Using the Cloud Considerations for adopting Cloud services There are several considerations when adopting cloud services. Cloud services differ from traditional hosting models by providing scale, commodity services, and tiered pricing. However, security, privacy and lack of control are common concerns. Service level agreements for cloud providers like Amazon differ in that uptime is measured annually rather than monthly, and compensation is limited. Cloud service terms can change frequently and services can disappear with little notice. While cloud services provide flexibility, speed and lower costs, organizations must understand provider operations, design applications for failure, and have plans to export data and move services if needed.

1. Using the Cloud
Considerations for adopting Cloud services
Matt Johnson, Eduserv

2. Forget everything you know already…
Cloud services ≠ Colocation
Cloud services ≠ Dedicated hosting
Cloud services ≠ Managed services
(although service management can be layered on top)

3. Cloud services are about
Scale
Commodity
Tiered services
Low (or no) cost-of-sale

4. Common Cloud “FUD” issues
Security
Privacy
Control
But there are other considerations as well…

5. SLAs are fundamentally different
Amazon EC2’s SLA of “99.95%” looks good – but:
Measurements based on rolling year
Assumed 100% uptime prior to contract
Only covers entire service outages – not single VMs
Maximum service credit of 10% of monthly spend

6. “Long-term” means 1 month
But don’t always count on it – read the T&Cs:
“We may change, discontinue or add Service Level
Agreements from time to time.”
“We may terminate this Agreement for any reason by
providing you 30 days advance notice.”

7. Even the T&Cs are short-term
“We may change, discontinue, or deprecate any of the Service
Offerings (including the Service Offerings as a whole) or
change or remove features or functionality of the Service
Offerings from time to time.”
“We may modify this Agreement (including any Policies) at
any time by posting a revised version on the AWS Site...”

8. By the way…
…the quotes above were from Amazon Web Services, the
World’s biggest Cloud IaaS provider.
They’re not unusual.

9. Cloud services can disappear…
…and do so more often than you might think:

10. You are now a small fish in a big pond
Rackspace has 70,000+ physical servers
Amazon has 460,000+ physical servers
Microsoft has 350,000+ physical servers
How many do you have?

11. Above all, Cloud services are commodities
When did you last negotiate on price at a supermarket?
When did you last change the T&Cs of your gas bill?
When did you last get a refund because your bus was late?

12. Given all this, why use the Cloud?
Lots of reasons (which are not covered here), but primarily:
Flexibility
Speed
Cost
So, how do you overcome the drawbacks?

13. Know what you want, and what you need
You have to know your own service requirements
the cloud provider doesn’t (and shouldn’t) care

14. Understand how your cloud provider operates
Cloud services often work in different ways:
By default, Amazon instances disappear when powered off…
…as does all of your changed data

15. Build good cloud applications…
…that are designed for failure:
Assume your infrastructure is non-resilient
Allow your applications to control the infrastructure
Google “Chaos Monkey” for more info

16. Walk before you run
Make use of free trial services
Start with non-critical services
Learn how to break (and fix) things

17. Stay on your toes
Shop around for the best pricing / performance
Design your services to be provider agnostic
Avoid lock-in to specific technologies
Just like other hosting, (including in-house), Cloud services
can go wrong!

18. Plan your exit...
Can you export configuration/data/virtual machines?
What are the T&Cs relating to notice periods?
Can you move the services elsewhere?
Will you move the services elsewhere?

19. Final thoughts…
Who manages and operates your services?
Do they “get” the benefits of Cloud computing?
Do your applications scale (up and down)?
Many cloud providers will disappear before you do!

20. Thanks – any questions?
Matt Johnson
Head of Research, Eduserv
E: Matt.Johnson@eduserv.org.uk, T: @mhj_work
www.eduserv.org.uk/hosting/cloud-computing