January 3, 2012 at 12:19 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Cloud Patches
January 3, 2012 at 4:55 am
Thank you Steve, highly informative editorial.
M&M
January 3, 2012 at 10:10 am
I've been wrestling with data in the cloud for a while. It doesn't help that the definition of cloud is so nebulous.
I'm not an infrastructure guy but I've been told that the realistic limit for data transfer involving the cloud is 300 IOPS. I know of people who have had trouble stress testing apps in the cloud because the cloud vendor identified the heavy load as a denial of service attack.
Being able to store vast amounts of data in the cloud indefinitely and knowing that any piece of that data could be brought back, even with a slight lag, is of huge interest but if the app profile requires massive amounts of data movement then cloud doesn't feel right.
In 2012 I am going to be experimenting with analytics in the cloud where both the data and software reside in someone elses data centre. As data and app reside together then in theory this should work well. If I need more storage I simply pay the vendor and let them worry about floor space, cooling and power supplies. The instant someone wants a bulk download of customers matching a profile defined by the analytics work then this fires up the alarm bells.
January 3, 2012 at 12:16 pm
This below excerpt came from a BLOG I just recently read on the Cloud and on putting stuff on the Cloud. It bears repeating:
"Lack of consistent access isn't the only concern. People and organizations have lost all of the information they have put out on the Cloud. GoogleMail and Flickr have deleted people's ENTIRE accounts. Imagine losing ALL of your emails. Imagine losing ALL of your photos (with all those notes and tags and descriptions and what not)."
Something to think about anyway. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
January 3, 2012 at 4:25 pm
Yep, that sounds familiar. If you are using a public cloud service that is cheap or free then realistically you shouldn't expect much from it. You might be OK 95% of the time but the 5% will kill you.
Private cloud is another matter and it depends on what SLAs you have in place. That said, if an SLA is breached it doesn't do you much good if your data cannot be recovered.
January 3, 2012 at 4:27 pm
I just designed and built (and manage) a cloud-based virtual platform and while some issues are valid others are really a result of poor management.
For example, to delete an entire account is just poor management and poor validation of process.
But updating 50+ web servers can be a challenge. The example provided is great if all of your web/app servers are identical. Well how about when they are all completely different from one another but still house the same application (each one is for a different client)? Well our solution was to write a new management console specifically for our app a la System Center - so we can look out and see all instances of the app and update them one at a time or in groups or all at once just like System Center can. It is a unique solution but it works.
And what if you have flaws in the vendor's platform or software (ie. VMware vCloud has some flaws I am waiting for them to fix)? Using the Cloud requires thinking outside of the box and finding new ways to do things as well as compensate for items beyond your control. It's do-able and can be worth the effort but it requires planning and thought put into every single step - no rushing into anything.
January 4, 2012 at 4:11 am
I would be interested to know just how Azure changes things for DBAs. There seems to be a lot of standard DBA tasks that just aren't relevant in SQL Azure and yet they must be going on under the hood.
Are there some super-DBAs somewhere looking after Azure installations with lesser DBAs will simply use the services?
Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply