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Navigating YOU in your cloud journey

Your Guide to a Resilient WAF: Essential Steps for Website Protection

 

In short:

1. Constant Cyber Threats: Websites are constantly targeted by attacks like DDoS, SQL injections, and XSS, demanding strong security measures.

2. WAF as First Defense:A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a critical filter, examining traffic and stopping harmful requests.

3. Key Implementation Tips: To build a resilient WAF, customize settings, update regularly, ensure it scales, and integrate it with other security tools.

4. Beyond Basic Protection: A properly implemented WAF is crucial for website security, meeting regulations, and keeping user trust.

5. Proactive Security Wins: Staying vigilant and having a robust WAF strategy are essential for protecting your website in today's changing cyber environment.

Given the dynamic nature of today’s cyber world, organizations are constantly exposed to many cyber threats. The digital landscape has become a minefield of potential vulnerabilities, from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to SQL injections and cross-site scripting (XSS) exploits. In this high-stakes environment, shielding your website has become a top priority.

One of the most effective tools available is the Web Application Firewall (WAF). A WAF is a formidable filter, meticulously analyzing every incoming request and intercepting potential threats before they can breach your defenses. This durable solution stands as a sturdy shield, adapting to the ever-evolving cyber attacks and ensuring your website remains secure and accessible.

Here are some key tips to consider when implementing a resilient WAF solution:

  1. Customized Configuration: One size does not fit all when it comes to WAF protection. Tailor your WAF settings to the unique needs and vulnerabilities of your website, ensuring that it is optimized to defend against the specific threats your site faces.
  2. Continuous Monitoring and Updating: Cyber threats are constantly changing, and your WAF must adapt accordingly. Regularly monitor your WAF's performance and update its rules and signatures to ensure it remains effective against the latest attack vectors.
  3. Scalable and Flexible: As your website grows and evolves, your WAF must be able to scale to meet the increased demands. Opt for a solution that can seamlessly handle fluctuations in traffic and adapt to changes in your web application's architecture.
  4. Integrated Security Approach: While a WAF is a crucial component of your website's security, it should not be the only layer of defense. Combine your WAF with other security measures, such as network firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and regular vulnerability assessments, to create a comprehensive security ecosystem.

  5. Compliance and Regulatory Requirements: Depending on your industry and the type of data you handle, your website may be subject to various compliance regulations. Ensure that your WAF solution is designed to meet these requirements, safeguarding your website and your customers' sensitive information.

By implementing a resilient WAF solution, you can rest assured that your website is well-protected against the constantly changing cyber threat landscape. With the right tools and strategies in place, you can confidently navigate the cyber era, ensuring the safety and integrity of your online presence.

Remember, in the face of cyber threats, vigilance and proactive security measures are the keys to safeguarding your website and maintaining the trust of your users.


Our Advantage

Securing your cloud applications from evolving cyber threats doesn't have to be a headache. Whether you need tailored WAF configurations, continuous monitoring, or seamless integration into your existing cloud infrastructure, we've got the knowledge to protect you. Let's discuss how our focused WAF solutions can provide you with superior security and peace of mind. Book a quick meeting with our team today.

ronen-amity
2025/04
Apr 24, 2025 3:16:21 PM
Your Guide to a Resilient WAF: Essential Steps for Website Protection
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Compliances, Cloud Computing, WAF, Security, cyber attack

Apr 24, 2025 3:16:21 PM

Your Guide to a Resilient WAF: Essential Steps for Website Protection

Mastering Identity Management in AWS: IAM Identity Center

 

In short:

  1. Centralized AWS Identity: IAM Identity Center simplifies managing access and permissions across multiple AWS accounts from a single location.

  2. Seamless Hybrid Integration: Connecting IAM Identity Center with Active Directory (AD) creates a unified identity system for both on-premises and cloud resources.

  3. Simplified Administration: Effortlessly grant/revoke access and manage users/groups across AWS through centralized control.

  4. Enhanced Security & User Experience: Leverage AD security policies in the cloud and enable single sign-on (SSO) for a consistent user experience.

  5. Improved Efficiency: Reduce administrative overhead and streamline access management in hybrid cloud environments.


At the heart of AWS IAM's offerings is the IAM Identity Center, previously known as AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO). This service excels in centralizing identity management across multiple AWS accounts, significantly simplifying the administrative overhead. But its true power is unleashed when integrated with Active Directory (AD). This integration creates a harmonious link between your on-premises and cloud-based identity systems, ensuring a seamless and secure user experience across both environments.

For businesses grappling with the dual challenges of secure access management and operational efficiency in a hybrid cloud environment, the IAM Identity Center, coupled with AD integration, presents a compelling solution. It's not just about managing identities; it's about transforming the way you secure and access your AWS resources, paving the way for a more agile and secure cloud journey.

What is IAM Identity Center?

IAM Identity Center simplifies the administration of permissions across multiple AWS accounts. It allows you to manage access to AWS accounts from a central location, ensuring a consistent and secure AWS console user experience.

Simplifying Multi-Account Permissions

In a multi-account setup, managing permissions can become complex. IAM Identity Center provides a unified view, enabling you to grant or revoke access rights across all accounts effortlessly. This centralized approach not only saves time but also reduces the risk of human error in permission management.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up IAM Identity Center

  1. Enable IAM Identity Center: Log into your organization's root AWS Console, search for “IAM Identity Center”, and enable it.

  2. Configure Your Directory: Choose to connect to an existing directory (like Active Directory) or create a new AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

  3. Create Permission Sets: Define the level of access users will have across your AWS accounts.

  4. Assign Users and Groups: Map your users and groups from the directory to the permission sets.

  5. Enable SSO Access: Provide users with a URL to access the AWS Management Console using their existing credentials.

Best Practices for Managing Centralized Identity
  • Least Privilege Principle: Assign only the permissions required for users to perform their tasks.

  • Regular Audits: Conduct periodic reviews of permission sets and access rights.

  • Use Groups for Management: Leverage group-based access control to simplify management and ensure consistency.

  • Integrating IAM Identity Center with Active Directory

Connecting the IAM Identity Center with your on-premises Active Directory or Microsoft Entra ID offers several advantages. It enables single sign-on (SSO) across your AWS resources and on-premises applications, streamlining the user experience and enhancing security.

How to Connect IAM Identity Center with On-Premises Active Directory

  1. Directory Setup: Ensure your Active Directory is configured correctly and accessible.

  2. Configure Trust Relationship: Establish trust between your Active Directory and AWS.

  3. Sync Users and Groups: Use AWS Directory Sync to synchronize your Active Directory users and groups with IAM Identity Center.

Test the Configuration: Verify that users can sign in to AWS using their Active Directory credentials.

Benefits of Integrating with Active Directory for SSO

  • Unified User Experience: Users can access both on-premises and cloud resources with a single set of credentials.

  • Simplified Management: Centralized identity management, reducing the overhead of managing multiple systems.

  • Enhanced Security: Leverage existing Active Directory security policies and controls in the cloud.

Security Implications and Best Practices

  • Maintain Strong Authentication: Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for added security.

  • Monitor Access: Use AWS CloudTrail and other monitoring tools to keep track of access patterns and detect anomalies.

  • Regularly Update Policies: Align your access policies with changing business needs and security standards.

Conclusion

IAM Identity Center, when combined with Active Directory integration, offers a robust solution for managing identities across your AWS environment. It not only simplifies multi-account permissions but also ensures that your cloud identity management remains aligned with your on-premises practices. By following best practices and leveraging the power of centralized identity management, you can enhance security, improve efficiency, and provide a seamless user experience across your AWS ecosystem.


Our Advantage

Managing cloud access doesn't have to be complicated. Let's work together to make identity and access management simple, secure, and scalable. Whether you're working across multiple AWS accounts or integrating with your on-prem systems, we’ve got you covered. Let’s talk about how we can tailor a solution for your needs. Book a quick meeting with our team today.

ronen-amity
2025/04
Apr 7, 2025 5:55:55 PM
Mastering Identity Management in AWS: IAM Identity Center
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Compliances, Cloud Computing, Security

Apr 7, 2025 5:55:55 PM

Mastering Identity Management in AWS: IAM Identity Center

Reliable Backup Solutions: Keep Your Business Running

 

In short:

  1. Businesses rely on vast amounts of data, and losing it can severely disrupt operations.
  2. A well-structured backup strategy is essential for Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP).
  3. Organizations must determine acceptable downtime (RTO) and data loss tolerance (RPO).
  4. Backup retention periods and costs must be balanced to meet business and regulatory needs.
  5. Clear ownership and decision-making are crucial for an effective backup strategy.

Modern businesses generate and depend on enormous volumes of data to drive daily operations and strategic decisions. Whether it's customer records, financial transactions, or operational systems, losing data can cause severe disruptions. To maintain resilience and ensure continuity, a well-structured backup strategy must be part of your Business strategy.

Understanding Business Continuity Through Backup

A well-designed backup plan isn't just about saving copies of files—it’s about ensuring your organization can recover from disruptions with minimal downtime. Here are the key considerations when building a backup strategy:

1. Defining Acceptable Downtime: How Long Can You Be Offline?

Every business needs to define its Recovery Time Objective (RTO)—the maximum time an organization can afford to be down before operations must resume. Some businesses can tolerate a few hours, while others require immediate recovery. The answer will influence the type of backup and DR solutions you implement.

2. Data Loss Tolerance: How Much Data Can You Afford to Lose?

Another critical factor is your Recovery Point Objective (RPO)—the amount of data you can afford to lose between backups. If you run frequent transactions (e.g., an e-commerce platform), you may need real-time backups to prevent data loss. For other industries, a daily or weekly backup may suffice.

3. Retention Period: How Long Should You Keep Backups?

Regulatory requirements and business needs dictate how long you must store backup copies. Some industries require data retention for years, while others might only need a rolling backup of 30 to 90 days. Your backup retention policy should balance compliance needs with storage costs.

4. Cost Considerations: What’s the Right Backup Investment?

Backup solutions vary in cost depending on storage capacity, backup frequency, and recovery speed. Businesses must evaluate:

  • On-premise vs. cloud backup costs
  • The price of high-availability DR solutions
  • Storage costs for long-term archiving
  • The impact of extended downtime on revenue

5. Decision-Making: Who Takes Responsibility?

Building a resilient backup plan requires clear ownership. IT leaders, security teams, and executive stakeholders must align on:

  • Backup frequency and retention policies
  • Budgeting for BCP and DR infrastructure
  • Responsibilities for monitoring and testing backups
  • Protocols for activating disaster recovery procedures

Building a Backup Strategy Aligned with Business Goals

To ensure business continuity, organizations should develop a tiered backup strategy:

  1. Daily backups for critical operational data
  2. Weekly full backups stored off-site
  3. Long-term archival backups for compliance and auditing
  4. Regular backup testing to validate recoverability
  5. Hourly backups for Ultra-Critical data when needed.

With a resilient backup plan, businesses can confidently navigate disruptions, minimize financial losses, and recover swiftly when incidents occur. Investing in a well-defined BCP and DR strategy today ensures your organization remains prepared for the unexpected.

Plan to test your backups at least once a year as part of your Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). Ensure your DRP is effective by testing across different regions, VPCs, and other configurations so that when disaster strikes, your plan is foolproof.

Our Advantage

Implementing these strategies takes planning and attention to detail. Regular testing and a well-structured backup plan ensure your data is protected and accessible when needed. Set up a meeting with our team to review your backup plan and make sure you’re fully prepared for any disruption.

ronen-amity
2025/03
Mar 31, 2025 4:31:50 PM
Reliable Backup Solutions: Keep Your Business Running
AWS, Disaster Recovery, backup

Mar 31, 2025 4:31:50 PM

Reliable Backup Solutions: Keep Your Business Running

Beyond the Cloud Bill Panic: 13 Ways to Build a FinOps-First Culture

 

Picture this: your engineering team just deployed an exciting new feature. Everyone's celebrating... until Finance storms in with this month's cloud bill. Sound familiar? This scenario plays out in companies everywhere, but it doesn't have to be your story. Here are 13 practical strategies to build a FinOps culture where cost optimization becomes everyone's business, not just Finance's headache.

Core Strategic Approaches

  1. Establish Cross-Functional Collaborations

    Success in FinOps begins with breaking down silos. By bringing together teams from finance, technology, product, and business units, organizations can create a unified approach to cloud cost management. This near-real-time collaboration ensures all stakeholders are actively involved in optimization decisions.

  2. Maintain Data Transparency

    Implementing accessible FinOps data is crucial for success. When teams have clear visibility into cloud spend and utilization metrics, they can make informed decisions quickly and establish efficient feedback loops for continuous improvement.

  3. Form a Dedicated FinOps Team

    A dedicated FinOps team serves as the cornerstone of your cloud financial management strategy. This team drives initiatives, maintains standards, and ensures consistent implementation across your organization.

Engagement and Implementation Strategies

4. Launch Interactive Learning Events

Transform learning into engagement through themed FinOps parties. Similar to LinkedIn's approach, these events can focus on specific aspects like Graviton optimization, resource cleanup, or EBS policy implementation, making technical concepts more accessible and memorable.

5. Develop Common Language Guidelines

Establishing a common FinOps language across your organization eliminates misunderstandings and streamlines communication between technical and business teams.

6. Drive Engineering Cost Ownership

Empower your engineering teams to take ownership of cloud costs from design through operations. This responsibility creates a direct link between technical decisions and financial outcomes.

Measurement and Business Alignment

7. Implement Value-Based Decision Making
Align cloud investments with business objectives by implementing unit economics and value-based metrics. This approach helps demonstrate the direct business impact of your cloud spending decisions.

8. Set Clear Performance Metrics
Define clear KPIs to measure FinOps success, including financial metrics for engineering teams based on unit economics. These measurements provide concrete evidence of progress and areas for improvement.

Organizational Integration

9. Create Strong Policy Guidelines

Implement organizational policies that support and reinforce FinOps principles across all levels of your organization.

10. Launch Recognition Programs

Celebrate FinOps achievements to maintain momentum. Recognizing teams and individuals who successfully implement FinOps practices encourages continued engagement and innovation.

11. Integrate FinOps into Your Strategy

Embed FinOps considerations into your organization's strategic planning processes, ensuring that cost optimization aligns with broader business objectives.

12. Establish Centers of Excellence

Create dedicated FinOps centers of excellence to provide specialized expertise, tools, and resources supporting organization-wide implementation.

13. Deploy Internal Communications

Maintain engagement through regular newsletters inside your company sharing success stories, case studies, and upcoming events, keeping FinOps at the forefront of organizational consciousness.


Our Advantage

Implementing these strategies requires commitment and expertise. As cloud optimization specialists, we understand organizations' challenges in building a FinOps culture. Our approach combines technical expertise with practical implementation strategies, helping you create a sustainable FinOps practice that drives both efficiency and innovation.

Ready to transform your organization's approach to cloud financial management? Save your spot on our meetup to learn how to build a strong FinOps culture that delivers lasting results.

reThinking Cost Control | March 27th | AWS TLV

 

nir-peleg
2025/02
Feb 26, 2025 5:14:52 PM
Beyond the Cloud Bill Panic: 13 Ways to Build a FinOps-First Culture
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cost Optimization, Financial Services, Fintech

Feb 26, 2025 5:14:52 PM

Beyond the Cloud Bill Panic: 13 Ways to Build a FinOps-First Culture

How Can I Migrate from On-Prem to the Cloud? A Practical Guide

 

In Short: Ready to move to the cloud but feeling overwhelmed? This guide breaks down the essential steps for a successful migration, from planning and choosing the right provider to ensuring security and optimizing performance. We'll cover key strategies (like "lift and shift" and "re-architecting"), explain how to build a smooth deployment pipeline and show you how to keep your systems running flawlessly. Think of it as your cheat sheet for cloud migration success.

Moving from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud is no longer just an option—it’s a necessity for businesses looking to stay competitive. Whether you're aiming for business continuity, greater security, or an optimized development cycle, cloud migration presents a world of opportunities. But with great potential comes great complexity. How do you ensure a seamless transition while maintaining high availability and resilience? Let’s break it down.

1. Assess Your Current Environment

Before making the move, conduct a thorough assessment of your existing on-prem infrastructure. Identify critical applications, dependencies, and data workloads. Consider factors such as security, compliance requirements, and performance expectations.

2. Choose a Suitable Cloud Services Provider

Not all cloud providers are the same, and selecting the right one is crucial for a successful migration. Evaluate providers based on factors such as security features, cost efficiency, scalability, and support for CI/CD pipelines. Major players like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud each offer unique advantages—align their strengths with your business needs.

3. Define a Migration Strategy

There are multiple cloud migration strategies, often categorized as the "7 Rs":

  • Rehost (Lift-and-Shift) – Moving applications to the cloud with minimal modifications.
  • Replatform – Making slight optimizations while migrating.
  • Refactor (Re-architect) – Redesigning applications to leverage cloud-native capabilities.
  • Repurchase – Switching to a cloud-based SaaS solution.
  • Retire – Phasing out redundant applications.
  • Retain – Keeping certain workloads on-premises.
  • Relocate - Hypervisor level lift and shift.

Your choice will depend on business needs, development cycle efficiency, and long-term scalability.

Photo credit: AWS

4. Prioritize Security and Compliance

Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility between you and your cloud provider. Implement identity and access management (IAM), encryption, and security policies that align with your compliance requirements.

5. Establish a CI/CD Pipeline for Seamless Deployment

A successful cloud migration requires automation and agility. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) help streamline software delivery, reduce manual errors, and accelerate time to market. Leveraging tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or AWS CodePipeline ensures efficiency in your development cycle.

6. Ensure High Availability and Resilience

Cloud platforms offer built-in capabilities for high availability and resilience. Utilize multi-region deployments, auto-scaling, and failover strategies to maintain uptime and performance.

7. Test, Monitor, and Optimize

Post-migration, continuously monitor performance, security, and cost optimization.
Cloud-native monitoring tools like AWS CloudWatch Suite help ensure smooth operations.

8. Migration in a Box

Migrating to the cloud is more than just a technical shift—it’s a strategic move toward business continuity, security, and operational efficiency. Every business has unique needs and IT demands. Cloudride's "Migration in a Box" is designed to adapt to those needs. Our agile approach ensures a smooth and successful cloud transition, regardless of your current infrastructure's complexity.

Don't know where to start? We’ll take you there. Schedule a meeting with our team, and we’ll handle your cloud migration from start to finish!

ronen-amity
2025/02
Feb 6, 2025 9:07:57 PM
How Can I Migrate from On-Prem to the Cloud? A Practical Guide
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Migration, CI/CD, Cloud Computing

Feb 6, 2025 9:07:57 PM

How Can I Migrate from On-Prem to the Cloud? A Practical Guide

Redefining Search with Gen AI: Amazon OpenSearch

In today's data-driven landscape, users find themselves inundated with an overwhelming amount of information. The sheer volume of data can be intimidating, leaving organizations struggling to quickly derive actionable insights. Legacy search tools frequently fall short of expectations, requiring convoluted queries or yielding results that fail to hit the mark. For businesses, this translates into diminished productivity, missed opportunities, and frustrated employees.

Enter Amazon OpenSearch—a solution designed to tackle these pain points head-on by bringing a new level of intelligence and efficiency to search and data exploration.

Enhancing Search with Natural Language Understanding

At its core, Amazon OpenSearch leverages advanced natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning via Amazon Q for OpenSearch, to reshape how users interact with data. Instead of wrestling with rigid syntax or deciphering Boolean logic, employees can simply phrase their queries in plain language. This intuitive approach makes search more inclusive, bridging the gap for professionals who aren’t steeped in technical expertise.  This combination allows businesses to build powerful search solutions that can understand user intent, provide accurate and relevant results, and ultimately enhance the user experience.

