OT: Cloud IT structure for a start-up?

Nope. One of the requirements is backup to a site of our choice. 1&1 offers that, although for a fee I think. So you can either designate your own computer if you have a fast enough Internet and make sure it runs at the scheduled times, or use a different company for that (rent server space somewhere else in addition).

Also, each contributor will keep his own contribute files as well as important other ones on his local machine as well. Because one cannot count on the infrastructure to always be there. All it takes is one wildfire and it can be out for days.

They usually never leave the cloud.

What should prevent that from being done? A file that can be read into MS-Office is the same, whether it comes from the cloud of your local hard drive.

No, as the scouts say, be prepared. Just like locally: The red power light went on at my trusty old Durabook. I won't be able to get around to it until later next week but I simply continue on another computer. Doesn't cause me any delay. Well, maybe 2-3 minutes to connect the mouse and all the USB for the lab equipment.

Very. I have seen first hand what a money drain local IT can be for a smaller company. "Oh, we have to upgrade the ueber-gizmo over there because of yada-yada-yada". A few weeks later there is a fat four-digit invoice for hardware and labor.

I rather spend a large company a stipend to handle this. It's like with flying. You can buy a ticket on Southwest and the day trip to Orange Country will be $460, plus gas for your car and parking fee. Say $500 total. Because the total cost of the Boeing 737 gets shared with 150 other passengers, times the number of hours it flies and I bet they will make sure that that number is well over 3000h/year.

You could also have your own airplane and then, all costs factored into the hours you actually use it, the same trip costs well north of $2000.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Ours will be kept at localtions about 3000 miles apart and under our control. If that all gets flattened I think we have other things to be concerned about.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Hi Joerg,

Teeth behav> D>> OTOH, having to *access* the "sole" copy of my data through

Careful -- you'll find that it gets to be a different management issue when you have to sort out who's got *the* latest copy (WITHOUT any of their locally added changes! i.e., the "master" copy that *you* were using to introduce YOUR changes)

I suspect that is the case.

That assumes you are using MS-Office and not something that the cloud provider doesn't make available for you to use to maintain your documents!

E.g., imagine MS creates a special version of Office for its cloud service. You interact with *this* tool and MS maintains the "source" for the document in their cloud.

Later, you want to download that document as you end your service agreement with MS-Cloud and discover that the document is not readable by your "old" MS-Office. And, that the Cloud-Office software is not available for sale on "PC's" (because it was developed for use in the cloud!)

Doesn't appear like you are talking about true cloud computing, then. Just a "remote file repository".

Yup. Historically, I think I spend a day or two PER WEEK (on average) maintaining equipment, software, etc. Of course, much of that I can schedule on time that isn't "precious". But, it's still got to get done and there's no other warm body to do it if I don't!

OTOH, I tend to have a much wider variety of tools to support than most folks. So, it's not *just* calibrating a 'scope, power supply, DVM, etc. "once a year". Or, *just* upgrading a CAD program. Or, a DTP program. Or, a 3D modeling tool. Or...

(and let's not forget SWMBO's needs! :< )

Sure. OTOH, if they don't fly to the location you want to reach

*or* if their flights are all booked, you're stuck having to change *your* plans to accommodate *them*!

A good portion of the time I spend "maintaining" stuff is expressly for the purpose of being able to continue working on regardless of what other circumstances might befall me.

Power supply in computer fails? I'm running on another machine WITH THOSE SAME FILES AND TOOLS 15 minutes later. Primary monitor dies? Give me 5 minutes to swap the cables between that and the secondary monitor and I won't miss a keystroke.

I've spent late nights "rescuing" friends who've had problems the night before a key dog-n-pony because they weren't prepared for those "eventualities" (and, to their credit, *their* strategy was obviously more effective than mine! Don't spend time/money ahead of time... just call Don when it hits the fan! :< )

It's a matter of discipline. Even for myself I follow a strict rule by adding a "poor man's rev level" where needed.

ubergizmo_007_1.doc ubergizmo_007_2.doc ubergizmo_007_3.doc

And so on. ..._3 is the latest in this case. It is a very solid method to reliably find files back. I do not entrust this kind of stuff to an automated version control system. Of course you must be careful that there isn't a case where two people wok on it at the same time. But in our small group that's easy to handle. Should we ever screw that up we'd get a warning "file already exists".

Only over my dead body could that ever happen. One of the reasons why the MS solution is not under consideration. It is too expensive and we do not wish to rent software, we prefer to use our own.

IMHO it would be a very stupid decision to fall for such services. We are not planning to do that.

Pretty much. But it seems that with 1&1 you also get one (or more if you pay more) processor cores and 1GB of RAM. It runs Linux but Windows adds only $0.05 per hour which is cheap. So, my thinking is I might be able to run heavier duty simulations on that instead of my much slower netbook. Or potentially someone could run them controlled via s smart phone. Heck, if this works it could even convince me to get one of those.

All this only if we can install our software on the cloud server, of course. For me that would only be one program, LTSpice. That would be real cloud computing.

Ouch. That I absolutely want to avoid. Maintaining my lab equipment takes up enough time. Now the Durabook laptop popped a red light for the battery charging. Rats! So I'll have to do some IT next week.

After I married the availability of "non-precious" time became almost zero :-)

Exactamente. In five minutes and for the rest of the day that will be pruning and trimming bushes in the yard.

