[Hidden-tech] finding systems to test on

Daniel Fried frieddan at gmail.com
Wed Apr 21 15:28:06 EDT 2010


On using the cloud for HIPAA: From my research on the subject, while there
are cloud providers pushing the cloud for secure uses, there is no
confidence in HIPAA security field that it would be considered sufficient to
meet an audit review process.  We would also need to sell our clients on the
security of a cloud solution and I'm not willing to start that battle in the
sales process.

On the using of the cloud for performance testing:  I hesitate to try to
draw any conclusions on an architecture that is radically different from the
one we plan to use.  The process I need to test will suck up every ounce of
processing power it can get from every core, which will probably also be
affected by things like thread switching, I'm not sure how a cloud solution
would handle that.  I also expect disk IO to be an issue, and in a shared
testing environment I don't see how that can be pinned down the way cycles
and memory can.  I'm looking to check for scaling on processes which take,
on average, .02 seconds per member, including db reads and writes, so I'm
really looking at some fine distinctions.

I also don't need a major time or infrastructure investment.  I can run the
tests I need in under an hour if I can find a setup reasonably close to what
I'm looking for.

-Dan

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Chris Hoogendyk <hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>wrote:

> I understand the concerns there, and it does complicate things
> considerably.
>
> There was a guy from IBM at the Cloud Camp who was a specialist in
> authentication issues related to accessing encrypted data and compliance
> with various regulations such as HIPAA. I didn't attend the session where he
> and others were discussing that, because I was more interested in the
> sessions on failure and recovery (cool -- you can use a containerized Amanda
> backup server in the cloud, etc.). Anyway, I think he was talking about IBM
> cloud services that provided sufficient auditable protection and security,
> but there was doubt about meeting regulations with some providers.
>
> However, you could do some prototyping and testing with depersonalized
> data. Then, obviously, your actual deployment would end up not being in the
> cloud. I believe Amazon and others can give you a specification of exactly
> what a compute unit translates into in terms of comparable type of
> processor. The virtualized instance does in fact land and stay on a specific
> piece of hardware somewhere when it is deployed. So, it's probably as good
> as testing a piece of actual hardware that ends up not being exactly what
> the customer ends up deploying. You still have to come up with an
> understandable size/capability comparison that means something to the
> customer.
>
>
>
> ---------------
>
> Chris Hoogendyk
>
> -
>  O__  ---- Systems Administrator
>  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
> (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
> ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
> <hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>
>
> ---------------
> Erdös 4
>
>
>
>
> Daniel Fried wrote:
>
>> Thanks Chris, several people have recommended similar approaches.
>>
>> Unfortunately, our data is covered under HIPAA laws, and there is no way
>> we can use a shared infrastructure.  As such, I am concerned that as I try
>> to benchmark for future needs, I would not be able to get a true test that
>> would help me gauge what system characteristics I need to look at.
>>
>> -Dan
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Chris Hoogendyk <hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu<mailto:
>> hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>    Daniel Fried wrote:
>>
>>        I have a resource intensive application that I need to test
>>        for performance scaling with hardware, specifically I want to
>>        be able to get a better idea of where my bottlenecks are by
>>        testing the application on systems with faster processors/more
>>        cores and database performance with faster drives.
>>
>>        Can anyone give me some ideas on where I might be able to find
>>        some systems I can test on?  I have a .Net application that
>>        talks to a MySQL database.  The current dev and qa systems
>>        require Windows for the application, but can run MySQL on
>>        either Windows (same or different system) or Linux.
>>
>>        Any help would be appreciated.
>>
>>
>>    One of the major points that was made at the Cloud Camp yesterday
>>    (by the folks from TNR Global, who, I believe, were using the
>>    Amazon cloud services) was that it made prototyping and testing
>>    incredibly easy and cost effective. One of their guys described
>>    building out a significant sized virtual cluster to test disaster
>>    recovery. Once the test was completed, the whole system could be
>>    torn down. Since there were no physical machines to be spec'ed
>>    out, purchased, set up, configured, etc., the whole process could
>>    be done in the same day, and the cost was just the cost of the
>>    resources used that day.
>>
>>    This would give you the flexibility of doing tests on variable
>>    sized virtual instances. You could run a test today with
>>    specifications for number of compute units, memory and disk size.
>>    Using those results you might continue your development, tweak
>>    your settings, and then next week run another test with a virtual
>>    machine specified to twice that number of compute units, memory,
>>    etc. In the time between now and then there are no physical
>>    machines hanging around and no cost.
>>
>>    Since I haven't done it myself, I can't tell you the cost, and the
>>    guy from TNR Global didn't say what their costs were. Only that
>>    they were extremely affordable and almost nothing compared to the
>>    alternative of setting up real physical machines. So, you'll have
>>    to look into the costs for yourself to know if it works for you.
>>
>>
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