About six years ago, Netflix began the move from a monolithic to cloud-based microservices architecture, openly documenting the journey along the way. Netflix is one of the earliest adopters of microservices, a term that didn’t even exist when Netflix began moving away from its monolith. Today, the Netflix application is powered by an architecture featuring an API Gateway that handles about two billion API edge requests every day which are handled by approximately 500+ microservices. Netflix has been so successful with its architecture, that the company has open sourced a great deal of its platform including the technologies powering its microservices. Netflix has become one of the most well-known examples of a modern microservices architecture; if an article mentions microservices, odds are, it also mentions Netflix.
MapR claims world’s first converged data platform with Streams
Apache Hadoop system specialist MapR Technologies claims it has invented a new system to make sense of all the disjointed streams of real time information flooding into big data platforms. The new MapR Streams system will, it says, blend everything from systems logs to sensors to social media feeds, whether it’s transactional or tracking data, and manage it all under one converged platform.
Stream is described as a stream processing tool that can handle real-time event handling and high scalability. When combined with other MapR offerings, it can harmonise existing storage data and NoSQL tools to create a converged data platform. This, it says, is the first of its kind in the cloud industry.
Starting from early 2016, when the technology becomes available, cloud operators can combine Streams with MapR-FS for storage and the MapR-DB in-Hadoop NoSQL database, to build a MapR Converged Data Platform. This will liberate users from having to monitor information from streams, file storage, databases and analytics, the vendor says.
Since it can handle billions of messages per second and join clusters from separate data centres across the globe, the tool could be of particular interested to cloud operators, according to Michael Brown, CTO at comScore. “Our system analyses over 65 billion new events a day, and MapR Streams is built to ingest and process these events in real time, opening the doors to a new level of product offerings for our customers,” he said.
While traditional workloads are being optimised, new workloads from the emerging IoT dataflows are presenting far greater challenges that need to be solved in a fraction of the time, claims MapR. The MapR Streams will help companies deal with the volume, variety and speed at which data has to be analysed while simplifying the multiple layers of hardware stacks, networking and data processing systems, according to MapR. Blending MapR Streams into a converged data system eliminates multiple siloes of data for streaming, analytics and traditional systems of record, MapR claimed.
MapR Streams supports standard application programming interfaces (APIs) and integrates with other popular stream processors like Spark Streaming, Storm, Flink and Apex. When available, the MapR Converged Data Platform will be offered as a free to use Community Edition to encourage developers to experiment.
[video] Economics of Cloud with @Singac | @CloudExpo @Actifio #Cloud
“We are the first enterprise class data virtualization platform. We help organizations become more resilient in the area of backup disaster recovery,” explained Chak Singamsetti, Senior Solutions Architect at Actifio, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 17th Cloud Expo, held November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
The Utopia of API Documentation | @CloudExpo #API #Cloud
It’s proven time and again how much API documentation matters to your developer experience-in fact, it kind of matters more than anything else as to whether your API is adopted or not. And certainly developer experience matters to your overall bottom line. After all, in the world of the application programming interface or the API, developers are your users and therefore their user experience matters most.
There’s no doubt your API documentation has to be sexy, but, as sexiness is in the eye of the beholder, there’s a lot of debate about just what that means. Today, SmartBear sits down with Arnaud Lauret of AXA Banque (a.k.a. the API Handyman) to talk about this idea of documentation utopia and his vision of an ideal world where APIs and documentation live in perfect harmony.
How much money is your cloud slurping up? Businesses still in the dark, says survey
(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/trekandshoot)
Many organisations continue to be left in the dark when it comes to providing details on cloud costs and consumption, according to research released by Cloud Cruiser.
The survey, which polled almost 350 IT professionals who were at the AWS re:Invent shows in 2014 and 2015, found almost half (42%) of respondents saying it continues to be difficult to properly allocate public cloud usage and costs, even though 85% believe it is valuable to share cloud consumption metrics with the business.
AWS usage has become universal among the companies attending AWS re:Invent over the past year, the research reveals. Whereas 7% of respondents in the 2014 survey said they were not using AWS yet, that figure drops to 0% for this year.
Similarly, the numbers of those using AWS for more business-critical operations continues to grow. Almost half (45%) of those polled say they use Amazon’s cloud for enterprise applications – ERP, CRM, HR, and email – compared to 38% in 2014, while the numbers using AWS for software development and testing has also risen (62% in 2015, 60% in 2014). The percentage of companies who use AWS as a sandbox for testing public cloud offerings has gone down year on year.
AWS made changes to its ‘reserved instance’ (RI) model – whereby users can reserve EC2 compute capacity for one or three years at a discounted hourly rate – this time last year. The usage naturally indicates a long-term commitment to Amazon’s cloud, and this is borne out in the survey results. 61% said they expect to increase their use of RIs, while 6% do not expect a change in use and 2% expect a decrease. 29% of respondents said they do not use RIs, while 2% did not know what they were.
In addition to AWS, event respondents in 2014 were more likely to supplement it with other offerings, such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. This year, the confidence in public cloud means the tables have turned: 43% say they have no additional resources, compared to 27% the year before.
This shows the benefits of public cloud are becoming more apparent to business – but at a price, argues Deirdre Mahon, Cloud Cruiser chief marketing officer. “Lack of usage visibility and cost transparency are key problem areas which have in turn created demand for new, flexible and easy to use solutions that drive efficiency, cost savings and a way to hold business users accountable for what they are consuming,” she explained.
“Investing in the right cloud efficiency solutions will continue to be critical for businesses of all sizes, even during the early stages of adoption.”
