Cloud

I know, there are tons of materials and training that will explain you how to select between SaaS and custom software. I’ll summarize their usual points, but I wanted to add some details on how you might have to look at the full scope of cloud services : from Iaas, through PaaS, to Saas, and a detour through containers. First the usual discussion, that have seen unfurl dozens of times : why choose SaaS over a custom/on-premises solution? You know the drill, right? On one side, you have full control and can customize the solution. This means the software will be tailored to your exact needs, and you will control exactly what is done with it, how is updated, where data is stored, accessed, replicated, backed-up etc. You will know the exact setup of the deployment, which layer is connected to which other layer, how, where traffic goes, how each layer is protected, and replicated. You will handle failover, high-availability etc. In a few words : you will be the master in your own kingdom. Problem with that path : you are, mostly, on your own. All of these domains I just listed are your responsibility, and you have to have knowledge and skills to handle those. You might need to expand those skills to cover 24*7. You’ll need a strong IT team, in addition to a trained software team. On the other side, you have SaaS : bright new, quick and easy. You set that up in a flash, connect the solution to your other enterprise software, create user accounts and voilà! No administrative overhead, the only skill you have to master is the configuration of the solution. You’ve seen the downside coming : you have absolutely no control over the software, its release cycle, the mechanisms in place to provide high-availability. Sometimes you have some control over your data, but it’s not obvious. In the end it’s your call to choose the balance you need. The cloud has integrated the same choices and solutions. You will have to decide whether you want to use IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. The basic triggers are the same, you choose the right balance between control, freedom and responsibility. Read here a good explanation : https://docs.microsoft.com/fr-fr/azure/app-service-web/choose-web-site-cloud-servicevm I would like to add something to that horizon, something spicier, which could probably give you the best of each solution, provided you are ready to learn some new skills. We had the same discussion several times with our customers, revolving around the limitations of Azure App Service for some Java applications, its lack of control, and how moving from that to a full-blown IaaS virtual machines felt like dropping out of the cloud. Here what we built with some of those customers. We wanted to provide them with the flexibility and ease of use of Azure App Service, tailored to their needs, without adding much IT admin overhead. We had already been running a Kubernetes cluster for our own internal needs for a while, and it was an easy leap to suggest that solution. Kubernetes is becoming the leader in container orchestration, but you could choose any other solution (DCOS, Swarm etc.) Here is a short list of the benefits the customer gained in that solution : • Flexibility of the deployment and settings of the application, down to every Java VM option • Scalability of an enterprise-ready container orchestration, based on a cloud platform that is reliable • Ease of deployment : these are containers after all! The only thing you have to keep in mind here is that someone has to learn and master containers and the orchestration layer for those. Kubernetes might not be the most accessible solution here, but it is, in my mind, the most mature and powerful. One last word, for you sceptics who still believe that Microsoft and Open-source are still far from each other : try to make a new build of your software for containers using Visual Studio : https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jcorioland/2016/08/19/build-push-and-run-docker-images-with-visual-studio-teamservices/

I may have skimmed that subject a few times before, but as I get to the end of the (Microsoft) year, and begin a new one, it feels right to reflect for a while on what got me where I am now. The short version is : I got enough of cabling, servers, storage and operating systems, and wanted to move to something else, however related. Okay, that is VERY short. Allow me to develop that further. I started working in IT about 15 years ago. I did my duties in user support, moved to network engineering and implementation. At the same time, I discovered the wonderful world of Microsoft training and certification, and got my first cert around 2003, quickly followed by an MCSE (yes, on Windows 2000!). I switched back and forth between networking and systems engineering for several customers. I collected some knowledge along the way, mainly about hardware installation, cabling, storage and servers, but also about virtualization, networking, SAN. I continued my cert trip in parallel, maintaining my MCSE up to Windows 2016 and Azure. I also collected a few other certs : ITIL, Redhat RHCE (6 & 7), Vmware VCP & VCAP-DCD, Prince2 etc. I will say more about certification in a later article, keep in touch! To complete the brush-up, I tried my hand at project management, as well as people management. Let’s get to the point where it gets interesting. First time I heard about public cloud was at Tech-Ed Europe, probably in 2010. It was mostly limited to SQL server databases with many limitations. It was not really a hit for me. The subject kept reappearing : public cloud, private cloud, elastic computing, you’ve heard the talk. There were actually two triggers to my “Frederi, meet Cloud” moment. The first one was rather a long term evolution of my area of interest. After years spent working with the same company, and on the same software, I got to the point where I could understand the business side of my actions and responsibilities for our customers. It was a slow shift to a more end-user/application centric approach. This is where I try to push today : the major focus and metric is the end-user. If this user is not happy about his experience, then we (the whole team behind the software, from IT infrastructure to developers and designers) have failed. This is why I tend to ask the question early in the discussions : how is the application used? By who? The second trigger was more of a “a-ha” moment, specifically about public cloud. In a previous job, I was in an outsourcing team, focused on infrastructure. We had a whole Services department, whose job was to design build and deliver custom software. We almost never had a project in common. Until once we had a developer on the phone, and we had the most common conversation between dev and ops : Dev : “we have built a php application for that customer, and he wants to know if we can host and operate it, and what the cost would be” Ops (me) : “OK, tell me your exact need : OS, VM size, which web server, which version, how much disk space, a public IP etc?” Dev : “I do not know that” Ops : “in that case, I cannot give you an estimate. We can operate, but we need to know what” Follow a few days of emails trying to get those details ironed out and try to write a proposal. Two weeks later, we had the same dev on the phone : “Drop it, the customer has already deployed in Azure by himself”. That is when I realized that we, ops and infra, could not stay on the defense line and ask for what we knew best. We had to ask about the application itself, and we had to get into that “Azure” stuff. And that’s how I ended up in Azure, and mostly PaaS oriented ;)

