Voice of the DBA

Tag: Cloud Computing

  • Four Years Later

    Yesterday I republished a piece on cloud computing, and I was struck by a sentence in the piece. I had written ” Paul Nielsen says inside of 2 years we’ll be leaning cloud first, local server second and in 5 hosting your own data will seem obsolete.” I had written I was skeptical of that, but I wanted to revisit the topic. It’s been 4.5 years since I wrote that, so it’s close to five years.

    Are we thinking cloud first for SQL Server applications? I can say that for the businesses I’ve considered or engaged in, we do think about cloud type services first. The cost and hassles of procuring hardware mean that for a small business, I’m not sure it’s worth renting space in your own, or even someone else’s, data center. It’s much more cost effective and easier to rent a virtual machine or two from Azure, AWS, Rackspace or another vendor. For many non-database services, like email, it’s probably better just to contract for a service, and not even concern yourself with machines or software.

    For larger, more established businesses, however, I’m not sure that most SQL Server professionals think cloud first. There are still lots of concerns over security, control, and performance. Most DBAs I know do think virtual machines in many cases, but without their own infrastructure, not the cloud.

    I do think we could get to the point where many DBAs think about the cloud first, but only if their clients find provisioning a new server inside isn’t as smooth as clicking a few buttons. For the DBAs that ensure new databases can be created quickly and easily, I would guess that their clients would never even bother mentioning the cloud.

    Steve Jones

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  • The Cloud of Destiny

    This editorial was originally published on Mar 15, 2009. It is being re-run as Steve is away on the 2013 SQL in the City tour.

    Is it inevitable that SQL Server will move to the cloud? In a word, yes.

    But like absolutely everything else with databases, “it depends” applies as well. I am sure that we’ll have support for SQL Server in the cloud, something much more advanced than the current state of SQL Server Data Services, before too many more releases.

    Paul Nielsen says inside of 2 years, and in 5 we’ll be leaning cloud first, local server second. I think that’s a bit aggressive, and I do think Denis Gobo has some great thoughts about a few things that need to be done before SQL Server can move into the clouds, but it’s going to get there for many people. Not everyone, but many people.

    If you think about it, we are already moving towards a cloud type architecture. SQL Server has supported the idea of master/target servers for awhile, and with the addition of Policy Based Management, we are moving towards a way of telling SQL Server how we want it to work and behave and letting it then handle the details.

    Much of IT is slowly moving down this path of requesting and using resources, and not necessarily specifying the details. We have implemented SANs that hide the disk architectures from us. For the most part they work, as long as those engineers in the deep bowels of SAN-storage land continue to replace disks as they fail.

    In 2007 and 2008 is seemed many companies were also looking beyond individual servers by provisioning virtual machines and letting our hypervisors handle the details of getting the required resources to the calling server instance. There’s  still work to be done here to allow database servers to take advantage of this, but it’s a matter of when now, not if.

    Tomorrow we’ll take a look at another aspect of SQL Server in the cloud.

    Steve Jones

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  • If we can do it, so can you

    We hear constantly about the benefits, and potential pitfalls of cloud based applications. There are certainly reasons to move to the cloud, or stay away, depending on your particular situation and requirements. However one thing I hadn’t thought was viable was software development in the cloud. Most of the companies I’ve seen that host applications in the cloud still do the development on desktops and laptops, with a build server somewhere on site. However Microsoft wants to show us that this isn’t necessary.

    There is a push inside Microsoft to perform more of their development in the cloud. Across the last year or two, various managers inside Microsoft have been moving development to the cloud, typically starting with testing and code analysis. Those are great fits for cloud services, since they are used at discrete periods, but may requite lots of resources. One of the interesting things in the piece was that the first objectives was to speed up the continuous integration process. At Red Gate (my employer), we’ve seen a lot of benefits from implementing continuous integration, both in our applications and databases, and we’ve done a lot of work to smooth out those processes.

    Obviously Microsoft might have an advantage over many of our other companies in terms of Azure resources and cost, but I would bet the reliability is similar for their developers. If they can make it work, on products like Windows, SQL Server, Sharepoint and more, I’d think that many of us could make use of the platform as well. I know a few people that have worked with TFS on Azure, and they’ve been pleased with the performance and reliability. There are any number of other software services, like GitHub, that make use of distributed, cloud-based services for software development.

    However even if you don’t want to use the Azure platform, the idea of using virtual systems, of spinning up and down the machines you need to perform various functions makes lots of sense. You can make better use of your hardware resources, and even schedule continuous integration services (builds, tests, analysis) for different teams (or applications) at different times, improving your efficiency and not only speeding up your development processes, but hopefully improving the quality of the final code.

    Steve Jones

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    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

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  • Provisioning

    azurecreate

    At a talk recently, the presenter talked about the time lag for an on-premises server to be installed and configured to be on the order of months. Not that many, but it could easily be six months.

    That seems crazy, but in many companies I’ve worked in, that wasn’t an unusual time frame. From the time someone decided that a purchase was allowed, it could be days for the accounting department to approve the funds. A day or two to place an order, assuming that IT had already provided the specifications. Vendors respond quickly, but it could still take a week or two, possibly even more, for a server to arrive at our company.

    One of the advantages of cloud computing services is that new virtual machines can be bought and enabled in minutes. That might be true, but I wanted to ask many of you if you know how longs it actually takes for you to begin working on a new SQL Server.

    How long does it take to provision a new server?

    Imagine that you were to ask for a database server today, and you management agreed to grant the approval, think about how long would it be before you could sign into a SQL Server. I’m sure some of you have virtual infrastructures available, and that should reduce the time it takes, but let us know if that’s your setup and how long it takes.

    The ultimate service would be a cloud like application inside your organization that allowed you to select a SQL Server template, and send you a server name and login with minutes after an automated build took place. I don’t know many companies that have that yet, but I think many of us would appreciate that capability. Especially if we could choose the hardware we required.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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