Template talk:Cloud computing: Difference between revisions

Template Purpose

This template was created for use on the cloud computing article as an illustration by example of the top level taxonomy or "layers" of same. It was not intended to advertise specific products nor be extended with arbitrary categories, rather to give a small number (5-10) of the best examples available. Documentation updated accordingly. -- samj _in^out 16:43, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The template purpose should not be dictated by one person. We can and should have a discussion about this. As I've written below, the guiding principle, IMHO should be utility (e.g., an extended "see also" table for related articles) rather than illustration (e.g., layers in the "cloud computing" stack). Besides, I don't believe a logically-consistent layering structure is possible yet with something as amorphous and poorly defined as cloud computing. If you do your job well you'll just end up describing networking layers.LirazSiri (talk) 07:54, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It is well accepted that there are three layers (infrastructure, platform, application) and the other two (clients, servers) are there to provide a functional taxonomy - that is, one that can cater for everything we need to classify - without polluting the application and infrastructure layers. This came about by necessity following persistent injection and reinjection of inappropriate articles (not unlike your "advertising" of the TurnKey article, no offense). It appears that you are angling to change the rules so as to be able to include the TurnKey article, in which case I would ask that you consider the well-being of the project (in terms of creating the most useful article possible) rather than the well-being of your project. -- samj _in^out 22:00, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Regarding the layering scheme: All models are wrong but some models are useful. Where appliances fits depends on what you mean by cloud computing but in any case at some point you need a preconfigured system automatically deployed for handling the job at hand without manual installation/setup. None of the cloud computing server platforms (e.g., Amazon EC2, RackSpace Clouds) can actually do anything of value without them. Sure you don't necessarily need a vendor and you could setup your own appliances, but that's inefficient. Better to have systems experts collaborate in the setting of an open source project to figure out the best integrations and then make it easy to deploy that on a range of platforms. That's what TurnKey is about. It's not about me personally. If somebody saves a few hours of work I don't benefit from that in any way except for some goodwill if they know I'm involved. Most users don't know and don't care who the developers are. Heck I don't know who contributes to most of the open source projects I use, though I would buy them a beer if I ever met them.
• Also there's no need to keep parading my involvement with TurnKey in every single response. I've always been open about that so it's not useful to "out me" on it. Yes, I started and actively contribute to an open source appliances project that is closely related to cloud computing (at least in the sense of cloud computing with virtual servers) and I believe we should have a category for that along with the other vendors in this space. TurnKey just happens to be the only open source appliance vendor (there are a few other proprietary ones). I think that's significant not just in the value it can provide users right now but also in that it's a nice platform for further development by others in the community who are interested in this stuff. Since we've introduced TKLPatch an encouraging number of new appliances have been built by the community. I'm just happy to have bootstrapped an open source project others are interested in. Before I always felt a bit guilty for taking so much from open source and not giving back. Cheers. LirazSiri (talk) 23:20, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Relevancy

I am not sure Facebook or Android have to do with cloud computing... IMHO cleanup required.--Kozuch (talk) 10:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Facebook, the apps aren't run in the cloud. Sure, they're internet apps but they're run by the developers. --TheSeer (TalkˑContribs) 06:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, works for me. -- samj _in^out 20:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

What goes in?

I've just purged a couple of non-notable entries in the template. Anything that goes into the template pops up across many pages, so we should be much stricter about what goes in here than anything else.

• Things should be discussed here before being added, especially whole new groups
• Only highly notable examples should go in.
• Stuff that goes in without discussion ought to be pulled and discussed, especially if there is any sign of CoI issues.

