VMWare Private Cloud computing, now that sounds quirky, using VMWare for a cloud is bizarre and seems to me like the upside down solution. Why should a company invest in a virtualization solution and then go and turn it into a cloud computer?

What are the advantages especially in ROI and utilization?
I can understand the need in spannable resources in the IT and the ability to provide space as service and so on but, wasn’t private cloud computing suppose to be getting us as close as you can to the bare bone? Supplying us with on demand processing/storage? so how will be a VM able to supply me with exactly that when we know that a VM adds a layer to the hardware.
May be the target is different, some old esx servers are available in many places and make decent sense to become a part of a cloud computing. If that is the case why not have a Ubuntu eucalyptus implementation instead of the VMWare proprietary solution enabling you running on VMWare and normal machines.
Why turn to this very proprietary solution?
That beats me.
I hold the thought that if you are an organization you should deploy something useful that is spanable across the whole infrastructure and operates indifferently of the hardware.
I guess that the guys in VMWare were just trying to hook the people already involved with them to make the move to a familiar environment and justify the cost to the board.
Some claim that the Amazon is hosting in a Virtualized environment for their EC2 and that might be the case, and amazon do place you in a position to buy your computational supply in chunks called Virtualized servers.
AS got discovered by Peter Wayner on InfoWorld

After a few hours, the fog of hype starts to lift and it becomes apparent that the clouds are pretty much shared servers just as the Greek gods are filled with the same flaws as earthbound humans. Yes, these services let you pull more CPU cycles from thin air whenever demand appears, but they can’t solve the deepest problems that make it hard for applications to scale gracefully.

So may be the VMWare solution is better/similer to other solution?
I return to the previous problem I have with running a VM to support a real time need of CPU cycles and the investment in Virtualized environments to create these computers.
When google lashed at VMWare they had the same argument

In the virtualization approach of private data centers, a company takes a server and subdivides it into many servers to increase efficiency. We do the opposite by taking a large set of low cost commodity systems and tying them together into one large supercomputer.

This in turn ties both of my problems with the VMWare implementation together to a one coherent issue with virtualised clouds. The increase in efficiency is coming with a cost of having to buy dedicated hardware and jeopardise the performance with the added VMWare layer.
I can understand the need for a Private Cloud and the ability to stretch resources to the organization on demand making the production environment stable and flexible but I think that the solution is not a VMWare one.
The VMWare solution will appeal to the avid VMWare professional who wants to keep his job easy and not learn new tricks.
If I was an organization COO/CTO that needed to recommend on a solution to our private network I would have chased the Eucalyptus Ubuntu solution or the Reuven Cohen, thus utilising those old Pentium 4 that are been decommissioned to supply my organisation with more breathability, especially with the shrinking IT budgets that are now so common.
What do you think! Do you see a cloud without virtualization?

CloudKick is a new startup that enabling Cloud Computing users to do the unthinkable! move cloud computing vendors!
The company came out of stealth mode at the end of march and is now a free service though moving into pay mode soon.
It currently has 1,600 customers, and manages about 12,500 servers.

I like allot the name they have chosen, been so literal and direct.

After signing in to the Cloudkick website, a user can add different cloud-computing accounts by entering the necessary log-in information. A dashboard then shows each of these services and the status of the servers being used. A person can set up e-mail alerts to warn if traffic dips below a certain level or if it spikes, for example. The company also provides graphs to visualize the average load on a machine–an indicator of the overall health of the system.

Since data stored on Amazon’s servers, using its Simple Storage Service (S3), is saved in a proprietary format that keeps it from simply being moved to another service. To solve this limitation Cloudkick has written software that automatically cleans the data from the S3 file format.
This involves removing a layer of encryption that surrounds the data like ripping a DVD.
Moving data from one vendor to vendor is as simple as dragging and dropping an on-screen icon.

CloudKick also promotes future services of automatic data management based on Price and load location.
For example if a vendor drops the price of the service ClousKick promise to move your content to that cheaper service.
Or if you have a higher load in a region of the world at a certain time of the day they will move your data to servers in that region.
The proposition of moving workloads around is great value for many clients.
I am looking forward for the next future service of redundancy and backup so when services go down like i ranted about in the S3 post you will be able to continue serving your users from CloudKick.

