What is a cloud service?

Let me give you a simple description: it is smart enough to provide you with real-time services based on your location, time, preferences and other information. Anticipate the needs. In this new model, information search will be done for you, not by you. No matter what device you use, no matter which on-demand service you need, you will get a consistent and coherent ultimate experience.

By multiplying a large number of start-up companies, we provide a wealth of personalized products to meet the growing personalized needs in the market. Its method of reproduction is to provide start-up companies with a complete set of services including funding, promotion, payment, logistics, and customer service, and make its own operating capabilities available to outsiders for on-demand use like water and electricity. This is the business model of cloud services.

The premise for the birth of cloud services is that the Internet breaks down geographical divisions to form a unified market, and it becomes profitable to provide products for personalized needs. The objective effect is: to reduce the cost of starting a business to a minimum, entrepreneurs will only focus on core aspects such as creativity, and operations and management will no longer be important. Small companies began to challenge large companies and subvert the industrial civilization of "win at scale". Our society and culture will be more independent and free.

Cloud terminal

The next generation of PC is called "cloud terminal". It no longer requires a central processor, hard disk, graphics card, or even operating system and application software, because all the above functions are Completed by a public cloud server, it is just a compact set-top box, or built directly into the display. "The price is only 500 yuan."

Cloud terminal is by far the most economical computer network solution. The price of a single unit is only a few hundred yuan. According to statistics, commercial network systems that achieve the same function and cloud terminal systems Compared with traditional PC systems: 70% of the investment will be saved in the procurement process; 90% of the cost burden will be reduced in the system operation and maintenance process; in terms of usage cost, 50 cloud terminals are equivalent to one ordinary PC Power consumption, electricity bill savings are considerable.

Cloud computing will change the current "chassis + monitor" model of computers. In the future, TVs, mobile phones, and game consoles may all become terminal devices of the network. Computers are so ubiquitous that we cannot see them. Yes, this is ubiquitous computing. As the concept of cloud computing matures, telecom operators, hardware suppliers and software service providers are integrated. In the past, the operating system and processor platform dominated the traditional PC industry. will decline, and PC manufacturers will have more say and development opportunities.

Cloud computing is an emerging method of sharing infrastructure that can transform huge industries. Pools of systems are connected together to provide a variety of IT services. Many factors are driving the need for such environments, including connected devices, real-time data streaming, SOA adoption, and Web2 such as search, open collaboration, social networking, and mobile commerce. .0 applications. In addition, the improvement in the performance of digital components has also greatly increased the scale of IT environments, further strengthening the need for management by a unified cloud.

Cloud computing- Definition of Cloud Computing Cloud computing in a narrow sense refers to the delivery and usage model of IT infrastructure, which refers to obtaining the required resources (hardware, platform, software) through the network in an on-demand and easily scalable manner. The network that provides resources is called a "cloud." ". The resources in the "cloud" are infinitely expandable from the user's point of view, and can be obtained at any time, used on demand, expanded at any time, and paid according to use. This feature is often referred to as using IT infrastructure like water and electricity.

Generally speaking, cloud computing refers to the service delivery and usage model, which refers to obtaining the required services through the network in an on-demand and easily scalable manner. This kind of service can be related to IT, software, and the Internet. Any other service can be used.

Cloud computing is often confused with parallel computing, distributed computing and grid computing. Cloud computing is virtualization. ), Utility Computing, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and other concepts mixed evolution and leap forward.

Cloud computing-Features

(1) Ultra-large scale. The "cloud" has a considerable scale. Google Cloud Computing already has more than 1 million servers, and the "clouds" of Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. all have hundreds of thousands of servers. Enterprise private clouds generally have hundreds or thousands of servers. "Cloud" can give users unprecedented computing power.

(2) Virtualization. Cloud computing allows users to obtain application services at any location and using various terminals. The requested resources come from the "cloud" rather than a fixed tangible entity. The application runs somewhere in the "cloud", but users don't actually need to know or worry about the specific location where the application is running. With just a laptop or a mobile phone, everything we need can be achieved through network services, even tasks such as supercomputing.

Cloud computing (3) High reliability. "Cloud" uses measures such as multiple copies of data, fault tolerance, and isomorphic interchangeability of computing nodes to ensure high reliability of services. Using cloud computing is more reliable than using local computers.

(4) Universality. Cloud computing is not targeted at specific applications. With the support of the "cloud", ever-changing applications can be constructed, and the same "cloud" can support the operation of different applications at the same time.

