So many clouds - 7 things to consider when choosing your IaaS provider
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The document discusses 7 key factors to consider when choosing an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider: 1) Inventory your workloads and match them to provider offerings, 2) Consider your software delivery process and a provider's automation capabilities, 3) Evaluate how your software is architected and a provider's ability to handle scalability, availability and security, 4) Leverage available services and avoid duplicating functionality, 5) Comply with regulations regarding data location and privacy, 6) Select a provider with network coverage near your customers, and 7) Understand a provider's cost model and structure. The main benefit of IaaS is agility, so choose a provider that matches your organization's agility.
So many clouds - 7 things to consider when choosing your IaaS provider
- 1. So many clouds 7 things to consider when choosing your IaaS provider Sirris IaaS breakfast 2014/02/11 By Frederik Denkens http://skyscrape.rs @skyscrapers @fdenkens
- 2. We ... ● help companies figure out cloud for their web applications (choosing the right cloud, architecture, etc) ● design, build and manage platforms in the cloud ● are your DevOps partner that integrates with your team
- 3. Small disclaimer ... ● ● ● ● We are an AWS Consulting Partner But are not married to them We work with various suppliers (Linode, AWS, …) It all depends on customer requirements
- 4. <irony> How to choose </irony>
- 5. Based on … first impressions?
- 6. Based on … first impressions? ● Like you would choose wine, based on a pretty label? ● Based on the presenters we saw the last few months? ● The seemingly safe choice?
- 8. The safe choice? ● The saying used to be: “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” ● Maybe today it should be: “nobody ever got fired for buying Amazon Web Services” ● All the cool kids are doing it, why not us?
- 10. Or maybe not? ● It seems this Belgian start-up didn’t have a good business case for AWS. (though I’m not sure if going for a private cloud was the best choice for them) ● Many other examples of people learning that there is much to be considered.
- 11. Oooh, it has lot’s of shiny knobs and lights!
- 12. Oooh, it has lot’s of shiny knobs and lights! ● Don’t let the techie in you decide. ● Technology shouldn’t be your first guiding principle. ● Rather it is a result of the coming exercise.
- 13. So … how to choose?
- 14. So … how to choose? ● It’s a holistic decision, taking ALL business angels into account. ● Considering both today and tomorrow ● In other words, it’s a business decision! ● Impossible to give you a one size fits all, but let me give you some things to think about.
- 17. Make an inventory ● Inventorise your workloads ● See what they need in terms of scalability, flexibility, availability, security, async/sync, etc ➔ Allows you to do an initial matching to the offering of each provider ➔ Required homework for the next steps
- 18. Your software delivery process
- 19. Your software delivery process ● Waterfall vs Full Continuous Deployment ● The further you go, the more Infrastructure as code becomes interesting ● But also poses more automation challenges ➔ Will allow you to know how important the IaaSproviders’ automation possibilities (API’s, etc) are to you.
- 20. How is your software architected?
- 21. How is your software architected? ● Does it depend on underlying layers (infra/os/storage) to handle challenges around scalability, availability and security? ➔ Go with an IaaS provider who also solves these issues for you and gives you a strong SLA. (Probably at a higher cost, more complexity and less flexibility.)
- 22. How is your software architected? ● or at the other of the spectrum: is it a true cloud design? (designed for failure, loosely coupled, built for scale, …) ➔ Go with an IaaS provider who provides you all the necessary blocks to control your own destiny (Probably at a lower cost, less complexity and more flexibility.)
- 23. How much wheels (are you inventing?)
- 24. How much wheels (are you inventing?) ● Seek out workloads in your application that can be considered ‘commodities’ (messaging, queuing, etc) ● Don’t reinvent the wheel ● Potential benefits: no maintenance, faster time-tomarket, better built, higher QoS ● (Risk of lock-in: business decision, not emotional) ➔ Consider the richness of services each IaaS provider offers (and how far they move up in the PaaS stack)
- 26. Compliance and regulation ● We have a customer (bank in NL), they say: “no US owned company” because of Patriot Act vs personal data handling/privacy liability ● Think about compliancy on data location ● What standards do your customers care about (HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI, etc)? ➔ Might be a reason to go for an EU or regional company ➔ Consider their certifications
- 27. Where are your customers?
- 28. Where are your customers? ● Latency is still a reality ● Can have a major impact on the usability of your product/service ● IaaS is great, gives you access to the world ● But make sure your provider has locations close to where your customers are. ➔ Check out your providers coverage and network
- 29. Cost model and control
- 30. Cost model and control ● It’s a complex topic, a presentation by itself ● AWS (highly variable, flexible) vs ‘classic’ outsourced, typical model (fixed, inflexible) ● But don’t worry … it’s manageable and predictable by continuous measurement and evaluation ● If you do it right, you can save a lot of money ➔ In any case: it’s very important that you understand the cost structure of the chosen provider and link it to your own cost-model.
- 31. Where to next?
- 32. To the cloud! (Mandatory cloud image)
- 33. It’s a voyage
- 34. It’s a voyage ● Know where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow > make a roadmap ● Include: development process, application architecture, what IaaS/cloud benefits will you take up first, business requirements, etc ● Start with an application that's well suited to cloud ● Or get your feet wet with non-critical stuff like your test-environments ● Go step-by-step as enabled by true IaaS
- 35. It’s a mindset
- 36. It’s a mindset ● Enjoying benefits of IaaS to the maximum requires a cultural/mental shift ● Start educating/forming yourself and your team ● Build/evolve your processes and way of working with what you learn ● Get inspired by looking into DevOps / Infrastructure as code / Continuous delivery / Cloud centric design / lean principles / etc
- 37. Make a choice
- 38. And evolve
- 39. And evolve ● Unlike the choice of blue/red pill, with IaaS you can and will have to evolve all the time ● Everything evolves the whole time: the world, your market, your business, your knowledge, etc ● Reevalute regularly ● Maybe even go multi-provider? Perfectly possible today. ● Fear of lock-in: these days the worst kind of lock-in is contractual lock-in.
- 40. The main benefit of IaaS, agility
- 41. The main benefit of IaaS, agility ● Main benefit of IaaS is the agility. It is what enables the cost benefits, scalability benefits, etc ● If your organisation cannot match that agility, it can become a nightmare (and then you start reading the posts “why we went back to our own hardware” …) ● and vice versa: make sure your provider has the same level of agility as you have.
- 42. Thank you. Contact us if you want help in making the right choice. http://skyscrape.rs @skyscrapers @fdenkens