NoSQL Patterns

http://architects.dzone.com/articles/introduction-nosql-patterns

Worth reading.

Ten tests to add to the basic list when using cloud computing

Ten tests for software applications in the cloud list, well, 10 tests. I particularly like the tests under the "performance" umbrella:

• profile that is more challenging than the average performance profile
• Service provisioning/de-provisioning testing
• Distributed cloud testing
• Multi-tenancy testing 
• Graceful degradation testing
• Connected/disconnected operations testing
• Cloud portability testing 

Google App Engine: cloud is not just hardware

More and more it becomes obvious that the cloud aspect of infrastructure will blur the distinction between what the application architecture has to take into account as a precondition and what it has to handle in its scope. This post from DZone is a great illustration on how taking the cloud into account is paramount to a successful project. You don't deal with it: you lose money; take it into account and you're as easily profitable.

Cloud Automation with Chef

I've stumbled on this Slideshare presentation on using Chef to automate cloud. This presentation is basically a how to guide that should be "required reading" before even considering using Cloud.

You can find it here

Agility Platform

ServiceMesh is now at 7.3 of its platform called Agility Platform. I missed a few... anyway, part of the platform is the Planner which is
Agility Planner leverages existing application and platform information sources including CMDBs, and combines this with service provider capabilities and SLA parameters, to analyze, classify, and score each workload according to a programmable criteria set. Agility Planner generates Cloud Readiness™ and Cloud Value™ scores and recommends which service providers are most appropriate for each workload by automatically comparing needs to current market offerings.http://www.servicemesh.com/agility-platform/agility-planner/

Azure: Do the maths!

Yesterday was the workshow day for Mix 10. Great day indeed! I attended the Silverlight boot camp in the morning and the “Building Cloud Services with Windows Azure Platform” sessions in the afternoon. I’ll post on Silverlight 4 later on but for now, what caught my attention was the presentation on Azure by Chris Auld from Intergen.

As technical director, I’m obviously concerned with technological progress and making sure we invest money only where the ROI justifies it. I’ve been using EC2 since its inception, mostly for making sure I can scale easily without incurring actual expenses on projects that might realize a profit. Basic equation: nothing to write mom about. But after attending Chris Auld’s presentation, I realize I did not get the Cloud right. Coding for high volume and high availability is not enough on the cloud. Partitioning and denormalizing for performance as one does in a non-cloud environment is not only not enough but will bite you big time when your next invoice comes.

Therefore, while the economic aspect of cloud do relate to scaling and managing upfront costs,  it also relates to managing the architecture such as to leverage the possibilities of cloud computing and working with the “pay as you go” nature of that beast. Cloud changes the way one thinks of scaling as well as the way one thinks of his data. For example, denormalization and duplications need to be considered at least as much as the parallel and asynchronous dimensions of the cloud application. Batch jobs, queues, blobs and CSS sprites are all tools one need to consider in his architecture when thinking of cloud. What you store and where you store it is also a consideration. For example, Binaries in SQL Server can make sense but it doesn’t in SQL Azure as we pay by the GB of space.

So what I take from yesterday’s workshop is that cloud is about maths: performance will not be an issue as long as you apply sound development methods. Success though, will come by figuring out the economic aspects of the beast and adjusting the application architecture accordingly. In the end, I think one could feel justify to think of Cloud as a game changer. It will not be so much a divide between those who are on the cloud and those who are not but between those who can leverage the cloud and those who get bitten by it.

RDS launch

Amazon has launched a new service yesterday. Finally, they offer a RDBMS as a service. MySQL 5.1 as it turns out was their choice. I'm good with that.
There are quite a few posts about this: no surprise: Werner Vogels, Amazon's CTO has a post as well as Cloud Ave, RightScale and TechCrunch to cite only the ones on my RSS feed list.

cloud management

We're deploying Adsong on AWS in production. I'm considering aiCache and Right Scale to ease management of the infrastructure. I've been using AWS from their launch for testing/development purposes as it is a great service when doing machine learning.In production, it will be a first for me and the SLA is now a consideration.