How Does the Truly Right Cloud Work?
Content
Given the current crisis, it is also about companies being able to function in the most efficient manner, optmize where possible, ensure stability and most of all control the costs. And cloud is of course the right way that ensures all of these; or is it?
It is possible to imagine many things under the word cloud. If you told someone that you are buying a car, it would not really clear which one – is it a beautiful luxurious limousine, a robust off-road or perhaps a sports coupe where your fingers cannot hold the number of Vs? There are many options and you have to be specific. And so we are going to be specific.
You probably know how the IT infrastructure evolved – first, everything was physically stored in the office, then there was the transfer to virtual servers. But the development goes on and it directs you straight towards the virtual data center. Why you ask? The transfer to the virtual data center brings about many advantages not only for the IT department, but namely gives the management the opportunity to significantly lower costs of the whole IT department, make processes more efficient and have full control over all costs. Who would not like that?
We will look closer at these three areas. To make you better understand, why there is only one right choice for the operations of the IT infrastructure, we are going to include the comparison to physical infrastructure and virtual servers. You will then have to make a conclusion for yourself.
Cloud Minimizes Costs when Compared to Physical Infrastructure
When a company migrates to cloud, the first big savings come from not being dependent on physical servers. The whole virtual data center is built on top of a physical data center, which is managed by a team of professionals. All of the infrastructure elements are secured in multiple ways to prevent outages and it is being well-taken care of thanks to the 24/7 monitoring center.
When operating the company infrastructure in VDC, you get rid of the care necessary for the individual infrastructure elements and their stability. You can maintain your cool and keep these activities to professionals.
The right cloud works in a way you do not have to take care of the physical infrastructure
On the contraty, maintaining your own physical devices brings about many risks. Any hardware failure means company outage. Financial costs are increased by the amount of time that is necessary to remove the system failure and exchange the damaged device. And we are not talking about just the servers or storage. The outage can impact network elements, back-up sources or the cooling system. The operation of physical devices is also costly in and of itself.
When hardware gets old, you need to replace it with new pieces, purchase it, exchange it and then migrate the software. All of this also means interruption of services and operations.
Minimizing Costs Compared to Virtual Servers
A large contribution to saving costs also comes from the efficient use of resources in the virtual data center. Your company can choose which resources and how much of them are needed (CPU, RAM, SSD/HDD). Based on your specific request, your IT technicians can then deploy their own virtual servers (instances) from the allocated resources.
The price is calculated based on the consumed resources. This solution is therefore very economically beneficial. If the situation requires fast increase in resources (for the Holiday season, system tests or enlarging the service offer), additional resources are available for you to use immediately. You just send us an email with your additional requests and our support takes care of it.
Slovníček
CPU – virtual processor units
RAM – virtual operation memory in GB
HDD – kapacita diskového prostoru na běžných discích v GB
SSD – capacity of the storage on fast drives in GB
NVMe – capacity of the storage on regular drives in GB
The right cloud works in a way to always adapt to you and thus decrease costs
Virtual servers work very differently. Even though they enable you to select the amount of resources, these resources have to be immediately assigned to a specific virtual machine (instance). Certain servers can be set-up to reflect your needs but only when you deploy them. Their additional adjustments are not within your limits. You have to set up and purchase another server.
In many cases you cannot choose the specific amounts of resources but only select the closest possible match – a server that closely reflects the resources you really need. This inability to adapt in both cases makes the virtual server not an efficient choice for the operation of more than one server.
Increasing Efficiency thanks to the Right Cloud
Another step you can take to decrease costs is to currently enable your employees to fully work from home. This step is related to ensuring the highest possible transmission capacity to handle the increasing number of requests coming to your web services. These problems are again solved by VDC that is connected to the backbone network.
All services (web apps, remote desktop, terminal services, shared drives and databases) are highly available. Besides, the placement in the Czech Republic provides to local companies very low latency. We can put it this way – your company systems will run smoothly and the infrastructure will work like a charm.
The right cloud works to make your work easier not the other way around
When operating your own physical infrastructure, you will always need someone that will solve local physical issues; and not always can everything be solved with internal resources. So not only that your efficiency goes down because your employee is focusing on an issue but there are also rising costs. It is also possible that your physical infrastructure will deny you peacefull cooperation and then there is no smooth running or charms. More attention and energy is then expended on a problem and not on work itself.
What about Cloud Efficiency and Virtual Servers?
When your technicians receive access to your virtual data center, they control all virtual elements – instances/servers, routers, networks and firewall rules. The web graphic interface makes it easier to maintain the high level of security. IT technicians can manage all the elements through this web interface and also configure the infrastructure as a Service. Everything is in one place and clearly displayed.
The right cloud works in a way everything is easily controlled from one place
Virtual servers have to be accessed as individual services and so each is managed individually. Even though some providers give you the option to pay for an additional service of complete control, we are still looking at each server and the individual service purchasing as separate services. Therefore, management is less smooth than in VDC – the virtual data center is one service where everything is included.
Full Control over the IT Infrastructure
We have already talked about the virtual data center giving a lot of options to your IT department – setting up the work environment just like it is needed. But VDC also gives full control to you as a manager – and there is no tech lingo you need to learn. The virtual interface that is used to manage the resources, includes an Overview where you can easily check on a few pie charts if your department is using the resources in the most efficient way. Of course, some reserve is a wise decision, but if that reserve amounts to 0.5% of the allocated resources, you need to optimize – simply, with just one email, in English.
The right cloud works in a way for you to always have it fully under control and know exactly where you stand
We would not even attempt to try to find a way for someone to tame the iron of the physical infrastructure. Physical machines, their components and other elements can cease to function at any point and the costs at that point just skyrocket. And it is always necessary to overstate the current resource need since you need to take into account “what if” situations that may come in the future.
This is just not the right way towards full control. And what about virtual servers? They are a cloud service so full control just has to be included in the price. The issue with virtual servers is called unclear invoicing. Even if you use a calculator provided at the supplier´s website to find everything you need, you need to sign a long-term contract to get some financial benefits. Ot you need to purchase additional elements so your stored information or configurations are not deleted when a server is restarted. And we also encounter another item – data transfer.
For each datum that is transmitted by the server or to the server, you pay a certain price. So the dollar counter just keeps on going because the server has to send and receive many data to function properly. So you never know, what your next invoice will look like.
How Does the Right Cloud Function Then?
To summarize, the right choice for the operation of IT infrastructure is cloud. But not any cloud, the right cloud. A cloud service that enables the following
- Accurately define resources
- Optimize resources at any point in time
- Pay only for what you really need
- Increase the efficiency of the IT department
- Manage the whole infrastructure from one place
- Provide the manager and the IT department full control over the costs and environment
So… do you know which one is the right cloud?