Precision-Driven and Context-Aware Search Results

Amazon OpenSearch doesn’t just deliver results; it provides actionable insights. By analyzing the context and intent behind each query, the platform surfaces the most relevant information from vast datasets. This capability is especially valuable for decision-makers who need accurate insights at their fingertips without wading through irrelevant noise. Imagine having your business intelligence dashboard tailored precisely to your needs—that’s the edge Amazon OpenSearch offers.

Seamless Integration with the AWS Ecosystem

Amazon OpenSearch integrates seamlessly with the AWS ecosystem, including services like Amazon Elasticsearch, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Lambda, and Amazon CloudWatch. This interconnectedness enables businesses to process, index, and analyze data streams in real-time, ensuring agility in a fast-paced environment. Whether it’s tracking customer trends, operational metrics, or predictive analytics, the service ensures uninterrupted data flow and actionable outcomes.

Scalable and Resilient for Every Organization

From startups managing modest datasets to enterprises operating at massive scale, Amazon OpenSearch adapts to meet diverse needs. Its high-performance architecture ensures reliable results, whether powering customer-facing applications or supporting internal analytics teams. With options like Graviton2-based instances and cost-effective storage tiers like UltraWarm, OpenSearch provides scalable, budget-friendly solutions that grow with your business.

Cost-effective and Flexible Storage Options

Amazon OpenSearch offers innovative storage solutions to optimize costs and performance. Features like UltraWarm and cold storage allow businesses to retain large volumes of data affordably without compromising on usability. UltraWarm uses Amazon S3-backed nodes for long-term data storage, while cold storage is perfect for historical or compliance-driven data, accessible when needed for analytics.

Transforming Search in the Gen AI Era

The demand for smarter, faster, and more intuitive search solutions is only increasing. Amazon OpenSearch exemplifies the potential of Gen AI to not just enhance search capabilities but to fundamentally shift how organizations harness their data. With built-in integrations, flexible storage options, and context-aware insights, OpenSearch is setting a new standard for search in the modern era.


Want to learn more about how Amazon OpenSearch can drive value for your business?
Contact us at info@cloudride.co.il to get started.

You might also like: Turn Your Company’s Data into Business Insights with Amazon Q Business

 

ronen-amity
2025/01
Jan 13, 2025 4:49:44 PM
Redefining Search with Gen AI: Amazon OpenSearch
AWS, Gen AI, Amazon OpenSearch

Jan 13, 2025 4:49:44 PM

Redefining Search with Gen AI: Amazon OpenSearch

In today's data-driven landscape, users find themselves inundated with an overwhelming amount of information. The sheer volume of data can be intimidating, leaving organizations struggling to quickly derive actionable insights. Legacy search tools frequently fall short of expectations, requiring...

Turn Your Company’s Data into Business Insights with Amazon Q Business

The evolution of Amazon Q can be traced back to AWS's pioneering efforts in the realm of machine learning, beginning with the introduction of Amazon SageMaker. This groundbreaking service empowered business users to independently extract insights from their data, paving the way for the next stage of innovation. The launch of Amazon Bedrock further streamlined the process, enabling organizations to leverage pre-built code and solutions developed by others. Now, Amazon Q Business represents the latest leap forward, allowing business users to harness the power of conversational Gen AI to unlock valuable insights from a wide range of data sources utilizing Amazon Bedrock models.

Extracting Insights from Diverse Data Sources

Amazon Q allows you to comprehensively understand operations, customer behavior, and market trends by extracting insights from diverse data sources, including databases, data warehouses, and unstructured documents.

Data Made Simple and Accessible for Everyone

With Amazon Q Business, you can receive quick, accurate, and relevant answers to complex questions based on your documents, images, files, and other application data, as well as data stored in databases and data warehouses. The service's natural language processing allows you to use simple conversational queries to interact with your data, making exploring and analyzing complex data sets more intuitive and accessible. So Amazon Q Business enables everyone in your organization, regardless of their technical background, to uncover valuable insights from your company's data.

Streamlining Workflows with Automation and Integration

Moreover, Amazon Q for Business includes pre-built actions and integrations with popular business applications, allowing organizations to automate routine tasks and streamline workflows. This seamless integration boosts productivity and enables businesses to act quickly on generated insights.

Embracing the Gen AI Revolution with Amazon Q for Business

As the demand for data-driven decision-making continues to grow, Amazon Q for Business stands as a testament to the transformative power of Gen AI in the business world. By empowering organizations to harness the full potential of their data, this service paves the way for a new era of strategic decision-making and competitive advantage.

Want to learn more about how Amazon Q Business can drive value for your business? Contact us at info@cloudride.co.il to get started.

You might also like: Exploring Amazon Q Developer

ronen-amity
2025/01
Jan 5, 2025 1:19:09 PM
Turn Your Company’s Data into Business Insights with Amazon Q Business
AWS, Gen AI, Amazon Q

Jan 5, 2025 1:19:09 PM

Turn Your Company’s Data into Business Insights with Amazon Q Business

The evolution of Amazon Q can be traced back to AWS's pioneering efforts in the realm of machine learning, beginning with the introduction of Amazon SageMaker. This groundbreaking service empowered business users to independently extract insights from their data, paving the way for the next stage...

Unleash Your Coding Superpowers: Amazon Q Transforms Software Development with Gen AI

In the constantly advancing realm of cloud computing, a new champion has emerged, poised to revolutionize how developers approach their craft. Introducing: Amazon Q Developer, a cutting-edge Gen AI service designed for building, operating, and transforming software, with advanced capabilities for managing data and AI/ML.

The Evolution of Amazon Q: From SageMaker to Bedrock to Gen AI 

Amazon's AI journey showcases a remarkable evolution in technology. Starting with Amazon SageMaker, which provided tools for machine learning, the company progressed to Amazon Bedrock, offering pre-built AI components. The latest innovation, Amazon Q, represents a significant leap forward, allowing users to generate solutions through simple verbal requests. This progression from specialized tools to user-friendly AI assistance demonstrates Amazon's commitment to making artificial intelligence more accessible and efficient for everyone.

Seamless Integration with Existing Technologies

Amazon Q stands out as a powerful developer agent that changes the game for the coding process. It acts as an intelligent assistant, understanding complex programming requirements and generating tailored code snippets on demand. By leveraging natural language processing, Q can interpret developers' intentions, offering solutions that align with best practices and project-specific needs. This AI-driven approach not only accelerates development cycles but also helps bridge knowledge gaps, making advanced coding techniques more accessible to developers of all skill levels. With Amazon Q, Amazon has effectively created a virtual coding partner that enhances productivity and fosters innovation in software development.

Enhancing Productivity and Efficiency

One of the key features of Amazon Q is its ability to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up valuable time and resources for developers to focus on more strategic initiatives. By leveraging the service's advanced natural language processing and machine learning capabilities, developers can streamline their workflows, improve code quality, and accelerate project delivery. Moreover, Amazon Q's integration with popular AWS development IDE tools and platforms, such as Visual Studio and others, ensures a seamless user experience for developers, further enhancing their productivity and efficiency.

Thinking Ahead: Catering to Evolving Business Needs

Importantly, every developer should consider that when developing something, they must think ahead to cater to their company's evolving business needs, ensuring their solutions are ready to scale and grow with the organization. Additionally, Amazon Q for developers can be customized to a company's specific code and compliance requirements, ensuring that developers can seamlessly integrate the service into their existing infrastructure and workflows.

Embracing the Transformative Power of Gen AI with Amazon Q Developer Agent

Amazon Q Developer Agent exemplifies the transformative potential of generative AI in software development. By enabling developers to harness Gen AI's capabilities through natural language interactions, Q streamlines the entire development lifecycle - from coding and unit testing to documentation creation and code review. It integrates seamlessly into CI/CD workflows, enhancing productivity across all stages. This powerful tool accelerates development processes while making advanced techniques accessible, with the potential to reshape the future of software creation and set new standards for AI-assisted programming.

Where Cloudride Steps In

If you're ready to unlock the full potential of Gen AI and revolutionize your software development processes, Amazon Q is the solution you've been waiting for. Our team of AWS experts at Cloudride can help you maximize the benefits of Amazon Q and elevate your cloud infrastructure to the next level.

Cloudride uses Amazon Q to empower developers, boost productivity, and drive innovation. We'll guide you through the seamless integration and implementation of this transformative service, ensuring your organization can harness the power of Gen AI to gain a competitive edge.

Reach out to us today to learn how Cloudride can help you leverage the cutting-edge capabilities of Amazon Q and take your software development to new heights.

ronen-amity
2024/12
Dec 16, 2024 10:52:33 PM
Unleash Your Coding Superpowers: Amazon Q Transforms Software Development with Gen AI
AWS, Gen AI, Amazon Q

Dec 16, 2024 10:52:33 PM

Unleash Your Coding Superpowers: Amazon Q Transforms Software Development with Gen AI

In the constantly advancing realm of cloud computing, a new champion has emerged, poised to revolutionize how developers approach their craft. Introducing: Amazon Q Developer, a cutting-edge Gen AI service designed for building, operating, and transforming software, with advanced capabilities for...

Graviton: AWS's Secret Weapon for Performance and Cost Efficiency

Last Thursday, our team participated in a deep technical session that explored the capabilities of AWS's Graviton family of processors. Over the years, Graviton has become a pivotal CPU architecture for companies seeking to cut cloud costs while maintaining high levels of performance. With each new generation, AWS has pushed the envelope in terms of what's possible in cloud infrastructure, and this session shed light on Graviton's potential to transform how businesses operate in the cloud.

From Graviton 1 to Graviton 4: A Journey of Continuous Improvement

AWS first introduced the Graviton processor to bring significant cost reductions to cloud operations, offering up to 45% savings compared to Intel-based instances. Built on ARM architecture, Graviton was particularly effective for Linux workloads, where it reduced CPU costs without sacrificing operational efficiency.

Graviton 2 followed with a notable 40% performance increase, bringing improved memory access and core efficiency. This made Graviton 2 a strong choice for a variety of workloads, including those requiring parallel data processing and large-scale computation.

When AWS released Graviton 3, users saw an additional 25% performance boost, particularly in floating-point calculations. This upgrade further solidified Graviton's status as a top-tier option for compute-intensive tasks such as AI training and big data analytics.

Most recently, Graviton 4 was launched, offering a 50% increase in core scaling compared to Graviton 3, with up to 192 cores for the largest R8g instance type with dual sockets. This makes Graviton 4 a powerful architecture for workloads that demand high CPU throughput, such as parallel computing. Graviton 4 not only provides a performance boost but also allows businesses to scale more efficiently than ever before. 

Graviton vs. Intel and AMD: The Power of Full-Core Utilization

One of the key advantages of Graviton processors is their ability to utilize full dedicated cores rather than relying on hyper-threading, which is common with Intel and AMD processors. Hyper-threading simulates multiple threads per core, but under heavy load, this can cause performance bottlenecks, with CPU utilization spiking prematurely.

Graviton’s architecture eliminates this problem by using dedicated cores, which ensures consistent and predictable performance even during high-demand workloads. In the technical session, benchmark tests showed Graviton’s superiority when handling millions of queue requests. In a certain model tested, the Intel instances began to fail at around 120 requests per second, while the Graviton instances managed up to 250 requests per second without crashing. This makes Graviton not only more powerful but also far more reliable for mission-critical applications.


Real-World Benefits: Cost Savings and Efficiency Gains

During the session, we discussed how Graviton offers more than just raw performance—it also delivers substantial cost savings. Businesses that have switched from Intel or AMD to Graviton-based instances, such as C7g, have reported cost reductions of around 20%. The savings come from two main areas: lower per-instance costs and the ability to run more workloads on fewer machines.

One example shared during the session involved a customer who switched from AMD’s C5A instance to Graviton’s C7g, resulting in a 24% cost reduction. This customer was able to consolidate workloads, reducing the overall number of instances required while simultaneously improving performance.

In addition to cost savings, Graviton processors also offer reduced latency and faster request handling, which is crucial for organizations scaling their operations. Graviton has also been integrated into AWS’s managed services, including RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, and ElasticCache. This means customers using these services can benefit from the increased efficiency and lower costs associated with Graviton processors without needing to modify their applications.

A reminder is that the Graviton instances are also available at the AWS’s Spot market, where businesses can take advantage of unused EC2 capacity at reduced prices. This creates additional savings for companies with flexible workload requirements.

Graviton and the Future: Expanding Beyond CPU Workloads

AWS isn’t stopping at CPU performance with Graviton. During the session, we also explored how Graviton can work its way into AI and machine learning workloads, which traditionally rely on GPU processing. With frameworks like TensorFlow, businesses can run machine learning models directly on Graviton processors, further reducing the need for expensive GPUs.

For organizations that rely on machine learning, this shift opens up exciting possibilities. Graviton’s efficient CPU architecture can now handle workloads previously reserved for GPUs, offering a cost-effective solution for medium to large-scale AI applications.

Why Graviton is the Future of Cloud Optimization

The insights from the technical session clearly highlighted AWS’s commitment to developing high-performance, cost-efficient processors that meet the growing demands of cloud infrastructure. From Graviton 1 to Graviton 4, each generation has brought improvements that enable businesses to optimize their workloads, reduce operational costs, and scale efficiently.

For any organization looking to modernize its cloud infrastructure, Graviton offers a clear path to doing so. Its unique combination of full-core utilization, improved performance with each iteration, and lower costs makes it an ideal choice for companies that demand both speed and efficiency.

Where Cloudride Steps In

If you're ready to take advantage of the impressive performance and cost savings that Graviton can offer, Cloudride is here to assist. Our team of AWS experts specializes in optimizing cloud infrastructures to harness the full capabilities of Graviton processors, ensuring your workloads run more efficiently and cost-effectively. Whether you're looking to transition from your current instances or want to enhance your cloud environment, we provide tailored solutions that meet your specific business needs.

Reach out to us today to learn how Cloudride can help you maximize the benefits of AWS Graviton and elevate your cloud infrastructure to the next level.

ronen-amity
2024/09
Sep 29, 2024 3:44:40 PM
Graviton: AWS's Secret Weapon for Performance and Cost Efficiency
AWS, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing

Sep 29, 2024 3:44:40 PM

Graviton: AWS's Secret Weapon for Performance and Cost Efficiency

Last Thursday, our team participated in a deep technical session that explored the capabilities of AWS's Graviton family of processors. Over the years, Graviton has become a pivotal CPU architecture for companies seeking to cut cloud costs while maintaining high levels of performance. With each new...

Achieve Unparalleled Resilience with Scalable Multi-Region Disaster Recovery

Effective disaster recovery (DR) strategies are critical for ensuring business continuity and protecting your organization from disruptions. However, traditional DR approaches often fall short when faced with unexpected demand spikes or regional outages. This is where the power of AWS Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing comes into play, offering a dynamic, scalable solution that takes your disaster recovery capabilities to new heights.

Why Scaling Matters for Disaster Recovery

Conventional disaster recovery methods frequently rely on static infrastructure provisioned for peak demand. This approach leads to inefficiencies, with resources being either underutilized during normal operations or potentially insufficient during unexpected traffic surges. The inability to rapidly scale resources can result in service disruptions, longer recovery times, and potentially devastating consequences for your business.

AWS Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing provide a solution by allowing your infrastructure to automatically adjust based on real-time conditions across multiple AWS regions. When integrated into your DR strategy, these services ensure that your mission-critical applications remain highly available and performant, even when faced with unpredictable workloads or regional outages.

Building a Resilient Multi-Region DR Architecture

At Cloudride, we leverage Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing to design and implement scalable, multi-region disaster recovery solutions tailored to your unique business needs. Our proven approach includes the following key steps:

  1. Define Scalable Auto Scaling Groups: We set up separate Auto Scaling Groups for your application and database tiers across your primary and disaster recovery regions. This includes configuring the database tier for multi-AZ replication, defining scaling policies based on metrics like CPU, memory and network utilization, and setting capacity thresholds to control costs during traffic spikes.
  2. Implement Elastic Load Balancing: Our team sets up Application Load Balancers (ALBs) or Network Load Balancers (NLBs) in both regions, ensuring traffic is distributed across multiple Availability Zones for redundancy and fault tolerance.
  3. Establish Database Replication: We leverage AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) or native replication features to establish and maintain database replication from your primary region to the disaster recovery region, ensuring data consistency.
  4. Automate Failover with Route 53: Cloudride integrates AWS Route 53 into your DR solution, creating primary and secondary DNS records that alias to your load balancers in each region. We configure health checks and failover rules to automatically redirect traffic to your DR environment if the primary region becomes unavailable.
  5. Comprehensive Monitoring and Optimization: Our experts implement comprehensive monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch or other monitoring tools (like DataDog), tracking key metrics across your infrastructure. We create alarms, review scaling policies, and make optimizations to ensure optimal performance and cost-efficiency.
  6. Regular DR Testing: We work closely with your team to periodically (at least once per year) simulate disaster scenarios, test failover to your DR region, and validate scaling and failover mechanisms. This includes verifying database replication, scaling standby resources, and promoting the DR database to the primary role.


Optimizing Costs with Scalable DR

One of the key advantages of using AWS Auto Scaling Groups in your disaster recovery strategy is cost optimization. Unlike traditional DR methods that require maintaining idle resources, Auto Scaling allows you to pay for what you need, when you need it.

At Cloudride, we implement several cost optimization strategies, including:

  1. Right-Sizing Instances: We leverage AWS recommendations and CloudWatch metrics to select the most cost-effective instance types and sizes for your applications.
  2. Scaling Down in DR Region: We configure your standby Auto Scaling Groups in the DR region to maintain a minimum of zero instances when not in active use, minimizing costs.
  3. Leveraging Spot Instances: For non-critical workloads, we explore the use of Spot Instances, which can provide significant cost savings compared to On-Demand instances.
  4. Setting Maximum Capacity Thresholds: We set maximum capacity limits on your Auto Scaling Groups to prevent excessive scaling and maintain control over costs during traffic spikes.
  5. Cost Allocation Tagging: Our team implements cost allocation tagging to provide you with granular visibility into your AWS spending per application and environment.

Best Practices for Scalable Multi-Region DR

We follow industry best practices to ensure your scalable disaster recovery solution is secure, reliable, and optimized for your business needs:

  1. Security-First Approach: We secure your infrastructure with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, VPC peering, and security groups across regions.
  2. Automation and Reproducibility: We automate deployment processes with Terraform and back up your DR configurations to Amazon S3 for versioning and reproducibility.
  3. Regular Testing and Documentation: Our team works closely with you to conduct regular DR testing, including failover, scaling, and data replication scenarios. We also provide detailed documentation of your DR runbooks and procedures.
  4. Continuous Improvement: We implement AWS Config rules to audit your DR configurations and identify opportunities for optimization, ensuring your solution stays at the forefront of cloud technology.

 

Our Advantage

As an AWS certified partner, we specialize in helping businesses design and implement scalable, cost-effective disaster recovery solutions that align with their unique needs. Our team of experts combines deep technical AWS expertise with a nuanced understanding of your business objectives to ensure your mission-critical applications and data are protected, while providing you with the peace of mind that comes from knowing your business is prepared for any eventuality.

By leveraging the power of AWS Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing, we can help you achieve unparalleled resilience and availability across multiple AWS regions. Our solutions automate scaling and failover processes, reducing downtime and optimizing costs, ensuring your business can weather any disruption and keep running smoothly.

If you're ready to take your disaster recovery strategy to new heights, Contact Cloudride today. Let us show you how scalable multi-region DR can help you build a resilient, future-proof infrastructure that's prepared for anything.

ronen-amity
2024/09
Sep 22, 2024 2:38:49 PM
Achieve Unparalleled Resilience with Scalable Multi-Region Disaster Recovery
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Sep 22, 2024 2:38:49 PM

Achieve Unparalleled Resilience with Scalable Multi-Region Disaster Recovery

Effective disaster recovery (DR) strategies are critical for ensuring business continuity and protecting your organization from disruptions. However, traditional DR approaches often fall short when faced with unexpected demand spikes or regional outages. This is where the power of AWS Auto Scaling...

