5 lessons from the Cloud about Efficient Environments

August 2, 2010

The week before last our team decided to divide and conquer to cover two simultaneous events.  Half of us headed to Portland, Oregon for  OSCON and the other half stayed here in Austin to participate in hostingcon.

The Hostingcon keynote

Among those participating in hostingcon was my boss Andy Rhodes who gave the keynote on Tuesday.  Here’s are the slides Andy delivered:

(If the presentation doesn’t appear above, click here to view it.)

The idea of the keynote was to share with hosters the five major lessons we have learned over the last several years working with a unique set of customers operating at hyperscale.  Those five lessons are:

  1. TCO models are not one size fits all.  Build a unique model that represents your specific environment and make sure that you get every dollar of cost in there.  Additionally, make sure that your model is flexible enough to accommodate new info and market changes.
  2. Don’t let the status quo hold you back.  Not adapting soon enough and delays in rolling out solutions can cost you dearly.
  3. The most expensive server/storage node is the one that isn’t used (sits idle for 6-12 weeks) or the one you don’t have when you need it most.
  4. Don’t let Bad Code dictate your hardware architecture.
  5. Don’t waste time on “Cloud Washing.”  Talk to your customers about real pain points and how to solve them.

The WHIR’s take

The WHIR did a good write up of the keynote, here is the concluding paragraph:

So, it seems that cloud best practices will help companies reduce their physical infrastructure, which seems to be a bit counter-intuitive, given that Rhodes is representing a hardware provider. But it makes sense. Given the never-ending list of projects for IT staff, and as they drive down costs, their business will grow, and they’ll be able to increase their IT spend for innovative efforts. “What we’re hoping to do is let you do more with less.”

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Onlive’s gaming cloud powered by custom Dell servers

June 15, 2010

Today at E3, OnLive Inc is kicking off the roll out of its cloud gaming service.  OnLive, whose motto is “Just Play,” leverages broadband and the cloud to deliver on-demand gaming titles directly to users’ PCs, Macs or even TVs.

Square Enix's Batman: Arkham Asylum -- one of the first batch of games available from OnLive

This new service could prove to be a real “game changer.”  As Dell Data Center Solutions director Andy Rhodes, helping with the launch at E3 explains, “I see it as the start as of a move of processing power from consoles into data centers…from the center of the living room into the data center.”

Building the OnLive Cloud

So what’s behind this gaming cloud, Dell of course 🙂 (well, at least a good part of it).  The Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) group began working with OnLive a few years back to design and build custom-tailored systems for the OnLive platform.

The problem statement for the solution was to create an infrastructure that supported the streaming of HD-quality video game over the internet, drove down the total cost of ownership and allowed OnLive to scale quickly as the company grows.  The DCS team worked directly with the folks from OnLive to architect an ultra-dense and uber-power efficient infrastructure solution designed around OnLive’s super secret hardware components and software.  Thousand of these customized systems are now deployed at OnLive data centers around the country.

Plug and Play Racks

By leveraging the DCS supply chain and fulfillment chops, Dell is able to deliver pre-integrated fully racked solutions that can be hooked up and powered on within hours of arriving at an OnLive data center.  Going forward Dell will continue to work with OnLive to create new infrastructure architectures for future generations of the service.

Game on! (and on, and on and on)

Electronic Arts' Mass Attack 2: available via OnLive

Who’s on First?

The initial batch of 23 titles available to OnLive subscribers include:

  • Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft)
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum (Square-Enix)
  • Borderlands (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
  • Dragon Age: Origins (Electronic Arts)
  • Just Cause 2 (Square-Enix)
  • Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts)
  • NBA 2K10 (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
  • Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction (Ubisoft)

Extra Credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Dell’s Cloud Plans Grab Virtual Ink

February 9, 2010

The Friday before last my boss Andy and I had a call with James Niccolai of IDG.  We chatted about what we’ve been up to at Dell as well as teed up what we have in store for the near distant future.

Here is the result:

To get the full scoop you should read the articles but here are some summary bits from the PCworld article:

The DCS [Data Center Solutions] unit was formed about three years ago to help Dell get more business from large Internet firms. Its engineers often spend several weeks on-site with those companies to design low-cost, low-power systems that meet the special requirements of their search, social networking and other Web applications.

That hands-on role means the DCS group designs servers only for large companies, such as Ask.com and Microsoft’s Azure division, which order tens of thousands of servers per year. But that’s about to change, Dell executives said in an interview.

Later this year Dell will turn some of those custom servers into standardized products and sell them to companies that order lower volumes of systems, including enterprises building “private cloud” environments in their data centers, and a second tier of smaller Internet companies.

“What we’ve found is, there are a whole bunch of other customers who want access to those designs but who are not buying in those types of quantities,” said Andy Rhodes, a director with Dell’s DCS group. “So the big thing we’re solving now, and we’ll talk more publically about over the next couple of months, is how to provide more of that capability to many, many more customers.”

Stay tuned for more 🙂

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George