I don't know if this question is suited for superuser or not, but it doesn't seem right for Stack Overflow.  Basically I have been hearing a lot about the cloud, but I don't understand what exactly it is.  I am familiar with things that I am told are cloud computing, e.g. Amazon EC2, but I don't know what makes EC2 cloud computing as opposed to anything else.  Is it just a matter of storing data at a remote location rather than on your own private servers that you physically own?  I am not looking for a 2 sentence answer - I'm really looking for a detailed explanation of what the cloud actually is (and is not), because after watching at least ten youtube videos on this I still don't get it.
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I hear about "" all the time, but don't know what it is.     What is it's purpose?  Why do I need it? What problems does it solve? What problems does it create?
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So I think I understand a good amount of the theory behind elliptic curve cryptography, however I am slightly unclear on how exactly a message in encrypted and then how is it decrypted. So my questions are   How are messages encrypted and decrypted? How are the public and private keys determined?   Thanks for the help
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I am looking at automated deployment solutions for my team and have been playing with Chef for the past few days. I've been able to get a simple web app up an running from a base Red Hat VM using chef-solo.  Our end goal is to use Chef (or another system) to automatically deploy application topologies to the cloud as we run builds. Our process would basically run like this:   Our web app code, dependencies, and chef cookbooks are stored in SCM A build is executed and creates a single package for images to acquire and test against The build engine then deploys new cloud images that run a chef client to get packages installed. The images acquire the cookbooks from SCM or the Chef server and install everything to get up and running   What are the benefits and/or use cases for getting a Chef Server running?  Are there any major benefits to have a Chef Server hold and acquire the cookbooks from SCM vs. using chef-solo and having a script that will pull the cookbooks from SCM?
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Can somebody explain what is  and what is  in plain english? And how Web Services work?
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I have a Ubuntu 15.10 server, which currently has a bunch of software installed on. Now, I want to make a full backup of everything there (including profiles, configs, etc...) on this computer (virtually on Parallels Desktop) for another physical computer which I've recently installed Ubuntu 15.10 server on it.  So how can I transfer this system completely into that computer? I tried PinguyBuilder and Systemback, but they were not what I wanted.  Considering that if there is a way, which would need not or at least a Internet connection (specially on physical computer) would be awesome.  Any help?  P.S: I know there are many topics for backup things, but they are not exactly for a non-gui server, or maybe I couldn't find what is suitable for me.
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Am moving a Win2003 server onto Amazon.  I'd like to build it on the On Demand instance first, then if all goes well, move to a Reserved.  Question:  Is there any way to move from On Demand to Reserved, or will I have to manually rebuild the machine again.  Its not an easy build and I don't want to have to do it again :-)
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I wonder what is the best practice for storing the virtual machine encrypted. I tried putting the image it a TrueCrypt volume, but it doesn't work nicely:   With the volume unmounted the VirtualBox complaints about missing VM disk, which is a bit annoying after a while. There's no way to quickly unmount the volume without shutting down the VM first (except for a dirty unmount, which is no good idea).   Maybe there's a better way or maybe a VM integrating encryption?
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Through reasons that don't warrant exhaustive discussion, I find myself in charge of 10 servers:   A domain controller-~500 hosts/~350 users IIS web server-This is where we make our money SQL server-The crown jewels Exchange server Linux box for data entry AV server Backup server A few others tossed around   The company where I work believes everybody is replaceable and therefore believes they can pay a minimum wage for any position. The IT manager and Sysadmin quit recently and I think I was the only person who did not take a big step backward when the call went out for volunteers. This also explains why someone with my background is in this position. That is the reality, as much as I wish it otherwise.  What are the things I should be doing to keep those systems running? There is no written procedure left behind and I crammed the A+ and Network+ certs in the last two months but that leaves me with some theory and no practical experience.  I am in the process of teaching myself powershell but from here to there is a long way. I have no scripting or programming experience.  What tasks should I be performing? What practices should I implement?  I understand I am probably hosed but a lifeline to get me through would be helpful.
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I'm wondering about the downsides of each servers in respect to a production environment. Did anyone have big problems with one of the features? Performance, etc. I also quickly took a look at the new Glassfish, does it match up the simple servlet containers (it seems to have a good management interface at least)?
