How to compare cloud costs between Amazon, Microsoft and Google

Comparing prices among the major IaaS cloud vendors is not as easy as simply checking the cost of one virtual machine versus another. Myriad factors influence price: Size of the virtual machine, type of VM and contract length, to name a few.So how are you supposed to know which vendor offers the best deal? The key is to understand the different offers from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform and then determine which is best for your use case.“Comparing cloud pricing is complicated,” begins a blog post from RightScale that analyzes cloud prices among the major vendors. “It can be difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons because cloud providers offer different pricing models, unique discounting options, and frequent price cuts.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Guide To VPN Basics

Why You Can’t Avoid DevOps

2016: A systems security disaster

This will likely make you angry. It made me livid.  It’s a report, 34 pages long, from the Identity Theft Resource Center of the known systems breaches just this year. Read it and rage.  It does not include the San Francisco Metro Transit Authority (SFMTA) hack from Thanksgiving weekend, where the SFMTA had to let passengers go free through the gates. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2016: A systems security disaster

This will likely make you angry. It made me livid.  It’s a report, 34 pages long, from the Identity Theft Resource Center of the known systems breaches just this year. Read it and rage.  It does not include the San Francisco Metro Transit Authority (SFMTA) hack from Thanksgiving weekend, where the SFMTA had to let passengers go free through the gates. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Your digitization success depends on co-creating value with customers

There is a fundamental differentiator between companies that are winning the digitization race and transforming industry segments and those that have traditional business models.I’m talking about companies like Airbnb, Uber, Facebook or Amazon. Those companies don’t just create stuff for their customers, their customers create stuff for them, and for each other. The value of their product or service, therefore, is co-created by the people who use it.+ Also on Network World: Is your network a platform for business innovation and growth? + Facebook is the most obvious example of this. We are the product. Facebook just provides a platform. Its customers create all of the content and thus create the reason to engage as well as the value of the platform. Without us, there is no reason to be on Facebook.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Your digitization success depends on co-creating value with customers

There is a fundamental differentiator between companies that are winning the digitization race and transforming industry segments and those that have traditional business models.I’m talking about companies like Airbnb, Uber, Facebook or Amazon. Those companies don’t just create stuff for their customers, their customers create stuff for them, and for each other. The value of their product or service, therefore, is co-created by the people who use it.+ Also on Network World: Is your network a platform for business innovation and growth? + Facebook is the most obvious example of this. We are the product. Facebook just provides a platform. Its customers create all of the content and thus create the reason to engage as well as the value of the platform. Without us, there is no reason to be on Facebook.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Your digitization success depends on co-creating value with customers

There is a fundamental differentiator between companies that are winning the digitization race and transforming industry segments and those that have traditional business models.I’m talking about companies like Airbnb, Uber, Facebook or Amazon. Those companies don’t just create stuff for their customers, their customers create stuff for them, and for each other. The value of their product or service, therefore, is co-created by the people who use it.+ Also on Network World: Is your network a platform for business innovation and growth? + Facebook is the most obvious example of this. We are the product. Facebook just provides a platform. Its customers create all of the content and thus create the reason to engage as well as the value of the platform. Without us, there is no reason to be on Facebook.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: So You Want to Become a Cloud Provider

My friend Robert Turnšek published an interesting blog post pondering whether it makes sense to become a cloud provider.

I loved reading it, particularly the Trap for System Integrators part, because I know a bit of the history, and could easily identify two or three failed or stalled projects per paragraph (like: “Just adding some blade servers and storage to the existing server environment won’t make you a cloud provider”). Hope you’ll have as much fun as I did.

Kontena Goes ‘1.0’ With Its Kubernetes Alternative for Containers

Those 'long Finnish nights' pay off.

San Francisco Muni says server data not accessed in ransomware hit

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said late Monday that no data had been accessed from its servers in a ransomware attack on the Muni transit system and the agency has never considered paying the ransom asked by the attacker.The statement by the SFMTA follows reports that the alleged attacker has threatened to dump 30GB of data stolen from the agency, if the ransom of the equivalent of about $73,000 in bitcoin was not paid.“The SFMTA network was not breached from the outside, nor did hackers gain entry through our firewalls,” the agency’s spokeswoman Kristen Holland wrote in a blog post. She did not mention how the ransomware had got to the SFMTA systems, though there is the possibility that it may have been activated through a link in an email or a web link by an unsuspecting insider.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

San Francisco Muni says server data not accessed in ransomware hit

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said late Monday that no data had been accessed from its servers in a ransomware attack on the Muni transit system and the agency has never considered paying the ransom asked by the attacker.The statement by the SFMTA follows reports that the alleged attacker has threatened to dump 30GB of data stolen from the agency, if the ransom of the equivalent of about $73,000 in bitcoin was not paid.“The SFMTA network was not breached from the outside, nor did hackers gain entry through our firewalls,” the agency’s spokeswoman Kristen Holland wrote in a blog post. She did not mention how the ransomware had got to the SFMTA systems, though there is the possibility that it may have been activated through a link in an email or a web link by an unsuspecting insider.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Liveblog: Hybrid Architectures, Bridging the Gap to the Cloud

This is a liveblog of the AWS re:Invent session titled “Hybrid Architectures: Bridging the Gap to the Cloud” (ARC208). The line to get into this session, as with the previous session, was quite long—and that was for attendees who’d already registered for the session. Feedback I’ve heard from folks who weren’t registered for sessions was that they weren’t getting in, period. The speaker for the session is Jamie Butler, Manager of Solutions Architecture at AWS (focused on state/local government).

Butler starts out by establishing some expectations—attendees should be familiar with regions, AZs (this is a 200-level talk), and will focus on hybrid use cases. Butler says there will be some demos along the way. This session will not focus on the VMware announcement regarding VMware Cloud on AWS.