Harness Your Competitive Edge with Our AWS SMB and MAP Competencies

Today, businesses of all sizes are turning to cloud solutions to drive innovation, scalability, and efficiency. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), leveraging the right expertise can make all the difference in navigating the cloud journey successfully. This is where our AWS Competencies in Small and Medium Business (SMB) and Migration and Modernization (as part of the Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)) come into play, allowing us to offer you a competitive edge for your digital transformation.

Leverage Our Cloud Expertise for Your Business Success

1) Specialized Expertise for SMBs 

Our AWS SMB Competency demonstrates our deep understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities faced by small and medium-sized businesses. You can expect:

  • Cost-effective solutions that fit within your budget constraints
  • Scalable architectures that grow with your business
  • Hands-on support throughout the cloud adoption process

2) Accelerated Migration with MAP 

The Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Competency streamlines your transition to the AWS Cloud. Our expertise in this will guide you through:

  • Assessing your current infrastructure and applications
  • Developing comprehensive migration strategies
  • Executing seamless transitions with minimal disruption

3) End-to-End Cloud Transformation 

By combining SMB and MAP competencies, you gain access to a holistic approach to cloud adoption. From initial planning to post-migration optimization, you'll receive guidance on:

  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) implementation
  • Containerization strategies
  • Serverless architecture design

4) Access to AWS Resources 

The AWS Competencies we've achieved ensure you benefit from our:

  • Priority access to AWS resources, including advanced technical support and early access to new features
  • Collaboration opportunities with AWS solution architects
  • A proven track record of successful implementations across various industries

5) Optimized Costs and Maximized ROI 

With deep expertise in AWS pricing models and cost management tools, we can help you implement cost-effective solutions that maximize your return on investment (ROI). We will set up regular monitoring and alerts to help you stay on top of your AWS usage and costs, ensuring you are notified of any spikes or issues.

6) Robust Security and Compliance 

As we're well-versed in AWS's robust security features and compliance standards, we'll assess you in maintaining a secure cloud environment by leveraging these capabilities. Cloudride can help you scan your environment on a regular basis,  and fix items found to keep your environment as secure as possible.. Our regular scanning and remediation services ensure your environment remains secure and adheres to stringent compliance requirements.

7) Continuous Innovation 

AWS competencies require ongoing education, ensuring we're always at the forefront of cloud technology and best practices, keeping your business right up there with the latest innovations and industry-leading methodologies. By continuously expanding our knowledge and skills, we can provide you with cutting-edge solutions that leverage the most advanced cloud capabilities, empowering your organization to stay ahead of the curve and gain a competitive advantage in your market.

8) Scalability and Flexibility

For startups seeking to scale operations rapidly or well-established SMBs with growth plans on the horizon, our solutions are meticulously designed with flexibility at the core. We understand that business needs are dynamic, and our architectures can seamlessly adapt and expand as your requirements evolve. Whether you need to accommodate surging demand, integrate new technologies, or explore new markets, our scalable and flexible solutions provide the agility to pivot without constraints, ensuring your cloud infrastructure remains a catalyst for innovation rather than a limiting factor.

9) Streamlined Processes

By leveraging our AWS SMB and MAP competencies, you gain access to streamlined processes that encompass your entire cloud adoption journey, from the initial assessment phase through to ongoing management and optimization. This streamlined approach ensures a seamless transition to the cloud for your organization, minimizing disruptions and saving you valuable time and resources. With our expertise handling the intricate details of your cloud transformation, you can focus on driving your core business objectives while benefiting from a hassle-free experience tailored to your specific needs.


10) Bridging the Gap: From On-Premises to AWS Cloud for SMBs

At Cloudride, we understand that many SMBs are still operating with on-premises infrastructure or legacy systems. Our expertise in both SMB and MAP competencies uniquely positions us to guide you through this transformation. With a deep understanding of SMB culture and challenges, such as limited IT resources, budget constraints, and concerns about business disruption, you'll receive a tailored approach that aligns with your business goals and culture.

Leveraging the Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)

The Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) methodology, adapted specifically for SMBs, includes:

  1. Assessment: We evaluate your current infrastructure, applications, and business processes to understand your unique needs and challenges.
  2. Readiness and Planning: We develop a comprehensive migration plan that minimizes disruption and aligns with your business objectives.
  3. Migration: Our team executes the migration using AWS tools and best practices, ensuring data integrity and minimal downtime.
  4. Modernization: Post-migration, we help you leverage AWS services to modernize your applications and infrastructure, unlocking new capabilities and efficiencies.


Empowering Your SMB for Cloud Success

Throughout your cloud journey, you'll gain:

  1. Education and Empowerment: We provide training and knowledge transfer to your team, ensuring you're comfortable with the new cloud environment.
  2. Cost-Effective Solutions: We design solutions that provide immediate value while setting the stage for future growth.
  3. Simplified Management: We implement tools to simplify ongoing management and governance.
  4. Security-First Mindset: We ensure your cloud environment is secure from day one.
  5. Scalability for Growth: Our solutions are designed to scale with your business.
  6. Continuous Optimization: We continuously optimize your cloud environment to ensure you're getting the most value from AWS services.

Real-World Impact:

At Cloudride, our AWS SMB and MAP competencies have enabled us to deliver transformative results for numerous small and medium-sized businesses. Our clients have experienced:

  1. Modernized Architecture: Successfully transitioned to cloud-native designs, significantly enhancing operational efficiency, agility, and scalability.
  2. Exceptional Reliability: Consistently achieved 99.99% uptime for critical applications, ensuring business continuity and superior customer experiences.
  3. Enhanced Security and Compliance: Substantially improved security postures and met stringent compliance requirements, providing peace of mind in an increasingly complex regulatory landscape.

These tangible outcomes demonstrate our ability to not only facilitate a smooth AWS migration but also to unlock the full potential of cloud computing for SMBs, driving real business value and competitive advantage.

Seize the Power of Cloud Transformation

Moving to the cloud is more than a technical challenge – it's a business transformation. With our dual AWS SMB and MAP competencies, you gain access to expertise, empathy, and a focus on your unique business needs.

Whether you're taking your first steps into cloud computing or optimizing your existing AWS environment, Cloudride is your trusted partner.  We combine deep technical expertise with a nuanced understanding of SMB culture to ensure your cloud migration is successful, cost-effective, and aligned with your business objectives.


Key AWS services we leverage include:
  • AWS Organizations and Control Tower for multi-account management
  • AWS Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing for scalability
  • AWS Application Discovery Service for assessment
  • AWS Database Migration Service and Server Migration Service for seamless transitions
  • Amazon ECS, EKS, and Lambda for modern application architectures
  • Amazon S3, RDS, and DynamoDB for storage and database solution
  • AWS IAM, GuardDuty, Security Hub and KMS for security

Ready to start your cloud journey or optimize your current AWS environment? Contact Cloudride today to learn how our SMB and MAP competencies can accelerate your digital transformation and drive your business forward in the cloud era.

ronen-amity
2024/09
Sep 4, 2024 9:44:23 AM
Harness Your Competitive Edge with Our AWS SMB and MAP Competencies
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing, AWS Certificates, Startups

Sep 4, 2024 9:44:23 AM

Harness Your Competitive Edge with Our AWS SMB and MAP Competencies

Today, businesses of all sizes are turning to cloud solutions to drive innovation, scalability, and efficiency. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), leveraging the right expertise can make all the difference in navigating the cloud journey successfully. This is where our AWS Competencies...

Accelerate Your Cloud Journey with AWS MAP: Why does It Matter and How Cloudride Can Help

Cloud migration is one of the most effective ways for businesses to innovate, streamline operations, and reduce cost. However, this type of cloud journey is not always straightforward and can set a few challenges - complexities involved in moving legacy systems, applications, and data can make cloud migration a daunting task for even the most tech-savvy organizations. This is where the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) comes into play, offering a structured, outcome-driven methodology that simplifies and accelerates the cloud migration process.

Understanding the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)

The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) is a comprehensive and proven cloud migration program that leverages AWS’s extensive experience in migrating thousands of enterprise customers to the cloud. MAP is designed to help organizations navigate the complexities of cloud migration by providing a clear, phased approach that reduces risks, controls costs, and ensures a successful transition.

The MAP framework is built around three key phases: Assess, Mobilize, and Migrate & Modernize. Each phase is designed to address specific challenges and requirements, ensuring that the migration process is smooth and aligned with the organization’s business goals.

  1. Assess: In this initial phase, [your AWS partner will assess the business justification of undergoing such a significant transformation of your digital assets]. The process helps identify gaps in capabilities across six dimensions: business, process, people, platform, operations, and security. This comprehensive evaluation provides a roadmap for addressing these gaps and building a strong foundation for migration.
    One of the tools generated by AWS is the Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) that evaluates your current infrastructure, applications, and operational readiness for cloud migration. 
  2. Mobilize: The Mobilize phase focuses on closing the gaps identified in the Assess phase. During this phase, organizations work on building the operational foundations needed for a successful migration. This includes developing a migration plan, addressing technical and organizational challenges, and preparing the team with the necessary training and resources. The goal of this phase is to create a clear and actionable migration plan that sets the stage for a smooth and efficient transition to the cloud.
  3. Migrate and Modernize: The final phase of MAP is where the actual migration takes place. Using the plan developed in the Mobilize phase, organizations begin migrating their workloads to the cloud. This phase also includes modernization efforts, such as re-architecting applications to fully leverage cloud-native capabilities. The Migrate and Modernize phase is where the benefits of cloud migration—such as cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and increased agility—are fully realized.

MAP: The Crucial Path to Cloud Success for Businesses

Research indicates that organizations leveraging the AWS Migration Acceleration Program framework experience substantially higher cloud migration success rates compared to those not utilizing the program; This comprehensive solution addresses the unique challenges of cloud migration and guides you how the program can help your organization with a smooth transition to the cloud:

  1. Cost Efficiency: One of the biggest concerns for organizations considering cloud migration is the cost. The MAP framework includes tools and resources that help control and even reduce the overall cost of migration by automating and accelerating key processes. Additionally, AWS offers service credits and partner investments that can offset one-time migration expenses, making the transition to the cloud more affordable.
  2. Risk Reduction: Cloud migration is inherently risky, with potential challenges such as data loss, downtime, and security vulnerabilities. MAP’s structured approach helps mitigate these risks by providing a clear, phased methodology that addresses potential issues before they arise. This risk-averse approach ensures that businesses can migrate to the cloud with confidence.
  3. Tailored Expertise: MAP offers businesses access to AWS’s extensive expertise in cloud migration, as well as the knowledge and experience of certified AWS partners. This includes specialized tools, training, and support tailored to the specific needs of the organization. Whether it’s migrating legacy applications, modernizing infrastructure, or ensuring compliance with industry regulations, MAP provides the resources needed to achieve a successful migration.
  4. Comprehensive Support: MAP is not just about getting to the cloud—it’s about ensuring that businesses fully realize the benefits of cloud computing. From optimizing applications to improving operational resilience, MAP provides ongoing support to help organizations maximize their cloud investment. This comprehensive approach ensures that businesses are not just migrating to the cloud but are also set up for long-term success.

     

Cloudride’s Achievement: What This Competency Means for You

At Cloudride, we are proud to have achieved the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Competency, a recognition that underscores our expertise in cloud migration and modernization. But what does this achievement mean for our clients?

  1. Proven Expertise in Cloud Migration: Earning the AWS Migration and Modernization Competency is no small feat. It requires a demonstrated track record of successfully guiding medium and large enterprises through complex cloud migrations. At Cloudride, we have the hands-on experience and technical know-how to manage even the most challenging migration projects using the MAP framework, ensuring minimal disruption and maximum benefit for our clients.
  2. A Trusted Partner for Enterprise-Level Projects: The AWS Migration and Modernization Competency is one of the most difficult competencies to achieve, requiring a deep understanding of AWS technologies, a proven methodology, and a commitment to delivering results. By achieving this competency, Cloudride has demonstrated that we have the expertise and resources necessary to handle enterprise-level cloud migration projects. AWS’s trust in us is a testament to our ability to deliver on complex, large-scale migrations with precision and efficiency.
  3. Your Partner in End-to-End Modernization: Cloudride’s Migration and Modernization Competency isn’t just about migration—it’s about modernization across all stages of your product and production lifecycle. Whether it’s enhancing operational efficiency, driving innovation, or re-architecting applications to leverage cloud-native features, Cloudride is your partner in ensuring that your cloud journey is transformative and aligned with your business goals.
  4. Commitment to Your Success: Our commitment to our clients goes beyond just providing services. We are dedicated to ensuring your success at every stage of your cloud journey. Our Migration and Modernization Competency means that we are recognized by AWS as experts who can deliver on complex projects, providing you with the confidence that your migration will be handled by the best in the industry.

Why Choose Cloudride for Your Cloud Migration?

When it comes to cloud migration, the choice of partner can make all the difference. With Cloudride, you’re choosing a partner that:

  1. Is Trusted by AWS: Our MAP Competency is a direct reflection of the trust that AWS places in us. We are recognized as experts who can deliver on complex cloud projects, ensuring a seamless transition for your business.
  2. Supports SMBs and Large Enterprises: We specialize in helping business of all sizes, from SMBs to enterprises, through the navigation of their cloud journey. Our tailored solutions ensure that your migration is not just successful but also aligned with your broader long-term business objectives.
  3. Drives Innovation Across Your Organization: From migrating your infrastructure to modernizing your applications, Cloudride is equipped to support your organization at every stage of its cloud journey. We bring innovative solutions that drive business agility and operational excellence.
  4. Provides End-to-End Support: Cloudride’s expertise doesn’t stop at migration. We provide end-to-end support that ensures your business can fully leverage the power of the cloud. From ongoing optimization to modernization efforts, we are with you every step of the way.

Embrace Cloud Migration with Confidence

Cloud migration is a critical step in any enterprise’s digital transformation journey, but it’s one that requires careful planning, expertise, and the right tools. The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) provides a proven framework to guide businesses through this complex process, and Cloudride’s recent Migration and Modernization Competency achievement positions us as a trusted partner in this journey.

With Cloudride by your side, you can accelerate your cloud migration, reduce risks, and unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth. If you’re ready to take the next step in your cloud journey, connect with us today. Let’s explore how we can make your migration smoother, more efficient, and ultimately, more successful.

uti-teva
2024/09
Sep 2, 2024 3:57:20 PM
Accelerate Your Cloud Journey with AWS MAP: Why does It Matter and How Cloudride Can Help
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing, AWS Certificates

Sep 2, 2024 3:57:20 PM

Accelerate Your Cloud Journey with AWS MAP: Why does It Matter and How Cloudride Can Help

Cloud migration is one of the most effective ways for businesses to innovate, streamline operations, and reduce cost. However, this type of cloud journey is not always straightforward and can set a few challenges - complexities involved in moving legacy systems, applications, and data can make...

Building an Automated DR Solution with AWS Backup and Terraform

Maintaining business continuity in the face of disruptions is paramount, as losing critical data can lead to severe consequences, ranging from financial losses to reputational damage. In exploring disaster recovery (DR) strategies, we have refined a method that aligns with the Cloudride philosophy—utilizing AWS Backup and Terraform to automate disaster recovery processes. This approach not only helps safeguard your data but also ensures rapid business continuity with minimal manual intervention. In this article, we'll detail how to create an automated, resilient DR solution using these advanced technologies, reflecting the practices that have consistently supported our clients' success.

What is AWS Backup?

AWS Backup is a fully managed backup service that makes it easy to centralize and automate data protection across AWS services. It allows you to create backup plans, define backup schedules, and retain backups for as long as you need, all while providing centralized monitoring and reporting capabilities.

What is Terraform?

Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that allows you to define and provision infrastructure resources in a declarative manner. With Terraform, you can manage your infrastructure as code, ensuring consistent and repeatable deployments across different environments.

Why Use AWS Backup and Terraform for Your DR Solution

  1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform allows you to define your entire infrastructure, including your DR solution, as code. This IaC approach ensures consistency, repeatability, and version control for your infrastructure deployments, making it easier to manage and maintain your DR environment.
  2. Automation: Terraform automates the provisioning and management of your DR infrastructure, reducing manual effort and minimizing the risk of human error. With Terraform, you can quickly spin up or tear down resources as needed, ensuring efficient resource utilization and cost optimization.
  3. Multi-Cloud and Multi-Provider Support: While our blog focuses on AWS, Terraform supports a wide range of cloud providers and services, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more. This flexibility allows you to create a DR solution that spans multiple cloud providers, enabling true disaster recovery across different platforms.
  4. Scalability and Flexibility: Both Terraform and AWS Backup are designed to scale seamlessly, allowing you to adjust your DR solution to meet changing business demands. AWS Backup can handle backups for a wide range of AWS services, while Terraform can manage infrastructure resources across multiple cloud providers.
  5. Cost Optimization: By leveraging Terraform's automation capabilities and AWS's pay-as-you-go pricing model, you can optimize your DR solution costs. With Terraform, you can easily spin up and tear down resources as needed, ensuring you only pay for what you use.
  6. Centralized Backup Management: AWS Backup provides a centralized backup management solution, allowing you to create backup plans, define schedules, and retain backups for as long as needed. This centralized approach simplifies the management of your backups and ensures consistent backup policies across your infrastructure.
  7. Monitoring and Reporting: AWS Backup offers centralized monitoring and reporting capabilities, enabling you to track backup jobs, identify issues, and ensure compliance with your backup policies.
  8. Disaster Recovery Testing: By combining Terraform and AWS Backup, you can easily simulate disaster scenarios and test your DR solution by provisioning resources, restoring backups, and validating the restored environment, all in an automated and repeatable manner.
  9. Version Control and Collaboration: Terraform configurations are stored as code files, which can be version-controlled using tools like Git. This enables collaboration among team members and facilitates tracking changes and rolling back to previous versions if needed.


Implementing the Automated DR Strategy - Step by Step

Step 1: Create a Terraform for Your Production Environment

Before setting up your DR solution, you'll need to have a Terraform configuration for your production environment. Here's how you can do it:
  1. Define your infrastructure resources: Create a main.tf file and define the resources required for your production environment, such as EC2 instances, RDS databases, VPCs, and more.
  2. Configure variables and outputs: Create variables.tf and outputs.tf files to define input variables and output values, respectively.
  3. Initialize and apply Terraform: Run terraform init to initialize the working directory, and then run terraform apply to provision the resources defined in your configuration.

Step 2: Test Your Terraform Configuration in Another Region

To ensure that your Terraform configuration is reliable and can be used for your DR solution, it's recommended to test it in another AWS region. Here's how you can do it:

  1. Create a new Terraform workspace: Run terraform workspace new <workspace_name> to create a new workspace for your test environment.
  2. Update your configuration: Modify your main.tf file to use the new AWS region for your test environment.
  3. Apply your configuration: Run terraform apply to provision the resources in the new region.
  4. Validate your test environment: Ensure that all resources are created correctly and that your applications and services are running as expected in the test environment.

Step 3: Add AWS Backup to Your Terraform Configuration

Now that you have a tested Terraform configuration for your production environment, you can integrate AWS Backup to create a DR solution. Here's how you can do it: 

  1. Define AWS Backup resources: In your main.tf file, define the AWS Backup vault, backup plan, and backup selection resources using Terraform's AWS provider.
  2. Configure backup schedules and retention policies: Customize your backup plan to specify the backup schedules and retention policies that align with your organization's requirements.
  3. Apply your updated configuration: Run terraform apply to create the AWS Backup resources and associate them with your production environment resources.

Step 4: Test and Validate Your DR Solution

Wiih AWS Backup integrated into your Terraform configuration, you can now test and validate your DR solution. Here's how you can do it:

  • Simulate a disaster scenario: Intentionally fail over to your DR environment by terminating or stopping resources in your production environment.
  • Restore backed-up resources: Use the AWS Backup service to restore the backed-up resources from your AWS Backup vault.
  • Validate your DR environment: Ensure that the restored resources are functioning correctly and that your applications and services are running as expected in the DR environment.
  • Validate your DR environment: Once you have validated your DR solution, you can fail back to your original production environment by promoting the DR environment or restoring the production resources from AWS Backup.

