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Cage Match: Cloud vs Virtual vs Hosted

To me the term “cloud computing” itself is so vague as be just about meaningless, yet it carries with it all kinds of connotations.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow,
It’s cloud illusions I recall,
I really don’t know clouds, at all.
– Joni Mitchell

I have so many questions.

  • Does “cloud” imply virtualised?
  • What’s the difference between a cloud host and a virtual host?
  • What advantages are offered by cloud hosts vs physical hosts?
  • Or a cloud host vs a VPS?
  • How do cloud architectures differ?
  • How does cloud hosting differ as applications scale up to very large?
  • Or down to very small?
  • Are there applications that should not be run on cloud services? Why?
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A SqueezeCenter Server For Under $100?

Some time ago I published a project about How To: DIY Music Server Using FreeNAS, SlimNAS and an H-P T5700. This remains one of the more popular items around here, generating over 6,000 page views in the past 12 months alone.

A couple of new posts to a related thread over in the forum at Small Net Builder points me to a new take on the project. Kevin Hanson has reworked it to address…How to: Building a Squeezebox Server for under $100… Yes, it can be done…

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Seeking Opinions: Netbooks

hp-compaq-8510pI suspect that there is a netbook in my near-term future. My travel to and from Toronto last week reinforced this sense. At three hours that flight is about as long as you’d want to be on a 50 seat regional jet. Such is the reality of air travel these days. Smaller aircraft are being used on longer flights so that they can still offer a few flights a day on less traveled routes. While really do like my HP NX8510p notebook it’s just too large to be useful in small spaces, like on a regional jet.

Further, a lot of the stuff that I’m doing these days is “in-the-cloud” as they say. So many of my activities don’t require major applications installed on the platform before me. It would seem that a netbook with some reasonable amount of local storage would make some sense for me. I’m not sure I’d go for one with inboard 3G ‘net access. They seem to costly at the moment.

Tim Higgins over at Small Net Builder has been in a protracted search for a netbook. He’s actually taken delivery of three different models;

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