Post on 26-Jan-2017
transcript
The reality is somewhere in between
● Need to adapt to a diferent way of doing things● The complexity has moved
– Further abstracted from the real world● Costs need to be watched
– (Don't forget that double XL instance you left running)
– (And that 20TB of disk)● Diversity and resilience in deployment
– It's gonna break in a odd way, plan for it in a way that will suit your organisation
Adapting
● It's not going to be easy if you try to transpose your existing infrastructure to cloud hosting. Consider what is on ofer:– Load balancers
– Databases
– Network Security
– Backups
The Providers (Examples)
● Amazon– Widest, but also most complex ofering
● Microsoft Azure– Was once geared towards Windows
● Rackspace– Morphing from one type of provider to another
● Google– Thanks for the price war
● Catalyst and other OpenStack providers– Obviously the best
Hedonistic IT
● “Pets” vs “Cattle”● Live for today! For we shall die at 7PM!
– Infrastructure wasted 50% of the time
– Maybe you have no idea of the popularity?
– Scale down between semesters● Diversity and resilience in deployment● Maybe now you can scale horizontally
– One Mahara per dept/school?● Maybe Mahara institutions don't cut it
– New opportunities for on-billing
1st Corny Section Break Slide
A Higgs Boson walks into a church, the priest says “Sorry, we don't allow
bosons in here”
THE DANGER - It's real
● Cloud hosting is terrifying● Can't see internals
– Powerlessness when it stops working (And why?!)● Unexpected new challenges
– Rate limiting on all sorts of annoying things● Disk access (Ie. Per operation)● Network throughput / New connections● CPU usage (Watch the %steal)● Instance start rates● Email sending rate
Safe Harbour - Schrems Vs. Facebook
● US government and companies have access to data in a way considered unlawful in the EU– So storing data concerning European citizens in the
US probably illegal
– We all knew it was unsafe, now a court says so
– Probably the lowest risk is use a provider in your country
– No legal compulsion for correction or erasure in the USA
– NSA etc able to legally creep on your data in the USA
THE DANGER – Continues!
● It's still shared hosting, and the performance can be variable– You are efected by your neighbors; further increasing
your powerlessness● Burnt by crappy VPS providers in the past● SLAs are pretty open ended, the most you are going to
get back is the money you are putting in
THE DANGER – … never ends!
● To the big guys, you are probably a minnow– Expect to get treated as such
– (But I bet all are looking for a coup in the education market)
● Skill loss– How networks/firewalls actually work
– Install a database
– Manage storage● Scare people
– “We've moved it too the cloud”
THE GOOD PARTS – Begin!
● Free your valuable system administrators to administer– Save time dealing with hardware vendors
● Impossible diagnostic tools– Frequently Redhat (Or worse, Windows) only
● Impossible staf at $HARDWARE_VENDOR– Upgrade the BIOS/IMM/$RANDOM_FIRMWARE– “Not running Windows/RedHat? We can't help..”
● Expensive maintenance contracts– They seldom show up within the agreed time anyway,
and make a weasely excuse (See above)– And you probably feel like you never use it
THE GOOD PARTS – Continue
● Not wasting time / having 0 lead time on hardware frees you to– Try new things
– Do and practise upgrades
– Load testing● Not having own hosting means
– No need for proximity to hardware (Sysadmins can stay at home and not engage in hygiene!)
– Swap CapEx for OpEx
– The vendors are serious about hosting, maybe you have trouble convincing others to be serious?
THE GOOD PARTS – ad nauseam
● Invest time in resiliency, not redundancy● Save the planet (Maybe)
– Cloud providers do more with every watt than you can do
● No more room of that junk because 'maybe we need it'● Impress people
– “We've moved it to the cloud!”● Performance now very good, definitely good enough for
ePortfolios
More good bits
● Much of choice in providers● Freedom to go to another
– Don't have justify investment in hardware● Maybe go 'half-way' and use a containerisation provider?
– Maybe talk to me about Docker
IN SUMMARY
● Generally suited to Mahara– Load balancers
– Cloud DB
– Scale up for busy times
– Huge increase in flexibility● Except damn NFS!
● Cloud hosting is not for everyone– You still need skilled people to make it work for you
● It's not the same as outsourcing your Mahara– Some new challenges to replace old ones