How do you feel about "Cloud Computing"?

[lexluthermiester]

After a bit of discussion in this thread;

Intel's CEO Blames 10 nm Delay on being "Too Aggressive"

During Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, Intel's CEO Bob Swan took stage and talked about the company, about where Intel is now and where they are headed in the future and how the company plans to evolve. Particular focus was put on how Intel became "data centric" from "PC...

www.techpowerup.com

I thought it might be interesting to see how everyone feels about the subject. The poll allows for up to 5 selections and feel free to join the discussion.

I personally have mixed feelings and opinions on cloud computing and streaming services. I use cloud storage incidentally but prefer to avoid it. I love Youtube but am not a fan of streaming TV shows & movies. I absolutely refuse to stream games on any level. I would rather not game at all then stream games.

 

[Solaris17]

Hm, This is an interesting topic of discussion.

I have trouble understanding what both sides argue. From back when I was a sysadmin then to sysengineer to again where I am now, seeing the otherside really puts into perspective what "Cloud" really is.

Its simply the ability to access an application or service remotely on servers you may or may not manage.

Do you use freeNAS or PLEX at home? Do you stream videos from those servers or sync documents to the Owncloud or Nextcloud you host on a spare machine in your closet? Congrats, you are using the "cloud".

I really could go on forever but im in the middle of dinner. I do not use and will never use certain applications that utilize the cloud....such as gaming. However the "Cloud" is much more than end user applications. Even in the IT infrastructure world the "cloud" be it Azure/AWS/GCP and its related service O365/GSuite/Sharepoint probably run one or many if not all of the employers you have ever worked for.

In the early 2ks we were all about multi-server infrastructures and HA (High availability). Then in the mid 2ks we were wow'd by leaps in virtualization. Now we are taking Virtualization to the cloud to run multiple as in hundreds and sometimes even thousands of servers to help deliver products, or simply keep them private and leverage them as tools for internal workforce. Some even rent cluster space to mine bitcoin, or run scientific calculations.

I do think the "cloud" is huge, but it is very much what you make it. Cloud infrastructure and services are here to stay. Cloud SaaS like o365 Gsuite are also here to stay. Other things may follow suite like gaming etc. It at first wont be as predominant or as needed as say word. But the market is their for some.

Will offline backup or private/on prem servers or services always exist? I think so. No doubt that alot of services will offer something to someone via the "cloud" though.


Remember though, all context. "Cloud" existed long before some of these platforms.

 

[moproblems99]

Do you use freeNAS or PLEX at home? Do you stream videos from those servers or sync documents to the Owncloud or Nextcloud you host on a spare machine in your closet? Congrats, you are using the "cloud".

In regards to this thread, I don't consider anything I 100% control (location, hardware, management, access, etc) the cloud. AWS, Azure and the like, most certainly the cloud and I prefer not to use them if I can. Obviously, as a home internetz user, I have limited choices of what I can do and I am not running all my stuff in a DMZ co-located with my personal network. I would absolutely love to get a second line into my house but I just don't have the justification to pay for it.

I know many companies that make use of Azure AD.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Do you use freeNAS or PLEX at home? Do you stream videos from those servers or sync documents to the Owncloud or Nextcloud you host on a spare machine in your closet? Congrats, you are using the "cloud".

For me, no. Too much hassle and irritation. Building a standalone system and the network, wired or not, to service it is not worth the added expense when I could simply buy an extra drive for the systems in question and copy over the files to said drive. Don't have to worry about network congestion or making shares for some but not for all or managing network authoritatives.

or run scientific calculations.

This is an excellent use case scenario for cloud computing.

 

[Solaris17]

In regards to this thread, I don't consider anything I 100% control (location, hardware, management, access, etc) the cloud. AWS, Azure and the like, most certainly the cloud and I prefer not to use them if I can. Obviously, as a home internetz user, I have limited choices of what I can do and I am not running all my stuff in a DMZ co-located with my personal network. I would absolutely love to get a second line into my house but I just don't have the justification to pay for it.

I know many companies that make use of Azure AD.

Yup and I can see where you are coming from, thats how it is for most I think when it comes to arguing against it. Like I said I am neither for or against some of the "products" but thats all they are. Cloud is a "tool" more than it is a "thing". If that makes sense. Or atleast if you think about it like that, it gives it a bit of clarity when trying to make decisions on what you really like or dislike given the extra context.

