Xbox clould storage being rolled out now!!

justsomebloke

hightower1 wrote: »

"New" cloud computing = Accessing an online account from anywhere / pulling down data that is stored on multiple locations accross the globe.

BS, plain and simple. We have always been doing this. Think ofany large online account you have had in the last 10 years that you stored any type of data on.... I'll give another example. Youtube.
.

Hotmail turned 15 years old yesterday, which is older then some of the posters on this forum

theblueeyz

Joe the Santa wrote: »

Hotmail turned 15 years old yesterday, which is older then some of the posters on this forum

It's unfortunate I can't thank yet, so +1 will suffice.

-=al=-

Joe the Santa wrote: »

Hotmail turned 15 years old yesterday, which is older then some of the posters on this forum

Pity it's still pants

Ah I used hotmail for yonks and yonks, still use my 11 year old email for msn... loved the old msn, pity that was ruined a few years back... think it went all windows live-y after version 7.5 ...apple using this cloud nonsense recently is just annoying

/a bit random :pac:

bobbytables

hightower1 wrote: »

So what company are you working for thats allowing this unlimited source resource in terms of storage?! lmao. I will definitly sign up for that but I dont think a company offering such a service will last very long

Jesus relax buddy LOL, you are entitled to your beliefs & if you're content with your understanding of cloud technologies then good for you. I'd love to know what sort of background you have in all of this that makes you so "confident".

Actually no ****it...

Where in my previous post did I say my company provided unlimited cloud services?. If you read it again I said I work with cloud technologies in work. I also said "potentially unlimited", because the resources available to a cloud can be extended by simply adding more physical resources resulting in a larger single entity. What's the max number of physical resources that could be added to a single cloud, oh sure it just so happens to be potentially infinite. Also "back in the day" when we were apparently calling the cloud something else, I'd love you to describe in detail how software was creating variable infrastructures on the fly without human intervention?.

How do I know these things, I'm a software developer that once developed software that ran on server farms (even on PVMs), but more recently software that can dynamically spawn/scale infrastructures as required thanks to all the efforts that made this level of abstraction (which we call the cloud) possible. What makes me different from you is that I appreciate it first hand from the perspective of a developer first and user second. I am looking forward to hearing what qualifies you to tell me I'm spouting BS, because some of that code I wrote over the past few years that takes advantage of innovations in virtualisation and the cloud must be pretty ****ing redundant.

So I tell you what, stop being so ****ing arrogant and attacking others on this thread just because your understanding of the subject is different. The intention of my previous post was to be helpful, not simply to disagree with you for the sake of it.

amacachi

bobbytables wrote: »

I saw this thread earlier but didn't have time to reply. The concept of the cloud seems to be causing a lot of people a lot of bother.

I work with cloud computing, storage, etc etc, quite a bit with work so let me shed some light on the subject. The contemporary cloud as we've all been hearing about through the media, etc, is not the same as the more traditional concept of "a server". The cloud is a virtual abstraction on top of a scalable base of physical resources (servers, networks, storage devices, etc). Anyone who says it's just a marketing concept is incorrect. A cloud is a fantastic application of virtualization technology.

What differs this from years back when we all used servers to say host games of quakeworld or host files, etc is that each server had a resource limit. Vertical scaling was easy, but again the limit was never far away, and horizontal scaling was not always easy and still kept us tied to the notion of physical. So then advancements in virtualization technology brought us to a place where the concept of a "resource" wasn't tied to a single physical device.

So in the context of say your XBox where you have some storage in the cloud it means that the actual physical resources that you consume are not exclusively attached to a single machine or server. They could be scattered all over the place, but form my or your perspective it would appears like a traditional setup.

So when you're thinking about "the cloud", think of it as a potentially unlimited resource, and not in terms of physical machines.

I don't suppose you have an MBA by any chance?

bobbytables

amacachi wrote: »

I don't suppose you have an MBA by any chance?

Afraid not. My degrees, most of my qualifications & my years of experience are are all in IT/Engineering. Before I got in to service oriented stuff I too considered this "cloud" stuff hype. I was wrong.

amacachi

Without "vertical" and "horizontal" buzzwords etc. what's so great about cloud storage over just calling it "on a server somewhere" other than the built-in redundancy and therefore scalability? You can talk about abstractions all you want but all I can see is that it's on a server and I (don't need to know where) can't be told what server as such.

bobbytables

Ok so let's just take storage as a type of resource. Let's say a cloud has (n) physical storage devices connected via a network, each of variable size. Through code I can create a new virtual hard drive of a capacity that I can define on the fly that allocates sufficient resources from the cloud for this purpose. The benefit here is that i don't care that it's virtual and that I don't need to pay for more than I need.

Have a look at IaaS and what the likes of AWS have done in this regard. Yes down the stack it's a collection of physical devices just like years ago, but an ability to create a hard drive like a object in code is a powerful feat and very useful. I say this as someone who worked in situations where this was simply not possible and we had to rely on admins to provision the infrastructure that could serve foreseeable demands. Both expensive & time consuming it was.

amacachi

So will MS be renting cloud space off someone else or have they their own huge amounts of servers sitting idle until they fill up?

