Despite the maturity of cloud , enterprise IT departments continue to weigh the risks and benefits of on-premise vs. cloud , particularly when it comes to the organization’s most critical data. In the view of many businesses, cloud has many pros and just as many cons. As a lifelong network engineer who used to be ridiculed by IT security departments for not disabling NTP on routers, I’m stunned those same security departments are approving putting intellectual property and internal files in public cloud. Sorry, that was my bias two cents, ill get back on track now. We are here to discuss Cloud Vs On-Prem so let’s get into it. Public cloud providers will always say their solution is more cost-effective than on-premises data centers. Hardware vendors will always say the opposite. Furthermore, there are a lot of organizations that’s don’t have any public facing services who are looking to move to cloud. Factor corporate politics that continue to influence the results of any attempt to produce defensible calculations.

Step 1 is really getting a good understanding of what cloud really is. For example, I had a customer who wanted to move all internal shared drives to public cloud, all their intellectual property would be in public cloud, every single internal file would be migrated to public cloud. This data with be accessed via Azure ExpressRoute via direct ECX and would be routed into customers corporate WAN via VRFs. I presented the customer with the design and he seemed surprised. When I inquired about the concern, he was surprised I didn’t put a firewall in between the Express Route and corporate WAN to protect the campus network. I guess those printers might have some G14 classified information. Sorry, getting back to the article, it’s very important that IT leaders understand what the move to cloud means. To be clear, cloud is not for every organization.

Public facing services versus non-public facing services.

Which Cloud provider makes the most sense for your organization? Based on the thousands of deployments Ive seen, the majority go like this: public facing services like ecommerce or SAAS usually go with AWS. Companies looking to move their internal applications, files, and data usually go with Azure. Not every deployment follows this but the majority I’ve seen.

Telco, Internet, DX , Express Route , & Cloud Exchange

The aspect of cloud that is overlooked from a technical and cost perspective is the connectivity. How much bandwidth do you need? How much redundancy do you need? Are you going to back up to the cloud? If so, backup via internet or dedicated circuit? Do you need AWS DX or Azure Express Route or should you just connect to the Equinix Cloud Exchange? Are you going to backhaul fibers/Waves from DC directly to your DC or should you just take a rack in Ashburn/San Jose? Are you 100% certain you will only use a single public cloud provider? Maybe, a couple of VPN tunnels to your public cloud provider will suffice.

I worked with a mid-size customer who wanted connectivity from their Princeton DC to Ashburn (East 1 and East2). The cost came out to close to $10K per month which included: two waves to Ashburn, Equinix Cloud Exchange Ports, Express Route VC fees, two racks in DC2. Side note, the Azure Express route virtual circuits were 1G. Gone are the days where having a primary and backup circuit are suffice. Fiber cuts are so frequent now that a thertiary circuit is a good idea if you don’t have a backup DC with its own cloud connectivity. You also have the option to

bypass WAN connectivity and have cloud provider deploy a small footprint in your DC. Strange considering I don’t see how it would be any different from an ESX cluster, but it is an option.

To Summarize, you should go through connectivity details before anything else. How much bandwidth do you anticipate and how will you back it up? What are the closest POPs to your DC? Will you use internet or private connectivity? Will you backhaul private connectivity to your DC or take a small presence in a POP?

How Hybrid do you want to be

With cloud, you have to establish short term goals and long-term goals. Short term goal might to migrate applications on legacy hardware that’s toward the end of lifecycle. Long term goal might me all applications in public cloud. With that in mind, is the goal to stay hybrid? What are the biggest pain points that public cloud will eliminate? I have done deployments where customers have web servers and load balancers in AWS and backend servers on-prem. Have also seen reverse, front end server on prem and big data in S3 buckets. Or maybe, you just want to move internal home directories to one drive along with your email on office365.

How fast can you scale your private cloud

Another factor to consider is how fast can you scale your private cloud? As mentioned in one of my previous articles, hardware vendors clear the path for public cloud success when they stopped pre-manufacturing hardware. Now, I might need to wait as long as 4-12 weeks just to get my hardware delivered. Depending on how fast this new infrastructure is needed, this timeline will not work. To be fair, proper capacity planning and budgeting will eliminate last minute fire drills like this most of the time. With that said, if you have existing public cloud connectivity, you can spin up resources in a matter of minutes.

However, the exploding volume of data is necessitating the use of cloud solutions. And the increasing use of cloud-based software applications means that cloud solutions are displacing their traditional counterparts over time. Before choosing to buy cloud , companies should understand the key differences between on premise and cloud .

On-premises IT infrastructure cost considerations:

• Initial upfront hardware costs of servers and storage

• Cost of maintenance contracts to maintain servers

• Redundant hardware purchases for high availability • Power and cooling expenses

• OS & Compute licensing costs • Legacy hardware and software due for upgrades • Maintenance, DR , and Testing • Need in-house team to support infrastructure

Cloud-based cloud infrastructure cost considerations

Costs will be higher than on-premises servers in the long run • Internal files and Intellectual property could be sharing same resources as hacker • Cloud outages are not uncommon • SLAs only backed by refunds on service, not business/productivity lost • If you stop paying for cloud services, they might go away (unlike on-premises servers and software) • Use of cloud services doesn’t necessarily eliminate reduce the need support staff • Monthly cloud costs can have large unexpected spikes based on data transfer • Redundant ISP connectivity to public cloud is needed for internal SLAs • Do you want to throw away your private cloud that’s already paid for

On Premise vs Cloud

On-premise and cloud reside in two different locations. On-premise utilizes in-house hardware and software. That is, the hardware is owned and managed by the enterprise versus a cloud service provider.Cloud resides in remote servers, across town or across the country. It is typically provided by one of the large cloud computing companies such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.

Key Differences Between On-Premise and Cloud

A key difference between on-premise and cloud is financial. Cloud-based software and cloud resources are treated as operational expenses (OpEx). Because they are rented monthly, these charges are part of the operating expense.In contrast, on-premise software and hardware are treated as a capital expenses (CapEx). They are typically purchased once as a capital expense.

One of the benefits of private cloud is that it combines on-premise control over infrastructure, security and data with the flexible nature of cloud technology. Like public cloud , private cloud provides the ability to dynamically scale resources up or down as necessary. Unlike public cloud , customers do not need to worry about performance degradation that may occur as the result of using a remote data center, since private cloud resides within an enterprise’s data center.

Why is Email still the #1 Infrastructure visibility and notification tool?!

Email VS

For the 20 plus years, the primary infrastructure visibility tool has been electronic mail. For 70% of global enterprises, email is the first notification for a network or IT infrastructure issue. From there, it’s follow the email trail: what’s the issue, where is the issue, what is impacted, who is impacted, who is working on it, what’s the bride details. Then we finally get to the fun part of troubleshooting the actual issue!

As a network engineer for the past 20 years, I have noticed many blind spots that no one is addressing. In today’s fast-paced, digital-first ecosystem, complete visibility is vital in maintaining control of your network operations and eliminating (or at least minimizing) blind spots and system downtime. Here is a list of a few things that I felt there was a great solution for:

Notifications & Communications – Email based notifications that require to follow email trials to get details around the: who, what, when, where, why for an issue, outage, task, or deliverable.

Device History – When was a device put in service? who was the last person to log into it? What maintenances were implemented on this device?

Change History – What’s the last commands executed on device and when? Who has been logging into this device?

Incident History – What is the incident history for device? Who worked on those incidents? What was the resolution of those incidents?

TAC Case/History – What TAC cases have been opened for this device? Who opened those TAC cases? What was the outcome of those TAC cases. Were there any RMAs issued? Is there an easier way to communicate with TAC engineers besides email and phone?

Carrier Case/History – What carrier cases have been opened for this device? Who opened those carrier cases? What was the outcome of those carrier cases? Was an engineer dispatched from carrier? What were past carrier maintenances that impacted your service? What are future carrier maintenances what will impact your service? Is there an easier way to communicate with carrier NOC engineers besides email and phone?

Infrastructure Timeline – What is currently going on in your infrastructure from outages to incidents to changes to task. Who is working on these events? When did the events occur?

Ticket Systems – Between hardware vendors, carriers, internal ticketing systems, and departmental documentation, why does an engineer need to document the same info in two to three different systems?

Updates – When it comes to incidents, outages and tasks. Email is still the primary communication method followed by ticketing systems. Is there an easier way to communicate updates without have engineer log into multiple systems, especially while still in the middle of incident or outage?

Diagram – Infrastructure is always changing but documentation is not always updated. How can we make documentation adaptive while maintaining history?