 

[moproblems99]

Yup and I can see where you are coming from, thats how it is for most I think when it comes to arguing against it. Like I said I am neither for or against some of the "products" but thats all they are. Cloud is a "tool" more than it is a "thing". If that makes sense.

I agree. It's not that I am against them, I just don't want to use them. They have valid use cases for people (even for me) but just not my preference if I don't have to. I use both AWS and Azure for work.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I agree. It's not that I am against them, I just don't want to use them.

Exactly. However, what we all should actively resist is the forceful requirement of cloud usage. We have already seen this with software such as Adobe products, and as a form of DRM with games.

 

[Solaris17]

It's not that I am against them, I just don't want to use them.

That was careless of me to word it like that. I was not trying to make assumptions, but you certainly did hit the nail on the head of another big juxtaposition the arguments for or against seldom seem to tackle.

To want to use them and to be against "it" are two different points of view. Its technically 4 different arguments.

for or against a product

and for or against the/a product being SaaS on the "cloud"

 

[eidairaman1]

Local is faster by far plus you dont ave to worry about a cloud server going down if data is local.

 

[moproblems99]

That was careless of me to word it like that. I was not trying to make assumptions, but you certainly did hit the nail on the head of another big juxtaposition the arguments for or against seldom seem to tackle.

I didn't take it that way. I was pretty sure I knew what you meant, more just clarifying my position.

Exactly. However, what we all should actively resist is the forceful requirement of cloud usage. We have already seen this with software such as Adobe products, and as a form of DRM with games.

They can require whatever they want. I just won't use the product provided that I don't agree with what they are doing.

 

[rtwjunkie]

I prefer backups to my server, but absolutely critical data and photos are also synced with One Drive, which has never given me any trouble and also syncs with my phone.

I do stream movies from Netflix and Amazon, but my preferred movie and TV show storage and streaming is my own home server.

It's also where I keep an extra copy of every GOG game I own...just in case.

So, predominately a local network guy, but I see some uses for the cloud and use them.

 

[windwhirl]

Everything local. Cloud services limited as much as possible. I can make exceptions, but I have a few rules:
*Work-related stuff must remain either local or inside internal network. No cloud services allowed, only exception being government-provided and/or mandated services (some tax filing and certain information requests are done online today)
*No game-streaming (DRM and always-online games are enough of a pain already)
*If it is bandwidth intensive, avoid it (I have a 250 GB cap)

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Do you use freeNAS or PLEX at home? Do you stream videos from those servers or sync documents to the Owncloud or Nextcloud you host on a spare machine in your closet? Congrats, you are using the "cloud".

Those aren't clouds, they're servers.

You can tell something is cloud versus not because when you're running software, you can't point to a specific machine and say "it is running on that one" without doing a lot of research to figure out which instance is running on which hardware. Clouds are virtualization to the extreme: take a request, find available and suitable hardware, fulfill the request, then synchronize with the cloud informing others what transpired. It's redundant and flexible.

Clouds are great for general compute and storage but anything personal or high security shouldn't go on them. They're a great way for businesses to flexibly service clients and a way for individuals to not lose documents that would cost a fortune to rebuild but not a big deal if stolen.

About the only cloud I use on a regular basis is Steam Cloud for game save data. Woe is me when a game doesn't use it and I discover that after the fact (Wolfenstein: The New Order was my latest discovery).

 

[Frick]

Local is faster by far plus you dont ave to worry about a cloud server going down if data is local.

OTOH the (good) providers are guaranteed to have better backup systems than you. Depending a whole lot on the specifics obciously, but I trust Onedrive a whole lot more than my hard drives.

Those aren't clouds, they're servers.

You can tell something is cloud versus not because when you're running software, you can't point to a specific machine and say "it is running on that one" without doing a lot of research to figure out which instance is running on which hardware. Clouds are virtualization to the extreme: take a request, find available and suitable hardware, fulfill the request, then synchronize with the cloud informing others what transpired. It's redundant and flexible.

Clouds are great for general compute and storage but anything personal or high security shouldn't go on them. They're a great way for businesses to flexibly service clients and a way for individuals to not lose documents that would cost a fortune to rebuild but not a big deal if stolen.

About the only cloud I use on a regular basis is Steam Cloud for game save data. Woe is me when a game doesn't use it and I discover that after the fact (Wolfenstein: The New Order was my latest discovery).

I feel like you are talking about the end users perspective and sol's talking about the providers perspective. All of that redundancy and synchronizing has to be defined. It's not a black box.

