The Morning Paper

MARCH 1, 2020

Firecracker is the virtual machine monitor (VMM) that powers AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate, and has been used in production at AWS since 2018. The traditional view is that there is a choice between virtualization with strong security and high overhead, and container technologies with weaker security and minimal overhead.

Serverless 101

Serverless Virtualization Lambda AWS 101

Dynatrace

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Container as a service is a cloud-based service that allows companies to manage and deploy containers at scale. Container environments enable enterprises to quickly deploy and develop cloud-native applications that can run anywhere. This, in turn, drove the creation of cloud-based services that further automated this function.

Serverless 221

Serverless Azure Hardware Transportation 221

Scalegrid

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Key Takeaways Distributed storage systems benefit organizations by enhancing data availability, fault tolerance, and system scalability, leading to cost savings from reduced hardware needs, energy consumption, and personnel. They maintain fault tolerance and redundancy by replicating this information throughout various nodes in the system.

Storage 130

Storage Systems Big Data Azure 130

Dynatrace

AUGUST 11, 2022

Before an organization moves to function as a service, it’s important to understand how it works, its benefits and challenges, its effect on scalability, and why cloud-native observability is essential for attaining peak performance. Cloud providers then manage physical hardware, virtual machines, and web server software management.

Development 256

Development Serverless Best Practices Lambda 256

Dynatrace

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

As an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Advanced Technology Partner, Dynatrace easily integrates with AWS to help you stay on top of the dynamics of your enterprise cloud environment?. It differentiates Dynatrace as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member with a fully tested product on AWS Outposts. “We

AWS 205

AWS Design Storage Cloud 205

SQL Performance

DECEMBER 17, 2019

One initial, easy step to moving your SQL Server on-premises workloads to the cloud is using Azure VMs to run your SQL Server workloads in an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) scenario. One important choice you will still have to make is what type and size of Azure virtual machine you want to use for your existing SQL Server workload.

Azure 72

Azure Virtualization Servers Storage 72

Brendan Gregg

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

Hardware virtualization for cloud computing has come a long way, improving performance using technologies such as VT-x, SR-IOV, VT-d, NVMe, and APICv. At Netflix, we've been using these technologies as they've been made available for instance types in the AWS EC2 cloud. I'd expect between 0.1%

Virtualization 40

Virtualization AWS Hardware Storage 40

Percona

AUGUST 22, 2023

Some of the most important elements include: No single point of failure (SPOF): You must eliminate any SPOF in the database environment, including any potential for an SPOF in physical or virtual hardware. Without enough infrastructure (physical or virtualized servers, networking, etc.), there cannot be high availability.

Availability 77

Availability Hardware Open Source Database 77

Percona

JUNE 22, 2023

To make data count and to ensure cloud computing is unabated, companies and organizations must have highly available databases. Components of high availability infrastructure Multiple copies of data Data redundancy helps prevent data loss due to hardware or software failures. Redundancy is also critical for disaster recovery.

Availability 105

Availability Database Open Source Hardware 105

Adrian Cockcroft

JANUARY 17, 2022

There were five trends and topics for 2021, Serverless First, Chaos Engineering, Wardley Mapping, Huge Hardware, Sustainability. I’d even use it to manage datacenter failover or failover for other cloud vendors, as what you really need is a highly available control plane that is totally independent of your own failure modes.

Serverless 98

Serverless Hardware AWS Architecture 98

Adrian Cockcroft

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

We used this model effectively at Netflix when I was their cloud architect from 2010 through 2013. The layers of platforms start at the bottom with hardware choices such as which CPU architectures and vendors you want to use. Netflix made many contributions to open source projects by it’s cloud platform team.

Engineering 137

Engineering Serverless Lambda AWS 137

Brendan Gregg

JULY 4, 2021

It's an exciting time for developments in computer performance, not just for the BPF technology (which I often [write about]) but also for processors with 3D stacking and cloud vendor CPUs (e.g., This was a chance to talk about other things I've been working on, such as the present and future of hardware performance. Ford, et al., “TCP

Performance 140

Performance Latency Hardware Storage 140

Brendan Gregg

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple Addresses,” [link] Mar 2020 - [Gregg 20] Brendan Gregg, “Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud, Second Edition,” Addison-Wesley, 2020 - [Hruska 20] Joel Hruska, “Intel Demos PCIe 5.0 Ford, et al., “TCP

Performance 110

Performance Latency Cache Virtualization 110

All Things Distributed

MARCH 11, 2016

This is a given, whether you are using the highest quality hardware or lowest cost components. When customers left the constraining, old world of IT hardware and datacenters behind, they started to develop systems with new and interesting usage patterns that no one had ever seen before. The importance of the network.