There are plenty of communication, collaboration, and documentation portals/systems and ticketing systems that can help with the tasks and challengess above. They typically require engineers to write thesis which leads to the documentation not being done right or done at all. 90% of the data mentioned above is already documented somewhere in your infrastructure or one of the ticketing systems you use. What if you had a tool that could consolidate all this data into one UI for you. A tool that could not only document your infrastructure but your network operations.

From a documentation perspective, sometimes simple paragraph update is all that’s required, similar to a social network.

Social Network for your network

Before you close out this webpage, here us out.

We know, this sounds crazy! We designed and built this tool and it still sounds crazy to us. When you consider all the expensive documentation/collaboration tools that have been purchased in the past decade alone and quality of documentation/collaboration hasn’t improved much and how much we still leverage email for IT infrastructure and network operations, it’s time to think outside of the box.

MobileNOC’s Management Infrastructure Timeline gives you 100% visibility into everything that’s going on in your infrastructure. From changes, incidents, outages, TAC tickets, Carrier Tickets, ticket details, notes, updates, and RFOs from one location. Reach out to your account executive to find out how MobileNOC can make your life easier.

I actually wrote this article yeeeears ago, never got around to posting it….but “When in Rome/Quarantine”.

AWS and public cloud is a Juggernaut …I know…captain state the obvious….but not only for the reasons you think. While AWS is an amazing business and product, AWS had a lot of help, from its competitors. Public clouds have shut down left and right over the years…ie Cisco, Verizon, HP…for one a very simple reason. They did not listen to their customers. If you go back 8-9 years ago, maybe even longer, what were enterprise customers’ biggest gripes? “There is too much Capex and lead time required to deliver new services/applications to my users/customers”.

How in the world did that translate into “Let’s build a public cloud to compete with AWS”!? It wasn’t until 5-7 years ago where the argument shifted to Capex vs. Opex. Let’s examine the first complaint of the enterprise, “Too much Capex and lead time”. To me, that means I need cheaper hardware and better delivery times. This was strictly a procurement process and pricing issue. But let’s ignore customer’s complaint and focus on Amazon!

Was anyone complaining about not having public cloud alternative to Amazon…don’t think so

Was anyone complaining about AWS not working….don’t think so

Was anyone complaining about AWS not being stable…..No

Was anyone complaining about AWS not being fast enough…No

So why did so many tech companies feel the need to build public clouds…. when there was no public cloud problem! They all created solutions for a problem that was not even on their customer’s radar. All everyone wanted was cheaper hardware and better lead times. Customers were willing to spend the capex, just not as much. Ironically you used to be able to order hardware and it would ship the following week but most manufacturers stopped pre-manufacturing hardware. If you’re going to manufacture and sell approximately 200K of ModelA routers….does it really matter if you manufacturer all of them in one month or

spread it out over 12 months? So make customers deal with massive lead times just so manufacturers can manipulate their accounting/books for earnings reports! Even if you don’t hit you targets, I’m positive those extra routers will sell at some point.

Next the cloud argument shifted to Capex vs. Opex. “I’d rather pay $4K per month instead of $192K cash up front” (assuming 4yr hardware lifecycle). This to me was a much easier problem to solve. How about leasing the hardware to customers and include free upgrades? You would still have maintenance contracts to make a couple of points. How about a managed private cloud service along with hardware? You build the private cloud out, manage it and just bill the customer every month (maintenance fees included). All the customer has to do is spin up VMs.

Could go on and on but so let’s move on….you built your new public cloud. What is going to make AWS customers forklift their operations into your newly built cloud? If you’re going to build a me-too product, that’s fine but put some bells and whistles on there. You can’t just build the exact same service with insignificant improvements. Imagine if a new company popped up called tweeter and they allow you to send 290 character messages instead of Twitter’s 280. You think twitter’s user base will give any thought to this product…NO!!

Some collaboration amongst tech companies would’ve really went a long way. Let’s use Cisco as an example. What if Cisco had partnered with Century Link. When you sign up for Cisco Cloud service, it includes dedicated point-to-point layer 2 circuits from your DC to Cisco cloud . You also get 2 UCS boxes for your on-site DC/MDF. With the Century Link circuits, I can vmotion hosts between my on-site UCS boxes and host in Cisco’s cloud. That would’ve been really cool a few years ago. I would’ve given serious consideration to that solution. All the Cisco account team would’ve had to do was throw in some additional discounts for my hardware purchases and I would’ve most likely signed up for that deal.

AWS does have its kryptonite …ie Azure, Nutanix, Flexpod, Vblocks etc.. Azure has also risen to the ranks of Juggernaut…. but I don’t see anything slowing down this AWS and Public Cloud Juggernaut at this point. Amazon has too much innovative firepower and executes flawlessly.

