Rumor: Apple's iCloud powered by Microsoft, Amazon servers

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  • Reply 41 of 149
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stelligent View Post


    If this is true (and I believe there's at least partial truth), then it is an excellent decision. Quite a few good reasons (http://bit.ly/rq5YbR).



    Regardless of how you look at it, it would be silly to not use iCloud just because of this. After all, as consumers, who cares how they make it happen as long as it is a good, reliable service?



    You may look at it that way it is your right, I on the other hand I do care about about what company I keep. It makes shaving easier, if you can figure out what I mean, although I have a question on that one given your opinion .
  • Reply 42 of 149
    I think it would be a grave miscalculation to think that the whole world will stick their data in US controlled clouds. They won't. They've learned from GPS how vulnerable, unreliable, and inaccessible it can be. Read: manipulated. Used as a strategic and a political weapon. Therefore non-US user markets will develop their own cloud systems. Just like the experiences with GPS inspired the Galileo, Glonass, and Baidu projects, and the Japanese, Indian, Brasilian, and Australian plans to each also build their own nav systems.
  • Reply 43 of 149
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shoozz View Post


    This shows how big Apple has become, they have outgrown their capability to serve their customer base, at least for now.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by rbryanh View Post


    It's difficult to trust a company that doesn't use its own products,



    Neither of the above is correct. Apple does not serve the enterprise server market and apparently has no desire to do so. While at one time they dabbled with it, they are no longer selling a server for applications like this. Apple is wise enough to 'stick to its knitting' and do the things it does well while outsourcing the things it doesn't.



    It's similar to Sony. Sony makes PCs, but you can be sure that Sony's backbone operations are not run on Sony PCs. Sony's PCs are consumer-oriented products and if they do anything with businesses, it's no more than small business operations which really operate like home computers.



    It's really about time that people learned that 'computers' is not a single market and there's no rule that someone has to participate in every computer market segment.
  • Reply 44 of 149
    ksecksec Posts: 1,569member
    There aren't many choice. Apple wont be using Google's Server. Which left them with Amazon and M$ only. The rest aren't enough Big enough for Apple's requirement.



    I think Apple will continue to build very Large Datacenter in EU and in Asia as their very Backend. And Using M$ and Amazon Cloud as front end.
  • Reply 45 of 149
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post


    There is a limit per person, which is less than a google email limit.



    5GB per person * millions of iPhones and iPads.



    But the thing is, it's not just having the capacity to store that data, that is the easy part.

    You also have manage upload, process, and push of millions of photos, documents, settings, application data, and more every minute. Apple also has to keep track of each of these things thrown into iCloud individually so they know what is there, what isn't, what's been pushed, what hasn't, what's changed and what needs to be updated on other iDevice's or OS X, etc. Providing that kind of access is going to be a pain in the ass; I can only imagine how they scaled that database to be able to handle such a load and how they managed to keep the servers able to supply all of that data simultaneously to every iDevice without any slowdown.

    Storing data is easy, keeping track of it is not. Scaling applications like iCloud is a not as simple as Google's email system.
  • Reply 46 of 149
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by noirdesir View Post


    Listen to this podcasts for more details on how the really large cloud companies run their servers:

    http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/22

    Start at: 28:02, also have a look at the links on that page.



    Thanks for posting that great link. I learned a lot.
  • Reply 47 of 149
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    It is not an area I would claim to know all that much about but I would have thought Apple would use Unix severs which I though ruled out anything from MS. I expected to hear Apple had teamed up with Oracle and would be using Sun hardware to be honest. Alternatively perhaps even IBM minis. Do MS offer anything other than Windows based servers?
  • Reply 48 of 149
    Well, that's it then. iCloud will fail. If Microsoft are hosting it, the privacy will be porous - both to provide MS with backdoors to snoop for pirates (they never trust end users) and because MS security is sloppy at the best of times. I'll not go anywhere near MS if I can help it.



    For a while now I've seen Apple veering away from being an independent company, and one which seeks to make money from being an adjunct of Microsoft in the Enterprise. iOS is great for syncing with Windows servers, but awful for syncing with OS X servers. All the efforts go into moving Apple software closer to Windows. The Apple server line is bereft of serious attention at the software level, and there are still compatibility issues with File Permissions in mixed Windows/Mac environments which use Mac servers.



    Apple are selling out just to make money. No wonder Steve Wozniak left.
  • Reply 49 of 149
    This is one of the more absurd rumors I've heard.
    1. Apple always avoids entrusting their user experience to third parties when they can.

    2. Why build a data center if you're going to outsource it?

    3. Azure is way too new/unproven for them to even consider much less rely on.

  • Reply 50 of 149
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by shompa View Post


    Technically it is impossible to scale to the level that is needed with Windows servers. If you have worked with large installations: the problem with windows is that you need to exponentially increase the server for double performance.



    This is the reason why almost not one single computer on top 500 uses windows. It could even be zero.



    Have you got a source for that?



