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/velocity/default.aspx">Velocity</a>!<br /><br />I'm very excited about Microsoft's foray into the distributed object cache field -- mostly because I talk with our customers, and our customers have been begging for this.<br /><br />I started doing performance testing here in our lab, and I can tell you this: it can <span style="font-style:italic;">dramatically</span> improve performance for moving data on the grid.<br /><br />Hey, Digipede customers -- if you want to know more about these proofs-of-concept, e-mail me directly: dan at youknowwhere dot net.<br /><br />Photo credit: <a href="http://morguefile.com/forum/profile.php?username=blary54">blary54</a><br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/mono" rel="tag">mono</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/velocity" rel="tag">velocity</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-34320356093562573422008-06-03T16:37:00.000-07:002008-06-03T16:43:13.215-07:00Increasing VelocityAt TechEd yesterday, BillG and friends made a very interesting announcement: Microsoft is releasing a distributed, in-memory object cache (code named Velocity). For details, check out the <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/velocity/archive/2008/06/03/microsoft-project-code-named-velocity-followup.aspx">Velocity Blog</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://mdavey.wordpress.com">MDavey</a> is already on record <a href="http://mdavey.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/thoughts-for-the-velocity-team/">asking the right questions</a>: how will it interact with the grid (thanks for the mention, Matt)? Will there be push? How does it compare with the commercial object cache solutions already on the market?<br /><br />Can't wait to get my hands on that CTP!<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/velocity" rel="tag">velocity</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/distributed%20cache" rel="tag">distributed cache</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-25912989813565584292008-05-29T08:47:00.000-07:002008-05-29T08:50:22.227-07:00Digipede On Board!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWKRo217h_8Q8ErFYSCFnWXURo8gb62hxz8vEosur9MGB9_lk-lRoowgNmqvJvuYcfyR_m10c9z4ph6QJBHnpB8kt03RaE_2lkxKI1Ico4YJVrA4i7l2lQbwYJLtBJZEPm3zjqfQ/s1600-h/DigipedeInside.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWKRo217h_8Q8ErFYSCFnWXURo8gb62hxz8vEosur9MGB9_lk-lRoowgNmqvJvuYcfyR_m10c9z4ph6QJBHnpB8kt03RaE_2lkxKI1Ico4YJVrA4i7l2lQbwYJLtBJZEPm3zjqfQ/s320/DigipedeInside.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5205827586386312114" /></a><br />I know I can't use the word "inside" (apparently, Intel owns it now). But we've now got tiny little decals that let you tell the world your computer is on the grid!<br /><br />If you're a Digipede customer and you want some of these nifty stickers to throw around your datacenter, give me a shout (dan {at} digipede {dot} net).<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/grid%20computing" rel="tag">grid computing</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-84260042287609851092008-05-13T11:33:00.001-07:002008-05-13T11:49:09.842-07:00Something for everybodyI know there are two distinct flavors to my readers: those who care about <strike>distributed</strike> <strike>grid</strike> <strike>application virtualization</strike> parallel computing in general, and those who read specifically to hear about the <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigipedeNewsAndAnnouncements">latest Digipede news</a>. This post has a little something for everyone.<br /><br />Bill McColl has a <a href="http://www.computingatscale.com/?p=75">great post up</a> over at <a href="http://computingatscale.com">Computing at Scale</a> entitled "Domain-Specific Parallel Programming." His most important point: "(thirty years of research and funding) has gone into parallel supercomputing, an area that is in many ways the opposite of industrial and commercial computing." He then contrasts supercomputing programmers ("Ph.D. level scientists with deep experience of parallel software development") with developers in the commercial world ("have only a limited range of programming skills, and usually no experience whatsoever of parallelism").