Expert Texture
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for Miscellaneous
July 28, 2008 at 1:09 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I posted Cloud Services Continuum a couple of weeks back. In that post I articulated a simplified view of cloud services and how they fit together. This was simple by design — others had found this view useful, so I wrote it down. I intentionally ignored some kinds of services, greatly simplifying the Infrastructure piece. In this post I delve deeper into infrastructure services. I’ll move on to platform next.
BTW: Stack is a more fitting word than continuum for various reasons, so I’m using that instead. And a shout out to Matias Wolsky — check out his SaaS Taxonomy Map.
Infrastructure as a Service
In my earlier post, I defined IaaS to include provisioning of hardware or virtual machines on which one generally has control over the OS; therefore allowing the execution of arbitrary software. This definition isn’t really enough, because there are many other kinds of infrastructure. Take a look at the services that are out there:
- connectivity / messaging services. Examples: Microsoft BizTalk Labs and Connectivity Services, Gnip.
- identity services. Countless OpenID identity providers, again the BizTalk Labs Identity Services.
- data storage. Examples: Amazon’s S3 and SimpleDB, Microsoft SQL Server Data Services.
One might argue that together these services create a “platform” — and they get close — but since none of these host general user-written code, they don’t quite get there.
Then, of course, there is flexible machine provisioning like Amazon EC2. These are definitely infrastructure — where the platform is the OS, Web servers, and other software.
Calling this all IaaS is fine — it is all infrastructure — but, maybe we should further divide these:
- Virtual Hardware Infrastructure
- Storage Infrastructure
- (Other) Infrastructure Services
Granted, these names need some work, but I think the categories are useful. And I won’t make them into acronyms because I think we have enough of those.
Tags: Amazon, AWS, cloud, Gnip, Google, IaaS, Microsoft, PaaS, SaaS, Salesforce, SSDS
July 24, 2008 at 8:46 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
I am http://identi.ca/rwandering. I am still http://twitter.com/rwandering. I don’t expect to drop Twitter. Oh, and I’m http://friendfeed.com/rwandering.
On its own, identi.ca is interesting because of its promise more than anything else. I do like:
- It has a clean UI.
- It supports OpenID as a logon.
- It supports XMPP.
- Twhirl supports it with XMPP! Very cool.
- I would like to see it supporting GNIP.
A couple of observations about these kinds of services:
- I want a simplified user experience here. I want one consolidated view across these types of services and the ability to update once and submit everywhere.
- I believe Twhirl is working on this.
- We need a web-only solution. This might be Friendfeed, but only if Friendfeed can aggregate views of those I follow across services.
- We need a Twhirl for mobile. Maybe TwitterBerry can go this way?
I really like the XMPP update, and I like using my GMail account for it — because of searchable history — but I don’t like getting duplicate messages in GTalk and Twhirl. One solution and a question:
- I can use a separate GMail account for these kinds of updates. Not ideal.
- Can Jabber servers understand a preferred client for messages sent by a specific contact? That way identi.ca updates could go only to Twhirl, if Twhirl is connected.
BTW: this post is testing WordIdentica a WordPress plugin for Identi.ca. This should send a dent to identi.ca when I update my blog. I use http://twitterfeed.com to do the same for Twitter.
Tags: FriendFeed, identi.ca, twhirl, Twitter, xmpp
July 21, 2008 at 10:37 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
There are a lot of questions circling around the blogosphere about Microsoft’s plans in the cloud. These plans are clearly secret and tangled up with code words, but some bits are public and getting more so.
If you haven’t checked out BizTalk Labs and the Internet Service Bus, you can get an overview here. But more than an overview, you can download version 12 — OK, 0.12 — of the SDK and get started very quickly.
The Internet Service Bus consists of three main parts:
- Identity Service. A service to unify authentication and authorization across the Internet Service Bus with support for other identity providers.
- Connectivity Service. A general service to connect applications with message relay when necessary.
- Workflow. A service that runs Windows Workflow Foundation workflows in the cloud.
Workflow was added this week. Before that, the Internet Service Bus looked mostly like infrastructure, but with this new addition, it is moving up the stack towards platform.
I played with the SDK earlier in the week. The Workflow Service supports a set of cloud activities included in the SDK. Using these activities as building blocks, you can build simple workflows hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. The available activities for the cloud are only a subset of the standard .NET 3.0/3.5 activities, but I’ll bet more are added as the service matures.
Now, this is all a CTP and final plans aren’t public, but, a quick glance at the ISB and some very interesting possibilities emerge. For example, the existing features in the CTP today, would greatly ease the engineering effort of extending a Digipede Network into the cloud. Pretty cool, huh?
