Cloud computing is a popular and powerful way to deliver scalable, flexible, and cost-effective services over the internet. But how do you know if it's the right choice for your system? In this article, you'll learn some key factors to consider before moving your system to the cloud, and some best practices to follow if you decide to do so.
Before deciding if cloud computing is right for your system, you should analyze your system requirements and compare them with the benefits and challenges of cloud computing. Ask yourself questions like what performance, reliability, availability, and security needs you have, how much data you need to store, process, and transfer, and how often you need to scale up or down your system resources. Additionally, consider how much control you need over your system infrastructure and configuration and how much budget you have for system maintenance and operation. Depending on your answers, cloud computing can offer advantages such as faster deployment of resources, lower upfront and operational costs, higher scalability and elasticity, easier access and collaboration, and reduced hardware and software maintenance. However, it can also bring challenges such as dependency on network connectivity and bandwidth, potential security and privacy risks, compliance with regulations and standards, vendor lock-in and migration issues, complexity and learning curve.
I would say the system is not the only thing central, it is also your organisation and the team managing the system. Are they ready for a cloud native DevOps approach or not? What aid and plan do you have for the management forward, dont choose technologies that seem cool or seem to fit if you dont have a good plan how to manage them.
Before you can effectively select a suitable provider, you need to understand your specific business needs. This includes clarifying your specific requirements and minimum expectations in advance of assessing providers. Meanwhile, define your application requirements. It's not too difficult to calculate the size of your application. You can look at the overall size of the application as well as the anticipated traffic, the number of repeat visitors, and page views per visitor.
If you decide that cloud computing is suitable for your system, the next step is to choose the right cloud service model. There are three main types of cloud service models: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). IaaS provides basic infrastructure components, such as servers, storage, network, and virtualization, but you are responsible for managing and configuring your system software and applications. PaaS provides a platform that includes infrastructure components and system software, while SaaS provides a complete system that includes infrastructure, system software, and system applications - however, you have the least control and flexibility with SaaS. Examples of providers include Amazon Web Services for IaaS, Heroku for PaaS, and Gmail for SaaS.
Once you have chosen your cloud service model, the next step is to design your cloud system architecture. This involves defining the components, relationships, and interactions of your system in the cloud environment. Aspects such as workload distribution across multiple cloud resources and locations, system performance, reliability, availability, and security in the cloud, system resources and performance monitoring and management, integration with other cloud or on-premise systems and services, and backup, recovery, and disaster recovery in the cloud should all be taken into consideration. To help you design your cloud system architecture, you can use best practices and patterns that are widely adopted in the cloud industry such as microservices, serverless architecture, containers, and DevOps culture and practice. Microservices are a style of architecture that decomposes your system into small, independent, and loosely coupled services that communicate via APIs. Serverless is a style of architecture that abstracts away the server management and scaling from your system logic and allows you to run your system functions on demand. Containers are a technology that packages your system software and dependencies into isolated and portable units that can run on any cloud platform. Lastly, DevOps is a culture and practice that combines development and operations to enable faster and more reliable delivery of your system in the cloud.
Before deciding if cloud computing is right for your system, it is important to test and deploy your cloud system. You should verify the functionality, performance, reliability, availability, and security of your system in the cloud environment. This includes performing unit, integration, and system testing on components and services; load, stress, and endurance testing on resources and performance; security testing and auditing on data and access; user acceptance testing on usability and satisfaction. Furthermore, you should deploy your cloud system to the production environment using automated tools and pipelines. By doing so, you can determine if cloud computing is the best solution for your system goals and objectives. Cloud computing is a powerful option that can be tailored to fit your needs.