
As an organisation looks to making a journey to the cloud, there are several options available today to aid this transition. Some of the available options include;
1. Use one of the public cloud services from Amazon, MS Azure & Google;
OR
2. Build a private cloud where they can decide to operate in- house, or use a managed services provider;
OR
3. Hybrid private & public cloud. Build the cloud infrastructure on-premise then use the public cloud for replication of workloads, disaster recovery and burst-out capacity needs;
OR
4. Join or start a community cloud. A community cloud is a group of industry-common organizations agreeing on a model to sharing and accounting for consumption of virtual computing resources.
Often one solution does not suit the whole organisation for all workloads and companies often may adopt a particular cloud model for a particular function or project depending on the specific requirements on cost, speed or compliance.
Public Cloud |
Is a public cloud right
for you? If you can tick most of these boxes, the Public Cloud may be your best option! |
||
Speed |
Your project needs to get up and running in under six months |
Your project has a
short-term lifecycle making a rent-now option attractive to building it
|
|
Budget |
There’s no Capex budget
available for this project |
There’s Opex budget
available for this project |
|
Resources |
Your technical team is
very small |
Your technical team
doesn’t have a lot of virtualization or cloud experience |
You struggle to hire
developers and sysadmins with cloud skills |
Demand |
Demand for your cloud
application is likely to be unpredictable |
Demand for your cloud
application or service will experience peaks & troughs |
Your current IT
infrastructure will struggle to handle the workloads |
Privacy & Compliance |
You are happy to host
your applications and data in a 3rd party data centre |
You are comfortable making
your applications & data accessible via the internet |
TOP TIP: A public cloud model may seem more cost-effective than a private cloud at first but beware of ‘image sprawl.’ Licensing for VMs in the cloud may see your public cloud costs spiral very quickly. It is recommended that organisations consider on-demand services initially and use open source OSs instead.
P
Private cloud |
Is a private cloud right
for you? If you can tick most of these options below, a private cloud may suit! |
||
Speed |
You have the time to
build an internal private cloud first before deploying your apps |
You already have the
cloud infrastructure available
|
Your project has a
med-long term lifecycle, so building seems attractive to renting
|
Budget |
There is Capex or Opex
budget to build the private cloud infrastructure |
There is a Opex budget
available to operate & manage the cloud infrastructure |
|
Resources |
You have a good sized
in-house technical team
|
Your technical team has
virtualization or cloud experience |
You have a budget to
hire developers & sysadmins with cloud skills |
Demand |
Your cloud
infrastructure will be able to handle demand even during high peaks |
||
Privacy & Compliance |
Your project involves
sensitive data subject to data & privacy laws |
Your data & apps
must be hosted on premise or at an approved dc in country |
Your SLA / IT governance
policies specify that the data will be hosted by you |
TOP TIP: Even though there
is time and budget to build the private cloud, you will require expertise
in-house to operate and maintain it. Consider managed services from companies
such as Canonical and if you onboard cloud operation expertise, or, are willing
to gain organisational knowledge, consider Red Hat or openQRM, they all use
OpenStack! We bring together a range of Infrastructure as a Service platforms
which you can test-drive with us at no costs to yourselves. Contact us today on
cloud@mjenzi.com
for a more specific discussion.
3. Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud |
Is a hybrid cloud right
for you? If you can tick most of these options, a hybrid cloud model may suit you best! |
||
Speed |
You have built a private
cloud |
|
|
Budget |
There is an Opex budget
to operate your private cloud infrastructure |
There is an Opex budget
to rent / consume 3rd party resources as needed on demand |
|
Resources |
You have an internal
cloud that is ready to use |
Your technical team has
virtualization or cloud experience |
You have a budget to
hire developers & sysadmins with cloud skills |
Demand |
Your in-house cloud may
not be able to handle high peaks of user demand |
Business requires a
higher level of service availability by replicating workloads |
|
Privacy & Compliance |
Your project involves
non-sensitive data |
TOP TIP: Interoperability between
cloud is critical in a hybrid setting. Any OpenStack-based platform hybrids
well to the Public Clouds such as AWS and Azure as well as to other OpenStack
clouds. So does our MS Azure Stack with an Azure cloud which you can explore in
our Cloud Solutions section!
4. Community Cloud
Community cloud |
Is a community cloud
right for you? If you can tick most of these indicators, community cloud may be your best option |
||
Speed |
You already have the
cloud infrastructure available |
There are others similar
to start sharing resources with |
You are already member
of a community cloud |
Budget |
There is an opex budget
to operate your private cloud infrastructure |
There is a budget
available to connect to a community cloud |
|
Resources |
You have an internal
cloud that is ready to use |
Your technical team has
virtualization or cloud experience |
You have a budget &
staff to hire developers & sysadmins with cloud skills |
Demand |
Your in-house cloud may
not be able to handle high peaks of user demand |
Your in-house cloud may
not be able to handle bursts of data processing / analytics |
Workloads in your cloud
are not being replicated in a second site and this has an impact to your
service-availability |
Privacy & Compliance |
Your project involves
sensitive data subject to data & privacy laws |
Your data & apps
must be hosted on premise or at an approved dc in country |
TOP TIP: Underutillised resources are the greenest and most efficient to tap into. Combining underutilized resources in any community cloud: National, science, education, defense, banking etc. carries significant benefits to the wider community. You can try out RedHat Openstack 13 with OpenShift with us today!
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