http://www.chipchilders.com Can we get on with building the software yet? posterous.com Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:20:02 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/UY_P89wmw_g/review-of-the-stackops-openstack-distro-03-sm http://www.chipchilders.com/review-of-the-stackops-openstack-distro-03-sm <p> <b>First Impressions</b><p /><div>In December of 2011, <a href="http://www.stackops.org">StackOps</a> <a href="http://blog.stackops.com/2011/12/06/stackops-openstack-distro-0-3-diablo-stable-released/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+stackopsblog+%28StackOps+Blog%29">released version 0.3</a> of their <a href="http://www.openstack.org">OpenStack</a> distribution, following the <a href="http://www.openstack.org/blog/2011/09/openstack-announces-diablo-release/">Diablo stable release</a> that occurred in late September.  I recently went through the process of using the StackOps Smart Installer to get a single node instance up and running, and wanted to share my experiences.<p /><div>First, I love the general idea of simplifying the installation and configuration of the OpenStack components.  At least for a proof of concept, this is a great tool to get you started with the platform.  Unfortunately, after both using the installer and reading through all of the StackOps documentation on the subject, I&#39;m left with concerns about the whole Smart Installer model itself.  I&#39;d love for StackOps to rethink some of their base assumptions and decisions, so that they can move forward with a more compelling model.</div> <p /><div>Basically, the Smart Installer concept is to start with the StackOps distribution ISO image (or a bootable USB drive with the same material on it), perform a fairly standard Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS setup process, and then use their Smart Installer system to get the node up and running.  </div> <p /><div>My first general concern is directly tied to the way that the Smart Installer works.  The newly installed server hosts an installation control process, via a web server listening on TCP 8888 and running on the server itself.  When a user hits that URL, some information about the server is passed off to the StackOps hosted Smart Installer landing page.  Here, you&#39;re asked to register and then log into their site.  While I&#39;m sure that StackOps would say that they treat information about the registered systems and users with care, I got that nagging feeling that exposing the configuration details of a production OpenStack platform to a third party might not be the best thing for a provider to be doing.  I do like the fact that they make it clear for how users can opt-in/out of receiving commercial sales contact and email from the company when registering.  They also make it possible to perform the installation without registering a user account, which theoretically means that your server configuration data isn&#39;t stored permanently.  I&#39;m just not sure that these options are enough to get me past the idea that the system data has to be passed to the distribution vendor.</div> <p /><div>Another general concern with the Smart Installer approach is scalability.  I wasn&#39;t able to determine how the installation process would work when done at any significant scale.  For example, assume that you have a compute pod with 80 hosts.  That&#39;s allot of website navigation to get all 80 configured.  It seems like <a href="https://github.com/dellcloudedge/crowbar">Dell&#39;s Crowbar</a> system is much more useful for large scale deployments.  I&#39;d love to find out that StackOps has a similar approach!<br /> <p /><div>Beyond the major concerns of data security and installation process scalability, there are a few minor issues that I ran into while performing the installation:</div><p /><div><b>Installation Progress Tracking</b></div> <p /><div>When you get to the end of the configuration data input process, the actual installation and configuration of OpenStack is like a black hole process.  First off, when you click the &quot;Start deployment now!&quot; button, there is no visual indicator anywhere on the page to tell you where the installation process is in it&#39;s steps, or even if the process has actually started!  The button itself doesn&#39;t even reflect the fact that it was clicked (I tested on Chrome, so perhaps this works on other browsers?).  The only indication you get that something is happening is what appears to be a very long page loading process.</div> <p /><div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile9.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/gffCd4etw0rKfuHHyS7bc8MPu7wzA5S2DxBp6ctXCzkSgZuOa71e3hB5Va3U/image.png"><img alt="Image" height="101" src="http://getfile0.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/palS82idYSSQ1qopeFBw1dMO68fzbiezcANOriZtx34rg0Ahl53d83y52w9T/image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <br /></div><p /><div>That is, until you get an error...</div><p /><div><b>Error Reporting</b></div><p /> <div>The Smart Installer configuration process makes it clear that OpenStack <a href="http://horizon.openstack.org/">Horizon</a> support is experimental, but it&#39;s enabled by default.  Unfortunately it doesn&#39;t seem to work at all.</div> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="1image" height="155" src="http://getfile3.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/hMgt6RoH2tiRC8fvU4kQpIuAIhEOtha6UqjZ0XHveYBRkJp1BdFOfmBIJlcO/1image.png" width="472" /> </div> <br /></div></div><div>My issue isn&#39;t so much about this experimental feature, but the fact that error conditions are so poorly reported to the user when they DO occur (I ran into volume manager errors as well, but that was my fault for not reading the documentation thoroughly enough).  When a problem happens, you see this:</div> <p /><div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://getfile8.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/QjJfNbibAgVqNxAtzkuJtefdBgNzL9oTC1uMYcL9dlNH8QvxxUWLlZd5gj6C/0image.png.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="0image" height="231" src="http://getfile6.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/RBOFYeLA5HGQIf6mYfWRPVESODJ5xx9lWwdROpBSoIudaGpWv3RjGAA3EBzD/0image.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <br /></div><p /><div>That&#39;s a pretty ugly user error report, with no obvious way to deal with the condition.  The trick to fixing this is to use the browser back button to go backwards through the configuration process, and then uncheck the option to install Horizon.  You can then for forward again, re-filling in the required data for the screens that you went past on your way back.</div> <p /><div><b>Online Help / Support Confusions</b></div><p /><div>Gor the actual Horizon installation issue, I reported it on the <a href="http://forum.stackops.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&amp;t=40">StackOps Forum</a>.  I&#39;m not sure what to make of the forum though, since it&#39;s pretty empty in there!  The other place that I see StackOps directing users is to the <a href="https://getsatisfaction.com/stackops">StackOps environment on Get Satisfaction</a>.  I couldn&#39;t find any reference to the problem on that site.</div> <p /><div>I did end up finding it in the StackOps Jira tracking system (which I have to say is nice to be able to access as a user):  <a href="http://jira.stackops.org/jira/browse/STACKOPSDISTRO-51">STACKOPSDISTRO-51</a>  You have to use your <a href="http://installer.stackops.org">installer.stackops.org</a> account to access the Jira Issue.</div> <p /><div><b>Thinking About the Future</b></div><p /><div>I believe that the StackOps team is doing a great job of taking the young OpenStack projects and creating a reasonably useful distribution for fast proof of concept environments.  I truly respect that they are only on version 0.3 of the StackOps Distro, and I know how long a road it can be to get to a version 1.0.  Hopefully, my general concerns about the model can be addressed over time (while still keeping the current, or similar, approach in place for the small scale non-production environments).  They should be happy about what they have built, but they shouldn&#39;t be satisfied yet.  Good luck StackOps team!