Cloud Computing?

[waba]

So whats all this cloud computing on Karmic? i signed up to it without really knowing...its it like a personal online space where you can stores stuff? and is it secure? because it keeps asking for my password to sync online, but im not too sure how secure it is. if i, for example, use evolution to store my calender, to do list etc, can that by synced with the cloud thing and then accessed somewhere else if i need it?

[mrgoose]

As I understand it there are two Ubuntu cloud models here. The data in the so-called public cloud lives on their servers. However there also seems to be an enterprise cloud (http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/private) that actually sits on your own Ubuntu Server installation.

FWIW I been flirting with cloud computing long before the term became popular, using eyeOS (http://eyeos.org) on a Debian Linux webserver. I never really used it in anger though.

My personal opinion is that the only cloud computing I'm interested in for my business is a cloud that I own and manage myself.

Best wishes, G.

[Mr Grapes]

i think waba means ubuntu one, 2 gig of online storage, rather than the ubuntu server cloud server

[mrgoose]

Yes indeed. The Karmic 2GB is on their hardware, not yours. Apologies for over-complicating things!

I was just trying to explain (rather badly, on reflection) that there were actually two cloud models available. One uses their hardware and the other uses your own hardware, c/w Ubuntu Server OS. I was also trying to address his question regarding security in saying that I personally feel uncomfortable about keeping my data on someone else's hardware. But of course that is a personal opinion rather than a statement of fact. I am rather paranoid about my data as you know :)

Might be interesting to play with though - providing you are mindful of its limitations.

Best wishes, G.

[Kremmen]

I've been looking at the various articles surrounding Cloud computing and I'm not convinced.

True Cloud computing is where not only your data is 'on the server' but also the application itself. Therefore if you lose your net connection you can't do anything, you have a 'dumb terminal'.

Microsoft are pushing this route which will mean that instead of installing MS Office for example you will access and run it from Microsoft's various servers and you will be billed for usage instead of a one off up front licence fee like now. Their convincing advertising will state that you will always be running the latest software fully patched and never need to wait and purchase new versions.

This strategy is often named 'Software as A Service (SAS)' and a route I hopefully can avoid. With a whole load more people constantly online running their web apps the net is sure to slow to a crawl as this Gov are only guaranteeing a minimum of 2 Mbps which I don't think will suffice.

This is going right back to the legacy days of 'Thin Client' where everything happens on the server. It won't matter that you have the latest multi-core CPU because it will be the server doing the work.

We have a few Cloud apps here that access Apps and Data in Sweden and in the afternoons once they start work 'over the pond' the net access slows to a crawl and you can sometimes hit a key and put the kettle on whilst your waiting for it to process (slight exaggeration).

[Mr Grapes]

don't worry, this fashion will soon be over once one of the major players has a major outage and loses a major amount of data (it's already happened on one of the cellular cariers in america with the sidekick. no data - even contacts - is stored on the phone, it's all in the cloud, and they lost a load of it....

[candtalan]

I am testing out Ubuntu One (2GB). It works ok. I have two PCs, a 9.04 and a 9.10 Ubuntu. Files in the alloted area get copied and lifted to - wherever, and then also appear as available locally on my second PC.

I have also used it for access to my (U1) files when I am away from home, by using the web interface (and of course my password). The most severe test so far that I have tried is to upload a 800mb zipped file - by way of backup off site. This took a long time because there is no useful compression in the transfer, which I am guessing usually happens. It did work though. My ISP connection is approximately 3.5 mb, and the upload speeds will be a limit if I throw large files at it I guess.

Security:
U1 is not specially secure, I think it is recommended to use your own encryption if you need security.

I plan to upgrade to a 50gb paid level as soon as I hav egot more used to it, it wil be a usful off site backup.

[mrgoose]

+1 re security. You need to regard this cloud as being rather like a USB stick that you frequently leave on a bus, IMHO!

Standing back from this, there are a number of problems with this as far as I am concerned.


Whilst I would trust Ubuntu more than certain other providers, nevertheless, I feel very uncomfortable trusting any cloud that I do not own and control myself. I very much understand & sympathise with MGMan's comments in this context.
My dataset is 6TB! Ubuntu One's 2 GB is 1/3000 of what I need.
The UK's provision of WANs (i.e broadband etc) is one of the worst in the developed world and shows little sign of improving. So it's going to be slow and unreliable for real time usage. FWIW, this is the main issue I had with EyeOS. It's a nice toy. But try editing a 20 page word-processing document with it! Or up/downloading a few 12 MPixel images from your DSLR. Painful! For this to work we need WAN speeds to at least on a par with today's LAN's
Therefore, even if I created my own cloud, populating and manipulating a dataset of the size I need would actually take several years!

