1. Important Questions Moving to the Cloud (Or even splitting the environment) Stephen Wynkoop ( swynk@sswug.org )SSWUG.ORG

2. My Background Databases – Early (very) Access – First version of SQL Server – Even dBase and other platforms Coding along the way, books, SSWUG.ORG

3. Agenda Different, But the Same Approach Lessons Learned Along the Way Getting Started

4. Key To Success Understand your application(s) and environment.

5. Important to Remember Cloud resources are NOT an all or nothing proposition.

6. Overall, Breaking Into Pieces Functional Security Availability Fault Tolerance Sound familiar? EnvironmentEnvironment

7. Functional Considerations Understand the application – What storage requirements are there? – What type of security is needed? – Recovery? – Processing – and what types Reporting, transactional, etc. – Spikes – elasticity in demand/requirements

8. Functionality – Questions #1 Usage patterns – “When is the application used, are there spikes or critical periods?” Authentication – “Beyond login, are there other authentication requirements? Think single sign-on, or application roles/logins.” 3 rd Party Apps – “What are the interface requirements?”

9. Functionality – Questions #2 Usage – “What comes out of the front-end inputs?” (reporting, exports, sharing) Recovery – “What is acceptable downtime?” and “What is the downtime process?”

10. Security Considerations Authentication Data protection Network segmentation Data in transit, data in use, data at rest Archived information Information sharing/reporting

11. Security – Questions #1 General – “How are users authenticated?” – this could be cards, UID/PW, etc. Protection – “What regulatory bodies care about this information?” – Remember, there may be multiples – HIPAA, PCI, etc. plus simple best practices

12. Security – Questions #2 Segmentation – “Who will have access, and why, and what protection is needed?” Firewalls, segmentation, VPN, etc. Protection – “Where does information go?” – protection of that information - encryption Sharing – “Who uses this information, how is it provided to them?”

13. Availability Drives system sizing Drives load balancing Drives scale up and down Drives associated resources, tool selection This drives the entire environment “chain”

14. Availability Surprises This was our biggest challenge area – Still is. Architecting correctly to support this is challenging. Physical System requirements Logical System requirements Application requirements Oddities, licensing, support

15. Fault Tolerance Determines functional components – Database, OS, app tools Determines failover requirements Determines feature selection within tools and platforms

16. Fault Tolerance – Questions #1 Application – “What happens when the application “crashes” – what does recovery look like?” Process drives how you recover… Consider recovery like trauma – – What is the immediate assessment and action process? – What is the short term stop-gap process? – What is recovery like? – What is confirmed recovery?

17. Fault Tolerance – Questions #2 Understand – Transparent recovery vs. ‘please wait’ – component approach can help OR HINDER fault tolerance. – Key: How do components interact?

18. Fault Tolerance - Surprises Things to consider: – IP Address changes (DNS, IPs, etc.) – Machine name changes/DNS name changes – Cached DNS – Cycle times on availability checks – Firewalls, other items that reference IP/machine name – Application configurations, database connections, etc.

19. Data Entry Security Encryption at the source Access controls These can become architecture issues because services can be involved.

20. A LOOK AT SSWUG ARCHITECTURE

21. Auto Scaling group Availability Zone #1 www.sswug.org security group root volume data volume Elastic Load Balancing Amazon S3 bucket S3-served Video, graphics EC2 instance web app server DNS Flash Server “Main” Server root volume data volume Default 2 instances, Max 10 Medium instances M1.large “Dev” Server “Test” Server M1.medium Site source AMI for Servers github

22. Key Services Enabled Elastic Load balancing Auto-scaling groups AMIs Multiple availability zones Cloudfront S3 - storage SES – email DNS (Route 53) Resized instances for services Encoding services Challenges: – Full-text services – Encryption options – Managing emergence of technologies

23. Interesting Trends Many start with “co-locating” approach Instead: – “Peel” off services you need – Consider backup, bursting to the cloud services – Use the elasticity, fault tolerance to your advantage – excellent place to start

24. Interesting Trends 2 Database services for analysis, reporting great starting points, etc. Supporting services (DNS, backups, etc.) Pro tip: Watch for incremental costs that can slowly snowball (storage, other usage-based)

25. Biggest Mistake Not figuring out services, components and implementation options that will enhance your environment.

26. Pet Peeve Billing – Monitor – Analyze – Trend – Trim All of these different pieces do make it more difficult to manage costs.

27. Where Do You Start? Ask the questions Understand the applications and the requirements Historic process applied to current technologies

28. Questions? Email:swynk@sswug.orgswynk@sswug.org Twitter:@swynk Phone:520-760-2400 x1030