Cloud (3)

If you’re like most businesses, you already have at least one workload running in the cloud. However, that doesn’t mean that cloud migration is right for everyone. While cloud environments are generally scalable, reliable, and highly available, those won’t be the only considerations driving your decision.
For companies considering their first cloud migration, there are a lot of factors that you’ll want to take into account, from the benefits and the risks, to the cloud service model and type that is right for your business. In this post, we’ll look at the high-level elements that you should consider as you contemplate a move to the cloud.

Potential Benefits of Cloud Migration

There are many problems that moving to the cloud can solve. Here are some typical scenarios that will benefit from cloud migration.

• • Your application is experiencing increased traffic and it’s becoming difficult to scale resources on the fly to meet the increasing demand.
  • You need to reduce operational costs, while increasing the effectiveness of IT processes.
  • Your clients require fast application implementation and deployment, and thus want to focus more on development while reducing infrastructure overhead.
  • Your clients want to expand their business geographically, but you suspect that setting up a multi-region infrastructure – with all the associated maintenance, time, human, and error control effort – is going to be a challenge.
  • It’s becoming more difficult and expensive to keep up with your growing storage needs.
  • You’d like to build a widely distributed development team. Cloud computing environments allow remotely located employees to access applications and work via the Internet.
  • You need to establish a disaster recovery system but setting it up for an entire data center could double the cost. It would also require a complex disaster recovery plan. Cloud disaster recovery systems can be implemented much more quickly and give you much better control over your resources.
  • Tracking and upgrading underlying server software is a time consuming, yet essential process that requires periodic and sometimes immediate upgrades. In some cases, a cloud provider will take care of this automatically. Some cloud computing models similarly handle many administration tasks such as database backup, software upgrades, and periodic maintenance.
  • Capex to Opex: Cloud computing shifts IT expenditure to a pay-as-you-go model, which is an attractive benefit, especially for startups.

Potential Risks of Cloud Migration

While your specific environment will determine the risks that apply to you, there are some general drawbacks associated with cloud migrations that you will want to consider.

• • If your application stores and retrieves very sensitive data, you might not be able to maintain it in the cloud. Similarly, compliance requirements could also limit your choices.
  • If your existing setup is meeting your needs, doesn’t demand much maintenance, scaling, and availability, and your customers are all happy, why mess with it?
  • If some of the technology you currently rely on is proprietary, you may not be legally able to deploy it to the cloud.
  • Some operations might suffer from added latency when using cloud applications over the internet.
  • If your hardware is controlled by someone else, you might lose some transparency and control when debugging performance issues.
  • Noisy “neighbors” can occasionally make themselves “heard” through shared resources.
  • Your particular application design and architecture might not completely follow distributed cloud architectures, and therefore may require some amount of modification before moving them to the cloud
  • Cloud platform or vendor lock-in: Once in it might be difficult to leave or move between platforms.

What Cloud Service Model Do You Need?

Now that you’ve decided to try the cloud, you’ll have to choose the cloud computing service model that you would like to deploy it in. These are the most common service models:

• • IaaS: Infrastructure as a service is a form of cloud computing that provides virtualized computing resources over the internet.
  • PaaS: Platform as a Service is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure associated with developing and launching an app.
  • SaaS: Software as a service is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted.

Here’s where you’ll have to make an important choice.
IaaS is best for companies that don’t mind hosting their applications in third-party data centers, but would prefer to outsource the care of their physical infrastructure to concentrate more completely on developing, deployment, and monitoring.
However, if you prefer your applications to be portable, you might want to simply drop your code onto a robust PaaS platform that provides a full (and invisible) infrastructure environment. SaaS is a delivery model through which centrally hosted productivity software is licensed on a subscription basis.

Public, Private, or Hybrid?

Assuming you’ve chosen a cloud model, it’s time to choose the cloud type. There are three basic options:
Public: Your resources are entirely hosted by a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Private: You create your own private cloud using a platform like OpenStack or VMware’s vCloud.
Hybrid: Your resources are spread over both private and public platforms.
With its healthy mix of on-demand reliability, high availability, security, and reduced operations costs, hybrid cloud implementations can be attractive. Going hybrid can sometimes give you the best of both worlds.I’ll illustrate how hybrid can work through a hypothetical scenario.
Let’s imagine that your web app is quickly gaining popularity and users. In order to keep up with the growing demand, you need the underlying resource to scale up dynamically. During peak usage, you should be able to deploy maximum resources to serve requests, and when demand drops, you should ideally be able to simply drop unneeded resources to save costs. This is possible within a public cloud. But suppose the data your app gathers is highly confidential and can’t just be stored off-premise. This is where a hybrid solution can help. In this case, you can choose which components you want to live in the public cloud, and which will remain in your data center.
RightScale reported that enterprises are increasingly adopting a multi-cloud strategy (81%), and 51% plan to use hybrid clouds.