My view is that U1 and its ilk is interesting to play with. But it is not a serious business tool - certainly not while BT owns and (mis)manages the bulk of the nation's communications infrastructure.

Best wishes, G

Edit: @ Candtalan. If you need (relatively) small off site backup via the internet, why not simply sshfs or rsync-over-ssh to another linux box. That's what I do and it actually works quite well. And it's pretty secure. Just a thought. G.

[waba]

ahhh thanks, i was thinking about ubuntu one, probably as a backup of files. i was just worried about putting personal details on there, which iv decided not to do, judging by the responses here! in which case...i have no use for it! :D

[candtalan]

Cloud stuff:
I have become aware that Tahoe-LAFS was included in Karmic (just in time....) and it is said to have secure and robust cloud functions, which may be of interest to some members of this thread.

Tahoe-LAFS is a cloud storage tool with "provider-independent security" -- your file
can't be read or modified even by the cloud storage provider who owns
and operates the servers. This is fitting with Karmic's cloud focus.
The Tahoe-LAFS home page is
http://allmydata.org
Extract:
This filesystem is encrypted and spread over multiple peers in such a way that it remains available even when some of the peers are unavailable, malfunctioning, or malicious.

information partly from:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2009-September/000682.html
hth

[mrgoose]

Interesting concept. Encrypted multi peer does make it a lot more attractive. It certainly would seem rather more attractive than trusting your stuff to a large American corporation that is just as likely to loose it, or give it so somebody else, or both.

I must have a play.

Trouble is though, it still doesn't get away from the issues of lack of bandwidth and size of dataset though, does it? Seems to me that if cloud computing is really going to work on a serious scale then we really need a much better comms infrastructure than the decrepit old junk BT is providing us with. Surely?

Best wishes, G.

[candtalan]

Good points, but thinking of Ubuntu One particularly, I did not think Canonical were a big *American* org, in fact they are not particularly big either?

I have a 50GB account for Ubuntu One now, as an experiment. Bandwidth is, yes, a significant factor, but with the free 2GB account it was hardly noticed with files of normal document size. Files were whisked up and copies dumped back down onto another machine in the space of a few minutes. Even as I sat looking I had to be alert to see things happening.

About infrastructure - one has to decide what to bet on, the chicken or the egg.
:-)

[mrgoose]

Nah, I explained myself badly. Of course I don't mean Ubuntu. Canonical certainly seems to have very high moral and ethical values - and Mr Shuttleworth is South African.

I'm referring to the likes of MS & Google, & their ilk.

Best wishes, G.

[waba]

google isnt immoral!!! are they?! :| this cloud computing does seem interesting, although i dont really have a need for it now...maybe some time in the future....

[mrgoose]

Didn't say Google was immoral. Merely that I would not trust it (or any other large foreign corporation over which I had little or no control) with my data.

Actually I think Google is probably one of the better US corporations. But I'm very much with former US Presidential candidate, journalist and social commentator Ralph Nader (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4897059404976553130&ei=goH_StjBCKKgqQPJofjdCQ&q#) with regard to the deep suspicion I have of corporate America and our slow but relentless sleepwalk towards a state of global corporate fascism.

Don't take my word for it though. Have a gander at Nader's recent lecture at the recent Washington DC Green Festival. I think you will find it quite illuminating:-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4897059404976553130&ei=goH_StjBCKKgqQPJofjdCQ&q#

More info & links:-
http://opensources.davy.us/index.php/opensources/2009/11/14/ralph-nader-the-road-to-corporate-fascism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader
http://nader.org

You see, open source is about far more than just free software and being free of viruses :)

Best wishes, G.

[waba]

hehe dont worry mr goose, im a student which means that im against every corporate thing, and want us to all live in harmony :D totally agree with you on what you said...and i do find open source amazing in its ideas.

[mrgoose]

It's not just students Waba - I'm a grumpy old git and even more deeply sceptical regarding the so-called "multinationals" than I was when I was a student!

And it seems that Mr Nader is even older and grumpier than I am! LOL. :)

Off topic, but what are you studying?

Best wishes, G

[waba]

maths student!! love the philosophy side of it...and the physics and economics. sadly, no one wishes to talk about maths these days :( this is my fifth year of it now, and hopefully many more to come...
i gotta say, it lives in the lovely world of the mind, which is often far from the craziness of the world we live in. so whenever i get angry at politics, i do some maths :D

[Superewza]

Look a Joliclouid and Moblin. Heavily cloud based OSes.