Building Resilience with Automated Disaster Recovery

Leveraging automated disaster recovery solutions like AWS Backup and Terraform not only streamlines the recovery process but fundamentally enhances the resilience of your business operations. By implementing these tools, organizations can efficiently safeguard their data and ensure continuous operational readiness with minimal downtime. This approach to disaster recovery reduces the manual overhead and potential for human error, allowing businesses to focus on growth and innovation with confidence.

At Cloudride, we're dedicated to helping you build a robust disaster recovery strategy that aligns with your specific business needs, contact us and let's work together to fortify your infrastructure against unexpected disruptions and keep your business resilient in the face of challenges.

ronen-amity
2024/08
Aug 12, 2024 11:59:18 AM
Building an Automated DR Solution with AWS Backup and Terraform
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Aug 12, 2024 11:59:18 AM

Building an Automated DR Solution with AWS Backup and Terraform

Maintaining business continuity in the face of disruptions is paramount, as losing critical data can lead to severe consequences, ranging from financial losses to reputational damage. In exploring disaster recovery (DR) strategies, we have refined a method that aligns with the Cloudride...

Disaster Recovery in the Cloud Age: Transitioning to AWS Cloud-Based DR Solutions

The evolution of cloud computing has revolutionized many aspects of IT infrastructure, notably including disaster recovery (DR) strategies. As organizations increasingly migrate to the cloud, understanding the transition from traditional DR solutions to cloud-based methods is critical. This article explores the pivotal shift to AWS cloud-based disaster recovery, highlighting its advantages, challenges, and strategic implementation.

The Shift to Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery

Traditional DR methods often involve significant investments in duplicate hardware and physical backup sites, which are both cost-intensive and complex to manage. Cloud-based DR solutions, however, leverage the flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of cloud services. This paradigm shift is not merely about technology but also encompasses changes in strategy, processes, and governance.

The Benefits of AWS Cloud-Based DR

  1. Cost Efficiency: AWS cloud DR significantly reduces upfront capital expenses and ongoing maintenance costs by utilizing shared resources. Organizations no longer need to invest in redundant hardware, facilities, and personnel dedicated solely to DR. Instead, they can leverage AWS's infrastructure and pay only for the resources they consume.
  2. Scalability: AWS provides the ability to dynamically scale resources up or down as needed, which is particularly advantageous during a disaster scenario when resources might need to be adjusted quickly. This elasticity ensures that organizations can rapidly provision additional computing power, storage, and network resources to meet surging demand during a crisis.
  3. Simplified Management: With AWS cloud DR, the complexity of managing DR processes is greatly diminished. AWS offers automated solutions and managed services like AWS Backup and AWS Disaster Recovery Services that simplify routine DR tasks, such as data replication, failover testing, and recovery orchestration. This frees up IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than being bogged down by operational tasks.
  4. Improved Reliability and Availability: AWS invests heavily in redundant infrastructure, robust security measures, and advanced disaster recovery capabilities across its global network of Availability Zones and Regions. By leveraging these resources, organizations can achieve higher levels of reliability and availability for their critical systems and data.
  5. Faster Recovery Times: AWS cloud-based DR solutions can significantly reduce recovery times compared to traditional on-premises approaches. With data and applications already hosted in the AWS Cloud, failover and recovery processes can be initiated more quickly, minimizing downtime and its associated costs.


Challenges in Transitioning to Cloud-Based DR

Data Security:
Ensuring security when transferring and storing sensitive information offsite in a cloud environment continues to be a major concern. Organizations must carefully evaluate the security measures implemented by cloud providers and ensure that they align with their own security policies and regulatory requirements. 

  • Solution: Leverage AWS data protection services like AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for encryption and access control. Implement strict security policies, multi-factor authentication, and least-privilege access principles. Regularly review and update security configurations to address evolving threats.

Compliance Issues:
Adhering to various regulatory and compliance requirements can be more challenging when data and applications are managed and stored remotely. Organizations must work closely with cloud providers to understand their compliance obligations and ensure that the provider's services and practices meet those requirements.

  • Solution: Understand the compliance requirements specific to your industry and region. Utilize AWS services and features designed for compliance, such as AWS Artifact, AWS Config, and AWS CloudTrail. Implement robust monitoring, auditing, and reporting mechanisms to demonstrate compliance.

Dependency on Internet Connectivity:
Cloud-based DR solutions heavily rely on stable internet connections, making them vulnerable to disruptions in connectivity. Organizations should consider implementing redundant internet connections and explore options for failover to alternative connectivity providers to mitigate this risk.

  • Solution: Implement redundant internet connectivity providers and failover mechanisms to achieve resiliency in connectivity. Explore AWS Direct Connect for dedicated network connectivity to AWS. Evaluate the use of AWS Site-to-Site VPN or AWS Transit Gateway for secure and redundant connectivity options.

Integration and Compatibility:
Integrating cloud-based DR solutions with existing on-premises infrastructure and applications can present challenges. Organizations must ensure that their cloud provider offers seamless integration and compatibility with their existing systems and tools.

  • Solution: Leverage AWS integration and migration services like AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), AWS Server Migration Service (SMS), and AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to streamline the migration of on-premises workloads to AWS. Conduct thorough compatibility testing and address any integration issues before migrating production workloads.

Strategic Implementation of Cloud-Based DR

  1. Assessment of Business Needs: Identify critical applications and data, and understand their specific recovery requirements, such as Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs). This assessment will help determine the appropriate AWS cloud DR solution and configuration.
  2. Choosing the Right AWS Services: Select AWS services that meet your security, compliance, and service level requirements. Evaluate factors such as AWS Availability Zones, Regions, and support for specific workloads and applications.
  3. Develop a Cloud DR Plan: Create a comprehensive AWS cloud DR plan that outlines the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders, recovery procedures, testing schedules, and communication protocols. This plan should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure its effectiveness.
  4. Test and Validate: Regularly test and validate your cloud DR solution to ensure that it functions as expected. Conduct failover and failback tests to identify and address any issues or gaps in your DR strategy.
  5. Continuous Monitoring and Optimization: Continuously monitor and optimize your AWS cloud DR solution to ensure it remains effective and aligned with your evolving business needs. Leverage AWS tools and services like AWS CloudWatch and AWS Systems Manager for monitoring, automation, and optimization.
  6. Training and Awareness: Provide adequate training and awareness programs for IT staff and stakeholders involved in the AWS cloud DR process. Ensure that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities during a disaster scenario.
  7. Governance and Compliance: Establish robust governance and compliance frameworks to ensure that your AWS cloud DR solution adheres to relevant industry regulations and internal policies. Regularly review and update these frameworks to address evolving regulatory landscapes.

Embrace the Future of Disaster Recovery with AWS

As cloud computing continues to reshape the IT landscape, the shift to AWS cloud-based disaster recovery provides organizations with an opportunity to enhance resilience and agility. Embracing AWS cloud-based solutions doesn't require a complete overhaul of existing infrastructure. By selecting the right AWS tools and strategies, businesses can streamline their transition and optimize disaster preparedness with efficiency.

For more detailed guidance and personalized advice, contact us at Cloudride to discover how we can elevate your disaster recovery strategy with AWS. Let's work together to ensure your business remains robust and responsive in the face of adversity, achieving both security and scalability effortlessly.

uti-teva
2024/08
Aug 5, 2024 4:58:16 PM
Disaster Recovery in the Cloud Age: Transitioning to AWS Cloud-Based DR Solutions
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing, DMS, Disaster Recovery

Aug 5, 2024 4:58:16 PM

Disaster Recovery in the Cloud Age: Transitioning to AWS Cloud-Based DR Solutions

The evolution of cloud computing has revolutionized many aspects of IT infrastructure, notably including disaster recovery (DR) strategies. As organizations increasingly migrate to the cloud, understanding the transition from traditional DR solutions to cloud-based methods is critical. This article...

Addressing the CrowdStrike Boot Issue A Temporary Recovery Guide

Last Friday, a seemingly routine update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered an unexpected global IT crisis. This update, aimed at bolstering security protocols, inadvertently caused a critical error that led to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on countless Windows systems worldwide. Among the affected, Israel’s infrastructure faced significant disruptions, impacting hospitals, post offices, and shopping centers—essentially paralyzing essential services.

Interestingly, this incident unfolded just days after we had emphasized the importance of robust disaster recovery planning in our discussions. The timing underscored how crucial proactive measures and preparedness are in mitigating the impacts of such unforeseen disruptions.

What Went Wrong?

The root of the problem lay in an error within the update that interfered with the Windows boot configuration. This flaw prevented computers from booting up normally, disrupting business operations and critical services alike. The immediate effects were chaotic, with institutions like the Shaare Zedek Medical Center and the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv struggling to maintain operational continuity.

The Scope of Impact

The scale of the disruption was vast:

  • Healthcare: Several major hospitals had to switch to manual systems to keep running.
  • Postal Services: Israel Post reported complete halts in service at numerous locations.
  • Retail: Shopping centers and malls saw shutdowns, affecting both retailers and consumers.


How to Recover from the CrowdStrike Boot Issue: A Step-by-Step Guide

In response to this sweeping disruption, IT professionals and system administrators have been diligently working to mitigate the impact. Recognizing the severity of the situation, our CTO at Cloudride developed a detailed, easy-to-follow solution to help our customers recover their systems. We now wish to share this solution more broadly to assist others facing similar challenges.

How to Recover from the CrowdStrike Boot Issue: A Step-by-Step Guide

  1. Ensure Access and Permissions: Verify that you have the necessary administrative rights to access the EC2 instances and EBS volumes involved. Both servers should ideally be in the same VPC and availability zone.

  2. Stopping Server1:
    • Navigate to the EC2 console in your AWS Management Console.
    • Select Server1, go to “Instance State,” and choose “Stop.”
    • Wait until the instance has fully stopped.

  3. Detaching the EBS Volume from Server1:
    • In the EC2 console, go to the "Volumes" section.
    • Identify and select the root EBS volume of Server1, noting its volume ID.
    • Proceed with “Actions” > “Detach Volume.”

  4. Attaching the EBS Volume to Server2:
    • Still in the "Volumes" section, select the previously detached EBS volume.
    • Click on “Actions” > “Attach Volume” and choose Server2 as the destination.
    • Assign it a new drive letter, for instance, D:.

  5. Deleting the Problematic Files:
    • Connect to Server2 via Remote Desktop using its public IP or DNS.
    • Access the attached volume and navigate to the directory containing the
    • CrowdStrike files, likely under D:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike.
    • Delete the specific files (e.g., 'del C-0000291*.sys').

  6. Reattaching the EBS Volume to Server1:
    • Back in the "Volumes" section, detach the volume from Server2.
    • Reattach it to Server1, ensuring to specify it as the root volume ('/dev/sda1').

  7. Restarting Server1:
    • In the EC2 dashboard, select Server1.
    • Opt for “Instance State” > “Start” and allow the system to boot.

This method should effectively resolve the boot issue. It's a good practice to create backups before proceeding with such operations to prevent data loss.

Forward-Looking Reflections

The CrowdStrike incident underscores the critical importance of robust IT systems and the potential ramifications of even minor disruptions in our increasingly digital world. As we move forward, it's essential to learn from these incidents and strengthen our system's resilience against future challenges.

At Cloudride, we are dedicated to supporting you in enhancing your system's security and ensuring a smooth operational flow. For more insights and solutions, feel free to contact us. We are committed to making your cloud journey secure and efficient.

ronen-amity
2024/07
Jul 21, 2024 11:35:21 AM
Addressing the CrowdStrike Boot Issue A Temporary Recovery Guide
AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Jul 21, 2024 11:35:21 AM

Addressing the CrowdStrike Boot Issue A Temporary Recovery Guide

Last Friday, a seemingly routine update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered an unexpected global IT crisis. This update, aimed at bolstering security protocols, inadvertently caused a critical error that led to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on countless Windows systems worldwide. Among...

Cost-Effective Resilience: Mastering AWS Disaster Recovery without Cutting Corners

Robust disaster recovery (DR) plans are essential for businesses to protect their critical data assets, especially with the increasing cyber threats and data breaches happening lately. However, the costs involved in implementing such strategies can be a significant barrier. AWS offers a variety of tools and services designed to help organizations establish effective and cost-efficient disaster recovery solutions. This article will explore the fundamental aspects of utilizing AWS for disaster recovery and discusses ways to optimize costs without compromising on the reliability and effectiveness of your DR approach.

Understanding the Need for Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery is a critical component of any organization's overall business continuity plan (BCP), a term we will look further into moving forward. It involves setting up systems and processes that ensure the availability and integrity of data in the event of a hardware failure, cyberattack, natural disaster, or any other type of disruptive incident. The goal is not just to protect data but also to ensure the quick recovery of operational capabilities.

In AWS, disaster recovery's importance is amplified by the cloud's inherent features such as scalability, flexibility, and global reach. These features allow businesses to implement more complex DR strategies more simply and cost-effectively than would be possible in a traditional data center environment.

Key Timelines in Disaster Recovery

Two important concepts in disaster recovery that are crucial for tailoring a disaster recovery plan to your business needs and capabilities within AWS are RTO and RPO. Understanding these metrics is essential for ensuring efficient and effective data recovery, helping to minimize both downtime and data loss in alignment with specific operational requirements.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective)

This is the maximum tolerable downtime before business impact becomes unacceptable. It sets a target for rapid restoration of operations.

RPO (Recovery Point Objective)

This specifies the oldest backups that can be used to restore operations after a disaster, essentially defining how much data loss is acceptable. For example, an RPO of 30 minutes means backups must be at most 30 minutes old.


Key AWS Services for Disaster Recovery

AWS provides several services that can be utilized to architect a disaster recovery solution. Understanding these services is the first step towards crafting a DR plan that not only meets your business requirements but also aligns with your budget.

  1. Amazon S3 and Glacier: For backing up and archiving data, Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier offer highly durable storage solutions as explained in our previous article about cost efficiency in S3. These services are ideal for data that needs to be accessed quickly and frequently, addressing RTO needs, while Glacier is cost-effective for long-term storage that aligns with longer RPO, accessed less frequently.
  2. AWS Backup: This service offers a centralized place to manage backups across AWS services. It automates and consolidates backup tasks that were previously performed service-by-service, saving time and reducing the risk of missed backups, thus supporting stringent RPOs.
  3. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (EDR): Formerly known as CloudEndure Disaster Recovery, this service minimizes downtime and data loss by providing fast, reliable recovery into AWS. It is particularly useful for critical applications that require RTOs of seconds and RPOs of minutes.
  4. AWS Storage Gateway: This hybrid storage service facilitates the on-premises environment to seamlessly use AWS cloud storage. It's an effective solution for DR because it combines the low cost of cloud storage with the speed and familiarity of on-premises systems, optimizing both RTO and RPO strategies.


Optimizing Costs in AWS Disaster Recovery

Cost optimization is a crucial consideration when deploying disaster recovery solutions in AWS. Here are some strategies to ensure cost efficiency:

  1. Right-Sizing Resources: Avoid over-provisioning by using the right type and size of AWS resources. Utilize AWS Cost Explorer to monitor and forecast spending, aligning resource allocation with your RTO requirements efficiently.
  2. Utilizing Multi-Tiered Storage Solutions: Move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage options like Amazon S3 Infrequent Access or Glacier to cut costs. This approach helps in maintaining RPO by ensuring data availability without excessive expenditure.
  3. Automating Replication and Backups: Automate replication and backups during off-peak hours with AWS services to reduce costs and meet RPOs effectively. This minimizes impact on production workloads and optimizes resource use during less expensive times.
  4. Choosing the Right Region: Select regions with lower storage costs while ensuring compliance with data sovereignty laws. This strategy helps in managing RTO and RPO by storing data cost-effectively in strategically appropriate locations.

Best Practices for Disaster Recovery on AWS

  • Regularly test your DR plan to ensure it meets the required recovery times (RTO) and data recovery points (RPO) your business mandates, at least annually.
  • Leverage AWS’s global infrastructure to position your DR site strategically for cost-effectiveness and swift accessibility, aligning with your RTO needs.
  • Implement automation wherever possible to reduce the manual overhead and potential for human error, supporting consistent RPO and RTO targets.
  • Maximize use of IaC extensively, to streamline deployments and ensure consistency, reducing time and enhancing reproducibility and maintaining defined RTO and RPO.

 

Wrapping Up: Secure Your Future with AWS

AWS offers an array of services that can help design a disaster recovery plan that is not only robust and scalable but also cost-effective. By understanding and utilizing the right AWS tools and best practices, businesses can ensure that they are prepared to handle disasters without excessive spending while keeping their RPO and RTO. This introductory guide lays the groundwork for exploring deeper into specific AWS disaster recovery strategies, which can further enhance both cost efficiency and reliability.

If you're looking to optimize your AWS disaster recovery strategy or need personalized guidance on leveraging AWS for your business needs, contact Cloudride today. Our team is ready to help you ensure that your data is safe and your systems are resilient against disruptions.

ronen-amity
2024/07
Jul 17, 2024 6:36:04 PM
Cost-Effective Resilience: Mastering AWS Disaster Recovery without Cutting Corners
AWS, Cost Optimization, Disaster Recovery

Jul 17, 2024 6:36:04 PM

Cost-Effective Resilience: Mastering AWS Disaster Recovery without Cutting Corners

Robust disaster recovery (DR) plans are essential for businesses to protect their critical data assets, especially with the increasing cyber threats and data breaches happening lately. However, the costs involved in implementing such strategies can be a significant barrier. AWS offers a variety of...

Maximizing AWS S3 Cost Efficiency with Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies

Amazon S3 stands out as one of the most versatile and widely used cloud storage solutions. However, with great power comes the challenge of managing costs effectively. As stored data capacity grows, so do the associated costs, meaning that ensuring the data is managed in a cost effective manner is critical for many organizations. This blog post explores three key features for S3 cost optimization: Amazon S3 Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies. These tools not only simplify the process but also ensure substantial savings without compromising on performance.

The Importance of Cost Optimization in Amazon S3

Amazon S3 is renowned for its scalability, durability, and availability. However, without a proper cost management strategy, the expenses can quickly add up. Cost optimization is not just about reducing expenses; it's about making informed decisions that lead to the best return on investment (ROI). In the context of FinOps (Financial Operations), predictability and efficiency are paramount. By leveraging the right tools and strategies, organizations can achieve significant cost savings while maintaining optimal performance.

Amazon S3 Storage Lens: A Comprehensive View of Your Storage

Amazon S3 Storage Lens is a powerful tool designed to provide a comprehensive view of your storage usage and activity trends in multiple dimensions of cost optimization, security, governance, compliance and more. It offers detailed insights into various aspects of your S3 storage, helping you identify cost-saving opportunities and optimize your storage configuration.

Key Benefits of Amazon S3 Storage Lens

  1. Visibility and Insights: Storage Lens provides visibility into your storage usage and activity across all your accounts. It helps you understand your storage patterns and identify inefficiencies.
  2. Actionable Recommendations: Based on the insights, Storage Lens offers actionable recommendations to optimize your storage costs. These include identifying underutilized storage, recommending appropriate storage classes, and highlighting potential savings.
  3. Customizable Dashboards: You can create customizable dashboards to monitor key metrics and trends. This allows you to track your progress and make data-driven decisions.
  4. Comprehensive Reporting: Storage Lens provides detailed reports on your storage usage, including data on object counts, storage size, access patterns, and more. These reports help you understand the impact of your storage policies and make informed adjustments.


