The Infrastructure Dilemma in a Cloudy World - What's right for your business?
By Sumit Singh, Founder & CEO, Timus Solutions, May 26, 2023
While Cloud Solutions and Offerings have been there for a while, for many small and medium organisations, this is still not the preferred choice for multiple reasons and it is not to say all large enterprises have made the transition to Cloud either. The reasons are many but it starts with lack of understanding especially among some of the non-technical decision makers who perhaps have not taken the time to get a broad take on the nuances involved. Quite likely they have overseen an in-house data centre that is managed by their own IT department which has generally stood the test of time and served them well. Every few years when this data centre begins to come in the way of business growth or sustainability, they plan a refresh and life goes on.
This is like a full ownership model when one purchases a car outright. Now suddenly there is this new way that feels like leasing a car which has fine prints causing many doubts and questions leading to uncertainty and certainly increasing the complexity of the decision making process. Easy to revert to the buy outright method, right? Let’s try to demystify this and begin by a closer understanding of the data centre itself.
Data Centre and its Different Flavours
So what is a data centre? To start with, the systems which a normal user works on in a place of business is termed as an end point which could be desktop/laptop or a mobile device like tablets/smartphones that may be connected to peripheral systems like headsets, webcams, printers, projectors, phones, fax machines and so on. These users used light applications such as document processing applications or internet browsers that are self contained and served by the end point itself but many business suite applications that are shared across the enterprise are server based and are referred to as client server applications. For this type of client server applications, the primarily heavy duty of computing is carried out in a set of servers that are connected by wired or wireless networks. The Data Center is the secured place that hosts this computing set of servers. To provide connectivity, a network is needed with wires terminating to this data centre and all related equipment to facilitate this is also found in this location. Additionally, communication systems like telephony and connectivity related systems are found here as well. Further, as these systems are super critical to the organisation, various backup systems are also housed here. Security being such an important need today, numerous ever evolving and specialising security related tools and products are put in place. All this computing power is an energy hog and consumes a lot of electricity, hence there are specific considerations needed including power backup in case of grid failure. As one may imagine, these equipment on their own produce a lot of heat which then necessitates high end cooling to keep these systems in a constant humming and happy state. Additionally, these systems often require a dust free environment requiring additional protection from the elements. Finally, managing all of these systems requires highly skilled professionals whose physical presence is often needed to conduct regular checkup, preventive maintenance and monitoring to name some of their key functions. As you may imagine, depending on the complexity, these data centres vary and are classified into 4 tiers.
Tier 1: The basic data centre with no redundancy and no alternate paths for electricity. Yet it has a still very high level of uptime, primarily on the back of the systems in place. At the most, only a couple of days in aggregate in a whole year of downtime is expected and no more.
Tier 2: This particular type of data centre adds a secondary path for electricity and cooling as compared to Tier 1 and hence improves on the uptime further which is expected to be no more than a day of aggregate failure annually.
Tier 3: Here, secondary infrastructure is also introduced and the electricity and cooling is maintained through multiple paths or sources. As you can imagine, the uptime of this kind of data centre greatly improves and one can expect less than 2 hours of downtime annually – an excellent uptime for most businesses
Tier 4: The highest level, which has so much redundancy in place for all its systems and manpower that it guarantees only a few minutes of downtime annually if any. Of Course one can imagine what type of clients have these kinds of requirements.
It is obvious that as the Tier level goes up, the complexity of putting together and running goes up as well. Further, there are very strict mandates and guidelines to adhere and illustrate to get certified higher tiers and rigorous checks by external independent agencies verify the conformity.
Slicing & Dicing Further
So moving on, the traditional data centres have generally been On-Premise. As it suggests, this type of data centre is hosted within the organisation’s facility which provides tight control along with the full set of responsibilities involved to manage it. Often, when larger organisations deploy more complex systems for their needs within their location, these data centres are also called Enterprise Data Centres.
The next level in this evolution chain comes the Colocation Data Centres. Typically, organisations rent a space for their own equipment and manage their applications and related services themself while the colocation provider manages the physical premise along with electrical and cooling supplies along with some manpower for some of the related tasks. Imagine a large office building with multiple tenants who all have computing needs and perhaps the same building management has a dedicated data centre space let out for a fee to host for these tenant’s server needs. If the capacity permits, the data centre management may even extend the facility to those not within the physical boundaries of the building itself.
The next evolutionary stop is Cloud Data Center which answers the obvious question on the table which is why limit with colocation service only and not provide servers as well? Remember the leasing of a car I spoke of earlier? This is where this concept comes more into play. Here a cloud provider puts in all the required ingredients as mentioned earlier when I explained Data Centre as a whole and typically it would be of a Tier 3 or Tier 4 class. Clients will host their applications and retain some shared responsibility with more leaning on the Cloud Provider to deliver. They are billed based on their consumption which then more or less eliminates the procurement and setup processes and vastly reduces many of the burden that befalls upon the organisation’s IT department.
Perhaps some control is lost along the way which may or may not result in compliance or security issues. The contracts have become more complex over time which has not actually slowed down its adoption given the flexibility and scalability possibilities. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are some of the most well known providers, but many country or region specific cloud providers are also providing stiff competition to these global behemoths in their area of presence.
There are a few more types but this blog is not meant to delve into every nook and cranny, but to shed some light on the essentials. However one last bit remains. Public and Private.
Essentially, when one speaks of a Cloud Provider, which you would imagine is a full service colocation centre, one is talking of Public Cloud. Occasionally, a client may demand exclusive hosting of its infrastructure by the cloud provider, may demand some few customizations to suit its needs by which they often get to ensure higher levels of security and compliance without compromising scalability and flexibility. This facility is then termed as Private Cloud.
I hope I have been able to walk through in a meaningful way on this complex topic.
Isn’t there a middle ground between Public and Private Cloud? Ah, surely there is and it is called Hybrid Cloud. And did I hear someone mention Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)? Hmm. For another time I suppose.
Sincerely hoping so far you are with me. Do drop in a line with your thoughts or comments at sumit.singh@timussolutions.com.
Timus Solutions will be happy to collaborate and work with you on your business challenges.
