Posted on 03/15/2012 3:14:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The cloud could suffer the same kind of collapses that plague the financial system, according to an analysis of the unrecognised risks of cloud computing.
The cloud is essentially a metaphor for a network of computers in which computational tasks and resources can be shared.
The big idea here is that users simply rent the computing power, the storage or an application for as long as they need it without having to invest in the infrastructure behind it.
That makes computing cheaper, easier and more efficient.
There are well known problems of course. The most obvious relates to guaranteeing the security of data when it is stored on computers that that a user does not own and that many others can also access. But various solutions have emerged such as encrypting data before it is sent to the cloud. For that reason, the migration to the cloud is proceeding at full speed in many places.
That may be folly. Today, Bryan Ford at Yale University in New Haven says that the full risks of this migration have yet to be properly explored. He points out that complex systems can fail in many unexpected ways and outlines various simple scenarios in which a cloud could come unstuck.
In the worst case scenario, a cloud could experience a full meltdown that could seriously threaten any business that relies on it.
Ford identifies a number of different possibilities. One example involves an application provider who bases its services in the cloud, such as a cloud -based advertising service.
He imagines a simple scenario in which the cloud operator distributes the service between two virtual servers, using a power balancing program to switch the load from one server to the other as conditions demand.
However, the application provider may also have a load balancing program that distributes the customer load.
Now Ford imagines the scenario in which both load balancing programs operate with the same refresh period, say once a minute. When these periods coincide, the control loops start sending the load back and forth between the virtual servers in a positive feedback loop.
"The two controllers each compensate with a stronger action causing a larger swing the next minute," says Ford. Clearly, this is a process that must eventually spiral out of control and crash the system.
Ford is careful to put the risk in context: "This simplistic example might be unlikely to occur in exactly this form on real systems—or might be quickly detected and “fixed” during development and testing—but it suggests a general risk," he says.
In fact, this kind of coupling between an application provider and the infrastructure provider is inevitable, particularly when the cloud provider's system is opaque so that external users cannot see the internal control loop cycles and so avoid them,
"Non-transparent layering structures...may create unexpected and potentially catastrophic failure correlations, reminiscent of financial industry crashes," he says.
But the lack of transparency is only part of the story. A more general risk arises when systems are complex because seemingly unrelated parts can become coupled in unexpected ways.
A growing number of complexity theorists are beginning to recognise this problem. The growing consensus is that bizarre and unpredictable behaviour often emerges in systems made up of "networks of networks".
An obvious example is the flash crashes that now plague many financial markets in which prices plummet dramatically for no apparent reason. Understanding how and why this happens is the focus of much research.
Given that cloud is clearly becoming a network of networks that is rapidly growing in complexity, it's not hard to imagine that the computing equivalent of flash crashes are not just likely but inevitable.
Of course, it would be easy for cloud providers to say that their systems are carefully designed and monitored and entirely risk free in this respect. That would be an understandable knee jerk reaction from a PR department.
But it ought to be a worrying sign for any customer, indicating that the providers simply do not understand the problem, let alone have a solution for it.
Ford concludes with the following: "We should study [these unrecognised risks] before our socioeconomic fabric becomes inextricably dependent on a convenient but potentially unstable computing model."
Clearly, an eminently sensible suggestion.
Really a cloud? I am gonna put my data up their to be looked at on their servers by the socialist weasels over at Google, Apple and Microsoft?
It’s like anything, you have to do a rigorous Benefit/Risk analysis to determine what to put in the Cloud, and what to keep under your control.
Does anyone know the outcome of the Amazon Cloud Crash? I haven’t heard much about it lately.
There are ways where you can host programs in the Cloud, but keep your data behind the firewall.
I am looking at deploying some of our apps using Google App Engine, to allow access to our employees from anywhere, but we use Google’s Secure Data Connector to communicate with the back-end database, which lies behind our firewall.
Anyone who claims to be an IT professional using the word “cloud” to describe where your data or applications are held is not to be taken seriously.
Amen
I’ve done the risk/benefit analysis.
No way does anybody get a hold of my data, but me.
You betcha....
Use Amazon, that limits it to the socialists there.
That way I can get a high performing server with unlimited storage for $25 a month, encrypt the data, and store backups locally.
Or I can buy my own server for $20,000 and another $20,000 for the firewall and associated equipment.
hmmmm
We just did a pen test for a company who has everything local. We gained full admin access to their entire network and all their data.
yeah heaven forbid we should let the market have any influence, shudder
A meltdown of the cloud however, primarily effects only absolute idiots.
Not surprising.
If it’s connected to the web, there is no such thing as security.
The way things are going, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft are eventually, in all intents and purposes, going to be part of the government. If they have access to your data, the government is going to have defacto access to your data.
If you use the internet they already have access to the data. Unless you encrypt and even then that will only slow them down.
What the heck are you buying?
66TB server....
24
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1
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3
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Subtotal: $9,662.67
“Or I can buy my own server for $20,000 and another $20,000 for the firewall and associated equipment.”
That’s a fairly significant server, you must have a lot of customers.
They deserve to have you take better care of their information than the “Cloud”.
$20k is nothing for a server when you are building high reliability systems which need a lot of processing power.
One project for a large banking system spent about $14 million on servers. Some of the servers were $3.2 million each. They were the size of a fridge and the expansion cabinet was equally large. Had to reinforce the datacenter floor and add additional power to the building.
“They deserve to have you take better care of their information than the “Cloud”.”
HA, go back to the minor leagues.
I have customers who use amazon servers at night for extra processing. They code in the building process so their app creates the servers, copies apps and data, does the processing, copies the data back, and then shuts the servers down thereby stopping the financial charges. Saves them huge amounts of money. Its processing on demand minus the datacenter, costs, or labor required to build and maintain the infrastructure.
They use local servers for the highly sensitive data.
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