closed-source cloud computing

By basd on May 31, 2009 | In cloud computing

Since I've pretty much always been a self-employed DIYer, my focus has been on open source tools; and with cloud computing, stuff that will run on my hosted web site.

...

Because, let's face it, if my server goes down and I'm somewhere far away, there's no way I can get it back online.

Whereas, my web host is cheap and professionally maintained. If it goes down, it probably will be back soon -- and I have something like 99.99% available stats.

In a corporate environment, that picture changes. There is enough IT to keep the server running. So, if you can get server access, YIPPEE!

I don't have a lot of experience with these tools, because they would not even come close to being cost effective for me.

But ... surprise, I got a new job.

Everything is online -- and everything is in some well-known operating system I am not not exceptionally fond of.

So, they gave me RDP access and there was a remote XP desktop, right there on my laptop. Semi-cool. (The "semi" is that the screen was too big, so I had to scroll a lot just to find "start" and "x". And secondly, there was horrifying lag.)

I went home and got rdesktop running on my trusty linux laptop. With a bit of research, I discovered I could create an icon that would start up rdesktop using option switches to (a) auto-login; (b) set the screen to an arbitrary size that worked well on my laptop; (c) connect my local drive so I could move files; and (d) NO LAG.

Awesome. So, this constitutes "sort of" universal cloud computing, because provided I can run rdesktop, "I'm in!"

But, as it turns out, I had to access two systems.

The semi-famous closed-source software company also has a different "Small Business Server" system. This one you access from a browser.

Which, means, of course, that if you can sit down at ANY computer, you can access the remote desktop.

Well, sort of. You WERE planning on tying yourself permanently to software provided by that semi-famous software company, weren't you? Because this system runs on "activeX" -- and there is no Firefox or Linux implementation of activeX. Totally surprisingly, there is only one browser that can run activeX controls -- and you-know-who makes it.

Lucky us -- if we are traveling, 90% of the computers (or more) that we find in public places happen to have that browser on it. So, if admin has not prevented activeX controls, we now can log into the remote desktop. Yay!

Now, a small group of us contrarians have laptops sporting a penguin-oriented operating system. What now?

Oh, yeah, I remember that because it's cheaper to buy a computer with a semi-famous operating system than with a penguin one, my computer has some dusty copy of that obsolete system running in dual-boot somewhere. I could, I suppose, take a giant step backwards and do all my computing from the other partition.

Unless, of course, I happen to be running "virtualbox" -- and so I set everything up in there. Is this computer hot or what?

Now, I could not find a "URL" command or something that would provide me with autologin options. So, logging in is annoying, because there are multiple steps to get logged in. Whereas the rdesktop login to RDP puts a full-blown Windows desktop on the screen pretty much instantaneously -- on the SBS server, I have to go through multiple login steps and also re-designate my local drive every time I log in.

I couldn't get local printers to work on either system -- but mostly because there are no local printers connected physically to my laptop. They are network printers and both of these remote systems will only recognize (a) the printers on the server network, which are 60 miles away (100 km. or so, for those of you who are not still locked into some archaic measuring system) or (b) printers actually physically connected to the local client, such as on "LPT1".

So, I guess possibly I will be able to print to my portable printer, but otherwise I have to create PDFs, move them to my local drive, open them, print them.

Which is tedious.

But, unfortunately there are mountains of proprietary software I have to use on the remote system that are not duplicated in the free world. So my future is locked into tedious.

Thank you for visiting and have wonderful tomorrow.