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Important Questions Moving to the Cloud
(Or even splitting the environment)
Stephen Wynkoop ([email protected])SSWUG.ORG
My Background• Databases– Early (very) Access– First version of SQL Server – Even dBase and other platforms
• Coding along the way, books, SSWUG.ORG
Agenda• Different, But the Same Approach• Lessons Learned Along the Way• Getting Started
Key To Success • Understand your application(s) and
environment.
No Kidding!
Important to Remember• Cloud resources are NOT an all or nothing
proposition.
Overall, Breaking Into Pieces• Functional• Security• Availability• Fault Tolerance
Sound familiar?
Environment
Functional Considerations• Understand the application– What storage requirements are there?– What type of security is needed?– Recovery?– Processing – and what types • Reporting, transactional, etc.
– Spikes – elasticity in demand/requirements
Functionality – Questions #1• Usage patterns – “When is the application used,
are there spikes or critical periods?”• Authentication – “Beyond login, are there other
authentication requirements? Think single sign-on, or application roles/logins.”
• 3rd Party Apps – “What are the interface requirements?”
Functionality – Questions #2• Usage – “What comes out of the front-end
inputs?” (reporting, exports, sharing)• Recovery – “What is acceptable downtime?”
and “What is the downtime process?”
Security Considerations• Authentication• Data protection• Network segmentation• Data in transit, data in use, data at rest• Archived information• Information sharing/reporting
Security – Questions #1• General – “How are users authenticated?” –
this could be cards, UID/PW, etc.• Protection – “What regulatory bodies care
about this information?”– Remember, there may be multiples – HIPAA, PCI,
etc. plus simple best practices
Security – Questions #2• Segmentation – “Who will have access, and
why, and what protection is needed?” Firewalls, segmentation, VPN, etc.
• Protection – “Where does information go?” – protection of that information - encryption
• Sharing – “Who uses this information, how is it provided to them?”
Availability• Drives system sizing• Drives load balancing• Drives scale up and down• Drives associated resources, tool selection
This drives the entire environment “chain”
Availability Surprises• This was our biggest challenge area– Still is. Architecting correctly to support this is
challenging.• Physical System requirements• Logical System requirements• Application requirements• Oddities, licensing, support
Fault Tolerance• Determines functional components– Database, OS, app tools
• Determines failover requirements• Determines feature selection within tools and
platforms
Fault Tolerance – Questions #1• Application – “What happens when the application
“crashes” – what does recovery look like?” Process drives how you recover…
• Consider recovery like trauma – – What is the immediate assessment and action process?– What is the short term stop-gap process?– What is recovery like?– What is confirmed recovery?
Fault Tolerance – Questions #2• Understand – Transparent recovery vs. ‘please
wait’ – component approach can help OR HINDER fault tolerance. – Key: How do components interact?
Fault Tolerance - Surprises• Things to consider:– IP Address changes (DNS, IPs, etc.)– Machine name changes/DNS name changes– Cached DNS– Cycle times on availability checks– Firewalls, other items that reference IP/machine name– Application configurations, database connections, etc.
Data Entry Security • Encryption at the source• Access controls
These can become architecture issues because services can be involved.
A LOOK AT SSWUG ARCHITECTURE
Auto Scaling group
Availability Zone #1
www.sswug.org
security group
root volume
data volume
Elastic Load Balancing
Amazon S3 bucket
S3-served Video,
graphics
EC2 instance
web appserver
DNS
FlashServer
“Main” Server root volume
data volumedata volumedata volumedata volume
Default 2 instances, Max 10Medium instances
M1.large
M1.large
“Dev” Server
“Test” Server
M1.medium
Site source
AMI for Servers
github
Key Services Enabled• Elastic Load balancing• Auto-scaling groups• AMIs• Multiple availability zones• Cloudfront• S3 - storage• SES – email• DNS (Route 53)
• Resized instances for services
• Encoding services
• Challenges:– Full-text services– Encryption options– Managing emergence of
technologies
Interesting Trends• Many start with “co-locating” approach• Instead:– “Peel” off services you need– Consider backup, bursting to the cloud services– Use the elasticity, fault tolerance to your
advantage – excellent place to start
Interesting Trends 2• Database services for analysis, reporting great
starting points, etc.• Supporting services (DNS, backups, etc.)
Pro tip: Watch for incremental costs that can slowly snowball (storage, other usage-based)
Biggest Mistake• Not figuring out services, components and
implementation options that will enhance your environment.
Pet Peeve• Billing– Monitor– Analyze– Trend– Trim
All of these different pieces do make itmore difficult to manage costs.
Where Do You Start?• Ask the questions• Understand the applications and the
requirements
Historic process applied to current technologies
