The cloud is one of the fastest growing areas of IT over the past few years. I want to make sure that you first understand what the cloud actually is. Simply put, it means that you are loading your data or network on someone else’s network. That doesn’t mean that the cloud is not a good thing. For many companies, the cloud allows them to use network components that they could never use in the past.
Cloud Advantages
The cloud can offer companies of any size a lot of benefits. Let’s take a look at some of those benefits:
High Availability (HA) The capability of an application to remain running in a healthy state, without any substantial downtime, is known as high availability (HA). When an application is in a healthy state, it is responsive by allowing users to connect and interact with it.
Scalability The increase or decrease of a service or resource at any particular time, regardless of the demand, is called scalability. Adding additional resources to an existing server is called vertical scaling, or scaling up.
Understanding Cloud Concepts
Elasticity This is a cloud service that automatically scales resources as needed. Elasticity is the ability to automatically increase or decrease computer processing, memory, and storage resources to meet the current demand. It is usually measured by system monitoring tools. With cloud elasticity, a business can avoid paying for resources that aren’t being used, and they don’t have to worry about purchasing new equipment or maintaining current systems.
Cloud Agility Being able to quickly change your infrastructure lets you adapt to changing business requirements. Cloud agility is all about giving the corporation the ability to develop, test, and launch applications as needed and to do so quickly.
Fault Tolerance Fault tolerance is a way to make sure that you are not too badly impacted if/when something unexpected happens. The cloud services architecture has redundancy built right in. With fault tolerance, if one component fails, then another backup component steps up to the plate and takes over.
Disaster Recovery Disaster recovery is a blend of strategies and services for backing up data, applications, and other resources to a public cloud or dedicated service providers. If a disaster occurs, the affected source can be restored and you can resume normal operations. Disaster recovery means that the cloud infrastructure can replicate application resources in an unaffected region so that the data is safe and the application availability isn’t compromised.
Understanding CapEx vs. OpEx
When deciding if the cloud is a good fit for your company, you need to think about money. Obviously, money makes the IT world go around. When considering building a network, you need to take into account the money it will cost for you to build an onsite network. You may decide it’s more beneficial to use the cloud.
To make this decision, you must consider the cost of buying, building, and maintaining an onsite network compared to using an online network. This means you must understand the difference between capital expenditures (CapEx) and operational expenditures (OpEx).
Capital Expenditures
Capital expenditures (CapEx) is when a company spends money on their physical assets up- front. This cost, over the life of the equipment, will depreciate. For example, if you pay in advance to acquire, upgrade, and/or support physical assets, then you can deduct these expenses from your tax bill. Here are some items that are considered CapEx:
Server Costs Server costs include the cost of supporting your servers as well as any hardware needed to support them. It’s important to remember that when buying servers, you will want to incorporate fault tolerance and redundancy. Server costs can include adding redundant and uninterruptible power supplies and server clustering, among other factors. If a server needs to be added or replaced, this becomes an up- front cost that can affect the corporate cash flow.
Storage Costs Storage costs include the costs that are associated with all storage hardware components and the support of those components. Depending on the level of redundancy and fault tolerance used, storage can get costly. If you are part of a larger organization, you may want to create storage tiers where your most critical applications use the fault- tolerant storage devices and your lower-p riority data uses a less expensive storage device.
Network Costs Networking costs include all of your onsite hardware components. These costs can include routers, switches, access points, any cables, the wide area network (WAN), and Internet connections.
Backup and Archive Costs Backup and archive costs are the costs associated with backing up your data. Copying and archiving data also falls into this category. There may be up- front costs as well, such as the cost of purchasing hardware or backup tapes.
Organization Continuity and Disaster Recovery Costs Organization continuity and disaster recovery costs are the costs associated with how you plan to recover from a disaster so that you can continue working without interruptions. These costs can include the creation of a disaster recovery site or the purchase of backup generators.
Datacenter Infrastructure Costs Datacenter infrastructure costs are any costs associated with building and construction equipment. These costs may incur operational expenses. These expenses can include building maintenance; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC); and electricity, among others.
Technical Personnel While not typically a capital expenditure, you need to take into account the costs associated with the personnel that are needed to maintain your on- premises datacenters as well as your disaster recovery site.
Operational Expenditure (OpEx)
Operational expenditures (OpEx) are the costs of products and services that are being used at this moment. These expenses can be deducted from your tax bill within the same year. You are paying as you go. Here are some items that are considered OpEx:
Leasing Software and Customized Features Leasing software and customized features are considered a pay- per- use model. Ensuring that your users do not misappropriate services or that provisioned accounts are being used properly requires that you actively manage your subscriptions. Billing will start as soon as you start using those resources. If the resources are not used, you will want to deprovision them in order to decrease costs.
Scaling Charges Based on Usage and Demand Scaling charges are based on usage and demand. They can be billed in a number of different ways. Billing can be based on the number of users or the CPU usage times. Billing can also be based on the I/O operations per second (IOPS), allotted RAM, or the amount of storage used.
Understanding Cloud Concepts
Billing at the User or Organization Level Billing at the user or organization level can be based on the pay- per- use model; this is also called your subscription. The subscription is the billing method. You will be billed for the services used. This is typically a recurring expense. You can scale your resources to meet your corporate needs.