back to article Clouds' crazy kinks can spin your wheels and lead you to mistakes

You're probably cocking up the cloud, but clouds themselves are part of the reason why. So says Kyle Hilgendorf, chief of research at Gartner for Technology Professionals, the branch of the analyst firm that talks to Reg-reading types instead of suits. Hilgendorf delivered a session titled “Top AWS and Azure IaaS mistakes you' …

  1. Adam 52 Silver badge

    This is one of the best articles I've read in a long time. Sorry, nothing more constructive to add, other than to second the recommendations.

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "He instead counselled connecting all offices to a cloud exchange, over one link, and letting the cloud exchange handle links to clouds."

    I think the technical term for this is "single point of failure".

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Top AWS and Azure IaaS mistakes you'll want to avoid

    "there are lots of little limitations to cloud services that vendors hardly shout from the rooftops."

    translation: We oversold the benefits and you were foolish enough to believe us.

    "Trusting clouds' native file transfer tools is also not advisable, as Hilgendorf said they're not particularly resilient .. Failing to plan a proper backup regime is as dangerous in the cloud as it is anywhere else"

    Let me get this straight, the 'cloud' fails at basic file transfer and automatic backups? The entire raison d'être and selling point of moving to the 'cloud.'

    Besides and finally, what's any of this got to do with selling stuff? Bottom line, how much money will I save on business processes, salaries and hardware by moving to the cloud?

    1. Adam 52 Silver badge

      Re: Top AWS and Azure IaaS mistakes you'll want to avoid

      "Let me get this straight, the 'cloud' fails at basic file transfer"

      I wouldn't say fails, but the vendor supplied tools are basic and the APIs require you to understand how to make best use of a WAN link. Sort of thing that used to be considered basic programming. There is a niche for products like s3browser.

      " and automatic backups?"

      He didn't say there was anything wrong with the automatic backups, just that you need a backup strategy. Lots of products don't have automatic backups and it would be prudent to know what those are. Possibly the most obvious is ec2.

      " The entire raison d'être and selling point of moving to the 'cloud.'"

      I would say that if that's your reason for moving to the cloud then your reasoning is fundamentally flawed.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        IT Angle

        Re: Top AWS and Azure IaaS mistakes you'll want to avoid

        OK, I'll go again, the short version, move to cloud and eliminate own hardware and networking people and therefore save money. Now I'm given to understand that I need to hire back on programmers who can write IaaS API interfaces, configure virtual interfaces, virtual networks, WANs and peer-to-peer links, configure active directory, load balancing etc. And to monitor the software in the cloud in case it eats up your budget. Just how many businesses has such a skill set on hand. What would it cost to hire in such people. What has any of this got to do with making money? If moving to the cloud won't save me money then what is the point?

        elReg, produce a report on a real life medium sized business that made money moving the cloud. Fully document the before and after phases and the cost of designing and implementing the system, including the long term annual costs of maintaining such a service in the cloud.

        1. Ken 16 Silver badge
          Meh

          Your milage may vary

          This is all part of your due diligence. Moving to the cloud may save you money, it may not.

          It depends. Doing it badly will almost certainly lose you money and this article is point out a few gotchas that the cloud providers aren't as enthusiastic in advertising.

          How much data you have, where it comes from and how often it's accessed, whether your workload is flat or spikey, what your risk tolerance is, what rate you depreciate on-premise, whether you're expecting growth and how you weigh OPEX against CAPEX all affect whether you save money. If you aren't willing to put the work in yourself then you have to pay people to do it for you, also in money.

          Cloud != Magic.

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