</div> </div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/review-of-the-stackops-openstack-distro-03-sm">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/review-of-the-stackops-openstack-distro-03-sm#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/UY_P89wmw_g" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/review-of-the-stackops-openstack-distro-03-sm Sat, 14 May 2011 05:00:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/j5UCChVMq18/understanding-the-impact-of-multi-tenancy-des http://www.chipchilders.com/understanding-the-impact-of-multi-tenancy-des <p> <p>As you evaluate different cloud providers, it is important to understand the different concepts providers can use to deploy multi-tenancy. Different concepts facilitate&mdash;or limit&mdash;the way in which a provider can respond to changes in the service needs of clients.</p> <p><em>General Purpose Clouds:</em></p> <p>For example, some vendors design their clouds as commodities. They focus on providing low cost access to computing power in flat, homogenous environments. This type of general purpose cloud can scale quickly and easily to support large numbers of similar users. As they become saturated, however, you may begin to see variations in performance, as some users expand their usage and experience spikes that place constraints on all other uses.</p> <p>Performance variations can affect computing power, storage and I/O or network traffic. Most providers already have solved performance problems associated with sharing VM RAM and CPU power, and most have deployed one or more of the many solutions for storage and I/O performance issues. Consequently, network performance is usually the first noticeable bottleneck. While it is important to know how your provider will handle performance variations wherever they appear, it is especially important to know how network issues will be handled.&nbsp;</p> <p><em>The Concern: Network Latency:</em></p> <p>Networks experience varying levels of latency based on where the users and their data reside and how much bandwidth has been allocated each user. The easiest solution to network issues within a cloud is to physically separate heavy users from lighter users. This means moving the heavy user to a private cloud where resources can be adjusted to meet the requirements of peak periods, more users and new applications.&nbsp;</p> <p><em>The Answer: Scalability and SLA:</em></p> <p>To reduce your risk of incurring more costs from your cloud provider, look for an enterprise provider that has scalability at every level of the cloud&mdash;SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. And look, too, for a provider offering a Service Level Agreement that addresses the performance requirements for the services most important to your business. These are the attributes of an enterprise level provider with the elasticity to meet your future needs.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/understanding-the-impact-of-multi-tenancy-des">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/understanding-the-impact-of-multi-tenancy-des#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/j5UCChVMq18" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/understanding-the-impact-of-multi-tenancy-des Fri, 13 May 2011 07:16:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/8YZ8GPZqcqg/cloud-compatible-development http://www.chipchilders.com/cloud-compatible-development <p> <p> <p>One of the largest benefits that an application developer can get out of a cloud-based infrastructure is the opportunity to design for variable scale. &nbsp;Specifically, you can start off small (with a limited number of virtual machines, using limited host resources), and then expand your environment as usage grows. &nbsp;Conversely, you are able to shrink your infrastructure consumption during non-peak times. While some of this flexibility can be applied to existing legacy applications, the real win can be for newly developed systems. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>To get this benefit, there are some fundamental architectural principals that need to be followed: &nbsp;loose coupling of system components, distributed system design and automated application installation / configuration. A solid architecture should reasonably scale from fitting the entire application onto a single VM to sharing it among hundreds (or even thousands) of VMs supporting the users.&nbsp;</p> <p>To achieve the loose coupling and distributed design goals, you need to decompose the architecture into units of functionality and think through how they will distribute work within the system. &nbsp;Each component should be designed to support multiple instances of that application service within the environment. By doing this, you can load balance the application load as you need to scale.&nbsp;</p> <p>This decomposition should happen at all layers. It does no good to scale out web servers if a singular application server will become the performance bottleneck. &nbsp;And definitely be sure to think through a scaling strategy for your databases. &nbsp;If you plan on using a traditional relational database platform (RDBMS), consider setting up your identity columns in a way that will support future distribution of load through sharding techniques. &nbsp;Another alternative is to use multiple read replicas, with a single write-enabled database instance. If you plan on going the route of NoSQL, be sure that you understand the scaling dynamics of the selected platform.</p> <p>Achieving automated application installation and configuration builds on your distributed design. The key to ensuring that you can do achieve this architectural goal is to classify virtual machines into roles. &nbsp;Role definitions will let you relate one server to the other servers in the environment. Using a &ldquo;web server&rdquo; role as an example, perhaps any server in that role needs to know what database server to connect to. &nbsp;And just to relate this idea back to the point about determining a database scaling design, that database target might be different for different web servers.&nbsp;</p> <p>Once you have a good understanding of how you plan to deploy a highly-distributed version of your system, it's time to automate your installation and configuration. These are critical tasks if you want to achieve value from a dynamic infrastructure environment, because you need to match the speed that you can install and configure an application with the speed that you can provision new infrastructure. &nbsp;Your software should be installable via command line, and you should look at different options to automate the configuration of the installed applications. &nbsp;</p> <p>While you may want to take these concepts to the extreme, my best advice for a new application architecture is to start simple. &nbsp;Let these ideas guide your design, but remember, you&rsquo;re main goal is to get the new application deployed for your users!</p> <p /> </p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/cloud-compatible-development">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/cloud-compatible-development#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/8YZ8GPZqcqg" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/cloud-compatible-development Wed, 20 Apr 2011 05:59:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/jvBYAg-2Ux4/more-cloud-foundry-environment-stuff http://www.chipchilders.com/more-cloud-foundry-environment-stuff <p> <p>Here's a really simple application that can help explore the runtime environment of a Cloud Foundry provider (Sinatra ruby apps only, obviously):</p> <p> <div class="data type-ruby"> <table class="lines" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td> <pre class="line_numbers"><span rel="#L1" id="L1">1</span> <span rel="#L2" id="L2">2</span> <span rel="#L3" id="L3">3</span> <span rel="#L4" id="L4">4</span> <span rel="#L5" id="L5">5</span> <span rel="#L6" id="L6">6</span> <span rel="#L7" id="L7">7</span> <span rel="#L8" id="L8">8</span> <span rel="#L9" id="L9">9</span> <span rel="#L10" id="L10">10</span> <span rel="#L11" id="L11">11</span> <span rel="#L12" id="L12">12</span> <span rel="#L13" id="L13">13</span> <span rel="#L14" id="L14">14</span> <span rel="#L15" id="L15">15</span> <span