The Hybrid Cloud For High Availability

The private cloud remains the best choice for many applications for a variety of reasons, while the public cloud has become a more cost-effective choice for others. This split has resulted — intentionally or not — in the vast majority of organizations now having a hybrid cloud. But there are many different ways to leverage the versatility and agility afforded in a hybrid cloud environment, especially when it comes to the different high availability and disaster recovery protections needed for different applications.

This article examines the hybrid cloud from the perspective of high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR), and provides some practical suggestions for avoiding potential pitfalls.

The Hybrid Cloud For High Availability

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Cloud Services

Advantages Of Cloud Storages

Utilizing an outer drive is the most generally utilized approach for having reinforcement stockpiling. The general population who mull over making utilization of distributed computing for this reason regularly think about whether the innovation is justified regardless of the exertion. Clients of the framework guarantee that there is no motivation behind why anybody must abstain from utilizing this framework as it guarantees different extra points of interest when contrasted with the ordinary techniques.

The way that one needs to spend an infinitesimal measure of cash each month for the utilization of cloud information stockpiling is one explanation behind potential clients to be reluctant.

Notwithstanding, the accompanying advantages of the innovation are reason enough to guarantee that this cash spent is well justified, despite all the trouble.

Extensive storage space: The most fundamental preferred standpoint of utilizing the cloud is that one can store any measure of information, which is outlandish while utilizing drives. Additionally, the framework is to a great degree simple to use as the record is made in minutes, instead of the time and exertion spent on going looking for an outside drive.

No Physical presence: Once you have put away your information on the cloud, it turns into the obligation of the supplier to stress over its upkeep. Rather than purchasing and putting away those various outer drives, one just needs to remain associated with the web keeping in mind the end goal to get to the put away information.

Convenience of automatic backup: The clients of distributed computing don't need to try guaranteeing that they have associated the outside drive to their PCs and that they take reinforcements at general interims. The settings on the cloud framework can be changed according to the client's inclination with respect to whether the reinforcement ought to be taken various circumstances in a single day or once consistently. The main clear essential for the framework to be moved down is that the web ought to be associated and everything else is dealt with.

Easy restoration: In regular conditions, recovering and reestablishing a hard drive from moved down information is a long and awkward process which requires the administrations of a PC professional. The cloud clients are saved from any such burden as this reclamation procedure is made straightforward and brisk. On the off chance that at all the clients still have questions about taking care of this all alone, they can simply look for assistance from the suppliers and they will gladly oblige.
For such huge numbers of administrations, the little expense charged by the supplier ought to barely be a killjoy. One can simply be on the watch out for rebates and offers that are offered by cloud suppliers for new customers which chop down the expenses to an absolute minimum.
If you want to know more go to: https://cgimart.us/onedrive-customer-service-phone-number/

By Shail Ahmed

3 Things You May Not Know About Managed Cloud Services

Keeping up with the technical side of business these days is a challenge that many company owners are ill-prepared for. Marketing can be a tricky endeavour if you are not up to date on the most recent technological advances in reaching audiences and customers of all kinds. With the development of the Internet at one's fingertips, there are open opportunities for companies to advertise and promote their services. Unfortunately, many companies fall short because they do not have the ability or strategy to make sure their efforts pay off, and wind up collapsing under the pressure of the competitive market. Furthermore, security breaches can be costly and difficult to repair without the proper manpower, knowledge, and skill. It is important that business owners become more familiar with the services out there that have recently been developed to address these typical issues that companies face worldwide. One of the most helpful developments is the initiation of managed cloud services. Cloud services have become a standard for many businesses to store and access their data and company information at any given moment, from any given location.

Here are some other things you may not know about managed cloud services.

