how to scale into the cloud using process? example computing simple average

[Steve Davis]

On May 26, 4:58 am, Ulf Wiger <ulf.wi...@REDACTED> wrote:
> Steve Davis wrote:
> > 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
>
> So, in the old days, when computers were physical, steam-powered
> beasts that you could actually see and touch, I believe this
> would have been called a 'cluster'.
>

On May 26, 4:58 am, Ulf Wiger <ulf.wi...@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> So, in the old days, when computers were physical, steam-powered
> beasts that you could actually see and touch, I believe this
> would have been called a 'cluster'.
>

Perhaps the definition should read "to meet unlimited user demand".

I suspect that the big issue with doing this is probably not the
processing part but the (persistent) data part.

BigTable and S3 solve this by accepting "eventual
consistency" (generally a few seconds but can be more). For many
applications this is enough (e.g. google search), since the now-ness/
consistency of the data is not mission critical.

Where it is mission critical, even a clustered transactional/
relational layer will eventually suffer unacceptable performance
degradation.

I'm not sure I have seen a solution to that, and I'm not even sure
that it is physically possible. Of course, just because I personally
cannot see how, that doesn't mean it isn't possible.

/s