rel="#L16" id="L16">16</span> </pre> </td> <td width="100%"> <div class="highlight"><pre /><div class="line" id="LC1"><span class="nb">require</span> <span class="s1">&#39;sinatra&#39;</span></div><div class="line" id="LC2"><span class="nb">require</span> <span class="s1">&#39;pp&#39;</span></div><div class="line" id="LC3"><br /></div><div class="line" id="LC4"><span class="n">get</span> <span class="s1">&#39;/&#39;</span> <span class="k">do</span></div><div class="line" id="LC5">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">processor</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="sb">`head /proc/cpuinfo`</span></div><div class="line" id="LC6">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">memory</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="sb">`head /proc/meminfo`</span></div><div class="line" id="LC7">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">swap</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="sb">`head /proc/swap`</span></div><div class="line" id="LC8">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">linuxversion</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="sb">`head /proc/version`</span></div><div class="line" id="LC9">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">disks</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="sb">`head /proc/partitions`</span></div><div class="line" id="LC10">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">appuser</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="sb">`whoami`</span></div><div class="line" id="LC11">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">net</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="sb">`cat /etc/network/interfaces`</span></div><div class="line" id="LC12">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">output</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s1">&#39;local OS user: &lt;br&gt;&#39;</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">appuser</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;processor: &lt;br&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&#39;</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">processor</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;memory: &lt;br&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&#39;</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">memory</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;swap:&lt;br&gt;&#39;</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">swap</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;ver: &lt;br&gt;&#39;</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">linuxversion</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;disks:&lt;br&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&#39;</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">disks</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;networking:&lt;br&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&#39;</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="n">net</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;/pre&gt;&#39;</span></div><div class="line" id="LC13">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">output</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">output</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;pre&gt;&#39;</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="no">ENV</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">pretty_inspect</span> <span class="o">+</span> <span class="s1">&#39;&lt;/pre&gt;&#39;</span></div><div class="line" id="LC14">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="n">output</span></div><div class="line" id="LC15"><span class="k">end</span></div><div class="line" id="LC16"><br /></div></pre></div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/more-cloud-foundry-environment-stuff">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/more-cloud-foundry-environment-stuff#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/jvBYAg-2Ux4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/more-cloud-foundry-environment-stuff Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:45:34 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/_sLGxvGBtng/cloud-foundry-kept-it-simple http://www.chipchilders.com/cloud-foundry-kept-it-simple <p> <p>I've been spending a good amount of my time in the evenings this week reading through the <a href="http://cloudfoundry.org/">Cloud Foundry</a> source code (<a href="https://github.com/cloudfoundry">available on github</a>). I'll admit that I've caught the bug... the team at VMware has done a fantastic job of keeping the foundational system as simple as possible. &nbsp;I say that both from a user's perspective, and from looking through the internals of the code itself. To me, this is exactly the right way to solve a problem. &nbsp;Start with a simple solution to a generalized use case, and then make it work. &nbsp;From there, it's a matter of refinement and feature extension.</p> <p>What I think is most powerful about the platform's approach, is that it is fundamentally based on the idea that the app runtime environment, supporting service and platform provider options can (and should) grow independantly. &nbsp;It's only been a few days, and the community as already provided the Cloud Foundry team with pull requests to add in <a href="https://github.com/cloudfoundry/vcap/pull/24">JRuby</a> and <a href="https://github.com/cloudfoundry/vcap/pull/20">Erlang</a> support. &nbsp;I have to imagine that new service support will quickly follow as well.</p> <p>In terms of cloud providers, VMware made the right decision to host an instance of the platform in their own environment (which, combined with their new responsibility to host Mozy for parent EMC, is another topic altogether), but is fully expecting to see other providers offer differentiated versions of the platform. As Ezra Zygmuntowicz (<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/ezmobius">@ezmobius</a>) put it, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/ezmobius/status/58144238491271168">"(VMware) want(s) this to be the kernel for the cloud, not only our cloud"</a>. Unlike vCloud, the openness of Cloud Foundry is what will make it more palatable to cloud providers, because it gives them numerous opportunities to establish differentiated solutions and offerings around the base platform.</p> <p>Will VMware be abe to avoid some of the governance and political issues that Rackspace / OpenStack <a href="http://dendrobates.rustedhalo.com/2011/03/22/rackspace-openstac/">have run into</a>? Rackspace and OpenStack appear to have gotten through that little rough spot, but I certainly hope that VMware learned from their experience.</p> <p>For a quick overview of the internals, take a look at <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/igrigorik">@igrigorik's</a>&nbsp;post on the <a href="http://www.igvita.com/2011/04/14/vmware-cloudfoundry-ruby-powered-paas/">Cloud Foundry architecture</a>. &nbsp;I also found this presentation (shared by Dave McCrory - <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/mccrory">@mccroy</a>) targeting developers to be quite useful:</p> <div style=""><iframe scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7651158" frameborder="0" height="355" width="425"></iframe></div> <p><br /><em><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: x-small;">Disclosure: &nbsp;I work for a cloud platform provider, but the views in this post are mine alone. &nbsp;They do not reflect those of my employer.</span></em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/cloud-foundry-kept-it-simple">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/cloud-foundry-kept-it-simple#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/_sLGxvGBtng" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/cloud-foundry-kept-it-simple Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:34:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/uQlDtiu6mB4/cloudfoundrycom-some-discovery http://www.chipchilders.com/cloudfoundrycom-some-discovery <p> <p>I got access to <a href="cloudfoundry.com">cloudfoundry.com</a> late last night, but just had a chance to start playing around this morning. First off, I love the simplicity of the developer experience... at least for Hello World style applications. I'll have to dig into it further, to start exploring how the services are implemented and how application instances scale.