(5) High scalability. The scale of the "cloud" can be dynamically expanded to meet the needs of application and user scale growth.

(6) On-demand services. The "cloud" is a huge resource pool that you purchase on demand; the cloud can be billed like tap water, electricity, and gas.

(7) Extremely cheap. Due to the special fault-tolerant measures of the "cloud", extremely cheap nodes can be used to form a cloud. The automated centralized management of the "cloud" eliminates the need for a large number of enterprises to bear the increasingly high cost of data center management. The versatility of the "cloud" improves resource utilization. Compared with traditional systems, it is greatly improved, so users can fully enjoy the low-cost advantages of the "cloud". It often only takes a few hundred dollars and a few days to complete tasks that previously took tens of thousands of dollars and months to complete.

Cloud Computing - Origin Cloud Computing (Cloud Computing) is an emerging business computing model. It distributes computing tasks across a resource pool composed of a large number of computers, allowing various application systems to obtain computing power, storage space and various software services as needed.

This resource pool is called a "cloud". "Cloud" is some virtual computing resources that can be self-maintained and managed, usually some large server clusters, including computing servers, storage servers, broadband resources, etc. Cloud computing centralizes all computing resources and automatically manages them by software without human intervention. This allows application providers to focus more on their business without having to worry about tedious details, which is conducive to innovation and cost reduction.

The reason why it is called "cloud" is that it has the characteristics of real clouds in some aspects: clouds are generally larger; the scale of clouds can be dynamically expanded and contracted, and its boundaries are fuzzy; Floating in the air, you can't and don't need to pinpoint its exact location, but it does exist somewhere.

The reason why it is called "cloud" is also because Amazon, one of the originators of cloud computing, gave what was once called grid computing a new name "Elastic Computing Cloud" (EC2 ) and achieved commercial success. Cloud computing is regarded by its advocates as a "revolutionary computing model" because it makes it possible to freely circulate supercomputing power through the Internet. Enterprises and individual users no longer need to invest in expensive hardware acquisition costs. They only need to purchase rental computing power through the Internet. "Treat your computer as an access point and leave everything to the Internet." Users only need 640K of memory. "Bill Gates said this in 1989 when talking about "the past, present and future tense of computer science." At that time, all programs were so small that a 100MB hard drive could not be used up. The Internet was still being developed in the laboratory. Now, hypertext protocols have just been proposed. Their widespread application will begin in 6 years. At present (2008), such information can be retrieved on the website that provides installation services. The computer logo required by an ordinary white-collar worker. The configuration is: low-end Core Duo/1GB memory/100GB hard drive. Soon, mega-level hard drives will enter the range of home computers.

Behind the rapid increase in hardware configuration is the rapid growth of data on the Internet - this is simply challenging the limits of human imagination. When massive data was proposed as a concept, the unit was measured in GB. Now this is just a unit of data for a small website.

Cloud Computing - Basic Principles Kaifu Lee Cloud Computing (Cloud Computing) is the development of distributed processing (Distributed Computing), parallel processing (Parallel Computing) and grid computing (Grid Computing), or these computers Commercial implementation of scientific concepts.

The basic principle of cloud computing is that by distributing computing over a large number of distributed computers rather than local computers or remote servers, enterprise data centers will operate more like the Internet. This enables enterprises to switch resources to needed applications and access computers and storage systems on demand. This is a revolutionary move. For example, it is like switching from the ancient single generator model to the centralized power supply model of a power plant. It means that computing power can also be circulated as a commodity, just like gas, water and electricity, which is easy to access and low-cost. The big difference is that it's transmitted over the Internet. The blueprint of cloud computing is already emerging: in the future, all we need is a laptop or a mobile phone to achieve everything we need through network services, even tasks such as supercomputing. From this perspective, the end user is the real owner of cloud computing. The application of cloud computing includes the idea of ??uniting power and making it available to every member. In its most fundamental sense, cloud computing is the ability to leverage software and data on the Internet. For cloud computing, Kaifu Lee (Google's global vice president and president of China) made a vivid metaphor: a bank. At first, people just put money under their pillows. Later, banks were established, which was very safe, but it was more troublesome to cash out. Nowadays, banks can withdraw money from any bank branch, even through ATM or foreign channels. Just like when you use electricity, you don’t need to equip every household with a generator. You can buy it directly from the power company. "Cloud computing" brings such a change - professional network companies such as Google and IBM build computer storage and computing centers, and users can easily access them through a network cable with the help of a browser, turning the "cloud" As the center of data storage and application services. Cloud computing has currently developed two major areas: cloud security and cloud storage. For example, domestic Rising and Trend Micro have begun to provide cloud security products; while international leaders such as Microsoft and Google are more involved in the field of cloud storage.

