About cloud computing: four misunderstandings and four conjectures of IaaS

For ordinary users, cloud computing is always a topic in the cloud. This article starts with the most basic concepts of science, and explains four common misunderstandings and the author's four conjectures.

Ji Xinhua, former CEO of Shanda Cloud and founder of Ucloud.cn

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) refers to infrastructure as a service. Consumers can obtain services from a complete computer infrastructure through the Internet. Internet-based services (such as storage and databases) are part of IaaS. Other types of services on the Internet include Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). PaaS provides complete or partial application development that users can access, and SaaS provides complete ready-to-use applications, such as managing enterprise resources via the Internet.

Misunderstanding 1: IaaS is selling resources

A popular point of view now: IaaS is selling resources, traditional IDC is selling bandwidth and racks, cloud computing plus servers, at most these resources are split into loose retails through virtualization technology.

In our opinion, cloud computing is divided into 3 levels:

1. Resource layer: This is the physical basis for IaaS to provide services, mainly including computing resources, storage resources and network resources, as well as necessary power resources and IP resources. This layer mainly makes money and profits through large-scale procurement and resource reuse models, and the profits are not high.

2. Product layer: This is the core of IaaS. IaaS operators develop various products on the basis of the resource layer based on various customer needs. For example, storage products, messaging products, CDN (content distribution network) products, and monitoring products, and each product will be targeted for transformation and optimization according to different scenarios and needs to form a specific type of product. The product layer is where the competitiveness of different IaaS is reflected. These products meet the different needs of users from different angles. These products are the main source of IaaS profits and an important stickiness of IaaS. For example, domestic Alibaba Cloud provides products such as cloud servers, load balancing, and cloud monitoring. Ucloud provides UDisk for block device storage and UDB for cloud databases.

3. Service layer: Above the product layer, IaaS operators will also provide some more value-added services according to the needs of users. This part may not necessarily make money from a business perspective, but it is an important condition for users to use IaaS. For example, to provide users with data express delivery services, in China, they must include website filing services, as well as security services.

Misunderstanding 2: IaaS has no technical content

The propaganda in various media has made cloud computing a myth, thinking that cloud computing is omnipotent, and regards cloud computing technology as very high-end, and the technology content is particularly high. And many people who have worked in technology think that cloud computing has no technical content. There are already many open source systems like Openstack, Eucalyptus, cloudstack, etc. that can be deployed directly.

Or a management system based on KVM, XEN and other open source virtualization systems.

Indeed, with the rapid development of cloud computing, a large number of open source cloud computing platforms have emerged, and major companies are also actively supporting the development of open source software. But even if it is developing as fast as Openstack, there are currently no mature success stories because the technical complexity of IaaS is very high.

1. From the basic point of view, IaaS must achieve multi-tenancy, flexibility, stability, reliability and security. It must implement resource pooling management, that is, form resources into resources pools through virtualization technology, and then flexibly allocate them according to user needs. Ensure safety and isolation. As mentioned earlier, resources mainly include computing, storage and network, so here we have to do virtualization of computing, virtualization of storage and virtualization of network.

Computing virtualization is currently mainly implemented through software such as XEN, KVM, Vmware, etc. It is relatively mature, but there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of performance optimization and stability.

Storage virtualization currently does not have a relatively mature open source system. If file storage is used, it is mainly coded according to the GFS idea. It is inevitable that Openstack ’s swift, and block device storage are all magical. There are nova-volume, domestic Shanda Cloud and UCloud have each implemented block device storage. In addition, SDS (Software Defined Storage), which is very popular in the world recently, has actually achieved storage virtualization.

2. On top of virtualization management, it is large-scale scheduling management. How to quickly find suitable resources to meet user needs, how to dynamically adjust resources based on monitored data, how to dynamically migrate services, and how to prevent avalanches. If it is 10 machines, it may be easy, if it is 1000 machines, this is a problem, if it is more than 10,000 machines, it is a big challenge. And cloud computing, to achieve the ability to solve scale, it must solve the large-scale scheduling problem. The difficulty and challenge here are quite large.

3. Performance and security issues are also challenges of IaaS. How to ensure that a user's high demand does not affect other users, how to prevent a tenant from invading other tenants, and how to prevent a user from being attacked do not affect other users. Here we need more in-depth research .

More product development, as mentioned above, in addition to resources, IaaS is more critical to products. More products that meet specific needs must be developed according to user needs. This will involve all aspects of the system, network, database, application and security, and the requirements for IaaS development and operation and maintenance are very high.

In summary, the technical threshold of IaaS is relatively high, and it is not without technical content.

Misunderstanding 3: IaaS is insecure

The industry is questioning the security of cloud computing, especially Evernote's security incident, which has caused more people to worry about the security of IaaS.

Based on my more than ten years of experience in security industry:

1. Without absolute security, any system may be hacked;

2. Security is relative, the key depends on which is more secure under IaaS mode and traditional hosting mode. Therefore, suppose a company is very large and has a professional security team, such as Tencent, Ali, Baidu, etc., they are sure that they will be much safer to deploy by themselves, but if it is assumed to be a small startup company, it is impossible to have very professional security personnel. , IaaS service providers can provide more professional security.

Misunderstanding 4: Public cloud can only serve SMEs

Due to the pursuit of stability by large enterprises and the protection of old investments, it is true that most users of public clouds start with small enterprises. At present, whether it is domestic or foreign, SMEs are the main users of cloud computing.

