Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Reese George (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If you're involved in planning IT infrastructure as a network or system architect, system administrator, or developer, this book will help you adapt your skills to work with these highly scalable, highly redundant infrastructure services.

While analysts hotly debate the advantages and risks of cloud computing, IT staff and programmers are left to determine whether and how to put their applications into these virtualized services. Cloud Application Architectures provides answers -- and critical guidance -- on issues of cost, availability, performance, scaling, privacy, and security.

With Cloud Application Architectures, you will:

• Understand the differences between traditional deployment and cloud computing
• Determine whether moving existing applications to the cloud makes technical and business sense
• Analyze and compare the long-term costs of cloud services, traditional hosting, and owning dedicated servers
• Learn how to build a transactional web application for the cloud or migrate one to it
• Understand how the cloud helps you better prepare for disaster recovery
• Change your perspective on application scaling

To provide realistic examples of the book's principles in action, the author delves into some of the choices and operations available on Amazon Web Services, and includes high-level summaries of several of the other services available on the market today.

Cloud Application Architectures provides best practices that apply to every available cloud service. Learn how to make the transition to the cloud and prepare your web applications to succeed.

About the Author

George Reese is the founder of two Minneapolis-based companies, enStratus Networks LLC (maker of high-end cloud infrastructure management tools) and Valtira LLC (maker of the Valtira Online Marketing Platform). Over the past 15 years, George has authored a number of technology books, including MySQL Pocket Reference, Database Programming with JDBC and Java, Java Database Best Practices, and the upcoming Web Architecture and Programming in the Cloud. Throughout the Internet era, George has spent his career building enterprise tools for developers and delivering solutions to the marketing domain. He was an influential force in the evolution of online gaming through the creation of a number of Open Source MUD libraries and he created the first JDBC driver in 1996-the Open Source mSQL-JDBC. Most recently, George has been involved in the development of systems to support the deployment of transactional web applications in the cloud. George holds a BA in Philosophy from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois. He currently lives in Minnesota with his wife Monique and his daughters Kyra and Lindsey.

Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media (April 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596156367
• ISBN-13: 978-0596156367
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,313 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cloud Computing Demystified, May 16, 2009

By	Tajan R. Kenkre "tkay" (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have been waiting a long time for a book on architectures for Applications that run in the Cloud. Based on the reviews I had seen on Amazon on previous books on the Cloud, I gathered that the term "Cloud" was either being used as a way of attracting readers even though the contents of some of these books had nothing to do with the Cloud, or that some of the books did not deal sufficiently or well enough with the key architectural issues.
George Reese's book on Cloud Application Architectures, on the other hand, is an excellent, and in-depth treatise on the subject.
Reese has organized the book well into easily readable sections, and given very detailed information and best practices in each. He has sprinkled the book with examples of command line utility and other code to illustrate his key ideas. He is clearly an experienced practitioner of Cloud Computing. He has written the book with clarity that many other technical books lack. For each of the topics covered in the book e.g. Security, and Disaster Recovery (which, I trust, not coincidentally, rate as the top concerns of CIOs and IT Managers when making decisions about using the Cloud), Reese provides not just the key issues to consider, but also suggests different ways of addressing the issues, with the pros and cons of each.
The main examples in the book are based on Amazon Web Services, E2, and S3. I also appreciated the included sections in the back of the book by GoGrid and Rackspace, which offer different services for the Cloud. The idea of using GoGrids's CloudCenter and other similar servces may appeal to CIOs and IT Managers who are wary of the main issues of security and manageability, while Rackspace's one-stop shop approach to servers, files and sites might appeal to others.
All in all, a practical, and thoughtfully written book. I think this is a book that has the power of changing how key IT executives approach decision making about using the Cloud.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very good book on cloud computing, April 18, 2009

By	PC (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

A very refreshing take at a topic that was always unclear in my head no matter how much I tried to read about it. In this book, the author does not try to impress you with buzzwords and try to establish how great cloud computing is, instead he just lays out his knowledge in a very clear and practical manner. In the very first chapter itself you get a very clear idea of what cloud computing is about. I am also thankful that the author did not try to start from the history of the internet and the web :-)

Here is the table of contents:

Chapter 1. Cloud Computing
Section 1.1. The Cloud
Section 1.2. Cloud Application Architectures
Section 1.3. The Value of Cloud Computing
Section 1.4. Cloud Infrastructure Models
Section 1.5. An Overview of Amazon Web Services
Chapter 2. Amazon Cloud Computing
Section 2.1. Amazon S3
Section 2.2. Amazon EC2
Chapter 3. Before the Move into the Cloud
Section 3.1. Know Your Software Licenses
Section 3.2. The Shift to a Cloud Cost Model
Section 3.3. Service Levels for Cloud Applications
Section 3.4. Security
Section 3.5. Disaster Recovery
Chapter 4. Ready for the Cloud
Section 4.1. Web Application Design
Section 4.2. Machine Image Design
Section 4.3. Privacy Design
Section 4.4. Database Management
Chapter 5. Security
Section 5.1. Data Security
Section 5.2. Network Security
Section 5.3. Host Security
Section 5.4. Compromise Response
Chapter 6. Disaster Recovery
Section 6.1. Disaster Recovery Planning
Section 6.2. Disasters in the Cloud
Section 6.3. Disaster Management
Chapter 7. Scaling a Cloud Infrastructure
Section 7.1. Capacity Planning
Section 7.2. Cloud Scale
Appendix A. Amazon Web Services Reference
Section A.1. Amazon EC2 Command-Line Reference
Section A.2. Amazon EC2 Tips
Appendix B. GoGrid
Section B.1. Types of Clouds
Section B.2. Cloudcenters in Detail
Section B.3. Comparing Approaches
Section B.4. What's Right for You?
orm:knowledge-test B.5.
Appendix C. Rackspace
Section C.1. Rackspace's Cloud Services
Section C.2. Fully Integrated, Backed by Fanatical Support
orm:knowledge-test C.3.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Only cloud in the sky, August 24, 2009

By	J. Wood - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Cloud is a concept, not an absolute. This book is far too specific around EC2 from Amazon, and the promotion thereof. Alternative approaches are referenced far too rarely, and mostly at the very end. The book also flipped between business models / architectures, to dumping 128 bit encryption code from RSA. No matter who you are, much of this book will not be what you are looking for. I felt it was very biased.