 

[snuif09]

I really prefer cloud service for everything since it's safer than local storage when everything goes fubar. Even for gaming I can imagine it will be great for simpler single player games when the latency is cut down. 60ms is not a big deal when playing skyrim for CSGO it would be absolute shit for sure.

plus you dont ave to worry about a cloud server going down if data is local.

I think otherwise with current redundancy in the cloud, if your local system goes bad you are f'ed but when using cloud services it will just fire up another instance. A server might catch fire and you wouldn't even notice with stuff like AWS.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I really prefer cloud service for everything since it's safer than local storage when everything goes fubar. Even for gaming I can imagine it will be great for simpler single player games when the latency is cut down. 60ms is not a big deal when playing skyrim for CSGO it would be absolute shit for sure.



I think otherwise with current redundancy in the cloud, if your local system goes bad you are f'ed but when using cloud services it will just fire up another instance. A server might catch fire and you wouldn't even notice with stuff like AWS.

And what do you do when you don't have an internet connection? Or if your account gets hacked? As for safety, that depends on your perspective. Privacy and data security are a thing.

 

[snuif09]

And what do you do when you don't have an internet connection? Or if your account gets hacked? As for safety, that depends on your perspective. Privacy and data security are a thing.

Well my internet uptime is as good as my energy grid uptime so that would not matter if it was local or remote. And well yeah if your account gets hacked than you have some other thing to worry about first , like choosing better MFA methods and passwords in general, if you are that careless your local system is likely to be bricked by ransomware as well.

All the what if's for data security also account for local systems.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I feel like you are talking about the end users perspective and sol's talking about the providers perspective. All of that redundancy and synchronizing has to be defined. It's not a black box.

Definition of CLOUD

a visible mass of particles of condensed vapor (such as water or ice) suspended in the atmosphere of a planet (such as the earth) or moon; something resembling or suggesting a cloud: such as; a light filmy, puffy, or billowy mass seeming to float in the air… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

the computers and connections that support cloud computing

Note the plural forms of the words. Singular is a server. Many related servers is a cluster. A cluster with abstraction (virtualization) is a cloud.

 

[Apocalypsee]

I don't prefer to use cloud storage especially private stuff, the only time I use is to store my work-related documents on Dropbox so I could retrieve them anywhere. For videos I don't mind YouTube, but if there is something I'm gonna watch I prefer it to be on local storage. My country streaming is still poor and a lot of buffering.

 

[Solaris17]

I feel like you are talking about the end users perspective and sol's talking about the providers perspective. All of that redundancy and synchronizing has to be defined. It's not a black box.

He’s being difficult he also didn’t read that far head and not figure out I know what the cloud is. That’s the problem with cloud related arguments.

 

[silkstone]

I run my own cloud server from home synced in a few locations. I have a combination of Resilio Sync (a torrent based system) and sftp.
I get a huge amount of storage space along with encrypted nodes/backups at a couple of other locations. It works great for syncing my camera roll as well as having general dropbox like properties.

If I need to share my files with other people, I can copy it over to a file hosting system manually. One of my biggest gripes with cloud storage is the time it take to index the files during each boot, with google drive and dropbox, my files generally aren't ready for 15-30 minutes after a cold boot.

 

[Deleted member 158293]

For commercial purposes, cloud servers makes work quite a bit easier and is generally accepted practice. I stay far away from them for personal use though.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I have no problem with streaming from the cloud.

I do not and will not backup any of my sensitive data to the cloud. I do not believe it will get lost. In fact, I believe the opposite - there will quickly become more copies of it everywhere, most that I am not aware of, and many that I cannot delete even if I want to delete it! And I see that as a big problem.

I do not believe the cloud service providers will EVER be competent enough, or sincere enough to ensure my data is not hacked or compromised by badguys. Another big problem and reason I will not put my stuff there.

 

[R-T-B]

I have no problem with streaming from the cloud.

I do not and will not backup any of my sensitive data to the cloud. I do not believe it will get lost. In fact, I believe the opposite - there will quickly become more copies of it everywhere, most that I am not aware of, and many that I cannot delete even if I want to delete it! And I see that as a big problem.

I do not believe the cloud service providers will EVER be competent enough, or sincere enough to ensure my data is not hacked or compromised by badguys. Another big problem and reason I will not put my stuff there.

Ditto here. I know enough in this field to be afraid of any kind of privacy guarantees.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Privacy is one thing. Security it another. If you backup your computer, emails, and other sensitive data to the cloud, there could be account numbers, passwords, social security numbers, phone numbers and addresses in there too.