ivantohelpyou

Here's the latest chapter of my Linux experiments for SmallBizResource.com, in which I try to install something other than Microsoft Office on an old PC. Also, I reveal my reviewer bias towards the Redmond team.

Links:
My Microsoft-Free Office Experiment, Part 1
Disclosure: Open-Source Review Written by Microsoft Partisan

Labels: linux, Microsoft

Eric Gales from Microsoft Canada spoke yesterday to the BCTIA and the IAMCP. During the Q&A, I asked him what the Microsoft answer would be to EC2. He coolly mentioned that they're building out huge server farms which aren't all meant for Hotmail users.

Let's flash back to the Vancouver PHP conference in February, where I asked Amazon Web Services evangelist Jeff Barr whether the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) could run Windows server instances.

Explanation of EC2

(You can skip to the next section if you already know what EC2 does)

You see, organizations need servers. Servers to serve up web pages, e-mail, video, you name it. The hard part is figuring out how many servers you require. In the old world, the safe bet has been to buy at least one server more than your expected peak capacity.

Think of a supermarket with 12 lanes at the checkout. Most times, only a few lanes are open. But the supermarket still has to own 12 cash registers, and maintain 12 conveyor belts and 12 inventory racks of chewing gum and gossip rags at each lane. If it's a high-traffic day and all of the lanes are backed up, the market doesn't have any options left but to keep things moving.

With "elastic" computing, it's much different. First, you figure out what kind of server you need, and then configure one of each. You save the "image" of each kind of server, and then just spawn instances as needed.

To continue the supermarket analogy, "elastic" checkout would mean that the market could add as many lanes as was necessary to get people through as quickly as possible, to meet whatever quality of service they wanted to meet. The market could have a separate lane for each customer. And then, after that person was finished, the lane would simply disappear.

On the Internet, this concept can be used to manage anything where the server is the bottleneck: serving up video, 3-D, data, you name it. With elasticity, small players can swing for the fences with new applications, with the knowledge that their ideas will scale globally using the cloud.

The Amazon/Microsoft Question

So back to my question: Can you put a Windows server on Amazon EC2? Sure, answered Jeff, and people have done it. However, the Microsoft server licenses weren't built for the cloud. When you buy a license for, say, Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, you can install it on any processor you like. And if you want to put it on a virtual processor in the cloud, that's fine too. But if you want to create an image of SBS2003 and spawn multiple instances at will, you're out of bounds.

OK, if you can't put Microsoft servers in the cloud, what can you put in the cloud? The answer: Linux servers. The default Amazon Machine Instance (AMI) is a Linux server, which you're welcome to modify or replace with your own Linux instance, using whatever distribution you please.

How long do you think Microsoft will let open-source stand as the default option for cloud computing?

Get ready for the battle of the clouds.

Disclosure: I'm a member of the IAMCP doing business with Microsoft partners and customers. I'm also an Amazon affiliate.

Labels: Amazon, linux, Microsoft, virtualization

Went to the Vancouver Software Development Meetup on Tuesday night for a presentation about Plone, a content management and workflow framework. I won't be installing it anytime soon on my shared web host (it's outside the capability of my current plan), but it's was definitely worthwhile to see what it does.

OK, and it was cool to win one of the door prizes, Python in a Nutshell.

Now I can follow up on a presentation by Adrian Holovaty at WebDirections North about Django, which is also built on Python, and is also a framework.

In her blog, Molly.com asks "what's a framework?"

Good question. I'm not going to try to give the Wikipedia answer, but I know one when I see it.

Hey, here's one! A blog is a framework. Without programming, I can create a new web page, while updating all of the related pages for monthly indexes and keyword pages, plus the search index. All other frameworks are just extensions of the same idea.

I've been spending a bit of time lately testing out various Linux distributions for an upcoming SmallBizResource article. Since there aren't nearly enough Linux distributions in the world, somebody should write a framework for creating new Linux distributions.

Hmm....

Labels: books, linux, small biz, web design

The feedback to my SmallBizResource post "How To Revive An Old PC With Linux" has been phenomenal. Read some of the responses in "Readers Respond to Linux."

From the exchanges, I have come up with a few ideas on how to keep large numbers of decommissioned computers from getting dumped into landfills, and it could even turn into an interesting business. Stay tuned...

Labels: linux, small biz

InformationWeek, TechWeb and Yahoo! News have picked up the SmallBizResource article: How To Revive An Old PC With Linux, and it's been a big hit. I've received e-mails from other people who regularly reclaim PCs, who have done similar experiments, who have suggestions for other Linux distributions to try, and who just want to say "thanks" for the idea.

My response to everyone: I'm glad to join the Linux crowd! And if you haven't tried it yet, what are you waiting for? Just find an old computer, erase it, and start trying various installations until something sticks.

Labels: linux

Here's an article about how I turned Scooter's PC into a Linux machine.

Although the article makes it look like it all happened in a single afternoon, it actually took a few weeks to prepare the machine and to get around to the various experiments. Budget accordingly.

Labels: linux, small biz