News Dev boots a PC from Google Drive storage in the cloud — a storage-less laptop becomes a truly cloud-native computer

[Admin]

A developer has successfully booted a Linux system from Google’s cloud storage platform. After overcoming a multitude of hurdles, they managed to boot a storage-less laptop from Google Drive and thus create a Cloud-Native Computer.

Dev boots a PC from Google Drive storage in the cloud — a storage-less laptop becomes a truly cloud-native computer : Read more

 

[Krieger-San]

There's a reason why we have internal storage drives; primarily for reduced access latency. Placing the block storage device across the internet not only makes it slow to operate (obviously), but it will also do one of two things: create congestion for people outside your household by doing so; or significantly throttle your own internet to only provide bandwidth for communicating with said remote block storage device.
This is a great Proof of Concept; terrible idea, in my opinion. (Re: I'm a 10 year Systems & Network Admin)
This is also why SAN's are utilized - a dedicated, isolated network with its own bandwidth pool strictly for block storage communications 😉

 

[ekio]

The nightmare.
Relying on servers for even your OS…

 

[USAFRet]

The nightmare.
Relying on servers for even your OS…

Sounds like thin clients, used all over the world.
OS held on the company server farm.

Of course, only for specific purposes.

This is absolutely NOT for thee and me.

 

[ivan_vy]

Sounds like thin clients, used all over the world.
OS held on the company server farm.

Of course, only for specific purposes.

This is absolutely NOT for thee and me.

data security, updates, demotivate the thieves... a great idea for 'specific purposes'.

 

[mitch074]

It has one huge interest : sleepless devices. As it is a RAM disk image, you load it once; it runs from RAM until you completely power off the device. Every time you boot up from scratch, you get an up to date system.
It IS a compelling idea on paper; if you make the base OS very small (and that's possible), booting may not take too long; you get a brand new, completely up to date core OS (streamlined kernel + limited user space + basic GUI + browser could fit under 200 Mb) and do the rest of your activities in the cloud...
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see ChromeBooks using that system in the coming years.
The cost ? Bigger UEFI images.

 

[jeremyj_83]

The nightmare.
Relying on servers for even your OS…

This is already done in data centers all the time using PXE network booting. In a way this is just a PXE boot but the storage is device is MUCH further away and most likely on a slower network connection to you.

 

[jeremyj_83]

There's a reason why we have internal storage drives; primarily for reduced access latency. Placing the block storage device across the internet not only makes it slow to operate (obviously), but it will also do one of two things: create congestion for people outside your household by doing so; or significantly throttle your own internet to only provide bandwidth for communicating with said remote block storage device.
This is a great Proof of Concept; terrible idea, in my opinion. (Re: I'm a 10 year Systems & Network Admin)
This is also why SAN's are utilized - a dedicated, isolated network with its own bandwidth pool strictly for block storage communications 😉

Since this was booted from Google Drive, I bet it was object storage instead of block.