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>So it's not a 'data storage service in a remote data center'?

okay, looked at from a naive enough perspective, they have similarities. they both can be described using the buzzword 'cloud', but it doesn't go much beyond that. they do not perform the same task. they do not serve the same market. they do not have a similar interface. one service cannot replace the other. drawing any sort of comparison between the two is completely meaningless to the discussion at hand.



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> That's not a "cloud," that's just a server.

Much like Web 2.0, cloud doesn't have a technical definition.

> There's an important difference, and people need to stop using them interchangeably.

People need to stop using "cloud" altogether.


> I think you're conflating "cloud" to mean any computer on the internet.

If you read "cloud" as "somebody else's computer" it entirely depends on perspective.

If you're running a service on your own hardware in your own datacenter, you're clearly not cloud.

However, if you're a user of that same service, and your data lives on some computers that are running in someone else's data center, then for all intents and purposes your data is "in the cloud". It's indistinguishable if the service you're using is using AWS/Azure/etc, running their own hardware, and/or storing data on something like S3.

There's of course a mix of in between stuff that makes this 10x more complicated: if it's a rented server in somebody else's datacenter, are you "cloud" or not? What if it's your hardware, but somebody else's datacenter? What if you store backups on S3?


That's not a "cloud," that's just a server. There's an important difference, and people need to stop using them interchangeably.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Weirdly he's not talking about the cloud at all, he's just talking about storing things on someone else's servers. So I guess he's one of those people misusing the word cloud.

It's a completely semantical argument. I said the phrase was ridiculous.

I didn't once say anything about the technology or whether it was better to store things yourself. All I said was those other things have their own names and calling them cloud is either misleading or lazy.

And yes, that's exactly what I want you to say, that your home server, despite being remotely accessible, isn't covered under the definition of cloud computing.


Cloud and IT are not mutually exclusive. The roles they provide are so different I can't at all see why anyone bothers to makes this apples and oranges argument.

No ... I was just commenting on the linguistic part whether the two phrases mean the same. I moderately don't give a frak about the services due to my irrational, passionate and relentless hatred for everything cloud related. (I love the underlying technologies, I just hate the feudal model of a foreign service holding your data hostage)

It's called the cloud. You're arguing against it.

> cloud

> compares virtual machines

I mean cloud is different for everyone, but for me a VM is far from cloud. It's the least differentiable item in each of their suite.


I think that's a little pedantic. The point he was making is that, conceptually speaking, the cloud is comprised of servers not unlike the servers you run yourself. The difference, obviously, is who runs them, the manner in which they're run, the exact manner in which they're utilized by you, etc., but they are still just servers at the bottom of the stack.

It must just refer to the Cloud in a derogatory way, not the particular platform. It sounds so similar.

Yeah, I don't get the cloud/device distinction people are making. Increasingly they are one and the same (if you know what I mean).

To me calling it a service would imply cloud more that calling it a server does.

The advantage of the cloud was supposed to be elastic compute, but what this thread is trying to claim is that's not the case.

How is this different from “cloud”?

When cloud == SaaS, sometimes. When cloud == IaaS, nope.

But that doesn't stop the misconception.


Notice how you didn't use the term server to describe "The Cloud"

"the cloud" and "on a server" are the same thing.

Point is, "disk" in the cloud is not the same thing as the disk in your PC.
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