BSIT400 Cloud Computing and Governance

Something interesting when looking at subnetting in the cloud is the amount of translations that need to happen in the backend for everything to work. With the numerous customers that a cloud service provider like AWS would be hosting, there would need to be the ability to have completely isolated, but still routable RFC1918 networks sitting beside all their other customers. When looking through the AWS documentation there doesn't seem to be a limitation on what IP addresses can and can't be used, and as I have spun up my own networks it is very flexible. Multiple layers of routing need to happen for this all to work. The customer routing, the datacenter infrastructure routing, AWS internal routing, and their connections to the outside world. Since AWS allows customers to provision their own networks, this has to happen seamlessly in the background using templated provisioning. It would be a wonder to see what this architecture looks like and how AWS can keep up with it.

When looking at the stages of cloud migrations, I think the planning phase is the most important phase to spend time on. Planning consists of designating which workloads make sense in the cloud, which cloud services will replace servers, the correct resource allocation, and an estimate of costs. The reason this phase is so important is because it will determine how successful a long-term stay in the cloud will be, or if the company is likely to be migrating back to on-premise. There are a couple of different reasons for moving to the cloud, with two of the big reasons being cost and scalability. For cost, a business case can be put together from the results of planning the migration and what it would take to move systems to the cloud. Too often the costs are not well known and when in the cloud it can quickly get out of control when not managed properly. Planning for each costs and using the assistance of a migration partner that excels in this area can set realistic expectations for m...

I have been at several companies that made the move to the cloud when it was beginning to peak in popularity. Migration tools and free consultants made it easy to move our servers to the equivalent Azure virtual machines. When moving services to the cloud there is always a time at the beginning when the costs are cheap and the full scale of the bill hasn't fully hit. It takes a little while for the costs to settle. Unfortunately, this type of migration isn't sustainable. These same companies I have seen move to the cloud very quickly decide they need to move back to on-premise data centers. As I have watched this happen it has formed my opinion to be that using virtual machines in the cloud is not cost-effective. While short-term utilization of virtual machines is nice to do development and testing, cloud services should be prioritized over cloud servers. By adopting cloud services, admins get the most cost-effective solutions that can scale. This means that instead of migratin...

My name is Dustin Pike, and the class I am doing this blog for marks the halfway point of my bachelor's degree! It has been a challenging time balancing life, work, and school - but also rewarding. I am looking forward to this class because it is a topic everyone is talking about.  Cloud computing and doing more in the cloud is a hot topic, and at the same time needs to be evaluated based on the use case. I don't think the cloud is perfect for every use case, but for the cases it makes sense it can provide much-needed flexibility and accessibility to companies. I have a little bit of experience in this area from taking classes and getting my AWS foundations certification a few years ago. The cloud landscape is changing so much that I have no delusions that I have a lot to learn. I'm looking forward to gaining new knowledge, and hopefully being able to apply it to my work life as well.