EC2 vs. Rackspace Cloud Servers - More Performance and Analysis Relative to Cost

And excellent series of tests and interpretations of Rackspace Cloud Serveres versus EC2 AMI's.  The most interesting comment to me was,

"The amount of available computing power on the Cloud Servers platform is independent of instance size and hourly price. This means that users can expect to receive the same amount of computing power, regardless of instance size or price."

This is one of the reasons I often choose Cloud Servers or Joyent Accelerators (not mentioned but subject to the same concept) of Amazon EC2 AMI's quite frequently!

Full Article, well worth your time to go through:
http://www.thebitsource.com/2010/01/11/rackspace-cloud-servers-versus-amazon-ec2-performance-analysis/

EC2 vs. Rackspace Cloud Servers - Performance and Analysis

I wanted to call out a specific post I just read.  The reason is the because it highlights a very specific area of cloud computing that often seems little understood.  That is, CPU Burstability.

http://www.thebitsource.com/2010/01/11/rackspace-cloud-servers-versus-amazon-ec2-performance-analysis

and I decided to blog a little about it as well here
http://www.productionscale.com/home/2010/1/13/bursting-cpus-and-distributed-applications.html

Cloud Security Alliance v2.1 Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing Available

Not to be missed.

Cloud Security Alliance v2.1 Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing Available

CSA-LogoVersion 2.1 of the Cloud Security Alliance “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing” is available for download here.


It’s important to note that in this version of the guidance there are some notable changes in structure and content focus:


The guidance provided herein is the second version of the Cloud Security Alliance document, “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing”, which was originally released in April 2009.  The permanent archive locations for these documents are:


http://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org/guidance/csaguide.v2.1.pdf  (this document)

http://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org/guidance/csaguide.v1.0.pdf  (version 1 guidance)


In a departure from the first version of our guidance, a decision was made to separate the key guidance from the core domain research.  Each domain’s core research is being released as its own white paper.  These white papers and their release schedule are located at:


http://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org/guidance/domains/


In another change from the first version, Domain 3: Legal and Domain 4: Electronic Discovery were combined into a single domain.  Additionally, Domain 6: Information Lifecycle Management and Domain 14: Storage were combined into a single domain, renamed Data Lifecycle Management.  This has caused a renumbering of our (now 13) domains.


We have hundreds of pages of edited/compiled content for each of these domains and the working groups will be releasing their schedules for the domain work products shortly.


Thanks to everyone who contributed!  We look forward to delivering even more value in the follow-on releases.


/Hoff,

Technical Advisor CSA


Related posts:

  1. JERICHO FORUM AND CLOUD SECURITY ALLIANCE JOIN FORCES TO ADDRESS CLOUD COMPUTING SECURITY
  2. Cloud Security Alliance Releases Initial Whitepaper At RSA Conference 2009

-Kent Langley

Rackspace Takes Page Out of the Old Microsoft's Playbook - Partner Don't Kill Ecosystem Players

Here is an interesting article and mini history lesson.  Looking at partner ecosystems related to cloud in relation to Microsoft, Amazon, and Rackspace.  It's an interesting point of view.

http://siliconangle.net/ver2/2009/12/17/rackspace-takes-page-out-of-the-old-microsofts-playbook-partner-dont-kill-ecosystem-players/

This is quite interesting to watch and we definitely live in interesting times.

Building Super Scalable Systems: Blade Runner Meets Autonomic Computing in the Ambient Cloud

Here is a rather epic length blog post from Todd Hoff over at HighScalablility.com.  In particular I liked this (slightly modified) comment from the post.

The Cloud is the appliance

Exactly!  That is spot on.  Once you get this, it changes how you think about certain things.

Some interesting and thought provoking ideas.  Thanks Todd!

http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/12/16/building-super-scalable-systems-blade-runner-meets-autonomic.html