Category: Business

Perform a Data Center Assessment

• Inventory and Classification: Begin by conducting a detailed inventory of existing workloads, understanding their dependencies, and classifying them based on their business criticality.
• Rationalization: Identify which workloads are suitable for migration to the cloud and which should remain on-premises. Consider factors like data sensitivity, compliance, and performance needs.

Establish Cloud Governance

• Governance Framework: Set up a governance framework for managing workloads across private and public cloud environments. This framework should address operations, regulatory compliance, security, and the management of mission-critical applications.
• Compliance & Regulatory Guidelines: Ensure that policies around data handling, privacy, and regulatory requirements are met, especially when migrating workloads to the cloud.

Create Stringent Guidelines and Policies

• Documented Policies: Develop clear guidelines for how applications and data should be migrated to either private or public clouds. This includes performance expectations, compliance needs, geographic restrictions, and business-critical application requirements.

Reassess Resources and Capabilities

• Resource Optimization: Hybrid cloud solutions provide new capabilities, so take this opportunity to assess how additional resources can address business needs without disrupting current operations. Look for efficiencies in both IT and business processes.

Monetization Opportunities

• Cost Efficiency: The hybrid cloud can lead to significant cost savings. Transition from a traditional CAPEX model (Capital Expenditure) to an OPEX (Operational Expenditure) model by leveraging on-demand cloud capacity, reducing the need for hardware investments.
• Evaluate Future Expenditures: As part of your hybrid strategy, analyze future capital expenditures and assess if cloud solutions can reduce or eliminate these costs.

Manpower Management

• Skill Requirements: A hybrid cloud environment demands specialized expertise. Consider whether to train existing staff or engage with third-party service providers who have experience in managing complex cloud infrastructures.
• Resource Planning: Ensure your team is equipped with the skills necessary to implement, manage, and maintain a hybrid cloud infrastructure, covering areas like compliance, storage, networking, and virtualization.

Implement Hybrid Cloud in Phases

• Gradual Migration: Avoid rushing the transition to hybrid cloud. Start with migrating a few less-critical applications or workloads and scale up as you gain confidence in the system’s performance and security. This iterative approach helps build trust among stakeholders, including management and users.
• Continuous Improvement: The flexible nature of hybrid cloud allows for ongoing refinement. Monitor performance and make adjustments as needed.

Using cloud solutions to enhance data center efficiency, performance, and availability is a strategic approach that many organizations are adopting. Here’s an overview of how cloud technologies can optimize these aspects:

Efficiency

• Resource Optimization:
  • Dynamic Scaling: Cloud services allow organizations to scale resources up or down based on demand, ensuring that they only pay for what they use. This prevents over-provisioning and underutilization of resources.
  • Automated Workloads: Automation tools in the cloud can manage routine tasks and workflows, freeing up IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives.
• Cost Management:
  • Pay-As-You-Go Model: Cloud providers offer flexible pricing structures, allowing organizations to reduce capital expenditures and convert fixed costs to variable costs, which can lead to significant savings.
• Energy Efficiency:
  • Optimized Data Centers: Cloud providers often operate energy-efficient data centers, utilizing advanced cooling and power management technologies. Organizations can benefit from lower energy consumption by offloading workloads to the cloud.

Performance

• High-Performance Computing (HPC):
  • Cloud platforms provide access to powerful computing resources that can handle intensive workloads, such as big data analytics, machine learning, and complex simulations, without the need for significant on-premises infrastructure.
• Global Reach:
  • Content Delivery Networks (CDN): Cloud providers offer CDNs to deliver content quickly to users around the globe, improving the performance of web applications and services.
• Load Balancing:
  • Cloud solutions can automatically distribute workloads across multiple servers, ensuring optimal performance and reducing the risk of bottlenecks during peak usage times.