</p> <p>Coming from an IaaS development background, one of the first things I was interested in digging into was the runtime details for the platform. I decided to extend the VMware Hello World ruby app, and have it return some details about the base OS supporting the app instance.</p> <p>Here's the simple code:</p> <div class="CodeRay"> <div class="code"><pre>require 'sinatra' get '/' do processor = `head /proc/cpuinfo` memory = `head /proc/meminfo` swap = `head /proc/swap` linuxversion = `head /proc/version` disks = `head /proc/partitions` appuser = `whoami` net = `cat /etc/network/interfaces` output = 'local OS user: &lt;br /&gt;' + appuser + '&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;processor: &lt;br /&gt;&lt;pre&gt;' + processor + '&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;memory: &lt;br /&gt;&lt;pre&gt;' + memory + '&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;swap:&lt;br /&gt;' + swap + '&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ver: &lt;br /&gt;' + linuxversion + '&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;disks:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;pre&gt;' + disks + '&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;networking:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;pre&gt;' + net + '&lt;/pre&gt;' output end</pre></div> </div> <p>Here's the deployment process. The mem reservation property seems to be the only configuration that will affect the selection of an appropriate VM to host the app instance.</p> <div class="CodeRay"> <div class="code"><pre>$ vmc push Would you like to deploy from the current directory? [Yn]: Y Application Name: test1 Application Deployed URL: 'test1.cloudfoundry.com'? Detected a Sinatra Application, is this correct? [Yn]: Memory Reservation [Default:128M] (64M, 128M, 256M, 512M, 1G or 2G) 64M Creating Application: OK Would you like to bind any services to 'test1'? [yN]: Uploading Application: Checking for available resources: OK Packing application: OK Uploading (0K): OK Push Status: OK Staging Application: OK Starting Application: OK</pre></div> </div> <p>And here's what I get out of it, after deploying. Assuming that I don't turn it off or break this over time, you can hit the application live at <a href="http://test1.cloudfoundry.com/">http://test1.cloudfoundry.com/</a>.</p> <div class="CodeRay"> <div class="code"><pre>local OS user: vcap-user-11 processor: processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 37 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5650 @ 2.67GHz stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 2660.000 cache size : 12288 KB fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes memory: MemTotal: 16470448 kB MemFree: 12623164 kB Buffers: 217692 kB Cached: 1959284 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 2368488 kB Inactive: 980064 kB Active(anon): 1171648 kB Inactive(anon): 164 kB Active(file): 1196840 kB swap: ver: Linux version 2.6.32-30-server (buildd@crested) (gcc version 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) ) #59-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 1 22:46:09 UTC 2011 disks: major minor #blocks name 7 0 131072 loop0 8 0 1049600 sda 8 1 999023 sda1 8 16 33554432 sdb 8 17 16474657 sdb1 8 18 17077095 sdb2 networking: auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 172.30.49.74 network 172.30.48.0 netmask 255.255.248.0 broadcast 172.30.55.255 gateway 172.30.48.1</pre></div> </div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/cloudfoundrycom-some-discovery">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/cloudfoundrycom-some-discovery#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/uQlDtiu6mB4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/cloudfoundrycom-some-discovery Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:10:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/T7QV2uzI1jA/non-obvious-should-be-a-non-starter http://www.chipchilders.com/non-obvious-should-be-a-non-starter <p> <p>Steve Jin (a great guy, who develops and runs the <a href="http://vijava.sourceforge.net/">VI Java project</a>, without which the vSphere API would have beaten me down more than once) has a <a href="http://www.doublecloud.org/2011/03/non-patentable-software-architecture/">great perspective on patentability of software architectures</a> over on doublecloud. While I agree with his point about patent law, the main reason I point this post out is the value he places in "obvious" architecture being the right architecture.</p> <p>This falls in line with my thoughts about building systems with an eye toward the future, but a focus on the present. We, as an industry, need to stop over-engineering things. Focus your time on achieving the system requirements, and just get it built already.</p> <p>To me, if you want to patent something, make it a feature! Isn't that the real value we provide to customers? Sure, coming up with a scalable, robust, performant and extendable design is hard work. But the design constraints dictated by the features we want to build now (and in the future) should absolutely lead to obvious approaches to building the system.</p> <p>Now this sentiment doesn't necessarily match every situation, but VERY few software projects warrant a non-obvious answer. In fact, if it's non-obvious, then that should really be due to the FEATURE being novel. Patent that.</p> <p>If your high level architecture meets the patent law rule of being non-obvious, you're doin' it wrong.</p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/non-obvious-should-be-a-non-starter">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/non-obvious-should-be-a-non-starter#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/T7QV2uzI1jA" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/non-obvious-should-be-a-non-starter Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:06:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/9BFb8y9IqW4/sure-design-for-failure-but-you-cant-design-f http://www.chipchilders.com/sure-design-for-failure-but-you-cant-design-f <p> <p>I'm a big fan of designing systems to deal with component failures. &nbsp;But let's be honest, doing that perfectly is pretty darn hard.</p> <p>In the research paper <a href="http://www.cert.org/research/isw/isw2000/papers/56.pdf">"Fundamental Concepts of Dependability"</a>, all possible sources of fault conditions have been classified into 16 different categories. &nbsp;In another paper, <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.95.6406">"Software Architecture Reliability Analysis using Failure Scenarios"</a>, an 8 step failure analysis process is proposed for how to understand a system's potential failure conditions. All this is about identifying and classifying fault conditions, not actually providing designs to resolve them.</p> <p>I'm going to go out on a limb, and declare that nobody is doing that type of full and formal analysis for their cloud applications. (OK, perhaps somebody, but certainly not many.)</p> <p>So that's the problem in a nutshell. &nbsp;How can you really say that you have fully designed for failure, given all of the possible failure conditions? &nbsp;And for the 90% of the cloud platform population that just want to get their apps built, how much time should they really be spending on solving this problem?</p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/sure-design-for-failure-but-you-cant-design-f">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/sure-design-for-failure-but-you-cant-design-f#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/9BFb8y9IqW4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/sure-design-for-failure-but-you-cant-design-f Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:59:04 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/m_ZZiKmAEaM/why-enterprise-clouds-do-matter-and-no-i-dont http://www.chipchilders.com/why-enterprise-clouds-do-matter-and-no-i-dont <p> <div style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> <p style="margin-right: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: small;">There's an awful lot of discussion going on in the Intertubes about the concept of Enterprise Clouds, but most of it is confusing private (single enterprise) clouds and the concept of a multi-tenant cloud platform that is built to help companies avoid the issues associated with &ldquo;designing to fail&rdquo;. &nbsp;One of the more useful descriptions of the difference between private and &ldquo;enterprise&rdquo; clouds (at least that I&rsquo;ve found) is from Simon Wardley in his &ldquo;<a href="http://bit.ly/gB5U8l">Private vs. Enterprise Clouds</a>&rdquo; post. It&rsquo;s worth taking the time to study his thinking, as I believe he has a firm handle on the situation.