Safe to be in the clouds

rabiakhatun

Many are attracted to the cloud, but not everyone clearly understands why they need it. Sometimes a client turns to cloud technologies only because it is a noticeable trend: their market colleagues have already done so, and they want to follow their example. In itself, such a desire is commendable, if not for one thing: the client begins by migrating “something and somehow” to the cloud. For example, at first, they migrate several servers that are responsible for a not very important service. In doing so, they gain experience in migrating to the cloud, but will not be able to quickly get all the technological advantages of the cloud.

It's a completely different matter if the transition to the cloud is verified in advance. As a rule, with properly planned migrations to the clouds, frontend services that interact with the client via the content writing service Internet are moved first. Backend services can either remain with the client or be in the same clouds, but hidden from the Internet. With such a transition scheme, the client will much faster feel how convenient, interesting and useful the clouds are for transferring CAPEX to OPEX.




Even more careful planning is required to migrate all of the company's resources to the cloud. Sometimes, the course of such projects needs to be calculated several years in advance, but the result is worth it. We had a very successful project, which the client started by transferring a small part of its capacities to the cloud and integrating cloud services with services in its own data center. Then, as the hardware became obsolete and was decommissioned, all of the client's resources were transferred to the cloud one by one. As a result of this long migration, the client received a convenient and flexible cloud infrastructure. When the season of big sales comes, the client increases the consumption of cloud resources, which they notify the provider about. As soon as the hot season has passed, consumption decreases.
As secure as clouds are, I would caution anyone planning to migrate business-critical data against relying solely on one cloud space.
If a company has the ability to distribute its resources across multiple clouds and sign contracts with multiple cloud providers, it should be used.
Synchronizing data between different cloud service providers is, of course, more complex than when working with a single provider, but in terms of security and fault tolerance, a distributed infrastructure significantly wins in terms of overall fault tolerance.
If a company does not have the opportunity to cooperate with several providers at the same time, it would be reasonable to be located with one provider, but in different clouds. For example, we offer each client to distribute data across several data centers. In Moscow alone, we have three clouds in different data centers, and experience shows that this is the right decision. In our practice, there was a case when a fire broke out in a data center where a large number of our clients are located. The data center employees heroically fought the fire, and all the clients' resources were completely saved. But we were once again convinced of what we always warned those who want to get by with one cloud: unfortunately, no data center is insured against force majeure.

WHO PROTECTS FROM CYBER-ATTACKS

Everyone knows that data loss – including data stored in the cloud – can lead to business loss. But not all companies take into account that moving to the cloud does not eliminate the need to independently take care of the security of their data. Cloud providers by default provide IaaS infrastructure “as is” – that is, the client must implement additional information security services independently or order them separately.