Butler then quotes Werner Vogels in saying that adopting cloud is not an all-or-nothing proposition. With that in mind, Butler transitions into a discussion of a particular customer example. In this case, the customer had Active Directory, a file server, and a bunch of Windows-based desktops connecting back to the file server for data access.

The first thing to tackle in a scenario like this is identity. Butler says you don’t want Continue reading

Liveblog: Scaling to Your First 10 Million Users

This is a liveblog of the AWS re:Invent session titled “Scaling to Your First 10 Million Users.” It’s my first session of the week here at re:Invent; yesterday’s sessions were full and I couldn’t get into anything. (The crowds here at the event are pretty significant; I think I heard 32K attendees total.) The speaker for the session is Joel Williams, an AWS Solutions Architect.

Williams starts out with a brief blurb about how this session is a perennial favorite at re:Invent, and how the principles are fundamental to working in building solutions in/on AWS. Even if attendees don’t have the sort of immediate scaling needs that Williams may be describing in this session, he believes that the lessons/fundamentals he discusses are applicable to lots of customers, lots of applications, and lots of use cases.

Williams starts out by saying that while Auto-Scaling is a destination on customers’ scaling journey, it’s not where you want to start. It’s not a “magic button” that fixes all problems. Williams puts up a map that shows AWS’ 14 global regions, encompassing 38 different availability zones, and points out that availability zones are a fundamental building block for highly-available applications. The next Continue reading

Liveblog: Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck with EC2

This is a liveblog of the AWS re:Invent session titled “Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck With #EC2 #Winning” (CMP202). The speaker for the session is Joshua Bergin, General Manager, EC2 Spot Business. According to the abstract, this session is supposed to focus on effectively using on-demand instances versus spot instances and reserved instances.

As a matter of quick introduction, there are three purchasing options for EC2:

• On-demand: “pay as you go”; no long-term commitments
• Reserved: good for steady-state workloads, used with 1 yr or 3 yr commitment
• Spot: pay market price for unused compute capacity

How do you choose which one to use? Bergin shares the “four pillars of performance and cost optimization”:

1. Right-sizing: choosing the cheapest instance available while meeting performance requirements
2. Purchasing options: Bergin will discuss this in more detail; this is the primary focus of the discussion
3. Increase elasticity: turning off (“scaling down”) instances that don’t need to be running (example: turn off development workloads when the developers aren’t working)
4. Measure, monitor, and improve: tagging resources; identitying always-on instances; identifying instances that can be downsized; recommending Reserved Instances (RIs) where it makes sense; dashboards and reports

Bergin points out the key AWS pricing principles (no Continue reading

Teeny sensor system lets you effectively monitor electricity usage

Getting a handle on electricity use in the data center, home or even Navy ships at sea is no easy task, but a system under development by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Office of Naval Research aims to tame that challenge. Office Of Naval Research/Bryce Vickmark  MIT researches have developed a system that could figure out exactly how much power is being used by every appliance, lighting fixture, and device in home or business...Office Of Naval Research . Credit: Bryce Vickmark   With backing from ONR, MIT have designed what they call a portable system to precisely measure and cheaply monitor the amount of electricity used by individual household appliances, lighting fixtures and electronic devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Teeny sensor system lets you effectively monitor electricity usage

Getting a handle on electricity use in the data center, home or even Navy ships at sea is no easy task, but a system under development by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Office of Naval Research aims to tame that challenge. Office Of Naval Research/Bryce Vickmark  MIT researches have developed a system that could figure out exactly how much power is being used by every appliance, lighting fixture, and device in home or business...Office Of Naval Research . Credit: Bryce Vickmark   With backing from ONR, MIT have designed what they call a portable system to precisely measure and cheaply monitor the amount of electricity used by individual household appliances, lighting fixtures and electronic devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Teeny sensor system lets you effectively monitor electricity usage

Getting a handle on electricity use in the data center, home or even Navy ships at sea is no easy task, but a system under development by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Office of Naval Research aims to tame that challenge. Office Of Naval Research/Bryce Vickmark  MIT researches have developed a system that could figure out exactly how much power is being used by every appliance, lighting fixture, and device in home or business...Office Of Naval Research . Credit: Bryce Vickmark   With backing from ONR, MIT have designed what they call a portable system to precisely measure and cheaply monitor the amount of electricity used by individual household appliances, lighting fixtures and electronic devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

50% off Shining Buddy Head Lamp, Water & Shock Resistant – Deal Alert

This highly-rated head lamp is ultra-bright, dependable, comfortable, and has an easy-to-wear design. A go-to tool for working around the house, or out for a late-night hike. Its no-slip strap is adjustable enough to accommodate everyone, from adults to children. Three AAA batteries (included) supply more than 12 hours of bright light before needing to be replaced. This head lamp averages 4.8 out of 5 stars from over 1,800 people on Amazon (read reviews), where its typical list price of $29.99 has been reduced 50% to just $14.97. See the discounted head lamp now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nvidia CEO’s “Hyper-Moore’s Law” Vision for Future Supercomputers

Over the last year in particular, we have documented the merger between high performance computing and deep learning and its various shared hardware and software ties. This next year promises far more on both horizons and while GPU maker Nvidia might not have seen it coming to this extent when it was outfitting its first GPUs on the former top “Titan” supercomputer, the company sensed a mesh on the horizon when the first hyperscale deep learning shops were deploying CUDA and GPUs to train neural networks.

All of this portends an exciting year ahead and for once, the mighty CPU …

Nvidia CEO’s “Hyper-Moore’s Law” Vision for Future Supercomputers was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.