Cloud does not cure all evils.

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Dynamic

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#145471 19-May-2014 11:38

I have a client who moved one of their Line Of Business (LOB) applications to the Cloud in April after hosting it on an in-house server that we managed for 3 years. In that 3 years they had less than an hour's downtime during operational hours.

Following the migration to the software vendor's own Cloud infrastructure, in the first month they have had 5 outages lasting more than 15 minutes (one was half a day) and it has cost the client more than our charges to manage that server for the last 3 years. The vendor is very well known in their industry, but is not a household name.

Leaves me a little frustrated for the client.

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ubergeeknz

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#1047923 19-May-2014 11:47

Have the outages all been with the cloud service itself, or also counting the company's Internet connection?

However, there is a lot to be said for having a local server which is well managed.

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#1047951 19-May-2014 12:32

Issues have definitely with the Cloud provider. We prepped for broadband issues with dual connections (a DSL and a fibre) via a load-balancing firewall that checks every minute that both connections are live.

I remind clients (with a bit of humour) looking to move facilities to a large provider... if your systems are in-house and something goes wrong, you have someone to yell at. If your facilities are hosted, you are in 'a priority queue... your call is important to us'....

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onebytemike

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#1047976 19-May-2014 13:07

I live in Christchurch. I know a LOT of businesses that have had significantly more than an hours downtime in the last three years with locally housed servers. ;)

Inphinity

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#1047980 19-May-2014 13:11

We have also found an increase in downtime since moving some services to cloud-hosted. Disappointing, really.

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#1048015 19-May-2014 14:12

really?
Did you negotiate SLAs? Penalties for unavailability? What discounts/refunds are you getting? Did they visit the provider beforehand to see the equipment?

"Cloud" is the wild west. If you don't have ironclad SLAs and penalties then you're stuffed. I have personally visited a number of "Cloud" service DCs - located in a random office that is half converted and running on a non redundant hodge-podge of oversubscribed gear.

Software providers are also the worst culprits. Writing software does not give you ANY knowledge on how infrastructure works - high availability and redundancy are specialised fields on their own.

As someone who has dedicated the last 12 years of my life to getting really good at what I do, the fact that these monkeys are still getting away with crap like this aggravates me.

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#1048018 19-May-2014 14:15

It's true. Cloud does not mean "it just works" - it just means "making it work is someone else's problem" :)

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#1048032 19-May-2014 14:26

ubergeeknz: It's true. Cloud does not mean "it just works" - it just means "making it work is someone else's problem" :)

Otherwise known as "Outsourcing" I would think.

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Dynamic

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#1048040 19-May-2014 14:33

ubergeeknz: It's true. Cloud does not mean "it just works" - it just means "making it work is someone else's problem" :)

I'll have to remember that line, but might add "and you won't have any idea whether they are any good at it". :)

wasabi2k: really?
Did you negotiate SLAs? Penalties for unavailability? What discounts/refunds are you getting? Did they visit the provider beforehand to see the equipment?

"Cloud" is the wild west. If you don't have ironclad SLAs and penalties then you're stuffed. I have personally visited a number of "Cloud" service DCs - located in a random office that is half converted and running on a non redundant hodge-podge of oversubscribed gear.

Software providers are also the worst culprits. Writing software does not give you ANY knowledge on how infrastructure works - high availability and redundancy are specialised fields on their own.

As someone who has dedicated the last 12 years of my life to getting really good at what I do, the fact that these monkeys are still getting away with crap like this aggravates me.

Ohhhh I hear you, wasabi2k. In this case the hosting from the software vendor was almost free, but the customer didn't invite us into the process. In hindsight I should have pushed our involvement a little more.

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wasabi2k

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#1048084 19-May-2014 14:54

Dynamic:
ubergeeknz: It's true. Cloud does not mean "it just works" - it just means "making it work is someone else's problem" :)

I'll have to remember that line, but might add "and you won't have any idea whether they are any good at it". :)

wasabi2k: really?
Did you negotiate SLAs? Penalties for unavailability? What discounts/refunds are you getting? Did they visit the provider beforehand to see the equipment?

