I’m going to add this site to my blogroll. The author is one of VMWare’s R&D honchos.
Interesting tid-bit on how to DOS Google if you’re so inclined.
Some of the search queries can cause huge IO. One example Jeff gave is “circle of life” as one phase enclosed in double quotation marks. It could incur 30GB I/O before. As I just searched on Google, the phrase is now a song name. I bet it’s now in Google’s cache server.
When there are so many servers to manage, something unique happened. Jeff mentioned an interesting phenomenon called “query of death.” If a query can causes a server to crash, then it can crash all other servers because the software stack is the same. To avoid large scale of crashes, they used canary request which is first sent to one machine. If it’s good, then send it to the rest of machines; otherwise reject the request after failing several times. It of course adds a little delay but far better than large scale system crash. Of course, you need to log down the query and found out why it crashed software as a process of continuous improvement. Jeff didn’t mention this, but I bet Google did that.
via DoubleCloud » What Lessons You Can Learn from Google on Building Infrastructure.
So, I wonder what the I/O load is on google if I did a search on:
“Ubuntu Private Cloud Prince William Engagement” or “MySQL Replication Senator McConnell Earmark ban”
Pick any two other totally different subject and combine them into a single query.
Courtesy of Intuit Works to Restore Online Access – WSJ.com:
Intuit Inc. said it is trying to restore service to company websites affected by an outage that began Tuesday night, leaving consumers and small businesses without access to online versions of the company's accounting and tax software.
Intuit’s products include TurboTax, Quicken and the QuickBooks accounting program used by many small businesses. The online services associated with those products remained offline Wednesday afternoon.
A company spokeswoman said it hadn't yet identified the cause of the outage, but ruled out a cyber attack. Some Intuit websites were beginning to come back online late Wednesday afternoon, she added…..
While many small businesses have their own issues with disaster recovery, the fact that all your critical data is stuck on a server you have no access to should be a source of concern. I’ve not used their online products, but if you can’t export your data to a Quickbooks file for use on your PC, you’re just asking for trouble.
Excellent read on the iPad as a desktop virtualization thin client. If you’ve seen any science fiction (StarTrek, Babylon 5, etc) they all use iPad/tablet like computers. The traditional laptop/desktop form factor requires you working at a desk. If you’re doing anything standing up, normal computers fail.
The problem I think Desktop Virtualization will have is:
1) The problem with keeping all your data in the cloud is you have to be able to get to the cloud. So, it only works where you have wifi or 3/4G, and its useless on planes or in rural areas.
2) All the desktop export protocols sucks. I’ve not used VDI, but VNC is teh suck, and RDP is only usable if you’ve got a good WAN connection. The iPad will work fine for carrying it to the conference room, but not for being able to get into your work PC at home to finish that memo your boss wants. (Speaking of protocol suckage, I’m seriously considering moving my primary PC to Win7 w/ VMWare Workstation so I can RDP into it when I need to. But thats another post about Command Center 3.0)
3) The iPads 1024×768 screen resolution is straight out of the late 1980s. Grabbing your desktop off your desk terminal (1680×1050) and moving it there will make all your windows difficult to use. At least windows lets you resize from all corners and not just the lower right like on the Mac.
Is that you need to have ubiquitous Internet to make it work.
Google OS: the end of the hard drive? – CNN.com.
This looks like a neat device. But if none of my data is stored on the device, it is useless for reading email or working on documents. Wifi coverage is sporadic and expensive. Cellular coverage is even more expensive. WiMax (aka Clear) is only available in a few markets. Having to attach a dongle for Cellular/WiMax to the netbook destroys the form factor and fast start-up time.
Plus there is the DANGER of storing all your stuff in the cloud.
