What is the best approach to migrate a whole network to the cloud, what are the pros and cons?
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I may start working for a company that is interested in migrating their whole network to the clouds. If so, I would like to be proactive in being ready for such a task. Do any of you have any ideas? What are the good, the bad and the ugly for this move?
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That's a big question. Doing this probably involved a complete and total redesign of everything. It also requires defining how the term "cloud" is meant to be used in this case. What is the overall goal?
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This will be an interesting thread to follow.
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Only looked into it briefly, but the killer for us was network speed. Cost of getting a "real" internet connection (100/100 fiber) vs continuing to bandaid our infrastructure was too high. Not the way I would like to have gone, but $0.02 for you.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It also requires defining how the term "cloud" is meant to be used in this case. What is the overall goal?
That's a great question. A question I will present once I go in for the interview. Any other questions on this matter should I ask to avoid the rolling eye scenario? lol! I would like to be armed and ready to ask the appropriate questions to be able to lock down the direct steps needed to get the job done on time, with in budget and with less down time.
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@MattSpeller said:
the killer for us was network speed. Cost of getting a "real" internet connection (100/100 fiber) vs continuing to bandaid our infrastructure was too high. Not the way I would like to have gone, but $0.02 for you.
That's a valuable point Matt. Even with vmware. The though of having less hardware is awesome until you have to give up some speed. I need to know if they intend to have 3rd party cloud or a cloud onsite. I would think a cloud onsite would be better. I don't trust 3rd party clouds too strong.
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@MrWright4hire said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It also requires defining how the term "cloud" is meant to be used in this case. What is the overall goal?
That's a great question. A question I will present once I go in for the interview. Any other questions on this matter should I ask to avoid the rolling eye scenario? lol! I would like to be armed and ready to ask the appropriate questions to be able to lock down the direct steps needed to get the job done on time, with in budget and with less down time.
Well given that you will be interviewing in this case, I'll propose some ideas based on some assumptions that could be way off base.
They probably want to go to a completely "hosted" model. The most common approach here, still today, is colocation and VPN. NTG does this. We colocate enterprise servers (one of our datacenters is in Mississauga near you) that we then run VMware vSphere on and virtualize all of our servers. We then add an enterprise VPN (we used to use IPSec, then OpenVPN and finally settled on Pertino) that connects every user into the "hosted network."
With this model, we use traditional computing like Active Directory, SMB drive shares, RDP and any other LAN protocol and it all works right over the Pertino VPN network. We are able to manage our network like a traditional LAN while not being in a single office and having no on premises servers.
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Every network is different. It's hard to give specific recommendations without knowing your network. It's best to tackle this one service (Exchange, AD, etc) at a time.
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@MrWright4hire said:
That's a valuable point Matt. Even with vmware. The though of having less hardware is awesome until you have to give up some speed. I need to know if they intend to have 3rd party cloud or a cloud onsite. I would think a cloud onsite would be better.
I guarantee they are not actually looking at any real cloud. People say that but they just make up the term. Real cloud is for huge companies, not SMBs, and a cloud strategy would be selected before they started to consider going down that path. Clouds only make sense for horizontally scaling workloads - something that doesn't really exist for LAN traffic, only external traffic (99% of the time.)
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@MrWright4hire said:
I don't trust 3rd party clouds too strong.
You should rethink that. There is nothing you should trust more. Enterprise, third party cloud providers are the most secure environments in the world. Amazon is tops. Places like Rackspace, Azure, Google, etc. are very close. Even with a billion dollars and dedicated security staff you can't make your own environment to compete, not at all. The CIA can't do it, Wall St. can't do it, you can't do it. The most dangerous thing is going on instinct for security rather than testing. Security should drive you to cloud, not away.
That doesn't mean that nearly any SMB needs the kind of security that enterprise cloud providers give you, SMBs just aren't at that level of risk. SMBs always over estimate their need for security and under implement (often by avoiding secure processes in the "name of security.") But if security really is a need, it should rule out everything except the cloud.
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When SMBs say "cloud", cloud computing is never what they mean. They just mean "hosted." It is completely safe to assume that they if they use the term cloud, it's not what they mean. If they really wanted true cloud, they would not have called it cloud knowing that it would be unclear.
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Now what they might want, besides just "hosting", is SaaS. They might be interested in things like Google Email, SalesForce, SharePoint Online or other hosted apps of that nature. If that is part of what they are interested in, there is no way to tell until you get a chance to question them on it.