There's a price to pay for everything. Can happen on your personal aircraft as well. Vacuum pump warning light comes on after starting the engine ... game's over (although one could potentially saddle up anyhow and do a white-knuckle ride). Southwest will have another Boeing 737 if something tehnical happens. Heck, Lufthansa even had a spare (!) A380 when something went on the fritz in Frankfurt. Couldn't believe it.

Same here. A backup for the backup, just in case.

Yep, good old scout teachings, be prepared.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Hi,

Crowd sourced cloud computing, I think businesses are not going to be interested in this due to security for sure, but still interesting, I think the beta for it just started in August2013.

cheers, Jamie

Things like "git" handle that scenario well.

--
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Congratulations on your start-up!! And really it sounds like a worthwhile effort since fundamentally, it HELPS people. Best of luck to you!

So, what I was thinking about probably wouldn't be a direct fit, but might be worth your kicking the tires a bit to find out. Essentially, you'd be t reating your team members as your own in-house customer.

I was thinking: ZenDesk

and they do have a free trial.

Our little start-up is now operational, so maybe this makes more sense for you down the road...? All I can say is I was squeemish about SaaS (Softwa re as a Service) and cloud stuff too. But after some awful internal growin g pains, we opted for ZenDesk and have never looked back. One of the best decisions we ever made.

If nothing else, it is a tool to keep everyone on the same page! Works with email (and a bunch of other channels). Very flexible!

IME, git (and most of the other VCS's) really only handle "text" well.

I've been setting up a P4 repository, here, as there are LOTS of "objects" besides "source code" and "text files" that need to be "controlled", formally. While they (p4) appear to support local "sandboxes", I doubt that is a practical solution for folks with small/nonexistent IT departments...

pretty much everything can be handled as text with the main exception being digitised analogue data

--
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If, by that, you mean "any object can be piped through od(1) and, thus, converted to a TEXT object", I would agree. I'm not sure how much that *buys* you, though! (e.g., compared to treating everything as a *binary* object)

But, unless you *only* write code or deal with objects having ASCII-based native formats (VHDL, HTML, etc.), there are LOTS of things that really exist *as* "binary objects".

I quickly browsed the file list on the workstation that I use to prepare documentation (repository is powered down, at the moment) and it includes the following extensions:

graphics JPG/GIF/PNG/XWD/BIT/PSD/TIFF/CDR/AI "fonts" FOG/PFM/PFB documents DOC/FM/TEX/PDF/NB audio WAV/AU/FLAC video MPG

[I.e., these are files being used in the documentation for the current project!]

Of these, only the PSD/AI/NB "file types" are ASCII. The rest are not. (no "source code" or "hardware" stuff on that machine currently)

Note that my CAD drawings, schematic capture/PCB layout (including component libraries!), animations, etc. aren't even on this machine! Most of those formats are similarly "binary" (I think DXF's are ASCII).

Dumping even relatively simple schemas in "script" format (ASCII) leads to multimegabyte objects. OTOH, dumping them in archive format (BINARY) usually cuts that down by an order of magnitude! OToOH, the VCS can more effectively store diffs of ASCII dumps than binary ones...

And, I've not bothered talking about the *obvious* binaries: executables, VM's and compressed archives! :-/

[I've installed/configured several VCS's, here, concurrently, so that I can actually compare their performance side-by-side on "real" workloads. *Actual* workloads not just "writing code", etc. Soon, I'll "pick" one and move everything into a unified repository (though I will have to upgrade that server when the time comes :< ) ]

That looks interesting, but looks windows only. It would look more interesting if it were Linux or some other completely open source based system.

I know the whole world and it's dog uses windows, but I wouldn't use it out of choice for anything critical...

Chris

They're a lot bigger if you transmit them in ASCII CSV or tab- delimited or hex etc., but it's certainly possible. They should compress down fairly well too.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward" 
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com 
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

On the contrary, IME IT departments are typically _very_ effective at doing some things. Mostly the heavy-handed imposition of top-down corporate policies that cause the productivity of technically inclined users to sharply decrease.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward" 
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com 
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Hi,

Ya its linux virtual machines running on windows kind of strange mix! Also the virtual machines can't currently accept incoming connections, and can only start outgoing connections if I read it correctly.

cheers, Jamie

Thankfully, I've never been subjected to the whims of *any* IT/IS department! At those times I was working at places *with* such departments, I was able to work as an isolated "little island" on my own workstation, etc. This seemed to annoy the hell out of those folks who would make a point of not allowing me to use other "computing resources" (printers, etc. -- "Printer? Now why would I need *that*?!!" :>)

Maybe Funambol? They have a demo system at

but offer tailored setups for customers as well, webpage is If read that correctly, one option is that they setup all you want on your hardware in your premises or alternative in theirs. No idea about the prices though but I'd look into this if I were in your shoes.

Thanks. Yes, when it's done it will help people. It isn't always bad lifestyle or habits that gets them into this medical condition. I know people where it is clearly hereditary, there is almost nothing they can do to prevent it.

That looks like only a customer service app as far as I can see, for for sales and support-oriented businesses. And very expensive, at $25/person/month.

The ticket feature would probably be useful for us, to make sure that no open issues are left dragging in the sand. Gantt charts get old very quickly with that. But I think we need a real cloud server thing here.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

[...]

I don't think our VC folks would go with that :-)

They prefer a well-established commercial provider with a reputation.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Thanks. "Call sales rep for pricing" usually means $$$ but a quick glance around the web seems to hint that pricing could be reasonable:

But support seems not so great and no encryption. The latter would be a show stopper for us.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/