<br /><br />He's absolutely correct--and the latter set needs access to powerful distributed computing just as much as the former. <br /><br />On the Digipede front, I've just put up a couple of posts on the Digipede Community site specifically for developers using the Digipede Framework SDK: <a href="http://support.digipede.net/community/showthread.php?p=310">here's a list</a> of the new features in version 2.1 of the SDK, and <a href="http://support.digipede.net/community/showthread.php?t=127">here's a little sample</a> that uses some of the new API functionality.<br /><br />Finally, for my social-networking-addicted-readers (both of you): I got totally annoyed at the criticism of Scoble's claim that Twitter beat the USGS with news of the earthquake. The lesson isn't "You should get earthquake news from Twitter because the USGS takes two minutes." The lesson is "There is an amazing new, very widespread information gathering and distributing network--wider and faster than anything that has ever existed." That is news, and it was worth trumpeting.<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/grid%20computing" rel="tag">grid computing</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-18953602134377197132008-05-07T15:45:00.000-07:002008-05-07T16:36:18.243-07:00Release Me!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy4iNoRNoKobFw9jsoMr3vPKK6cXeHiygCzMakpChjdE-6OQXLhOShjSZOc86ePLxTX-KNtQFi8_b_emUmVq4f8A0FrUoW8ryGSiS_hXiftiVyBi8eJS5BRuZMql6TgfRWe2_GYQ/s1600-h/cruise+ship.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy4iNoRNoKobFw9jsoMr3vPKK6cXeHiygCzMakpChjdE-6OQXLhOShjSZOc86ePLxTX-KNtQFi8_b_emUmVq4f8A0FrUoW8ryGSiS_hXiftiVyBi8eJS5BRuZMql6TgfRWe2_GYQ/s320/cruise+ship.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197783769053683122" border="0" /></a><br />Whew!<br /><br />As I'm sure <a href="http://twitter.com/010111011010111">Deatle</a> is about to announce, Digipede Network version 2.1 just gained "general availability" status.<br /><br />The frequency of my posts here is one indicator that a <b>boatload</b> of work has gone into this release -- by all rights, it should probably be called v3.0. Here's a quick rundown of my favorite features:<br /><br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Certified for Windows Server 2008</span>: Announced previously, but cool nonetheless.<br /></li><li><b>Risk-free sharing</b>: "Pool Rank" permits risk-free sharing of resources: you can add your departmental servers to the enterprise grid and ensure that they always work on your jobs first. That means that by joining the grid, you can only improve your application performance.<br /></li><li><b>Job concurrency</b>: The improved Digipede Agent software can manage different applications simultaneously, maximizing utilization of compute nodes on the grid. This allows your multi-core machines to be used most efficiently. </li><li><b>Management APIs</b>: New management APIs give developers programmatic ability to create, modify, and delete resource pools. </li><li><b>Improved task concurrency</b>: More detailed specification of task concurrency lets you specify the number of cores per task (for multithreaded applications) or the number of tasks per core.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Improved server efficiency</span>: The Digipede Server has been vastly improved in its use of storage and memory. It will handle more applications, larger applications, better than ever before.<br /></li></ul>And, of course, a host of other small changes.<br /><br />If you're already a customer, make sure you let us know when you're ready to upgrade. And if you've been waiting for a chance for an evaluation, here's a perfect chance.<br /><br />I'll be hosting some webcasts over the next couple of weeks to go over new features. If you're interested in signing up for one of those, head over <a href="http://www.digipede.net/products/webinar.html">here</a>...