Challenging Times with the Cloud
These are great times for the cloud-based solution providers. There are some great examples of what works, what benefits there can be from a cloud-based hosting environment and we have started learning just how great it can be.
All sunshine and lollipops!
OK, so not so much. To me, it feels like a bit of the wild, wild west right now. The benefits are great, but the tools are all over the board. I’m a fan of the underlying opportunities, but the process of supporting, moving to and getting set up correctly on the systems is really challenging. Take database setup – it’s a matter of row-by-row copies. Load-balancing? You get to mess with DNS, load balancers, SSL key conversions, alarms, zone selections and more.
I really look forward to getting more automation and integration of tools. The end-product – excellent. Be sure you take the time to architect your project, it pays off in the end, it’s just more difficult than it needs to be. Things to think about:
– security (SSL may be quite different in the cloud, for example)
– breaking apart your application – web, database, certain services – is helpful
– what happens to your application(s) if an instance is stopped? Started?
– how will you monitor? What’s important? What’s a good indicator of a problem?
– how will you set things up to be fault-tolerant?
What successes have you had? What area you seeing? We’ve had some pretty amazing successes, after much learning and tweaking.
Shoot me a note – let me know – swynk@sswug.org