There are substantial benefits of migrating workloads between different cloud providers or between private and public clouds can only actually be achieved with an understanding of the cloud business model and cloud workload management. Cloud adoption has reached the point where advanced cloud users are creating their own hybrid solutions or migrating between clouds while looking for interoperability values within their systems.
Q1: Difference between cloud workload and cloud workload management?
A cloud workload relies on the cloud layer (i.e. infrastructure, compute unit, storage unit, etc.). In infrastructure the workload is the compute or storage units that are being utilized by the cloud consumer during a period of time. In PaaS, the workload is the software stack processing efforts while in SaaS it means the usage and demand habits of the end user or system.
You can reasonably estimate and measure workload throughput by analyzing the utilization efficiency. Cloud workload management requires understanding resource demand in order to ensure efficient capacity utilization at all times. Additionally, it means using visibility and tools to utilize fixed capacity for steady demand as well as the ability to burst on-demand peaks while aiming for ideal throughput of IT and cloud resources.
Q2: What to consider before switching between clouds?
There are many considerations that need to be managed when considering switching between clouds. Workload migration, whether between private and public clouds or between cloud vendors, must be determined by the business values gained by the cloud user – reduced costs,
enhanced security, improved availability, or lessened cloud vendor lock-in. Workload migration automation, or workload transportation rules,need to be established based on full transparency of the cloud environment.
Q3: How workload prospective is different between cloud vendor and its consumer?
From a vendor perspective, loud workload refers to the physical machine compute units that are utilized in a period of time (second, minute, hour). The goal is to eliminate idle physical capacity.
User workload is utilization of the cloud compute utility in order to meet demand and cease idle capacity. Fundamentally , both sides align with the need to be efficient and to make sure that capacity meets demand while maintaining maximum throughput of resources at all times.
Q4: Cloud interoperability?
Cloud interoperability is the ability to use the same tools, process, and compute images on a many different computing providers and platforms The ability to migrate cloud workloads between environments or between clouds requires common concepts throughout.,
including actual API standards that enable and facilitate cloud integrations.
Q5: What about cloud vendor lock-in?
Cloud vendor lock-in is a major factor when adopting a specific cloud vendor or platform. Vendor lock-in depends on assumed costs of switching clouds. That is why it is good to compare traditional data center “lock-in” with public or private cloud vendor “lock-in”.
Public cloud consumers generally prefer not to be locked-in simply because there is no initial hardware investment. Heavy reliance on proprietary APIs, however, can create greater lock-in that drives costs up and affects the savings that can be achieved through portability and technical efficiency.
At 247Rack, we take these factors into consideration, both when helping organizations migrate to the cloud or when switching cloud vendors. For a complimentary analysis and free trial, contact us today.
