Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

All it talks about is Amazon's EC2, S3, MapReduce. It does not talk about "Application Architecture". It does not have ideas about how to break up traditional programs into MapReduce paradigm. It should be called Cloud Operations Architecture. If it was named by that title, I'd give it 5 stars. The book itself is not bad, but it will get obsolete very quickly due to its specificity to Amazon.
subtitle should be :Building Applications and Infrastructure in Amazon Cloud

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.

This is a very good book - I have nothing to add over the other good reviews. Important point to note is that this book is heavily focused on IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) - Amazon/GoGrid/Rackspace, while using Amazon as the main theme. If you plan to go for Google Apps/Azure/Salesforce/... - this book not directly required and may be pretty hardcore for a start.
FYI

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.

I've been working with Amazon's EC2 environment for nearly a year now. I thought I had a clear understanding of all that involves the Cloud, including spooling up instances, setting up security groups and using off-line storage for backups. However, I never considered many of the issues covered in the book.

I think the most important aspect of the book is that it lays out best practices that I'm leveraging now to scale my large web applications, tighten up my security and automate disaster recovery. It's clear that the author has spent a great amount of time thinking about these issues and has the hardcore experience backing his advice.

I also liked discovering more about the other offerings in the marketplace. It's impossible to tell what a client's needs might be so its nice to have them in mind when making these types of a decisions.

This is a good introduction to Infrastructure as a Service type cloud computing with a focus on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Just about the right level of detail to get an idea of what AWS and cloud computing is about along with a thoughtful treatment on some of the key issues and trade-offs. This is not a detailed how-to book.

Being in charge of a midsized IT unit (600 people), I was looking for answers around cloud. This book might be indeed very interesting for any software developer interested in developing against the cloud.

It does not aswer, however, questions from professionals about integrating cloud computing in a productive and heterogeneous enterprise environment.

I couldn't find answers about things like patching (do you get a new AMI if the underlying OS needs patching? How do you test after patching, etc.), user management, monitoring, questions about SLA, etc.

Furthermore, the chapter about the financial aspects might be appropriate - albeight tiny - for a one-server shop or for a startup, but it is definetly not suitable for a 500-1000+ server shop (at least not if you already are using virtualization technologies extensively).

To bring an example, the statement made in the book "in the cloud you don't incur capital costs" is so superficial to become just wrong. Even in the cloud there are well capital costs, but the pricing model is set up to mask them to the final user. Any "legacy"-IT can set up its services the very same way, where final users pay a rental price per time unit for use of any server instance. Truth is, the cloud allows a variabilization of capital costs, but this is only interesting if the load of your servers in not constant over time (i.e. load peaks or sporadic usage).

In a nutshell, if your are a CIO and are looking for answers to enterprise deployment of cloud computing, this book will not bring you further.

I use, and have been using EC2 in highly distributed and scalable applications that my business now relies on to function.

While EC2 has it's drawbacks, it is a great shot at hosted, on-demand, step-up application hosting.

I am telling you this book is for anyone interested in diving into this explosive technology that makes life easier, from the entrepreneur start up to the enterprise client.

I consider myself well versed in many "cloud" service providers, and this book addresses all concerns with implementations and infrastructures that I had never thought of. From basic questions to unique scenarios that are cloud and implementation specific.

George really displays his knowledge and experience throughout this book. It is a must read for anyone diving into any part of this industry.

Don't be caught without this book, knowledge, and experience. You will regret it the first time you are putting out an enterprise level fire, that could have been easily avoided.

-Brandon

I understand that this was not a how to book but rather an overview of cloud computing. However I would liked to have seen more detail information.

It's the classic CC book and it shouldn't miss on your bookshelf. Very useful to get started, but there are many new services and offerings in AWS now which are not yet covered in this book (micro instances, AWS Linux, free monitoring).

So you may consider to supplement it with "Host your web site in the cloud" by Jeff Barr (for the PHP developers and those who are mainly interested in hosting websites) or "Middleware and Cloud Computing" by Frank Munz (better choice for software architects, very up to date).