"Cloud" is the wild west. If you don't have ironclad SLAs and penalties then you're stuffed. I have personally visited a number of "Cloud" service DCs - located in a random office that is half converted and running on a non redundant hodge-podge of oversubscribed gear.

Software providers are also the worst culprits. Writing software does not give you ANY knowledge on how infrastructure works - high availability and redundancy are specialised fields on their own.

As someone who has dedicated the last 12 years of my life to getting really good at what I do, the fact that these monkeys are still getting away with crap like this aggravates me.

Ohhhh I hear you, wasabi2k. In this case the hosting from the software vendor was almost free, but the customer didn't invite us into the process. In hindsight I should have pushed our involvement a little more.

not much you can do if the client wants it. Price trumps all in most cases unfortunately.

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#1048090 19-May-2014 14:59

cloudwash my existing datacentre

Inphinity

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#1048091 19-May-2014 15:00

wasabi2k: really?
Did you negotiate SLAs? Penalties for unavailability? What discounts/refunds are you getting? Did they visit the provider beforehand to see the equipment?

"Cloud" is the wild west. If you don't have ironclad SLAs and penalties then you're stuffed. I have personally visited a number of "Cloud" service DCs - located in a random office that is half converted and running on a non redundant hodge-podge of oversubscribed gear.

Software providers are also the worst culprits. Writing software does not give you ANY knowledge on how infrastructure works - high availability and redundancy are specialised fields on their own.

As someone who has dedicated the last 12 years of my life to getting really good at what I do, the fact that these monkeys are still getting away with crap like this aggravates me.

I was not involved in the decision making process, though that said, there are SLAs and penalties, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating when you don't have access to fix anything and have to wait on the hosting vendor's support to get around to it. In this case it is not a bit player provider either, but I think recent changes have mitigated the issues sufficiently that we should have far fewer problems going forward.

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mattwnz

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#1048093 19-May-2014 15:02

Dynamic:
ubergeeknz: It's true. Cloud does not mean "it just works" - it just means "making it work is someone else's problem" :)

I'll have to remember that line, but might add "and you won't have any idea whether they are any good at it". :)

wasabi2k: really?
Did you negotiate SLAs? Penalties for unavailability? What discounts/refunds are you getting? Did they visit the provider beforehand to see the equipment?

"Cloud" is the wild west. If you don't have ironclad SLAs and penalties then you're stuffed. I have personally visited a number of "Cloud" service DCs - located in a random office that is half converted and running on a non redundant hodge-podge of oversubscribed gear.

Software providers are also the worst culprits. Writing software does not give you ANY knowledge on how infrastructure works - high availability and redundancy are specialised fields on their own.

As someone who has dedicated the last 12 years of my life to getting really good at what I do, the fact that these monkeys are still getting away with crap like this aggravates me.

Ohhhh I hear you, wasabi2k. In this case the hosting from the software vendor was almost free, but the customer didn't invite us into the process. In hindsight I should have pushed our involvement a little more.

As with most hosting services, you get what you pay for. So they can't really complain. I wouldn't paint all cloud services with the same brush though, just because you have had a problem with a 'free' one. It is often false economy going for 'free' or really cheap hosting services, as it will often cost more in the future with poor reliability or support problems, or they may even close up shop without warning.

Dynamic

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#1048105 19-May-2014 15:10

mattwnz: As with most hosting services, you get what you pay for. So they can't really complain. I wouldn't paint all cloud services with the same brush though, just because you have had a problem with a 'free' one. It is often false economy going for 'free' or really cheap hosting services, as it will often cost more in the future with poor reliability or support problems, or they may even close up shop without warning.

Normally mattwnz you would be right.

The product has an interesting pricing structure, in that our client is paying a relatively astronomical figure per user per month and can have the software in-house or hosted at no extra charge. I figured the vendor must be making decent savings on support calls by hosting themselves and might have been able to offset the hosting or hardware costs against fewer product support staff.

Fingers crossed it is just a bad patch and will not be an ongoing issue.

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