Intelligent Tiering: Automate Cost Savings

Amazon S3 Intelligent Tiering is designed to help you optimize storage costs automatically when data access patterns are unpredictable. It moves data between multiple access tiers based on usage patterns, ensuring you only pay for the access you need.

Key Benefits of Intelligent Tiering

  1. Automatic Cost Optimization: Intelligent Tiering automatically moves data to the most cost-effective storage tier based on changing access patterns. This eliminates the need for manual intervention and ensures optimal cost savings.
  2. No Retrieval Fees: Unlike other storage classes, Intelligent Tiering does not charge retrieval fees when accessing data from the infrequent access tier. This makes it an ideal choice for unpredictable access patterns.
  3. Seamless Integration: Intelligent Tiering integrates seamlessly with your existing S3 workflows, making it easy to implement and manage.


Lifecycle Policies: Efficient Data Management

Lifecycle Policies in Amazon S3 allow you to define rules for transitioning objects to different storage classes or expiring them after a certain period, based on an intelligent policy engine with fine grained filters and rules. This helps you manage your data lifecycle efficiently and reduce storage costs.

Key Benefits of Lifecycle Policies

  1. Automated Data Management: Lifecycle Policies automate the transition of data between storage classes based on predefined rules. This ensures that data is stored in the most cost-effective class without manual intervention.
  2. Cost Reduction: By transitioning data to less expensive storage classes or deleting unnecessary data, you can significantly reduce your storage costs.
  3. Customizable Rules: You can create custom rules based on your specific needs. For example, you can transition data to Glacier for archival purposes after a certain period of inactivity.
  4. Enhanced Data Governance: Lifecycle Policies help you manage data retention and compliance requirements by automatically expiring data that is no longer needed.


Implementing Cost Optimization Strategies

To achieve significant cost savings in Amazon S3, it is essential to implement these strategies effectively. Here are some practical steps to get started:

  1. Analyze Your Storage Usage: Use Amazon S3 Storage Lens to gain visibility into your storage usage and activity. Identify the buckets with the highest savings potential and focus your optimization efforts on them.
  2. Enable Intelligent Tiering: For data with unpredictable access patterns, enable Intelligent Tiering to automate the cost optimization process. This ensures that your data is always stored in the most cost-effective tier.
  3. Monitor and Adjust: Continuously monitor your storage usage and costs using Storage Lens. Adjust your policies and settings as needed to maintain optimal cost efficiency.


The 80-20 Rule in S3 Cost Management

Experience shows that the 80-20 rule often applies to S3 cost management. This principle suggests that approximately 80% of your savings may come from optimizing just 20% of your buckets. By strategically focusing on these key areas, you can achieve substantial cost reductions without getting bogged down in excessive details.

The Importance of Predictability in FinOps

For FinOps professionals, predictability in cost management is crucial. Being able to forecast costs and savings accurately allows for better financial planning and decision-making. The ability to present clear ROI calculations to management justifies cost-saving actions and ensures alignment with organizational goals.

Simplifying the Message

When communicating these strategies to stakeholders or customers, simplicity is key. Instead of overwhelming them with a long list of tips, focus on the most impactful tools: Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies. Providing concrete examples and potential savings can make the message more compelling and easier to understand.

 

In Conclusion

Effective S3 cost optimization doesn't require mastering every aspect of AWS. By leveraging Amazon S3 Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies, you can achieve significant cost savings with minimal effort. These tools provide a clear path to optimizing your S3 storage, ensuring you get the best return on your investment.

For more detailed guidance and personalized advice, contact us at Cloudride. to learn how we can help your business soar to new heights. Let's work together to make your Amazon S3 usage as cost-efficient as possible and achieve significant savings!

nir-peleg
2024/07
Jul 11, 2024 1:50:07 PM
Maximizing AWS S3 Cost Efficiency with Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing

Jul 11, 2024 1:50:07 PM

Maximizing AWS S3 Cost Efficiency with Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies

Amazon S3 stands out as one of the most versatile and widely used cloud storage solutions. However, with great power comes the challenge of managing costs effectively. As stored data capacity grows, so do the associated costs, meaning that ensuring the data is managed in a cost effective manner is...

Our Highlights from the AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit

The AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit was a remarkable event, filled with innovation, learning, and collaboration. It was wonderful to network with our co-pilots at AWS, ecosystem partners, customers, prospects, and even potential job candidates looking to join our high-flying crew.

The energy and innovation at the summit perfectly showcased the exceptional resilience and drive of the Israeli tech community. This summary won't even begin to capture the full scope of the event, especially the atmosphere and the spirit of technological advancement and creativity, but we'll give it a try:

A First-Class Experience

Our booth was designed to transport attendees into the world of aviation and cloud computing. Dressed as pilots, our team took everyone on a first-class journey to the cloud. We handed out exclusive flight cushions, which were a big hit.

Additionally, we offered branded bags of peanuts for grabs, paired with the alcohol served at the conference, to give guests the feeling of flying in business class. Not to mention the delicious food and coffee available. These small touches were designed to create a memorable and unique experience, and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.

Engaging Sessions and Workshops

The summit featured a variety of engaging sessions and workshops designed to provide valuable insights into the latest AWS services and best practices. These sessions covered a range of topics, including API design, serverless architectures, real-time data strategies, and digital transformation, all of which are crucial for businesses looking to leverage modern cloud technologies.

Workshops on building APIs using infrastructure as code and advanced serverless architectures offered practical, hands-on experiences. These sessions provided a deep understanding of key concepts and ensured businesses could directly apply them to enhance operations and ensure a seamless transition to cloud-based solutions.

Hands-On Workshops

Hands-on workshops offered in-depth knowledge and direct interaction with AWS tools, covering API design and cost optimization. The interactive nature of these workshops ensures businesses can apply learned concepts to real-world scenarios, enhancing their cloud technology implementation.

Gamified Learning Events

Gamified learning events provided a unique and engaging way to explore AWS solutions. These events challenged participants to solve real-world technical problems in a dynamic, risk-free environment. Experiences like the Generative AI challenge allowed businesses to experiment with AI technologies, fostering innovative thinking and showcasing AWS tools' practical applications in driving innovation.

Sessions on Data and AI

Sessions focused on the importance of real-time data strategies and their role in driving innovation. Businesses gained insights into the latest AWS data services and their applications in predictive analytics and real-time decision-making. These sessions emphasized leveraging modern data architectures to gain a competitive edge and provided actionable insights on harnessing data for improved performance and customer satisfaction.

Architecting on AWS

Sessions dedicated to best practices for architecting solutions on AWS covered creating resilient multi-region architectures, optimizing performance, and ensuring security and compliance. These insights are invaluable for businesses developing robust and scalable solutions, offering strategies to manage dependencies, data replication, and consistency across regions.

Digital Transformation

Digital transformation was a key theme, with presentations highlighting how AWS Cloud drives innovation and efficiency. Businesses learned about modernizing IT infrastructures with AWS, gaining insights into cost savings, operational efficiencies, increased agility, and innovation. Case studies showcased successful digital transformation journeys, offering practical insights and lessons learned.

Community and Collaboration

The AWS Community panel emphasized the impact of tech communities on developers, highlighting how these communities foster skill development, networking, and collaboration. Discussions demonstrated the value of tech community involvement for professional growth and staying updated with industry trends. The collaborative spirit within these communities reinforced the importance of active engagement and contribution to the tech community.

Ready for Takeoff: What's Next

The AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit was an experience to remember. The event provided valuable learning and networking opportunities, reinforcing the importance of innovation and collaboration in the tech industry.

Is your business ready to take off with the cloud? Partner with Cloudride for expert guidance and cutting-edge solutions tailored to your needs. Let's navigate the future of cloud technology together. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business soar to new heights.

summit2024group-1-1-1

shira-teller
2024/07
Jul 4, 2024 6:47:11 PM
Our Highlights from the AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing, AWS Summit

Jul 4, 2024 6:47:11 PM

Our Highlights from the AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit

The AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit was a remarkable event, filled with innovation, learning, and collaboration. It was wonderful to network with our co-pilots at AWS, ecosystem partners, customers, prospects, and even potential job candidates looking to join our high-flying crew.

The energy and...

Unlocking Business Agility: The Imperative of Evolving to Cloud-Native Architectures

Adapting to change is no longer a choice; it's a necessity for businesses to thrive in today's competitive landscape. As customer expectations evolve and market dynamics shift rapidly, traditional approaches to application development and deployment are struggling to keep up. Monolithic architectures, once the go-to solution for software engineering, now face significant challenges.

Tightly coupled components and a single codebase characterize these monolithic architectures, leading to slow deployment cycles, difficulty scaling individual components, and resistance to adopting new technologies. Furthermore, as applications grow more complex and user-centric, performance bottlenecks, reliability issues, and the inability to meet changing customer needs become prevalent – hindering innovation and posing risks to business continuity and growth.

The Emergence of Cloud-Native Architectures: A Paradigm Shift

Recognizing the limitations of monolithic architectures, forward-thinking organizations are embracing a paradigm shift towards cloud-native architectures. This modern approach, which encompasses microservices and serverless computing, offers a multitude of benefits that directly address the challenges faced by traditional architectures.

Cloud-native architectures thrive in the dynamic and distributed nature of cloud environments. By breaking down monolithic applications into smaller, independently deployable services, organizations can achieve greater agility, faster deployment cycles, and better fault isolation. This modular approach enables teams to develop, test, and deploy individual services independently, reducing the risk of disrupting the entire application and accelerating time-to-market for new features and updates.

Furthermore, cloud-native architectures inherently promote scalability, a critical requirement for businesses operating in today's rapidly evolving markets. With microservices and serverless computing, organizations can scale individual components up or down based on demand, ensuring optimal resource utilization and cost-effectiveness. This level of granular scalability is simply not achievable with monolithic architectures, where scaling often involves scaling the entire application, leading to inefficiencies and increased operational costs.

Unlocking Competitive Advantage with Cloud-Native

Embracing cloud-native architectures is not merely a technological shift; it is a strategic imperative for businesses seeking to remain agile, innovative, and competitive in today's rapidly evolving markets. By breaking free from the constraints of monolithic architectures, organizations can unlock a world of possibilities, enabling them to respond quickly to changing customer needs, rapidly deploy new features and services, and scale their operations seamlessly to meet fluctuating demand.

Moreover, cloud-native architectures foster a culture of innovation and experimentation, empowering teams to rapidly iterate and test new ideas without risking the stability of the entire application. This agility not only drives innovation but also enhances customer satisfaction, as businesses can rapidly adapt to evolving preferences and deliver personalized, high-quality experiences.

Navigating the Cloud-Native Journey

While the benefits of cloud-native architectures are clear, the journey to adoption can be complex and challenging. Transitioning from a monolithic architecture to a cloud-native approach requires careful planning, execution, and a deep understanding of the underlying technologies and best practices.

Organizations must start by conducting a comprehensive assessment of their existing monolithic application, identifying components, dependencies, and potential bottlenecks. This critical step ensures that informed decisions are made about which parts of the application should be refactored or migrated first, minimizing disruption and maximizing efficiency.

Next, teams must identify bounded contexts and candidate microservices, analyzing the codebase to uncover logical boundaries and evaluating the potential benefits of decoupling specific functionalities. This process lays the foundation for a modular, scalable, and resilient architecture.

Establishing a robust cloud-native infrastructure is also crucial, leveraging the right tools and services to optimize performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency. This may involve leveraging container orchestration platforms, serverless computing services, and other cloud-native technologies.

Throughout the journey, organizations must prioritize asynchronous communication patterns, distributed data management, observability and monitoring, security and compliance, and DevOps practices. By implementing best practices and leveraging the right tools and services, businesses can ensure that their cloud-native architecture is resilient, secure, and optimized for continuous improvement.

Partnering for Success

While the rewards of embracing cloud-native architectures are substantial, the path to success can be daunting for organizations navigating this complex transformation alone. This is where partnering with an experienced and trusted cloud service provider can be invaluable.

By leveraging the expertise of a cloud service provider with deep knowledge and hands-on experience in guiding organizations through the process of modernizing their applications and embracing cloud-native architectures, businesses can significantly increase their chances of success. These partners can provide tailored guidance, architectural recommendations, and hands-on support throughout the entire transformation journey, ensuring a smooth transition and maximizing the benefits of cloud-native architectures.

In an era where agility, scalability, and innovation are paramount, embracing cloud-native architectures is no longer an option – it is a necessity. By recognizing the limitations of monolithic architectures and proactively evolving towards a cloud-native approach, businesses can future-proof their operations, drive innovation, and gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing digital landscape.

If you're ready to embark on the journey to cloud-native, consider partnering with an experienced and trusted cloud service provider such as Cloudride. Our expertise and guidance can be invaluable in navigating the complexities of this transformative journey, ensuring a successful transition. Contact us now to unlock the full potential of cloud-native architectures for your business.

ronen-amity
2024/06
Jun 3, 2024 4:22:21 PM
Unlocking Business Agility: The Imperative of Evolving to Cloud-Native Architectures
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing

Jun 3, 2024 4:22:21 PM

Unlocking Business Agility: The Imperative of Evolving to Cloud-Native Architectures

Adapting to change is no longer a choice; it's a necessity for businesses to thrive in today's competitive landscape. As customer expectations evolve and market dynamics shift rapidly, traditional approaches to application development and deployment are struggling to keep up. Monolithic...

The Vital Importance of Enabling MFA for All AWS Users

As cloud computing continues to grow in popularity, the need for robust security measures has never been more critical. One of the most effective ways to enhance the security of your AWS environment is to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users, including both root users and IAM users.

AWS has announced that beginning mid-May of 2024, MFA will be required for the root user of your AWS Organizations management account when accessing the AWS Console. While this new requirement is an important step forward, we strongly recommend that you take action now to enable MFA for all of your AWS users, not just the root user.

Enhancing Security with MFA

MFA is one of the simplest and most effective mechanisms to protect your AWS environment from unauthorized access. By requiring users to provide an additional form of authentication, such as a one-time code from a mobile app or a hardware security key, you can significantly reduce the risk of account compromise, even if a user's password is stolen.

This security feature has become common across many platforms and services. Its adoption is driven by the need to secure access in a variety of digital environments, from online banking to social media platforms, highlighting its effectiveness as a security measure in both personal and professional contexts.

Critical Importance for Root and IAM Users

The  root user of your management account is particularly critical, as it is the key to privileged administrative tasks for all other accounts in your organization. If this account is compromised, the entire AWS environment could be at risk. That's why it's so important to secure the root user with MFA.

But the importance of MFA extends far beyond just the root user. Every IAM user in your AWS environment should also be required to use MFA when accessing the AWS Console or making API calls. This includes developers, administrators, and any other users who have access to your AWS resources.

By  enabling MFA for all of your AWS users, you can help ensure that only authorized individuals are able to access your critical systems and data. This not only enhances your overall security posture, but it also helps you meet important compliance requirements, such as those outlined in the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.

Best Practices for MFA Implementation

Fortunately, enabling MFA in AWS is a relatively straightforward process. You can choose from a variety of MFA options, including virtual authenticator apps, hardware security keys, and even physical security tokens. The AWS Management Console provides a user-friendly interface for configuring and managing MFA devices for both root users and IAM users.

One best practice is to enable multiple MFA devices per user, which can provide an additional layer of redundancy and resilience. This way, if one device is lost, stolen, or becomes unavailable, the user can still access the AWS Console or make API calls using another registered device.

Another important consideration is the user experience. By providing a range of MFA options, you can ensure that your users are able to choose a solution that works best for their needs, whether that's a mobile app, a hardware key, or a physical token. This can help to minimize friction and improve user adoption, which is essential for the success of any security initiative.

Of course, enabling MFA for all of your AWS users is just one part of a comprehensive cloud security strategy. You'll also need to implement other best practices, such as regular security audits, access management controls, and incident response planning.

But by making MFA a top priority for all users, you can take a significant step towards protecting your AWS environment from a wide range of threats. And with the May 2024 deadline looming, there's no better time to get started than right now.

Getting Started

For organizations unsure about how to proceed or lacking in-house expertise, who need help navigating the process of enabling MFA for all AWS users, don't hesitate to reach out to our team of cloud experts at Cloudride. We can provide guidance, support, and tailored solutions to help you enhance the security of your AWS environment and protect your organization from the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats.

Remember, the security of your AWS environment is not just a technical challenge – it's a strategic imperative that can have far-reaching consequences for your business. By taking action now to enable MFA for all of your users, you can help to ensure that your organization is well-positioned to thrive in the cloud for years to come.

nir-peleg
2024/05
May 29, 2024 1:08:27 PM
The Vital Importance of Enabling MFA for All AWS Users
Cloud Security, AWS, Security

May 29, 2024 1:08:27 PM

The Vital Importance of Enabling MFA for All AWS Users

As cloud computing continues to grow in popularity, the need for robust security measures has never been more critical. One of the most effective ways to enhance the security of your AWS environment is to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users, including both root users and IAM...

Evolving Monolithic Architectures to Microservices: A Step-by-Step Guide for AWS

Microservices have emerged as a popular architectural pattern for building modern, scalable, and resilient applications. By breaking down a monolithic application into smaller, independent services, organizations can achieve greater agility, faster deployment cycles, and better fault isolation. However, adopting a microservices architecture can be a complex undertaking, especially when considering the intricate details and best practices required for successful implementation. In this article, we'll explore a step-by-step guide to building microservices on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

Step 1: Design and Decompose Your Application

The first step in adopting microservices is to design and decompose your application into distinct, loosely coupled services. Identify the bounded contexts or functional domains within your application and determine the appropriate service boundaries. This process involves analyzing the application's codebase, identifying logical boundaries, and evaluating the potential benefits of decoupling specific functionalities.

Step 2: Establish a Cloud-Native Infrastructure on AWS

Leverage the appropriate AWS services based on the application's requirements and workload characteristics. Options include AWS Lambda for serverless computing, Amazon EKS and ECR for container orchestration, or EC2 for virtual machines. Choose serverless for event-driven architectures and unpredictable workloads or containers for microservices and complex dependencies. Align the infrastructure choice with the application's usage needs to optimize performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency.

Step 3: Develop and Deploy Microservices

Utilize infrastructure as code (IaC) tools like Terraform or CloudFormation to provision and manage resources. Implement continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines with tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or AWS CodePipeline. Automate configuration management with Ansible or Puppet. Package and distribute application artifacts using tools like Packer or Docker. 

Step 4: Implement Asynchronous Communication Patterns

Microservices communicate with each other using lightweight protocols like HTTP or message queues. Implement asynchronous communication patterns using AWS services like Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) or Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK) to decouple microservices and improve resilience.

Step 5: Implement Distributed Data Management

In a microservices architecture, data management becomes more complex as each microservice may have its own data storage requirements. Leverage AWS services like Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), or Amazon Elasticsearch Service to implement distributed data management strategies that align with your application's needs.

Step 6: Implement Observability and Monitoring

With multiple microservices running in a distributed system, observability and monitoring become critical for maintaining system health and performance. Implement monitoring and logging solutions using AWS services like Amazon CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, and AWS CloudTrail to gain visibility into your microservices and infrastructure.  If you want to implement advanced observability and monitoring, you can go to tools like Datadog and AppDynamics to get a better view of your environment.

Step 7: Implement Security and Compliance

Microservices architectures introduce new security and compliance challenges. Leverage AWS services like AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Secrets Manager, and AWS Security Hub to implement robust security controls, manage secrets and credentials, and ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations. 

Step 8: Automate and Implement DevOps Practices

Embrace DevOps practices and leverage external tools to streamline microservices development and deployment. Implement CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, or CircleCI, integrating with source control systems like GitHub or GitLab. Automate build processes with tools like Maven or Gradle, and containerize applications using Docker.

Utilize configuration management tools like Ansible or Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and deployment. Implement monitoring and observability with solutions like Prometheus, Grafana, and Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK) stack. Leverage external tools like Spinnaker or Argo CD for continuous delivery and automated deployments. Embrace practices like infrastructure as code, automated testing, and continuous monitoring to foster collaboration, agility, and rapid iteration.