AWS 144

AWS Hardware Retail Virtualization 144

Dotcom-Montior

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

There was a time when standing up a website or application was simple and straightforward and not the complex networks they are today. With the rapid advancements in web application technologies, programming languages, cloud computing services, microservices, hybrid environments, etc., The recipe was straightforward. Peer-to-Peer.

Systems 74

Systems Monitoring Hardware Network 74

HammerDB

APRIL 19, 2023

Regardless of whether the computing platform to be evaluated is on-prem, containerized, virtualized, or in the cloud, it is crucial to consider several essential factors. There are many times we get asked why some cloud instance performed poorly for their database application and almost always turned out to be some configuration error.

Performance 54

Performance Benchmarking Cache Storage 54

ACM Sigarch

APRIL 26, 2018

EPU: Emotion Processing Unit is designed by Emoshape , as the MCU microchip design to enable a true emotional response in AI, robots and consumer electronic devices as a result of a virtually unlimited cognitive process. HPU: Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) is the specific hardware of Microsoft’s Hololens.

Hardware 99

Hardware Artificial Intelligence Architecture Google 99

HammerDB

OCTOBER 23, 2023

With a simple example such as this, it would not necessarily be expected for the additional network traffic to be significant between the 2 approaches. However, with more complex application logic this network round trip soon becomes a key focus area for improving performance. On MySQL, we saw a 1.5X performance advantage.

Benchmarking 62

Benchmarking Database Network C++ 62

The Morning Paper

MARCH 8, 2020

This paper describes the design decisions behind the Snowflake cloud-based data warehouse. This paper presents Snowflake design and implementation along with a discussion on how recent changes in cloud infrastructure (emerging hardware, fine-grained billing, etc.) From shared-nothing to disaggregation. Workload characteristics.

Storage 112

Storage Engineering Cache Serverless 112

Dynatrace

AUGUST 5, 2019

Across the board, the topics cloud migration, application modernization, breaking the monolith or hybrid cloud re-platforming have been a center point in many of our discussions with our joint enterprise customers. If you can answer all these questions fine – if not: get your own Dynatrace Trial and start installing OneAgents.

Cloud 31

Cloud Traffic Database Network 31

Testsigma

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

These devices ran on a diverse range of OS versions, screen resolutions, and network types. Once you have chosen your target devices, consider the architectural aspect of your hardware. New devices will launch more rigorously in the near future and you would always find yourself struggling to keep your hardware up to the minute.

Mobile 52

Mobile Testing Hardware DevOps 52

Brendan Gregg

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple Addresses,” [link] , Mar 2020 [Gregg 20] Brendan Gregg, “Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud, Second Edition,” Addison-Wesley, 2020 [Hruska 20] Joel Hruska, “Intel Demos PCIe 5.0 Ford, et al., “TCP

Performance 52

Performance Latency Cache Virtualization 52

VoltDB

JUNE 1, 2017

It was – like the hypothetical movie I describe above – more than a little bit odd, as you could leave a session discussing ever more abstract layers of virtualization and walk into one where they emphasized the critical importance of pinning a network interface to a specific VM for optimal performance.

Hardware 56

Hardware Latency Virtualization Cloud 56

Brendan Gregg

JULY 4, 2021

It's an exciting time for developments in computer performance, not just for the BPF technology (which I often [write about]) but also for processors with 3D stacking and cloud vendor CPUs (e.g., This was a chance to talk about other things I've been working on, such as the present and future of hardware performance. Ford, et al., “TCP

Performance 52

Performance Latency Hardware Storage 52

All Things Distributed

JANUARY 23, 2012

Expanding the Cloud - The AWS Storage Gateway. Today Amazon Web Services has launched the AWS Storage Gateway, making the power of secure and reliable cloud storage accessible from customersâ?? The Amazon Virtual Private Cloud extends on-premises compute with all the power of AWS, making it elastic, scalable and highly reliable.

