Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS Differences
October 18, 2016
With so many options for cloud computing, it can be confusing about which one to use for your personal or business files. Three of the most popular cloud computing options are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. Beyond the pricing, the main differences range from what services they offer and what they name them. Site Point did us a favor with its article comparing the different cloud services: “A Side-By-Side Comparison Of AWS, Google Cloud, And Azure.”
Cloud computing has the great benefit of offering flexible price options, but they can often can very intricate based on how much processing power you need, how many virtual servers you deploy, where they are deployed, etc. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud do offer canned solutions along with individual ones.
AWS has the most extensive service array, but they are also the most expensive. It is best to decide how you want to use cloud computing because prices will vary based on the usage and each service does have specializations. All three are good for scalable computing on demand, but Google is less flexible in its offering, although it is easier to understand the pricing. Amazon has the most robust storage options.
When it comes to big data:
This requires very specific technologies and programming models, one of which is MapReduce, which was developed by Google, so maybe it isn’t surprising to see Google walking forward in the big data arena by offering an array of products — such as BigQuery (managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics), Cloud Dataflow (real-time data processing), Cloud Dataproc (managed Spark and Hadoop), Cloud Datalab (large-scale data exploration, analysis, and visualization), Cloud Pub/Sub (messaging and streaming data), and Genomics (for processing up to petabytes of genomic data). Elastic MapReduce (EMR) and HDInsight are Amazon’s and Azure’s take on big data, respectively.
Without getting too much into the nitty gritty, each of the services have their strengths and weaknesses. If one of the canned solutions do not work for you, read the fine print to learn how cloud computing can help your project.
Whitney Grace, October 18, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Microsoft Azure Plans Offers Goldilocks and Three Bears Strategy to Find Perfect Fit
April 15, 2016
The article on eWeek titled Microsoft Debuts Azure Basic Search Tier relates the perks of the new plan from Microsoft, namely, that it is cheaper than the others. At $75 per month (and currently half of for the preview period, so get it while it’s hot!) the Basic Azure plan has lower capacity when it comes to indexing, but that is the intention. The completely Free plan enables indexing of 10,000 documents and allows for 50 megabytes of storage, while the new Basic plan goes up to a million documents. The more expensive Standard plan costs $250/month and provides for up to 180 million documents and 300 gigabytes of storage. The article explains,
“The new Basic tier is Microsoft’s response to customer demand for a more modest alternative to the Standard plans, said Liam Cavanagh, principal program manager of Microsoft Azure Search, in a March 2 announcement. “Basic is great for cases where you need the production-class characteristics of Standard but have lower capacity requirements,” he stated. Those production-class capabilities include dedicated partitions and service workloads (replicas), along with resource isolation and service-level agreement (SLA) guarantees, which are not offered in the Free tier.”
So just how efficient is Azure? Cavanagh stated that his team measured the indexing performance at 15,000 documents per minute (although he also stressed that this was with batches organized into groups of 1,000 documents.) With this new plan, Microsoft continues its cloud’s search capabilities.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 15, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Monkeys Cause System Failure
July 28, 2015
Nobody likes to talk about his or her failures. Admitting to failure proves that you failed at a task in the past and it is a big blow to the ego. Failure admission is even worse for technology companies, because users want to believe technology is flawless. On Microsoft’s Azure Blog, Heather Nakama posted “Inside Azure Search: Chaos Engineering” and she explains that software engineers are aware that failure is unavoidable. Rather than trying to prevent failure, they welcome potential failure. Why? It allows them to test software and systems to prevent problems before they develop.
Nakama mentions it is not a sustainable model to account for every potential failure and to test the system every time it is upgraded. Azure Search borrowed chaos engineering from Netflix to resolve the issue and it is run by a bunch of digital monkeys
“As coined by Netflix in a recent excellent blog post, chaos engineering is the practice of building infrastructure to enable controlled automated fault injection into a distributed system. To accomplish this, Netflix has created the Netflix Simian Army with a collection of tools (dubbed “monkeys”) that inject failures into customer services.”
Netflix basically unleashes a Search Chaos Monkey into its system to wreck havoc, then Netflix learns about system weaknesses and repairs accordingly. There are several chaos levels: high, medium, and low, with each resulting in more possible damage. At each level, Search Chaos Monkey is given more destructive tools to “play” around with. The high levels are the most valuable to software engineers, because it demonstrates the largest and worst diagnostic failures.
While letting a bull loose in a china shop is bad, because you lose your merchandise, letting a bunch of digital monkeys loose in a computer system is actually beneficial. It remains true that you can learn from failure. I just hope that the digital monkeys do not have digital dung.
Whitney Grace, July 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Altiar Decides to Embed dtSearch Engine
April 30, 2015
PR Newswire has a big announcement for fans of dtSearch Engine: “Announcing The Altiar Cloud-Based (Optimized For Microsoft Azure) ECM Platform Embedding The dtSearch Engine.” Altiar is a leading enterprise collaborative content management platform based in the cloud, developed for prime optimization in Microsoft Azure. To improve the enterprise content system, dtSearch’s search engine (its headlining product) will be integrated into Altiar platform.
Altair wants to improve how users find content on the platform. Users can upload and create brand new content on Altair, but with files from so many different programs it can be confusing to manage and locate them. Altair hopes to remedy any search problems with the integration:
” ‘Utilizing the power of dtSearch Engine at the core, users can search across the entire database of files uploaded by other users as well as manage their own uploads simply and quickly,’ explains Altiar. ‘Search results deliver relevant results from the content within every file as well as any additional data provided at upload.’”
Altair restates what we already know about search: it is one of the most important functions of technology and without out people would not be able to track down their content. Comprehensive search across multiple programs is a standard feature in all computers these days. Is searching the cloud more complex than a regular system? What improvements need to be made to make search handle the extra work?
Whitney Grace, April 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Microsoft Veteran Transitioning to New Role
April 7, 2015
Chris Jones, a veteran with Microsoft since 1991, is transitioning to a new role within the organization. Jones is the former head of the OneDrive and SharePoint teams. Microsoft has been making many announcements regarding changes with SharePoint lately, including the impending release of SharePoint 2016. Read more in the ZDNet article, “Microsoft’s OneDrive, SharePoint Chief to Take on a New Role.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft veteran Chris Jones, the current head of the OneDrive and SharePoint businesses at the company, will be transitioning to a new job in Microsoft’s Applications and Services Group (ASG) later this year. Jones, who has been at Microsoft since 1991, will be passing the Corporate Vice President torch to Phil Smoot, another Microsoft veteran who has worked on the Hotmail and Azure Storage businesses.”
To stay apprised of all the latest SharePoint news and developments, keep a close eye on Steven E. Arnold’s Web site, ArnoldIT.com. Arnold is a longtime search expert and operates a dedicated SharePoint feed on his Web site. Changes within SharePoint’s highest management could indicate additional directional changes that may affect customers. Stay tuned.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 7, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
