Clouds - How to fly - And how NetworkAccessStorages can't (or can?)

[Ahnzh]

Introduction:

 

So what i want to do here is getting a good conversation started about general cloud services. At first i want to point out what a cloud is, what it can be used for and a comparison to NAS. Since I plan on having a conversation here I'm focussing on expanding this over time and round it up with an extensive guide on how to build the 'NAS with cloud services' of everybody's dreams (based on Linux). This will be hand-in-hand with my NAS build and network expansion over the next 1-3 months

 

 

General:

 

It seems that the term 'cloud' consistently the same for everybody. Here's a short list of what private users think, that a cloud is:

1. A centralized storage for all your data and you can access it from your devices of basically from everywhere
2. A 'Push' service that pushes data to the different devices but without storing the data on a server
3. A combination of services like Calendars, Email, Storage, Collaboration for multiple users
4. Some sort of 'Backup'

Now let's get to business people's understanding of a cloud:

1. Infrastructure as a service
2. Platform as a service
3. Software as a service

The private usages are pretty much self explanatory but I think i have to get into detail for the business people's point of view because this explains pretty well what a cloud is based on. 

 

 

'IaaS' - Infrastructure as a service

 

Infrastructure as a service means that you can create your own infrastructure. That means, storage, virtual servers, VLANs and let your applications run on them. Basically it's as if you would buy servers, place them somewhere at work, configure them and let your stuff run on it, just more flexible because you can freely add and remove servers since they all run virtually.

 

 

'PaaS' - Platform as a service

 

This is more about running processes. Think about it this way: you have a bunch of program that you want to run on external hardware. You are not interested in the hardware it runs on, you want it to run and that's it. This is basically needed if you are running a program you created yourself and don't want to create things like a backup server, one or two servers on which VMs run, then configure it and so on. Platform as a service does this automatically.

 

 

SaaS - Software as a service

 

You don't have a program but want  a certain functionality. Let's say you want an exchange server. So you just rent it. You don't have to bother with anything like installing, setting it up or integrating it into other services. It just runs. You could call it 'software on demand' as well.

 

 

 

So the conclusion is: A cloud can be anything as long as it's scaling and flexible. So as a user you can either use it as a backup, as an email server, you can use it which way you want and tune it to your needs. 

 

Amazon/Microsoft Azure/Google Cloud are pretty much the leading global players in the business area. What they do is provide a wide range of services from IaaS to SaaS without needing to build actual infrastructure. It starts somewhere in the middle of IaaS and PaaS, you chose Infrastructure packages like Databases or Storage (without having to configure it from scratch), then create dependencies and let applications run on it. It goes as far as being able to run SaaS apps.

 

But most of them are running consumer cloud services as well, based on SaaS. So you got Amazon Glacier as backup, the Google squadron of Drive, Mail, the old Picasa (now Google Fotos), and whatever there may be. The functionality of these web apps is basically what the common person understands what a cloud is, even though it's a bit misleading. 

 

Recently (100% because of NSA) I regularly hear something like 'I want a cloud. At home! MY precious data, not the NSA's!' so I created this thread since nobody really knew what they actually wanted. With all those NAS devices which are advertised as 'home clouds' or something similar the questions kept coming: can my cloud do this, can my cloud do that. I told them that I would prefer saying 'can my NAS do this or can my NAS do that' and 'A NAS cannot become a cloud, it merely provides services that clouds do'.

 

---CONFUSED FACES---

 

So how becomes a cloud 'a cloud'? It's a combination of various things. Clouds run virtually. Physical hardware is derived into logical hardware. Clouds run on this logical hardware. What's the use? High availability and redundancy. You are able to run multiple instances of virtual machines on different servers / clusters / data centers. This provides failover. Additionally it makes it easy to scale and you are only paying what you actually need. This is not provided by a simple NAS. All you get are services that are provided by clouds as well. But a NAS has got advantages: speed and privacy. You cannot run big apps on them but they are located at home in your speedy LAN and nobody has access to it. What you are missing though is redundancy. If your NAS fails there is a risk of losing data. So, is there a way to build a proper home cloud? yes! easy? no! cheap? no!

