Yeah, Yeah, Yeah we Park %$#@, but what really matters to Enterprises? – Frequently Asked Questions
Jay Chapel
Cribl is the DATA ENGINE for IT and Security! @Cribl #cyber #cyberops #security #securityops #observability
Here at ParkMyCloud we get to do product demos for a lot of great companies all over the world, from startups to Fortune 500’s, and in many different industries – Software, IT, Financial, Media, Food and Beverage, and many more. And as we talk to industry analysts and venture capitalists they always ask about vertical selling and the like — we used to do this back at Micromuse where had Federal, Enterprise, Service Provider and SMB sales teams, for example. But here at ParkMyCloud we notice in general the questions from enterprises are vertical-agnostic, and since cloud is the great IT equalizer in my book, we decided to summarize the 8 Most Frequently Asked Questions we get from prospects of all shapes and sizes.
These are the more common questions we get beyond turning cloud resources off / on:
How does ParkMyCloud handle system patching?
Answer: The most common way of dealing with patching is to use our API. The workflow would be to log in through the API, get a list of the resources, then choose which resources you want and choose to “snooze” the schedule (which is a temporary override of the schedule, if you haven’t played with that yet) for a couple of hours, or however long the patching takes. Once the schedule is snoozed, you can toggle the instance on, then do the patching. After the patching is complete, you can either cancel the snooze to go back to the original schedule or wait for the snooze to finish and timeout.
If your patching is done on a weekly basis, you could also just implement the patch times into the schedules so the instances turn on, say at 3am on Sunday.
How do I start and stop instances in a sequential order?
Answer: ParkMyCloud has created a feature that we call ‘Logical Groups’, basically you group cloud resources into a group or cluster within the platform and then assign the order you wish them to stop and start, you can also set how long it takes before resource 1 starts / stops and then resource 2 starts / stops and so forth. This way, your web server can stop first and the database can stop second so all the connections close properly. As this feature is very popular, we have had many requests to fully automate this using our policy engine and tags, a work in progress – that will be way cool.
My developers hate UI’s, how does he/she manage the schedules without using your UI?
Answer: Yes, this is an easy one but always gets asked. If you are anti-UI or just don’t want to use yet another UI, you can use the following channels to manage your resources in ParkMyCloud:
Can I govern user access and permissions?
Answer: Yes, we have support for Single-Sign On (SSO) and a full on Role-based Access Control model (RBAC) in the platform that allows you to import users, add them to teams and assign them roles. The common scenario around this is ‘I only want my SAP QA team to have access to the cloud resources they need for that project and nothing else, and limit their permissions’ – handled.
Can I automatically assign schedules based on tags?
Answer: Yes, and in general this what most companies do using ParkMyCloud. We have a Policy Engine where you can create policies that allow you to fully automate your cloud resource scheduling. Basically the policy reads the AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud metadata that is brought into the platform, and based on those tags (or even other data like resource name, size, region, etc.) and the corresponding policy, we can automatically assign schedules to cloud resources. And we take that a step further, as those resources can also be automatically parsed to Teams and Users as well based on their roles (see RBAC).
You can only park stuff based on tags? That’s so weak!
Answer: Not so fast my friend … I must admit we sort of threw this one in there but it does come up quite often, and we recently solved this problem with our release of SmartParking, which allows you to bring in metric data, trend it for a period of time, and then automatically create schedules based on those usage patterns – cool stuff.
Can we pick which instances we bring into ParkMyCloud?
Answer: Sort of, through their API the cloud providers don’t allow you to choose which cloud resources in an account you bring into the platform, if you link a cloud account to ParkMyCloud all the cloud resources in that account will populate (assuming our API supports those resources and the cloud provider allows you to ‘park’ them). But we do let you choose which accounts you bring into ParkMyCloud, so link accounts and bring in as many or as few accounts as you wish, and by the way AWS recommends you create accounts based on on function like Production, Dev, Test, QA, etc., and then breaks that down even more granular to Dev 1, Dev 2, Dev 3, etc. – this is ideal for ParkMyCloud.
Where is ParkMyCloud located?
Answer: Northern Virginia of course, in Sterling at Terminal 68 to be precise. It’s a co-working space we share with several other startups; we would also be remiss if we did not mention this area is also one of the finalist locations for Amazon’s H2Q – it’s a hotbed of cloud and data center activity.
We hope this was helpful and would value your feedback on the 8 Most Frequently Asked Questions we get, and if yours are the same or different, or of course our favorite … have you thought of XYZ as a feature? Let us know at [email protected].