<br /><br />Photo credit: <a href="http://morguefile.com/forum/profile.php?username=M42">M42</a><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/grid%20computing" rel="tag">grid computing</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-89549757731566591852008-04-25T11:58:00.000-07:002008-04-25T12:09:35.835-07:00Use that heat!Ian Foster has a <a href="http://ianfoster.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/greenhouse-and.html">terrific post</a> up about a program happening at the University of Notre Dame -- they've put an HPC cluster in a greenhouse, where the heat it generates is actually welcome. They're saving money on <i>heating</i> in the greenhouse, and on <i>cooling</i> in the datacenter. <br /><br />It's genius!<br /><br />He then describes an idea from Paul Brenner from ND's Center for Research Computing:<br /><blockquote>Paul then described a fascinating idea: placing low-cost (but high-heat) "grid heating appliaces" (CPU+memory+network) in campus offices... By scheduling jobs only to cold rooms, a grid scheduler can do double duty as a source of both low-cost computing and free heating (or is it heating and free computing?).</blockquote>I love that. <br /><br />My question is: who's going to write the first thermostat to grid-scheduler interface module? It would be absolutely fantastic to see a scheduler that is dynamically allocating jobs based on temperatures in rooms.<br /><br />Of course, it's a bit of a pipe dream. Clusters that generate lots of heat also tend to generate lots of noise, and you can't have that just anywhere. <br /><br />Still, creative ideas like this can lead to practical innovations -- you can imagine a university eliminating a large datacenter in favor of "compute closet/heat rooms" throughout the campus. Or a large datacenter where the generated heat is used to heat water -- as the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/cool-data-centre-used-to-heat-pool/2008/04/03/1206851071924.html">datacenter in Uitikon</a>, is doing.<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/hpc" rel="tag">hpc</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ian%20foster" rel="tag">ian foster</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-70690298387595392022008-04-24T10:59:00.000-07:002008-04-24T11:16:43.598-07:00MDavey in DDJ: PFX, PLINQ, and Digipede<a href="http://mdavey.wordpress.com">Matt Davey</a> of <a href="http://www.lab49.com">Lab49</a> must live in a world where the days are 30 hours long.<br /><br />Read his blog and you'll soon find out that he's an expert at user interface (Lab 49 has been working with Microsoft for a while on cutting edge UI with Silverlight and WPF), but he's also delved quite deeply into complex event processing as well as distributed computing.<br /><br />He also manages to write articles for Dr. Dobb's -- oh, and don't forget that he's a consultant, so you <i>know</i> he's working for clients as well. <br /><br />I don't know where he finds the time. <br /><br />But I'm glad he does. In <a href="http://www.ddj.com/windows/207401588">his article in the current Dr. Dobb's</a>, he discusses parallelism and concurrency, PLINQ and ParallelFX. He writes about his experience taking PLINQ and implementing it to run on a compute grid (using the Digipede Network). <a href="http://www.ddj.com/windows/207401588">Check it out</a>.<br /><br />One thing he doesn't mention is that some people developing in .NET are solving their multicore problem using Digipede alone -- the API makes it dead simple to take single-threaded code and run it in parallel (on separate threads or in separate processes) on multicore and multi-processor machines. <br /><br />As an aside: we are just about ready to release v2.1 of the software. It's been heads-down around here for quite a while as we get ready for this, which is by far our best release ever. Haven't had time to blog about it (or anything else, for that matter), but all should return to normal very soon.<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/grid%20computing" rel="tag">grid computing</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/plinq" rel="tag">plinq</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-4950954271915154782008-03-07T15:23:00.001-08:002008-03-07T15:34:12.492-08:00Desktop software is hard, eh Google?