</span></p> <span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: small;">&nbsp;</span><br /> <p style="margin-right: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As for the public vs. private debate, I just can&rsquo;t get behind the private cloud solutions. &nbsp;The economics aren&rsquo;t there, not to mention the very real challenge of finding enough multi-disciplinary talent to effectively build and maintain private cloud stacks. Fundamentally, I believe that the concept of a private cloud is based on the collision of &ldquo;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here">Not Invented Here</a>&rdquo; </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">thinking within enterprise IT departments and the lack of adaptability of the companies providing them their IT infrastructure and service management products. &nbsp;Two wrongs don&rsquo;t make a right. &nbsp;</span></span></p> <span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: small;">&nbsp;</span><br /> <p style="margin-right: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: small;">To me, the main difference between the commodity cloud approach, and the enterprise cloud approach, is in the availability attributes of the utility service itself. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s the economic conditions created by the commodity providers themselves that make it very difficult to offer anything other than an environment where tenants are strongly pushed to &ldquo;design for failures&rdquo;. &nbsp;This may change over time, either due to the commodity players deciding that they will take a significant margin hit to get a larger share of enterprise IT spend, or due to technical advancement in the platform fabrics themselves that improve reliability and availability of tenant VMs / data.</span></p> <span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span> <p style="margin-right: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: small;">Unlike private clouds, I&rsquo;m a firm believer that enterprise clouds have a role to play in today&rsquo;s market. A window of opportunity for enterprise clouds exists right now, regardless of the commentary that points out it&rsquo;s lack of adoption. &nbsp;I&rsquo;d say that the lag in (not lack of) adoption is really caused by providers not having (until recently) the clarity of purpose to deliver viable and scalable enterprise cloud platforms. &nbsp;Now that adoption is starting to pick up, the providers are responding with appropriate investment in this area (with even AWS investing in features that better align it with the needs of the enterprise). &nbsp;This movement is what is going to give enterprise IT shops the ability to take advantage of many of the &ldquo;cloud attributes&rdquo;, while having a solid availability foundation on which to trust their critical systems.</span></p> <br /> <p style="margin-right: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: small;">While intended as a point for only believing in the commodity clouds, <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/randybias/enterprise-cloud-myths">pointing to CAGR charts</a> for the commodity clouds only serves to support the value of the overall ecosystem of cloud providers. &nbsp;It doesn&rsquo;t really make a conclusive argument that commodity clouds are the only model that will win. &nbsp;Even with the great success of AWS in the market, assumptions that amazon will be in the range of getting annual revenues of $10B US by 2016 just show success in the market and the increasing rate of general growth in IT services. <a href="http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=clientFriendlyUrl&amp;id=1512016">Gartner is estimating</a> that the global quarterly IT spend for 2011 to be $360B, with an average of 4% CAGR. &nbsp;Given the solid growth of commodity cloud services, and understanding the needs of the enterprise IT buyers, I believe that enterprise cloud adoption will follow the earlier market trends of the commodity clouds for the next several years. There's going to be alot of room in the market for different types of cloud services...</span></p> <br /> <p style="margin-right: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: small;">All this is not to say that the market opportunity will exist forever, but the reality is that providing high availability for &ldquo;legacy&rdquo; applications in commodity clouds is a significant challenge with today&rsquo;s features and technology. Just like the mainframes that just won&rsquo;t go away, the relative usefulness of enterprise clouds will remain with us. &nbsp;Their important has faded, but mainframes are still critical to many institutions. Enterprise clouds will be very similar, existing as a bridge solution for the lifetime of enterprise &ldquo;legacy&rdquo; applications. We're just not anywhere near the top of the growth curve yet.</span></p> <br /><em><span style="font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: x-small;">Disclosure: &nbsp;I work for a company that is actively investing in an enterprise cloud platform, but the views in this post are mine alone. &nbsp;They do not reflect those of my employer. &nbsp;This post is not intended to promote any product or service. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s just me thinking about the overall market from the perspective of supporting enterprises over the past decade.</span></em></div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/why-enterprise-clouds-do-matter-and-no-i-dont">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/why-enterprise-clouds-do-matter-and-no-i-dont#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/m_ZZiKmAEaM" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/why-enterprise-clouds-do-matter-and-no-i-dont Sat, 26 Mar 2011 17:30:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/zc0Tv1BAWbM/best-architecture-ever http://www.chipchilders.com/best-architecture-ever <p> <p>I have finally created the most flexible and powerful architecture ever. This is the be all and end all of software design. I almost feel silly for not having thought of this before. I am the Buddha of design now. This is #winning. </p> <p>Here it is:</p> <p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/xZvuFt17N7ldacbwyDAf3lhmvgbZYSVVQ3kV2L0E4wFrAzvy70RLlSV4wYxR/photo.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Photo" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/9wyzXaU378V0SyCzLTy7T46JuabxGdV8kK5mjdVLWHmxJt6C24S4jpXDluOK/photo.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> </p><p>-chip</p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/best-architecture-ever">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/best-architecture-ever#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/zc0Tv1BAWbM" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/best-architecture-ever Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:57:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/sIClQG1DpSo/software-development-philosophies.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2009/01/software-development-philosophies.html <p> <p><a href="http://samhalperin.com/" target="_blank">Sam Halperin</a> (a good friend of mine), just posted some <a href="http://samhalperin.com/wordpress/?p=267" target="_blank">interesting thoughts</a> about software development, and I thought I'd reply with my thoughts here.</p> <p><em>"Someone once said that the number of bugs in any software system is constant."</em></p> <p>That is certainly true, but only because the number of bugs in a non-trivial system is equal to N+1, where N=the number of bugs that you know about. So if you start with N+1 and then subtract 1 from N, the value of N has gone down by 1. But, you still have N+1 bugs in the system!