Shine some light through this cloud

a short primer on clouds and cloud computing

Feminist Linux Meetup, Vienna 19 April 2024


jackie / Andrea Ida Malkah Klaura <jackie@tantemalkah.at>

https://tantemalkah.at/2024/cloud-talk

Creative Commons License All contents, unless otherwise noted, were produced by Andrea Ida Malkah Klaura
under a Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 4.0 International License.

whoami

  • Andrea Ida Malkah Klaura (if you need a legal name)
  • jackie (in almost all other cases)
  • Pronouns:
    • she/her in binary gender space
    • ze/hir in the wider multiverse
  • Working mostly as open source engineer @ dieAngewandte
    • focus: backend with Python/Django and DevOps-y stuff
  • Also trying to clone myself to do:
    • teaching web-based game prototyping and machine learning @ dieAngewandte
    • and feminist technoscience (studies) @ TU Wien
    • some side web projects for NGOs (mostly WordPress based)
    • organising feminist linux meetups and other community stuff
  • More details on tantemalkah.at

Source: fsfe.org, Markus Meier, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Contents

  1. a very short history of cloud computing
  2. the basics of virtualisation and containers
  3. types of clouds
  4. do clouds cool the climate?
  5. discussion & workshop teaser
  6. [optional] live "cloud" examples

how much does it rain on you?

sli.do : #528793

a very short history of cloud computing

☁🖧📜

cloud computing

"the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user."

WP-en: Cloud computing

☁🖧📜

  • 1960ies: time sharing became popular
  • 1970ies: the cloud as a network symbol
  • 1990ies: cloud as a metaphor for virtualised services
  • 2002: AWS created as Amazon subsidiary (S3 & EC2 in 2006)
  • 2008: NASA's Nebula; Google App Engine
  • 2010: Rackspace & NASA team up on OpenStack; Microsoft Azure
  • 2012/13: Google Compute Engine
  • 2014: Cloud Computing foaled as a son of Distorted Humor.

virtualisation and containers

(hardware) virtualisation

creating a virtual machine (with virtual hardware) in which an OS can be run as if it would be installed on its own computer

the virtualisation host contains some form of virtualisation software (ideally hardware-assisted) that allows us to create virtual machines on which guest operating systems can be run

containerisation

creating multiple isolated process environments that can run on the same operating system

a specific approach to OS-level virtualisation

Source: kubernetes.io, CC-BY 4.0

types of clouds

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Sam Johnston, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Bikeborg / Wylve, CC0 / Public domain

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Sam Johnston, CC-BY-SA 3.0

do clouds cool the climate?

clouds for a greener IT?

the cloud is

"a hyperscale, automated computer farm run by someone who's better at automation and security than you, and can buy electricity and servers and network connectivity more cheaply than you because they buy so much of it and if you want all the benefits of cloud you have to design things to achieve that"

Mary Branscombe (2016): ZDnet: Stop saying the cloud is just someone else's computer - because it's not

Hopefully I raised some questions

hopefully I am able to answer some as well

Contact me: https://tantemalkah.at/#contact

Slide deck: https://tantemalkah.at/2024/cloud-talk

[optional]
live "cloud" examples

Nextcloud

VPS

kvm-based virtual desktop

Docker container