You want to learn from the mistakes of others in Cloud Computing. What should you be asking?

Most cloud mistakes are often not seen. This is because even bad architecture works. We need to do better. It's time that we get better at cloud architecture, and learn how to focus beyond just a single cloud provider.

Understand the specific technical, operational or human factors that contributed to the failure. Explore whether there were indicators or warnings that could have been identified earlier to prevent or mitigate the failure. Evaluate the incident response process to learn how the organization handled the situation & resolved the issues. Investigate the steps taken post-incident to enhance security, improve processes & prevent similar failures from happening again. Assess the communication strategy during & after the incident, both internally & externally, to understand how well stakeholders were informed. Determine the extent of the impact on business operations, including downtime, data loss, financial implications & damage to reputation.

Human Error: Simple mistakes in configuration, lack of knowledge about the cloud, or rushing the process all contribute to major problems. Complexity: Cloud environments are ever-changing and managing multiple components from various providers creates chances for errors. Organizational Issues: Lack of communication between teams, inadequate training, and unclear change processes lead to mistakes slipping through. External Factors: Occasionally, the cloud provider itself may have issues, and integrating with third-party services can introduce unintended vulnerabilities.

What were the key challenges or setbacks encountered during your cloud computing projects? How did you address these challenges, and what strategies did you implement to overcome them? What were the root causes or factors contributing to the failures or shortcomings in your cloud initiatives? In hindsight, what do you wish you had done differently to prevent or mitigate these issues? What lessons did you learn from these experiences, and how have they influenced your approach to future cloud projects? What best practices or recommendations would you offer to others based on your experiences? Can you share any specific examples or anecdotes illustrating the importance of certain decisions or actions in cloud computing projects?

Atenta-se aos custos! O grande problema é o erro em dimensionar o que quer comparado com o quanto você tem para investir e o quanto de retorno você vai ter.

Ask about the costs before the days of cloud and compare that to the current spend. For legacy applications that don't automatically scale, you may end up paying a premium. This is a major impact that affects enough firms that we are now using FinOps to understand those bills.

Security Breaches: Poor security practices can lead to sensitive data being stolen or leaked, harming your company's reputation and finances. Cost Overruns: Unexpected costs can pile up with inefficient resource use, wrong pricing models, or a lack of cost planning. Vendor Lock-in: Relying too heavily on one cloud provider limits your flexibility and makes it difficult to switch providers if needed. Compliance Failures: Violating industry regulations (like HIPAA or GDPR) can result in serious fines and damage your company's reputation. Performance Issues: Network problems or incorrect architecture choices can lead to slow applications, which frustrate users and harm productivity, Downtime and Outages.

The team should ascertain the underlying cause of the service outage, which may be as minor as a misconfiguration issue on one of the cloud servers, and then promptly restore services in accordance with the cloud failure protocol and migrate the impacted data. To prevent outages, the organization implemented redundancy measures and improved monitoring systems. Additionally, they kept customers informed about the failure and the steps being taken to resolve it.

In order to effectively resolve cloud failure issues, it is essential for organizations to establish a transparent and accountable system. To gauge the effectiveness of this system, organizations should implement a comprehensive feedback mechanism. This can be achieved through customer satisfaction surveys and regular feedback collection from stakeholders.

After action reviews / retrospectives help us learn and grow after we deploy solutions. Always use the opportunity to gather feedback on your solution to learn where both the development experience and the final product could be improved. One of cloud's biggest benefits is how it encourages continuous improvement and innovation. Make sure to take advantage of the ability to fail fast and succeed soon, iterate and improve solutions. When designing solutions, don't forget the foundation - cover basics like infrastructure design, governance and controls, security and monitoring, standardization and automation. Shoot from the hip and you'll end up with a lot more failures than necessary.

Prioritize Security: Don't neglect security. Build it in from the start and continuously monitor for weaknesses. Plan Carefully: Define your goals, understand your needs, and prepare your team before migrating to the cloud. Control Costs: Right-size resources, track usage, and automate where possible to optimize your cloud spending. Avoid Vendor Lock-in: Use open standards and consider multi-cloud strategies to maintain flexibility. Keep Skills Sharp: Invest in your team's training to maintain control and troubleshooting abilities. Design for Resilience: Plan for downtime; use redundancy and test your disaster recovery plan regularly. Stay Adaptable: Cloud technology changes quickly – commit to ongoing learning and collaboration.

The plan includes a well architected cloud environment with comprehensive strategy. It is essential to assess current cloud skills, prioritize gaps, choose a reliable cloud provider, provide cloud training, encourage certification, implement a monitoring system, create a knowledge base, encourage learning from failures, regularly conduct cloud security posture reviews and utilize security assessment tools, and implement best practices. By following these steps, organizations can ensure a smooth and secure cloud journey, maximizing the benefits of cloud adoption.

I would also like to recommend the study of cloud design patterns. They are trusted solutions for recurring problems and chances are, they got created as a response for mistakes from the others or as a precaution method for those mistakes. Understand the intention for a cloud design patterns, then check if it will be applicable to your scenario.

Key factors to consider are security, scalability, reliability, performance, compliance, integration, and management. Emphasize the importance of implementing robust security measures, designing for scalability, ensuring high reliability, complying with relevant regulations, integrating with existing systems, and simplifying management. Recommendations such as encrypting data, using autoscaling features, choosing a reliable cloud provider, optimizing applications for the cloud, and utilizing cloud management tools.