</p> <p>It's important to remember that this is for non-trivial systems, and is more of a macro perspective than that taken at the lower levels of the software development process. It is absolutely possible to design a function that is bug-free (assuming that the underlying compiler, machine language and hardware that it will utilize do not have any bugs that will directly effect its operation), it just can't have many function points in it.</p> <p><em>"When do you throw out a system entirely and start from scratch with a new version?"</em></p> <p>Sam asks a good question here and, when something like this comes up, I always like to validate my thinking by finding out what better minds than mine have to say on the topic. In an <a href="http://www.artima.com/intv/refactorP.html" target="_blank">interview by Bill Venners</a>, <a href="http://martinfowler.com/" target="_blank">Martin Fowler</a> answers a question just like the one Sam asks:</p> <p> <em><b>Bill Venners:</b> In Refactoring, you list several problems with refactoring, including situations when you shouldn't refactor. How do you decide when you should start from scratch and throw away existing code versus refactor it? </em> </p> <p> <em><b>Martin Fowler:</b> The answer is: I don't really know. If you have no tests and cruddy code, then you should probably throw it away and start again because you'll have to do all the testing, as opposed to if you have cruddy code with many tests. If the code is riddled with bugs, then behavior-preserving transformations will of course preserve the bugs, so that might be an argument against refactoring. I think the answer to your question also changes as your comfort level with refactoring increases. As you become more confident with refactoring, you'll want to refactor something that you'd otherwise want to rewrite because you're more skilled at refactoring.</em> </p> <p>Martin has an interesting perspective here, and one that I actually agree with... again, as long as we are talking about non-trivial systems. Besides the engineering aspects of executing a good refactoring program within an organization, there is often a financial benefit of not always starting over. However, the comment that Sam makes about the difficulty of taking over a code-base that might not be designed or implemented in a way that is conducive to understanding and refactoring (think about all that spaghetti code that you have run into in life), is a major concern as well. In order to be in a position where it actually DOES make sense to use refactoring instead of rebuilding, you have to start on solid footing.</p> <p>One other area to consider in this discussion revolves around technology shifts, and their impact on a "legacy" code base. Every couple of years (it seems to be 3 to 4 years), enough of a shift in the technology landscape has occurred, either as a jump or as accumulated organic changes, that you have to seriously consider the potential value of migration to a new platform or approach. This obviously costs money to do, but the risk is that the further behind you get the more costly catching up can be.</p> <p>This leads me to a topic that I've been thinking about recently, the buy vs. build decision process that organizations are constantly having to answer for themselves. I'm working through my thoughts on that right now, and will be sharing it some time soon.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-847573315964192146?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2009/01/software-development-philosophies.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2009/01/software-development-philosophies.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/sIClQG1DpSo" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2009/01/software-development-philosophies.html Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:45:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/hy4Rl9h1mFI/infrastructure-investments-and-value-of.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/12/infrastructure-investments-and-value-of.html <p> <p>Last week, on his blog <a href="http://gevaperry.typepad.com/main/" target="_blank">Thinking Out Cloud</a>, Geva Perry wrote about how he thinks that we are going to see a wave of innovation surrounding data center infrastructure in his post <a href="http://gevaperry.typepad.com/main/2008/12/infrastructure-is-sexy.html" target="_blank">Infrastructure is Sexy</a>. I have to say that not only do I agree, but we are seeing it in action right now. We have the opportunity to work closely with some of the leading infrastructure hardware, software and service vendors in the industry, and I can tell you without a doubt: the investment wave has already begun and we will begin to see the rewards of that investment in the first half of next year. In fact, I was talking with one of those vendors just yesterday, and I'm excited about what is about to hit the market. (I can't share details though, as I need to respect their NDA.)</p> <p>In my role, one of my focus areas is infrastructure management software and automation. Given that focus over the years, I've been very frustrated with the level of support provided by the software vendors for service providers (and this includes ITSM applications, in addition to the automation frameworks). While this might have been an acceptable way to focus on getting into the enterprise market, trends in IT are going to drive CIO's to continue to push their infrastructure into service provider's hands. So... it's our turn for some focus from the vendors.</p> <p>The shift to service providers is due to a combination of cost cutting pressure and the fact that the increase demand for infrastructure has created what seems to be a never ending stream of capital investments required to meet that demand. Shifting spend from capital to variable, with cost drivers linked to real demand, is exactly why cloud computing is exciting. Service providers have an opportunity to provide clients with different expense models by leveraging scale and the laws of averages to drive down the overall capacity requirements across a wide variety of customers.</p> <p>For us to be effective at this, we have been relying on massive customizations or manual work-arounds when using the current generation of automation software packages. For the next generation of systems, my hope (and I think I may be in for a treat) is that we see more focus on multi-tenant solutions and increased programmatic access into the packages. No vendor will own our entire management infrastructure, because no vendor can really manage all of the different elements that we need to manage. It has remained up to us to sew these things together, using whatever hooks we can grab a hold of and <i>some</i> standards (SNMPv2 as the most basic example). The more vendors understand this reality, the more they will be willing to support our need to put these packages together in unique and scalable ways.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-4673824620758257497?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/12/infrastructure-investments-and-value-of.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/12/infrastructure-investments-and-value-of.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/hy4Rl9h1mFI" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/12/infrastructure-investments-and-value-of.html Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:02:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/IemTmHgyHeg/belated-photos-from-barcelona.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/12/belated-photos-from-barcelona.html <p> <p>I just published a couple of photos from our September trip to Barcelona on PicasaWeb <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/chip.childers/SmallBarcelonaAlbum" target="_blank">here</a>.</p> <p>I really like the wacky parts of a city... In particular those that make an interesting photo to share later.</p> <p> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Media_httpwwwchipchil_iyzha" height="120" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/laCgpbmDngbADqgkgiguAGFisGJGFzdBwpgrJvumygriksbGrfccCJIBdyqD/media_httpwwwchipchil_IyzHA.