Storage 115

Storage AWS Virtualization Cloud 115

O'Reilly

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

Even with cloud-based foundation models like GPT-4, which eliminate the need to develop your own model or provide your own infrastructure, fine-tuning a model for any particular use case is still a major undertaking. This is an area where cloud providers already bear much of the burden, and will continue to bear it in the future.

Open Source 106

Open Source Artificial Intelligence Google Infrastructure 106

VoltDB

JUNE 1, 2017

It was – like the hypothetical movie I describe above – more than a little bit odd, as you could leave a session discussing ever more abstract layers of virtualization and walk into one where they emphasized the critical importance of pinning a network interface to a specific VM for optimal performance.

Hardware 40

Hardware Latency Virtualization Cloud 40

Testsigma

FEBRUARY 3, 2021

Mobiles have different models, screen resolutions, operating systems, network types, hardware configurations, etc. Also, how to test the hardware of the mobile phone itself, is it supporting all the software as it should? Let us have a look at the most popular types of mobile testing for applications and hardware.

Mobile 82

Mobile Testing Hardware C++ 82

Adrian Cockcroft

JUNE 21, 2022

The early days at Sun Cambridge were special, I absorbed a lot about networking and the technical side of the role from my fellow systems engineer Martin Baines, and we were driving all over the region in cool company cars (I had a Citroen BX 16V) selling a really hot product. I also helped out in the run-up to the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Tuning 52

Tuning Benchmarking Engineering C++ 52

The Morning Paper

APRIL 14, 2019

The paper sets out what we can do in software given today’s hardware, and along the way also highlights areas where cooperation from hardware will be needed in the future. There are also stateless interconnects including buses and on-chip networks. Microarchitectural channels. Threat scenarios.

Hardware 44

Hardware Cache Latency Speed 44

Dotcom-Montior

JUNE 19, 2017

Today we’ll be reviewing LoadView , an on-demand load-testing platform from Dotcom-Monitor that makes realistic load testing possible without an up-front investment in hardware or software infrastructure. Thanks to cloud-based virtual servers, LoadView can send traffic to your site or application from around the world.

Performance Testing 40

Performance Testing Testing Performance Virtualization 40

All Things Distributed

DECEMBER 20, 2017

Developments like cloud computing, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are proving that IT has (again) become a strategic business driver. Breuninger, a fashion department store chain steeped in tradition, has recognized this and relies on a self-developed e-commerce platform in the AWS Cloud.

Artificial Intelligence 79

Artificial Intelligence Social Media Logistics AWS 79

Dotcom-Montior

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Today’s applications are built on multiple technologies, relying on vast networks of third-party providers and CDN’s. LoadView, our on-demand, cloud-based load and stress testing platform , takes an outside-in approach to performance testing. Your customers demand optimal performance, whether they’re the only user or one of a thousand.

Performance Testing 40

Performance Testing Strategy Testing Performance 40

Brendan Gregg

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

Linux has been adding tracing technologies over the years: kprobes (kernel dynamic tracing), uprobes (user-level dynamic tracing), tracepoints (static tracing), and perf_events (profiling and hardware counters). At my employer we sometimes use SR-IOV for direct network interface access, and NVMe for direct disk access.

Virtualization 76

Virtualization AWS Engineering Hardware 76

Abhishek Tiwari

DECEMBER 27, 2017

Containerized data workloads running on Kubernetes offer several advantages over traditional virtual machine/bare metal based data workloads including but not limited to. portability between cloud and on-premises. optimised container networking and security. better cluster resource utilization.

Big Data 63

Big Data Storage Benchmarking Hardware 63

Abhishek Tiwari

JULY 12, 2018

These nodes and edges require a good amount of compute and storage which is typically distributed across a large number servers either running in the cloud or your own data center. A data pipeline is a software which runs on hardware. The software is error-prone and hardware failures are inevitable.

Latency 63

Latency Analytics Scalability Engineering 63

ACM Sigarch

NOVEMBER 1, 2019

This blog post gives a glimpse of the computer systems research papers presented at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC) 2019, with an emphasis on systems that use new hardware architectures. Intel Quick Assist Technology (QAT) was the focus of the QZFS paper which used this new hardware device to speed up file system compression.

Architecture 12

Architecture Hardware Cache Storage 12