 

 

Services:

 

So for now: which services do you expect a NAS to have. What would you like to see here, your point of view, spam me ;D And which Linux Distro do you want to see this running on?

[Ahnzh]

*reserved*

[Madmanchris1]

Wouldn't bit torrent sync act as a (small private usage) cloud service if installed on a nas?

I've got that confused face you were talking about.

This home cloud your on about is it going to be built in with your nas or is it separate hardware.

 

This is how i think of the whole "The Cloud" thing

 

If someone says the cloud i think of storage of personal data

If i hear cloud computing i think of more business with software running on them to suit their needs.

[Ahnzh]

Wouldn't bit torrent sync act as a (small private usage) cloud service if installed on a nas?

I've got that confused face you were talking about.

This home cloud your on about is it going to be built in with your nas or is it separate hardware.

 

This is how i think of the whole "The Cloud" thing

 

If someone says the cloud i think of storage of personal data

If i hear cloud computing i think of more business with software running on them to suit their needs.

god, this is so hard to explain...

ok so there's a difference in 'cloud (services)' and 'cloud computing' for you, that's entirely correct. cloud computing is pretty much the IT environment cloud services are running on and cloud services is in general what people refer to 'cloud'. But there is no 'cloud' without a 'cloud infrastructure/computing' underneath. What you get with a NAS is merely services that bring you a similar functionality (for an end user). But it is no cloud.

Cloud is pretty much the design of the infrastructure services are running on and scalability is an important factor in that. You cannot scale a NAS. Maybe in data capacity, not in computing power though

I hope that brings some light into the dark

just keep asking questions, this thread was made in order to educate

[Madmanchris1]

So a cloud is basically a server that you can upgrade through hardware/ vm limits. that is capable of running high power apps?

 

when you say scale ability does that mean that you would have more than 1 cpu doing your processing power essentially combining multiple pc's do do your cloud processing?

 

If you were to build a small cloud in your home what parts would you need? i think this might help me understand it a bit more.

[Ahnzh]

So a cloud is basically a server that you can upgrade through hardware/ vm limits. that is capable of running high power apps?

 

when you say scale ability does that mean that you would have more than 1 cpu doing your processing power essentially combining multiple pc's do do your cloud processing?

 

If you were to build a small cloud in your home what parts would you need? i think this might help me understand it a bit more.

quirky explanation. Always think of current computing as working with a bunch of processes. You don't need raw processing power for a single thread usually. Actually clouds go in this exact direction. You got a CPU with 4 cores. You break up these cores into 16 logical cores so with hyper threading you got 8*16 LOGICAL cores = 128 cores (each core gets 1/16th of the compute time of a physical core). what you can do now is allocate cores to services, dynamically, so you get a far higher efficiency because you are able to avoid overhead since you can allocate precisely as much logical hardware to a service as it needs. This frees up resources for other processes. Clouds are not about processing one huge thread but an immense number of small ones. That's where they shine. So if you got a large number of threads to work with it's going to be highly effective (rendering for example)

So what do I need it for at home? I'm an enthusiast. Because I CAN, and I'm learning a bunch as well...

/edit: and you don't need a lot to build a private cloud. In theory you could run it on a mobile computer. But don't expect performance then

[Ahnzh]

I'm going to build one with a Data Server and 2 Compute Nodes. Not that big of a deal.

[Madmanchris1]

Well i think a cloud is beyond my skill level. 

i did just read some of "Building a Private Cloud with Ubuntu Server 10.04 Enterprise 

Cloud (Eucalyptus)"  and i think i know where you're coming from now.

It sounds like a really fun project and I'm interested to see how it goes for you. 

[Ahnzh]

I need to have free time though to get this done, so many projects, so much to do

For now i will halt this project at least until fedora 21 comes out. I do not want to miss the new fedora server and their general fedora rework.