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8F0CFwRaMnozgx_nRfafjMRFB49vJzXEXn1HRpktV29c1ebhGPQ7sER-Aejwx4fC2bxoOAJSTjnDEFgxBy5ar9DI6zlUPY3IA0A_MYeHsYEjID47lOtZbNaxJ9AK4uSmuBlb11w/s1600-h/blackberry.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8F0CFwRaMnozgx_nRfafjMRFB49vJzXEXn1HRpktV29c1ebhGPQ7sER-Aejwx4fC2bxoOAJSTjnDEFgxBy5ar9DI6zlUPY3IA0A_MYeHsYEjID47lOtZbNaxJ9AK4uSmuBlb11w/s320/blackberry.jpg" border="0" alt="Blackberry curve image"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5175146516050548674" /></a><br />I was excited to hear about Google Calendar Sync. I got a Blackberry Curve last week, and I've been playing around with the best way to get both my personal (Google) and business (Outlook) calendars sync'd with it.<br /><br />We don't use Blackberry Enterprise Server, so the Outlook syncing seemed to be a bit spotty. It got some events over the air (maybe the ones for which I was e-mailed invitations), but didn't get all of them. If I plugged it in and used Blackberry Desktop Manager it worked fine -- but I didn't want to have to plug it in.<br /><br />But with the Google Sync download for my phone, it started grabbing my Google Calendar items with no problem.<br /><br />Google Calendar Sync seems like it's an ideal solution for me: it can keep my Outlook calendar in sync with a Google Calendar, and my phone can grab those events directly from Google over the internet. Fantastic!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ZTz0Lb9w5_-EhA6GJQicrIuwXioQkqtZeTnsJs2LNZB7RAIwryaV7HI8so_tcMIvTRlcxyCyp3bEApCKp6kqXdMPPzSoKlwrEy_5XkhHl6Eqh-8EDa6_EMZHCCaVqKWnWI0ZXQ/s1600-h/googlesync.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ZTz0Lb9w5_-EhA6GJQicrIuwXioQkqtZeTnsJs2LNZB7RAIwryaV7HI8so_tcMIvTRlcxyCyp3bEApCKp6kqXdMPPzSoKlwrEy_5XkhHl6Eqh-8EDa6_EMZHCCaVqKWnWI0ZXQ/s400/googlesync.png" border="0" alt="Google Calendar Sync supports Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 only"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5175146627719698386" /></a>So I headed over to Google, downloaded the software, and ran the install. And this is what I see: "Google Calendar Sync supports Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 only"<br /><br />Now, this is a brand new laptop that has only ever had Outlook 2007 on it. It's never been uninstalled, reinstalled, or anything hinky. Should be pretty vanilla.<br /><br />What's worse is that there's nothing I can do. No setup pages to look at, no documentation to read. I guess I'm just SOL.<br /><br />Has anyone else seen this? And more importantly: has anyone else <i>solved</i> this?<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/blackberry" rel="tag">blackberry</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/googlesync" rel="tag">googlesync</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-84827729728227997662008-03-04T08:11:00.000-08:002008-03-04T08:34:15.241-08:00Where Was HPC?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicMKy-kvdBKl-zKO9JH5W3Wzh1J3VQy93HhhCWyy3uZmvGC6fbRFD_F6WgIo_m2xfWCRSkOu20_C1Xz7CFHTskWHPZ2jrQb6HP139w0KX_q2ZRbmxINTS8aXaMGy025XLbrTGYOA/s1600-h/certifiedfor_lg.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicMKy-kvdBKl-zKO9JH5W3Wzh1J3VQy93HhhCWyy3uZmvGC6fbRFD_F6WgIo_m2xfWCRSkOu20_C1Xz7CFHTskWHPZ2jrQb6HP139w0KX_q2ZRbmxINTS8aXaMGy025XLbrTGYOA/s200/certifiedfor_lg.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173923951943553298" /></a><br />Nathan Trueblood, <a href="http://powersunfiltered.com">John Powers</a>, and I went to the Windows Server 2008 launch last week (of course, we had to show off our shiny new Certified for Server 2008 logo).<br /><br />It was surprisingly well attended (and I wasn't the only one who was surprised; apparently the catering staff was as well. In the <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2006/07/logistical-problems-mar-wpc06.html">continuing battle</a> of <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2006/07/allison-watson-owes-me-lunch.html">Microsoft vs. Ciruli</a> on the <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2006/07/facts-and-figures-from-wpc06.html">lunch front</a>, I lost -- no lunch for me. How hard is it to count attendees <i>at an event that requires pre-registration??