Assessing Applications for a Cloud Migration

Having chosen a cloud model and cloud type, the real struggle is about to begin. Now, it’s time to see if your applications are cloud-ready. Here are some factors that you will need to consider:

• Application design complexity: Some traditional applications are so complicated and tightly coupled that customers might not be willing to rework it. However, the foremost requirement for any successful migration is that the app should follow a distributed architecture and should be scalable by design. Tools like PaaSLane and Cloudamize can help you assess your applications’ cloud-readiness. AWS’s Migration Hub service is a one-stop shop for everything you might need tool-wise to discover and assess your application’s readiness for cloud migration.
• Integration complexity: Every application has its integration points, such as payment gateways, SMTP servers, web services, external storage, and third party vendors. It’s very important to analyze the impact your cloud migration will have on those dependencies. Sometimes you will experience unexpected connectivity or authentication challenges that you should identify and solve up front.The most critical (and tedious) task is to identify all of those integration points. Since older applications might be poorly documented and the developers familiar with the end-to-end functional and non-functional details may no longer be available, you might have to go through each module manually. The task gets complicated if you’re considering migrating hundreds of applications currently running in your data center.

  Many of these issues can be addressed through a combination of the familiarity your team has with the apps and an asset discovery tool (either open source or commercial). An asset discovery tool can help you identify entire server configurations within a network, along with connectivity details.

  For example, say that you have a data center within a network that is hosting around 100 applications. A discovery tool can give you the bird’s eye view of the entire system. It can also provide granular details that can be helpful for a general capacity management assessment.

  Some of the better-known asset discovery tools include BMC Atrium and HP DDMA. Cloudamize provides a tool that can perform automated discovery of applications and machines, and additionally perform automated application dependency mapping to discover dependencies between applications.

• The host operating system: Once you have decided on a cloud migration, it’s important to know whether you will be able to deploy your applications on the same OS. Your applications may only run on a specific OS (or OS release). If it’s not compatible with your cloud provider, then you need to find a workable substitute OS, a different cloud provider, or simply give up the whole project.For instance, most cloud providers don’t provide 32-bit OS options and others might have unexpected subscription requirements. It’s best to do your research in advance.
• The application database: A database is obviously a critical part of any application. Customers invest a great deal on database servers and, often, licenses. Moreover, given the complexity and sensitivity of your data, you just might not want to move it right now: migrating petabytes of data is no trivial undertaking.In either case, you should make sure that the migration methods you use are highly reliable and come with the possibility of roll backs to deal with any unexpected chaos. Most cloud providers offer their own migration services. Therefore, it’s very important to evaluate those services before pushing the “start” button.
• Network: Most cloud environments don’t support multicasting, so if your application relies on multicast, then I would say “think twice.”

Cost Comparison

Aphelion like many cloud providers have pricing calculators that can help you to estimate the real costs you’ll face after a cloud migration vs. your current costs so you can decide which option is the best fit based on your current application workload profiles.

Proof of Concept

It’s always a great idea to build a small proof of concept (POC) before you actually migrate your workload to the cloud. I know such models won’t anticipate all possible issues, but it will give you greater clarity and understanding about the challenges you may face. Some of the things you should look for during your POC include:
• Performance comparisons with your existing application
• Complexity levels involved in migrating the application
• Network challenges that need to be worked out
• Reliability
• Cloud provider support evaluation
Addressing all the real-time challenges of a cloud migration cannot be captured in one post, but we have tried to address some common issues you should consider before you start the process. Contact us to see how we can help with your migration strategy.

If you are planning to deliver digital services of any kind, you’ll need to calculate resources including CPU, memory, storage, and network connectivity. Which resources you choose for your delivery, cloud-based or local, is up to you. But you’ll definitely want to do your homework first.
Cloud computing has benefited many enterprises by reducing costs and enabling a focus on core business competence, rather than IT and infrastructure issues. Despite the general hype, there can be disadvantages to cloud computing, especially in smaller operations. In this post, we will explore some of the key disadvantages and share tips and best practices that your teams can employ to address them.

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing Explained

1) Downtime

Downtime is often cited as one of the biggest disadvantages of cloud computing. Since cloud computing systems are internet-based, service outages are always an unfortunate possibility and can occur for any reason.
Can your business afford the impacts of an outage or slowdown? An outage on Amazon Web Services in 2017 cost publicly traded companies up to $150 million dollars and no organization is immune, especially when critical business processes cannot afford to be interrupted.
Best Practices for minimizing planned downtime in a cloud environment:

• Design services with high availability and disaster recovery in mind. Leverage the multi- availability zones provided by cloud vendors in your infrastructure.
• If your services have a low tolerance for failure, consider multi-region deployments with automated failover to ensure the best business continuity possible.
• Define and implement a disaster recovery plan in line with your business objectives that provide the lowest possible recovery time (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).
• Consider implementing dedicated connectivity. These services provide a dedicated network connection between you and the cloud service point of presence. This can reduce exposure to the risk of business interruption from the public internet.

