Do these firms view risk like the Cascadia plate in their locations? We're pretty lucky here in AB that all you really have to worry about is hail, the odd tornado, and flooding (oh and I guess forest fires but we aren't sticking these things in the mountains).
Our company's business continuity plan heavily focused on where our datacenters would be to ensure it is not in the flood plain. In 2013, many downtown datacenters lost power due to the century flood.
It’ll be interesting to see how much they pay their employees and what the working conditions are like in these centres.
AWS pays their employees pretty well from my research on Glassdoor, now we'll see what type of resources they hire hear. Will they have a bunch of engineers to maintain the servers, or will they use this as an opportunity to setup a office hub here and tap into the local talent.
Can someone explain to me in simple language for a non tech guy like me what exactly is a cloud computing product?
Is it just data storage on a cloud?
No it's data storage in a vast warehouse full of servers set in a cold lonely field in the middle of nowhere, but cloud sounds more romantic than rural craphole computing product
Can someone explain to me in simple language for a non tech guy like me what exactly is a cloud computing product?
Is it just data storage on a cloud?
Cloud computing is a service that can be anything that is hosted somewhere other than your local system, office, datacenter etc. Data storage is only a fraction. Contrast this with on-premise compute or co-located compute which is much more localized datacenter which was how things were often done in the past. Many Oil & Gas companies had a datacenter actually in their building, or rented out co-located datacenter space in one of the major Calgary centers (Q9, Rogers (Carefactor/Pivot), etc.) and ran their own servers and infrastructure directly. Contrast with cloud compute which is usually a subscription where you rent resources or entire services in the cloud.
It runs almost everything today but you also hear the terms SaaS which is Software as a Service which usually means a platform that you pay for access to that runs in one of these datacenters.
The biggest cloud computing players are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft O365/M365/Azure, Google Cloud Compute (GCP), and a few others like Oracle, IBM, etc.
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 11-10-2021 at 01:10 PM.
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Can someone explain to me in simple language for a non tech guy like me what exactly is a cloud computing product?
Is it just data storage on a cloud?
It's more than that. It's basically anything computer hardware can do, virtualized* on someone else's hardware. So say a company like Uber(making this up) ran everything in the Amazon cloud. You use their app on your phone, which talks to their virtual servers running on Amazon hardware. They would have a software defined firewall and routing in between your app and their virtual servers. They may run their entire network virtually, meaning they don't need their own hardware. They have virtual servers running everything they would normally run in their own office. Maybe they don't even have desktops, and everyone's Windows install is also virtual, which users can remote connect to from home. So it's a lot more than just data storage.
*A virtual machine is just the operating system running in a container that can use resources from hardware that it doesn't care what it is. So you allocate resources from the main physical servers that Amazon(Or MS Azure, or whoever else) runs and those resources can be shared across many virtual machines, and dynamically allocated on the fly. This makes load spikes easier to deal with, because you can do it instantly, rather than buying new hardware, setting it up etc. It also means you can setup a company in the cloud quickly with monthly costs, rather than large hardware expenses.
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"Cloud" just means someone else owns and is responsible for all the hardware and they provide it to people as a service. They add a bunch of fancy functionality to make automation easy and provide nice features.
Unless it's "on prem" cloud in which case you get all the fancy functionality but you can own the hardware and put it where you want.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
AWS pays their employees pretty well from my research on Glassdoor, now we'll see what type of resources they hire hear. Will they have a bunch of engineers to maintain the servers, or will they use this as an opportunity to setup a office hub here and tap into the local talent.
I wouldn’t put too much stock into online employer review websites. Employers figured out a long time ago that these sites can’t actually verify whether or not somebody actually worked for the company, which means they also can’t verify whether or not an HR department is padding their rating by adding fake favourable reviews to attract new employees.
So instead of having hardware and software inhouse you can outsource it to AWS?
Yes. You pay for usage, redundancy, reliability, availability, elasticity.
How much computer / computing do you want = AWS will provide it to you for $$$. You want massive computing power? Perfect! It will be provided to you for $$$$. You want to run a virtual machine for programming and testing your apps on different platforms but don't want to pay for hardware costs of each platform? Pay $$.
Think of some subscription services you may use, such as Playstation Now for example. You get to play / stream games, the computing is happening on Sony's side. You are cloud gaming as you aren't using your Playstation's hardware to process playing the games.
I wouldn’t put too much stock into online employer review websites. Employers figured out a long time ago that these sites can’t actually verify whether or not somebody actually worked for the company, which means they also can’t verify whether or not an HR department is padding their rating by adding fake favourable reviews to attract new employees.
Fair for ratings, salary, having inflated numbers hurts their position when negotiating for new hires and raises. The company I work for, the Glassdoor ranges are actually under the actual true ranges of the positions.
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Fair for ratings, salary, having inflated numbers hurts their position when negotiating for new hires and raises. The company I work for, the Glassdoor ranges are actually under the actual true ranges of the positions.
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I don’t disagree that inflating salary numbers can cause them issues but frankly Amazon is already known to have misleading hiring practices. Hopefully they pay well at this location(s) and treat their employees well there but personally I doubt they’ll be changing their spots.
It's more than that. It's basically anything computer hardware can do, virtualized* on someone else's hardware. So say a company like Uber(making this up) ran everything in the Amazon cloud. You use their app on your phone, which talks to their virtual servers running on Amazon hardware. They would have a software defined firewall and routing in between your app and their virtual servers. They may run their entire network virtually, meaning they don't need their own hardware. They have virtual servers running everything they would normally run in their own office. Maybe they don't even have desktops, and everyone's Windows install is also virtual, which users can remote connect to from home. So it's a lot more than just data storage.
*A virtual machine is just the operating system running in a container that can use resources from hardware that it doesn't care what it is. So you allocate resources from the main physical servers that Amazon(Or MS Azure, or whoever else) runs and those resources can be shared across many virtual machines, and dynamically allocated on the fly. This makes load spikes easier to deal with, because you can do it instantly, rather than buying new hardware, setting it up etc. It also means you can setup a company in the cloud quickly with monthly costs, rather than large hardware expenses.
Didn't the NDP give grants to IT companies to come to Alberta? and then the UCP killed it?
The NDP also provided the incentives for solar contracts that were a factor in Amazon making this decision (Amazon has already purchased power from two separate solar projects in AB).
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Input lag would rpobably suck, if you just mean rent a virtual machine. You'd also need one with beefy graphics. Microsoft has some packages with good video cards, but I think they are more aimed at professional apps.
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