</i>).<br /><br />Anyway, there were thousands of people there. We had hundreds walking around with the cool-looking Digipede stickers, and one lucky sticker-wearer went home with an XBox.<br /><br />With a triple-product launch, Microsoft had an enormous contingent there, both attending and demonstrating. In the Microsoft pavilion, they had 30 booths -- most of them centered around Server 2008. Many of those booths weren't for products that were launching: SharePoint Server was there, Microsoft Forefront, Exchange Server. Many of the booths were related to Server 2008: Hyper-V, File and Storage Solutions for Server 2008, Scalability with Server 2008.<br /><br />But you know what had no mention at all? HPC Server 2008.<br /><br />It was conspicuous in its absence. <br /><br />Now, HPC Server 2008 won't be out for months...then again, neither will SQL Server 2008 and it was launched at this event.<br /><br />So, what's the deal? While I think HPC Server 2008 will go far beyond what Windows Server 2003 CCE did (both in terms of capabilities and sales), missing an event like this shows that Microsoft still isn't thinking of the server market as a continuum. They're dividing server users into HPC (high performance computing) and what may as well be called LPC (low performance computing).<br /><br />In reality, of course, there's no strict division. It's a continuum. And Microsoft should be doing everything it can to <i>bridge</i> the gap between HPC and "the rest of us." As Jim Gray used to refer to it: Indoor Computing. It runs the gamut.<br /><br />I guess the HPC crew are huddled in Redmond, preparing for their release later this year...too bad they couldn't find the time to market to the thousands of Windows Server fans who gathered in LA last week.<br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/microsoft" rel="tag">microsoft</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/server%202008" rel="tag">server 2008</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/hpc%20server%202008" rel="tag">hpc server 2008</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-63681694374326185012008-02-26T11:12:00.000-08:002008-02-26T11:18:14.072-08:00Win an XBox 360 from Digipede at Server 2008 Launch<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ__Cv9QPp4SF1RiE93vKhmG-PzGl2T-LXppPrkxpxt03naJxo8m8tqtA_skeq65snbYbtC4T8LYe-A4ZT8UfkS3lSvIA8A-rtD_MQqYaRPM0D6KMQRmCxr5ro5HKXUFejpPqiWA/s1600-h/WearWin+(2).jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ__Cv9QPp4SF1RiE93vKhmG-PzGl2T-LXppPrkxpxt03naJxo8m8tqtA_skeq65snbYbtC4T8LYe-A4ZT8UfkS3lSvIA8A-rtD_MQqYaRPM0D6KMQRmCxr5ro5HKXUFejpPqiWA/s320/WearWin+(2).jpg" border="0" alt="Wear and Win"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171370244189853186" /></a>Are you going to the Windows Server 2008 / Visual Studio 2008 / SQL Server 2008 global launch in LA tomorrow?<br /><br />If you'll be there, stop by the Digipede kiosk in the Partner Pavilion and pick up a nifty sticker...and it could win you an XBox 360!<br /><br />The stickers are cool -- they feature Deatle, our lovable, binary mascot. And if we see you wearing one in the afternoon break, you could end up going home with an XBox 360.<br /><br />See you there...Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-41895886638383903902008-02-20T15:00:00.000-08:002008-02-20T15:08:47.860-08:00How Does Your Grid Help Your Multicore Problem?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfumNrCVektYCi6LHWG-gm7SRWWks8rwFer3FN2HVcgepUZYSyxYwn3-hIdlD1YmCy2wGt_bNAT6T-RCXXiTrxE3tQ5yk-152l28JCnPKyMAUOB3fvQMSO6nKSE4h8KNWxfJQH8A/s1600-h/gridperformance.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfumNrCVektYCi6LHWG-gm7SRWWks8rwFer3FN2HVcgepUZYSyxYwn3-hIdlD1YmCy2wGt_bNAT6T-RCXXiTrxE3tQ5yk-152l28JCnPKyMAUOB3fvQMSO6nKSE4h8KNWxfJQH8A/s400/gridperformance.