While there's plenty of optimization and all that happening the amount of space taken up is the same, the bandwidth is the same (if not higher on the server side) and the only benefit is that it's renting from someone else which would amaze me if MS needed to do that.

bobbytables

To be fair MS is a cloud provider itself. The benefits of cloud technology is what clients of such companies pay for. I've worked with Amazon's cloud services at both user and developer levels and as I said before if I wanted to write some code that could spin up or down some variable resource capacity based on some conditional event I can. I don't need to get on the phone to a human or even be aware what my code is requesting (within reason) if I wanted. At the end of the day the cloud let's me treat hardware resources like software components available to my applications.

This is not the same as "I have files on the Internet and I don't need to be concerned with where". We always had location transparency with distributed architectures & redundancy, we don't need virtualization or the cloud to have that. However cloud technology has inherited these things because the virtualization of resources spans distributed physical tiers.

Slippin Jimmy

So has anyone got their update?

naughto

nope

cython

Duffff-Man wrote: »

So has anyone got their update?

Don't think we'll be getting it so soon after all: http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-brief/57088-microsoft-denies-xbox-live-cloud-rumors

Microsoft is denying speculation that its promised cloud storage service for Xbox Live has been rolled out ahead of schedule.

As part of the myriad new features announced at its E3 keynote last month, Microsoft said it will be giving Xbox 360 users the ability to upload some of their user content - which to date has needed to be stored on a local console - to the cloud.

Specifically, users will be able to store their Gamertags to an online account, and then retrieve them from any other Xbox 360 system.

The service will also allow storing save files for certain games to the cloud, eliminating the dreaded fear of losing progress and having to start a game all over again.

Earlier this week, buzz started spreading that Microsoft was already beginning the phase of rolling out the cloud services, prompting Xbox gamers to check for updates and hunt for the new feature.

However, Joystiq quoted a Microsoft spokesperson as quashing the rumors, saying, "Just confirmed that the service has not gone live yet. We'll keep you posted on launch details."

Microsoft isn't really pioneering anything here, as Sony has offered online-based account retrieval for the PS3 from day one, and introduced cloud-based game saves when it rolled out Playstation Plus last year.

Among the other new features planned for Xbox Live this year are indeed new and exciting industry changers, like the ability to watch live TV from an Xbox 360 console. A huge update for Xbox Live is currently slated for a general fall 2011 time frame.

Underpaid Mike

hightower1 wrote: »

So what company are you working for thats allowing this unlimited source resource in terms of storage?! lmao. I will definitly sign up for that but I dont think a company offering such a service will last very long ...... or are you just putting a marketing spin on what is by its definition NOT an unlimited resource? Its very much limited in terms of technical aspects such as data saved will need to take up a finite amount of space and other technical aspects such as its utter reliance on ISP specs.

This is nothing new and we all know it tbh.

We have all been using remote saved data for years and it was in a lot of cases not saved on only one server somewhere (as you seem to belive this is the defining point of the "old cloud computing set up"). When you were accessing your bungie.net account ages ago do you really think all the details for every user was saved to one server somewhere or multiple. Of coarse there were multiple servers for this (redundency, geographical location access accross the web to counteract latency, and sheer volume of data storage needed) So this null and voids your idea that the recent emmergence of cloud computing is totally different to the already established use becuase your details are accessed through and account that links to multiple physical servers in differing locations... thats EXACTLY what we were doing with multiple other services just like bungie.net.


"New" cloud computing = Accessing an online account from anywhere / pulling down data that is stored on multiple locations accross the globe.

BS, plain and simple. We have always been doing this. Think ofany large online account you have had in the last 10 years that you stored any type of data on.... I'll give another example. Youtube. They clearly have server locations accross the planet but yet you access your youtube account from anywhere and can use that media at any terminal and youtube pulls the data stored in differnt locations to bring it to that terminat that your on.

Simply becuase iTunes says something is "new" doesnt make it so, all it is is a new name for a way of using tech that we have been using for decades now.

I find it pretty scary that you can write on this topic with such authority yet it is very obvious that you do not understand the concept or the technology. Cloud storage/computing and using servers are most certainly not the same thing. You should read bobbytables posts again.

The simpliest way to specify the difference i have found is as follows (from wikipedia) :

The key characteristic of cloud computing is that the computing is "in the cloud"; that is, the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or static place(s). This is in contrast to a model in which the processing takes place in one or more specific servers that are known.

If you want to argue cloud storage versus server storage simply replace storage for computing in the above quote.

unklerosco

amacachi wrote: »

So will MS be renting cloud space off someone else or have they their own huge amounts of servers sitting idle until they fill up?

They've just finished building a rather large place out near Clondalkin that as far as I know is being used for cloud storage... Been building it for near 4 years now, afaik it was finished late last year....

Gunther_Gloop

Cloud computing and cloud storage allows the relevant companies to rent their products, ensuring predictable and consistent revenue streams. It also gives them more control and power over what their "users" can do and see and use them for.

I don't mean to turn this into conspiracy theory stuff, but I have no enthusiasm for abdicating my central processing and storage abilities to anywhere other than the box that is next to me.

Trevor451

About time Steam have been doing this for a while now and its really handy