But with the development of cloud computing, we have also discovered several trends:

1. Some companies that have grown up on the public cloud still use the public cloud after they grow into large enterprises, such as Netflex, because they find that if they want to build an infrastructure, the human and material resources required are still very large, and the difficulties are still a lot. It's better to invest energy in their own areas of expertise.

2. Some traditional large companies have gradually begun to try to deploy some non-core business or new business on the public cloud, and even laid off the IT department, all transferred to the public cloud platform. Automobile companies such as Lamborghini and BMW have already used cloud computing to reduce costs and cloud computing to improve their design rendering capabilities.

In fact, this is also the case from the perspective of power development. In a society like modern times, we rarely see companies that build their own power plants without using the power grid. I believe that with the development of cloud computing, cloud computing is also an inevitable trend to replace IDC or replace its own operations.

Four conjectures:

1. The rapid growth of IaaS

IaaS public cloud services will be the fastest growing category of public cloud services. The global IaaS market size is expected to reach 8 billion US dollars in 2013, of which AWS (amazon web services, Amazon public cloud services) is expected to reach 2.5-2.8 billion US dollars, Rackspace revenue is about 1.6-19 billion, IaaS accounts for 35%, more than 6 The revenue of Terremark acquired by Verizon will exceed 450 million, and companies such as Joyent, Savvis, GoGrid, and Dimension Data will have certain revenue growth.

Compared with the world, China's IaaS market has a small base, but it is growing faster. It is expected that China's pure IaaS market will exceed US $ 100 million in 13 years, and gradually form 3-4 large-scale IaaS operators.

Second, large and medium-sized enterprises will begin to accept cloud computing

As mentioned above, large and medium-sized enterprises have begun to try to deploy some non-core businesses on the public cloud. From the list of AWS customers, we can see that Fortune 500 companies are more or less using Amazon's public cloud for testing or development. Some of these companies run real applications on them, such as Nasdaq, Lamborghini and other companies. .

This change will pose a great threat to traditional IT vendors, IBM, HP, Oracle, because traditional large and medium-sized enterprises are major customers of these IT vendors.

From the perspective of the development of AWS, this must also be the development goal of cloud computing companies. I believe that in the next 3-5 years, cloud computing will begin to eat away the market of traditional IT vendors, and 2013 is the beginning.

3. SDX technology (software defines everything) will develop rapidly

Traditional hardware manufacturers use the box-selling model. The equipment is not open and cannot be managed dynamically, which causes a lot of waste and management costs.

The software defined idea (Software Defined Everything) opens up the black box, which separates data and control, allows more flexible management and scheduling, and will become the mainstream of subsequent development.

Since 2013, we have seen a series of large investment and acquisition activities such as Software Defined Storage, Software Defined Network, and Software Defined Datacenter.

I expect that in 2013, SDS and SDN products and solutions will start to land, and related technologies will develop rapidly.

4. Cloud computing changes related industry chains

With the development of cloud computing technology, especially the continuous landing of applications, cloud computing has affected and changed in many industries, including:

1. Entrepreneurs: Cloud computing has greatly reduced the infrastructure threshold of entrepreneurs, so that entrepreneurs only need to pay attention to their core strengths and play their core strengths. This is very convenient for some teams that are not engaged in the Internet to use the Internet to start businesses, and will spawn many content-based and O2O-type startups. Especially in 2013, after the country lowers the threshold for registering companies, more and more startup companies will appear in batches.

2. Investment industry: Because cloud computing reduces the one-time server network investment, the entrepreneur ’s need for angel funds is reduced, and products can be quickly tested. If the product is good, the cloud computing can be used to grow quickly, if the product is not good, you can immediately switch careers. Therefore, the investment model has shifted from traditional angels to super angels, and may not even need the A round, and the business can be directly entered into the B round.

3. Server industry: In the traditional model, servers are sold to small and medium-sized enterprises through channels, and channels will be an important part of it. In the cloud computing mode, SMEs will not need to purchase servers. Therefore, IaaS operators will replace SMEs as server buyers, which has a greater impact on traditional server vendors and channels.

1. Indoor LED Curtain Poster Display with price Advantage: We have the best competitive price in the market, we also have the same or even better quality.
2. Indoor  LED Curtain Poster Display with quality advantage: From material to finished product, from design to production, we control all processes.
3. Indoor  LED Curtain Poster Display service advantage: We also provide best service after sales and we prioritize every customer's needs.
4. We ensure that our  LED Curtain Poster Display are CE certified, ROHS compliant, FCC identified.
5. Indoor LED Curtain Poster DisplayWith specially designed fast lock system, easy to install and dismantle.
6. The new structure design enablesIndoor LED Curtain Poster Display diversified installation to meet the hanging-up and stacking requirements.
7. Full Color Indoor LED Curtain Poster Display with High contrast rate up to 5000:1 by using black LED.
8. Indoor LED Curtain Poster Display with high refresh rate with NOVA control system, no scan line when photographed.

LED Curtain Post stander

Indoor LED Curtain Light Box,LED Curtain Slim Light Box,LED Curtain Poster.

Shenzhen Macion Optoelectronics Technology Co.,Ltd. , https://www.macion-led.com

Posted on