Newb: Looking for advice.
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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.
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An often large benefit to going to colo is reducing the need for high cost ISP connections to sites. Because without colo we often have to host services out of end point ISP drops at high cost, but with colo we normally only use low cost consumption bandwidth.
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@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
An often large benefit to going to colo is reducing the need for high cost ISP connections to sites. Because without colo we often have to host services out of end point ISP drops at high cost, but with colo we normally only use low cost consumption bandwidth.
Colo is better than on-prem for sure. There is more expertise required than going with IaaS for basic setups as you must manage a hypervisor. You can introduce elasticity into a colo just like you can with true IaaS but it is more work and obviously is not as fault tolerant as you can spread through AZs or regions quickly and easily with IaaS.
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If his needs can be met with PaaS it becomes even more benefecial to go cloud. Like if he wants to run database servers or spin up web servers there is no maintenance that needs to be done.
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So my initial comment was meant to be more tongue-in-cheek than anything, I wasn't trying to bash or belittle anyone, my apologies if it wasn't taken as intended.
I'm seeing a lot of advice that seems to be based on assumptions.
My first order of business in your shoes would be to understand the reasons for the current situation
- Why does the outgoing person have such an anti-cloud bias
- What does management mean by "get to the cloud".
The information you've given helps explain the current IT reality of the company. My concern would be that if management has SaaS in mind as opposed to migrating the existing workloads then looking at colo would seem to be a moot point. You've mentioned Citrix, which makes me wonder if they're looking to do Citrix Cloud.
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@notverypunny said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
My first order of business in your shoes would be to understand the reasons for the current situation
Why does the outgoing person have such an anti-cloud bias
What does management mean by "get to the cloud".This is the underlying problem. No one should be "anti-cloud" or "pro-cloud". Both cases are an emotional reaction to a technical business decision. This purely comes down to risk, cost, and capability. Any emotional response here is unprofessional in both a business and an IT context. Why would management have the slightest interest in the resulting decision? And why did management have apparently little interesting in the emotional crippling of a department previously?
Sounds like they are ignoring the actual issue (bad organizational thinking) and focusing on something in the weeds (buzzwords.)
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@notverypunny said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
You've mentioned Citrix, which makes me wonder if they're looking to do Citrix Cloud.
Still just XenApp, just hosted by Citrix.
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@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
@notverypunny said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
You've mentioned Citrix, which makes me wonder if they're looking to do Citrix Cloud.
Still just XenApp, just hosted by Citrix.
Yep, but our main / lead Citrx guy here has been back and forth with their support trying to get acceptable performance compared to our on-prem setup. We're looking at the possibility of using it for XenDesktop in a DR capacity, but from what I've been hearing the performance isn't even acceptable from a temporary / DR perspective.
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@notverypunny said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
@scottalanmiller said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
@notverypunny said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
You've mentioned Citrix, which makes me wonder if they're looking to do Citrix Cloud.
Still just XenApp, just hosted by Citrix.
Yep, but our main / lead Citrx guy here has been back and forth with their support trying to get acceptable performance compared to our on-prem setup. We're looking at the possibility of using it for XenDesktop in a DR capacity, but from what I've been hearing the performance isn't even acceptable from a temporary / DR perspective.
Well, not like they have any expertise in that kind of hosting. It's a weird situation to go with a vendor like that for something like that. I'm not surprised. Nothing in that equation is something that they are good at or have experience at. They are a software vendor that specializes in a single protocol and nothing else. They actually have an extremely small range of experience, even on the software side.
Going to any software vendor for operational expertise is generally a big mistake. Microsoft is an exception here, mostly due to scale. And even they are only "so so". It's like going to your car designer and expecting them to be the best race car driver. Bottom line... engineers make bad mechanics, and both make bad drivers. The skills and aptitude and experience of those jobs are unrelated to each other.
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After stepping through the most appreciated information "Hosted" services at a CoLo currently makes the most sense. I still have a lot to learn. My next adventure is to study up on what the architecture would look like with moving our data center to a colo.
What does the network interface on prem look like?
What type and size pipe do i need based on our traffic patterns?
What does a good colo provider look like?
Does the math work?
Is moving to a colo and calling it "cloud" solve the political problem?
What is the difference between managing on prem and managing colo?
What am i losing?
What am i Gaining?
Yada, Yada, Yada.........Again thanks for all the help. Hopefully I can return the favor some day.
ps. in the time it took me to write this reply you all gave more great things to think about. I see you gotta be on your toes when responding. HA!!!
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@notverypunny said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
So my initial comment was meant to be more tongue-in-cheek than anything, I wasn't trying to bash or belittle anyone, my apologies if it wasn't taken as intended.
No offense taken, the team I work with is vicious, no holds barred, prepare to be nuked at any moment.
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- Why does the outgoing person have such an anti-cloud bias
- What does management mean by "get to the cloud".
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Crusty old bastard that doesn't like change..... Learning something new is not in the playbook.
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It seems to me to be a keep up with the Jones's, this looks good at our mixed group meetings. I think its just a word that sounds cool. I will be digging into it more soon.
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@popester said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
Is moving to a colo and calling it "cloud" solve the political problem?
@popester said in Newb: Looking for advice.:
- Why does the outgoing person have such an anti-cloud bias
- What does management mean by "get to the cloud".
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Crusty old bastard that doesn't like change..... Learning something new is not in the playbook.
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It seems to me to be a keep up with the Jones's, this looks good at our mixed group meetings. I think its just a word that sounds cool. I will be digging into it more soon.
So - according to the bold points above - there really isn't any understanding on what moving to the cloud means. You really have to start there. You need to pin management down on what they want - what the goal is. Get them to admit - they heard this 'cool' term cloud and how all the cool kids are doing it, and they assumed they needed to as well. Assuming they do admit that - then ask them, if you don't know what it is, then how can you say you want to do that? Wouldn't it be better to learn what it is and if it even applies to their business?
Is there a pain point they have today they are trying to solve?