There is a new buzz in the Cloud Computing community
A researcher from Barkley (Intel research to be exact) named Byung-Gon Chun did the unthinkable and made his smart phone interact with a cloud computing facility to extend the phones computational skill and prolong the battery life while utilizing the big bandwidth he has.
The ability to replicate your phone on the net in a cloud computing environment and let the cloud do the hard computational effort for your phone enabled him to put Face recognition software on his phone and make it send the photo to a replica of his phone on the cloud to get the match. this saved him 2 secs and cut the process into a third of its time to 1 sec.
The CloneCloud is a nice idea but is it a viable solution?
The vulnerabilities in putting part of your OS on a hosted environment and communicate with it over open communication channels are vast. viruses can intercept the communication and do lots of harmful actions. from merely eaves dropping to a replacement of the returned result with a false data containing an executable virus.
It also creates a hosted environment that is storing your personal data and uses Machine to Machine communication preventing captcha and other human identifications methods.
But with all the potential problems i think that the design is the worst. it is a flawed design resembling the mainframe only in an open environment assuming that we have our connectivity at all times and that our privet data is to be remotely accessed for the benefit of the performance.
We have CPU design to solve that. dont we? arent intel drifting away from their core business?
turning into the black giant nicked IBM to hide their inability to produce more energy efficient more powerful CPU for the mobile market.
The mobile market was always a sore thorn in the Intel history. Intel was always the underdog for the mobile market and only sub par Microsoft Mobile OS was running on it. most of the market was relaying on other CPU manufacturer with better products.
So are we seeing Intel riding the Cloud to get some hype back into slow and sluggish Wintel ME market?
I only hope that Byung-Gon Chun and Petros Maniatis will get recognized in the community as innovators to some extent.

Looking at Lukas Biewald post in Dolores Labs startled me a bit.
Do all of those companies that use the S3 API to store data have no DR plan for any downtime due to S3 problems?
no application and hardware is immune to fail over.
What happens if their DB server is down will they stop servicing their clients due to that down time?
I think that looking at any infrastructure we need to assume there is a risk when using it and we need some sort of even temporary backup.
I am sure it will be hard to queue the thousands of pictures that SmugMug is handling in those 7 hrs of down time but a solution should be in place to enable that. especially when solution like ParkSpace allow you to work on S3 API with local resources.
All i can say about those applications fail time is Naive attitude to System Architecture that borders with neglegence. if you want to make a stable system you need a stable platform design and implementation.
I think that the main problem is again the hype of Elastic Cloud Computing that promises to relieve you from the need for DR as this is part of the system they developed. but due to its immaturity a company setting upon been in the early adopters group should consider the instability and eventual trouble it may encounter from this immature solution. this calls for a DR solution to these resources.
Now that we know that this is the case i expect more companies using the Elastic Cloud Computing to be more aware of the instability and treat the resources as another hardware resource.

Oh i had enough! (read it gordon “F%$#ing” ramzy way)
Cloud here and cloud there. the only cloud i see are like the one that poured its water on me this morning.
There is quite a big buzz going around the industry from Oracles purchase of sun.
I say that the buzz is deafening and that Oracle siezed an opportunity to buy Sun cheap to fight IBM rather to get Cloud computing scene passes.

What is cloud computing any how?
The definition is too bloody wide for me to even get through. i’d say that every web application i ever used fit the term. if you are unaware the term “cloud computing” refers to computing and data storage resources delivered over the Internet rather than from users’ own computers.
We have the major ones that Jon ranted on in his blog and the smaller companies like Aviary creators of Raven the SVG editor but also website creators we see in Geocities.

But that is not cloud computing for me. this is the web the master cloud the big kahuna!
Cloud Computing is more Amazons Elastics or Enomaly from Reuven Cohen. the ability to stretch your application infrastructure according to the needs and pay as you use.
So i find the term Cloud Computing more like the Elastic Computational Platforms and not the hype it is getting now which is totally out of the focus of the actual term.
We should instatiate a term that will be techi jargon.
Elastic Cloud computing is my suggestion, what is yours?