Appliances, clusters and clouds
I believe:
- The trend to clustered computing is sustainable.
- The trend to appliances is also sustainable.
- The “single” enterprise cluster is almost as much of a pipe dream as the single enterprise database.
I shall explain.
Arguments for hosting applications on some kind of cluster include:
- If the workload requires more than one server — well, you’re in cluster territory!
- If the workload requires less than one server — throw it into the virtualization pool.
- If the workload is uneven — throw it into the virtualization pool.
Arguments specific to the public cloud include:
- A large fraction of new third-party applications are SaaS (Software as a Service). Those naturally live in the cloud.
- Cloud providers have efficiencies that you don’t.
That’s all pretty compelling. However, these are not persuasive reasons to put everything on a SINGLE cluster or cloud. They could as easily lead you to have your VMware cluster and your Exadata rack and your Hadoop cluster and your NoSQL cluster and your object storage OpenStack cluster — among others — all while participating in several different public clouds as well.
Why would you not move work into a cluster at all? First, if ain’t broken, you might not want to fix it. Some of the cluster options make it easy for you to consolidate existing workloads — that’s a central goal of VMware and Exadata — but others only make sense to adopt in connection with new application projects. Second, you might just want device locality. I have a gaming-class PC next to my desk; it drives a couple of monitors; I like that arrangement. Away from home I carry a laptop computer instead. Arguments can be made for small remote-office servers as well.
To put all that more simply:
- Moving existing applications to new platforms often isn’t worth the trouble.
- Many needs can be best met by single, physically local devices.
Appliances are a natural form factor for single-purpose computing. It is reasonable to characterize as “appliances” — in the computing sense of the term — medical equipment, vehicles, cash machines, cash registers, enterprise security devices, home entertainment, exercise machines and, yes, refrigerators; computers, in some form, can be found almost anywhere. But appliances also are a convenient way to package enterprise systems — configurations will be correct, installation will be simpler, and fortunate software-centric appliance vendors may capture margins on hardware sales and support. And the idea of SaaS-like continuous updates to your enterprise systems seems much more reasonable in the case of a locked-down appliance-like configuration.
Circling back to the beginning, I’d say there are multiple reasons not to expect all your computing to be done on a single cluster:
- You might want to use appliances don’t fit into that cluster.
- You might want to use SaaS offerings that don’t fit into that cluster.
- The efficiency gains from using a single cluster aren’t that much greater than the gains from using a few of them.
- You might want different parts of your computing work to be done in-house and in the public cloud.
- You might want different parts of your data to be kept in different countries.
- Different kinds of work might fit better onto differently-configured nodes, and current cloud/cluster technology doesn’t do a wonderful job with heterogeneity.
- A lot of computing is so inherently small and local that it shouldn’t be clustered at all. 🙂
Ceteris paribus, fewer clusters are better than more of them. But all things are not equal, and it’s not reasonable to try to reduce your clusters to one — not even if that one is administered with splendid efficiency by low-cost workers, in a low-cost building, drawing low-cost electric power, in a low-cost part of the world.
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8 Responses to “Appliances, clusters and clouds”
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Hi
Could you someday asess the issue about license costs around appliances, clusters and cloud?
Best regards
Leif Svendsen
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