Step 9: Continuously Evolve and Improve

Microservices architectures are not a one-time implementation but rather an ongoing journey of continuous improvement. Regularly review and refine your architecture, processes, and tooling to ensure alignment with evolving business requirements and technological advancements.

In Conclusion

By following this step-by-step guide, you can successfully build and deploy microservices on AWS, unlocking the endless benefits. However, navigating the complexities of microservices architectures can be challenging, especially when considering the intricate details and best practices specific to your application and business requirements.

That's where Cloudride, an AWS Certified Partner, can be an invaluable asset. Our team of AWS experts has extensive experience in guiding organizations through the process of adopting microservices architectures on AWS. If you're ready to embrace the power of microservices, we invite you to contact Cloudride today. We understand that every organization's needs are unique, which is why we offer tailored architectural guidance, implementation strategies, and end-to-end support to ensure your success.

ronen-amity
2024/05
May 23, 2024 1:52:07 PM
Evolving Monolithic Architectures to Microservices: A Step-by-Step Guide for AWS
AWS, Cloud Container, microservices, Cloud Computing, IaC

May 23, 2024 1:52:07 PM

Evolving Monolithic Architectures to Microservices: A Step-by-Step Guide for AWS

Microservices have emerged as a popular architectural pattern for building modern, scalable, and resilient applications. By breaking down a monolithic application into smaller, independent services, organizations can achieve greater agility, faster deployment cycles, and better fault isolation....

Best Practices for Upgrading Terraform: Ensure a Smooth Transition to the Latest Version

As the DevOps landscape continues to evolve,  staying current with tools like Terraform, a cornerstone infrastructure-as-code (IaC) platform, is vital. Regularly updating Terraform not only maintains compatibility with the latest cloud innovations but also leverages new features and enhancements for more efficient infrastructure management.

This guide looks into best practices for upgrading Terraform, providing insights into the process and the perks of keeping your system up-to-date.

Establish a Parallel Terraform Environment

Begin by setting up a parallel Terraform environment. This method allows you to run the newest version alongside the existing one, facilitating thorough testing without disrupting your current setup. This safe, controlled testing ground helps pinpoint any compatibility issues, enabling adjustments before fully transitioning.

Update Your Resources

Once your parallel environment is operational, align your resources with the updates in the new Terraform version. Terraform's frequent updates often include modifications to providers, resources, and functionalities.

Diligently review the release notes and update your configurations accordingly. This might mean modifying resource attributes, phasing out deprecated options, or incorporating new functionalities to optimize your setup. Testing these changes in the parallel environment is crucial to ensure they perform as expected without adverse effects.

Utilize Terraform's Built-in Upgrade Command

The terraform provider upgrade command is a useful tool in the upgrading arsenal. It automatically updates the provider versions in your configurations to ensure compatibility with the new Terraform release. While this tool simplifies the process, some complex scenarios might require manual adjustments to ensure all aspects of your infrastructure are up-to-date.

For example, there could be a mandatory argument to be used on a specific Terraform resource, while after upgrading to a newer version it is no longer necessary, or even the opposite - this has to be changed manually.

Implement Continuous Monitoring and Upgrading

Terraform updates are not merely occasional adjustments but should be part of a continuous improvement strategy. Regular updates help leverage the latest functionalities, bug fixes, and security enhancements, minimizing compatibility issues and security risks.

Integrating regular updates into your DevOps workflows or setting up automated systems to handle these updates can keep your Terraform infrastructure proactive and updated.

The Benefits of Upgrading Terraform

  • Compatibility with New Cloud Services: New cloud services and features continually emerge, and keeping Terraform updated ensures that your configurations are compatible, allowing you to leverage the latest technological advancements.
  • Enhanced Functionality and Performance: Each update brings enhancements that improve the functionality, performance, and reliability of managing your infrastructure.
  • Security Improvements: Regular updates include critical security patches that protect your infrastructure from vulnerabilities.
  • Streamlined Workflows: Advances in Terraform's tooling and automation streamline the upgrade process, reducing the potential for errors and manual interventions.

Leverage Expert Terraform Guidance

If upgrading Terraform seems daunting, our team of experts is ready to assist. We offer comprehensive support through every step—from establishing a parallel environment to continuous monitoring—to ensure your infrastructure is efficient, secure, and leverages the full capabilities of the latest Terraform versions.

Upgrading Terraform is a strategic investment in your infrastructure’s future readiness. Reach out to our Terraform specialists to seamlessly transition to the latest version and optimize your cloud resource management.

segev-borshan
2024/05
May 16, 2024 4:06:31 PM
Best Practices for Upgrading Terraform: Ensure a Smooth Transition to the Latest Version
Cloud Compliances, Terraform, Cloud Computing, IaC

May 16, 2024 4:06:31 PM

Best Practices for Upgrading Terraform: Ensure a Smooth Transition to the Latest Version

As the DevOps landscape continues to evolve, staying current with tools like Terraform, a cornerstone infrastructure-as-code (IaC) platform, is vital. Regularly updating Terraform not only maintains compatibility with the latest cloud innovations but also leverages new features and enhancements for...

Mastering Cloud Network Architecture with Transit Gateways

Efficient cloud networking is essential for deploying robust, scalable applications. Utilizing advanced cloud services like AWS Lambda for serverless operations, Elastic Beanstalk for seamless Platform as a Service (PaaS) capabilities, and AWS Batch for container orchestration significantly reduces the infrastructure management burden. These services streamline the deployment process: developers simply upload their code, and AWS manages the underlying servers and backend processes, providing a seamless integration between development and deployment.

Strategic Application Deployment in AWS

The strategic deployment of applications on AWS, using separate AWS accounts for each environment, offers significant advantages. This approach goes beyond enhancing security by isolating resources; it also boosts management efficiency by clearly segregating development and production environments into distinct accounts. Such segregation shields production systems from the potential risks associated with developmental changes and testing, thereby preserving system integrity and ensuring consistent uptime. This method of environment segregation ensures that administrative boundaries are well-defined, which simplifies access controls and reduces the scope of potential impact from operational errors.

Advanced Networking Configurations and Their Impact

Implementing sophisticated network setups that include both public and private subnets, equipped with essential components such as Internet Gateways, NAT Gateways, Elastic IPs, and Transit Gateways, enhances network availability and security. These configurations, while beneficial, come with higher operational costs. For instance, the cost of maintaining NAT Gateways escalates with the increase in data volume processed and transferred, which can be significant in complex network architectures. Additionally, incorporating Transit Gateways facilitates more efficient data flow across different VPCs and on-premise connections, further solidifying the network's robustness but also adding to the overall expense due to their pricing structure based on the data throughput and number of connections.

The Essential Role of NAT Gateways

NAT Gateways play a pivotal role in securely accessing the internet from private subnets, shielding them from the security vulnerabilities commonly associated with public subnets. These gateways enable secure and controlled access to external AWS services via VPC endpoints, effectively preventing direct exposure to the public internet and enhancing overall network security.

Solution: Management Account/VPCs

To reduce the complexity and overhead associated with managing individual NAT Gateways across multiple AWS accounts, adopting a landing zone methodology is highly advisable. This approach involves setting up a centralized management account that acts as a hub, housing shared services such as NAT Gateways and, when applicable, site-to-site VPN connections. This facilitates secure and streamlined connections between all other accounts in the organization and on-premise, ensuring they align with predefined configurations and best practices. This strategic implementation not only optimizes resource utilization but also simplifies the management and scalability of network architectures across different accounts, enhancing overall security and operational efficiency.

This kind of a VPC will hold all of our shared resources, like Active Directory Instances, Antivirus Orchestrators and more We will use it as a centralized location to manage and control all of our applications in the cloud, all the VPC will connect to it using a private connection such as peering or VPN

VPC Peering vs. Transit Gateway Routing

Deep Dive into Management Account Configuration

A Management Account encompasses critical shared resources such as firewalls, Active Directory instances, and antivirus orchestrators. It serves as the administrative center for all cloud applications, connected through secure networking methods such as site-to-site VPNs, aligning with the landing zone methodology. This centralized management not only simplifies administrative tasks but also significantly enhances the security of the entire network. By splitting environments between accounts, we ensure a clean separation of duties and resources, further enhancing operational control and security compliance.

The Advantages of Transit Gateways

Transit Gateways are crucial for enabling comprehensive data transfer between accounts and on-premise networks, providing a more scalable and flexible solution than traditional methods. They support a variety of connection types, including Direct Connect, site-to-site VPNs, and peering, and feature dynamic and static routing capabilities within their route tables to efficiently manage data flows. This integration is particularly effective in environments where landing zone strategies are employed, allowing for better scalability and isolation between different operational environments.

Cost Analysis and Transit Gateway Utilization

Although implementing Transit Gateways incurs costs based on the number of attachments and the volume of traffic processed, the benefits in operational efficiency and security often justify these expenses. These gateways serve as centralized routers and network hubs, facilitating seamless integration across the network architecture of multiple accounts and significantly improving the manageability and scalability of cloud operations. The use of landing zones further optimizes cost management by aligning with AWS best practices, potentially reducing unnecessary expenditures and improving resource allocation.

Final Thoughts

Utilizing Transit Gateways within a structured landing zone framework offers a formidable solution for managing complex cloud environments across multiple accounts. This strategic approach not only enhances operational efficiency and bolsters security but also ensures a scalable infrastructure well-suited to support modern application demands. As cloud technologies continue to evolve, staying informed and consulting with specialists like Cloudride provides essential insights for leveraging these advancements.

For expert guidance on cloud migration, securing and optimizing your network architecture, and implementing effective landing zone strategies, do not hesitate to contact us. Our team specializes in both public and private cloud migrations, aiming to facilitate sustainable business growth and enhanced cloud infrastructure performance.

ronen-amity
2024/05
May 8, 2024 6:17:52 PM
Mastering Cloud Network Architecture with Transit Gateways
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing

May 8, 2024 6:17:52 PM

Mastering Cloud Network Architecture with Transit Gateways

Efficient cloud networking is essential for deploying robust, scalable applications. Utilizing advanced cloud services like AWS Lambda for serverless operations, Elastic Beanstalk for seamless Platform as a Service (PaaS) capabilities, and AWS Batch for container orchestration significantly reduces...

Cloud-Driven Success: How Startups Thrive with AWS

With a cloud computing-based solution, you can set up your systems and scale them up or down depending on your needs. This allows you to plan for peak loads or unexpected surges in traffic. In this article, we will discuss why AWS is a game changer for startups, how AWS cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem, and, more importantly, why it makes sense to go with AWS as your primary infrastructure provider.

Powering Startups With the Cloud

The cloud is a game changer for startups. It's the best way to ensure your company's success by ensuring that you are prepared for anything, from growth spurts and technical difficulties to business expansion.

AWS has revolutionized the startup ecosystem by providing scalable and flexible technology at an affordable price. This makes it easy for all kinds of companies—from enterprise businesses, nonprofits, and small businesses to large enterprises—to take advantage of what the cloud offers.

As a CTO who deals with many systems and platforms daily, it is important to have access to reliable infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or software-as-a-service (SaaS) like the Marketplace in AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

These services allow you to help customers perform better and free up time so that you can focus more on improving processes internally rather than worrying about server maintenance tasks such as manually provisioning instances or performing upgrades manually when they become necessary.

 

How Cloud Computing Has Revolutionized the Startup Ecosystem

Cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem by helping entrepreneurs to focus on their core business, customers, employees, and products. The cloud allows you to run applications in a shared environment so that your infrastructure costs are spread across multiple users rather than being borne by you alone. This allows startups to scale up quickly without worrying about being able to afford the necessary hardware upfront.

In addition, it also provides them access to new technology such as AI and machine learning which they would not have been able to afford on their own. This helps them innovate faster and stay ahead of the competition while enjoying reduced costs simultaneously!

 

Reasons for AWS for Startups

There are many reasons why a startup should consider using AWS.

AWS is reliable and secure: The Cloud was built for just that, to ensure that your critical data is safe, backed up, and accessible from anywhere. It's not just about technology. Amazon provides excellent customer support.

Cost-effective: There are many benefits when pricing as well; you pay only for what you use hourly, so there are no long-term commitments or upfront fees. You also get access to all features that come with an AWS operating system, including backups, monitoring systems, and security tools.

 

How AWS Is a Game Changer

Cost savings: AWS saves money by running your applications on a highly scalable, pay-as-you-go infrastructure. Using AWS is typically lower than maintaining your own data center, allowing you to focus on the business rather than the infrastructure aspects of running an application.

Speed: When you use AWS, it takes just minutes to spin up an instance and start creating your application on their platform. That's compared to building out servers and networking equipment in the house, which could take weeks or even months!

Change implementation: As soon as you make a change, it gets reflected instantly across all environments – staging or production – so there's no need for error-prone manual processes or lengthy approvals before rolling out updates. This makes it easier for teams within companies that use this service because they don't have to wait around until someone else finishes making changes before moving forward (which doesn't happen often).

 

AWS Global Startup Program

The AWS Global Startup program is an initiative that provides startups access to AWS credits and support for a year. The program assigns Partner Development Managers (PDMs) to each startup, who will help them use AWS services and best practices. 

PDMs help startups with building and deploying their applications on AWS. They can also provide valuable assistance for startups that are looking for partners in the AWS Partner Network or want to learn more about marketing and sales strategies.

 

Integration With Marketplace Tools

Amazon enables startups to integrate their applications with Marketplace Tools. This set of APIs enables startups to integrate their applications with Amazon's marketplaces. Marketplace Tools are available for all AWS regions and service types, enabling you to choose the right tools for your use case.


Fast Scalability

When you're building a business from scratch and don't have any funding, every second counts—and cloud computing speeds up your development process. You can get to market faster than ever before and focus on your product or service and its customers. You don't need to worry about managing servers or storing data in-house; AWS does all this for you at scale.

This frees up time for other important tasks like meeting with investors, hiring new employees, researching competitors' services (or competitors themselves), or perfecting marketing copy.

Conclusion

The cloud's flexibility is unparalleled, seamlessly adapting to your business's unique needs. AWS provides a vast array of services tailored to distinguish your startup and accelerate its success. As an AWS SMB Partner with extensive experience supporting startups, Cloudride offers expert guidance to optimize these resources effectively. Don't wait, contact Cloudride today and start harnessing the transformative power of AWS cloud computing for your startup

ronen-amity
2024/04
Apr 30, 2024 9:10:55 AM
Cloud-Driven Success: How Startups Thrive with AWS
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing

Apr 30, 2024 9:10:55 AM

Cloud-Driven Success: How Startups Thrive with AWS

With a cloud computing-based solution, you can set up your systems and scale them up or down depending on your needs. This allows you to plan for peak loads or unexpected surges in traffic. In this article, we will discuss why AWS is a game changer for startups, how AWS cloud computing has...

Unlock AWS Database Performance & Efficiency in 2024 | Cloudride

As we navigate the ever-evolving cloud computing landscape in 2024, the strategic selection and optimization of database services have become pivotal to driving business success. Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to lead the charge, offering a plethora of database solutions that empower organizations to build cutting-edge applications, unlock new insights, and stay ahead of the curve.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the latest advancements in the AWS database ecosystem, highlighting the key services and capabilities that can elevate your cloud strategy in the year ahead.

Navigating the Evolving AWS Database Landscape

AWS has consistently expanded and refined its database offerings, catering to the diverse needs of modern businesses. Let's review the standout services that are shaping the future of data management in the cloud.

 

Amazon RDS: Streamlining Relational Database Management

In the realm of AWS database offerings, the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) remains a pivotal solution, simplifying the deployment, operation, and scaling of relational databases in the cloud environment. As we approach 2024, RDS is poised to undergo significant enhancements, solidifying its position as the premier choice for enterprises seeking a reliable, fully managed relational database solution.

One of the notable updates is the introduction of new database engine versions, ensuring that RDS stays at the forefront of technological advancements. Additionally, enhanced security features and advanced monitoring capabilities will be implemented, further strengthening the service's robustness and providing organizations with greater visibility and control over their database operations.

RDS will continue to support a comprehensive range of eight popular database engines, including Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition, Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition, RDS for PostgreSQL, RDS for MySQL, RDS for MariaDB, RDS for SQL Server, RDS for Oracle, and RDS for Db2. This diverse offering ensures that organizations can seamlessly migrate their existing databases or choose the engine that best aligns with their specific requirements.

Furthermore, the Amazon Aurora database, renowned for its high-performance and compatibility with MySQL and PostgreSQL, is set to revolutionize the cloud database landscape with the introduction of Aurora Serverless v2. This innovative offering will enable organizations to seamlessly scale their database capacity up and down based on demand, optimizing costs while ensuring optimal performance for their most critical applications. This dynamic scalability will empower businesses to respond swiftly to fluctuating workloads, ensuring efficient resource utilization and cost-effectiveness.

 

Amazon DynamoDB: Scaling New Heights in NoSQL

Amazon DynamoDB has solidified its position as the go-to NoSQL database service, delivering unparalleled performance, scalability, and resilience. In 2024, DynamoDB has introduced several game-changing features, including support for global tables, on-demand backup and restore, and the ability to run analytical queries directly on DynamoDB data using Amazon Athena. These advancements empower organizations to build truly scalable, low-latency applications that can seamlessly adapt to changing business requirements.

 

Amazon Redshift: Powering Data-Driven Insights

Amazon Redshift, the cloud-native data warehousing service, has undergone a significant transformation in 2024. The launch of Redshift Serverless has revolutionized the way organizations can leverage the power of petabyte-scale data analytics, eliminating the need for infrastructure management and enabling on-demand, cost-effective access to Redshift's industry-leading performance.

 

Amazon ElastiCache: Accelerating Real-Time Applications

Amazon ElastiCache, the in-memory data store service, has solidified its position as a crucial component in building low-latency, high-throughput applications. In 2024, ElastiCache has expanded its support for additional open-source engines, such as Memcached 1.6 and Redis 6.2, empowering organizations to leverage the latest advancements in in-memory computing.

 

Amazon Neptune: Unlocking the Power of Graph Databases

Amazon Neptune, the fully managed graph database service, has continued to evolve, introducing support for the latest versions of Apache TinkerPop and W3C SPARQL. These advancements have made it easier than ever for organizations to build and deploy applications that leverage the power of connected data, unlocking new insights and driving innovation.

 

Optimizing Your Cloud Database Strategy in 2024

As you navigate the ever-expanding AWS database ecosystem, it's essential to align your choices with your organization's specific requirements and long-term goals. Here are some key considerations to keep in mind:

  • Workload-Centric Approach: Evaluate your application's performance, scalability, and data management needs to identify the most suitable database service.
    Cost Optimization: Leverage the latest cost-optimization features, such as Amazon Redshift Serverless and Aurora Serverless v2, to ensure your database infrastructure aligns with your budget and business objectives.
  • High Availability and Resilience: Prioritize database services that offer built-in high availability, disaster recovery, and data durability features to safeguard your mission-critical data.
  • Seamless Integration: Explore the integration capabilities of AWS database services with other cloud-native offerings, such as AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Athena and AWS OpenSearch, to build comprehensive, end-to-end solutions. 
  • Future-Proofing: Stay informed about the latest advancements in the AWS database ecosystem and plan for the evolving needs of your business, ensuring your cloud infrastructure remains agile and adaptable.


Partnering for Success in 2024 and Beyond

The AWS database ecosystem continues to evolve, offering a comprehensive suite of services that can empower your organization to build, operate, and scale mission-critical applications with unparalleled performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. By staying informed about the latest advancements and aligning your database strategy with your specific business needs, you can unlock new opportunities for growth, innovation, and competitive advantage in 2024 and beyond.

