On 3/7/2012 1:20 PM, John R Pierce wrote: > On 03/07/12 10:06 AM, John Hinton wrote: >> I'm looking into adding a cloud to one of my servers. > what does "a cloud" mean in this context ? > > to me, a cloud is a set of homogenous servers running distributed > applications. classic cloud is google. the term has been degraded > to also refer to a stack of servers running a virtualization platform > such that the individual VMs don't care what hardware they are assigned > to, classic example of a VM cloud is Amazon AWS. > > I don't understand how ANYTHING you do on a single server could be > called 'cloudy'. > Perhaps the definition of cloud has gone lower and should be called "fog" now? It seems however that the definition is an online infrastructure which may: provide applications provide file storage calendar contacts collaboration communication among a number of other things and that these services are all available to 'users' on the cloud via: servers desktops laptops tablets phones As for how many servers? Well that is a matter of how many users you have, loads, storage capacity and just about anything else a single or bank of servers might do. At the moment, our business has 4 people in four different locations and we want to better share our work. Seems like file shares are one aspect, but perhaps some applications, certainly collaboration and I really don't like putting stuff on Google. I see at least one of these allows you to run OpenOffice through the browser. I haven't really done a lot of research into this yet and really all I wanted was some ideas for a simple open source cloud software that was preferably friendly to CentOS. Also, this would be a good exercise in learning a bit more of what is out there that our clients might wish to use. No, I'm not building a system where anyone in the world can sign up, nor for a fortune 500 company, nor even one much smaller. Just for us at the moment, and perhaps do a bit of sharing to our clients from time to time. I have so far found eyeOS and am also looking at ownCloud. Thanks Devin for that link. -- John Hinton 877-777-1407 ext 502 http://www.ew3d.com Comprehensive Online Solutions