Cloud Contessa

Amazon adds a new cluster instance type

2011-11-16T11:29:00.000-05:00

The new Cluster instance includes 2 Intel Xeon processors, each with 8 cores, for a total of 88 EC2 Compute Units. The 64-bit platform comes with 60.5 GB of RAM and 3.37 TB of instance storage, connected to a 10 Gigabit network. The CC2 moniker comes from the instance type's API name: cc2.8xlarge.

Amazon Web Services Expands HPC Cloud offerings

Oracle makes a decision on Grid Engine...

2010-12-25T04:43:00.001-05:00

Oracle finally announced that it will no longer be maintaining the open source version of Grid Engine.

Read the official announcements here: gridengine.info and here: Dan Templeton's official announcement

Merry Christmas!

Pitting Cloud against Cloud

2010-07-19T21:32:00.002-04:00

From MIT's Technology Review:
New software developed to measure the performance of different cloud computing platforms could make it easier for prospective users to figure out which of these increasingly popular services is right for them.

Duke University computer scientist Xiaowei Yang and her colleague Ang Li are trying to make the cloud market more like the car market, where, as Yang says, "you can compare specifications like engine size or top speed." Yang and Li have developed a suite of benchmarking tools that make it possible to compare the performance of different cloud platforms without moving applications between them. These tools use algorithms to measure the speed of computation, and shuttle data around to test the speed at which new copies of an application are created, the speed at which data can be stored and retrieved, the speed at which it can be shuttled between applications inside the same cloud, and the responsiveness of a cloud to network requests from distant places. The researchers used the software to test the services offered by six providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, GoGrid, RackSpace and CloudSites. Results of those tests were combined with the providers' pricing models to allow for quick comparisons.

The researchers aren't yet willing to disclose the performance scores of specific providers, but they plan to make their tools publicly available. "We are building a website where people will be able to download the software we used and see the results of the benchmarks," says Yang. "We gathered our initial data by running the trials for a few hours, sometimes over two days. But ideally they should run every day to provide live data on the clouds' performance."

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25815/

Hello from Portland...

2009-11-16T14:48:00.000-05:00

I'm here in lovely Portland, Oregon for the Supercomputing Conference (SC|09).

Tutorials on topics like CUDA, Cloud Computing, parallel programming, and high performance filesystems were conducted yesterday and continue into today. Tonight the exhibit floor opens with exciting new things like Fermi from NVIDIA, SGI's new systems, a variety of "green" solutions, NetApp's 10GbE offering, and more.

Former Vice-President (and "Inventor of the Internet" ;-) ) Al Gore is speaking on Thursday morning about “Computing for a Changing World,” and will present initiatives related to Sustainability, Bio-Computing and the 3D Internet.

It should be a great conference. I look forward to sharing interesting tidbits I learn right here!

P.S. Thanks to my friend and former colleague, Claude Baudoin, for including a mention of this little blog in his company's newsletter: The KIT -- Knowledge and Information Technology. Go ahead, subscribe to it!

The Economist is hosting a live debate on Cloud Computing

2009-11-10T13:09:00.000-05:00

The topic is: This house believes that the Cloud can't be entirely trusted.

Tune in to hear what Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division and Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO, salesforce.com have to say about this topic.

http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/409

Which Industries are most interested in Cloud Computing (according to Gartner)?

2009-11-03T20:46:00.006-05:00

The top 3 are:

Financial Services
Manufacturing
Business and Management Services

To see the rest of the top 20, please click here.

Videos from Google Cloud Conference

2009-11-02T21:07:00.001-05:00

Google held an event for CIOs called Atmosphere on October 22nd. Below are links to some notable presentations given at the event.

Nicholas Carr: Era of the Cloud
Dr. Werner Vogels (CTO Amazon.com): Cloud Capability
Nelson Mattos and Matthew Glotzbach, Google: Making Waves, Google Cloud Innovation

How does Amazon do what it does?

2009-11-02T20:27:00.000-05:00

See this informative paper on what's going on under the hood at Amazon.

Welcome to Cloud Contessa

2009-10-30T07:29:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Cloud Contessa! This blog will be a place for me to share interesting developments regarding Cloud Computing with you. I welcome your questions and comments!