May
24
2011
Around 2000-2001, Oasis Digital built a system for a client which (in retrospect) took a “cloudy” approach to data storage. 2001 is a few years before that approach gained popularity, so it’s interesting to look back and see how our solution stacks up. The problem domain was the storage of check images for banks; the [...]
Tags: cloud, sysadmin
Apr
25
2010
A few months ago I mentioned James Hamilton’s comments on the micro-server trend. Today I came across a talk he gave at MIX10 in which he presented excellent real-world large-scale data, with insightful analysis, about the cost efficiency of data centers. (Here is a direct MP4 download, suitable for viewing across more platforms.) I had [...]
Tags: cloud, sysadmin
Feb
10
2010
A few weeks ago when I spoke at the St. Louis Cloud Computing User Group, one of the possible cloud storage worries I brought up was the prospect of a few misplaced (accidental or malicious) clicks deleting large swaths of data. This applies with both S3 (the market leader) and other similar offerings. If you’ve [...]
Tags: cloud
Jan
29
2010
On Jan. 21, I gave one of the talks at the inaugural St. Louis Cloud Computing User Group meeting. I don’t think there is any video or audio (I forgot my audio recorder), but the slides are on SlideShare: To the Clouds and Back or for download as a PDF.
Tags: cloud, commentary, saas, sysadmin
Jan
08
2010
The St. Louis Cloud Computing User Group launches on Jan. 21st at Appistry. Sam Charrington over there kicked it off, but I suspect it will shortly grow far past its Appistry roots. I’m giving a talk (one of two) at the first meeting. Contrary to the initial description floating around, I won’t be speaking (in [...]
Tags: cloud, sysadmin