Cloud Operational Considerations


Availability and Performance

  • a core measurement of cloud performance is availability
  • can increase availability by increasing resiliency
    • is the ability of cloud infra to withstand disruptive events
    • e.g., redundant servers
  • performance is the ability of cloud service to stand up to demand
  • customers should negotiate specific service levels in SLAs

Maintenance and Version Control

  • consider how CSP maintenance schedule will impact business operations
  • version control allows organizations to manage the development of software by tracking different versions being worked on by different developers
    • can be used to track the configuration of systems and applications

Outsourcing Issues

  • consider the importance of reversibility
    • how difficult is it to restore original operations or state
    • make rollback plans part of every change
  • avoid vendor lock-in
    • portability is a design principle that says workloads should be designed so that they don’t leverage vendor-specific features and may be more easily shifted between cloud providers
    • each vendor relationship should provide the ability to export data
      • need to be able to retrieve data when vendor relationship ends
  • consider interoperability
    • ability to integrate and work with other systems and services