We got hit pretty hard last night. Somebody (or somebodies) really had some stuff to analyze! That's great, of course, but it does pose a challenge to the infrastructure that underpins OpenAmplify, a challenge that requires management.

For most of the history of computing, that management required significant planning: for average load, peaks, failover, etc. It also required that one purchase, lease or otherwise make available the hardware and software needed to handle the peaks, etc. Since the hardware was obsolete the moment it was procured, one was always compromising on cost/performance. "TIme sharing" was an alternative, but didn't really scale very well. You just had to bite the bullet and write the checks. Big checks.

Ah, the good old days: I would spend weeks, or even months, preparing plans, RFP's, checklists...I could count on a bunch of really good, free lunches as I pitted the various vendors against each other. Eventually, I'd have an infrastructure that would suffice...for awhile.

Those days are gone, at least for me. OpenAmplify is built on the Amazon EC2 cloud. No more free lunches. But, no more headaches, either (or, at least, far less of them). Our infrastructure makes itself bigger when the load increases, makes itself smaller when the load decreases, senses when a server is unhappy and simply replaces it with a new one. Presto! All automatic, no muss, no fuss. I get a monthly bill from Amazon, and they manage all the servers, networks, power supplies, and all the rest. I don't even know what hardware they're running.

So when we got slammed last night, I got the best possible news: none. I didn't even know about it until Ram mentioned it to me in today's Managers Meeting.

Cloud computing rules.