Thoughts? SteveLoughran (talk) 13:41, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

The point is to help people understand what each layer is/does, not to advertise solutions. Examples should be household names and there should only be a few (5-10) at each layer. For a start you can rip out anything without its own Wikipedia article, and even then check to see whether the article shouldn't be prodded or AfD'd. -- samj _in^out 20:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

IMHO, the purpose should be to provide readers with a quick overview of the different aspects associated closely with cloud computing plus links of further interest. Agree with Steve that new groups should be discussed first and we should include only the most notable in each category rather than an exhaustive list of every vendor under the sun. Currently some of the sections are getting too bloated with not very notable examples. Disagree with Sam that we should try to punish new entries we don't like with AfD or prod for deletion. That's too aggressive and violates WP:AGF. Also it's likely to foster unnecessary animosity between editors. Let's keep editorial control in-band. LirazSiri (talk) 08:05, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposals

These are missing the point - the idea was to illustrate each of the layers and provide a high level taxonomy, not a linkfarm/coatrack for any vendor that cares to associate themselves with cloud (which is pretty much every vendor by the way). -- samj _in^out 20:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

"The idea was to illustrate each of the layers and provide a taxonomy?" Who's idea? What's wrong with a structured related articles table? LirazSiri (talk) 08:12, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

What's *right* with a "structured related articles table"? You're presumably angling for inclusion of your TurnKey article, but did it occur to you that if we're to dig that deep how much other stuff we'd have to include? -- samj _in^out 21:44, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Group: Algorithms

I propose a new group, algorithms. Distributed Hash Table, MapReduce, PageRank Column Table are all examples of datacentre-scale algorithms that merit a mention. By linking to the algorithms, we can stop people sticking in links to every implementation of DHT, MapReduce, etc. SteveLoughran (talk) 13:46, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. LirazSiri (talk) 21:51, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that actually sounds fairly sensible (but I'd want to see the list first). -- samj _in^out 21:44, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Group: Technologies

The other thing we could list is technology areas (As opposed to specific products)

Technologies would be areas of computing common to many views of what Cloud computing is : Virtualization, automated deployment, [[web services (in the purest form, not just WS-*), datacenters, distributed file systems. These aren't protocols, and they aren't specific products. Indeed, by listing the technologies we could ensure that implementations of specific technologies get added to the technology pages, rather than having people add links to their favourite/personal product in this template.

If nobody objects, I will start a listing of the above technologies. And explictly purge any attempts to add a single product into the listing. That is not a technology, it's a prodcut.

Sounds good. LirazSiri (talk) 21:49, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

done. SteveLoughran (talk) 00:28, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's use the same (darker) background as for standards, so as to differentiate the layers from the "collections". -- samj _in^out 21:44, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Group: Appliances

Earlier I attempted to add an Appliances section which SteveLoughran removed with the following rational: "Templates may be part of the EC2 world, but not in other stacks.". Regardless of what you call them (or how they're implemented), pre-integrated software stacks are an important part of on-demand server provisioning. There's little point in provisioning a server that isn't configured for the role you need it. That's true whether you are provisioning a server in EC2, GoGrid, or on a private cloud (e.g., running VMWare infrastructure or Xen). Cloud computing users are just like everyone else in the IT world in that they want stuff to just work.LirazSiri (talk) 21:49, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I felt it was over biased towards EC2-as Cloud Computing to have a whole row of appliances in there. If we had a technology row on virtualisation it could be something that includes appliances as one entry, alongside PXE/Kickstart driven VM instantiation on demand from a list of RPM/deb files. SteveLoughran (talk) 09:13, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

No no there's nothing EC2 specific about appliances. How you implement an appliance is not that important. What's important is that you're pre-integrating a system to align with a particular narrow usage scenario into some kind of package which can then reproduce the result on scale. How you distribute the result is a relatively minor practical detail. The result can be packaged as an ISO, a VMDK HD image, AMI, or a set of interpreted instructions such as a list of RPM packages and preseeded configuration variables. It's still an appliance. Cloud computing is mainly about economics, and cloud computing and appliances go hand in hand because the economics work out. Instead of integrating over and over again and having to test each inconsistent result separately you are leveraging economies of scale and put more resources into creating the very best integration of components and then "mass producing" it with minimum marginal cost. That's especially important when you are provisioning servers on the fly. LirazSiri (talk) 03:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm returning to this topic as I'm watching the conflict between Liraz and SamJ. I propose that we create the technologies section, create a "Cloud Appliances" page that can contain technology-neutral coverage of this area. Just listing various people who have tooling or appliance VMs misses the point, and will end up being a WP:EL troublespot on the category listing itself. Similarly, we need something for Cloud Infrastructure APIs that looks at the various APIs, lists some requirements (long haul, security), problems: politics, notifications, etc, and it can be somewhere the various APIs can be looked at. Let's resolve this conflict by giving VM appliances a name and a place, and index that under Cloud Technologies. SteveLoughran (talk) 23:23, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree that "technologies" is a good section to have but unless we further edit the cloud computing template substantially the template will be unbalanced. In other words there's an inconsistency with the way cloud appliances entries are handled vs other areas of the cloud computing stack such as "platforms" and "infrastructure" which do list specific projects and vendors. For example, why do specific infrastructure vendors such as FlexiScale and GoGrid or even an open source project such as Nimbus deserve as much weight as an entire group of appliance vendors? LirazSiri (talk) 03:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Wherever they go, they definitely don't belong here. -- samj _in^out 23:40, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: remove Servers