It's not just about storage & accessibility

Firstly, cloud services do not just manage the storage and accessibility of company information. They also offer other services such as supplying companies with software via the web that are tailored to that specific company's needs. There are neat and clean payment options that come with cloud services; sometimes it is based on a flat rate, other times it is based on the software and services that you utilize most. You should be sure to look into whatever you will use the most and how the company charges for the services. Furthermore, business owners don't have to worry about updating their software regularly or staying on top of business security; cloud services routinely update and build your security by backing up your information on a regular basis, without need for your prompt or involvement.

Company data is omnipresent

A second thing you may not know about managed cloud is that company employees are able to collaborate and consult from any location. You can link the company data to any employee's technical devices and it routinely syncs the information on its own so you don't have to worry about saving documents, it simply does it for you with each revision or modification. Sharing theses capabilities in real-time is one of the most incredible developments in technology in recent years, and businesses are taking advantage of the perks. For instance, employees across the country do not need to be flown in for business meetings, going over spread sheets, or making changes to business plans-they can simply all modify and view the same document at the same time.

It saves business money

Thirdly, and lastly, cloud services help businesses become and stay Cloud Computing financially efficient. This can be particularly useful for smaller businesses that cannot afford to pay for many employees. Managing the IT side of businesses is complex and difficult to navigate for individuals who are not well versed in technological jargon and software applications, which is precisely why it requires skill and knowledge to successfully run this side of companies. Cloud services eliminate the need to hire an IT staff to manage software updates and security, or even analyze company data to ensure efficiency. Cloud services are excellent for people who need technology to be simplified for them. In the end, it saves businesses ample amounts of money in staff alone.

Final words

Cloud services are the wave of the future. Without it, hard copies of files are still being used worldwide. Not only do cloud services eliminate a huge amount of paperwork, helping the environment and saving our wrists from turmoil, but also they eliminate a lot of guesswork that could potentially be devastating to a business. Staying current with marketing is critical to businesses nowadays, especially if they wish to expand in the future. Cloud services are helpful for business fluency, expansion, and cost-effectiveness; it takes businesses from average to competitive with the click of a mouse.

By Rahul Asthana

Key Cloud Migration Considerations

The business case has been made and you've appointed your project resources for cloud migration. It's now time to scope and plan your migration. Moving your Enterprise IT workloads to the public cloud is a big decision and immediately alters the way you operate your business. It has to be approached strategically and shouldn't to be taken lightly. There are many benefits to cloud IT, but you must carefully deliberate and plan. The wrong decision is going to cost you in more ways than you care to calculate.

Many thoughts must have cluttered your mind such as, which of the cloud service providers best meets your needs? How would you calculate the cost of cloud migration and operation? How can you ensure service continuity during and after the move? What kind of security measures should you take and what do you need to prepare for? How can you ascertain regulatory compliance? There are many more questions that you should answer prior to migrating to the cloud.

In this article, we will discuss few of the most pressing issues to consider when planning the move.

Private, public or hybrid?

One of the first things to decide when migrating to cloud is whether you will go private, public or hybrid.

On a private cloud, you will have a dedicated infrastructure for your business, managed either by your teams or third-party providers. Your organization will have its own dedicated hardware, running on your private network, and located on or off premises.

A public cloud provides its services over a network that is not your private one and it is available for others to use. Usually it is off-site and provides a pay-per-usage billing model that could result in a cheaper solution, once it efficiently shares resources over the various customers.

Hybrid cloud combines your private or traditional information technology (IT) with a public cloud. Usually it is used to scale up and down your infrastructure systems to meet demand needs for seasonal businesses, spikes or financial closings, or to handle the application apart from the data storage, such as setting up the application layer in a public environment (for example a software as a service) while storing sensitive information in a private one.

Current infrastructure utilization

This is definitely one of the things you want to evaluate when considering a move to cloud. In traditional IT, businesses usually purchase their hardware based on utilization spikes in order to avoid issues when these scenarios occur. By doing that, organizations may end up with underutilized equipment, which could result in a huge waste of money. Taking a look at your performance and capacity reports can help you address these workloads on cloud and decide whether to release unused capacity for other workloads or simply move them over and avoid new investments.

