It started as an online bookstore and electronic retail, and now enjoys a high reputation in the industry, but its latest business is related to cloud computing. More than two years ago, Amazon, as one of the first manufacturers to enter the emerging market of cloud computing, made a good start for enterprises trying to enter this field.
Amazon's cloud is called Amazon WebServices (AWS). At present, it is mainly composed of four core services: simple storage service (S3); Elastic computing cloud (EC2); Simple QueuingService and SimpleDB, the latter is still in the testing stage. In other words, Amazon now provides access services for storage, computer processing, information queuing and database management systems that can be accessed through the network.
Google (hereinafter called Google)
Around Internet search, a super dynamic business model has been formed. Now, they have opened their "cloud" to enterprises in the form of application hosting and enterprise search.
In April this year, Google launched Google AppEngine (hereinafter referred to as GAE), which allows developers to compile Python-based applications and use Google's infrastructure for hosting for free (the maximum storage space is 500MB). For storage space exceeding this upper limit, Google charges according to the standard of "per CPU core hour 10 to 12 cents", and 10 GB space charges according to 15 to 18 cents. Recently, Google also announced a plan to provide a hosted enterprise search service that can be customized by enterprises.
Sales force
Is a pioneer of software-as-a-service providers, initially providing sales team automation applications accessible through the network. Driven by this company, other software as a service providers have mushroomed. Salesforce's next goal is: platform as a service.
The company is building its own network application software platform, which can be used as the basis of other enterprises' own software services. Including relational database, user interface options, enterprise logic and an integrated development environment named Apex. Programmers can test their application software developed by Apex on the sandbox of the platform, and then submit the finished code in the AppExchange directory of Salesforce.
Microsoft corporation
In the initial stage of cloud computing, Microsoft experienced many twists and turns. After several years of adjustment, the software giant's cloud computing strategy is finally on the right track.
According to some vendors' expectations, most IT resources will come from cloud computing in the future, but Microsoft doesn't think so. A few months ago, Microsoft Chief Software Architect (CSA) Lei; RayOzzie once said that Microsoft's grand plan is to "provide balanced enterprise software, partner hosting services and cloud services". In short, Microsoft calls it "software plus services".
The first software-as-a-service products that Microsoft will launch this year include Dynamics CRM Online, Exchange Online, OfficeCommunications Online and SharePointOnline. Each product has a multi-customer version, mainly serving small and medium-sized enterprises. The license fee for the single-customer version exceeds $5,000. For ordinary users, Microsoft's online services also include Windows Live, Office Live and Xbox Live.
Distributed computing is bound to become more and more common and gradually develop into the mainstream computing mode to replace centralized large computers, mainly for five reasons:
1。 The first reason of distributed system now is that it has better cost performance than centralized system. You don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get high-performance computing.
2。 Most applications are distributed in nature. For example, industrial enterprise applications, management departments and sites are not in one place.
3。 High reliability. Redundancy is not only a necessary condition for biological evolution, but also an information technology. Modern distributed system has a high fault-tolerant mechanism, and the control of nuclear reactor mainly adopts distributed to achieve high reliability.
4。 Scalability. Buying a host with higher performance, or buying another host with the same performance, is much more expensive than adding a few PCs.
5。 Highly flexible. It can be compatible with products from different hardware manufacturers, low-configuration machines and peripherals, and obtain high-performance calculation.
Roughly speaking, the processing capacity of each CPU chip of a personal computer is 200 megabits, which means that 200 megabits of instructions are executed every second, which means 200 million times. Recently, Yahoo! The company reported that they have realized a distributed system with 10000 nodes, that is, 10000 PC computers are connected, with a total processing capacity of 2 million megabits, which even the fastest chip can't reach because the speed of the chip designed in a certain area has an insurmountable limit. At present, the so-called TOP500, a world-famous supercomputer, reaches hundreds of trillion instructions per second, all of which are distributed. The world's first IBM BlueGene supercomputer used 32 racks, each equipped with 768 PowerPC440 CPU. By the way, this TOP500 basically uses Linux operating system! At present, the personal computers owned by society and families are PCs, and only 30% of the computing power is used, or even lower, while the remaining 70% is actually idle. These idle computer resources and computing power can only be effectively utilized through distributed systems, so as to greatly improve a country's computing power, which is an index to measure a country's national strength and scientific research ability, which has not been fully realized by Chinese people. The computing power of a country or region has now become an important strategic resource, as important as oil and other strategic materials. Cloud computing is to connect ordinary servers or personal computers to obtain the functions of supercomputers, also known as high-performance and high-availability computers, but the cost is lower. This is also an advanced project in the world. The cloud computing model will greatly improve China's scientific and commercial computing capacity, and greatly enhance China's economic competitiveness. There are many social distributed computing systems in the United States and Europe, which mobilize and use these social computing capabilities to study human genomics, astronomical problems, mathematical problems and other scientific problems. A research report last year estimated that the number of personal computers in China was close to 200 million.
