The Risk of a Meltdown In the Cloud 154
zrbyte writes "A growing number of complexity theorists are beginning to recognize some potential problems with cloud computing. The growing consensus is that bizarre and unpredictable behavior often emerges in systems made up of 'networks of networks,' such as a business using the computational resources of a cloud provider. Bryan Ford at Yale University in New Haven says the full risks of the migration to the cloud have yet to be properly explored. He points out that complex systems can fail in many unexpected ways, and he outlines various simple scenarios in which a cloud could come unstuck."
Oscillator (Score:5, Informative)
The TLDR version of the article is that load balancers can oscillate.
Its spun into a cloudy-thing because thats trendy, but the basic argument is nothing new.
Perhaps there's more "meat" in the original paper?
One common thread is that nothing is ever really "new" in computer science / IT. Clouds are just a rehash of ye olde mainframe outsourcing from decades ago. I worked at a place that was doing that in the early to mid 90s.
Example: Kindle's cloud (Score:4, Informative)
A coworker discovered when he upgraded from Kindle 1 to Kindle 2, many of the items he had purchased were no longer in the cloud (as amazon had promised). Most of what he lost was periodicals like magazines, but also some books. He was not a happy camper and asked for a refund for those books he could no longer acces, but Amazon simply told him they are not responsible.
That was back in 2009 if I recall correctly so maybe some of the bugs have been worked-out, but I stored it in memory as a reason why I won't trust the cloud to store any books I might purchase (or anything else). I try to back up these things to USB drive and googlemail storage.
Re:It has to happen (Score:5, Informative)
I am sorry but we have been virtualizing things by one name or anything going back to 1960's mainframes. In other words almost as long as commercial computing has existed.
The cloud is a different matter. The issue is not with virtualization but with creating dependencies on and between parties who don't really talk to each other.
The cloud (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why not stick to real risks? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, and the amount of data we work with is massively bigger. "Cloud" is a massive victory of marketing, not of technology.