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   1 [16:02] <ClassBot> Logs for this session will be available at http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/05/02/%23ubuntu-classroom.html following the conclusion of the session.
   2 [16:03] <kim0> Hi everyone
   3 [16:03] <kim0> Good Morning, good afternoon and good evening
   4 [16:04] <kim0> So I work with Jorge's (Jono's team) as well
   5 [16:04] <kim0> I'm focused on building the cloud community
   6 [16:04] <kim0> which means you can kick me any time to get info about cloud (at least I'll try) :)
   7 [16:04] <kim0> So my plan is going to be
   8 [16:05] <kim0> I'll give a quick intro to what cloud means
   9 [16:05] <kim0> Answer questions
  10 [16:05] <kim0> Then if we have time, shoot a nice little demo
  11 [16:05] <kim0> However, the session should be focused on interactive questions
  12 [16:05] <kim0> so basically you drive
  13 [16:05] <kim0> feel free to ask me anything and steer the session
  14 [16:06] <kim0> = Intro to cloud =
  15 [16:06] <kim0> Cloud has been a major buzz word the past few years
  16 [16:07] <kim0> however almost everyone has a different definition
  17 [16:07] <kim0> of what is or is not cloud
  18 [16:07] <kim0> let's try to go over some general principles
  19 [16:08] <kim0> or rather properties often found in cloud computing environments
  20 [16:08] <kim0> - Pay per use
  21 [16:08] <kim0> Which means you usually don't pay upfront .. but rather pay as you go
  22 [16:08] <kim0> the more resources you need/want .. the more you pay
  23 [16:08] <kim0> Example:
  24 [16:08] <kim0> Ubuntu One, is a cloud storage service
  25 [16:09] <kim0> you get a free basic package
  26 [16:09] <kim0> however should you want/need more storage .. you can buy them and use them
  27 [16:10] <kim0> other similar services would be dropbox, or Amazon S3 ..etc
  28 [16:10] <kim0> Of course "storage" is not the only application .. it's only an example .. you can rent complete servers as we'll see in IaaS shortly
  29 [16:10] <kim0> - Instant scalability
  30 [16:11] <kim0> A major differentiating feature of "cloud" is being able to "scale" almost instantly
  31 [16:11] <kim0> Example:
  32 [16:12] <kim0> Assuming you're running a wordpress blog on a VPS
  33 [16:12] <kim0> It will usually take your provider some time if you'd like to spin up 10 more servers
  34 [16:12] <kim0> and you usually rent a server by a month
  35 [16:12] <kim0> however with cloud services, you can rent them by the hour (or less)
  36 [16:13] <kim0> so you can spin up 10 servers for the next hour
  37 [16:13] <kim0> when your website gets slashdotted
  38 [16:13] <kim0> then destroy them and give them back and stop paying for them
  39 [16:13] <kim0> when you don't need them
  40 === vincent is now known as Guest60840
  41 [16:13] <kim0> of course making use of those 10 servers is another story (your software has to be intelligent)
  42 [16:14] <kim0> - API access
  43 [16:14] <kim0> Almost all cloud are going to provide you an API
  44 [16:14] <kim0> API = Application programming Interface
  45 [16:14] <kim0> which is a "programmatic way to manipulate your cloud envrionment"
  46 [16:14] <kim0> which means you can very simply write scripts that control every aspect of your cloud envrionment
  47 [16:15] <kim0> Alright .. any questions so far
  48 [16:15] <ClassBot> sebsebseb asked: A general question, but why are loads of companies such as Canonical starting to embrace the cloud a lot now?
  49 [16:16] <kim0> Great question
  50 [16:17] <kim0> Well, cloud computing is really a new way to look at computing (usually server side) but same concepts apply to some end-user services too like ubuntu-one for example
  51 [16:17] <kim0> Basically .. it's a paradigm shift into how we work with servers and services
  52 [16:18] <kim0> instead of waiting weeks for a server to be delivered, spending days installing and configuring software on it
  53 [16:18] <kim0> spending lots of money up front
  54 [16:18] <kim0> with cloud things change
  55 [16:18] <kim0> basically .. you snap your fingers (call api, click button ..) and a number of servers magically appear right this instant
  56 [16:19] <kim0> snap another and fully automated workflows configure the new servers
  57 [16:19] <kim0> snap a third .. and your application can scale onto those newly created servers!
