Now, personally when I first heard about this “cloud computing craze”, I thought it was a load of bull. I thought big corporations just want to take over the internetz. Now after thinking about it, I have been flirting with the idea of having a private “cloud” for our team. We have a lot of programmers this year (8+) and I have yet to think of a feasible and practical solution for code management. Then the “cloud” came to me. Personally, I use google docs all the time and I think its just great. All I am doing is school essays and stuff like that, nothing top secret, so I wouldn’t care if Google has all those documents on servers. I been thinking of setting up a server running Ubuntu Server. It can be used for everything from code repository to CAD storage and meeting notes. Now I certainly believe in distributed computing; just look at folding@home.
Now I want to know if I am misunderstanding or misinterpreting what cloud computing really is.
Do you think its a good idea to set up a Ubuntu Server Cloud? It only takes 2 hours max of downloading, burning and installing.
What does it take to maintain a “cloud”?
Are any other teams considering it?
Is my idea even feasible?
Im a bit confused as to why you would want a personal cloud (besides the awesome factor). It seems that with Google Wave (if you don’t have it, then why not!) that is exactly what you are asking for. It’s perfect for communicating ideas around, and although not top secret, I doubt Google with disseminate your ideas to other teams.
Cloud computing, is also more for distributing the load of something: Amazon distributes the load of servers, F@H, I guess is technically a cloud. Unless you are doing so ridiculously heavy compiling, then I doubt you need one. It should also be noted that the term “cloud” computing defies having a personal one XD
For code management, there are already several tools widely used such as git and svn. It isn’t hard to set up a local repository. If you want to store your code off site, you could use a free service such as github.com. For general “office” documents, google docs works pretty well. If it aint broke, why fix it?
There are many resources already available. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
Eh, I guess I’ll just go with the old fashioned server and repository. I set up servers before so I guess I am fine. Now I have to find a way to coordinate everyone working on the same project. Its like the parallel processing problems: deadlocks.
In 2007 another programmer and I set up an SVN server on his personal web server, and saved the code that way. Unfortunately, some of the lesser experienced programmers dumped their code in mid-season. One second everything was compiling fine, the next we had 100ish errors, 500 warnings, and a headache. It took us 20 minutes to realize what had happened, after that they had their own “special” repository set up.
Version control is great for teams of people, just make sure everyone knows what they’re doing. Giving read access to files is great, allowing people to modify and write files haphazardly is not.
Last thing - keep in mind that keeping version control takes discipline - if you don’t religiously update and save the latest version of code, you might as well not take the time to set it up.
For simple sharing of files, you may want to look into Dropbox.
Dropbox and other online storage is useful, but only if you have many people working from home. If most work is done locally, a local server (which is what we have set up) works quite well enough. I’m not much of a programmer, but version control doesn’t have to be online either. If you already have a server set up, you seem to be well prepared already.