To sum things up…… listen to your customers or you will be adding fuel to the fire that burns down your empire. Let me know your thoughts, love getting perspective from my peers.

Future of (IT Infrastructure) work – Mobile ??

As an experienced network engineer & product manager for MobileNOC, and a 21 year veteran of the IT Infrastructure industry, I wanted to share some insight on what I perceive will be part of the future for IT Infrastructure Management and Administration. I have become so fond of clichés …well they are typically true. The say be careful what you ask for…I always thought most corporate staff could work from home. And while most organization have been forced to do it, it is more challenging that I thought. While most organizations are handling it very well, there are some limitations, especially for IT professionals. This got us thinking, what if we could offer a mobile solution for IT professionals to perform almost any IT infrastructure task leveraging a mobile device to tablet.

Everyone is on the go these days. Just like we’re using mobile apps for email and banking, just like we have a travel app and a news app, wouldn’t it be nice if we could have our network administration tools on our mobile device as well? Although it is certainly cool to carry some of your tools on your mobile devices, coolness it rarely a convincing factor for deploying mobile tools. There must be some other compelling advantage to it. So, let’s have a look at why someone would need mobile network administration tools.

In these challenging times it is even more crucial that we leverage the tools at our disposal more effectively for steady productivity, rapid response, and efficient network management.

The main advantage of using mobile tools has to do with availability. Many organizations are always operating 24 hours a day and need to have on-call administrators. I used to be on-call years ago and it meant that I had to be ready to go back home on a moment’s notice to connect to the office and take care of whatever incident that came up. Being on-call severely limited administrators’ freedom. Today, network administrators have easy access to several management and troubleshooting tools right from their smartphone and many issues can be solved in minutes from wherever one may be.

Another advantage of mobile tools is their portability. They can be used wherever you are. For large organizations with multiple sites, this can be a major benefit. Imagine that an administrator is dispatched to a remote branch to try to troubleshoot some networking issue. With mobile network administration tools, they could have all the troubleshooting tools they need in the palm of their hand.

Network analysis tools are a must-have for networking professionals, providing crucial insight into performance and helping to solve bottlenecks and slowness. The right statistics and data about traffic flows, device configurations, and user behavior can identify problems quickly, or even before they actually happen.

Having that information immediately accessible — literally in the palm of your hand — can make things even easier. The use of mobile apps has exploded, and software has matured from games and entertainment to tools robust enough to use on the job. IT pros can increase their

productivity and save precious time with access to network data with a simple tap on a smartphone, whether they are in the office, relaxing at home, or commuting on the train.

Being able to troubleshoot a faulty network quickly and efficiently is necessity, especially when explanations are needy immediately. However, it is hard to predict when a network will go down, or when an Internet connection will begin to lose strength, which makes it practically impossible to keep an eye on the network without dedicating your entire day to just watching for a fault. Thankfully, app developers have created apps that not only let you respond to trouble spots from any location, but also help you monitor it as well, without having to go further than your pocket to check a report.

IOT

We have seen the hype and countless articles about IOT….from robotics to smart glasses to drones. We believe IOT can not only add enterprise value but can also add value to enterprise IT Infrastructure, especially on the operations side. IOT can increase IT Infrastructure production uptime and reduce operational risks. There are also security benefits as well. Although enterprise IoT is a relatively new development, 98 percent of survey respondents reported that most companies within their industry include enterprise IoT initiatives in their strategic road maps, including those related to improving service operations, increasing visibility into operations, enabling new business models, and creating new product and service offerings . Using data from cameras and sensors to optimize network operations and security.

Intelligent Edge Devices and Cloud Infrastructure

Your IoT platform should provide edge intelligence capabilities to extend the power of the cloud to your mobile and IoT devices. This will facilitate an intelligent edge that can bring computing power, data, applications, and intelligence to all the places where your data already exists. This will allow your edge devices to take decisions based on the local data that they generate, while enabling them to leverage the benefits of cloud to configure and manage those devices.

The future looks bright for the Internet of Things in the enterprise. By 2025, it is projected that there will be over 75 billion connected devices worldwide. The biggest opportunity isn’t with the actual sensors that are being deploying, but rather with the data that is generated from those sensors, and even more important, what action can be taken on the data provided. Contact us to learn more about how IOT can add value to enterprise IT infrastructure and network operations.