Which lens are you using for the cloud?

"The Cloud is here to stay"   -  For those in infrastructure many years ago,  I remember when this phrase started to be used.    I believe it started to be used because years before this time the push to managed services didn't take off so well.     As those days came and went,  there remained a crowd that still laughed under their breath that "the cloud" is just another managed service short-term idea. 

Now,  those that have not really embraced the potential power of the cloud are now looking at how they get up to speed with what the cloud offers as more and more companies move some internal applications to the cloud.     Let's face it -  that the cloud, specifically AWS, has really changed the landscape of infrastructure.    

We have all heard that you have to look at things from a different perspective - a different lens.  This is very true with the cloud.   One of the aspects of the cloud that I think is important to understand is how the dynamics of the cloud must be looked at from a different lens. If you use the "old school" view,  then the power of the cloud is not seen so clearly. 

In the not so distant past,  we use to bring up systems and applications and have them run until we were ready to replace them with something better (or do the occasional maintenance).     As a result,  many of these technicians look at the cloud the same way.     They start getting out the fancy cloud-workload calculators and then say "hey.. if I run this locally, I can save a lot of money" because at the beginning the cloud costs can seem expensive using this same old idea.     However, we are all looking at this from the old lens.

There is not a one size fits all when it comes to the cloud.  For some newer companies,   it makes sense to leverage the cloud capabilities from day1.  For companies that have been around the block a while, it makes sense to have hybrid clouds.    What’s important though is not leveraging the old lens to determine what and how it runs in the cloud.

Imagine the power of being able to anticipate when users need apps - bring those resources online - and then shutdown those resources when not needed.    This capability is here.

The moral of the story is when we are looking at bringing up applications in the cloud (either for the first time or from a pre-existing internal infrastructure landscape),   we must look at how we can have those applications run dynamically – that is – have them online when needed and have them offline when not needed.  This is one of the many powers of leveraging cloud-based tools.

There are a number of ways you can do this today.   For example,  if your workload is schedulable, you can leverage the scheduling tools to bring resources up and down.    May not apply to all environment.    Another way is leveraging the auto scaling from AWS.   Want to know other ways?   Ask me today.

What lens are you using for the cloud?

About the Author

Daniel Christenson is a cloud enthusiast.   He started looking at cloud applications in early 2000 and helped spread the word on how it can be applied to today’s companies.   He has been involved in all aspects of infrastructure - network, storage, servers.  He is also a founding member of the docker users group in Dallas, TX.    He can be reached at daniel@christenson.org