I have to agree with LirazShiri's actions at rm-ing the server line. We could have a datacenter hardware corner that looks at the hardware issues -and if you don't think there are problems in building power-efficient high availability datacentre hardware then you don't even know what the problems are, what PUE stands for or what limitations DNS encounters in this world. You may see things like AWS banning multicast IP but not understand why that is, or why vendor costs are the way they are. But having a row listing HW vendors is just doomed, everyone will end up battling over what goes in. SteveLoughran (talk) 00:11, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The source of the "Servers" and "Clients" layers is to capture the physical devices and operating systems that power and consume cloud computing services respectively. Without it you end up with things like CloudRack and Cisco UCS as well as virtualisation platforms like VMware trying to creep into the Infrastructure layer as well as mobiles, browsers, operating systems etc. creeping into Applications from above. Remember, this template should reflect/illustrate what is in the cloud computing article. -- samj _in^out 02:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

First, I disagree with the notion that the cloud computing template has to be some kind of table of contents for the cloud computing article. Rather than try to capture the one true taxonomy of cloud computing we should strive to maximize utility for our readers. In practice the template which is included on many cloud computing related articles serves as a resource for providing further links of interest to other related articles on Wikipedia. It's telling that the Server section doesn't even link to proper articles but rather to vendors. Also I stand by my original assertion that cloud computing has nothing to do with the hardware vendors listed. Cloud is a software/economic paradigm. You can implement "a cloud" with any hardware. Where do we draw the line? I bet the vendors listed only account for a tiny insignificant portion of the actual hardware used in actual cloud computing deployments. Conversely you could use the hardware marketed for "Cloud computing" in a software/economic configuration that nobody would genuinely identify with cloud computing. The Servers category is a poor fit for this template. LirazSiri (talk) 03:49, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, but's not really "server" so much as "datacenter technologies and infrastructure". SteveLoughran (talk) 17:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

• Like it or not, this template is attached to the cloud computing article in order to illustrate the various layers. If you persist in hijacking it then I shall simply remove it from the articles to which it is attached and create another in its place which serves the purpose for which it was intended. It is stunning to me that you are, even at this late stage, continuing to argue your position given that you have an absolutely blatant conflict of interest and have already proven yourself incapable of acting reasonably. -- samj _in^out 04:30, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry, but I don't get it. What does my involvement with TurnKey have to do with removing the servers section from the cloud computing template? Also, other editors can have a say in what the template is/should be used for. None of us own it. Am I really being so unreasonable? LirazSiri (talk) 07:42, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: removing that silly graphic

That silly cloud graphic in the template is as about non-descriptive as it gets. What value does the word "cloud" encompassed by a squiggly line add to the template? LirazSiri (talk) 07:58, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

The cloud image was a placeholder that I had intended to replace when something better comes along. So far nothing has but I have some ideas. -- samj _in^out 21:47, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'd like to hear more about those ideas but in the meantime that image isn't contributing anything. There's no need for a placeholder in a template. Think about it like this: if I made that image would you still advocate keeping it there? LirazSiri (talk) 23:01, 28 February 2010 (UTC)