« October 2009 | Main | December 2009 »
November 20, 2009
San Antonio Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon – Finisher!
Last Sunday (11/15/2009), we ran the San Antonio Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon.
In an attempt to run a faster, stronger marathon, we adopted a new Bart Yasso training plan which focused heavily on hills and speed workouts. My overall training mileage was 30-40% higher than previous marathons.
The race started at 7:30am with approximately 30,000 (!) participants. The temperature was in the mid 60s with 96% humidity. Being a Bay Area resident, I had never run in weather of this nature. Since this was a large race, runners were staged in corrals (the total length was over a half mile). Our corral crossed the start line 25 minutes after the race officially began.
Starting off, we headed south and ran through downtown San Antonio for miles 2 – 4 (course map). We passed famous landmarks including the Alamo. The crowd was pretty deep during this part of the race as the streets were narrow and twisting. At one point it reminded me of the Mountain stages of the Tour de France! The downtown area was fairly warm as there was no breeze and the humidity definitely slowed the race down a bit.
After running through the downtown, we headed north through some older neighborhoods. There wasn’t much to look at but the course was as advertised – flat.
At Mile 10.5, the half-marathoners went their own way, which thinned out the field. We went south into a more rural area of town, running along a large cemetery for miles 16 – 18, which was a bit … creepy.
The humidity stayed around the 96% mark with the temperature edging towards the 80 degree mark. We headed back into town at mile 22 and somehow I never hit the wall, no doubt in part to the training regimen (thanks Bart!)
The finish was at the Alamodome. Mile 26 had a full, cheering crowd which was very motivational. Right after Mile 26, the course took a hard right and after a poorly placed hill and another hard right, the finish line emerged, looking like an oasis in the heat.
Overall, here's how the run rates in my book:
Organization – Well-organized/staffed with 3,500 volunteers. Course was clearly marked, mile markers were accurate. Grade: A+
Course – Low on the scenery factor. Grade: C
Aid-stations – Truly excellent. Given the humidity and temperature, maintaining fluids is a key part to a successful race. Even though there were 30,000 runners, every aid station I saw was fully stocked. Grade: A+
Swag – Short sleeve, dri-fit shirt. Grade: A
Posted by davehod at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2009
ApacheCon 2009
I attended ApacheCon 2009 which coincided with the 10th anniversary of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) this week.
Deciding what sessions to attend what tough (So many sessions … so little time) I focused mostly on the following:
- Tomcat
- Internet Scalable Architectures
- Lucene
- Solr
- Hadoop/Mahout
Unlike the Cloud Computing conference I attended earlier in the week, there were no vendor presentations, pushing their solution. Instead, sessions were generally led by project committers. This meant that the speaker was very knowledgeable about his/her subject and was able to answer in-depth question off the cuff. Very Gnomedex-like!
Slides of each session are supposed to be up on the ApacheCon website “soon”. In the meantime, I’ve included links to some of the sessions. Unfortunately, some were hand drawn, so no slides :-(
I’m not sure on the date for the next ApacheCon but I would highly recommend attending if you are interested in ASF-related projects.
Posted by davehod at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2009
Cloud Computing Attracts Big Players
The Cloud Computing Conference in Santa Clara, CA (11/2/2009 – 11/4/2009) was well attended and featured a number of companies.
There were a number of large players offering cloud solutions. They are not just dipping a toe in the water, instead many enterprise players are putting significant efforts behind their cloud offerings.
Some of the large players included:
- Intel
- Oracle (yes, even though Larry said cloud computing was vapor)
- EMC (focusing on storage, disaster recovery)
- Unisys
- Yahoo
- Microsoft
- SAP
- Sun
- VMWare
There were a number of cloud vendors, ranging from large to small startups:
- Rackspace
- RightScale
- 3Tera
Amazon did not make an official appearance, although Jeff Barr tweeted that he would be in attendance.
Major takeaways:
- Vendors smell large opportunity. Agatha Poon of the Yankee Group thought large scale adoption was a number of years out, with adoption varying by sector. Interestingly, she stated that the healthcare sector was more optimistic on cloud adoption, ahead of both manufacturing and finance.
- Still working on “closing the deal” – many discussions about overcoming “myths” and having to educate potential customers about public/private clouds, security, etc. The cloud has not entered anything close to the mainstream yet.
- Major selling points revolve around economics (perhaps a sign of the times): pay-as-you-go, no depreciation, etc
- Cloud portability and service interoperability will not happen in the near term.
Agatha Poon captured the state of the cloud at the end of her presentation quite well:
“Make no mistake, cloud services are still evolving”
Posted by davehod at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2009
Nine Myths of Cloud Computing
Richard Marcello, SVP Unisys, gave the keynote presentation at the Cloud Computing Expo. His talk was entitled “The Time is Right for Enterprise Cloud Computing”
The most interesting part of the presentation was a list of the “Nine Myths of Cloud Computing”:
- Myth #9 - Cloud computing is not new, not revolutionary
- Myth #8 - All clouds are the same
The speaker noted that there are many different types of clouds including: public, private and hybrid. He felt that in the long run, most companies would end up with hybrid solutions, running what is appropriate for each type of cloud. - Myth #7 - Cloud computing is about technology
Marcello walked through a slide of Forrester info on traditional data center vs a cloud-based solution. He focused on expense, financial risk and depreciation, noting that cloud computing is also about cost. - Myth #6 - Private clouds have no benefit over virtualization
The speaker felt that private clouds had to deliver self-provisioned capabilities. At Unisys, the average setup time for a developer went from 10 days to 5 minutes due to the creation of a self-service web-based UI. - Myth #5 - Cloud computing is not reliable
Marcello disagreed with this myth, focusing on having a disaster recovery strategy, data security requirements, data reliability (using ‘m’ of ‘n’ redundancy strategies) - Myth #4 - Cloud value is only about cost
Don’t let the improvement in agility get lost in the message - Myth #3 - Cloud is not for mainstream business applications
Marcello felt that cloud computing won't take off until this myth dies - Myth #2 - Cloud is inappropriate for compliance-regulated industries
If architected properly, can address all kinds of compliance issues - Myth #1 - Internal datacenter is more secure than the cloud
Overall, quite an interesting presentation; certainly some hype around the cloud, but good list nonetheless.
Posted by davehod at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)