Availability

• Redundancy and Reliability:
  • Multi-Region Deployments: Cloud services allow for the deployment of applications and data across multiple geographic regions. This ensures high availability and disaster recovery, as services can continue operating even if one region experiences issues.
• Automated Backups:
  • Cloud solutions often include automated backup features that regularly back up data, ensuring it can be restored quickly in case of loss or corruption.
• Monitoring and Alerts:
  • Cloud providers offer comprehensive monitoring tools that provide insights into performance and availability. Organizations can set up alerts for any anomalies, enabling quick responses to potential issues.

Conclusion

Leveraging cloud technologies significantly enhances data center efficiency, performance, and availability. By optimizing resource utilization, reducing costs, and improving reliability, organizations can create a more agile and resilient IT environment. This not only helps in maintaining operational continuity but also positions businesses to innovate and respond swiftly to market demands. As organizations continue to embrace digital transformation, integrating cloud solutions into their data center strategy will be essential for success.

To learn more about how you can increase your data center efficiency, Contact SNP Technologies here

On July 9, 2019, Microsoft will end support and security updates for SQL Server 2008 + 2008 R2. By that date, businesses using those systems will need to have migrated their operations to new software. That presents issues not only of cost and security but availability. It’s not like you can migrate during downtime anymore. The 24/7 nature of the modern IT organization demands that you transfer on the fly to minimize service interruptions.

SNP has put together a unique process to ensure your organization has a low-risk, high-availability move to your optimal successor system for SQL Server 2008 + 2008 R2. Beyond that, this process will give you a reliable and repeatable methodology for future upgrades that includes planning, technology implementation, and validation and training.

Two Migration Paths to the Modern Cloud:

1. Migrate SQL on-premises to Azure SQL Database Managed Instances (SQL DB MI): This option gives you an intelligent, fully-managed PaaS solution that provides near 100% compatibility with SQL Server on-premises. SQL MI provides built-in high-availability and disaster recovery capabilities plus intelligent performance features and the ability to scale on the fly. SQL MI also provides a version less experience that takes away the need for manual security patching and upgrades.

2. Migrate SQL on-premises to Azure SQL VM: This is an IaaS option that provides Extended Security Updates at no additional charge above the standard pricing for Azure Virtual Machines. For customers that migrate workloads to Azure Virtual Machines, we will offer Security Updates and Bulletins rated “Critical” for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2.  This route to modern migration also offers you:

• Three years of Extended Security Updates at no additional charge and the ability to upgrade to a newer version when ready
• Built-in monitoring of security and performance for hundreds to thousands of databases at scale
• The option to migrate SQL Server workloads to Azure with on-premises licenses
• Significant time and resource savings with hybrid capabilities

Whichever route you choose to the cloud, or if you have no digital transformation plan, we recommend you upgrade to the most current version of SQL Server. That way, even if you cannot meet the end of support deadline, you can buy Extended Security Updates to keep the remaining servers protected until you upgrade them. Otherwise, you can choose to move to Azure by opting to rehost, refactor, rearchitect, or rebuild your workload or app. Or, you can upgrade on-premises to the latest version of Windows Server.

4 Ways to Migrate to Microsoft Azure:

• Rehost: Migrate 2008 and 2006 R2 workloads to Azure VM or Azure SQL Database MI (No code change required). This allows organizations to maintain existing versions and editions without paying for extended support. Microsoft is extending SQL Server 2008/2008R2 support through 2022 for servers migrated to Azure.
• Refactor, Rearchitect, or Rebuild: Innovate with Windows server containers and Azure SQL Database MI (From minimal change to new code required)
• Upgrade: Upgrade to Windows Server 2019 or SQL Server 2019 and get cloud and DevOps ready (potential code change required)
• Pay for Extended Support: Here the costs are exponentially higher than the other options listed above and can be short term focused.

For more details of information on how you can prepare for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 end of support, contact an SNP representative.

Shortly after an organization makes the decision to migrate to the cloud, another big decision must be made: Which cloud model should the business adopt? The public cloud model and private model each have benefits and drawbacks, and several factors must first be weighed before the right decision can be determined.

