Getting Started with Cloud Computing - available on the Kindle.

As various methods continue to get crammed under the umbrella-label "cloud computing", most, if not all, internet users will sooner or later work with at least some of them - and be forced to confront the associated jargon.

As with any avant-garde technology, the evolving jargon of the subject serves multiple roles. Unfortunately for the novice, it often - sometimes unintentionally but sometimes deliberately - works as an obfuscating layer. To cloud understanding, so to speak. This is indeed unfortunate, since understanding the fundamentals can go a long way towards strengthening the promise and warding off the associated dangers.

This book takes a deliberately neutral stance towards the business aspects of cloud computing in its various avatars, focusing instead on discussing and explaining, to the extent possible, the fundamentals of the technology that makes these avatars even plausible in the first place.

The book is written in easy-to-understand language, avoids jargon, includes a glossary of terms and references for further study. It presents

• an insight into acronyms liks IAAS, PAAS, XAAS, PVM, VMM, NOW and COW
• the aspects of economics that are driving the push
• the several factors that are retarding adoption
• technologies involved in moving an application to the cloud

Areas covered include

• factors that influence performace of a cloud application
• an introduction to HTC (High Throughput Computing) and HPC (High performance Computing)
• the different implementations of parallel computing
• terms such as NUMA, SMP, ASMP, MPI and embarassingly parallel tasks
• the Hadoop framework and MapReduce - what they're all about
• virtualization and its uses for consolidation and multi-tenancy

Several chapters in the book are software-independent - the explanations apply to many, if not all, cloud and grid computing platforms. The general backdrop of the book, however, is PBS Pro. Familiarity with this platform will help, though it's certainly not essential.

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