The first step in cloud computing decision: identifying business needs

The author has helped others build the network server and the corresponding device architecture. This work involves a variety of hardware, networks, operating systems, and procedures. I started by building the hardware and network layers, then adding the operating system, installing software such as Drupal (a Content management program), Postfix (e-mail program), and Bind (DNS). Finally, the built architecture is given to web designers and developers, who add the business layer content that the customer needs. In fact, building a physical server, from purchasing hardware devices to installing and debugging operating systems and software, takes up most of the time of the project.

A long time ago, the system was built from scratch by young it people. And at that time the price was very expensive. And now, we've saved a lot of time from standing on the shoulders of giants: Manufacturers have turned these systems into commodities, and buy the whole product directly.

In this case, I think I can put the burden of their work to the cloud service providers to make their work easier? If you are an IT decision maker for an enterprise, you are considering whether you want to migrate part of your organization to a public cloud service environment, or just start understanding cloud services, I hope to be able to give you a reference by choosing my personal experience as a cloud provider. Hopefully this reference will help you better assess your organization's environment and what benefits you can derive from the cloud services architecture in the future.

Cloud computing models can be divided into three tiers: Software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), architecture as a service (IaaS). IaaS is the base layer, the cloud architecture service. Most businesses, including me, need to find an IaaS provider.

Find the right IaaS provider: Sortingwheatfrom chaff

Trying to pinpoint the word "iaasproviders" through search engines, Bing gives 172,000 search results and Google gives millions of search results. I've got some newer articles, white papers, and names of companies from the home page of the search list.

In fact, most of the search results are not suitable for me. Some of these are SaaS products, such as Googleapps,zoho, and Salesforce.com. And I don't need SaaS. Some large companies sell products to build cloud computing platforms. In terms of hardware, HP, IBM and Intel all have such sales, software is VMware, Microsoft and Oracle and other companies, and network products companies, Juniper and Cisco also have their own to build a cloud computing environment of the products, Looking to build a cloud service platform is to mix a bunch of high-priced products together. But I'm not going to build a private cloud on these products, nor do I want to waste my penny.

I learned from the white paper that Amazonaws can provide the largest cloud architecture service in the present, and if I have difficulties in this area, I can find countless technical support information about AWS over the Web.

Rackspace is another large cloud service platform that once acquired Slicehost and its openstack. As far as I know, they are working very hard to build a good open source based on the cloud services project, so for the same open source concept of me, Rackspace won my heart.

In the UK, I know a lot of small web design studios that mainly use web hosting in the UK because they like some of the service advantages of local suppliers. Similarly, the factor that attracts me from the small cloud service provider is his support service: I can contact the technician or the aftermarket directly by telephone. And AWS Such a big platform, have automated management mechanism, but let me away from the after-sale personnel. But small local cloud service providers do not have a good advantage of cloud services. They provide customers with virtual machines, but some of the features of cloud services are not fully reflected, such as flexible and inexpensive pricing and huge demand elasticity.

So I finally decided to choose the AWS Cloud service. This vendor is selected because:

· AWS seems to be very popular.

• They provide amazonvpc (virtual Private cloud service). When I design an Internet cluster, most of them are private networks, and many enterprise-specific programs run on the network. So VPC will be very useful in the future, and this is the only solution.

• The threshold for using AWS is so low that I can try to play with this system for the purpose of experience. If I feel that AWS doesn't satisfy me, I can give up anytime.

Any small business can meet its IT computing needs by leasing virtual machines from cloud service providers. Even if these companies have a lot of features that cloud computing can offer, such as handling peak traffic and removing idle resources, it doesn't matter. Cloud computing is cheap and accessible, supporting most of the company's basic needs without the need for sophisticated technical knowledge to manage it. It's like shopping at Wal-Mart.

For large enterprises, the choice of IaaS is slightly more complicated, because the needs of these enterprises are complex. Without the prior customization phase, most cloud computing providers will not be able to guarantee the perfect match to the needs of the enterprise. But luckily I know how to customize it beforehand.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)