Cloud computing - development conditions

(Cloud computing) will inevitably become more and more common, gradually developing into a mainstream computing model and replacing centralized mainframe computers:

< p>1. The first reason why distributed systems are now used is because they have better performance-price ratio than centralized systems. You don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get high-performance computing.

2. Most applications themselves are distributed. For example, in industrial enterprise applications, the management department and the site are not in the same place.

3. High reliability. Redundancy is a necessity not only for biological evolution but also for information technology. Modern distributed systems have a high degree of fault tolerance, and distributed control of nuclear reactors is mainly used to achieve high reliability.

4. Scalability. The cost of buying a higher-performance mainframe, or buying another mainframe with the same performance, is much higher than the cost of adding a few PCs.

5. High flexibility. It is compatible with products from different hardware manufacturers and is compatible with low-configuration machines and peripherals to obtain high-performance computing.

Cloud Computing - Category

Markus Klems

Cloud computing is a buzzword that encompasses development, load balancing, business models, and architecture. It is a software industry The future model (Software10.0), or simply put, cloud computing is Internet-centric software.

Reuven Cohen

Cloud computing is a web-based service that aims to allow users to pay only for the functions they need, while eliminating the traditional software in hardware, software, professional skills investments. Cloud computing allows users to obtain applications without the complexity of technology and deployment.

Douglas Gourlay

Cloud computing refers to a big picture. Basically, it allows users to access technical services through the Internet. Now, every time they log on to Facebook or search for flights, In fact, they are all using cloud computing.

Praising Gaw

Cloud computing is the new Web2.0, a market bloom on existing technologies. Just like people used to put a little ajax on their websites and declare themselves to be Web 2.0, cloud computing is a new buzzword.

The positive side is that Web2.0 finally caught the mainstream attention. Similarly, the concept of cloud computing will eventually change people's minds, and various concepts will eventually explode, such as hosting services, ASP, Grid computing, software as a service, platform as a service, anything as a service.

Briande Haaff

From a consumer perspective, SaaS is a type of cloud computing, but people in the industry must understand what this means. Simply put, cloud computing is the sublimation of SaaS.

Ben Kepes

The original intention of the cloud model is to make the consumption of the hardware layer like on-demand computing and storage space required. In order to make the cloud model bring more power, We need to implement configuration, deployment, and services in a virtual environment throughout the entire application architecture.

Omar Sultan

Cloud computing is to access resources and services for some needs that need to be dynamically changed. The resources requested by applications and services come from the "cloud" rather than fixed tangible entities. Clouds are virtual resources that can be maintained and managed by themselves.

Cloud Computing - Prospects

Cloud computing is regarded as the next revolution in the technology industry, which will bring about fundamental changes in working methods and business models.

First of all, cloud computing means huge business opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs. They can use cloud computing to compete with large enterprises at a higher level. Since Microsoft launched Office software in 1989, the way we work has changed dramatically, and cloud computing has brought offices in the cloud - stronger computing power but no need to purchase software, eliminating the need for local installation and maintenance.

Secondly, in a sense, cloud computing means the death of hardware. At least those small and medium-sized enterprises with increasing computing needs no longer try to buy expensive hardware, but rent computing power from cloud computing providers. While avoiding hardware investment, the company's technical department also does not have to worry about busy technical maintenance, and the time saved can be used for more business innovation.

Take Amazon as an example. Its cloud computing products are cheap (and of course highly profitable), attracting a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises, and even large companies such as The New York Times, Red Hat, and SanDisk. Amazon charges 15 cents per 1GB of storage and 10 cents per hour for server rental. It is said that the investment in each computer in its "cloud" is only US$300. Assuming that the electricity consumption is also US$300, according to this charging standard, its income will be US$876 in a year of uninterrupted operation, with a profit margin of about 45%. —higher than its gross profit from selling books.

With the rise of cloud computing, traditional hardware manufacturers are once again facing a crisis. Dell, HP, SUN, etc. have been worried about the recession of the US market for many years. Perhaps the recession of the hardware market is really coming.