If you know me, or have read some of my previous articles, you will know that I am a big fan of PaaS services. They provide an easy way for architects and developers to design and build complex applications, without having to spend a lot of time and resources on components that may be used out of the box. And it relieves us IT admins of having to manage lower levels components and irrelevant questions. These questions are the ones that lead me to switch my focus into cloud platforms a few years ago. One day I’ll write an article on my personal journey :) Anyway, my subject today concerns the later stages of the application lifecycle. Let’s say we have designed and built a truly modern app, using only PaaS services. To be concrete, here is a possible design. ...

When I talk to customers who are already knowledgeable about the cloud, but still have not started their trip, the main subject we discuss about is : what is the first step to take to move into the cloud? Usually at that point we all know about the cloud and its various flavors, on a personal level. I have touched already the subject on how to start playing with the cloud as a person :http://cloudinthealps.mandin.net/wp-admin/post.php?post= 60&action=edit. But it’s not that easy to translate a personal journey and knowledge to a corporate view and strategy. There are two major ways to plan that journey. The first is : move everything, then transform. The second is : pick the best target for each application, transform and migrate if needed. Lift and shift I will touch quickly on the first path. It’s quite a simple planning, if difficult to implement. The aim is to perform a full migration of your datacenter into the cloud, lift-and-shift style. This can be done one-shot or with multiple steps. But in the end you will have moved all of your infrastructure, mostly as it is, into the cloud. Then you start transforming your applications and workload to take advantage of the capabilities offered by the cloud, in terms of IaaS, PaaS or SaaS offerings. The difficulty in there, for me, is that not all workloads or applications are a good fit for the cloud. Identify you application portfolio Enters the second solution : tailor the migration to your applications. Because the application is what matters in the end, along with the impact and use of this application for the business. The question of how you virtualize, or which storage vendor to choose is not relevant to your business. In that case you will have to identify all of your application portfolio, and split that into for categories : ...

I remember when I started working full time in IT, all the young professionals were employed by large contractors and consulting firms. The word then was “please help me find a job with a customer/end-user!”. When I recruit today, mostly people a bit younger than me, the word has shifted to “I love working for a contractor, as it does not enclose me in one function”. OK, I did think about that early today, and wanted to write it somewhere, so I used it as an intro, to show my deep thinking in the wee hours of the morning. However what I wanted to write about more extensively was about how I love working in IT today, and particularly on Cloud solutions, and how it is gratifying, compared to what we experienced a few years back. Technology centric and support functions Not so long ago, IT was a support function, and was supposed to keep the hassle of computers to a bare minimum. When interacting with our customers and users, the main issues and questions were about how we kept printers running, and emails flowing. If you worked on ERP or any management system, same thing : please keep that running so that we can do our job. For years, we had team members who loved technology, who delve deep into configuration and setups so that we could congratulate ourselves in building shiny new infrastructures, to try to keep up with users' demand. I will keep the example to my own situation. I went through technological phases, from Windows 2000 Active Directory, to Cisco networking, to virtualization, to SAN storage and blade servers, to end up on hyper-converged systems. For years I would generally not talk shop with friends, family or even friends from school (I went to a mix business/engineering school, so that could explain things). I did not see the point on digging into technical points with people from outside my “technological comfort zone”. Don’t misunderstand the situation, I was aware IT department trying to shift their role from support function to help the business, but it was a bit far-fetched for me. Then came public cloud… Business centric, and solution provider At first we had a simplistic and limited public cloud (Hello 2010!), and a private cloud which was just virtualization with a layer of self-service and automation. I could begin to see the point, but still… it was a technologist dream of being able to remove a large portion of our day to day routine. Situation evolved to a point where we had real PaaS and SaaS offerings that could solve complex technical solutions with a few clicks (or command lines, don’t throw your penguin at me!). And I started to talk with my customers on how we could help them build new solutions for their business, give them better quality of service, and have them understand me! Of course some of that is linked to my experience, and the fact that am not in the same role as I was 10 years ago, but still. I now enjoy discussing with my former schoolmates and help them figure out a solution to a business issue, being able to help some friend’s business grow and expand. IT can now be a real solutions provider. We have to work at gaining sufficient knowledge on all the cloud bricks to be able to build the house our business does not know they need.

For the last year, I have been meeting with customers and partners inside and outside the Microsoft ecosystem. I have talked with friends that are involved, at different levels, with IT whether Dev or Ops. I have been trying to explain what the public Cloud is, especially Azure, to many different people. Of course, I have been using the same evolution charts we all seen everywhere to illustrate my speech and explain where I believe we are headed. ...