Ten Considerations Before Moving Your Database to Cloud IaaS

What is Cloud IaaS?

Cloud infrastructure services, known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), are self-service models for accessing, monitoring, and managing remote datacenter infrastructures, such as compute (virtualized or bare metal), storage, networking, and networking services (e.g. firewalls). Instead of having to purchase hardware outright, users can purchase IaaS based on consumption, similar to electricity or other utility billing.

Compared to SaaS and PaaS, IaaS users are responsible for managing applications, data, runtime, middleware, and OSes. Providers still manage virtualization, servers, hard drives, storage, and networking.

Benefits of Moving to the Cloud

“Moving to the cloud” is not just a popular theory; it’s a strategic way to help manage valuable resources and your company database in a scalable and efficient manner. Organizations that move to the cloud can experience numerous benefits, including:

• Cost savings resulting from no capital expenditures and low operating costs.
• Scalability and flexibility with the ability to quickly provision and decommission computing resources.
• Access anywhere and anytime with device, location, and time independence.
• Self-provisioning of computing resources without human intervention on the side of the vendor.
• Focus on strategic initiatives as a result of moving commodity services to a third party.

In addition to the above benefits of migrating to the cloud, Cloud IaaS reduces complexity while delivering a higher level of programming and increased overall effectiveness. IaaS is a predictable application cloud infrastructure that can help your company accelerate time to market, quickly react to new opportunities, and spread your capital investments further.

Ten Key Considerations

There are a number of technical and non-technical considerations that should be evaluated before deciding to move your company database to the cloud. Below is a list of the top ten items to consider:

1. Performance: What are your requirements? Capture workload characteristics and plan for Central Processing Unit (CPU), Memory and Peak IO profile.
2. Security: Plan for security access to remote databases, remote management and personally identifiable information (PII) elements in the cloud. Encryption is key. Consider what aspects of security are the vendor’s responsibility and which responsibilities are the user’s.
3. Compliance: What are your compliance requirements and does the Cloud vendor meet them? Compliance requirements could include PCI, HIPAA, GAAP, SOX and IFRS.
4. Architecture: What will be your architecture in the cloud? How you architect a solution in the cloud is not the same as you do for on premise solutions. Plan for distribution of IO in multiple file systems matching IO systems to workload profiles. Consider whether you will architect to scale and reduce during peak and slack periods.
5. Migration: What is your migration strategy? How long will it take to migrate the data and what is the anticipated down time?
6. Licensing: Does the licensing model for your database software change when you make a move to a cloud environment?
7. Interfaces and Dependencies: Plan for data movement between cloud and internal systems.
8. Service Level Agreements (SLAs): What is the SLA for the cloud vendor? Are there financial penalties if the SLA is not met?
9. Billing: What is the billing model for the cloud vendor – Is it monthly or utility computing where you pay for what you use? Have you accurately calculated any recurring costs?
10. Support: Does the vendor provide a high level of support when there are issues? How will you monitor and administer your cloud environment?

How MiCORE Helps

MiCORE works with your business to implement a predictable application cloud infrastructure to help accelerate time to market, quickly react to new opportunities, and spread capital investments further. For more information, click here.

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