Our team of cloud experts can help you assess your database requirements, design optimal cloud-native architectures, and implement tailored solutions that unlock the full potential of AWS database services .To learn more about how Cloudride can support your journey into the future of cloud-based data management, we invite you to explore our other resources or  schedule a consultation  with our team. Together, we'll chart a course that positions your organization for long-term success.

ronen-amity
2024/04
Apr 16, 2024 1:36:14 PM
Unlock AWS Database Performance & Efficiency in 2024 | Cloudride
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Native, Database, Data Lake, NoSQL

Apr 16, 2024 1:36:14 PM

Unlock AWS Database Performance & Efficiency in 2024 | Cloudride

As we navigate the ever-evolving cloud computing landscape in 2024, the strategic selection and optimization of database services have become pivotal to driving business success. Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to lead the charge, offering a plethora of database solutions that empower...

Slash Your AWS Networking Costs with VPC Endpoints

Efficiently managing networking costs without compromising on security is a significant challenge in cloud infrastructure design. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Endpoints provide a streamlined solution to this issue, offering secure, direct connections to AWS services that bypass expensive, traditional data transfer methods. This piece delves into the mechanics and benefits of VPC Endpoints, highlighting their crucial role in reducing operational overhead while maintaining the integrity of private subnet communications.

When designing your AWS infrastructure, it’s essential to consider the costs associated with data transfer, particularly when using private subnets. Many customers rely on NAT Gateway to enable communication between resources in private subnets and AWS services, but this convenience comes at a significant cost. By leveraging AWS VPC Endpoints, you can dramatically reduce your networking expenses while maintaining the security and isolation of your private subnets.

The High Price of NAT Gateway

NAT Gateway is a solution for allowing resources in private subnets to communicate with AWS services. However, it comes with a hefty price tag. AWS charges $0.045 per GB of data processed by NAT Gateway. This may not seem like much, but it can quickly accumulate, especially if you have substantial volumes of data being transferred between your private resources and AWS services.

 

Real-World Example: Networking Cost Savings with VPC Endpoints

Let's consider an example to showcase the networking cost savings achieved by using VPC Endpoints. Imagine you have an application running on an EC2 instance in a private subnet. The application needs to communicate with AWS services such as S3 and DynamoDB.
The application transfers 500 GB of data to S3 and 200 GB of data to DynamoDB per day.

Without VPC Endpoints, you would need to use a NAT Gateway to enable the EC2 instance to communicate with S3 and DynamoDB. The monthly networking costs with NAT Gateway would be:

- NAT Gateway: (500 GB + 200 GB) * 30 days * $0.045 per GB = $945
Total monthly networking cost with NAT Gateway: $945

Now, let’s explore how VPC Endpoints can significantly reduce these networking costs:

 

Option 1: S3 VPC Endpoint:

  • Create an S3 VPC Endpoint to establish a direct connection between your VPC and S3.
  • Eliminates NAT Gateway costs for S3 traffic.
  • No data transfer charges between EC2 and S3 within the same region.

Option 2: DynamoDB VPC Endpoint:

  • Create a DynamoDB VPC Endpoint to establish a direct connection between your VPC and DynamoDB.
  • Eliminates NAT Gateway costs for DynamoDB traffic.
  • No data transfer charges between EC2 and DynamoDB within the same region.


With VPC Endpoints, the monthly networking costs for accessing S3 and DynamoDB would be:

  • S3 VPC Endpoint: $0
  • DynamoDB VPC Endpoint: $0

Total monthly networking cost with VPC Endpoints: $0


By using VPC Endpoints instead of NAT Gateway, you save $945 per month on networking costs, a 100% reduction!

Conclusion

AWS VPC Endpoints offer a cost-effective solution for enabling communication between resources in private subnets and AWS services. By eliminating the need for an expensive NAT Gateway, VPC Endpoints can lead to substantial savings on your AWS networking expenses. As illustrated in the real-world example, utilizing VPC Endpoints for services like S3 and DynamoDB can result in significant cost reductions. When architecting your AWS environment, consider implementing VPC Endpoints for supported services to optimize networking costs without sacrificing security or performance.

For optimal cloud efficiency and security, consider partnering with experts like Cloudride. Our expertise in deploying VPC Endpoints and other cloud optimization strategies can help unlock even greater savings and performance gains, ensuring your infrastructure not only meets current needs but is also poised for future growth. Contact us today to explore how your organization can benefit from tailored cloud solutions.

tal-helfgott
2024/04
Apr 4, 2024 1:31:17 PM
Slash Your AWS Networking Costs with VPC Endpoints
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cloud Native, Transit Gateway, Cloud Computing

Apr 4, 2024 1:31:17 PM

Slash Your AWS Networking Costs with VPC Endpoints

Efficiently managing networking costs without compromising on security is a significant challenge in cloud infrastructure design. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Endpoints provide a streamlined solution to this issue, offering secure, direct connections to AWS services that bypass expensive,...

Unlock Cloud Efficiency: Migrating to Karpenter on Amazon EKS

Recognizing the imperative for efficiency in today’s digital landscape, businesses are constantly on the lookout for methods to enhance their cloud resource management. Within this context, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) distinguishes itself as a robust platform for orchestrating containerized applications at scale. However, the real challenge lies in optimizing infrastructure management, especially in scaling worker nodes responsively to fluctuating demands.

Traditionally, the Cluster Autoscaler (CA) has been the go-to solution for this task. It dynamically adjusts the number of worker nodes in an EKS cluster based on resource needs. While effective, a more efficient and cost-effective solution has risen to prominence: Karpenter.

Karpenter represents a paradigm shift in compute provisioning for Kubernetes clusters, designed to fully harness the cloud's elasticity with fast and intuitive provisioning. Unlike CA, which relies on predefined node groups, Karpenter crafts nodes tailored to the specific needs of each workload, enhancing resource utilization and reducing costs.

Embarking on the Karpenter Journey: A Step-by-Step Guide

Prepare Your EKS Environment:

To kickstart your journey with Karpenter, prepare your EKS cluster and AWS account for integration. This step is crucial and now simplified with our custom-developed Terraform module. This module is designed to deploy all necessary components, including IAM roles, policies, and the dedicated node group for the Karpenter pod, efficiently and without hassle. Leveraging Terraform for this setup not only ensures a smooth initiation but also maintains consistency and scalability in your cloud infrastructure.

Configure Karpenter:

Integrate Karpenter with your EKS cluster by updating the aws-auth ConfigMap and tagging subnets and security groups appropriately, granting Karpenter the needed permissions and resource visibility. 

Deploy Karpenter:

Implement Karpenter in your EKS cluster using Helm charts. This step deploys the Karpenter controller and requisite custom resource definitions (CRDs), breathing life into Karpenter within your ecosystem.

Customize Karpenter to Your Needs:

Adjusting Karpenter to align with your specific requirements involves two critical components: NodePool and NodeClass.In the following sections, we'll dive deeper into each of these components, shedding light on their roles and how they contribute to the customization and efficiency of your cloud environment.

NodePool – What It Is and Why It Matters

A NodePool in the context of Karpenter is a set of rules that define the characteristics of the nodes to be provisioned. It includes specifications such as the size, type, and other attributes of the nodes. By setting up a NodePool, you dictate the conditions under which Karpenter will create new nodes, allowing for a tailored approach that matches your workload requirements. This customization ensures that the nodes provisioned are well-suited for the tasks they're intended for, leading to more efficient resource usage.

NodeClass – Tailoring Node Specifications

NodeClass goes hand in hand with NodePool, detailing the AWS-specific configurations for the nodes. This includes aspects like instance types, Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), and even networking settings. By configuring NodeClass, you provide Karpenter with a blueprint of how each node should be structured in terms of its underlying AWS resources. This level of detail grants you granular control over the infrastructure, ensuring that each node is not just fit for purpose but also optimized for cost and performance.

Through the thoughtful configuration of NodePool and NodeClass, you can fine-tune how Karpenter provisions nodes for your EKS cluster, ensuring a perfect match for your application's needs and operational efficiencies.

Advancing Further: Next Steps in Your Karpenter Journey

Transition Away from Cluster Autoscaler:

With Karpenter operational, you can phase out the Cluster Autoscaler, transferring node provisioning duties to Karpenter.

Verify and Refine:

Test Karpenter with various workloads and observe the automatic node provisioning. Continually refine your NodePools and NodeClasses for optimal resource use and cost efficiency.

The Impact of Karpenter's Adaptive Scaling

The transition to Karpenter opens up a new realm of cloud efficiency. Its just-in-time provisioning aligns with the core principle of cloud computing - pay for what you use when you use it. This approach is particularly advantageous for workloads with variable resource demands, potentially leading to significant cost savings.

Moreover, Karpenter's nuanced control over node configurations empowers you to fine-tune your infrastructure, matching the unique requirements of your applications and maximizing performance.

Your Partner in Kubernetes Mastery: Cloudride

Navigating the complexities of Kubernetes and cloud optimization can be overwhelming. That's where Cloudride steps in. As your trusted partner, we're dedicated to guiding you through every facet of the Kubernetes ecosystem. Our expertise lies in enhancing both the security and efficiency of your containerized applications, ensuring you maximize your return on investment.

Embrace the future of Kubernetes with confidence and strategic advantage. Connect with us to explore how we can support your journey to Karpenter and help you unlock the full potential of cloud efficiency for your organization.

inbal-granevich
2024/03
Mar 25, 2024 4:21:06 PM
Unlock Cloud Efficiency: Migrating to Karpenter on Amazon EKS
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes, Karpenter

Mar 25, 2024 4:21:06 PM

Unlock Cloud Efficiency: Migrating to Karpenter on Amazon EKS

Recognizing the imperative for efficiency in today’s digital landscape, businesses are constantly on the lookout for methods to enhance their cloud resource management. Within this context, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) distinguishes itself as a robust platform for orchestrating...

Unlock Business Potential with Kubernetes: Guide to Economic Benefits

Businesses are on a perpetual quest for operational streamlining, cost reduction, and heightened efficiency. Kubernetes (K8s) steps into this quest as a formidable ally, wielding its power as a transformative technology. As an open-source container orchestration system, Kubernetes has redefined application deployment, management, and scaling, offering robust and cost-effective solutions for organizations across the spectrum. This technological force has become an essential instrument for businesses looking to gain a competitive edge in today’s dynamic market.

The Power of Pay-as-You-Go: Scaling on Demand

One of the most significant advantages of Kubernetes is its ability to leverage a Pay-as-You-Go (PAYG) model for container services. This approach shifts the responsibility of capacity planning from your business to the service provider, allowing you to scale effortlessly without the burden of finding the most efficient hosting solution or optimizing resource allocation.

With Kubernetes, you can seamlessly scale up or down based on your evolving needs, ensuring that you only pay for the resources you actually consume. This adaptability not only saves costs but also ensures that your business is always prepared to meet changing market demands, giving you a competitive edge.

Maximizing Resource Utilization: The Key to Financial Efficiency

Resource utilization is at the core of Kubernetes' financial advantage. By ensuring that each asset is utilized to its maximum potential, Kubernetes makes the costs per container server unit more budget-friendly. This is achieved through continuous monitoring and dynamic scaling, which guarantee that your resources are always put to the best use.

Kubernetes excels in tackling the challenging aspect of resource maximization, eliminating waste and optimizing your investments. 

Precision Resource Balancing: A Fine-Tuned Approach

Kubernetes shines in its ability to balance resource allocation with precision. It effectively manages computing resources, ensuring that each application receives exactly what it needs – no more, no less. This balance means you avoid over-provisioning, which leads to wasted resources, and under-provisioning, which can result in performance issues.

By dynamically adjusting resources to fit each application's requirements, Kubernetes not only optimizes usage but also translates into direct savings for every dollar spent on infrastructure.

Minimizing Downtime: Safeguarding Revenue and Customer Satisfaction

Downtime is a major adversary for businesses, leading to lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction, and operational hiccups. Kubernetes' innate resilience and fault tolerance play a crucial role in minimizing downtime. It allows for deployments across multiple nodes, offering redundancy and resilience. When a node fails, Kubernetes swiftly redirects the workload, enhancing application reliability and reducing the need for manual interventions. This rapid response capability not only boosts operational agility but also safeguards against revenue loss and maintains customer satisfaction – two critical factors that directly impact your bottom line.

Accelerating Time-to-Market: A Competitive Edge

In today's fast-paced business environment, the ability to rapidly deploy applications and updates can be a game-changer. Kubernetes excels in this regard, enabling businesses to quickly adapt to market changes and customer needs.

By streamlining the deployment process, Kubernetes allows you to introduce new features, services, or products to the market at an accelerated pace. This agility not only translates into faster revenue generation but also positions your business as a leader in your industry, potentially dominating the market and leaving competitors behind.

Return on Investment (ROI): The Economic Litmus Test

When assessing Kubernetes' economic impact, Return on Investment (ROI) is a crucial metric. Kubernetes offers tangible savings by optimizing resources, minimizing downtime, and accelerating time-to-market. These savings directly contribute to infrastructure cost reduction, whether in the cloud or on-premises, marking a positive ROI. Additionally, by reducing downtime and enabling rapid deployments, Kubernetes safeguards against revenue loss, reputational damage, and customer churn – all of which can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

Moreover, the competitive edge gained through Kubernetes' agility can lead to increased market share, customer acquisition, and revenue growth, further boosting your ROI. By leveraging Kubernetes, businesses can not only cut costs but also unlock new revenue streams and monetization opportunities, solidifying their position in the market.

The Catalyst to Kubernetes-Driven Economic Growth

Adopting Kubernetes transcends mere technological advancement; it's a strategic move with profound economic implications. By optimizing resources, reducing downtime, accelerating time-to-market, and fostering agility, Kubernetes positions businesses for financial prosperity and long-term success. Whether you're a startup or an established enterprise, embracing Kubernetes can redefine your organization's economic landscape, propelling you towards greater profitability and sustained growth.

At Cloudride, we specialize in leveraging Kubernetes to help companies transform economically. Our team of experts is dedicated to helping you unlock the full potential of this powerful technology, ensuring that you maximize its benefits and stay ahead of the curve. Reach out to us today to discover how Kubernetes can revolutionize your business operations and drive sustainable economic growth.

segev-borshan
2024/03
Mar 19, 2024 4:23:56 PM
Unlock Business Potential with Kubernetes: Guide to Economic Benefits
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes

Mar 19, 2024 4:23:56 PM

Unlock Business Potential with Kubernetes: Guide to Economic Benefits

Businesses are on a perpetual quest for operational streamlining, cost reduction, and heightened efficiency. Kubernetes (K8s) steps into this quest as a formidable ally, wielding its power as a transformative technology. As an open-source container orchestration system, Kubernetes has redefined...

Mastering the Art of Kubernetes Performance Optimization

Over the recent years, Kubernetes has emerged as the ‘de facto’ standard for orchestrating containers. It enables developers to manage applications running in a cluster of nodes by allowing them to handle, deploy, and scale applications, making the management of applications in a distributed environment much easier. However, as with any system, optimization of Kubernetes is necessary for maximum efficiency. This practical manual will take a close look at the strategies for optimizing Kubernetes, with the goal of getting the most out of this container orchestration tool.


Resource Limits and Requests

Resource management is the foundation for Kubernetes optimization. Implementing resource limits and requests in individual containers within pods makes it possible to control the effective allocation and utilization of computing resources.

Resource requests define the minimum CPU and memory needed for a container’s run, limits define the maximum CPU and memory a container might consume. Finding a reasonable balance is necessary; requests that are set too low can cause a performance decrease, while too-generous requests may lead to a waste of resources. Also, if the limits are set too low, containers may be throttled, whereas setting limits too high may result in resource contention and instability.

Resource utilization should be optimized by monitoring the application performance and applying necessary adjustments to the resource limits and requests. Tools such as Prometheus and Grafana provide vital information on resource utilization trends and allow you to choose the right allocation decisions accordingly.


Pod Affinity and Anti-Affinity

Pod affinity and anti-affinity allow you to control how pods are scheduled onto nodes inside your Kubernetes cluster. Pod affinity enables you to establish policies for placing pods on nodes with particular traits, including the presence of specific labels or other pods. Alternatively, pod anti-affinity guarantees that pods are not placed with others that have particular qualities.

Proper use of pod affinity and anti-affinity will allow you to improve the performance and resilience of your Kubernetes cluster. For instance, you can use affinity rules to make sure that related pods are scheduled near each other, reducing network latency and the availability of communication between their components. In contrast, anti-affinity rules ensure the distribution of pods across various nodes, thereby improving fault tolerance and availability.

Creating efficient affinity and anti-affinity policies needs to understand the application architecture as well as the deployment needs. One way of achieving this is by trying out different rule configurations and observing how the changes affect performance.

Harnessing the Power of Horizontal Pod Autoscaling

HPA is one of the essential components of Kubernetes that enables automatic adjusting of the number of pod replicas according to the observed CPU or memory usage. HPA ensures that your application is resilient for periods of uneven demand on workload.

For the effective application of HPA, it is necessary to define suitable metrics and thresholds, which reflect the characteristics of your application’s performance. For instance, you can define CPU utilization thresholds to initiate scaling actions according to the expected patterns of load. Also, think about the combination of HPA with custom metrics and external scaling triggers for more sophisticated scaling techniques.

Through the combination of HPA along with pod affinity and anti-affinity, you can get better control over the resource allocation and workload distribution in terms of optimizing the performance and efficiency in your Kubernetes environment.

External Tools to Improve Monitoring

Although Kubernetes provides its own tools to help you understand, using tools from outside can assist in following things and troubleshooting problems:

Prometheus:
Prometheus is a widely used software that is available at zero cost. It records information from multiple sources, stores it in a particular type of database, and allows for easy interrogation. This can be very useful for checking how good your Kubernetes system is doing.

Gafana:
Grafana is a data visualization tool. It can partner with Prometheus, so it will be easy to create visual dashboards and get notified if something isn’t right. This collaboration between Prometheus and Grafana enables teams to watch over many factors.

Getting Better All the Time: Tips and Tricks

Ensuring that your Kubernetes system works amazingly should always be a matter of concern. Here are some easy steps to follow:

Keeping an Eye on Things
It is critical to observe events as they unfold. Configuring alerts that notify you when things go beyond prescribed limits allow you to capture and resolve issues even before they affect your app.

Using Resources Wisely 
Refining how much space and power your pods consume on a frequent basis is a smart move. Giving them too much is like having too much food at a party, where it is just thrown away. It’s like not having enough chairs, things get slow. Utilities such as Kubernetes HPA and VPA can ensure that your pods get only as much as they require.

Understanding Every Detail
Digging into the details can help make your applications work more effectively. With tools such as Jaeger, Zipkin, and Pprof, you find out the exact points where things might slow down. It is like having a detective for your software solving and eliminating the problems.

Conclusion: Optimizing for Excellence

Continuous monitoring and experimentation can help you perfect your optimization mechanisms and adapt to the varying requirements of the workload. If you adhere to good practices and keep abreast of the latest changes in Kubernetes technology, your containerized applications will perform well, even in challenging environments.

Contact Cloudride for white-glove Kubernetes and cloud optimization assistance. 

inbal-granevich
2024/03
Mar 13, 2024 4:51:12 PM
Mastering the Art of Kubernetes Performance Optimization
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes

Mar 13, 2024 4:51:12 PM

Mastering the Art of Kubernetes Performance Optimization

Over the recent years, Kubernetes has emerged as the ‘de facto’ standard for orchestrating containers. It enables developers to manage applications running in a cluster of nodes by allowing them to handle, deploy, and scale applications, making the management of applications in a distributed...

The Future of Kubernetes: Navigating the Evolving Container Landscape

As we venture further into the era of containerization, Kubernetes stands at the forefront of a transformative wave, poised to redefine the landscape of cloud-native application development. This evolution is driven by a fusion of emerging trends and technological advancements that promise to enhance efficiency, scalability, and innovation across diverse sectors.

