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Beating the Cloud Vendors

  • July 13, 2020 at 12:00 am

    #3767847

    Comments posted to this topic are about the item Beating the Cloud Vendors

  • July 13, 2020 at 8:22 am

    #3769335

    Confusing pricing, limited hardware choices, and a feature mix that is different.

    The king is dead, long live the king!

     

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  • July 13, 2020 at 3:19 pm

    #3769428

    We do payment (CC)....  and the processors said they will  not certify us if we move to cloud.

  • July 13, 2020 at 4:48 pm

    #3769458

    David.Poole wrote:

    Confusing pricing, limited hardware choices, and a feature mix that is different.

    The king is dead, long live the king!

    In our case, a feature mix that is inadequate when it comes to SQL Server.  We use the Developer Edition for our Dev boxes... AWS RDS (as just one example) carries the Express, Standard, and Enterprise Editions only.  You could stand up an EC2 box for such a thing and management has been advised but management wants only RDS for our environment.  I have no idea what the cost differential is but have been told to "not worry about it".   We'll see how that pans out.

    Also, if you're an xp_CmdShell user (and we use it for a lot of things), forget it.  It won't work on an RDS system because they don't make it available.  I don't blame them there because they're responsible for the safety of the system and they don't know how it can be used safely like the good DBAs out there know how to.

    I also have "scratch" databases that require NO backups (everything in the database is WIP and totally expendable) and so they're set to the SIMPLE recovery model (which also helps a lot with performance thanks to minimal logging for a lot of bulk operations).  Forget that on RDS... they necessarily keep all databases in the FULL recovery model because they're also responsible for backups, restores, and data protection in general.  Of course, performance will suffer and unnecessary backup space will cost more.

    On that same subject, our on-premise systems are setup for (what the NetOps folks call) SAN Replication for purposes of replication to the DR boxes.  That means that we don't have to fart around with log files and that means that we can slip into the BULK LOGGED Recovery Model when we do index maintenance to keep log files from being as big as the quarter Terabyte indexes that we rebuild.  That won't work on AWS RDS because they necessarily force your databases to stay in the FULL Recovery Model.

    It also takes us quite a while to login to AWS.  There's a secondary verification where it sends a verification code either to your phone or through email.  Our email is in the cloud as of a couple of years ago.  What used to be very nearly instantaneous now takes a least a minute and sometimes up to as much as 6.  Lovely.

    Our on-premise systems are also really powerful... to get the same performance on the cloud requires some pretty high prices levels.  I think management is in for a big surprise... we shall see.

    I'm sure there's more "fun" limits coming up but, my opinion of "managed systems" in the cloud is that the cloud can be smoke, mirrors, a lot of closed doors, and several dead cows.

    --Jeff Moden

    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • July 13, 2020 at 5:20 pm

    #3769468

    I think the dev story in the cloud is hard. I've seen people want to use RDS/Azure SQL DB for dev work, but the backup thing causes pain. This still costs storage, and includes the recovery stuff.

    What I really want is a switch that makes Dev edition look like Standard, Enterprise, RDS, or Azure SQL DB. Maybe some JSON/config file that determines what features work or don't.

    If you've invested heavily in on-premises systems already, I don't think the cloud is better, perf or price. However, re-investment or new investment can change that equation. It has to be evaluated each time you're ready to do this, because the pricing and options keep changing.

  • July 13, 2020 at 9:47 pm

    #3769563

    So our major hurdle to move our data to the cloud is security concerns and backups.  We are a government entity, and thus we have all kinds of data where the clients are tax payers.  The last thing we want to hear is OPPS! the cloud provider just exposed HIPPA data on all of our residents.

  • July 13, 2020 at 9:51 pm

    #3769564

    The cloud vendors have government certified cloud offerings in the US.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/government/

    https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

    I wouldn't be surprised if there are vendors offering something similar in non-US spaces.

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