Cloud customers keep learning the rudiments of services the hard way. Case in point: Engineers at a small ISP realized recently that the virtual servers they signed up for weren't backed up by the same cloud service that provided them.
"I am appalled that [our cloud provider] would offer something called 'cloud' without having any failover at all," complained one engineer from the ISP on an industry message board. He said his company's servers were out for hours as a result of not knowing the fine print on the contract.
But he was quickly set straight by other engineers on the email forum, who piled on with the "news" that expecting automatic redundancy from a infrastructure-as-a-service vendor is unrealistic. It's up to the customer to anticipate failures and prepare for them either within its own datacenter or by contracting more servers -- and possibly more support and configuration tools -- from the cloud provider.
"Just because it's 'in the cloud,' [a cloud] doesn't gain higher reliability unless you're specifically taking steps to ensure it," wrote one forum participant. "Most people solve this by taking things that are already distributable (like DNS) and setting up multiple DNS servers in different places -- that's where all this 'cloud stuff' really shines."
Someone else pointed out that adding redundancy or failover to a cloud service gets expensive. He stated that his company uses Amazon services and is happy about it, but had to arrange its own failover operation, albeit using Amazon's tools. "It's up to you to make it happen," the engineer wrote. Further, getting good support options (i.e., getting someone on the phone) costs extra and is "tied to how much of their resources you are using."
Creating redundancy on one's own network can also be costly, especially if storage area networking is used. But one ISP engineer noted that his company simply "swaps [virtual servers] with another ISP outside our geographic area" in order to achieve redundancy. And someone else suggested that since a DNS server was part of the original poster's cloud setup, simply tweaking the DNS records to allow the host to work around a failed host is also an option.
In any event, it's clear from this exchange that cloud services aren't always the complete package they appear to be. IT must do the diligence to establish exactly what is being offered by a cloud provider versus what's needed. Sometimes extra work and/or costs will have to fill the gap.
As one engineer posted: " 'Cloud' outside of references to mists and objects in the sky is a completely meaningless term for operators. In fact, it has made it harder to differentiate between services (which I'm sure is the point)."
Indeed, Mary. As I like to say: Hire a lawyer before you "need" one. It's not only going to be cheaper and take less time in the long run, but it makes your lawyer's job MUCH easier.
Case in point: A matter I worked on for a client was only recently resolved (a month or so ago) for an issue that began in 2008. The client had tried to represent himself. After two years of getting nowhere, he finally hired me. Had he hired me right from the get-go, it would have taken MUCH less time -- and been easier -- to deal with.
Got to agree with you here, Joe. Every enterprise, large or small, needs a good lawyer. Neglecting that particular post is likely to backfire horribly. Even small IT projects can get out of hand, and it's important to have legal backup to recoup any losses. Otherwise, a small issue can quickly become larger and much more annoying.
Why pay for a whole goshdarn IT department and cloud provider's IaaS if you're not going to throw the extra few bucks in to pay for a legal department or outside counsel (or even a lowly contracts/compliance manager) to read the blasted agreement? Or, for that matter, even have *anyone* read the agreement?
Maybe this is the lawyer in my speaking (and/or, possibly, the tech-weary (not wary -- weary) part of me), but I'd sooner run a major enterprise without email than I would without some sort of legal counsel to, you know, occasionally read stuff.
Agreed, cbernard. It would be interesting though to hear the backstory on this case -- how exactly the IT dept wound up holding the bag. I would venture a guess that it's a tale worth telling and probably not uncommon.
It's amazing that a team that would over engineer an in house solution ( and maybe I am generalizing here) would not ask the same questions of a cloud provider. I bet they would ask that of an outsourced environment. Do yes, the price looked great, but you could have gotten that price in house for the same half a solution. This is what IT leaders are supposed to think about regardless of how the capability is provided.
It seems there is still a significant knowledge gap with regard to the Cloud and thus there is the need for more training on the adoption of Cloud technology.
A mess indeed, Tech_ed. Clouds surely are providing plenty of opportunity for things to get out of hand, especially if cloud providers insist on bypassing IT, as reportedly isn't that rare.
The problem is that non-technical publications that target non-technical business leaders are distorting what a "cloud" really is for.
A cloud is not a redundant, self contained failover environment. Yes, you can fail your production system into a cloud environment, or vise-versa, but a cloud is designed specifically for quick ramp-up of computing capability with a ubiquitous exposure. A good example of an early cloud like structure is Akamai...you give them your content, and they geo-locate it throughout dozens of datacenters....works quite well really!
And to be real...today's rendition of cloud is moving further and further from its original intent...There are too many clouds and content in one cloud is not accessible in another cloud...so if you have your iphone data in the icloud, your Amazon mp3 purchases in the amazon cloud, other media on your Pogo-plug, and the rest is sitting on Microsoft Live and you backup to Carbonite, well...you have a real mess on your hands, don't you?
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