Are you surprised at the results of this cloud survey? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
The Cloud Without Safe Harbor | @CloudExpo @Cavirin #Cloud #BigData
The revocation of Safe Harbor has radically affected data sovereignty strategy in the cloud.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Jeff Miller, Product Management at Cavirin Systems, discussed how to assess these changes across your own cloud strategy, and how you can mitigate risks previously covered under the agreement.
Microsoft goes open source on Chakra JavaScript engine
Microsoft is to make the Chakra JavaScript engine open source and will publish the code on its GitHub page next month. The rationale is to extend the functions of the code, used in the Edge and Internet Explorer 9 browsers, to a much wider role.
The new open source versions of the Chakra engine are to be known as its open sourcing ChakraCore. Announcing the changes at Java development show JS Conf US in Florida, Microsoft now intends to run ChakraCore’s development as a community project which both Intel and AMD have expressed interest in joining. Initially the code will be for Windows only but the rationale behind the open source strategy is to take ChakraCore across platforms, in a repeat of the exercise it pioneered with .NET.
In a statement, Gaurav Seth, Microsoft’s Principal Programme Manager, explained that as Java Script’s role widens, so must the community of developers that support it and opening up the code base will help support that growth.
“Since Chakra’s inception, JavaScript has expanded from a language that primarily powered the web browser experience to a technology that supports apps in stores, server side applications, cloud based services, NoSQL databases, game engines, front-end tools and now the Internet of Things,” said Seth. Over time, Chakra evolved to fit many of these and this meant that apart from throughput, Chakra had to support native interoperability, scalability and manage resource consumption. Its interpreter played a key role in moving the technology across platform architectures but it can only take it so far, said Seth.
“Now we’re taking the next step by giving developers a fully supported and fully open-source JavaScript engine available to embed in their projects, innovate on top of, and contribute back to ChakraCore,” said Seth. The modern JavaScript Engine must go beyond browser work and run everything from small-footprint devices for IoT applications to high-throughput, massively parallel server applications based on cloud technologies, he said.
ChakraCore already fits into any application stack that calls for speed and agility but Microsoft intends to give it greater license to become more versatile and extend beyond the Windows ecosystem, said Seth. “We are committed to bringing ChakraCore to other platforms in the future. We’d invite developers to help us in this pursuit by letting us know which other platforms they’d like to see ChakraCore supported on to help us prioritize future investments, or even by helping port it to the platform of their choice,” said Seth.
Exponential-e launches CloudPort automated cloud portal for the channel
Cloud and network provider Exponential-e has launched a cloud pricing portal, CloudPort, to help its sales channel partner providers run their cloud reselling businesses more efficiently.
The system aims to make it easier for dealers of cloud services to install and manage their accounts, with quicker installation times and a fine tuned sales process that could help Exponential-e’s partners win more deals. Dealers can use the portal to get access to live a quotation tracking system that is designed to create price protection for Exponential-e’s business partners.
Exponential-e owns a 100 Gigabit Ethernet Layer 2 VPLS Network and integrates with third party providers and bespoke applications for both enterprise and SME clients. By tapping into Exponential-e’s product portfolio and carrier network CloudPort gives resellers access to suite of enterprise cloud services, including cloud compute, storage, server replication, colocation, online backup, SIP, internet and networking circuits.
According to researcher IDC global spending on cloud computing infrastructure is expected to grow by 21 per cent year over year to $32 billion in 2015. CloudPort will empower partners to meet this growing customer demand for cloud services and channel partners will be able to seamlessly tap into Exponential-e’s cloud solution portfolio and build systems to order for their clients, according to Exponential-e CEO Lee Wade. “CloudPort is a game-changer in cloud service delivery for the channel,” he said.
Resellers will also be able to configure services in order to adapt them for customers, according to Exponetial-e’s Head of Channel Strategy Michala Hart. “We will work with our partners to incorporate additional functionality into this new automated portal in the coming year. The portal will continue to evolve providing new solutions and services to our partners, facilitating innovation,” said Hart. The system is due to go live on December 14.
Abraxas uses Huawei Cloud Fabric for SDN datacentre
Cloud service provider Abraxas has built a new a virtualized multi-tenant cloud datacentre in Geneva, Switzerland using Huawei’s Cloud Fabric systems.
Huawei’s Cloud Fabric will give the datacentre the foundations on which to build a software defined network later, according to outsourcing giant Abraxas, which runs cloud computing services for enterprises, government agencies and scientific research institutions across Europe.
The Cloud Fabric is built out of a network of Huawei’s CloudEngine datacentre switches to create what Huawei describes as a Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) and Ethernet Virtual Network (EVN). The Huawei equipment helped Abraxas build an ultra-large cross-datacentre Layer 2 network, which it says will give datacentre managers and cloud operators complete flexibility when installing Virtual Machine (VM) resources.
Virtualization of these core switches, using a technique that Huawei describes as “1: N”, helps to lower the running cost of the network and gives more service options with its variety of Virtual Switches (vSwitches), each of which can create completely independent autonomous sub-networks. The CloudEngine datacentre switches, when used with Huawei’s Agile Controller, can create the right conditions for a completely software defined network, when the time comes.
Abraxas needed to make more efficient use of its IT resources and to create the foundation for a strategy to migrate services onto its datacentres, said Olaf Sonderegger, ICT Architect, Infrastructure Management at Abraxas. But it also had to prepare for the virtualised future, said Sonderegger. “In order to fulfil sustainable service development, our datacentre network architecture has to be flexible enough to evolve into SDN-enabled architecture,” said Sonderegger.
How to Access Files from an Old VM (That Won’t Even Start!)
Guest blog by Manoj Raghu, Parallels Support Team Last week, I talked about the way to access the data on your virtual machine by simply mounting it to the Mac Finder. But what if you need permanent access to the data and don’t need this particular VM? Why would you need that, you ask? Well, […]
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