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="160" /> </div> Apparently people in Barcelona require reminders not to step out into traffic or they might die.<br /> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Media_httpwwwchipchil_ayapa" height="120" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/ItnpepeCvthejdmJeydDwrseifkhdDCDJCBHtDcJCbvEtdrccfBJatGjqlqs/media_httpwwwchipchil_ayApA.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="160" /> </div> And on the beaches... the problem people seem to be the Brits and Americans.<br /> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Media_httpwwwchipchil_qhips" height="120" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/ulgIDeuuvsdkyzrBkmbnzlfbpJJzonJolpcaourbhovHGnbJFstfFtmhHmyJ/media_httpwwwchipchil_qhips.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="160" /> </div> While not in Barcelona, our trip to see the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dal%C3%AD_Theatre_and_Museum" target="_blank">Dali Theatre and Museum</a> in Figueres was definitely a highlight. </p><p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Media_httpphotos1blog_tcggt" height="16" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/GcgnywmxptEAinfCuhqxfuCuciDIvbrcfFstFqbcFbbsdFmedtwalHuktJGz/media_httpphotos1blog_tcGgt.gif.scaled500.gif" width="16" /> </div> Posted by Picasa</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-7223115531117701350?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/12/belated-photos-from-barcelona.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/12/belated-photos-from-barcelona.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/IemTmHgyHeg" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/12/belated-photos-from-barcelona.html Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:15:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/a1OuqcHtZa0/innovation-for-technology-departments.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/innovation-for-technology-departments.html <p> <p>It's interesting to me to think about the challenges of innovation within any organization, in particular a profit seaking enterprise. While small companies have the potential to innovate by virtue of their size and large companies have the ability to put capital directly towards formalized innovation strategies, there's a gap in the middle where it is a bit harder to drive change. If you have a small number of people, trusting that team to do what is best for the organization is really driven by hiring decisions. If you are large, you can set up a R&amp;D function or implement corporate-wide processes for identifying and fostering valuable ideas. If you are in the middle, you lose a little control over who gets hired (not that you don't try to get the best people possible). Mid-size companies also don't typically have the capital available for dedicated research activities.</p> <p><a href="http://www.cio.com/" target="_blank">CIO Magazine</a> recently published an interview with <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/462963/Microsoft_s_Culture_of_Innovation_An_Interview_with_CIO_Tony_Scott" target="_blank">Tony Scott</a>, the CIO of Microsoft, in which he talks briefly about their innovation strategy. Two interesting things to note: first, Tony makes a point that Microsoft tries to foster a culture of innovation, but at the same time it is important to remember that the company also spends large sums of cash every year running <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/" target="_blank">Microsoft Research</a>. While there are certainly some skeptics that believe that Microsoft has become too large (for some time now) to really innovate and that they have only really driven major changes to their product set through aquisition activity, but I think that we might just be asking for too much from one organization. Sure, they are going to do things that are in line with what other market players are doing... but I really do like their <a href="http://www.mesh.com/" target="_blank">Live Mesh</a> platform strategy.</p> <p>To me, the real question is how do you drive innovation without large budgets or small teams. Thoughts?</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-9019800313624690888?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/innovation-for-technology-departments.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/innovation-for-technology-departments.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/a1OuqcHtZa0" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/innovation-for-technology-departments.html Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:54:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/qT5M2X80upE/book-review-wall-mart-effect.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/book-review-wall-mart-effect.html <p> <p>Insightful, scary and impressive</p> <p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Media_httpecximagesam_xgfjd" height="110" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/IAeefxcHxGucgkjgEsbacBrnlBpiDcniuHCjavujGtupAmagGgynffHBDcCu/media_httpecximagesam_xGFjd.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="70" /> </div> Charles Fishman has managed to both intrigue and scare me with The Wall-Mart Effect. This book is worth reading for anyone interested in the economy, corporate growth models, supply chain management, manufacturing or sales. Even those with no interest in any of those topics should read the book, just to understand why you SHOULD be interested in this company. </p> <p>Not being focused on traditional retail or physical product manufacturing in my daily life, the book was still able to get my mind racing with thoughts about how to work with or against the massive force that Wall-Mart exerts on all of us.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R2LS7D34FKVHEQ/ref%3Dcm_cr_rdp_perm" target="_blank">Reviewed on Amazon</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-4430961312446073816?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/book-review-wall-mart-effect.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/book-review-wall-mart-effect.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/qT5M2X80upE" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/book-review-wall-mart-effect.html Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:46:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/8nw7cbRSJJ8/web-20-strategy-guide-good-blend-of.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/web-20-strategy-guide-good-blend-of.html <p> <p>I just recently read a book called <a href="http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529963/" target="_blank">Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide</a>, published by O'Reilly. <a href="http://www.amyshuen.com/" target="_blank">Amy Shuen</a> has done a wonderful job with this book. Its ability to blend the business, marketing and technology conversation around Web 2.0 philosophies into a cohesive discussion makes this book worth the read. While I was slightly disappointed that the book didn&rsquo;t spend much time on internal uses for these strategies (which could easily have been added as a seventh chapter), the focus on the value to changing a business was well researched and valuable.</p> <p>In particular, spending time understanding the various value propositions around Web 2.0 was excellent. From innovation models, to monetization strategies and harnessing the long tail of a potential market, the revenue potential is clearly explored.</p> <p>One comment that I read from <a href="http://infosysblogs.com/web2/2008/09/thumbs_down_for_web_20_a_strat.html" target="_blank">another reader</a> was that he felt that the language was contrived and not engaging enough. I couldn&rsquo;t disagree more. The book was articulate and readable, especially given the fact that the book covered so many of the dry topics that are often ignored for the sake of hype generating content.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-1990393908657284461?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/web-20-strategy-guide-good-blend-of.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/web-20-strategy-guide-good-blend-of.