  58 [16:19] <kim0> and when you don't need that much servers .. snap a fourth time .. and everything downscales to what it was .. and you stop paying for those resources
  59 [16:20] <kim0> sounds good ? yes it does .. which is why all IT companies are interested in cloud
  60 [16:20] <kim0> cloud is basically comoditizing IT and turning it into an "electric grid"
  61 [16:20] <kim0> where you never think about running your own, you just plug, use and pay for what you just used
  62 [16:21] <kim0> hope this sort of answers your question
  63 [16:21] <ClassBot> envygeeks asked: Since Ubuntu is embracing the cloud more and more everyday are there plans for Ubuntu to embrace and make Xen better for cloud hosting solutions that want to use Ubuntu to host the hypervisor?
  64 [16:21] <kim0> wow .. I am getting lots of questions .. cool
  65 [16:22] <kim0> Most major Linux distros has decided to support KVM over XEN
  66 [16:22] <kim0> KVM is the Linux kernel integrated hypervisor
  67 [16:23] <kim0> while Xen is basically a third party mini kernel that you load before linux
  68 [16:23] <kim0> this is not really the place to compare both hypervisors
  69 [16:23] <kim0> however both have their pros and cons
  70 [16:24] <kim0> The one thing Xen really has going on for itself (IMO) is that it was started long ago
  71 [16:24] <kim0> has built a big following and many customers have it deployed in production
  72 [16:24] <kim0> and do not want to change to KVM
  73 [16:24] <kim0> The topic has been brought up for Oneiric (11.10)
  74 [16:24] <kim0> you can read a more thorough discussion at http://fossplanet.com/f10/%5Boneiric-topic%5D-revisit-xen-support-118193/
  75 [16:25] <kim0> my understanding is that better Xen support is planned
  76 [16:25] <kim0> helped by the fact that more and more of its components are going into upstream Linux
  77 [16:25] <ClassBot> bullgard4 asked: You said: "[17:08]  <kim0>  - Pay per use". Is thus Ubuntu One Canonical's backdoor for making profit in the future?
  78 [16:26] <kim0> There's nothing backdoorish about providing an online service IMO
  79 [16:26] <kim0> It's quite similar to Dropbox, or Apple's iDisk ..etc
  80 [16:26] <kim0> and in no way are you forced to pay
  81 [16:26] <kim0> it's just a good service that is well integrated with Ubuntu
  82 [16:27] <kim0> and is multiplatform
  83 [16:27] <kim0> plus generating revenue is a good thing for the ubuntu project since it helps with future development
  84 [16:27] <ClassBot> envygeeks asked: Adding to bullgard4's question: Are there plans to expand Ubuntu's current cloud offers to things such as movies on demand (Linux's solution to iTunes) as a form of profit to keep the company going?
  85 [16:28] <kim0> well there is Music streaming at the moment
  86 [16:28] <kim0> Check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/MusicStreaming
  87 [16:28] <kim0> however I haven't heard about movie streaming
  88 [16:29] <ClassBot> raju asked: i dont the basics of cloud computing ...as you said cloud computing, nothing but storage . so already this google and hotmail providing us storage units then why we need to go for other sources ( dont mind if it is a silly doubt, but i have it )
  89 [16:29] <kim0> Great question raju
  90 [16:29] <kim0> Expect a fairly long answer :)
  91 [16:30] <kim0> so the storage example I used is only but a limited example
  92 [16:30] <kim0> to fully address your question .. let's see how people usually define different types of clouds
  93 [16:31] <kim0> one way to define clouds is by the level of abstraction they offer
  94 [16:31] <kim0> There is 3 different types
  95 [16:31] <kim0> - IaaS Infrastrcture as a service
  96 [16:31] <kim0> - PaaS Platform  as a service
  97 [16:31] <kim0> - SaaS Software as a service
  98 [16:31] <kim0> Let's quickly comment on each of these
  99 [16:32] <kim0> IaaS, is a cloud that provides you with "low level" computing resources on demand
 100 [16:32] <kim0> Example: "give me 40G of storage space" "give me 6 big servers, 2 small ones, and 1 really big server for my database"
 101 [16:33] <kim0> "give me 3 real IP addresses, and have my 6 big servers load balanced"
 102 [16:33] <kim0> All these are compute resources (storage, cpu/ram, network, ...etc)
 103 [16:33] <kim0> they are all generated and assigned to you on the fly
 104 [16:33] <kim0> and you only pay for them, as long as you need or want them
