Cloud Porting: April 2012

Friday, April 27, 2012

Getting Some Prices

We have come a long way on our journey toward getting on the cloud. We have inventoried our existing computing power, anticipated our moving costs and analyzed whether we should even move to the cloud. Now it's time to compare costs and how we will manage our computing power on the cloud.

Remember what we know about our computing power. We need it when searching for prices.

Disk: RAM: CPU:

Server 1: C: 20, D: 20 -- 2 GB (2.99 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 2: C: 8         -- 2 GB (2.99 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 3: C: 14        -- 1 GB (3.00 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 4: C: 20, D: 30 -- 3.5 GB (3.00 Ghz) -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Bandwidth: 5 minute peak In: 0.9 MB   Out: 6.4 MB

All Windows Servers and we have licenses.

-- A small warning -- My analysis confirms that there are no simple ways to select the right cloud vendor. It is currently a daunting challenge, but it is worth the effort.

I have chosen to explore the following cloud vendors:

Each of these vendors seems to have at least a part of my solution.

I will explore my experience with each one in succeeding posts.

Next Post: Getting Pricing Is Slow

Additional resources:

Thinking Out Cloud Cloud Storage - Pricing and Features Cloud Pricing War Begins

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Non Cost Considerations

We now have collected enough measurements about our existing environment to communicate intelligently with a cloud provider. Now its time to consider any other things that might indicate that we shouldn't move to the cloud. I'm going to throw out all that I can think of. I welcome your suggestions too.

We can't move to the cloud because

I need to see my computers everyday. This makes me feel safe.
We process very secure information for the government. I don't think the cloud is safe enough.
My brother in law is currently watching over my computers. He wouldn't have anything to do.
We use the heat from our computers to keep our baked goods warm.

Some of my favorites from 65 Reasons Not To Move To The Cloud:

Your career would be negatively impacted without a large IT budget and staff.
You would be bored – No more coordinating the configuration, test, development, and integration of hardware and software? What would you do all day?
You’re really fond of your consultants and systems integrators and would miss them terribly.
Your internal security is 100% guaranteed – much more secure than having your data in the Cloud. You’d bet your life on it.
Your internal infrastructure is much more reliable than that of the leading Cloud Service Providers.

David Linthicum has listed some good ones in To Move or Not to Move

Top 10 reasons ... to be careful about:

Security is largely immature, and currently requires specialized expertise.
Much of the technology is proprietary, and thus can cause lock-in.
Your dependent on the cloud computing provider for your IT resources, thus you could be exposed around outages and other service interruptions.
Using the Internet can cause network latency with some cloud applications.
In some cases cloud providers are more expensive than on-premise systems.
Not in control of costs if subscription prices go up in the future.
Integration between on-premise and cloud-based systems can be problematic.
Compliance issues could raise the risks of using cloud computing.
Data privacy issues could arise, if your cloud provider seeks to monetize the data in their system.
M&A activity around cloud providers, could mean constantly adjusting and readjusting your cloud computing solutions

If our benefits outweigh the riskd, then let's proceed to pricing our cloud needs.

Next Post: Getting Some Prices

Additional resources:

65 Reasons Not To Move Myths about Cloud Computing To Move or Not to Move

Monday, April 9, 2012

Other Cost Considerations

We now have a pretty good picture of our cloud needs. Before we start getting prices, lets consider some other issues:

Besides cloud rental costs, what else should we consider?

          Do we have talent on staff to assist in the planning of the move to the cloud? In addition to the cloud resources we will need to make changes to our Internet protocol (IP) addresses and our Domain Name Server records. If we don't have the staff, we will need to hire consultants.

    2. How do we move our existing computing power to the cloud?

         Related to staff for planning the move, do we have staff who can convert our existing computing power into a form that is transportable to the cloud. If not, consultants will be needed.

Next Post: Non Cost Considerations

Additional resources:

Cloud Switch Blog Cloud Sigma Double Take

Putting the Existing Picture Together

We have now inventoried our 4 servers and measured the Internet bandwidth. We should be able work with cloud providers better because we speak their language.

We can summarize our existing computing power as follows:

Disk: RAM: CPU:

Server 1: C: 20, D: 20 -- 2 GB (2.99 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 2: C: 8         -- 2 GB (2.99 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 3: C: 14        -- 1 GB (3.00 Ghz)   -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Server 4: C: 20, D: 30 -- 3.5 GB (3.00 Ghz) -- 5160 XEON - 3.00 GHz
Bandwidth: 5 minute peak In: 0.9 MB   Out: 6.4 MB

There will be some other options that we might anticipate:

What operating system should be on the servers?    Windows 2003 Server

Do you have licences or do you want to rent from the cloud provider?   We have licences.

Do you want to rent other software? i.e. mail server, sql server etc.    No

We now have a pretty good picture of our cloud needs. Before we start getting prices, lets consider some other issues:

Besides cloud rental costs, what else should we consider?
How do we move our existing computing power to the cloud?

Next Post: Other Cost Considerations

Additional resources:

IBM Smart Cloud

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Measuring Bandwidth

We now have information about the disks, memory and CPUs. This will help with the cloud comparison, but we also need to get a handle on bandwidth. I don't have any experience with this so I googled "Measure Bandwidth and came up with NetWorx by SoftPerfect. I installed it on 4 of my servers on March 27, 2012.

I looked at the results from NetWorx and realized that it includes all network traffic both internal network and Internet. The NetWorx tool recommended installing WinPcap, which would enable the isolation of the Internet traffic.

Here are the results for sample date 3/29/12:

NetWorx Daily Report
             Received -- Sent ------- Total
SRV01 12.5 MB      81.3 MB   93.8 MB
SRV02 103 KB        316 KB     418 KB
SVR03 136 KB       45.9 KB     182 KB
SRV04 924 KB       10.8 MB   11.7 MB
             --------------------------------------------------
Total     13.6 MB     92.4 MB    106 MB

Using the FibreCloud measuring technique (see link below) I'm going to convert these daily totals into estimated 5 minute peaks. I will be ultra conservative. I will divide the totals by 12hrs then by 12 for 5 minute intervals and multiply by 10 to get a high number. We will only pay for what we use, so this strategy is only to get a price from the provioder.

Daily total in MB	13.6	92.4	106.0

per day in bytes	14,260,633.6	96,888,422.4	111,149,056.0

divided by 12 - per hour	1,188,386.1	8,074,035.2	9,262,421.3

divided by 12 - per 5 minute	99,032.2	672,836.3	771,868.4

times 10 - estimated Max	990,321.8	6,728,362.7	7,718,684.4

5 min peak converted back to MB	0.9	6.4	7.4

Important Note: This is only a one day snapshot. The existing computing power should analyze for a longer period. If you are thinking about porting to the cloud, go ahead and set up NetWorx/WinPCap now, so you will have stats when you need them.

Next Post: Putting the Existing Picture Together

Additional resources:

NetWorx WinPCap FibreCloud Internet-Bandwidth