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/8nw7cbRSJJ8" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/11/web-20-strategy-guide-good-blend-of.html Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:46:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/-wlC1W-0yYE/lost-access-to-work-email.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/lost-access-to-work-email.html <p> <p>I lost access to my work email account yesterday afternoon, and it has yet to be restored (IT has been working on it since then, but they haven't figured it out yet). I always laughed at the idea of email addiction, but it really is painful to try to operate in a modern business environment without that trusty "send" button. I'm up to four calls today where people have assumed that I have already read something that they sent me. When they say this, I have to sheepishly reply that "I can't get into my email today, so I haven't seen that yet." When I go on vacation, I happily ignore all of my email accounts, but this is like walking around a cave without a light.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-13999471869450805?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/lost-access-to-work-email.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/lost-access-to-work-email.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/-wlC1W-0yYE" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/lost-access-to-work-email.html Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:17:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/X0tEseT_qk4/cloud-hosting-whats-missing-to-make-it.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/cloud-hosting-whats-missing-to-make-it.html <p> <p>There's been a ton of commotion recently with everyone getting excited about Google's <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/" target="_blank">App Engine</a> and Amazon's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011" target="_blank">EC2</a>. Rackspace has been getting into the mix as well with <a href="http://www.mosso.com/" target="_blank">Mosso</a>. It's pretty exciting stuff, and has the potential to take a significant market share from the more traditional hosting models (shared, dedicated, managed, etc...). </p> <p>Lew Moorman (from Rackspace) <a href="http://blog.racklabs.com/?p=75" target="_blank">argues</a> that there will always be a place for the other models. I actually think that he's right in the short to medium term, but fundamentally, computing power has become a commodity. It's getting to the point where individuals and forward thinking organizations are abstracting the details of hosting their applications away from themselves, in effect reducing the level of system administration knowledge that they will have to keep on staff. Like it or not, that's not going to stop. </p> <p>Programming language evolution is a perfect example of how this abstraction moves certain technical knowledge domains out of the mainstream and back into being a speciality. How many programmers do you know that actually use any sort of assembly language programming in their work today? I'll assume not many. Instead, programming has been abstracted away from the hardware and into the domain of solving user problems.</p> <p>Looking at the hosting market as it stands today, we are going to see some serious change over the next decade (if not sooner). Today, many companies are outsourcing the server and network administration work to an ever decreasing number of service providers (isn't consolidation fun?). This is the same principle as the programming example: companies are abstracting the detailed infrastructure work away from their staff. But in many ways, it isn't really abstract as much as the executive suite would like to think. Most enterprises still outsource in "server units" or "network device units", ensuring that they have to think in terms of physical or logical servers.</p> <p>Now look at "cloud hosting". It's another abstraction layer for application infrastructure, outsourcing most of the challenges of the physical systems completely to the providers.</p> <p>So here's where it's going... if cloud hosting providers can solve a couple of key problems, then they are in a position to help enterprise buyers move to this new model. Issue number 1? Security. In this world of industry competition, government regulation and consumer data protection concerns, this is of paramount concern to enterprise buyers - which is why it should matter to cloud hosting companies. These hosting companies should start to have a dialog with their various technology partners and potential customers about the following topics: Data Privacy, Authentication, Authorization, Logical "Tier-ed" Separation of Application Layers, Private Network Transport. The sooner this conversation starts, the sooner the problems can be solved.</p> <p style="">NOTE: This posting talks about the hosting business... which my employer is actively involved in. The ideas expressed above are my own, and have absolutely nothing to do with the company I work for.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-3452763300926538808?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/cloud-hosting-whats-missing-to-make-it.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/cloud-hosting-whats-missing-to-make-it.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/X0tEseT_qk4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/cloud-hosting-whats-missing-to-make-it.html Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:47:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/Cjl-F83gzxI/ibms-ideating-commercial.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/ibms-ideating-commercial.html <p> <p>Recent events reminded some of us about the IBM commercial on "ideating". This cracks me up every time I watch it.</p> <object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ziOG_GHNVq0&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x2b405b&amp;color2=0x6b8ab6&amp;hl=en" /></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ziOG_GHNVq0&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x2b405b&amp;color2=0x6b8ab6&amp;hl=en" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-7819533225111501998?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/ibms-ideating-commercial.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/ibms-ideating-commercial.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/Cjl-F83gzxI" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/ibms-ideating-commercial.html Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:04:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~3/AIVE-kSIP5w/2008-april-fools-joke-from-google.html http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/2008-april-fools-joke-from-google.html <p> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Media_httpwwwchipchil_veqqi" height="165" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/chipchilders/lGnnyeqDydugtJvifeqeJjmCzytkxvvxJhnFuvvnvfnoticcptAjvrxgJafg/media_httpwwwchipchil_vEqqI.png.scaled500.png" width="320" /> </div> <p>One of Google's April Fools jokes for 2008 is the <a href="http://www.google.com/googlecalendar/new_wakeup.html" target="_blank">Google Wake Up Kit</a>. It's definately not as funny as <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html" target="_blank">Google Paper</a>.</p> <p>For something actually useful, check out the <a href="http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/03/bringing-cloud-with-you.html" target="_blank">Google Docs "Offline" capabilities.</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img class="posterous_download_image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6888617-7268628161116856210?l=blog.chipchilders.com" height="1" alt="" width="1" /></div> </p> <p><a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/2008-april-fools-joke-from-google.html">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/2008-april-fools-joke-from-google.html#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/posterous/wbyo/~4/AIVE-kSIP5w" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1111272/me.png http://posterous.com/users/heO9aHtaHiLrA Chip Childers Chip Chip Childers http://www.chipchilders.com/2008/04/2008-april-fools-joke-from-google.html