Virtualization & Cloud Computing - Where to start?
cloud, virtualization
Solution
Have a look at Microsoft's Azure - http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx
And Amazon's Cloud - http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
At the moment, Cloud Computing is banded about and I'm sure that for most marketing purposes all it means is a 'hosted service'. This means that rather than install the applications on a client's hardware, the vendor agrees to charge a subscription fee and host it on their own site (or a third-party).
The term "Cloud" is used because when depicting "T'Internet" in techie diagrams, we draw a picture of a cloud. That's it.
In reality, it's just used as a big, cheap storage space at the moment. PAYG-computing is the ideal, but we're a few years from that yet.
Problem
Virtualization & Cloud Computing. I know these are very vague, nebulous words that mean so many different things. They are also the topics that are most discussed today. However, because they are so new, they are not taught in schools. I was lucky to have couple lectures on virtualization technology and read a paper about it. I now want to learn more about these two topics, because I know they are one of "HOT" topics out there, and staying on the "bleeding-edge" side is what I must do as a developer. Where should I start to learn about virtualization & cloud computing? Anything from articles to academic papers to blogs to books would be great. I would like to learn everything I can from architecture to deployment on cloud Because my lack of knowledge in both areas, I don't know what I should expect. Please fill me in :) Collections Technologies: Amazon's EC2 Microsoft Azure Articles/Papers: Sun's Cloud Computing Article Xen and Arts of Virtualization Google's Distributed System Educational Site Video: PDC 2008 Azure Services Platform In the News: Sys-Con Virtualization