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I'm trying to build a web application that is similar to Youtube (it's not a knock off), but I guess I don't know how video is served on the internet very well.  I know how to build regular database driven web applications, but nothing like the scalability of Youtube. All of the applications I have built before have all been run on one server with the files stored on the same box as the web server.  How does one decouple the application server from the file storage from the media server? I would more or less want four machines (clusters of machines):   Application servers -- Present the web page, handle user uploads, link the user's flash player to the correct media server etc. Database shards -- Store user information, check favorites, etc. File storage -- Store the media files Media servers -- Serve the media files   How do I hook all of this together? Which technologies should I leverage? Where do I go to learn more about architecting this?  How does Youtube's embeddable flash stuff work? I want to embed my flash player on other websites and have it tie into my architecture.  Note: I have looked into:   But I still don't get the overall picture of how this stuff ties together. If someone can explain in high level terms how all of this stuff works?  Are there dedicated client servers running internally to shuffle around all of this stuff between the application servers, file storage, etc. Is it all via HTTP using JSON, what is going on here!  Thanks!
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I am looking for the shortest comprehensive way to explain to people that are trying to use DRM as a technology to prevent users from using their data in some fashion deemed undesirable, why their solution cannot work by definition.  Ideally I'd like something that:   Covers why technically it is impossible to have people access local data, but only in such-and-such a way Imparts an understanding of why this is, to avoid follow-on "But what if" rebuttals Is intuitive enough and short enough that even a politician (j/k) could grasp it   When faced with this situation I try to be clear and concise, but I usually end up failing at least on one of these points. I'd really like to have a 'stock' answer that I can use in the future.
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I was just looking at  and they seem to be using the Stack Overflow engine or Stack Exchange.  But it seems to be hosted on their servers. How is that possible?
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I know what a CPU is(I think). It's the thing who's speed is measured in GigaHertz(these days).  However, you hear a lot about a GPU, and letting the GPU take over, not letting the CPU but the GPU do it, GPU-based rendering, etc...  What is this GPU anyway? How can I access it and use it to my advantage? What am I missing out on here?
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I don´t know how to use drush nor the command line, so I´ve started to read some tutorials, and watch some videos. I´ve installed the drush windows installer, because I have windows.  The thing is that all examples I´ve read so far, start with localhost. What if I have my devel installation in a shared hosting or a VPS, in the cloud? How to access that?  Using my ftp program, I access it using hostname ftp.mysite.com the username and the password to that account. How may I do that with the command line?  Thanks!
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I have two desktops (one of which I'm using as a server), my main machine has a weaker i5 cpu, my server has a stronger i7 cpu. On my main machine I am experiencing stutters because the CPU often runs at full load under regular use (strangely, I also use upwards of 10GB of RAM, no joke... The heaviest program I'm running is google chrome).  I was wondering if there was any possible way to share a cpu from one machine over network to another machine as an emulated processor, which could be used by the client machine in a similar sort of fashion as virtual machines use or "borrow" their host's cpu.  This way I could offload work onto the server's cpu when the main cpu is under full load to prevent annoyances like stutter, and possibly combine both of them for more intense tasks (like decryption, compilation, archiving or other multithreaded stuff)  Does this sort of software exist, or has anyone at least tried to make it? If not, is it feasible?  (This sort of program would also ideally be able to offload data onto the server's RAM for faster processing, since the now common gigabit connections get to have nearly the same speeds as a standard HDD this doesn't sound far fetched either)  To reiterate, what I am primarily looking for is the ability to offload work from a system's main cpu when it is under too much load and forwarding it to another computer's cpu over network.
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When configuring new SQL Servers on VMs, it is a good idea to have the Database, TempDB, logs, and backups on separate logical drives, even if the underlying storage is the same? I know that this is a good practice on physical servers; the separation actually helps us to reduce the pains caused by concurrent I/O.   I am trying to understand if having 3 drives instead of 5 would make sense. Can someone please provide their views/suggestions for this idea?
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I am in the process of creating an offsite backup, and need to do a initial load of data. Currently, that's about 400Gb, give or take 10Gb or so... The backup system is producing files which are about 4Gb each, and has some other, smaller related files also. So, i need to transfer all 400ish gigs to a remote server, but how? What is the best method?  I have full remote access to the server, so i can install anything i need to install. There are Windows, Linux and a Solaris VM running on the box itself, so any of those can be used there, and i have Windows and Linux at home. I have 2 internet connections in house, 10Mb/s uploading on each, so something that could potentially split the number of connections would be handy (kind of like GetRight, but in reverse... PutRight?).   [Update] I have tried the option below of using RSync, but there is only one connection being made between my workstation and server. When uploading large files to Amazon, there is an option of breaking them apart locally and unbreaking them on the server end. multiple files are also send over multiple connections. so, a 4Gb file could be split into 800 ish 5Mb chunks, and sent 4 or 8 at a time, using as much of your upload bandwidth as possible. So, how would i do this automatically? I could hack something together to do it and use SFTP to send the files, but is there an automagic option?