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Common Cloud Computing Services

Some notes from my research on cloud computing – some common cloud services, what they do and common providers:

• Storage – provides ability to store and serve files, usually unlimited and billed per GB of storage/bandwidth, no minimums. May or may not come with CDN functionality. Some examples:
  • Amazon S3 – the most famous of them all, ability to host in US or EU, no CDN ability but it is coming
  • CloudFiles – this comes from MOSSO, a Rackspace company. Not much info at this time.
  • Google App Engine File Hosting – not a dedicated storage API, but rather a subset of AppEngine functionality allows hosting of static content.
  • Microsoft Azure Blob Storage API – provides similar functionality to Amazon S3, no pricing or general avaibility yet.
  • Nirvanix – focuses on the enterprises market including Windows sharing support, has CDN functionality for an extra fee, provides built-in image and video support.
• Messaging – allows exchange of messages between many systems and computers via a cloud-hosted set of queues, usually a substitute for convention messaging middleware. Much more simplistic and less featured. Some examples:
  • Amazon SQS – the grand daddy of them all, allows to have queues, messages limited to 8KB, expire after 4 days
  • Microsoft Azure Queue API – similar to SQS, no pricing or general availability yet
  • OnlineMQ – an European messaging provider, not much info available
• Database – provides ability to store structured data like conventional databases but less features (especially on search). Some examples:
  • Amazon SimpleDB – best known of them all, however severely lacking on the search aspects.
  • Google AppEngine DataStore API – python only, currently limited in size and number of requests, has issues with unicode. BUT does provide full text search.
  • Microsoft Azure Table Storage API – looks similar to Amazon’s, however not yet available and no pricing information
• Service Hosting – this is a true cloud service – hosting of software services or websites that run seamesly across the entire cloud and scale on demand (unlike Amazon EC2). Examples include:
  • CloudSites – from MOSSO, a Rackspace company. Provides shared hosting in the cloud, flat pricing
  • Google AppEngine – python only, limited release
  • MediaTemple GridService – provides shared hosting in the cloud, flat pricing
  • Microsoft Azure Service Hosting – not yet available
  • Third party services running on top of Amazon EC2 – such as Enomaly, RightScale, Scalr
• Virtual Machine Hosting – provides ability to rent computing time by the hour on a per server basis with ability to run a full fledged virtualized server on Linux, Windows, etc. NO AUTOMATIC scaling or monitoring is included, developers must monitor on their own. Examples include:
  • Amazon EC2 – the grand daddy of them all. No monitoring or scaling built in, allows permanent storage via ESB, supports Linux and Windows.
  • CloudServers – from MOSSO, a Rackspace company. Not yet available.
  • GoGrid – provides cloud servers on demand, supports Windows

One should also keep in mind that Amazon does not charge for bandwidth when transfering data to/from Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2. That drives more developers towards the usage of the two services together.

Tags: cloud computing —

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