Cloud (hosted server) recommendations?

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Spartacus

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I have a good customer who runs a very small (3 person) office and reads up on all of the latest tech trends and wants to move his data from his 2003 server to "the cloud".

He's got around 50GB of data last I knew, most of which (around 30GB) is family pics that he keeps on his office server for whatever reason. The rest of it is MS Office docs & spreadsheets and a ton of PDF scans.

He's out of space on the old Dell 2003 server and dislikes it's slow speed. Their previous IT company sold them the server and did Windows software RAID (yuck). My suggestion was a new low-end server with a real RAID if he wants the speed over what he has. I told him another solution would be to just add new drives and RAID controller to the server he has, it's running fine.

I explained to him that opening his files across "the cloud" will not be any faster (likely slower) than his current slow server. New local server is the way to go. He won't have it though..... he wants "the cloud".

No changes required on their current hosted e-mail.

He's looking at Rackspace and "1 & 1" for the hosted server (both $$$).

Anybody have any experience with those two (or other) vendors?

Any other suggestions?
 
Rackspace is solid (and expensive).

Does he just use it for file hosting? How about jungledisk?

If he won't have the idea of keeping it locally, let him do it. Then charge him to migrate the data back in house when he realizes that it's a stupid idea. You make more money because you were honest and told him it's not a good idea so it's not your fault. :)
 
Well its just going to cost money if he wants to move it to the cloud. Monthly reoccuring revenu is what the cloud is all about, its a consistant way to rake in money for companies.

Now the cloud does have benifits, but in this situation, i see none. Keep it local
 
I hate this. I had the same issue. They wanted to go "to the cloud" because of the commercials they had been seeing on TV and the stories they read online about everything going to the cloud. They don't care if it makes sense or not, they just want to be "in the cloud" so they can tell their golfing buddies that they are "in the cloud". In a more practical sense I can sum it up in one word: facepalm

Find a way to show him it's better to have local storage.

Money usually talks, so find a few hosting options and project a 5 year cost vs. a 5 year cost of a server + backup.

When I did it, management saw it as a no-brainer. My brand new HP data server will be here Thursday :)

 
When people say "The Cloud", I
a) Actually hear the capitalization,
b) I hear the finger quotes, whether they were implied or not
c) Have the distinct need to stab someone in the face

To those of you who read Hitch Hiker's, it's easy to explain what "The Cloud" is. It's a SEP. That, in a nutshell, is all you need to know about "The Cloud".

Occasionally, when management says "The Cloud", I twitch and grab my pen tightly.

That said, the concept has it's uses....like this one. It does sound like an excellent opportunity to make his files someone else's problem. Rackspace is really good, I've used them in the past for similar things. Get a "test" account going and get the client set up like that. See how they like it. If they're gold, make it official ( with fees and everything ), otherwise present them with the second option.

Generally speaking, it's a bad idea to try to talk clients out of these kinds of ideas without some kind of evidence that they can touch and feel to back you up.
 
XOR != OR said:
When people say "The Cloud", I
a) Actually hear the capitalization,
b) I hear the finger quotes, whether they were implied or not
c) Have the distinct need to stab someone in the face

To those of you who read Hitch Hiker's, it's easy to explain what "The Cloud" is. It's a SEP. That, in a nutshell, is all you need to know about "The Cloud".

Occasionally, when management says "The Cloud", I twitch and grab my pen tightly.

That said, the concept has it's uses....like this one. It does sound like an excellent opportunity to make his files someone else's problem. Rackspace is really good, I've used them in the past for similar things. Get a "test" account going and get the client set up like that. See how they like it. If they're gold, make it official ( with fees and everything ), otherwise present them with the second option.

Generally speaking, it's a bad idea to try to talk clients out of these kinds of ideas without some kind of evidence that they can touch and feel to back you up.
Click to expand...

Our new bosses want us to push this out to all our clients because they saw how freaking awesome it was at some conference. Not push it out, but hype it up to them. For our clients, (Small Businesses with 10-40 people.) it isn't really practical. For some, yes, but most just need file serving type needs and a basic server works great for that. Plus the uploads available from our ISP aren't all that great and it would be slow using "the cloud."

Everytime someone says "the cloud" to me I want to punch a baby.
 
