[LINK] 'Cloud Computing doesn't fly'

[grove at zeta.org.au]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2010, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:

> Roger Clarke wrote:
> <snip>
>> [Tuesday] September 28, 2010 12:00AM
>> http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/virgin-system-crash-may-spark-multi-million-dollar-payout/story-e6frgakx-1225930251112
>>
>> ...
>> Late yesterday Navitaire submitted its first report on the incident,
>> showing that at 8am AEST on Sunday the solid-state disk server
>> infrastructure used to host Virgin Blue's applications failed.
>>
>> This crashed the airline's internet booking, reservations, check-in
>> and boarding systems.
>> ...
>
> It could have been a problem with the redundancy rather than
> the disk
> itself. I recall reliability problems with raid systems when
> they first
> emerged. From the description, it is more likely to be a
> software problem,
> as if it was hardware, it would be a simple matter of
> replacing the particular
> disk, assuming there was redundancy.
>
> Also, I wonder what the contracted outage window was.
>
> The timing is most unfortunate. Football Grand Finals,
> University and NSW School Holidays.


I wonder if a couple of my 2008 predictions are sort of coming to pass?

> 6) Supplies of rare earths, metals and noble elements will become 
> extremely scarce.  Stock prices for these will skyrocket, tech drivers
> will be put on hold and commodity tech goods will inflate or become 
> impossible to get.   An IT equipment demand will emerge and vendors will
> be forced to use what they have.  Business will innovate and extend 
> lifetime of existing systems until the new tech becomes affordable again.
> The second hand IT market rockets up and Linux finds a new market in 
> these areas.

(not quite, but I was on the right track)

And:

> 9)  Virtualisation becomes mainstream, with purpose built engines 
> provided with VM ready OS available as a default.  Substandard 
> components will cause major "grid failures" as dozens of VM nodes 
> collapse on failing hardware based on "6".

If the Virgin computer crash was caused by a virtualisation failure,
expect more of "9".....   Virtualisation is of course, the key to making Clouds work.....

Then again I may well be talking through my hat, if I had one......


rachel









-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove at zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
    "The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum." - Finagle's Law