Cloud Workload Analysis

Out of your IT workloads running in your datacenter, some may not be appropriate for migrating to the cloud. It isn't always easy to generalize the criteria for selecting the right applications for migration, but you need to consider all aspects of the execution environment. Given the service parameters promised by the provider, can you achieve the same level of capacity, performance, utilization, security, and availability? Can you do better? Can you afford less?

Your future growth must be factored into the decision. Can the cloud infrastructure scale as your resource consumption grows? Will your application be compliant with regulatory rules when hosted in the public cloud? How does the cloud infrastructure address compliance, if at all?

In order to make the right decision, you should thoroughly understand your current workloads and determine how closely their requirements, both for present and future evolution, can be satisfied.

Application Migration approaches

There are multiple degrees of changes you may want to do to your application depending on your short term and long term business/technical goals.

Virtualization - This model facilitates a quick and easy migration to cloud as no changes will be required to the application. Ideal candidate for legacy applications.

Application Migration - In this case your application will go through minimal architecture and design changes in order to make it optimal for a cloud model of deployment. For example, you may choose to use a No SQL database available on cloud.

Application Refactoring - This model will require a major overhaul of your application right from the architecture. This is typically done when you want to leverage the latest technology stack.

Backup policies and disaster recovery

How are your backup policies running today? Do they fit with your cloud provider? This is also an important point that organizations have to carefully consider. Cloud providers can have standard backup policies with some level of customization. It is worth it to have a look at those and see if they are suitable for your company before they become a potential roadblock. You'll want to pay attention to retention frequency, backup type (such as full, incremental and so on) and versioning.

Disaster recovery and business continuity are important even for the smallest companies. Recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) are important values that define how much data you are willing to lose and what amount of time you are willing to allow for the data to be restored.

Licensing

Is the application licensed per VM, per core, or for total infrastructure footprint? This can have massive cost implications. If the licensing model requires that all available resources be taken into account even if not allocated to the client, licensing costs will increase if migrated to a public-cloud platform. Similarly, if the application licensing is based per core and the cloud provider does not offer the ability to configure your cloud environment per core, this will have an adverse impact on your licensing cost.

Integration

Organizations often discover application dependencies too late in the process of migrating workloads, resulting in unplanned outages and limited functionality to systems while these dependencies are addressed. Understanding the relationships between applications is critical to planning the sequence and manner in which cloud migrations occur. Can the application exist on the cloud in isolation while other systems are migrated?

Compatible operational system

Clouds are all about standards, and you need to keep versions of your operating systems and middleware up to date when you aim to migrate them to a cloud provider. You need to take into consideration that cloud service providers (CSPs) do not support end-of-life operating systems or those that are being phased out. The same likely applies to your middleware and databases.

Hopefully this post will help you make decisions about your cloud migration.

By Saumya Sinha

Questions to Ask Your Potential Cloud Service Provider

Seemingly everybody is talking about cloud solutions, from small businesses to large Enterprises. It's not hard to see why - the benefits over on-site deployments are numerous - rapid deployment, potentially lower costs of ownership, and reduced maintenance and administration, to name but three.

For IT companies and Managed Service Providers (MSP's) offering solutions to their clients, the cloud equals opportunity. Unsurprisingly, rather than investing the considerable time and effort required to develop their own cloud solutions from scratch, the majority of smaller IT solution providers instead partner with cloud service vendors to provide their clients with services ranging from CRM to backup.

But one of the benefits of cloud services - rapid deployment - can also lead some IT companies to look at partnerships with cloud vendors with rose tinted glasses. If things go wrong with the cloud service, the first complaints won't come into cloud vendors - they'll come into the IT solution providers selling those services. For this reason alone, it's important for IT Solution Providers to take a step back and ask potential cloud partners "What happens when things go wrong? And is it really the best solution for your business?