>>Monthly reoccuring revenu is what the cloud is all about

Absolutely. Told him that too. Explained that companies like IBM miss the good old days when they leased you a mainframe and an office full of terminals and printers and billed you every month for it. They want to make IT services just like electricity and water, just another utility you pay monthly for. And pay... and pay... etc. I worked for EDS around 8-9 years ago and the regional guy was pushing that same stupid idea back then. It came from the top I'm sure.

>>so they can tell their golfing buddies that they are "in the cloud"

lol.... yep, that sure drives a lot of dumb business decisions!

His maintenance on his current server and office IT needs are very low. We fixed a bunch of problems when we took the account from the last guys, and we take good care of him.

He's really concerned about backups, we sold him a very nice/fast external DLT tape drive a couple years ago that's been running great. He also runs one of the online backups. We could either upgrade his current server or move everything to a new one pretty easily.

Ahh well.... it's his money I guess.

Yes, his IT costs will go up with really nothing to show for it but bragging rights that his server is now "in the cloud". :rolleyes: :p

Thanks for the feedback guys.
 
Might ask him WHY he wants to be in the cloud and see if he has a real reason. I did that, but it kind of backfired, and they said "you're the IT guy you tell us" and I had to do a project on cloud vs. local. It was like a book report that should be some high schooler's homework.

Is the company limited by their ISP? If you have all your data somewhere else, you can be extremely limited by ISP if it's a slow connection and you have people working off of it all day. Either that or you are limited by what this other company's data center (oops, I mean limited by the cloud) allows you in terms of bandwidth to their server.

 
Lots of different types of "cloud" computing, including private clouds. I use rackspace for my personal servers, cheaper to pay rackspace 10 cents an hours to run a linux server than to run it myself. Also run some monitoring applications on Rackspace with work, cheaper than having a server colo'd for the same purpose.

Putting a SMB file server in the cloud is stupid though.
 
Also consider the bandwidth at the office. If they are not moving files in and out of the could that could tax their existing internet connection. Depending on their ISP the next jump in service levels could be a deal breaker.
 
why would he give someone else access to his files? the "cloud" is just the internet. if he has a server is no different then it being on someone elses server off site. and his access times will go down. by moving if off site.


I HATE THOSE FUCKING CLOUD COMMERCIALS. when i explain the "cloud" to people there like thats all it is and i say yup its just marketing hype.

i love how the cloud helped that lady edit her family photo. bitch plz.
 
Filter said:
why would he give someone else access to his files? the "cloud" is just the internet. if he has a server is no different then it being on someone elses server off site. and his access times will go down. by moving if off site.


I HATE THOSE FUCKING CLOUD COMMERCIALS. when i explain the "cloud" to people there like thats all it is and i say yup its just marketing hype.

i love how the cloud helped that lady edit her family photo. bitch plz.
Click to expand...

Every time that commercial is on, I yell "YOU CAN DO THAT ON YOUR COMPUTER WITH NO INTERNET REQUIRED"

People stare.

 
Man, link those commercials to me, I have not had regular TV in well over a year now. I'm hardly ever exposed to commercials, whenever I see any commercial I feel dirty. lol
 
Yeah, this has to be what he saw (big into family pics) that sealed the cloud thing in his mind.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjtqoQE_ezA

I like the one comment, "I missed where she implemented cloud computing?? Anybody see it?"

Must have been when she clicked the Facebook icon. She could have done that 16 years ago with Windows 95 too.
Well..... if Facebook had been around, she could have clicked her AOL icon though. :)

Yay cloud!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lel3swo4RMc
 
^Those are the dumbest f***ing commercials ever... Only an idiot would buy into those.

I worry about humanity. :(
 
Here is the reality from rackspace. I am moving a client there who is getting a single Poweredge R710 with 2 processors, 64GB of RAM and 6 450GB 10k SAS drives for $2800 a month. Now that does include firewall, bandwidth, backup, ESXi, 6 2008 R2 servers, and whatever other goodies rackspace forced on us. But even still it is going to be $33,600 a year. For that much I could flat out buy a PE 710 with the same specs, all the MS licensing, and a firewall. The only advantage to rackspace is you essentially get free bandwidth.

The only reason we are putting this client in the cloud is because they specifically requested being in the cloud and even with the price wouldn't be swayed to have servers on site other then a DFS file server.

So the bottom line is that it truly is a marketing term with 200% markup on everything, and you are better off buying your own equipment and putting it in a CoLo then you are buying into cloud hosting. Email and storage are another ordeal all together, but overall the cloud is just crap marketing and I can't wait for it to go away.
 
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