    I know Windows Server has a limitation on running a process across many processors (the Windows version I assume the Azure Appfabric sits on has a 256 CPU/2TB RAM limitation) but I wasn't aware of any limitation for running many process across many servers (something which in my mind would have been handled by Azure rather than Windows Server itself)



    I would have thought the latter would be more important for something like iCloud. i.e. there isn't so much of a need to run one user process really fast but rather a need to run many user processes.
  • Reply 51 of 149
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post


    It is not an area I would claim to know all that much about but I would have thought Apple would use Unix severs which I though ruled out anything from MS. I expected to hear Apple had teamed up with Oracle and would be using Sun hardware to be honest. Alternatively perhaps even IBM minis. Do MS offer anything other than Windows based servers?



    My guess is Apple would have coded iCloud in Java or platform independant C++. The server hardware/OS everything is on wouldn't matter so much.



    Actually that's the benefit of something like Azure or Amazon. You just pay per unit of traffic/storage/CPU and leave the hardware and scaling up to the datacenter guys.



    It let's you get back to focusing on the user experience rather than the backend details.
  • Reply 52 of 149
    tbelltbell Posts: 3,146member
    Look at these photo. Those look to be HP Proliant servers.



    Apple is a consumer product company. Any corporate inroads have been ancillary to selling consumer products. It's server products have also been geared to small scale operations. Apple historically has used some of its own products for server operations. For example, XServe and Web Objects as the front end for iTunes. However, it also uses other companies server and data base products. Once Apple started buying data centers, it isn't hard to understand why it dropped X-Serve. It wants to focus on the front end for consumers, not the back end.



    Some sites suggest Apple used Solaris for MobileMe.



    On its jobs site, Apple claims its ?data center environment consists of MacOS X, IBM/AIX, Linux and SUN/Solaris systems.?



    Further, it states one center will have a ?heavy emphasis? on high availability technologies, including IBM?s HACMP and HAGEO solutions for high-availability clusters, Veritas Cluster Server, and Oracle?s DataGuard and Real Application Clusters.



    Job prospects are also asked to know storage systems using IBM, NetApp and Data Domain, and data warehousing systems from Teradata. Networking positions require a familiarity with Brocade and Qlogic switches.



    As Apple focuses on consumer products, it might as well rely on companies for the back end that have a proven track record in server solutions, which has never been Apple's strengths. I doubt Apple is using Microsoft's or Amazon's server farms unless the demand is larger then Apple's three farms can deliver. For instance, it probably would just be licensing the product to use on its own servers. The choice of Amazon wouldn't' be hard to understand either, since Amazon was one of the pioneers of cloud computing.
  • Reply 53 of 149
    Sure smells like crap. I'd be more inclined to believe the solution leaned heavily on z/OS and Linux. So there's my contribution to making stuff up and publishing it, trying to desperately fill the attention void.
  • Reply 54 of 149
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hagar View Post


    ... Given the train wreck iDisk is, it would not be a surprise if they will rely on third party servers.?



    Just wanted to point out that I am pretty sure Apple already uses third party servers for idisk. IF they are still relying on third parties for support I'm not sure how iDisk is evidence of a fail or success.



    Personally I think the rumor is BS. More likely they are using sun and Hp servers and probably running linux.
  • Reply 55 of 149
    "Apple may be hedging its bets with both Microsoft and Amazon in order to avoid any mishaps with the iCloud launch. Amazon has in recent months suffered a series of embarrassing outages that have shaken customer faith in its cloud services."



    So, go with Amazon? Hedging its bets to guarantee "embarrassing outages"?
  • Reply 56 of 149
    1. First, there is an adage that says to "use the right tool for the job". Apple being a consumer company, doesn't have any of the high-end software need to run a site on a scale like this, even despite MacOS running on Unix. This is no different than BMW, who make excellent cars, having to rely on trucks built by competitors to get their cars to dealers. Big whoop.

    2. For those who say "Windows cannot scale" don't know what they're talking about. Don't hold onto a common belief from 15 years ago, you obviously haven't worked with Windows Server 2008. I'm not suggesting that it's more or less capable than high-end unix solutions, but it is definitely a player now. Besides, you may have heard of a site called Hotmail? Sites don't get much bigger than that, and yes, they've been running Windows servers since forever.

    3. Even with the above said, I personally don't buy into this rumor. It seems very unlike Apple to rely on third-party services like this.

  • Reply 57 of 149
    pokepoke Posts: 506member
    "The Register reports" -- the three words that let you know everything you're about to read is total nonsense. The Register doesn't report, it publishes fiction.
  • Reply 58 of 149
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    There are some odd posts here. Apple has 3 data centers, right? That's not enough for the world's access to iCloud reliably and quickly. You need secondary servers to spread out the service for speed and redundancy. Apple has doing this for at least most of their iTunes Store existence.



    They even use other companies for relaying their streaming which you can see in your web browser's address bar. It's not some crazy notion, it's highly expected they would farm out to reduce load and better the service for customers.
  • Reply 59 of 149
    jd_in_sbjd_in_sb Posts: 1,600member
    Hot-swappable clouds - that's mind blowing.
  • Reply 60 of 149
    tofinotofino Posts: 697member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by poke View Post


    "The Register reports" -- the three words that let you know everything you're about to read is total nonsense. The Register doesn't report, it publishes fiction.



    That's as far as I got too, before i dismissed the rumour.
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