2) Security and Privacy

Any discussion involving data must address security and privacy, especially when it comes to managing sensitive data. We must not forget what happened at Code Space and the hacking of their AWS EC2 console, which led to data deletion and the eventual shutdown of the company. Their dependence on remote cloud-based infrastructure meant taking on the risks of outsourcing everything.
Of course, any cloud service provider is expected to manage and safeguard the underlying hardware infrastructure of a deployment. However, your responsibilities lie in the realm of user access management, and it’s up to you to carefully weigh all the risk scenarios.
Though recent breaches of credit card data and user login credentials are still fresh in the minds of the public, steps have been taken to ensure the safety of data. One such example is the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR), recently enacted in the European Union to provide users more control over their data. Nonetheless, you still need to be aware of your responsibilities and follow best practices.
Best practices for minimizing security and privacy risks:

• Understand the shared responsibility model of your cloud provider outlining which security controls are their responsibility and which are yours.
• Implement security at every level of your cloud deployment.
• Know who is supposed to have access to each resource and service and limit access to least privilege.
• Make sure your team’s skills are up to the task: Solid security skills and regular training for your team is one of the best ways to mitigate security and privacy concerns in the cloud.
• Take a risk-based approach to securing assets used in the cloud
• Extend security through to the device.
• Implement multi-factor authentication for all accounts accessing sensitive data or systems.

3) Vulnerability to Attack

In cloud computing, every component is online, which exposes potential vulnerabilities. Even the best teams suffer severe attacks and security breaches from time to time. Since cloud computing is built as a public service, it’s easy to run before you learn to walk. After all, no one at a cloud vendor checks your administration skills before granting you an account: all it takes to get started is generally a valid credit card.
Best practices to help you reduce cloud attacks:

• Make security a core aspect of all IT operations.
• Keep ALL your teams up to date with cloud security best practices.
• Ensure security policies and procedures are regularly checked and reviewed.
• Proactively classify information and apply access control.
• Prevent data exfiltration.
• Integrate prevention and response strategies into security operations.
• Discover rogue projects with audits.
• Remove password access from accounts that do not need to log in to services.
• Review and rotate access keys and access credentials.
• Follow security blogs and announcements to be aware of known attacks.
• Apply security best practices for any open source software that you are using.

These practices will help your organization monitor for the exposure and movement of critical data, defend crucial systems from attack and compromise, and authenticate access to infrastructure and data to protect against further risks.

4) Limited control and flexibility

To varying degrees (depending on the particular service), cloud users may find they have less control over the function and execution of services within cloud-hosted infrastructure. A cloud provider’s end-user license agreement (EULA) and management policies might impose limits on what customers can do with their deployments. Customers retain control of their applications, data, and services, but may not have the same level of control over their back-end infrastructure.
Best practices for maintaining control and flexibility:

• Consider using a cloud provider partner to help with implementing, running, and supporting cloud services.
• Understanding your responsibilities and the responsibilities of the cloud vendor in the shared responsibility model will reduce the chance of omission or error.
• Make time to understand your cloud service provider’s basic level of support. Will this service level meet your support requirements? Most cloud providers offer additional support tiers over and above the basic support for an additional cost.
• Make sure you understand the service level agreement (SLA) concerning the infrastructure and services that you’re going to use and how that will impact your agreements with your customers.

5) Vendor Lock-In

Vendor lock-in is another perceived disadvantage of cloud computing. Differences between vendor platforms may create difficulties in migrating from one cloud platform to another, which could equate to additional costs and configuration complexities. Gaps or compromises made during a migration could also expose your data to additional security and privacy vulnerabilities.
Best practices to decrease dependency:

• Design with cloud architecture best practices in mind. All cloud services provide the opportunity to improve availability and performance, decouple layers, and reduce performance bottlenecks. If you have built your services using cloud architecture best practices, you are less likely to have issues porting from one cloud platform to another.
• Properly understanding what your vendors are selling can help avoid lock-in challenges.
• Employing a multi-cloud strategy is another way to avoid vendor lock-in. While this may add both development and operational complexity to your deployments, it doesn’t have to be a deal breaker. Training can help prepare teams to architect and select best-fit technologies and services.
• Incorporate flexibility as a matter of strategy when designing applications to ensure portability now and in the future.

6) Costs

Adopting cloud solutions on a small scale and for short-term projects can be perceived as being expensive. Pay-as-you-go cloud services can provide more flexibility and lower hardware costs, however, the overall price tag could end up being higher than you expected. Until you are sure of what will work best for you, it’s a good idea to experiment with a variety of offerings.
Best practices to reduce costs:

• Try not to over-provision, instead of looking into using auto-scaling services
• Scale DOWN as well as UP
• Pre-pay if you have a known minimum usage
• Stop your instances when they are not being used
• Create alerts to track cloud spending

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing: Closing Thoughts

Many organizations benefit from the agility, scale, and pay-per-use billing that cloud services offer. However, as with any infrastructure service, the suitability of cloud computing for your specific use case should be assessed in a risk-based evaluation.  Build in time for research and planning to understand how the cloud will affect your business.