A layman's guide to understanding the Cloud | Hacker News Reader

A layman's guide to understanding the Cloud

kislayverma.com

49 pointskislayverma11 comments

The cloud is just someone else's computer in a data center in North Virgina. You can sometimes rent software from them too.

I think, the problem with the cloud is that it it's a whole automated network of someone elses computers that employs some idiosyncratic tech to manage them.

I don't think it's a problem. Every complex system is really an automated network of someone else's stuff employing some idiosyncratic tech to manage it. Mass-produced textiles, highways, factory farming, bee hives, air conditioners, coffee, rain. We don't always own the thing and don't always have control over how it works. But we still get a lot of value out of it and continue to use it.

I work in an enterprise where we are transitioning thousand-plus apps from data centers to the cloud. It can be reduced to this, and we can also do a lot of what we are doing now by moving certain technologies into the DC stack, but if you equate the cloud to VPS’ (bare instances) then the missing “rent software too” changes the validity of that reduction significantly.

That “rented computer plus rented software”, when it’s infrastructure, doesn’t look much like the DCs, with scripts, of old.

I’m an old school sysadmin. Cloud engineering doesn’t feel like sysadmin’ing anymore. It’s different enough to mark a significant change. I like 80s music and root prompts... and at work, one of those doesn’t play anymore.

I don't think it is that simple. NIST has an excellent definition of Cloud Computing that includes other specific characteristics that move beyond someone else's computer in a data center.

https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-145/final

Some links doesn't work on your website.

https://kislayverma.com/programming/learning-react-in-24-hou...

Just fixed it. Sorry for that!

I remember when the cloud represented the WAN.

At the risk of being rendered totally invisible, I would have to point out that you still have to hire-on techies to develop and maintain your apps in the “cloud”. Not to mention the latency issues you would experience. That's when you're required to re-install your local hardware to be run in a hybrid/cloud solution. And having your “cloud” provider install edge/devices. Finally you should ask yourself just how much money you are going to save by moving to the “cloud”.

Good introduction, but the article warps time a bit to have IBM coming up with virtual machines just in time to solve the cloud computing problem.

Virtual machines were first designed and built in the 1960s.

> We’ve all heard of iCloud, AWS, cloud computing etc,

iCloud mixed with AWS. A cloud service for end users, vs cloud computing for business.

You lost me there my man.

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