Mastering The Cloud

Creating RESTful web services is a great paradigm that goes well with cloud computing models. Recently I started using a tool called Enunciate written by Ryan Heaton that does basically takes the pain out of writing web services. The user only needs to create Java beans, an interface, and an implementation for their interface and Enunciate takes care of the rest, creating SOAP, REST, and GWT-RPC end points, as well as others. I put together a small presentation on it which I also presented at work.

IBM has recently started to really crank out the documentation and material on their SOA development and best practices site. One of particular interested would be their Servers on demand with EC2 article which is what I feel a great introductive to Amazon EC2. Chaganti Prabhakar did a great job pulling the appropriate pieces of information together in a well presented manner. If you have been reading about Amazon EC2 but have not yet tried it out, the above referenced article is a great place to start.

One of the first steps essential to getting the most out of cloud computing is to ensure that your design, thoughts, and mind have the correct focus. It is not simply a matter of using Amazon AWS and integrating a few frameworks. In my experience some of the best parts of cloud computing are the different approaches taken when designing your application to run in the cloud or moving an existing application to the cloud.

It is important to ensure that not only do you have the proper mindset but the members of your team are clear on your vision and the direction needed to take your application to the cloud. This involves items such as:

• think high loads and how to handle loads that spike during certain times of day or public events
• does your application have configuration or maintenance items that can only be performed by development? if so, eliminate it and anything similar
• avoid designs that have “special servers” or configurations of machines within the system. This will lead to cloud management nightmare and you won’t really see the full benefit
• avoid designs that appear good from a software design standpoint, but when viewed as part of the big picture and from a maintenance standpoint, cause more pain then help

The above will be become apparent as you step deeper into cloud computing and scaling your sites.