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vSphere local setup vs Amazon Cloud

J

joshu

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 11, 2011
Messages
160
Has anyone looked at the costs, benefits etc for a small business of running a local vSphere setup (2 hosts, shared storage, networking) versus running the same virtual machines (minus vCenter and such) in Amazon's Cloud?

Anyone with direct experience who can share their thoughts?

These are the types of VMs I have in mind for the purpose of this discussion:

1x AD/DNS/DHCP Windows Server 2012
1x RDS (Terminal Server) Windows Server 2012
1x File & Print Windows Server 2012
1x Zimbra Email Ubuntu Server
1x HylaFAX Ubuntu Server
1x Vyatta Core
1x Monitoring/ logging server
 
What benefits do you have in mind or why are you considering the change?

Or just curious...

my first issue would be data security...
2nd, what if your office losses internet.. now you have access to nothing....
 
MrGuvernment sure let me elaborate why I started this thread.

I've got another thread going about a new vSphere setup I'm about to purchase which will replace an older single host that has been operating for a little more than a year. As I explain in that thread the new setup will be used for a small business and remote users will require an internet connection to access the necessary resources/ VMs from thin clients.

I do not have practical experience with cloud services in terms of running production VMs, but I have a conceptual understanding of how it works and what some of the advantages/ disadvantages are. Using IAAS removes the hardware, networking and hypervisor levels from the sys admins, so you don't have 100% control of the full stack. On the other hand I don't have to invest and maintain my own server hardware. As you noted data will reside on someone else's hardware, but if I'm not mistaken don't some parts of the USA government use Amazon although they have a "special" gov cloud and probably very different terms and conditions.

Really this thread is about satisfying my curiosity as I have had it in the back of my mind that a cloud service provider like Amazon may be a viable alternative to running my local vSphere environment, but I have dismissed it without really knowing the practical details for implementing such a solution and whether it is a solution I should consider before going the local route.
 
It removes hardware for sure. Depending on your cloud provider and your solution you won't be doing hypervisor support but you may still have to provision machines through what tool is provided and same thing with designing networking between your VMs. All the reading I've done on cloud services is that it doesn't provide a reduction in work but just shifts what that work is. For one thing think about how important your vendor relationship now becomes. Going with a hosted solution also requires you to go over your SLA with a fine tooth comb. What backups (if any) do they provide? What type of availability do they guarantee and what accountability is there? Contract termination considerations for getting your data back out (or in your case your entire infrastructure). How quickly will they respond to service calls? If you hit a resource threshold how quickly can they grant you additional resources? I like the idea of using cloud services as part of an overall strategy for redundancy and availability but I don't think I'd ever put all my eggs in that basket.

Looking at the machines you have listed I could seeing having a second DC/DNS and a redundant server for some of your app/service servers but things like the print server I don't see a need for a redundant copy. But honestly I would just suggest getting a couple mid range servers and a small san to accomplish what you have listed. Setup correctly I would say it will give you a better experience and I doubt the long term costs will be that different, after all hosting isn't free.
 
renixing you bring up some very valid and important points!

I'm still trying to learn more about Amazon's offerings and I just read about something called VPC which appears to be what I would want rather than EC2 according to this blog post.

"And finally, VPC simply provides a much more realistic server environment. While VPC is a unique product to AWS and appears to “lock you in” to AWS, the model that VPC takes is more akin to if you decided to start running your own dedicated hardware. Having this knowledge beforehand and building up the real world experience surrounding it will be invaluable in case you need to move to your own hardware."
 
Regarding the data residing in the cloud provider's system, I found this product called Porticor which tries to solves that and any compliance requirements.
 
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