Engineers have one very keen sense in life, and that is to ferret out usefulness from perceived buzz. Trained as such, unless we are reading the weather report, the word “cloud” sends our buzz-o-meters into an alarm-sounding red zone. Nevertheless, let’s take a look at how the cloud might apply to us. Clearly, it has taken hold in the consumer world, and has possible compelling uses in many engineering domains.

Figure 1. Architecture of an onsite compile farm with one server and multiple workers.
Cloud computing was not simply invented, but has evolved rapidly from the primordial ooze comprised of the rapid improvements in performance of compute power, expanding network bandwidth, and networking infrastructure. The early mainframes started off as single-program, high-horsepower computing machines. As compute capacity of mainframes improved, machine administrators faced the practical problem of utilizing multiple machines at capacity, which drove innovation in job scheduling, machine virtualization, and individual user terminals.

With this technology, multiple users could utilize the mainframe with the appearance that they had their own computing environment — running their programs in a virtualized sandbox. As mainframes began to look more and more like a bank of server PCs stitched together through networking, the infrastructure of LAN and the Internet became widely available. The cloud is simply the next step in the evolution where many physically co-located PCs are stitched together into a larger computing unit that can then be virtualized to provide many users, regardless of location and the power of their terminal, the illusion that they have lots of computers or one giant computer at their disposal.

What the Cloud Is, and Isn’t

What is the difference between the cloud and the Internet? Is it the same as a network-connected mainframe? The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.1 Let’s dissect this definition a little to understand the defining characteristics of cloud computing.

“On-demand network access” means that the cloud can be quickly accessed from anywhere, from any device with a network data connection. Of course, a computer with a wired or Wi-Fi connection is an obvious access point. It becomes more interesting when you think of other data connections abstracted to look like a simple Internet connection, like a smart phone on the cell network or a WiMAX mobile networking device.

“Shared pool,” also called multi-tenancy, works like any other pool of shared resources. Many users can use reduced resources during slow times and ramp up during peak times, perhaps while other users are ramping down. The pool supports the ebbs and flows of the various tenants more efficiently than if each user provisioned an environment that supports only their own needs. It is like the ultimate commune of computing.

“Computing resources” does not just mean “How many boxes do you want?” Resources in the cloud are modular and highly configurable. Users can configure their cloud environments with different processors, RAM sizes, operating systems, applications, storage levels, download/upload bandwidths, infrastructure layers, and services.

“Rapidly provisioned and released” is the key component for the scalability of cloud computing, allowing the pool of resources to quickly reconfigure based on the needs and loads of the users. Many self-hosted operations report that their servers run at 10 to 20% utilization under normal operating conditions in order to account for periodic extraordinary usage patterns. Quick provisioning dynamically adjusts for more efficient usage and a significant cost savings in many circumstances.

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