Voice of the DBA

Tag: Cloud Computing

  • Cloud Patches

    One of the very cool things that I find in technology is that I learn new things constantly, usually from other people. In this case, I heard about a new site from my employer, Red Gate, that is designed to talk about the challenges and solutions of working in a cloud computing environment. It’s called A Cloudy Place, and it’s slowly getting moving as we develop new tools to work with cloud services.

    I was reading an interview with our main administrator, Simon, who also manages the SQLServerCentral servers, about the recent challenges of managing infrastructure for the DBA in Space contest. We had no idea how big the contest would be, and we knew that there might be a need to scale up rapidly to handle thousands of users accessing the site in a short period of time as new web-isodes of Brad’s adventures were released.

    Typically when you need to handle a large load, you set up a load balancer (hopefully clustered) and then you have a dozen or so web servers behind it to handle requests from clients. If you need to patch the web site, you typically make a change to one server (hopefully scripted), then make the change to the next server, and the next, rotating through them in order. The good administrators have some automated mechanism to do deploy changes, but those change scripts need testing, error handling, and more. It’s a simple process that can end up being fairly complex in it’s execution.

    However Simon had a different solution. He would make the change on one machine, then clone it using the Rackspace cloud environment, deleting the old machines from his environment. That’s pretty cool and a neat solution. Make changes on one machine, then clone the machine.

    That’s a neat idea, and it’s a great example of a place where cloud computing and the rapid provisioning of resources can cause us to rethink the way we deploy changes. I’m not sure if we’ll find advantages for databases, but I hope that we get people pushing the limits of cloud computing to see if there are better ways to handle database work in the cloud.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Cloud Common Sense

    Common sense is needed in, or outside of, the cloud.

    The byline for this piece about cloud computingis great. It a sarcastic comment about problems in the cloud, and if you read it, then maybe you won’t think every problem in the cloud is cause for the complete abandonment of cloud computing as a tool in your technology toolbelt. As cloud vendors grow, they often standardize and build more homogenous infrastructures that could have cascading failures. We’ve seen this in the past with hosting companies that provided data center services, and we’ve seen it in large companies that centralize and standardize their systems.

    When I started my career, I saw in in mainframe computing as well. That was more amusing as we would all stand up in our cubes, and if you saw a significant number of others standing up, you knew the entire mainframe was down. These days I think Twitter lets us know as quick as any monitoring software when there’s a large outage. That’s assuming Twitter isn’t down.

    Whether you move to the cloud, outsource any services to another company, or even host your physical servers in someone’s data center, you need to use common sense for your architecture, security, and monitoring. If you don’t control the physical hardware, you must be more diligent about security. If you move data around, be aware of security controls and implement tunnels or strong encryption. Above all, make sure you have good backups at your location, and away from the cloud provider. If the worst case scenario happens, you should still have your data.

    The cloud isn’t for every situation, just like outsourced data centers or IT services aren’t for every company. However there are a lot of advantages to moving to a cloud environment, and it may reduce costs. That last item might be enough for your company to force moves to the cloud, despite objections from sysadmins and DBAs. Learning more about cloud computing and services like SQL Azure is a skill that DBAs ought to consider. Even if cloud computing isn’t likely in your industry, you might find yourself in a different industry next year.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • The Special Cloud

    A new Amazon cloud for the US government

    It’s not a short yellow bus special cloud, at least I hope not. Amazon is introducing a cloud for the US government, designed to meet their regulatory and compliance requirements. The idea here is that there are different needs for some sensitive information that the US government deals with, or at least some departments. I think most of us recognize this might be the case, and the same cloud infrastructure that some company like SQLServerCentral needs wouldn’t be appropriate for OSHA or some other department.

    Amazon introduced this US only cloud that is physically and logically accessible in the US only and adheres to some alphabet soup of regulatory requirements. It should allow more government organizations to store or process data in a cloud environment. I think this is a good move on Amazon’s part, and a potential benefit for some US agencies that might process lots of data at times, but not want the overhead of a large IT infrastructure to maintain permanently.

    This is a good step in the evolution of cloud computing, and I hope that Microsoft and other vendors start to develop specialized clouds as well. There are PCI compliant hosting services, but I can imagine that there might be semi-private clouds for medical, research, or other specialized data sets, which conform to the specific security and regulatory need of that industry. At some point I can imagine that Amazon or Microsoft might have parts of their data centers partitioned into different industry verticals that provide services according to different criteria.

    The cloud can provide a great place for periodic and bursty workloads for many applications and companies, but there are definitely security concerns that need to be addressed. The development of specific clouds for specialized needs seems to be a positive step in allowing more companies to take advantage of cloud computing in the future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • The Woes of Cloud Computing

    Cloud computing: sunshine or rain?

    Many people have been skeptical about the move to cloud computing, especially in the database world. There are valid reasons to worry about security, legal issues, and more. I certainly think that using cloud services requires some planning and careful examination of the impact to your environment, but I also think that many companies will want to make the move, so it pays to learn more about cloud computing and be prepared with realistic, rational concerns from the database perspective.

    Anthony Skipper of ServiceMesh gave a presentation on some of the problems and lessons learned from moving to cloud computing. It was picked up in an Information Week piece that summarizes some of the areas that can cause problems for your company. The list of issues is a good one, and worth reading through.

    There are a couple of items in the list that I thought were very interesting for data professionals. The first was the fact that companies need to ensure that they implement policy from the beginning for how cloud services will be used. I think this will always be a point of contention between IT and the clients, and this isn’t an excuse to lock down clients or limit their options. Instead it ought to be a place where IT looks to be informed, help with guidance, and respond more quickly to client requests. IT cannot be the stumbling block in the cloud, or it will get left behind.

    The other thing? This quote: Have the ability to bring things back internally or to another provider at any point. That’s a great point. The cloud isn’t the ultimate answer, and you ought to have a backup plan, which should include the ability to move your services back to your own data center.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts