Cloud computing: System Engineering in the big data age (2)

Currently, if we want to fully understand cloud computing, we should understand both the "service" and "Platform", that is, cloud computing covers the cloud computing platform and cloud computing service concepts.

As mentioned above, cloud computing services represent a new business model. For any business model, in addition to being theoretically feasible, it must also be available in practice. For cloud computing services, it is necessary to provide available services that are always online and accessible to a large number of users at any time, and support multiple users to obtain service resources on demand and ensure service reliability, the underlying it system is required to support such a service model.

Therefore, with the development of the cloud computing service concept, cloud computing has also formed a complete set of technical implementation mechanisms, and the cloud computing platform is a concrete embodiment of this mechanism.

In essence, a cloud computing platform is similar to an operating system and manages an "extensible network supercomputer ". The operating system uses some technologies to connect a large number of computers distributed in various regions through the network, so that they are logically presented as a whole. When different application requirements arise, the system can quickly mobilize various software and hardware resources to work collaboratively to complete computing, storage, and communication tasks, without the need to focus on implementation details. Network supercomputer scalability refers to the ability to add or delete computing resources as needed, at the same time, the performance of the virtual computer will change linearly.

The relationship between cloud computing platforms and cloud computing services is like the underlying foundation and superstructure. By building a "Platform", you can centralize a large amount of computing resources and work collaboratively to support the operation of the "service" on the upper layer. The richness and expansion of "services" puts forward developing requirements for the underlying "platforms. However, it still needs to be clarified that there is no necessary correspondence between the two.

Cloud computing services are mainly driven by the commercial service model. The selection of underlying technical platforms can help and improve. They can still run on traditional underlying architectures (non-cloud computing platforms. Similarly, the cloud computing platform emphasizes the construction of a new basic platform or the transformation of the old underlying architecture through advanced technical means, it can provide underlying support for all applications or computing services, not limited to cloud computing services, for example, many people are currently studying how to implement parallel computing frameworks for large-scale simulated computing in scientific research on cloud computing platforms, or the cloud computing platform is used to solve the massive data storage or system management problems faced by enterprises.

Despite this, the cloud computing platform is designed to address the problems of "Big users", "Big Data", and "large systems". This is also a typical problem for providing cloud computing services, A solution is proposed. Therefore, cloud computing services supported by the cloud computing platform can not only improve service efficiency, but also give full play to the capabilities and advantages of the platform. It can be said that the cloud computing platform is more suitable for promoting cloud computing services. Only the perfect combination of the two can achieve a low service cost in the case of large-scale user aggregation, it provides highly available and highly reliable services to maintain business continuity and competitive advantages.

From a deeper perspective, the emergence of cloud computing is inevitable for the transformation of the information society to an intelligent society. With the development of society and economy, people's demand for information is moving towards a more comprehensive, personalized, and in-depth direction. The demand for simple information has been transformed into the demand for useful information and knowledge, this puts forward higher requirements on the quality and service level of information service systems. All of these are driving the beginning of another revolution-bringing services and knowledge to everyone.

"Cloud computing" is the force driving this revolution.

In his innovation theory, economic reform is centered on innovation, entrepreneurial activities, and market power. As a key factor in economic change, the market force produced by innovation can bring better results than what Cairns calls "invisible hands" and price competition. Manuel Castells, a sociologist, believes that the spirit of information is a culture of "Creative Destruction" and has been accelerated to the processing speed of photoelectric signals on the line, "Kumamoto met Weber in the network space of a network enterprise )."

In the past thirty years, the growth of the ICT industry has been like the one at Jack's foot, bringing people's lives to a new world. For stand-alone systems, the information storage space is getting bigger and bigger, and the clock speed is getting faster and faster. However, the development of storage and CPU is always on the ceiling, as herb Sutter, chairman of the C ++ Standards Committee, said, "Although Moore's law predicts exponential growth, we know that this growth cannot be sustained forever. After all, hardware has physical limits, the speed of light cannot be faster. This growth will eventually slow down and end ." [7] people's demand for fast hardware performance seems to be stuck in blocks of various sizes.

Cloud computing selectively aggregates "photoelectric signals" to make more targeted innovation and influence all aspects of this society. This depends on the way you use the cloud. Users-individuals, enterprises, and multinational companies-have almost unlimited creativity.

"With cloud computing, users can easily obtain a variety of distinctive applications through leasing, enter the software development and deployment environment, and use a networked computing infrastructure similar to data storage and processing ." [8] people no longer need to buy or install computers and software, and companies no longer need to deploy their own servers and information management systems, as described above, from "buy computers" to "buy computing", "Buy servers" to "buy services", cloud computing greatly simplifies the process of information manufacturing, storage, transmission, and acquisition, the transfer of information has evolved into a public infrastructure. Enterprises and individual users can save costs and enjoy convenience through cloud computing.

Just like the invention of printing, cloud computing accelerates the spread of knowledge while greatly reducing the cost of knowledge dissemination. In addition, in cloud computing, information becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes intelligent through data centralization, integration, and transformation. In this process, the production efficiency is greatly improved, and the innovation cost is greatly reduced.

From a more ambitious perspective, the true influence of cloud computing lies in democracy and equality. Driven by cloud computing, the use of "computing" will be more convenient and cost-effective, maybe in the future, everyone will have a cloud terminal at the price of a book-the support behind it is the power of a supercomputer. Based on the huge computing capabilities that can be used in such a simple manner, both individuals and companies, as well as large enterprises and new startups with limited resources, have fair innovation opportunities, both of them can detect the feasibility of the business on the basis of equality.

Therefore, cloud computing not only gives ordinary people the opportunity to dream, but also the power to realize the dream. Cloud computing reduces the acquisition cost of information services, achieves the large-scale production of IT services, and promotes the innovation process of the whole society. Its core significance is the same as the fundamental core significance of every change-making life more convenient, cheaper, and more democratic of knowledge.

 

 

This article is excerpted from cloud computing: System Engineering in the big data age

Yao Hongyu, Tian yongning

Published by Electronic Industry Publishing House