At SNP Technologies, we take a highly-structured approach to cloud design and development, and our implementation services take into consideration our clients’ current and future business needs before recommending a specific cloud model.

Following is a brief explanation highlighting the differences between public and private cloud offerings as well as some of the key factors we take into consideration before making a recommendation:

Public clouds are hosted services made available over the internet. Organizations that use web servers or application systems where security and compliance requirements are not very rigid normally prefer to use public clouds. For instance, web-based email, data storage, or file transfers over the internet (e.g. FTP), online office applications, and web hosting often use a public cloud.

Key resources (e.g., servers, storage) are shared between multiple users, and the infrastructure, services, and usage policies are often times managed by a cloud service provider.

Some of the key advantages of a public cloud offering include:

• Simple and easy to deploy: Public clouds are easily available as a service over the internet.
• Low initial investment costs: Shared key resources (e.g. servers, storage) enable lower start-up costs, which makes public clouds most appealing to start-ups and small businesses.
• Efficient: IT resources and services are made available immediately, saving time for the company.
• Zero maintenance: Hardware and network infrastructure is maintained by the cloud service provider.
• No contracts: Public clouds typically use a pay-as-you-go pricing model, also known as a utility model.

Some of the disadvantages of a public cloud offering include:

• Lack of control: Clients have zero control over the data infrastructure, which can raise concerns about data privacy and integrity.
• Performance: The network performance depends on the public cloud provider’s internet connectivity, which is largely outside the customer’s control.
• Security concerns:  With hardware resource being shared among multiple users, IT security issues and data theft concerns arise.

Private Clouds, which are also known as enterprise clouds, are for organizations that have high security, compliance, and data privacy requirements. Many mission-critical business applications have specific performance, security, and compliance needs, that can only be met by a customized private cloud, which gives you a managed, dedicated, secure and scalable environment. A private cloud needs to be looked at as a long-term investment, which involves a careful selection of the right technology and architecture to ensure optimal performance over a specific period.

Some of the key advantages of a private cloud include:

• Control: Web-based controls allow users to monitor and track system usage and give them a complete view of their IT infrastructure.
• Security & Compliance: Each cloud environment belongs to a single client, which allows for more granular security controls as well as alignment with organizational and industry data governance policies.
• Reliability: Private cloud offerings enable end-to-end managed services capabilities and can meet stricter SLA requirements. Additionally, complementary services such as backup and disaster recovery and granular data retention requirements are oftentimes included.
• Affordable: With the flexibility of private clouds, new workloads can be deployed without incurring extra capital expenses in physical infrastructure.
• Superior Performance: Normally, private clouds are deployed inside the firewall of the organization’s intranet which ensures efficiency and strong network performance.
• Easy Customization: Private cloud hardware and other resources can be easily customized.

Some potential drawbacks of private cloud offerings include:

• Higher Costs: Building an on-premise private cloud data center isn’t cheap. In addition to the initial IT and hardware costs, companies must factor personnel costs and periodic upgrade costs. In the case of outsourced private cloud, operating costs will include per-resource usage and are subject to change at the discretion of the service provider.
• Underutilization: Unlike public clouds where resources are turned on and paid for as needed, private cloud requires companies to purchase resources ahead of time and to predict future needs, which can lead to underutilization.
• Capacity Ceiling: Due to a service provider’s limitations, users could run up against a capacity ceiling regarding how many servers or storage resources the provider can handle.
• Vendor lock-in: This can be a major impediment to private cloud adoption, especially when the hardware and infrastructure is outsourced. This is a service delivery technique where the client company is forced to continue with the same service provider, thus preventing the client from migrating to another vendor.

However, by using a Hybrid approach, companies can maintain control of an internally managed private cloud, keeping the public cloud optional. For instance during peak periods individual applications, or portions of applications can be migrated to the Public Cloud.  This will also be beneficial during predictable outages: hurricane warnings, scheduled maintenance windows, rolling brown/blackouts etc

For more information about which cloud computing model suits your business best, Contact SNP Technologies here.