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- Entire Task A + Entire Task B = Great Task A & Great Task B.<\/li>\n
- 1\/2 Task A + Entire Task B + 1\/2 Task A = Okay Task A & Excellent Task B.<\/li>\n
- 1\/2 Task A + 1\/2 Task B + 1\/2 Task A + 1\/2 Task B = Good Task A & Good Task B<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Why does this matter?\u00a0 Well, because the same exact concept applies to computers & the software we write.\u00a0 A single processor can do one thing at a time only (let’s forget threads), but it can context switch extremely fast which gives the illusion of multi-tasking.\u00a0 But, like a human, context switching has a cost for a computer.\u00a0 So, when you write code try to do many “similar” things at the same time.\u00a0 If you have a bunch of SQL queries to execute then you should open a connection to the database first, execute them, & close the connection.\u00a0 If you need to call some VMware APIs then you should connect to vCenter first, do them, & close the connection.\u00a0 Opening & closing connections to any system is often slow so group your actions by context which, in this case, are systems.\u00a0 This also makes the code easier to read.\u00a0 Speaking of reading, here’s a great example of the cost of context switching.\u00a0 The author Tom Clancy loves to switch characters & plot lines every chapter.\u00a0 This makes following the story very hard & whenever you put the book down & start reading again it’s nearly impossible to remember where you left off b\/c there’s never, ever a good stopping point.\u00a0 Tom Clancy’s writing is one of the best examples of how costly context switching is.<\/p>\n
So, what does this have to do with cloud computing<\/a>?\u00a0 Well, it ties in directly with automation & orchestration.\u00a0 Automation<\/a> is doing the work & orchestration is determining the order in which work is done.\u00a0 Things can get complicated quickly when numerous tasks need to be executed & it’s not immediately apparent which need to run first & which are dependent on other tasks.\u00a0 And, once that is all figured out, what happens when a task fails?\u00a0 While software executes linearly, an orchestration engine provides the ability to run multiple pieces of software concurrently.\u00a0 And that’s where things get complicated real fast.\u00a0 Sometimes it may make sense to execute things serially (one at a time) vs. in parallel (more than one at a time) simply b\/c it becomes very hand to manage more than one task at the same time.<\/p>\n
We live in a world in which there are 10 different devices from which we can check our email and, if we want, we can talk to our smartphone & ask it to read our email to us.\u00a0 Technology has made it easy for us to get information virtually any time & in any format we want.\u00a0 However, it is because of this information overload that our brains have trouble separating all the useful information from the white noise.\u00a0 So we try to be more productive and we multi-task but that usually means we\u2019re becoming more busy than productive.\u00a0 In blogs to follow, I will provide some best practices for determining when it makes sense to run more than one task at a time.\u00a0 Now, if you don’t mind, I need to help my daughter find Maine\u2026<\/p>\n
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By Ben Sawyer, Solutions Engineer The term \u201cmulti-tasking\u201d basically means doing more than one thing at once.\u00a0 I am writing this blog while playing Legos w\/ my son & helping my daughter find New Hampshire on the map.\u00a0 But I am by no means doing more than one thing at once; I\u2019m just quickly…Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[113,114],"class_list":["post-5209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cloud-computing","tag-automation","tag-orchestration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}