My wife and I frequently take our young children for hikes up in the canyons and mountains that surround us. It’s great to be outdoors admiring God’s creation and taking a break from the hustle and bustle of life. My children and I have seen many wonderful sights. We’ve seen the hearty aspen and the delicate but beautiful mountain flowers, wild animals such as mountain goats and deer, and different species of birds. Not to mention the landscape of rolling hills, bubbling brooks and streams, and awe inspiring waterfalls. Yes truly amazing, but every so often there is something out of the ordinary, something unique, and sometimes menacing.
Something Amiss in the Woods
Recently there was a buzz when an amateur video was posted on YouTube. The video was recorded by some hikers up in the mountains who stumbled upon an animal. Thinking it possibly a bear (or perhaps a cougar) they stayed a ways off and recorded the strange creature. Much to their surprise the “bear” stood up in a very man-like way and the hikers ran from what was obviously Big Foot.
It’s fun to take my young children up into the canyon and look for signs of Big Foot. We tease the children about how that deer track could possibly be the footprint left behind by baby Big Feet, or make slight growling sounds as if Big Foot is around the corner. The younger children just laugh while their older siblings groan at the goof they have for a father. My wife just sighs and tries to remember what it was that attracted her in the first place.
Something Amiss in the Datacenter
In the HPC and cloud computing industry, we hear about another mythical beast. Just like Big Foot there have been rumors of sightings and some “fuzzy” pictures to back up a claim, but so far this mythical creature remains elusive. No one talks about it openly lest they be thought a fool, but deep down they wonder is it really there?
Adaptive Computing while always a sensible lot feels there might be something of a kernel of truth to these wild tall tales. So we’ve been preparing to mount an expedition and we’ll scour the datacenters of the Himalays if necessary to find this legendary animal, the vaunted but dreaded Hybrid Cloud.
I know you may laugh…
Hybrid Cloud, there’s no such thing. How could anyone get their private cloud to work with the public cloud? Even Dr. Moreau couldn’t create such a thing!
Maybe true, but that’s not to say it couldn’t be done by another more clever soul. So let’s take a look and separate the fact from the fiction.
Before there was Cloud
First, let it be said that the Cloud was once considered a myth till its discovery. In the good ol’ days (which I remember well) everything was local. It sat on a mainframe or if you were lucky, it could be right there on your personal computer. If you wanted to do something it had to be done on that machine. I still remember the thrill I received every time I flipped the heavy red switch on my IBM 5150, smelt the whiff of ozone, and longingly waited for my green color monitor to flicker to life. How I could not wait to begin coding in BASIC, a program from the back of my latest issue of Compute!
Sure you could hook up a modem and dial a BBS, but it was only one person at a time writing and sharing and then having a long wait for a response and the busy signal to go away.
No, we dreamt of it, talked of it, and wrote science fiction on it, but no one really believed it was out there. Then one day some intrepid explorers from the Commerce Department not only saw it, they brought it back to civilization like the scene from King Kong with the exception of the escaping, maiming, destruction, and climbing the Empire State Building.
Yes, it was the mythical Internet.
With the discovery of the Internet came other discoveries, the Web, Voice over IP, Dancing Hamsters, and the Cloud. All of these were thought impossible, couldn’t exist, but here they are so why not Hybrid Cloud?
But come on, Cloud is Cloud.
But it isn’t.
Is Public Cloud the same as Private Cloud?
Of course not, they have different consumers and different objectives. And if a company had need for both, couldn’t some mad scientist, or at least a nerdy engineer tripping on too many Frito’s and cans of Coke, possibly concoct such a thing.
But of course. It’s only a matter of putting together the right policies controlling which data is allowed to live in the Public space and which by either dictate of regulatory agencies or company concern must live in the Private space.
Well what about the nature of the two—aren’t they different species?
I mean who could think of EC2 mating with ESXi? Think of what their children might look like, ugh! Let’s not be prejudicial now. You wouldn’t think that a man and a piece of greasy bacon would go together (well the greasy part maybe) but it’s one of the most harmonious relationships in the universe. Indeed if a fried piece of fat can find a home then certainly there can be a place for Amazon and VMware to come together.
Data is what it’s about, just like with the bacon—it’s the flavor, I mean who really would eat bacon otherwise? It doesn’t matter how it’s delivered as long as it leaves that succulent aftertaste. Same with data—as long as it’s the same profit boosting data—does it matter if it comes from a Linux KVM box to Amazon’s compute cluster, it might just need a small dose of binary translation is all to make it palatable.
Okay, but it would have to be some kind of monster then, right, it couldn’t be easy to use and friendly like a newborn kitten. Or worse it would be Microsoft Bob all over with a gag me cutesy interface, terrible performance, and just plain nonsensical in getting anything done.
Again, it doesn’t have to be—we all have nightmares about Clippy (thanks to the computer nerds he was finally caught and put down), but Hybrid Cloud doesn’t have to be a deranged paper clip that gets in the way of meaningful work. This could truly be a noble creature like the BSD Daemon Beastie. It may not be a crime fighter like Manimal, but certainly no terror to the denizens of the data center. Some creativity and attention to the business case of customers would ensure this.
Yes the Hybrid Cloud is out there; I feel it in my bones. The combined benefits of private cloud with the ability to burst to the public space, improving efficiency and costs, and the bottom line, the ability to work with High Performance Computing or Big Data in cloud space can’t be fiction.
It must be there.
In fact, I’m hearing reports from our expedition that Hybrid Cloud was spotted near Program Management. It just might be that we found this noble savage close to home.
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