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5169203196965819890" /></a><br />One of the benefits of Digipede's object oriented programming model is the ease with which it lets you take advantage of the multiprocessor and multicore machines on your grid. The Digipede Agent knows how many cores are on each box, and it can execute work accordingly, taking advantage of the individual cores <i>without forcing the developer to do multithreaded programming</i>.<br /><br />We've been talking about this for a while, but John Powers <a href="http://powersunfiltered.com/2008/02/19/multi-core-and-grid-computing-new-digipede-video-shows-the-way/">made a short video</a> that makes it crystal clear.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.digipede.net/downloads/digipede_multicore_grid_demo.html">Check it out...</a><br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/grid%20computing" rel="tag">grid computing</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-75563163769687536442008-02-14T14:35:00.000-08:002008-02-15T09:13:34.198-08:00Worst .NET Bug I've Ever Seen<div class="Tags">Question: What exception(s) will this code produce? And why?<br /><code><br />while (true) {<br /> using (Stream sw = File.Open(strFileName, FileMode.Create)) {<br /> using (BinaryWriter bw = new BinaryWriter(sw)) {<br /> BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();<br /> bf.Serialize(bw.BaseStream, this);<br /> }<br /> }<br />}</code><br /><br />Answer: Well, it seems like it shouldn't produce any exceptions. It should run forever: create a file, write data to it, close the file. Same thing, over and over again.<br /><br />The <code>using</code>s should ensure that the BinaryWriter and Stream are closed each time through the loop.<br /><br />But that's not what happens. Run it enough times, and you'll get an exception: <span style="font-weight:bold;">System.IO.IOException: Cannot create a file when that file already exists</span>. How can that file be in use? You clearly closed it last time through the loop!<br /><br />Even stranger: if you follow your <code>using</code> with code that is doing something else with the file (like, say, moving it), you'll occasionally see a <span style="font-weight:bold;">System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path is denied</span> exception. This is a file that you <i>clearly</i> are authorized to access--you just created it!<br /><br />Note: adding explicit calls to sw.Close() and bw.Close() doesn't change the behavior--you still get exceptions eventually.<br /><br />This seems like some unholy combination of a problem between .NET, Win32, and the OS, combined with an incorrect exception being thrown sometimes.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this little nasty reared its head on a customer site. And, naturally, it wasn't tightly packaged like the code above. Occasionally, inexplicably, exceptions were being thrown. It's hard to reproduce in the wild, and it took us a few days to track down and boil down.<br /><br />Wow. Any .NET experts care to weigh in on why this would throw exceptions?<br /><br />Watch <a href="http://et.cairene.net">Robert's blog</a> to see how we ended up fixing this...<br /><br /><b>Update 2/15/2008 9:12</b>: After a conversation with Robert, I felt I should make it clear: our software didn't have a loop like the one written above; we came up with that when trying to reproduce the behavior. He'll have more details later...<br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/.net" rel="tag">.net</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-50708796525778796262008-02-08T15:32:00.000-08:002008-02-08T15:34:54.681-08:00Quick visit to the 212John Powers and I will be at the <a href="http://www.webservicesonwallstreet.com/">Web Services on Wall Street conference</a> on Monday, February 11th, at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.<br /><br />This conference was created by the same folks who put on the High Performance on Wall Street conference -- and that was probably the best event I attended last year.<br /><br />If you're in Midtown on Monday, stop on by...Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-10863072697810901662008-02-04T08:35:00.000-08:002008-02-04T09:19:06.415-08:00Digipede Network Free for MS MVPs<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9SB5F0tC9HxuHp6hObykv05_3z2UiKrz7i6p6O6Khe0a09BvYM9ldQlVqhIgWSVlerR3chv56z9TjJlSKNtXRH-6Ap0GRQASl1EB2gK35uSv7avWET1am1kpC2Z33N8tvgAMNbA/s1600-h/MVP_horizontal.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9SB5F0tC9HxuHp6hObykv05_3z2UiKrz7i6p6O6Khe0a09BvYM9ldQlVqhIgWSVlerR3chv56z9TjJlSKNtXRH-6Ap0GRQASl1EB2gK35uSv7avWET1am1kpC2Z33N8tvgAMNbA/s320/MVP_horizontal.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5163175642668494258" /></a>I'm very excited about <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/2/prweb664744.htm">this announcement</a>.<br /><br />As of today, Microsoft MVPs can get a free license to the Digipede Network <a href="http://www.digipede.net/products/pro_edition.html">Professional Edition</a>, with 10 agent processor licenses.<br /><br />Digipede joins a list of over 100 companies that make licenses free for this vibrant community of technical specialists, and we're proud to do it.<br /><br />Many people outside the .NET world don't realize what a <a href="http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/">community </a>Microsoft has fostered, and MVPs are a perfect example. They aren't Microsoft employees, but they spend a good deal of time engaging in the community, essentially helping Microsoft to evangelize the platform. They help other users on message boards, they facilitate users' groups, they put on code camps.<br /><br />I can't wait to see what some of these folks do with the <a href="http://www.digipede.net/products/sdk.html">Digipede Framework SDK</a>!<br /><br />If you're an MVP, head <a href="http://www.digipede.net/msmvp">over here</a> to claim your software...<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/grid%20computing" rel="tag">grid computing</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digipede" rel="tag">digipede</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/msmvp" rel="tag">MSMVP</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-37436820416259178542008-01-31T09:55:00.000-08:002008-01-31T12:34:07.982-08:00Hey, Excel: Resolver One understands .NET. Are you learning?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZuohVzsyuwCrfnPHtzjMVhXvANz3y9tZrttNUrKZbh2uV6-seYjWaPHtPv50_H8MIieJRenVCGnm07vKSsn7bzgERtEehyphenhyphenH_yN19enYb5iYD41S6m3JfiDCLLvI-tYLCnDqid6w/s1600-h/resolver+logo.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZuohVzsyuwCrfnPHtzjMVhXvANz3y9tZrttNUrKZbh2uV6-seYjWaPHtPv50_H8MIieJRenVCGnm07vKSsn7bzgERtEehyphenhyphenH_yN19enYb5iYD41S6m3JfiDCLLvI-tYLCnDqid6w/s320/resolver+logo.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5161711076000427410" /></a>I've posted extensively about Excel and Excel Services, and without a doubt my <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2006/09/excel-services-is-cruising-net-waters.html">biggest disappointment with Excel 2007</a> was the lack of .NET integration. Excel forces a developer to jump back into the 20th century to do COM development. I lamented this; I wish that the Excel team had adopted .NET.<br /><br />Well, earlier this week I found a spreadsheet that goes far beyond my expectations for .NET integration: <a href="http://www.resolversystems.com/products/resolver-one.php">Resolver One</a>. (BTW, when <a href="http://del.icio.us/harrypierson#2008-01-29">Harry Pierson</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/lobrien/statuses/656370522">Larry O'Brien</a> both mention a product within a couple of days of each other, check it out).<br /><br />Resolver One is a powerful spreadsheet tool based on Python. It translates your spreadsheet logic into Python, and it even lets you write your spreadsheet logic in Python.<br /><br />But what really impressed me was the .NET integration. They've got a very interesting take on how to integrate -- much more interesting than <a href="http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/2007/06/worst-name-ever-vsto-vsto.html">Microsoft's VSTO</a>.