Normally these pieces fall outside of "your network." Most of the time, SaaS products mean that you are moving that role out of the network and onto the Internet so that it is separate from your network management.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@MrWright4hire said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It also requires defining how the term "cloud" is meant to be used in this case. What is the overall goal?
That's a great question. A question I will present once I go in for the interview. Any other questions on this matter should I ask to avoid the rolling eye scenario? lol! I would like to be armed and ready to ask the appropriate questions to be able to lock down the direct steps needed to get the job done on time, with in budget and with less down time.
Well given that you will be interviewing in this case, I'll propose some ideas based on some assumptions that could be way off base.
They probably want to go to a completely "hosted" model. The most common approach here, still today, is colocation and VPN. NTG does this. We colocate enterprise servers (one of our datacenters is in Mississauga near you) that we then run VMware vSphere on and virtualize all of our servers. We then add an enterprise VPN (we used to use IPSec, then OpenVPN and finally settled on Pertino) that connects every user into the "hosted network."
With this model, we use traditional computing like Active Directory, SMB drive shares, RDP and any other LAN protocol and it all works right over the Pertino VPN network. We are able to manage our network like a traditional LAN while not being in a single office and having no on premises servers.
Are you saying that NTG provides or use this service? If it provide this IT service, why would I suggest yall? That's taking food off my table. lol! However, it it uses this service then your scenario would be a great foundation to learn from. I have to see how many employees there are. To gage how big their system may be. It's my understanding that they even have a sister company in Toronto. It's an Wine company. Holidays should be nice around there...cheers! lol!
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@MrWright4hire said:
Are you saying that NTG provides or use this service? If it provide this IT service, why would I suggest yall? That's taking food off my table. lol! However, it it uses this service then your scenario would be a great foundation to learn from. I have to see how many employees there are. To gauge how big their system may be. It's my understanding that they even have a sister company in Toronto. It's an Wine company. Holidays should be nice around there...cheers! lol!
NTG does everything, so that's a safe assumption
NTG can do total outsourcing of absolutely everything from customer-owned servers in a managed colocation scenario to private cloud, on premise cloud, managing third party cloud (like Rackspace, Azure and Amazon), etc. Pretty much any scenario like that is possible. And we work with three datacenters in the Toronto metro today which is very handy for companies that are in that metro area that we have a very long relationship with those datacenters and use two of them for our own servers.Why use NTG? Because you can get a single company that covers all of the bases. Not just all of the options that they might want to use today, but also if they change architecture tomorrow they can stay with a single vendor. If they start with Amazon cloud and decide to move to managed colo, we can accommodate. If they decide that hosted isn't really what they want, we can transparently (more or less) move everything to on premise while staying with a single, comprehensive provider.
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@MrWright4hire said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@MrWright4hire said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It also requires defining how the term "cloud" is meant to be used in this case. What is the overall goal?
That's a great question. A question I will present once I go in for the interview. Any other questions on this matter should I ask to avoid the rolling eye scenario? lol! I would like to be armed and ready to ask the appropriate questions to be able to lock down the direct steps needed to get the job done on time, with in budget and with less down time.
Well given that you will be interviewing in this case, I'll propose some ideas based on some assumptions that could be way off base.
They probably want to go to a completely "hosted" model. The most common approach here, still today, is colocation and VPN. NTG does this. We colocate enterprise servers (one of our datacenters is in Mississauga near you) that we then run VMware vSphere on and virtualize all of our servers. We then add an enterprise VPN (we used to use IPSec, then OpenVPN and finally settled on Pertino) that connects every user into the "hosted network."
With this model, we use traditional computing like Active Directory, SMB drive shares, RDP and any other LAN protocol and it all works right over the Pertino VPN network. We are able to manage our network like a traditional LAN while not being in a single office and having no on premises servers.
Are you saying that NTG provides or use this service? If it provide this IT service, why would I suggest yall? That's taking food off my table. lol! However, it it uses this service then your scenario would be a great foundation to learn from. I have to see how many employees there are. To gage how big their system may be. It's my understanding that they even have a sister company in Toronto. It's an Wine company. Holidays should be nice around there...cheers! lol!
I will never understand that sentiment. Going hosted does not mean that you suddenly don't need in house IT staff. Generally the opposite is true. Companies still need someone to manage the hosted environment, help trouble shoot connectivity and application issues, etc. It moves the task of IT from one of infrastructure and maintenance to one of high level development and actually using technology to expand the business.