BTW: A recent comment on my blog shows that some people aren’t aware of another Microsoft Cloud service: SQL Server Data Services (or SSDS). That one is in a limited beta, but you can sign up for it at Microsoft Connect.
Tags: BizTalk, cloud, IaaS, Microsoft, PaaS
June 24, 2008 at 12:45 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Last weekend, my parked Audi was hit by a speeding vehicle. The damage was pretty major: body, mechanical damage, and a bent frame.
Thankfully nobody was hurt.
Yesterday, my insurance carrier has declared the car a total loss.
It was in good condition with only 48000 miles on it. I planned on keeping the car for a few more years.
These things happen. On to plan B.
But I am irked about the timing. I planned to make my next car a hybrid. Gas prices have spiked. Hybrids have gone up in price and I understand that some models have wait-lists. For example, if I want a Prius, I might have to wait months.
Now what do I do?
Tags: blog, Personal
June 6, 2008 at 8:53 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
I am routinely asked if the Digipede Network can run under Mono. The main scenario people want is to run Digipede Agents on a mix of Windows and Linux boxes.
My answer has always been the same:
Not now, maybe never, but this would not be technically challenging.
A while back we researched what it would take to get the Digipede Agent working on Linux. At the time, the Mono project was less mature. Finding out what worked was mostly a game of just trying it. We eventually gave up, because a dependency on WSE2 turned out to be a blocker.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to see what it would take to finish this task. I haven’t paid much attention to the Mono project over the years, but Moonlight gave me hope that Mono has made a lot of advances since we tried last.
It has. Still using Visual Studio, I #ifdef’ed out a few noncompliant functions and got it working with the Mono runtime. It was surprisingly easy. Kudos to Miguel de Icaza, Novell, and the Mono team.
So now I have it working in the lab on a Linux VM. Checking in to a Digipede Server, it is able to run our .NET development patterns. Of course, it can also run command-line applications with Linux-specific binaries. Pretty cool.
This is not ready for release. Not only is a supported product more than just bits, but I took a few shortcuts in getting the bits to work!
Now if someone asks me if it Digipede Network can run under Mono, I can say
It does in the lab, it may never get released, and this is ultimately a market and product decision.
So now we can do it, what shall we do with it?
Tags: .NET, Digipede, Mono, Novell
May 19, 2008 at 6:22 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Dmitry Sotnikov provides the steps to get PowerShell — and of more general interest, .NET 2.0 – running on Windows Server 2008 Server core.
While this is a stopgap until Microsoft officially supports this configuration, it could still be useful.
Now the question for me is, will this work for running Digipede components?
Tags: .NET, Digipede, PowerShell, Server 2008, Server Core
May 18, 2008 at 10:35 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Playing with the Google Friend Connect demos last night, I found that my i-name doesn’t work as an OpenID. No big deal, after all it is a preview release.
Today I went to add a comment on a blogger.com blog and tried my i-name there. Nope.
What’s up, Google? Why aren’t you supporting i-names? Oversight, planned for release, bug, or politics? I really hope it isn’t the latter.
Tags: Blogger, Google, i-name, OpenID
February 19, 2008 at 9:51 am · Filed under .NET, Miscellaneous
Mary Jo Foley writes there’s no Windows Server 2008 SP1 in the works.
Why? Because the first RTM of Server 2008 is called Windows Server 2008 SP1. This is due to Server 2008 and Vista sharing the same core code and components.
Hmm.
This makes only marginal sense, and then only if Microsoft commits to keeping the service packs synchronized across the Windows 6 product family. I think this will be less confusing to customers. We’ll see if this synchronization happens.
Regardless of Microsoft’s plans, the SP1 designation on Server 2008 is misleading. Most of the server components of Windows 6 will remain without a service pack until SP2.
Customers who like to wait for initial service packs still will — unless they are duped into thinking they’ve already got it.
Tags: Microsoft, Server 2008, SP1, Vista, Windows
February 7, 2008 at 3:49 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
According to Mary Jo Foley, Some won’t have to wait until March for Vista SP1. Cool. I’m installing it now.
Tags: Microsoft, SP1, Vista, Windows
November 9, 2007 at 8:56 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1 with its new tagging support — very cool that they included an importer from Ultimate Tag Warrior.
Added my twitter feed to the sidebar. You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/rwandering
Added new phone-only templates: both iPhone and Windows Mobile users should see a simplified version of my blog.
Tags: blog, Wordpress
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