Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales http://1001tales.posterous.com tracing the roots & tendrils of storytelling today posterous.com Sun, 30 May 2010 19:35:00 -0700 What Everyone Needs To Know About (Second) Life “On The Cloud” | Sand Castle Studios http://1001tales.posterous.com/what-everyone-needs-to-know-about-second-life http://1001tales.posterous.com/what-everyone-needs-to-know-about-second-life

Author: Gianna Borgnine (aka Kimberly Winnington)

Excerpt:

Cloud Computing and How it Applies to Second Life

What is a “cloud”, and just what is it computing?

Wikipedia has this to say on the matter:

“Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility”

For example, Amazon.com offers a prominent web hosting service knows as EC2. EC2 allows paying clients to rent hosting on Amazon’s “cloud.” The software EC2 is hosting for its clients isn’t being run on any one computer in particular. Instead, whatever is being hosted by EC2 (a website, or what have you) is run on a virtual machine, backed by bucket loads of server computers being maintained by Amazon.

I know, now you’re asking “What the heck is a virtual machine?” A virtual machine is basically a software program meant to mimic a full-blown computer. So, interaction with EC2 would be a simulation of working with a single computer. You would even be able to think of this virtual machine interface as the one computer at Amazon that is personally hosting all of your files. But this is a mirage, and behind the scenes everything is made up of a virtual sea of computation.
So there you have it, the cloud, a metaphorical method of providing different services over the Internet. When people say a web service is “on the cloud”, what they really mean is there is a group of servers on the Internet, running whatever software solution that service is providing. There is no one cloud, there are many. The semantic distinction here isn’t really being made over where these computers/servers are located, who owns them or what they’re doing, in as far as how they’re configured and being utilized.

To some people, the Second Life main grid sounds like it could be a cloud, but, personally, I wouldn’t consider it that way. The main reason being that each SIM is dedicated to a specific server core, with a specific allotment of RAM (etc…), and that’s it. The grid’s severs can’t say to themselves “Oh, well, there is less traffic on these SIMs over in this region, so let’s throw some of their resources at these other, crowded SIMs over here. A SIM’s resources are static, and the main grid isn’t just a blob of computing power ready to mold itself to different computing situations. Thus answers the age old question: If a tree falls in Second Life, and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer: a big ol’ YES. It would be fantastic if this weren’t the case, but I’m no expert on the ins and outs of the main grid’s design, and I’m sure there are a number of reasons why things are the way they are.

Read more from original post!

 

 

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/2024188/Screen_Shot_2012-06-07_at_5.01.45_PM.png http://posterous.com/users/3sOfsD8qBu5X Siobhan O'Flynn narrativenow Siobhan O'Flynn