Cloud Computing Beginners Guide: An Introduction to Scalability, Services, and Serverless Technology by Cross Jarrett

Author:Cross, Jarrett [Cross, Jarrett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

Architecting in the Cloud

While a tremendous amount of thought and preparation goes into selecting a cloud provider and developing a deployment strategy, that’s only the beginning! Even after you’ve built your application stacks in a cloud environment, there are still a number of factors to consider. Just as there are a number of components that all have to integrated and maintained together in an on-premise data center, cloud-based environments present their own management variables. Over the course of the next few chapters, we will consider some of those variables, including architecting considerations, security plans/controls, and monitoring resources running in cloud-based environments. While each of these will vary to an extent based on the solution you choose to implement, my goal is to have you routinely evaluate your environment’s health in these areas of operation.

​ To begin with, let’s consider some fundamental principles of architecting in the cloud. Unlike managing on-premise hardware, you will probably never touch a piece of equipment that is running your cloud environment – especially if it is hosted by a third party provider. Consequently, the way you approach building your infrastructure in a cloud-based environment will differ from an on-premise situation. Cloud computing provides you with the flexibility to pursue efficiency more aggressively than you would be able to with physical hardware. In a physical environment, it may be quite some time before you begin to realize efficiency with a solution after a large capital expenditure. However, with cloud computing, you are able to purchase only what you think you will need, then scale up or down accordingly. In stark contrast to a physical infrastructure change, cloud-based changes can be almost instantaneous! When architecting for the cloud, be sure to take advantage of those efficiency gains. Let’s consider an example.

​ Imagine that you have a data warehousing application running in your on-premise environment, and you’re planning to move it up to your cloud provider. You might initially take inventory of the hardware it’s running on, then consider mirroring that up in the cloud with an identical virtual server instance. In many cases, while this might work, it is going to be significantly more expensive. Additionally, you might have purchased hardware powerful enough to allow for sustained growth over time. Because you are usually able to scale virtual server instances up or down fairly quickly, you would want to identify the smallest instance you could safely run the application on, giving consideration to potential spikes in traffic. Over time, you can continue scaling the instance up as needed. All this considered, you may not even need to go the route of a virtual server instance. Does your cloud provider offer a managed data warehousing service? If you decide the virtual server setup is the way to go, is there a way for you to offload some of the routine compute needs to a fleet of smaller server instances that you can quickly boot up, use for a short time, then boot back down? This might be an option that saves you more money and allows you to get by with an even smaller base server.

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