Wednesday 29 February 2012

Cloud-Computing

I had heard of the term Cloud-Computing before, and some years ago even worked myself in the migration of our own CPDs located at different countries into a unique one, but it's now, when once again the term comes to me strongly and seems to be here to stay, since I'm currently working in the decentralisation of my company's CPD with the aim of make it available on the Cloud (Net). To do so, we have currently a unique CPD, and our architecture and infrastructure teams are working on a step-by-step approach to take parts of the hardware and software "up in the Cloud".

In order to introduce you and to freshen up these new concepts to myself, I will write down a brief definition of them:

IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service. With this approach, you rent infrastructure to a provider of the service (in our case, we are considering signing up with Amazon). You only pay for the use of the service, and you, as a company, get support to the infrastructure rented, according to any SLA (Service Level Agreement), capacity, availability and any other parameter that both parties consider relevant.

PaaS - Platform as a Service. This is a step ahead in the approach, since apart from signing up to an infrastructure, your provider will also support your base software (be it database engines, O.S., etc.). Similarly, it may be clinged to a SLA agreed by both parties.

SaaS - Software as a Service. And a step even further, meaning that you sign up for a support to the software installed in the platform, regarding any software and application user-oriented. No need to say that it may be also working under a SLA.

What do we expect?
- Budget: well, so far, it seems clear that CAPEX will reduce drastically, since investment in capital assets will go down significantly. All OPEX seem to keep their current level of spending.
- Access: since applications and servers are located on the Cloud, it is completely indifferent for users and technicians to know the physical location of infrastructure. Access may be considered ubiquituous and connection among different platforms is easy to achieve

How do I get to it?
- First of all, you need to define your needs (a well-defined capacity plan is important, quality of service, availability, end-user support, as well as platforms and technologies you want to work with, etc.)
- Analyse current costs against the costs you will be incurring in the future if the Cloud option is to be adopted
- Define a SLA sufficient as to keep all users satisfied and avoid skyrocketing OPEX costs

Ok, I want to go for it, what's the physical appearance of it all?
- Infrastructure can be virtually located anywhere, since no matter where it is installed, your teams will always be able to access their applications. You just need to create virtual machines (think of it as of a physical server you may have now in your CPD). The virtual machine may consists of databases, clusters, disks, CPUs, applications, message queues and so on; creating HA (High Availability) servers is as easy as genearting two virtual machines, one of them active and other passive, taking over the service as soon as something goes wrong in the active node
- Virtuality means that storage can also be spread throughout different locations, and thus being safer
- HPC. And if your company needs a High Performance Computing solution, going to the Cloud will mean just the right option to consider

You can learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing and read about IaaS, PaaS and SaaS at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing#Service_Models and to read about Amazon Cloud Computing services, please go to http://aws.amazon.com/es/ec2/

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Kerouac

I'd already read Kerouac but never found the words to comment his book On the Road. This Blog really touched me. I do encourage its read! You can access it via http://fmaesteban.blogspot.com/2011/01/la-edad-de-las-ilusiones-un-recuerdo.html

Ya había leído a Kerouac pero nunca encontré las palabras para comentar su libro En la Carretera. Este Blog me ha llegado al alma. ¡Recomiendo su lectura! Puedes acceder al mismo vía http://fmaesteban.blogspot.com/2011/01/la-edad-de-las-ilusiones-un-recuerdo.html

Saturday 4 February 2012

Social Unrest on 2012

And here we go, right into the 5th year of this never-ending economic crisis. Now that 2012 has spent its first month, I may take a break, pause for a while and try to set my sight back to the Lehman Brothers’ fall and the famous phrase that Sarkozy mentioned after that happened, addressed to the urgent need of re-inventing capitalism as we knew it.

By the time, it sounded pretty good, it made common sense, even it was considered necessary (and it still is), though now… well, you know… that was all.

Once that re-foundation has been discarded as a solution, politicians worldwide have shown an incredible lack of strategic view and most of all, a lack of leadership.
To worsen that all, the possible exit of this depression is far from being green (as it was considered in the beginning of it all). Solution won´t have nothing to do with the use of the so-called green energies, another issue that has been left apart in the dark.


Nowadays, pushed by the rating agencies and German plus French governments the solutions has been drastically simplified and it has been translated into just a simple one, being it reducing the so-called Welfare State in the Western countries, where meager benefits took years and fight to be achieved. And as it seems clear now, benefit cuts that are having an incredible impact on poorest social classes and consumption.

And where does it all lead us? Well, current cuts in social benefits will end when a real convergence between the current lack of any welfare state in Asian countries and the one existing in Western ones meet. And which point will it be? The meeting point must be the one at which requirements and claims of Chinese workers may get to (I hope as a citizen of a Western Country they ask and fight for a good agreement) as to level up costs of production in both regions.


It is clearly known that non-existence of workers-rights in Asia economies make that region be productive and competitive, and thus make their exports a boost of the economy.

So, I guess that global unrest will keep on setting up our agendas on 2012.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Why You Should Start Blogging Today?

Should you have in mind the slightest and remotest idea about starting your own blog, you should consider at least the following issues I mention, since they may mark the thin line that separates a blog from failure to success.

About your audience: Identify the type of audience your blog may be aimed to. It is a high priority issue to get to know about the type of people you want to visit your blog. Think if it will be of interest for businessmen, writers, readers, photographers… Be concrete!

About your posts: Re-group a good bunch of articles or at least some ideas that allow you to keep the blog updated from the beginning and during a period of time that is enough to keep readers interested. It’s depressing visiting a blog and realizing that the owner updated it a year ago… and what’s worse, it has just two posts. Be constant!

About comments: Invite your friends and colleagues to visit it, since it is a very nice opportunity to let them know about your likes, opinions and ideas (though if they are really good friends they already should know yours!). That’s the best way I know to start receiving comments, and thus, showing other potential visitors that your blog is of interest. Get visitors!

About design: Think about an attractive name and brand image for your blog. Great colors, a well structured web page design and so on are also important, since a very gloomy design can prevent people from stopping by. Sell image!

About stats: Though it may be discouraging at the beginning of the life of your blog, do please get a nice stats widget (you may well hide it in your website for the first few weeks until the blog starts having important stats that allow you to show your numbers). Be conscious!

And, trying to get an answer to the title of this post, you should try blogging if you feel the need to share your interests and opinions, if you consider yourself to have something interesting to tell to the world (be it pictures, texts…), or should you want to unify your social network account, completing it with a blog.

Should you have any question, do not hesitate to contact me al asalbares(at)gmail.com