Private Cloud? Public Cloud? Hybrid?
There are reports that some are abandoning
plans to move to the public cloud, and we’ve been working with many different people putting together their own plans for the cloud.
In the work we’ve been involved with, we’re seeing bigger plans for the public cloud as tools and technologies mature. While security concerns have been highlighted with the whole series of NSA revelations, we’re still seeing a very strong pull to use the resources and build out solutions that lean on the scale and management tools of the public cloud.
Interestingly, one of the most challenging things about the cloud offerings (both public and private) is the rate of change. It’s really incredible how many new tools, new technologies, updates to solutions and so-on are coming to market. All the marketing hype aside, there are very compelling reasons to be working with cloud-solutions.
On a personal note, it seems like the wild-west a bit. The solutions, the mix of capabilities and the speed of change is startling at times. It’s very difficult to analyze your requirements today and determine your best options only to have those options fundamentally change tomorrow with new capabilities.
This directly impacts your designs with SQL Server – from data protection to data access to availability – it all comes from a properly architected solution, but the architecture is shifting so very quickly. I never realized that there is an *advantage* to release schedules you manage. With that in place, you control application of updates.
With the cloud, in many cases, the updates are just there. They appear in your application stack and you might miss them, might not know of them at all or they may simply continue changing the landscape.
What to do?
That’s a great question. I think you have to take a step back and pick apart the architectural pieces of your solutions, break them into modules and then attack it from there. It’s important that you keep after the modules, that you keep up on changing technologies and that you know what’s happening. By breaking things into functional areas – it’s a bit easier to at least keep after changes and new capabilities as they are released. Some ideas:
1. Do regular high-level reviews of your functional areas with your vendor of choice – talk to them, see what’s updating.
2. Figure out what helps, what isn’t important and what changes. By knowing this, you can keep an eye on side-effects – things that change and may be impacting other areas accidentally.
3. Devote time to keeping on top of changes. This can mean conferences, articles, news feeds, blogs, whatever. Find a source you trust and monitor the headlines, keep up with what’s happening at a very high level so you know where to look when it comes time for your reviews.
4. Lastly, but not least, understand how your vendor applies changes and updates. Is it automatic? Does it change based on the services you’re using? (Likely) or do you have to release updates? This is critical to understand.
What have I missed? What would you add?