[erlang-questions] how to scale into the cloud using process? example computing simple average

Steve Davis steven.charles.davis@REDACTED
Tue May 26 11:25:06 CEST 2009


I'll have a stab,,,

"cloud" the mechanism by which application processing and data is
_automatically distributed_ across hardware resources to meet user
demand.

...so I'm not sure that one exists.

/s


On May 26, 3:00 am, Joe Armstrong <erl...@REDACTED> wrote:
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 8:01 AM, Kid Erlang <kiderl...@REDACTED> wrote:
> > On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 2:26 AM, Bengt Kleberg <bengt.kleb...@REDACTED>
> > wrote:
>
> >> The return value of spawn/1 is the (Erlang) process identity. If you
> >> want data from a process you have to send it (using !) and receive it
> >> (using receive).
>
> > okay I have rewrite my project to use receive with spawn, but I still do not
> > get how to handle errors?  especially in the cloud?
>
> >> It would be a good idea to read one of the Erlang books or the online
> >> documentation.
>
> > what book is best for me to read?
>
> Modesty prevents me from recommending "Programming Erlang".
>
> > and I cannot find online documentation
>
> http://www.erlang.org/doc.html
>
> > for how to use spawn + receive + messages to scale into the cloud?
>
> What is a cloud?
>
> << seriously! - Just what is a cloud? -
>
>    I asked myself just this question the other evening -
>
>  Now I did actually go to "a glory glory hallelujah, the cloud is COOL
> and WOW - MAN - TWITTER ..." meeting in London - each participant was
> given 45 seconds to explain their next greatest "WOW COOL" cloud
> application to an assembly of what appeared to be thirteen year old
> programmers (the kind that think that PHP is cool) and 25+ ish wannabe
> business types
> in shiny suits" - I stood at the back for listening for a few minutes
> with a group of like-minded souls - after 10 minutes we could take it
> no more - we retired to the pub.
>
>    So the the cloud appears to be "a computer at the other end of a
> bit of wire, that
> somebody else will setup and manage so that you can just pay the bills
> and use the thing
> and have non of the pain and hassle of actually owning and running a
> pile of junk that might on a good day be called a computer."
>
>    This is actually nothing new - we had things called "servers" for a
> while now - and
> network computing and clusters and virtual machines.
>
>    What seems to be pertinent is management - from my point of view
> (and I'm thinking Erlang
> here) what I want is a distributed Erlang node up and running on a
> remote machine and
> I don't care zoot dinkels about how it got there. Since management is
> "out of band" I could
> happily manage this through a web interface - all need is a form
> saying "create N erlang nodes"
> I click on "doit" and N erlang nodes are are installed an the
> cheapest, lowest-latency, largest
> storage, fastest bandwidth kick-arse machine in the universe (has
> anybody written this?)
>
> But I digress ...
>
> Tentative answer
>
>      cloud = "a set of abstractions"
>
>      so what are the abstractions?
>
>     The Amazon Web Services says essentially
>
>      Cloud = "CPU + Storage + Queues + management"
>
>      (where CPU = EC2, storage = simple DB etc ...)
>
>      They also have an abstraction "elastic map reduce" (interesting)
>
>      Basing things on messages and queue is of course "the erlang way"
>      (ie you send a message to a process mailbox, in order to get it
> to do something)
>      but for reliable large-scale computing we would need persistent queues with
>      reliable delivery etc.
>
>      I guess a good start point for an erlang cloud would be "a set of
> erlang nodes"
>      (that's the "CPU") - Rabbit MQ (for queues) and a database
> back-end of your choice.
>
>      Then you have to manage the system - create all the nodes etc,
> make it secure etc.
>      This seems to be a mess - how do I create 1000 EC2 instances each
> with an Erlang node?
>      I just want Erlang, but am forced to install a host OS just for
> the purpose. What is the
>      minimal OS I need to do this?
>
>      ...
>
>     I'll stop here
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > that is my main worry: say I have something that uses spawn + receive +
> > messages.  how do I make it scale into the cloud?  where can I find online
> > documentation on this?  i want my erlang program to run on as many systems
> > as I need it to for however many users.  how do I do that?
>
> > - Kid Erlang
>
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