<br /><br />Rather than simply let you put .NET code behind your spreadsheet, ResolverOne actually allows you to put .NET objects <i>into your spreadsheet cells</i>. That's right -- simply add a reference to your DLL, then you can enter <code>=MyClass()</code> into a cell. It will instantiate your class, and store it "in the cell." If your constructor takes arguments, no problem: Enter something like <code>=MyClass(B1, B2)</code> to pass the contents of cells B1 and B2 to your constructor.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYikKHm4ILoXOI_BT7jHYxAdMcL28l9ef0MOH0Cf9gN8OKHjVj9xyWtA_DRnpSSWXTQPtDgyyCWxr05BGT62sOQGt6uyJOssghvKpkmd1xB4Th1V6vOCimK1YJLEOPZTSVPDvllg/s1600-h/resolver+screenshot.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYikKHm4ILoXOI_BT7jHYxAdMcL28l9ef0MOH0Cf9gN8OKHjVj9xyWtA_DRnpSSWXTQPtDgyyCWxr05BGT62sOQGt6uyJOssghvKpkmd1xB4Th1V6vOCimK1YJLEOPZTSVPDvllg/s320/resolver+screenshot.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5161712111087545762" /></a><br />How can you take advantage of this object? Well, now <i>other</i> cells can use that object -- pulling properties out for example. So if your object is in cell C1 and you want to pull out one of its properties into cell D1, you can enter <code>=C1.MyProperty</code>.<br /><br />Other great things about this product: it's <a href="http://www.resolversystems.com/get-it/">$99 for a commercial license</a>. Free for a non commercial license.<br /><br />This .NET integration made it a snap for me to adapt to commanding an app on the grid. I had my standard "MonteCarloPi" grid application running after about 5 minutes of coding (I'll post that source soon). And when I say "5 minutes," I mean 5 minutes. It was ridiculously easy, and that's a very good thing. With 5 minutes of coding, I had my simple, single-threaded .NET object running in parallel on all of the multicore machines in my office, and the results were being displayed in the spreadsheet.<br /><br />In a way, Resolver One's use of .NET reminded me a lot of our own use of .NET. Whereas previous spreadsheets (and grid computing software) required you to take an enormous step backwards in programming technology in order to write programs, Resolver One (and Digipede) actually leverage the programming models of .NET to make the developer more at home and more productive. <br /><br />All in all, it's a very impressive product. Microsoft, <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/default.aspx">are you watching</a>?<br /><br /><b>Update 2008-01-31 12:02</b> Harry Pierson <a href="http://devhawk.net/2008/01/31/Morning+Coffee+141+LangNET+08+Edition.aspx">just listed Resolver One</a> as one of the highlights of LANG.net, and points out that the talks <a href="http://langnetsymposium.com/">should be online soon</a>.<br /><br /><b>Update 2008-01-31 12:32</b> Half an hour later, Larry O'Brien calls Resolver One the most <a href="http://www.knowing.net/PermaLink,guid,d29256e1-178a-4c5a-9571-672e8b188939.aspx">impressive application</a> from LANG.net.<br /><br /><div class="Tags">Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/resolver%20one" rel="tag">resolver one</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/excel" rel="tag">excel</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/.net" rel="tag">.net</a></div>Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15675030.post-84687882749937506482008-01-24T10:39:00.000-08:002008-01-24T10:44:28.670-08:00Off topic: Where's my HD Movie Rental?This is way off topic for a grid computing blog -- but I have to get it off my chest.<br /><br />I will never, ever consider buying a set-top box dedicated to online movie rentals (see Vudu, AppleTV, Netflix).<br /><br />But if Microsoft or Sony announces HD rentals through an XBox 360 or the PS3, I'm buying one immediately.<br /><br />Why doesn't this exist?<br /><br />I want a multi-purpose box. Plays my DVDs. Plays games. HD Movie rentals online.<br /><br />The XBox and PS3 already have HD out and internet connections. Can they just write this software, make some deals with studios, and be done with it? Bill, this is your chance to beat Steve to a punch for once.Dan Cirulihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05765617047884197704noreply@blogger.com0