The impact of cloud computing on business models is reflected in the innovation of market space. Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, believes that there is a sudden surge in demand for Gmail. Google's cloud computing system will automatically increase the capacity and number of processors for Gmail without manual intervention, and additions and adjustments will not increase costs. Relying on cloud computing, Google can add new services at almost negligible cost. If the added service fails, that's okay, just turn it off and forget about it. If successful, the system will automatically add space and processing power to it.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes that cloud computing means returning from the PC era to the mainframe era. "In the PC era, PCs provided many good functions and applications, but now we have returned to the era of large-scale computers. Today's mainframes cannot be seen or touched, but they are indeed there, and they are in the cloud. in the sky.

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Cloud Computing - Development Space

Imagine that when the computer’s computing power is not limited by local hardware, it will be smaller in size and lighter in weight, but can perform more powerful processing. Mobile terminals are at our fingertips. We can still run the most demanding online games on paper-thin laptops, and we can also edit photos we just took by accessing Photoshop online.

What's even more attractive is that companies can obtain extremely high computing power at a very low cost, without having to invest in expensive hardware equipment and burden with frequent maintenance and upgrades. For example, the American real estate website Goosipy wants to build a database. Calculating data on the purchases and sales of 670,000 households over a 12-year period in order to provide better advice to consumers. If they do it themselves, it is initially estimated that it will take six months and millions of dollars. . In the end, they rented the "elastic computer cloud" service provided by Amazon. By using Amazon's powerful data analysis capabilities, the project was completed in only 3 weeks and cost less than $50,000 - the beauty of cloud computing. One is that the on-demand computing method can fully utilize the performance of a large computer cluster. If you only use 5% of the resources, you only need to pay 5% of the price, instead of having to pay 100% of the equipment as before. Pay the bill.

Cloud computing - identifying online games that make young people addicted 1) If the name is "Grid" or "OGSA (Open Grid Services Architecture)"... then it is not a cloud. .

2) If you need to provide the manufacturer with a requirement specification of dozens of pages... then it is not a cloud.

3) If you cannot use your own credit card. Buy... then, it's not a cloud.

4) If they want to sell you a hardware device... then, it's not a cloud.

5) If no API is provided. ..then, it's not the cloud.

6) If you need to re-architect your system... then, it's not the cloud.

7) If you can't do it within 10 minutes. If you can't provision a server in 10 minutes... then it's not a cloud.

8) If you can't deprovision a server in 10 minutes... then it's not a cloud.

9) If you know the exact location of the machine you're using... then, it's not the cloud

10) If you need a consultant to help you... then, it's not. Cloud.

11) If it requires you to prepare a list of the number of machines required in advance... then it is not a cloud.

12) If it only runs one operating system.. .Well, it's not the cloud.

13) If you don't have to connect it to your own machine... then, it's not the cloud.

14) If you need to install it. Software needs to be able to use it...well, it's not the cloud.

15) If you have all this hardware...well, it's not the cloud.

Cloud computing technology: several open source cloud computing projects that cloud computing enthusiasts should pay attention to. In view of the fact that many cloud computing enthusiasts want to learn cloud computing but don’t know how to start, China Cloud Network (china-cloud.com) Cloud computing experts remind cloud computing enthusiasts to pay attention to the following three open source cloud computing projects. Contact with open source things can help you master cloud computing better and faster.

(1) 10gen, which is both a cloud platform and a downloadable open source package that can be used to create your own private cloud. 10gen is a software stack similar to App Engine that provides similar functionality to App Engine — but with a few differences. With 10gen, applications can be developed using Python as well as JavaScript and Ruby programming languages. The platform also uses the concept of sandboxing to isolate applications and provide a reliable environment using many computers (built on Linux, of course) with their own application servers.

(2) The Eucalyptus project (Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems) is an open source implementation of Amazon EC2 that is compatible with commercial service interfaces. Like EC2, Eucalyptus relies on Linux and Xen for operating system virtualization. Eucalyptus was developed by the University of California (Santa Barbara) for cloud computing research. You can download it from the university's website or try it through the Eucalyptus Public Cloud, although the latter has some limitations.

(3) Enomalism cloud computing platform. Enomalism is an open source project that provides a cloud computing framework with functionality similar to EC2. Enomalism is based on Linux and supports both Xen and Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM). Enomalism provides a software stack based on the TurboGears web application framework and Python.