Showing posts with label Cloud Storage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cloud Storage. Show all posts
Implementing Cloud Infrastructure
To break it down this is very comparable to on premises infrastructure as when looking to physical storage, physical servers, virtualisation, virtual networks and virtual machines. The cloud reduces the need have the physical infrastructure in place. You are able to utilise this on a pay per use model in any of the public cloud providers for example Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure. You are charged for what you use which is great!
Virtual Networks
After activating your cloud subscription you can begin setting up your virtual network. This has different names depending on what provider you are using i.e in Microsoft Azure its called Virtual Networks and in Google Cloud Platform its called Virtual Private Cloud Networks (VPC's) Basically these are similar ways to perform network segmentation in the cloud based on virtualised networks. Subnets are used to segment these virtual networks or VPC's. You are also able to integrate load balancers and firewalls:
Within these virtual networks you can isolate specific services, i.e virtual machines, you can implement load balancers as well as connect networks from different regions togeather. You are also able to implement security with firewall's across these virtual networks both internally and externally. Another feature of virtual networks is the ability to connect them with your existing on premises networks. There are various methods available in order to achieve this as in a direct Interconnect (GCP) or Express Route (Azure) link from your site to the applicable cloud provider. Another way do to this is be using secure encrypted VPN tunnels:
Cloud Storage
Cloud Storage is absolutely critical as this is where all of your resources will be stored in the cloud. I have previously written about cloud storage if you would like to read further:
In the context of this article we will be referencing more towards storage of infrastructure like virtual machine files, virtual machine disks and general file storage. These will be the locations where your compute workloads will be stored when created. There are various different types of storage but for virtual machines you will look at options like HDD or SSD depending on workload. Google GCP has persistent disks and Azure has managed disks for VM's. http://www.ruckcloud.ml/2018/04/lets-talk-about-managed-disks.html
Compute
The compute layer is all about the computing resources that you will be utilising. This is based on virtual machines in one form or the other. You can spin up traditional VM's one at a time with a large selection of different operating systems from Windows to Linux. These are called IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) VM's. You can also leverage batch operation with automating a large number VM creation to achieve a large processing job for example. These VM's can automatically scale up and down based on load and you are only charged when they are in use. With IaaS you have direct control and management of your VM's.
You are also able to make use of virtual machines in PaaS (Platform as a Service) where you can immediately spin up app's for computing needs without the need of managing IaaS VM's. This is very handy for developers that are not too concerned with managing VM's.
In this article I have touched on the core base infrastructure required with cloud computing. These areas all go into much more depth but sometimes its nice to get a simple overview of what they are and how they work. This is really essential to understand when first looking into the cloud to either build new services or migrate your existing infrastructure.
Further information on cloud infrastructure is available at:
What exactly is Cloud Storage?
A good way to explain cloud storage is by comparing consumer vs commercial cloud storage. Most people these days are actively using and relying on cloud storage everyday through One Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox and the large number of other providers. Basically all these options are the same, store your media, images, files offsite in the cloud.
The commercial aspects of cloud storage are a bit more complex as you will need to identify your workload and requirements of it. As in blob storage is great for videos, images and media but that will not work with databases or application back end data. The various cloud suppliers have various tiers of cloud storage to help you identify your requirements. These can range from "hot" storage or frequently accessed data to "cold storage" archive data.
Looking at the Microsoft Azure offerings the below different products are available:
File
Simple, distributed, cross-platform file system
- Lift and shift migration
- Simple and inexpensive
- Move data to cloud with no coding
Disk
Premium storage for I/O-intensive applications
- Low latency, high throughput
- Automatic triple replication
- Enterprise-grade durability
- Learn more
Blob
Massively-scalable object storage for unstructured data
- Cost-effective for massive volume
- Tiered storage options
- Single infrastructure with global reach
- Learn more
Queue
Durable queues for large-volume cloud services
- Simple, cost-effective messaging
- Decoupled component flexibility
- Resilient scaling and buffering
- Learn more
Table
- Flexible NoSQL database
Key-value table storage
- Structured or unstructured data
- Low latency at Internet scale
- Learn more
Archive
Low cost storage for rarely used data
- Data automatically encrypted at rest
- Seamless integration with hot and cool storage tiers
- Supported by leading Data Management partners
Most cloud providers fit into the same above categories with different service offerings and names, Google Cloud Platform for instance offers the following in Google Cloud Storage:
Please see bottom of the article for links with further details and information.
A good way to start with cloud storage options are with your backup or archival data. By moving this data to the cloud a company can start leveraging the power of cloud without initially moving their entire workload. By storing your backups and even running your daily, weekly or monthly backup runs into the cloud this will provide a cost effective and reliable offsite backup option that can really prove to be invaluable in the case of a disaster.
There are really a huge volume of different cloud backup providers these days which all basically offer the same thing with different types of software. Locally running backups that copy your data to the cloud. All of these products will use either their own cloud storage servers or more likely one of the big cloud providers. You might even be able to get the choice of which public cloud storage provider you use with the specific backup product. You could also go directly to a public cloud provider and use their native cloud backup tools.
There are also on premises to cloud replication devices such as Microsoft's Storesimple that will automatically move your archival or "cold' on premises data into the cloud. This is something that can assist with large enterprise storage volumes and cloud storage adoption.
Ultimately cloud storage is expanding rapidly with the great volumes of data being generated everyday and it is really the future of all data storage. Going forward it will be easier, safer and more cost effective to utilise and migrate your current on-premises storage into the cloud. A good way to start on this journey is with your backups.
Further sources and information:
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