I’ll be up front and clear. This post is an overview of Cloud Computing and why museums should care or at least be aware of it. First though, I find the progression of the server room quite interesting.
In the beginning one would have a singular huge computer that would crave the computational power of your cell phone. Access to these main frames was given to the end users through terminals or consoles. As servers became smaller and relatively cheap (< $10k), we began to fill our server rooms with many racks of computers. Each server typically had a dedicated purpose. Much is wasted with this model, since many of these servers would sit idly by +90% of the time while still consuming an immense amount of power. Not too long ago the Virtual Machine gave us the ability to run many virtual servers on a single machine. This was just a step away from where we are today. Why not run these virtual machines on someone else’s server?
Filed under: Technology
