[Hidden-tech] finding systems to test on

[Chris Hoogendyk]

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.
>