1. Order the hardware
2. Wait for the hardware to be delivered
3. Install the hardware within a data center

It was a tedious and manual process that could span over weeks, and was very costly. Cloud computing solved the problem of acquiring and provisioning new hardware. The additional benefit is if you need hardware for a very short period (ie. a big media event to promote a new service) you can spin up additional instances, and then spin them down when done. So you can potentially save money by not purchasing extra hardware that sits idle.

The more complex issue of managing the software installed on the hardware isn’t solved with cloud computing. If anything, with instances that can only span a few hours, it has made things a much more complex process. From our experience, once a customer ventures into the cloud, these common questions arise:

• How can we make sure our instances are used effectively?
• Are they configured correctly with the software needed to run our services?
• How do we update software on all instances?
• How can we make sure our instances are secure?
• How do we monitor our instances to make sure services are running correctly?
• How can we quickly create new instances with software and configuration already installed?
• How can we safely and securely backup our data?

Empowering Media has system administration expertise for those customers who wish to use cloud computing. From a provider like Amazon’s EC2 service, to Slicehost, we can support them all. We are cloud computing neutral, and can work with any of the major cloud providers.

So for customers who feel they have outgrown the services we offer, or have mandates to use a specific cloud provider; Empowering Media can still assist with your system administration needs. From small business shared hosting, to managed VPSes, to customers who have their own data center or wish to provision hardware within the cloud. We can do it all, and can grow with you, as your IT needs change.

We’ve always believed Empowering Media is offering system administration expertise. Provisioning new hardware is easy; it’s the server management that’s very difficult. It’s the constant software updates, security, monitoring, backups, customer support, and scaling expertise is where we add value. When we first started, cloud computing was just a “pie in the sky” dream (pun intended). We had to no choice but to purchase, and provision our own hardware.

This does not mean we are abandoning our own cloud. On the contrary, we will continue to have our own cloud services. There are some advantages to owning your own equipment within our own data center cabinets. By controlling all aspects of the hardware and software it allows us to offer our services at a much cheaper price.

We have over 10 years of experience in automating, and managing our complex infrastructure. We can successfully rollout any of your technology requirements. We have developed many tools that automate deployment, and management of our network. This is what makes our own cloud network so reliable, but can also apply to third party cloud providers.

Contact us today to discuss your cloud computing needs. Moving services to the cloud can be a complex task, but we can make it easy and a worry free process.

http://news.oreilly.com/2008/08/luke-kanies-wants-to-modernize.html

Errors aside in the transcript, it’s great article.  Administration is no longer a task, but a process.  If you are still doing administration via SSH, it’s time to look at Puppet.

IMHO they completely missed the point and some of the blog commentators caught this. Regardless if their service is open, what they failed to mention, you are the system administrator. With that you have the responsibility of installing software, proactive monitoring, patch management, security, hardening and backups. This is fine if you are a full time system administrator; bad if you are a developer.

Cloud computing is about abstracting the technical details of your SaaS (Software as a Service) or PaaS (Platform as a Service). My favorite statement, “It just works!” applies here. What they are calling “open” is really a myth. Regardless if you have root access or not you still are locked into a specific hosting provider, OS, and the software applications you choose. Anyone that has switched dedicated server providers can attest this isn’t a small task. In addition, with the large amounts of SSH, FTP, IMAP and POP3 attacks we see its obvious proper system administration on a large scale isn’t already happening. What makes them think giving root access will make these other issues better?

Developers, for the most part, care about their development environment. In some cases yes, OS flavor does matter, but in most cases it does not. Developers typically want an environment that works and don’t have to worry about how to install and configure software packages. What’s important then? The development language and the tools that aid in the development. Giving root access to each developer (each on their own mind you) install to and configure a software package wastes time. Wading through docs, wikis, forums, and other online info trying to get a package configured, can be time consuming and frustrating experience. In some cases this requires a lot of technical skill. There has to be a better way. The better way is to offer pre-built configurations of services, programming languages and applications. This is what we offer with our HostCube service. Why reinvent the wheel each time you need a LAMP stack installed? Tools like Puppet automate this process and make it consistent.

Let me sidetrack for a minute and discuss the differences between system administrators and programmers. I’ve worked on both sides of the fence and from my experience, most developers make poor system administrators, as do many system administrators (sysadmins) make poor programmers. The mindsets are completely different. Developers care about how quickly they can develop their code and bring it into production. Sysadmins care about the stability, reliability and security of the service they are responsible for. As you can see, these two mindsets are always at odds with each other.

To solve this conflict, I believe in the traditional three tier development methodology. They are:

• Development – code that’s in flux and to “try out” new things
• Staging – some state of code that is stable and in testing before production
• Production – live code that’s being used by users, customers, vendors, etc.

This tiered environment allows for the best of both worlds and is recommended when a customer wants root access to a production server. Unfortunately I have seen many developers perform all of these tiers on their production system! In all of but the smallest of projects, this can lead disaster on many levels.

Creating a VPS for development is where I personally believe developers should/could have root. Let them play in their sandbox, break things and test out new code. Staging (which should mirror production configuration) and production should be managed by system administrators. In my opinion, developers, at least with production, should not have root access. At HostCube the value added is we perform the software installs, proactively monitor, patch management, security, hardening and backups. That’s what we’re experts in and have invested many years developing tools to automate this process. We also do realize unmanaged VPSes serve a valuable niche.