 105 [16:34] <kim0> sample clouds that do this today are
 106 [16:34] <kim0> Amazon EC2, or Rackspace and others
 107 [16:34] <kim0> Ubuntu allows you to "build" a cloud as well
 108 [16:34] <kim0> i.e. if you fancy competing with Amazon EC2, you can
 109 [16:34] <kim0> Ubuntu ships UEC (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud) based on the Eucalyptus project
 110 [16:35] <kim0> which allows anyone to build a cloud similar to ec2
 111 [16:35] <kim0> With Ubuntu 11.04 we also ship OpenStack, another foss cloud software stack that's getting popular rapidly
 112 [16:35] <kim0> The second type of cloud, PaaS
 113 [16:35] <kim0> this is a higher level of abstraction
 114 [16:36] <kim0> you are not really interested in seeing "server, storage, and network"
 115 [16:36] <kim0> you want to upload your application and boom it just runs on the cloud
 116 [16:36] <kim0> and runs well, and is fault tolerant and is scalable ..etc
 117 [16:36] <kim0> without you having to worry about any of the details
 118 [16:37] <kim0> Examples of such clouds would be Google's Google App Engine
 119 [16:37] <kim0> Heroku, Microsoft's Azure..etc
 120 [16:37] <kim0> With Ubuntu if you're interested you can run http://www.cloudfoundry.org/
 121 [16:38] <kim0> It allows multiple different programming languages
 122 [16:38] <kim0> Java, rails, node.js ..
 123 [16:38] <kim0> and I believe python and others are coming
 124 [16:39] <kim0> of course the disadvantage is that your application needs to be rewritten to use the PaaS provided APIs
 125 [16:39] <kim0> since this is what makes all the magic work (auto scale, fault tolerant ..etc)
 126 [16:39] <kim0> another potential disadvantage is vendor lockin (cloud foundry is an open source project though)
 127 [16:40] <kim0> and also having less control over the envrionment (pro or con depending on how you look at it!)
 128 [16:40] <kim0> The third and final type of cloud is SaaS
 129 [16:40] <kim0> Software as a service, the simplest to imagine
 130 [16:40] <kim0> basically a provider provides you with a full complete online application
 131 [16:41] <kim0> Examples would be google-mail, google-docs, facebook ...etc
 132 [16:41] <kim0> Since we just went through different cloud "types"
 133 [16:42] <kim0> people will also usually use the term "public cloud" or "private cloud"
 134 [16:42] <kim0> public basically means a multi-tenant cloud, i.e. one that is shared between many customers
 135 [16:42] <kim0> examples would be amazon ec2, rackspace, heroku ...etc
 136 [16:43] <kim0> a private cloud however, is a cloud serving one customer, isolated from other customers. Usually a private cloud runs in-house (behind your firewall)
 137 [16:43] <kim0> Again there's different pros and cons to each type .. but it's getting too long already :)
 138 [16:44] <kim0> let me know if that generated any other questions
 139 [16:44] <ClassBot> maco asked: how does "cloud computing" differ from good ol' fashioned "UNIX machines"?  Server with all your stuff exists elsewhere, and your data's there, not local...everything you interact with is away on a server... what's the difference? Isn't this just a return to 1982?
 140 [16:44] <kim0> Good question indeed ..
 141 [16:45] <kim0> In a sense nothing has changed, and in another, everything has changed :)
 142 [16:45] <kim0> nothing has changed, because yes it is just a remote "virtual" unix machine with your data on it
 143 [16:46] <kim0> however everything has changed, because everything that is needed now has an API on top
 144 [16:46] <kim0> which means it's faster, more fault tolerant (if you do it right), more elastic (if you softwae is smart enough) ..etc
 145 [16:47] <kim0> compare the time it takes to order ten servers, rack them, install them, configure them and get some website up and running
 146 [16:47] <kim0> with the 1 minute it takes me to do it on the cloud :)
 147 [16:47] <kim0> also, changing the payment from up-front capex, to on-going (opex) is a benefit many appreciate
 148 [16:48] <kim0> also, the "sharing" of services (machines, storage, networks, security personnel ...)
 149 [16:48] <kim0> generates overall better financials (lower prices, hopefully better service)
 150 [16:49] <kim0> I hope this sheds some light on the topic .. definitely there's more to be said
 151 [16:49] <ClassBot> envygeeks asked: Can you provide a link to the official AMI images that Ubuntu releases for Amazon Cloud?