According to the definition of distributed system given by Andrew S. Tanenbaum (AST), a master of computer operating system, "a distributed system is a system that runs on multiple machines without * * * memory, but looks like a computer in the eyes of users". (Quoted from Modern Operating System, Machinery Industry Press, Chinese version 1999). Its goal is to make every user feel that the networked computer is a time-sharing system-just like using a personal computer-rather than a collection of many computers. Even a distributed system consisting of five nodes should make users feel that they are using a large computer worth 200 thousand dollars. The only unusual feeling is that the processing speed has improved a lot, and the others are no different. For example, here is a simple example. The user of machine A wants to use the files in the user directory installed on machine B, and user A wants to log in to the directory of machine B by using the remote login command rlogin B, so this is not a real distributed system, because user A knows the existence of another machine, and the distributed system must do so. When user A logs into a directory, he doesn't know whether he is on the local machine or the remote machine. For user A, other related issues include: distributed file system, directory and file access mechanism and consistency, communication of distributed system processes and so on. Strictly speaking, the current cloud computing has not reached the semantic level of truly distributed computing.
Development trend and advantages of cloud computing in storage field
Maybe your computing life seems to be sending and receiving emails and browsing the Internet, but for those professional data users, you have to create files, tables, boring presentations and information stored in various ways. This raises a question: where are your data stored? Do you store data in services hosted by third-party providers?
Individuals and very small companies put important files on their computer hard drives. But the hard disk will fail, even though it seems to run forever. In the past few years, the sales of notebook computers have surpassed the sales of desktop computers. But you probably left your laptop in the taxi. Storing data in a personal computer will always cause problems of one kind or another.
Shortly after the first personal computer came out, local file servers appeared. The storage capacity of this server is getting bigger and bigger, and the price is getting cheaper and cheaper (the price of many TB-level hardware storage is 1300 to 2000 dollars). Novell's NetWare created the local file server market, but eventually lost its leading position in the market and was replaced by Microsoft. Local file storage devices have done a lot of work at a very low price. However, the world has changed again.
What is the biggest change in small businesses? They no longer put all their employees in one place. Only about 25% of small businesses operate in one place. Even for such a small business, employees still need to access company files, such as customers' websites, when they work outside the company. Local file storage devices that are cheap and work well in the office cannot be accessed on the Internet.
There are many companies that provide online file storage for individuals and businesses. Egnyte, which calls itself "cloud computing file server", provides M/Drive service for desktop computers and notebook computers, and even provides storage service connected to iPhone. Egnyte has client software for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
Considering that FTP is one of the earliest Internet protocols, this technology is not new. However, this technology has become easier to use. In addition, the broadband network service in the United States is more reliable and can be used to access important business documents.
Egnyte proudly declared that "I am a file server", although many companies have entered this field before. Xdrive service appeared earlier. But its owner, AOL, said that although the website is still providing services, it will close the website.
Other companies include file storage services in their collaboration services. A service called HyperOffice includes all online collaboration tools, such as exclusive and exclusive contacts, calendars, task lists and file storage. It even includes file version control, allowing large enterprises to control audit records, locked files and multiple versions of files. The company's HyperDrive function can connect users' Windows computers to HyperOffice's public and private storage folders.
Another service called iPrismGlobal provides similar functions. However, it mainly provides the look and feel of the virtual workplace. Collaboration is the main function of these two services and many other services in this field, rather than a simple file storage function.
Transferring files from online servers will not take longer than transferring files from local storage hardware, but large files may take longer. Of course, whenever you access something on the Internet, the performance is worse than that on the LAN. However, accessing the hosting service is as fast as connecting to your office server through the LAN, and you don't have to pay for the hardware.
Since small business owners are still the most price-sensitive buyers in the technical field, let's talk about money. Egnyte's service price is 15 USD per user per month. This price seems a little high. This price includes a default storage capacity of 20GB and unlimited storage capacity for more than three users. Compared with other GB storage hosts, this service is still very good. Egnyte says its price is one-eighth of that of hardware-based systems.
However, collaborative services such as HyperOffice provide online file storage and many collaborative functions, and each user spends less per month (a few users spend less than $65,438 +00 per month). This service does not provide unlimited storage space according to the price. However, users who create office files generally do not need a lot of GB storage space. The cost of providing other services such as sales or project management module should be increased accordingly.
If you have a large number of music files, you can look for professional music storage services, such as MP3Tunes. This service works in "music storage cabinet" mode. Therefore, you can transfer your own music files to any connected device. All this is done in the ready-to-use cloud computing.
Online folder and file storage has three advantages. First of all, you don't have to spend any money on file storage hardware in advance. Service providers have been vigorously promoting this fact. But the reality is that you can rent server hardware and software to reduce your monthly expenses to a manageable scale, and both methods can get the known total budget.
Second, the hosting service provider will maintain the security and update of the user file server. The server can be rented and you can plan your budget. However, you cannot be prepared for security updates, errors and hardware failures. The service provider will assign a special person to manage the storage and keep the system up to date.
Finally, it is very painful to share files with remote employees, customers and partners on the physical server of the enterprise. Every online service, whether it is a simple server service like Egnyte or a HyperOffice collaboration service, can easily control who reads files. These controls allow you to share files only with people you specify, whether they are your employees or outsiders. You can control the rights of visitors. You don't have to allow outsiders to enter your company network.
Some people still don't trust cloud computing, although some people trust the services of companies such as Google more than their IT distributors. If you trust Microsoft more than Google, you can pay attention to Windows Live SkyDrive. Even the largest local file server software vendor is providing server functions as Internet-based host services. (IT expert network)