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C'mon people! Spread the word! "The cloud" is not "just someone elses computer", it's a completely different way to compute!

I'm so tired of the oversimplifications done trying to explain the consept. The massive amount of work, sweat and tears put into the orchestration, automation and abstraction layers to deliver truly elastic, scalable and self healing infrastructure, applications and services deserves a fuckload more respect than "just someone elses computer"!

Hosting and time-sharing have been with us almost as long as we have had computers (mainframes etc), but dismissing the effort of thousands upon thousands of devs and ops people to make systems robust and automated enough to literally being able to throw a wrench in the engine any time during production and not have the systems suffer is fucking insane!

The whole reason the term "cloud" is so fitting is not just because it was coined from the cloud-shape used in technical and non-technical drawings and illustrations symbolising the internet, but also because of the illusion of magic it gives the end-user not being able to see "whats inside the music box".

Comments
  • 2
    So where can I learn what is in that black box, how does it works in details? You intrigued me!
  • 3
    I have to agree! Originally I hated "the cloud" because I thought it was just meaningless marketing, but it's not. It is a software architecture in its own right that takes a good while to grok. (And it's super cool. 😎 🌨)
  • 2
    @DiscanX Personally I started reading articles about scaling the back-end for apps, reading a lot of the blog post by the engineering team at Instagram (http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/...) following their growth from 3-5 engineers until the FB buy-out.

    I also found a lot of info on micro services, message driven architectures, cloud native applications (https://12factor.net) and studying the technology that drives the PaaS tech. Look into Heroku, Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes, Mesosphere, Docker Swarm etc and you will be well on your way.

    Also take a look at talks on YouTube, slideshare etc, plus free courses on Coursera, eDX, Udemy and such sites.

    You should also read about anti-fragile systems, the amazing stories from Netflix and WallMart, particularly the Simian Army. Simian Army is a collection of tools that randomly shuts down servers, network and entire datacenters at Netflix, Chaos Monkey being the best known.

    Good luck! 👍🏻🤓
  • 1
    I guess the people has problem with clouds in a particular case. I've tried to explain it a non IT-ish guy, but at the end he still didn't wantted to use it. He tought somebody will steal his data. And Obviously I understood him, cos you'll never know. When I use it I have no confidence about the security of my data, just the blind faith. And it makes frustration. Even if you have no secrets. The peoples don't trust in big companys, cos they always wanted to earn money. And everybody know, there is no free meal. But nobody knows what is the price they'll pay for this. So, after all, i go and delete my dropbox account :D (just kidding)
  • 1
    @zaturek Hehe, well the SaaSes do vary in quality, but most in the storage space offer encryption for the data so noone can steal it 😉
  • 3
    But it is someone elses computer.. doctors dont try to explain their work in smart terms, neither should be. "Normal" people dont understand, and dont want to.
  • 1
    @Hakash Thanks a lot for the answer and the ressources!
  • 3
    So... Still someone elses computer?
  • 1
    @SithLord @Charmgoggles Conseptually it's not "a computer" anymore, that part is abstracted away, it's more a distributed runtime environment. Sure, you can run your OS on rented hardware still, but even running VMs on Amazon is not really comparable with running it on an ESXi or KVM because of the abstraction and automation that comes with it. It's so much fucking more than "a computer".

    The doctor does explain that he is a brain surgeon, pediatrician or what ever, and people understand bevause they learn about anatomy in school. Teach IT to the general public in school like the Hour of Code has begun to do, and people will understand, when the population matures enough.
  • 1
    @DiscanX Happy to help 😊
  • 1
    I don't even see how the cloud itself is even new or revolutionary. Data centers and rack servers have been around for a good while, right? Probably just the idea of hosting consumer data en masse in these data centers and what that allows for syncing content between devices is what's new -- a new way to use old tech with a new name.

    It also bugs me about how people refuse to use cloud services yet bitch when their data gets destroyed on a local device/machine. The cloud is not big brother. It's big data. That NOBODY has time or intent to access but the end user. O_o
  • 1
    @corscheid Well there you touch another thing that bugs me. Too many believe that the cloud is just storage of data, like Dropbox, when it really is what makes Netflix magic, what drives YouTube and Google, the thing that allows you, as a dev, to launch your code without ever having to think about configuring network, patching servers, fiddling with firewalls and wasting loads of hours that could be spent coding. Just set up your CI chain and autodeploy your code in minutes or seconds to Heroku, AWS, Google or Azure, no remote shell required, IT JUST WORKS.

    Now please understand that cloud comes as private, public or somewhere in between. Host your own cloud on your own servers, scale the peak to a local or global provider, or just use the best fit in the market for your needs and budget.

    The cloud is not someone elses computer, the cloud is flexibility to do what you want, the cloud is a method to the madness...

    All hail The Cloud!! 😉
  • 1
    @Hakash Ok, nice. How you'll explain it to a non it guy? I mean his answer would be something like this: "they've encrypted it, they can decrypt it". And from this point if you try to explain it, he/she won't understand it. They don't even want to. Maybe I've not right. But this is my... guess... (idunno which word should comes here :D not native)
  • 1
    @zaturek They encrypt the encryption key with your password, which they dont store. They validate your password when you log in by taking whatever you give them and use it to encrypt some piece of garbage data to see if it ends up the same as they stored when you registered. Which means they cant decrypt the data 😊
  • 1
    @Hakash I understand it, and for me it's really interesting and exciting. And I really respect you knowledge. I just tried to put myself to the point of an "outsider". :)
  • 1
    @zaturek Oh, I dont doubt that, was just trying to explain to you in that role 😊
  • 1
    Does the cloud (abstractions,techniques,...) Need servers ?yes, Are servers computers ? Yes,are they my computers ? No. Then The cloud is simply someone else's computers .
  • 0
    @skonteam They can be your servers just fine. "The cloud" is the magic you run on top of it.
  • 1
    @RagingCodeChimp They claim not to save your password, but you wouldn't know if they did. Theoretically they do have the ability to compromise your key, making your encryption depend on trust.

    I'm not saying that is done on a broad scale, but if you use the service of a US company there is the patriot act, which affects you no matter where that data is located geographically. How much of an issue that is depends on your threat model.

    As for the topic: I believe this explanation was given a with storage providers in mind (Dropbox, icloud, ..) to make muggles understand that using those services comes with a risk of privacy violation or even leakage. They don't (or at least didn't, though I don't think that changed) know what actual cloud computing is at all and are probably already struggling with the definition of servers - and why would they, for them it doesn't matter where something is running.

    Edit: on duck I just saw I necrod this old ass rant
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