 152 [16:49] <kim0> Awesome ... I'm loving how the questions are all spot on and driving the session
 153 [16:49] <kim0> So, when you tell Amazon "give me 10 Ubuntu servers"
 154 [16:50] <kim0> Amazon uses an official Ubuntu server image
 155 [16:50] <kim0> and starts it on ten different virtual servers
 156 [16:50] <kim0> in order to do that, you need to tell Amazon which Ubuntu image you want (called AMI-ID)
 157 [16:50] <kim0> AMI = Amazon Machine Image
 158 [16:51] <kim0> Ubuntu generates official Ubuntu AMIs which you can find a list of at http://cloud.ubuntu.com/ami/
 159 [16:51] <kim0> You basically use the search bar to zoom in on the AMI you want
 160 [16:52] <kim0> like "natty 64 ebs"
 161 [16:52] <kim0> and you get the ID you want
 162 [16:52] <kim0> Once you get the ID .. you can use the Amazon web console to launch the servers
 163 [16:52] <ClassBot> There are 10 minutes remaining in the current session.
 164 [16:52] <kim0> check out this video tutorial http://www.youtube.com/user/ubuntucloud#p/u/4/rYJLIfVuSMY
 165 [16:53] <kim0> and check out the rest of the videos in the channel if interested
 166 [16:53] <ClassBot> envygeeks asked: Does Ubuntu make a "full server" AMI for Amazon Cloud that is "official"?
 167 [16:53] <kim0> Yes, again check them out on http://cloud.ubuntu.com/ami/
 168 [16:53] <ClassBot> sebsebseb asked: Surely you agree that it's a good idea to still  have data locally, in case cloud servers go down, or something goes wrong and data is lost on them?
 169 [16:54] <kim0> Great question
 170 [16:54] <kim0> I would rephrase it this way, it's a good idea to have a DR (disaster recovery) plan
 171 [16:55] <kim0> whether that plan includes having data locally, or remotely somewhere else (maybe on a couple of other VPS servers) or maybe in another cloud provider's data-center ..etc
 172 [16:55] <kim0> it really depends on your needs
 173 [16:55] <kim0> Cloud servers can and do go down
 174 [16:56] <kim0> Amazon ec2 (by far the world's largest) just had a major outgae!
 175 [16:56] <kim0> which was a wake up call for many
 176 [16:56] <kim0> definitely be prepared for failure and be prepared to migrate to a different provider or run things locally
 177 [16:56] <kim0> clouds usually however offer a way to better protect your data/servers
 178 [16:57] <kim0> like offering multiple avaialbility zones
 179 [16:57] <kim0> or multiple regions (continents)
 180 [16:57] <ClassBot> There are 5 minutes remaining in the current session.
 181 [16:57] <kim0> if you make good use of those resources by spreading your computing needs around them, you should be able to work around most failures
 182 [16:58] <kim0> since I'm almost running out of time
 183 [16:58] <kim0> you can always find me in #ubuntu-cloud
 184 [16:58] <kim0> feel free to ping me any tikme
 185 [16:58] <kim0> time*
 186 [16:58] <kim0> taking a quick shot at other questions
 187 [16:59] <ClassBot> envygeeks asked: Adding to zzecool's and bullgard4's comment: can you explain to us what data protections UbuntuOne takes? Such as encryption by user password and disk encryption.  I have been staying away from Ubuntu one because I cannot find any clear information on what you guys do to protect user data.
 188 [16:59] <kim0> sorry I'm really running out of time
 189 [16:59] <kim0> you can encrypt your data before sync'ing
 190 [17:00] <ClassBot> envygeeks asked: Are there any plans for Ubuntu cloud to parter with other vendors other than Dell and Amazon? Say vendors like ServerBeach (who is not starting to offer Private Clouds and Cloud services)
 191 [17:00] <kim0> check out canonical.com/cloud
 192 [17:00] <kim0> That's all folks
 193 [17:00] <kim0> thanks everyone
 194 [17:00] <kim0> if I didn't have time to answer you
 195 [17:00] <kim0> please ping me back any time
 196 [17:00] <kim0> Have fun .. bye
 197 [17:01] <coolbhavi> thanks kim0 for the session :)
 198 [17:01] <coolbhavi> howdy mates