Big Data, Data Warehouses, and Business Intelligence Systems - Database Processing: Fundamentals, Design, and Implementation - page 566

The hypervisor is
VMware Workstation 9

The virtual machine
WS12-003 is running
the Microsoft Windows
Server 2012 operating
system

SQL Server 2012
running on virtual
machine WS12-003

The host machine is
running the Microsoft
Windows 7 operating
system

Figure 12-30
SQL Server 2012 Running in
a Microsoft Windows Server
2012 Virtual Machine

a desktop running Microsoft Windows 8 can run the Linux and FreeBSD operating systems
in virtual machines. Figure 12-30 shows a desktop computer running Microsoft Windows 7
supporting a virtual machine running the Microsoft Server 2012 operating system. This virtual
machine has SQL Server 2012 installed and is, in fact, the virtual machine that we used to
obtain all the SQL Server 2012 screenshots in Chapter 10A (among others).

Cloud Computing

For many years, systems administrators and database administrators knew exactly where their
servers (physical or virtual) were located—in a dedicated, secure machine room on the com-
pany premises. With the advent of the Internet, companies started offering hosting services
on servers (physical or virtual) that were located somewhere else—in a location (sometimes
known but sometimes unknown) away from the company premises. And as long as these host-
ing companies provide the services we want (and at a price we want to pay), we really don't
care about exactly where the hosting servers are located.
This configuration of servers and services hosted for us over the Internet is known as
cloud computing . As shown in Figure 12-31, our Internet customer sees us by our presen-
tation at our company Web site and related e-commerce services on the Internet at www
.ourcompany.com . They don't care whether the servers that provide the services they want
(being able to see and buy the latest versions of our Class A Widget) are located physically
at our company or somewhere else “in the cloud” as long as those services are available to
them and work reliably.
Hosting services in the cloud has become an established and lucrative business. Hosting
companies range from Web site hosting companies such as eNom ( http://www.enom.com ) and
Yahoo! Small Business ( http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting ) to companies that offer
complete business support packages such as Microsoft Office 365 ( http://office.microsoft.com/
en-us/academic/ ) and Google Business Solutions ( http://www.google.com/services/ ) to com-
panies that make various components such as complete virtual servers, file storage, DBMS
services, and much more.
In this last category, significant players include Microsoft with Windows Azure ( http://
www.windowsazure.com/en-us/ ) and Amazon.com with Amazon Web Services (AWS) ( http://
aws.amazon.com/ ) . Of course, there are others, but these two provide a good starting point.
Windows Azure, like any Microsoft product, is Microsoft centric and not currently as expan-
sive in its product offerings as AWS.