Newb: Looking for advice.
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@popester said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Well it is getting closer to his retirement so I figure I had better start sharpening the brain. Long story short, started AD meds "under Dr. care of course" and am trying to make "or not make" a case for how to move forward into the future since it appears I will be taking the helm.
Cloud is not "the future". It's mostly a buzzword. Cloud is one of many critical architectures. But one that is ideally suited exclusively to horizontally, elastic scaling workloads (trust me, if you don't know that term, cloud isn't the right answer for you.)
It literally comes down to that. Unless your workload is elastic and scales specifically horizontally and you understand the system architecture to handle that, cloud makes no sense for you, none. Cloud computing is for that one, very specific niche use case (that happens to be the use case needed by folks like Change, Netflix, Amazon, etc.)
Cloud can power other workloads, but there is a difference, a huge difference, between "I need cloud computing" and "I need a service, that coincidentally uses cloud computing under the hood."
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@IRJ said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
I think cloud can have value for small companies as they can scale their resources low to avoid overhead.
That's VPS, not cloud. Cloud may or may not power VPS. But it is the VPS that allows for this, rather than the cloud. It's only because the VPS provider benefits from horizontal, elastic workloads that it often makes sense for them to use cloud to power their solution. But for SMBs, it's that it is a VPS, not that the VPS is on a cloud, that makes it useful for them.
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@IRJ said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Not to mention the obvious disaster recovery benefits where you can restore things very quickly for low cost.
That's not endemic to cloud computing, though. Non-cloud can do that just the same.
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This guide will help a LOT when talking cloud. Many people think cloud means just one side of any axis, but cloud refers equally to all.
https://mangolassi.it/topic/12023/cloud-computing-term-matrix
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@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
To normal people, cloud means hosted, not the technical cloud.
But wasn't that the original meaning to be honest? Hosted somewhere on the internet (and draw a big cloud to symbolize internet).
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@Pete-S said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
To normal people, cloud means hosted, not the technical cloud.
But wasn't that the original meaning to be honest? Hosted somewhere on the internet (and draw a big cloud to symbolize internet).
Using a cloud to mean "the internet" was a graphical representation before IT had cloud computing. But it was not "a cloud", the unknown network was "the cloud." And yes, this is very old.
Cloud computing, cloud in IT terms, is from Amazon in 2002 and did not imply hosted or Internet in any way, but referred to the pool of elastically scalable resources that were on premises to them that they could provision and scale programatically. Cloud computing was born from Amazon and they defined it carefully, and submitted that definition to NIST where the US Gov't ratified it as an extremely precise definition that equally includes things that are hosted on the Internet and things that are local ( and might not even be online.)
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@popester said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Our leadership really wants to get to "the cloud".
The use here doesn't imply IT's cloud computing in any way. "The cloud" has always, as was just pointed out above, meant literally nothing more than "hosted".
So the sole move that that terminology implies is leaving your premises to be hosted elsewhere. It doesn't imply cloud computing in any way.
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@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Using a cloud to mean "the internet" was a graphical representation before IT had cloud computing. But it was not "a cloud", the unknown network was "the cloud." And yes, this is very old.
I'm very old myself, or at least I feel old in the morning, so there you go
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@notverypunny said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Sounds like someone's taking to ML for a homework assignment?
This is very dustin'y of you to say.
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@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
This could mean so many things.
If they have a website, or email, etc, it's possible they are already "in the cloud".
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Our storage to host network is 10g Meraki. We run 100mb Avaya to our end users connect with Avaya 9608 sip phone passing through to Dell 3040 zero clients
Total of 3 Hosts:
• Hypervisor: VMware ESXi, 6.5.0
• Model: PowerEdge R730
• Processor Type: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 v3 @ 2.60GHz
• Logical Processors: 144
• 383 gig
We run:
Citrix Studio
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Version: 7.15.2000.260
XenApp shared desktop, windows 10, 125 users
We have a 10gig host/storage network:
Here is a typical week of activity:
Hope this helps and hope i did not break any rules. Thank you.
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Sorry, I did not realize all of the great content posted. I am reading all of it now playing catch-up.. Thank you everyone.
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So the majority of your workloads are done via RDS or equivalent (XenApp / XenDesktop)?
Something that is often done is moving to colocation and maintaining your general infrastructure, but doing so "out of house". So that would be fully in "the cloud" without the disaster of trying to re-architect your applications to work on "a cloud."
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@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
So the majority of your workloads are done via RDS or equivalent (XenApp / XenDesktop)?
Exactly.
I most certainly have more questions for sure, once I digest what you have given below.
Again, thank you.
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@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Something that is often done is moving to colocation and maintaining your general infrastructure, but doing so "out of house". So that would be fully in "the cloud" without the disaster of trying to re-architect your applications to work on "a cloud."
So other than site resiliency what does he gain? Assuming he would have to put some decent pipes between the colo and his office, that could really raise the IT expenses. What's the off-set to make that worthwhile?
Now I know you've said in the past that power consumption, etc was actually cheaper in a DC, than at home/office - plus they (the DC) also likely provides UPS and other power backup options, etc... of course, we don't know about that part of the OP's setup either.
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@Dashrender said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
So other than site resiliency what does he gain?
The "goal" here is to satisfy a political requirement. The "gain" is "meeting the goal."
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@Dashrender said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
What's the off-set to make that worthwhile?
Power, bench, HVAC, and equipment life span. Equipment in colo uses their power, not yours, that's often significant. Getting 24x7 bench support as part of the cost is huge. Not having to provide HVAC is huge. And the above tend to give you longer life spans on your gear.
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@Dashrender said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Assuming he would have to put some decent pipes between the colo and his office, that could really raise the IT expenses.
Well, just don't make that assumption. Almost no one needs this in the real world, so it's a pretty bad assumption to throw in. Worth asking if it might come up, absolutely. But as an assumption, it's really bad.
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@Dashrender said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Now I know you've said in the past that power consumption, etc was actually cheaper in a DC,
It's included in the price, so whether it costs them more or less is irrelevant to you as the decision maker. What you care about is math like this...
Cost to operate server X in my office? Power + HVAC + Office space = $35/mo
Cost to place server in colocation? $50/mo
Uplift to colo? $15/mo
Do the features of colo come out to $15 or more of value to your business? That's all that matters. How they make it cheap is their business and has nothing to do with us.
Now in many cases, colo actually comes out cheaper. So that becomes really easy to justify then. But when it doesn't, you have to look at the soft benefits to decide.
