Skip to main content

maRunga, in the sky

Everyone picked up on Google’s clouds misfortune, but back on July 2, 2012, New York Times reported: “On Friday night, lightning in Virginia took out machines that were part of Amazon Web Services, which hundreds of companies use for data storage and computation. Well-known sites like Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram were not accessible for hours.”

On October 22, 2012, GIGAOM reported: “Here we go again. Problems with Amazon’s Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service have brought down Foursquare, Reddit, Heroku, and other popular websites. Once again, Amazon’s U.S. East data center in Virginia is ground zero for these issues”

Back in 2011 Earnst&Young published a paper “Cloud computing issues and impacts”, as part of their Global Technology Industry Discussion Series. Interesting reading:

http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Cloud_computing_issues,_impacts_and_insights/$File/Cloud%20computing%20issues%20and%20impacts_14Apr11.pdf

So, unguarded clouds may get us all in trouble? I think that. What about the guarded ones? HP Clouds program does not address NonStop participation in the solutions. Not yet. We hope to change that with maRunga!

We spent a few hours last week discussing the name for a new InfraSoft product that will provide a shield against unexpected failures of the computers that are providing the resources as part of the cloud. It is no longer “pie in the sky”; it is a well-defined project, with plans, deliverable and a name!

Choosing a name is always fun; it needed to be an Australian Aboriginal word so that it is clear that the product comes from the same company that brought uLinga to market; yes it will share the underlying framework with uLinga, of course. The Team voted, and it will be maRunga, a word based on the Aboriginal word for cloud.

Building maRunga will not automatically promote NonStop systems to playing a prominent role within enterprise clouds and may only attract a select few – but after reading the reports being generated following the outages we have all seen recently, there certainly cannot be any harm in equipping NonStop to play a role in Clouds, so stay tuned and watch for more details in the coming year.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The folly that was Tandem Computers and the path that led me to NonStop ...

With the arrival of 2018 I am celebrating thirty years of association with NonStop and before that, Tandem Computers. And yes, a lot has changed but the fundamentals are still very much intact! The arrival of 2018 has a lot of meaning for me, but perhaps nothing more significant than my journey with Tandem and later NonStop can be traced all the way back to 1988 – yes, some thirty years ago. But I am getting a little ahead of myself and there is much to tell before that eventful year came around. And a lot was happening well before 1988. For nearly ten years I had really enjoyed working with Nixdorf Computers and before that, with The Computer Software Company (TCSC) out of Richmond Virginia. It was back in 1979 that I first heard about Nixdorf’s interests in acquiring TCSC which they eventually did and in so doing, thrust me headlong into a turbulent period where I was barely at home – flying to meetings after meetings in Europe and the US. All those years ago there was ...

HPE NonStop: Is the wait over? Will the legend live on?

No sun on the Rockies, not even the light of day I feel that old cabin fever coming on It won't be long before my ship comes in Gonna sail right out of Colorado Songwriters: Clint Patrick Black / James Hayden Nicholas I am a storyteller. As a storyteller, I am also an observer and as an observer I am yet to say that I have seen it all. Quite to the contrary, I am convinced that there is still much more to see and when it comes to IT, each and every time I speculate that a new dawn has come it seems that such an observation is only ever short term as with one dawn appearing over the horizon there is always another, and another, about to appear. Such is technology that nothing lasts forever to quote a popular song. I chose the photo above for its symbolism. Hard to escape? It’s a lighthouse. It may be decorative but they illuminate the location just as effectively. Dropping our gaze to the dock we see that there’s a warning: Snakes and Alligators. Who remembers that popular ...

An era ends!

I have just spent a couple of days back on the old Tandem Computers Cupertino campus. Staying at a nearby hotel, this offered me an opportunity to take an early morning walk around the streets once so densely populated with Tandem Computers buildings – and it was kind of sad to see so many of them empty. It was also a little amusing to see many of them now adorned with Apple tombstone markers and with the Apple logo splashed liberally around. The photo at the top of this posting is of Tandem Way – the exit off Tantau Avenue that leads to what was once Jimmy’s headquarters building. I looked for the Tandem flag flying from the flagpole – but that one has been absent for many years now. When I arrived at Tandem in late ’88 I have just missed the “Billion Dollar Party” but everyone continued to talk about it. There was hardly an employee on the campus not wearing the black sweatshirt given to everyone at the party. And it wasn’t too long before the obelisk, with every employee’s signature...