Below are a few questions that you should ask your potential cloud solution provider:

Does the cloud fit our current business needs? - 

It is true that, for many businesses, the cloud is the way to go. Gartner, Inc., the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, has said that by 2020, a corporate "no-cloud" policy will be as rare as a "no-Internet" policy is today. This is the kind of hype that makes it seem like everyone who matters is already using the cloud, and those companies who have remaining physical infrastructure will be left in the dust. But that may not always be the case. Cloud migration doesn't make sense in all scenarios.

Security and Availability - 

For one, moving systems to the cloud may complicate security measures and/or unique regulatory compliance considerations. In some cases, (i.e. HIPAA, instances of national security, etc.) extreme information security is necessary and having direct control of an on-site system is critical.

Learn about how they deal with and monitor security issues, install patches and perform maintenance updates. Does it match your company's expected level of security or service? Ask where they host data and if it's a shared or a dedicated environment, and find out how many servers they have and if those servers are set in a cluster. It's also critical to know if the infrastructure is mirrored and 100 percent redundant. While you're at it, investigate their disaster recovery processes and determine if they operate out of a Tier 1 or Tier 4 data center.

Integration - 

This is a deal breaker. Be sure to ask how their solution integrates with your current IT environment and other solutions. What's their track record and game plan when it comes to integrating with other, on-premise solutions you already have installed? If halfway down the road they realize it does not integrate, what is their contingency plan and what kind of guarantees are they willing to offer?

Uptime Metrics and Reports - 

Find out how your vendor measures uptime and how that's communicated to clients, such as what part of the hosting infrastructure (hosting, server reliability, service delivery, etc.) the uptime calculation takes into account. Ask about processes in place for handling major outages: do they have a SWOT team in place, how do they typically communicate with the client (phone, email, RSS Feed, Twitter, SMS), and at what speed and with what level of details. Determine if they are proactive or proactively reactive when a problem occurs.

Are applications essential to your business operations cloud compatible? - 

Some applications may not run as well in the cloud, as Internet bandwidth issues may impede performance. It isn't enough to have a high-performance hosted application server if your Internet bandwidth limitations will deliver a bad user experience.

Another consideration to keep in mind is application portability. Although it is often easy to migrate an application server to the cloud, the application might have external dependencies that complicate the move.

Finally, older applications that run on legacy operating systems may not have cloud-friendly functionality. Before initiating a transition to a virtual infrastructure, it's essential for you to check in with your MSP partner about each application's cloud compatibility, as they should do rigorous lab testing to identify issues in advance of a move.

Assess the Vendor's Sales Process - 

Does the rep take the time to understand your company's needs or is he or she just selling for sales' sake? If the rep spends time to assess your business requirements, it's likely that same attitude permeates the entire company. Industry studies show that many applications sold out of the box fail to meet the customer's requirements because they're not customized to the client's needs. Make sure that the vendor pays attention to what you need and not just what they want to sell. Finally, after-sale support can tell you a lot about the seriousness, professional nature and quality of the internal processes of an organization.

How does a move to the cloud fit into our existing IT roadmap? - 

Technology is the backbone of modern business. That said, your IT roadmap should complement your business goals. Cloud infrastructure allows the right systems to be quickly and efficiently implemented across the business. Whether you're looking to expand your client base, attract top talent, or all of the above, using technology that boosts your business's capabilities can be a huge asset.

How is Pricing Set Up? - 

Obviously, pricing is an important question to ask. You'll want to learn about the vendor's billing and pricing structure. Most set up billing as a recurring, monthly item, but it's always good to do your homework. Are you being asked to sign a contract, or does your deal automatically renew, as with an evergreen agreement? If the vendor's price is unusually low compared to others, it should raise a red flag. Find out why. Can you cancel at any time without hidden fees? Do you have a minimum of users required in order to get the most attractive price?

By thoroughly covering this ground, you're most likely to find not only the right cloud vendor, but also the best solutions for your company and your clients.

By Saumya Sinha