Posts Tagged ‘cloud storage’
With the 4th of July holiday over, it’s back to work where we can keep our heads in the clouds. Following are cloud news bites you may have missed over the relaxing holiday.
Cloud Computing Taxonomy
From Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to Software as a Service (SaaS), Forrester visually places cloud providers in its updated Cloud Computing Taxonomy.
The Cloud Could be a Substantial Part of the Way Britain’s National Health Service Will Operate
Britain’s National Health Service predicts that deploying a G-Cloud (Government Cloud) could offer a huge opportunity for very large savings. Imagine 82 million patient records floating in the cloud.
Science Clouds. Have you heard of them?
These informal clouds are making it easy for scientific projects to experiment with IaaS-style cloud computing. Access to a Science Cloud is provided voluntarily. Here are a few links to available science clouds:
Nimbus @ University of Chicago
Stratus @ University of Florida
Wispy @ Purdue University
Kupa @ Masaryk University
IT managers trust cloud now more than ever, according to coverage of a new survey. The survey, conducted on behalf of IT conference 360, found that the majority of European organizations now believe that cloud computing will result in an improvement in security defenses.
This represents a substantial increase from a similar study conducted in February of this year, and reflects a growing trend among IT managers on both sides of the pond who have increasingly relied on cloud computing as a secure and forward-thinking option.
As more and more businesses place their trust in the cloud, providers like ReliaCloud continue to work hard to maintain that trust. One way that we help ensure optimal security levels is through firewalls. Our cloud servers are located behind a two-layered firewall perimeter. The outer firewall security layer is provided by Cisco ASA hardware firewall devices, and the second security layer is provided by a virtual router running a software packet filter.
If you think the cloud is big now, the IDC (International Data Corporation and Premier market intelligence provider) thinks you haven’t seen anything yet. The Wall Street Journal is among those reporting on a recent IDC study indicating that the cloud market is expected to experience dramatic growth over the next few years. What does this mean to you? Well, let’s take a look.
According to the Wall Street Journal coverage, the boom will be particularly strong among private cloud servers as more businesses embrace the era of automated and virtualized data centers as opposed to “In-house data centers that have become increasingly more expensive and complex to set up and maintain,” writes Journal staffer Benjamin Pimentel. In contrast, “Cloud computing enables companies to access computing power through a network.” This means companies can spend less time and money dealing with IT headaches and get back to their core business with less effort at every stage of the process.
The article quotes IDC analyst Katherine Broderick as saying that “now is a great time for many IT organizations to begin seriously considering this technology and employing public and private clouds in order to simplify sprawling IT environments.” Isn’t it worth a few moments of your time to see if Cloud Computing can save hours of it?
To learn more about how to get on the booming Cloud, contact ReliaCloud today.
Phrases like “cloud server” and “cloud computing” are tossed around so frequently these days, you could be forgiven for thinking that they might be little more than water cooler buzz words. However, cloud servers and cloud computing represent a major paradigm shift, and organizations all around you are benefiting from hopping on the cloud.
So what’s this all about?
A cloud server is essentially raw computing power delivered as a metered service. This computing power is encapsulated within a cloud server instance. Each cloud server instance runs on top of a hypervisor within a physical computing infrastructure. A cloud server has a specific amount of computing (CPU and memory) and storage resources that can support an operating system and run applications.
Customers build their own cloud servers by selecting a specific cloud server model and a software template. The software template is a bootable image that contains an operating system and a set of applications. Customers pay for their cloud servers on an hourly basis, and customers are responsible for the provisioning and maintenance of their Cloud servers.
Now that you’re in the know, find out how cloud computing can work for your business.
I ran across another interesting article the other day – this one by the BBC, stating that cloud computing has come out from behind the clouds to shine in the mainstream business world. Tim Weber, Business Editor for the BBC news website, interviewed many people in both the business and information technology sectors. He cites five key reasons the cloud has attracted a growing fan base:
- Cheap: Your IT provider will host services for multiple companies; sharing complex infrastructure is cost-efficient and you pay only for what you actually use.
- Quick: The most basic cloud services work out of the box. For more complex software and database solutions, Cloud computing allows you to skip the hardware procurement and capital expenditure phase—it’s perfect for start-ups.
- Up-to-date: Most providers constantly update their software offering, adding new features as they become available.
- Scalable: If your business is growing fast or has seasonal spikes, you can go large quickly because cloud systems are built to cope with sharp increases in workload.
- Mobile: Cloud services are designed to be used from a distance, so if you have a mobile workforce, your staff will have access to most of your systems on the go.
Transferring applications and data from your current systems to a cloud server is a relatively simple three-step process, but it can be completed in a wide combination of ways.
The first step is to identify a data transfer protocol that you will use to copy your data. You could use FTP, SFTP, NFS, CIFS, WebDAV, or a variety of other storage or transfer protocols.
The second step is to configure your cloud servers to respond to these protocols. For example, you may need to setup an FTP server, NFS mount, network share, or Samba server.
The third step is to setup port forwarding on your cloud network to allow incoming traffic from the Internet to your cloud servers. Now you should be able to copy data from your existing systems to your new cloud servers.
To understand which combination works best for your company, contact us today, or check out the ReliaCloud Knowledge Base. It’s always a great resource for using your cloud server or cloud storage, search specific keywords, or browse by topic for answers to your cloud computing questions.