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@coliver said:
@MrWright4hire said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@MrWright4hire said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It also requires defining how the term "cloud" is meant to be used in this case. What is the overall goal?
That's a great question. A question I will present once I go in for the interview. Any other questions on this matter should I ask to avoid the rolling eye scenario? lol! I would like to be armed and ready to ask the appropriate questions to be able to lock down the direct steps needed to get the job done on time, with in budget and with less down time.
Well given that you will be interviewing in this case, I'll propose some ideas based on some assumptions that could be way off base.
They probably want to go to a completely "hosted" model. The most common approach here, still today, is colocation and VPN. NTG does this. We colocate enterprise servers (one of our datacenters is in Mississauga near you) that we then run VMware vSphere on and virtualize all of our servers. We then add an enterprise VPN (we used to use IPSec, then OpenVPN and finally settled on Pertino) that connects every user into the "hosted network."
With this model, we use traditional computing like Active Directory, SMB drive shares, RDP and any other LAN protocol and it all works right over the Pertino VPN network. We are able to manage our network like a traditional LAN while not being in a single office and having no on premises servers.
Are you saying that NTG provides or use this service? If it provide this IT service, why would I suggest yall? That's taking food off my table. lol! However, it it uses this service then your scenario would be a great foundation to learn from. I have to see how many employees there are. To gage how big their system may be. It's my understanding that they even have a sister company in Toronto. It's an Wine company. Holidays should be nice around there...cheers! lol!
I will never understand that sentiment. Going hosted does not mean that you suddenly don't need in house IT staff. Generally the opposite is true. Companies still need someone to manage the hosted environment, help trouble shoot connectivity and application issues, etc. It moves the task of IT from one of infrastructure and maintenance to one of high level development and actually using technology to expand the business.
That's because you are picturing a "hosting" provider, which is not the case here. This is an infrastructure outsourcing service arrangement. So it is both the hosting AND the IT being outsourced. So while you are correct, there isn't "less IT", it does actually eliminate, potentially, the need for in house IT staff because the IT staffing is part of the package.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@MrWright4hire said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@MrWright4hire said:
@scottalanmiller said:
It also requires defining how the term "cloud" is meant to be used in this case. What is the overall goal?
That's a great question. A question I will present once I go in for the interview. Any other questions on this matter should I ask to avoid the rolling eye scenario? lol! I would like to be armed and ready to ask the appropriate questions to be able to lock down the direct steps needed to get the job done on time, with in budget and with less down time.
Well given that you will be interviewing in this case, I'll propose some ideas based on some assumptions that could be way off base.
They probably want to go to a completely "hosted" model. The most common approach here, still today, is colocation and VPN. NTG does this. We colocate enterprise servers (one of our datacenters is in Mississauga near you) that we then run VMware vSphere on and virtualize all of our servers. We then add an enterprise VPN (we used to use IPSec, then OpenVPN and finally settled on Pertino) that connects every user into the "hosted network."
With this model, we use traditional computing like Active Directory, SMB drive shares, RDP and any other LAN protocol and it all works right over the Pertino VPN network. We are able to manage our network like a traditional LAN while not being in a single office and having no on premises servers.
Are you saying that NTG provides or use this service? If it provide this IT service, why would I suggest yall? That's taking food off my table. lol! However, it it uses this service then your scenario would be a great foundation to learn from. I have to see how many employees there are. To gage how big their system may be. It's my understanding that they even have a sister company in Toronto. It's an Wine company. Holidays should be nice around there...cheers! lol!
I will never understand that sentiment. Going hosted does not mean that you suddenly don't need in house IT staff. Generally the opposite is true. Companies still need someone to manage the hosted environment, help trouble shoot connectivity and application issues, etc. It moves the task of IT from one of infrastructure and maintenance to one of high level development and actually using technology to expand the business.
That's because you are picturing a "hosting" provider, which is not the case here. This is an infrastructure outsourcing service arrangement. So it is both the hosting AND the IT being outsourced. So while you are correct, there isn't "less IT", it does actually eliminate, potentially, the need for in house IT staff because the IT staffing is part of the package.
Nope, I wasn't thinking about it like that, thanks for pointing that out.
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@coliver said:
Nope, I wasn't thinking about it like that, thanks for pointing that out.
If it was purely hosting on its own, then your staffing concerns would certainly be correct.