Enhanced Cloud-Native Application Development

The shift towards cloud-native application development within Kubernetes is marked by a deeper integration of microservices architectures and container orchestration. This transition emphasizes building resilient, scalable, and easily deployable applications that leverage the inherent benefits of cloud environments. Kubernetes facilitates this by offering dynamic service discovery, load balancing, and the seamless management of containerized applications across multiple clouds and on-premise environments.


The Rise of Serverless Computing within Kubernetes

Serverless computing is transforming the Kubernetes landscape by abstracting server management and infrastructure provisioning tasks, allowing developers to focus solely on coding. This paradigm shift towards serverless Kubernetes, facilitated by frameworks such as Knative, empowers developers to deploy applications without concerning themselves with the underlying infrastructure. It not only enhances developer productivity but also optimizes resource utilization through automatic scaling, thereby leading to significant cost efficiencies.

Kubernetes at the Edge: Expanding the Boundaries

The integration of Kubernetes with edge computing represents a pivotal advancement in deploying and managing applications closer to data sources. This strategic convergence addresses latency challenges and bandwidth constraints by distributing workloads to edge locations. Kubernetes' orchestration capabilities extend to edge environments, enabling consistent deployment models and operational practices across a diverse set of edge devices. This uniformity is crucial for sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, and smart cities, where real-time data processing and analysis are paramount.

AI and ML Workflows: A New Frontier in Kubernetes

The incorporation of AI and ML workflows into Kubernetes signifies a monumental leap in harnessing computational resources for data-intensive tasks. Kubernetes' adeptness at managing resource-heavy workloads offers an optimal environment for deploying AI and ML models, ensuring scalability and efficiency. Through custom resource definitions (CRDs) and operators, Kubernetes provides specialized orchestration capabilities that tailor resource allocation, scaling, and management to the needs of AI/ML workloads, facilitating the seamless integration of intelligent capabilities into applications.

The Significance of Declarative YAML in Kubernetes Evolution

The adoption of declarative YAML manifests epitomizes the movement towards simplification and efficiency in Kubernetes management. This approach allows developers to specify desired states for their deployments, with Kubernetes orchestrating the necessary actions to achieve those states. The declarative nature of YAML, coupled with version control systems, enhances collaboration, ensures consistency between configuration and code, and simplifies rollback processes to maintain system integrity.

Addressing Challenges and Considerations

Despite the promising advancements, transitioning to these new paradigms poses challenges, particularly for teams accustomed to traditional infrastructure management practices. The adoption of serverless models and the integration of AI/ML workflows demand a shift in mindset and the acquisition of new skills. Moreover, the expansion into edge computing introduces complexities in managing distributed environments securely and efficiently.

The Vibrant Future of Kubernetes

As we look towards the future, Kubernetes emerges as a pivotal force in the evolution of cloud-native development, serverless computing, edge computing, and the integration of AI and ML workflows. Its ability to adapt and facilitate these cutting-edge technologies positions Kubernetes as a critical enabler of innovation and efficiency. For organizations seeking to navigate this evolving landscape, partnering with experts who understand the intricacies of Kubernetes can unlock unprecedented value, driving enhanced performance, scalability, and return on investment in containerized environments.

When it comes to Kubernetes adoption and optimization, Cloudride stands as a trusted partner. We are committed to guiding you through the complexities of the Kubernetes ecosystem, assisting you in maximizing your ROI by enhancing the security and performance of your containers. With Cloudride by your side, navigate the future of Kubernetes with confidence and strategic advantage. Contact us for more information.

tal-helfgott
2024/03
Mar 7, 2024 4:22:22 PM
The Future of Kubernetes: Navigating the Evolving Container Landscape
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes

Mar 7, 2024 4:22:22 PM

The Future of Kubernetes: Navigating the Evolving Container Landscape

As we venture further into the era of containerization, Kubernetes stands at the forefront of a transformative wave, poised to redefine the landscape of cloud-native application development. This evolution is driven by a fusion of emerging trends and technological advancements that promise to...

Transforming Business with Kubernetes and Cloud-Native Technologies

The heightened discussion around containerizing in the AWS cloud ecosystem has now grown enough to make it a signature practice of the contemporary business scene. Fueled by the quest for improved utilization of resources, increased portability, and advanced operational efficiency, companies are tactically modernizing workloads from traditional physical or virtual machines to containerized environments.

The Container Revolution

The swift embrace of container technology is pivotal in reshaping how companies deploy and manage their applications. Containers offer a streamlined approach for businesses to swiftly deploy and scale applications within complex landscapes.

Before the transition to containers, the management of both machine and application lifecycles was intertwined. However, the introduction of containers enabled the separation of application lifecycles from machine management. This separation empowered distinct operation and development teams to work more independently and efficiently.

Kubernetes: The Cornerstone of Container Orchestration

In the midst of the container revolution, Kubernetes became a de-facto standard for container orchestration and set the foundation for a new ecosystem of cloud-native technologies. Developed specifically to complement Kubernetes, tools such as Prometheus for monitoring, Istio for service mesh, and Helm for package management, are integral parts of this ecosystem, enhancing Kubernetes' capabilities for application deployment and management. 

Evolution of Cloud-Native App Lifecycle

Managing applications within containers offers a transformative approach to the application lifecycle, far beyond traditional cloud subscriptions. It centralizes the planning, building, deployment, and execution of cloud-native applications, fostering coordination and efficiency. This dynamic principle continually adapts to emerging tools and practices, ensuring the IT system remains agile and future-proof.

EKS as a Strategic Imperative

Many cloud providers recognize the importance of facilitating a smooth and cost-efficient transition to their cloud services for customers working with Kubernetes. Providing them with tools such as EKS (AWS's Kubernetes as a Service) that streamline this process is essential, supporting their need to navigate the transition into the cloud ecosystem with minimum effort while gaining cluster management features.

Policy-Based User Management for Security Improvement

When utilizing a managed cluster like Amazon EKS, cloud providers enable seamless integration with their services in the most secure manner. For example, EKS integrates with AWS products using IAM services, allowing you to manage permissions at the service level.

Cost-Efficiency: Saving on Investment for Resources

Transferring to a cluster managed on a service like Amazon offers a significant advantage in terms of resource allocation and scalability. With a wide variety of available nodes, you can provision them according to your workloads, optimizing resource usage and minimizing costs. This ensures that your applications utilize precisely the resources they require without overspending, while also providing the flexibility to scale resources up or down as needed to accommodate changing demands.

Hybrid Application Systems with EKS

Kubernetes plays a central role in modern software development by establishing the benchmark for container orchestration. In addition to EKS, AWS offers "EKS Anywhere," enabling cluster management on-premise as well as in the cloud. This unified approach facilitates seamless architecture development in a one centralized location, allowing for smooth management of both on-premise and cloud-based EKS clusters.

What to Expect with Kubernetes in Cloud Deployment

  • Simplified application deployment and management
  • Automation of cloud-based practices for development and deployment
  • Real-time deployment capabilities for increased developer productivity
  • Reduced time and effort spent on service provisioning and configuration
  • Continuous integration and deployment automation for efficient software delivery
  • Innovation and growth opportunities through next-generation software development
  • Multi-cloud portability for increased flexibility and resilience
  • Centralized management for better operational insight and monitoring

 

Our Strategic Edge in Kubernetes Optimization

To sum up, the constantly changing environment of Kubernetes and cloud-native applications needs a strong ally in robust security, speed, and resilience. Cloudride stands as that essential partner, and offers its expertise to optimize Kubernetes for unmatched scalability, agile development, and fast deployment. Contact us for more information and customized solutions.

izchak-oyerbach
2024/02
Feb 26, 2024 3:46:07 PM
Transforming Business with Kubernetes and Cloud-Native Technologies
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes

Feb 26, 2024 3:46:07 PM

Transforming Business with Kubernetes and Cloud-Native Technologies

The heightened discussion around containerizing in the AWS cloud ecosystem has now grown enough to make it a signature practice of the contemporary business scene. Fueled by the quest for improved utilization of resources, increased portability, and advanced operational efficiency, companies are...

10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 1

In an era where cloud computing has become the backbone of modern business operations, mastering cost efficiency in cloud computing is not just a smart strategy, it's an essential survival skill. As businesses increasingly pivot to cloud-based solutions, the ability to effectively manage and reduce expenses can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving financially.

This is the first article in a two-part series where we delve into the art of cost savings on the cloud. Here we will lay the groundwork with the first 5 strategies, and in the next article we will explore 5 more advanced strategies and savings opportunities.

 

Foundational Concepts

The cloud lets you shift from big costs (like data centers and physical servers) to variable expenses, only paying for IT when you use it. Whether you were cloud-native from the start or are just moving to the cloud now, AWS has resources for managing and improving your spend.

More and more businesses that had mostly on-site setups are switching to cloud services. This change has caused a big move from spending money upfront (CapEx) to paying for what they need when they need it in operations costs (OpEx). We've come to a turning point where we need new ways to understand, control and manage IT costs. To master cloud costs, finance and IT leaders must leverage practical strategies: right sizing, pay as you go models and clear budgeting.

 

FinOps Strategies for Cost Mastery

  1. Resource Right-sizing

    A basic method to save money is using cloud resources exactly as needed. This helps control costs by matching the demand with what's needed in reality. This means finding the right type and size of storage for workloads, ensuring efficient operations without spending too much. 

    Regularly examining the cloud instances already in use is also crucial. This includes checking instances already in use and finding ways to remove or reduce provisions without hurting operational efficiency. Consistently monitoring and adjusting their cloud resources allows businesses to achieve real cost savings.

  2. Adoption of a Usage-based Model

    With use-based pricing, IT costs are only incurred when they actually use the products or services. Customers typically receive a bill at the end of their billing cycle, paying for the services even if they didn’t use them, often using a yearly charge model. In contrast, billing based on usage changes according to how many resources are used.

    With AWS, you only pay for the services you take when you use them. You don't need to sign long-term agreements or handle complex permissions. Once you stop using them, there are no extra charges. Using this plan makes it easy to add or remove resources according to your need. This is helpful when your business requirements shift over time. It not only makes things cheaper, but also improves general work processes.

  3. Cost Visibility and Allocation

    Knowing how money is spent on cloud services helps control these costs better. IT managers should implement strong tools and systems that will help their professionals track and learn about their spending habits. Assigning costs to the responsible teams contributes to their sense of ownership over these resources. 

    This approach also motivates teams to explore smarter and more efficient ways to utilize cloud services. By making each team accountable for their cloud spending, it promotes overall cost savings and responsible financial management within the organization.

  4. Budgeting and Forecasting

    With AWS Budgets, you can create spending plans that effectively manage and control both costs and resource usage. If expenses go over the limit, you get an email or SNS notification to help you course correct. This AWS service can help you predict how much you're set to spend, or how many resources you are going to use, allowing you to make unique decisions for reducing cloud waste.

    When budgeting, it’s imperative to match resources with business goals. This keeps cloud costs in check and helps the company reach its goals. By anticipating upcoming cloud expenses, FinOps teams can better optimize resource allocation, prevent surprises and keep a closer watch on their budget.


  5. Improving Financial Governance

    Cloud cost control has climbed to the top of the agenda for many organizations, with 61 percent of cloud users claiming that cost optimization is a priority. Therefore, advocating for and implementing this practice in organizations is an urgent thing to do. Financial management drives responsible cloud spending by leveraging detailed cost analyses, aligning resource allocation with business priorities, and continuously optimizing technical aspects of cloud environments.

    Tighter financial control in the cloud is mission-critical for maximizing ROI and avoiding budget overruns. IT leaders must take proactive steps to establish robust financial controls by implementing spending limits, granular resource allocation policies, and automated cost alerts

    This also involves making rules, putting controls in place, and encouraging a sense of financial responsibility within the business. Good money management in the cloud makes sure costs match big goals and follow set spending rules.

Basic Cloud Cost Efficiency: Key Takeaways

Mitigating the overuse of cloud resources requires a collaborative effort between IT and Finance teams. Financial management strategies in the cloud are highly diverse, often differing substantially from one organization to another and even among various departments within the same company.

At Cloudride, we also specialize in offering bespoke guidance and solutions. Our team of FinOps experts is ready to provide personalized advice and services. Contact us to optimize your cloud expenses and drive your business forward.

nir-peleg
2024/02
Feb 26, 2024 12:38:42 PM
10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 1
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing

Feb 26, 2024 12:38:42 PM

10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 1

In an era where cloud computing has become the backbone of modern business operations, mastering cost efficiency in cloud computing is not just a smart strategy, it's an essential survival skill. As businesses increasingly pivot to cloud-based solutions, the ability to effectively manage and reduce...

IPv6 Adoption & Cost Optimization: Cloudride, Your Key to the Future.

The digital landscape today is highly dynamic, making the need for a robust communication infrastructure more crucial if you want to stay competitive. One of the essential frameworks that support communication infrastructure is the Internet Protocol (IP), a set of standards used to address and route data over the Internet. The IP address is a unique identifier assigned to devices connected to a network, enabling them to send and receive data. 

IPv4 is the most widely used version and has been the backbone of internet addressing. However, due to the depletion of available addresses following massive internet growth, there is an on-going deployment of the newer standard, IPv6. On the heels of IPv4 address exhaustion, many companies and organizations are making the shift to IPv6, which offers unlimited address space, among other benefits.

The Big Update

In light of these developments, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced a new charge for public IPv4 addresses starting February 1, 2024. Up until now, the service provider only charged IPv4 public addresses when not attached to a virtual server within the AWS cloud (EC2 instance). Under the new policy, a fee of $0.005 per hour will apply to all public IPv4 addresses, whether active or not, across all AWS services.

With this new policy, AWS is looking to encourage users to adopt IPv6 into their infrastructure. As an AWS partner, Cloudride aims to be at the forefront of this change, helping our clients adopt the latest IP standard. Cloudride is also helping businesses create effective IPv6 implementation strategies, ensuring a seamless transition from IPv4. Our services aim to mitigate the financial implications of AWS's new charging policy.

Understanding AWS's New IPv4 Charging Policy

AWS's policy change has a global impact, applying to all its services utilizing public IPv4 addresses in all regions. The $0.005/hour charge may seem low, but for large-scale business operations, the cumulative effect is significant. Even for small businesses, it can translate to a considerable increase in monthly expenses, affecting the bottom line. 

The policy change highlights a shift in operational cost dynamics for many businesses. As such, a strategic usage of IP solutions and a reassessment of IT budgets is necessary. Overall, AWS’s new policy highlights the importance of incorporating a FinOps strategy for such developments.

AWS offers a free tier option to cushion the blow despite the push towards an upgrade. This includes 750 hours of free public IPv4 addresses for the first 12 months. This option offers businesses a temporary solution, affording them time to adapt to the policy change and the space to transition to IPv6.

The Push Towards IPv6: An Opportunity for Modernization

IPv6 has a number of notable advantages over IPv4, with scalability being the primary one. IPv6 utilizes 128-bit addresses, allowing for a larger address space with a theoretical 340 undecillion addresses (3.4 by 1038), while IPv4 offers about 4.29 billion (232) unique addresses. IPv6 also provides other technical benefits. IPv6 has enhanced security features, including built-in network layer security. It also facilitates more efficient routing with packet fragmentation. 

In addition, IPv6 has an inherent Quality of Service (QoS) feature that filters and differentiates data packets. This capability allows to prioritize traffic and helps control congestion, bandwidth, and packet loss. Furthermore, network administration becomes easier with IPv6, as it enables stateless address auto-configuration. This grants you better control over your scaling operations, making network resource management much more effective.

The Drive for IPv6 Adoption and Network Modernization

The scarcity and rising acquisition costs of IPv4 addresses is what drove AWS into implementing this new policy. The cloud service provider is pushing its users towards IPv6 to mitigate these costs. AWS states that the policy change seeks to encourage users to re-evaluate their usage of IPv4 addresses and consider the move to IPv6.  

Adopting IPv6 is an important step in future-proofing your network infrastructure. With networking technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, IoT, and M2M (machine-to-machine) communication seeing increased proliferation, IPv6 offers a flexible approach to network communication. 

Future-Proofing and Operational Efficiency with IPv6

All  things considered, upgrading to the latest IP version protects your investment, ensuring your infrastructure is ready for future technological advancements and innovations. Not to mention, avoid time-consuming and costly migrations in the future under time pressure. In addition to being economical, it improves operational efficiencies by laying a foundation for future rolled out improved services.  

Another benefit of IPv6 is enabling devices to update servers continuously which improves performance, reliability, and mobility. As such, collaboration and mobility and services dealing with these issues will be easier to develop and deploy, increasing employee productivity. Lastly, newer devices’ default will be IPv6 by default, allowing you to implement a ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) strategy into your network. 

How Cloudride Can Help

  1. Smooth transition to IPv6

    Cloudride is a leading provider of consultancy and implementation planning services for cloud environments and service providers. Our team comprises experts in cloud platforms, including AWS and Azure and can help formulate and implement a migration roadmap to IPv6.  We work with your in-house IT team to analyze your use cases and evaluate your network capabilities. This helps us determine and plan the most appropriate transition strategy that suits your business demands.


    Cloudride takes over and handles all the technical aspects of the transition to the newer network communication standard. Our cloud engineers are well trained and experienced in cloud architecture and transition technologies. Our expertise ensures a smooth and seamless transition with minimal disruption to your business operations.

     

  2. AWS Cost Optimization with FinOps Services

    AWS’s new IPv4 charges add to your overall cloud expenses. As such, it’s crucial that you reassess your business’s cloud cost management practices to mitigate these and other costs. 


    Cloudride’s FinOps services aim to help you implement best practices regarding budgeting and optimizing your cloud computing costs from both a financial and technical perspective. We work collaboratively with our customers to bring together IT, business, and finance professionals to control cloud expenses. Our FinOps services encompass:
    ☁︎ Reviewing and optimizing cloud deployments
    ☁︎ Monitoring workloads
    ☁︎ Finding and eliminating underutilized or abandoned cloud resources
    ☁︎ Linking cloud costs to business goals 

    We provide best-in-class professional managed services for public cloud platforms, including AWS. The primary focus of our services is security and cost optimization. 

    Our experts employ a variety of tools to conduct comprehensive cost analysis, budgeting, and forecasting. These critical services help optimize your cloud expenditure by identifying key areas where you can make cost savings.

Leveraging Cloudride’s Expertise for Strategic Advantage

As a business or organization, it’s important to carefully plan and execute the migration to IPv6 cost-efficiently with minimum impact on your operations. Enlisting the services of a professional services company is crucial if you seek a successful transition. A strategic partner to advise and guide you on all aspects of the move is an invaluable asset. 

A professional service provider can also help you with ongoing maintenance of a cost-efficient cloud environment once you transition to IPv6. Cloudride specializes in developing and implementing comprehensive cost-saving strategies for our clients.

Start Your IPv6 Journey Now

Overall, deploying IPv6 in your enterprise networks can offer your business a competitive edge, among other operational benefits. AWS’s new charges for public IPv4 addresses necessitate both small and large businesses to accelerate IPv6 adoption and implement a proper cost-management strategy. Professional services can help your business make a successful transition to IPv6 and optimize your cloud computing costs. 

Here is where Cloudride comes in. As a specialist in managed cloud services, we help businesses make hassle-free transitions through tailored migration and technical support. Our FinOps experts also help you navigate cloud cost-management and on-going optimization following the transition.

Feel free to contact Cloudride today and book a meeting with one of our experts. We are looking forward to helping you maximize the efficiency of your network infrastructure and AWS expenditure.

guy-rotem
2024/02
Feb 14, 2024 10:54:36 AM
IPv6 Adoption & Cost Optimization: Cloudride, Your Key to the Future.
Cloud Security, AWS, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing, Security

Feb 14, 2024 10:54:36 AM

IPv6 Adoption & Cost Optimization: Cloudride, Your Key to the Future.

The digital landscape today is highly dynamic, making the need for a robust communication infrastructure more crucial if you want to stay competitive. One of the essential frameworks that support communication infrastructure is the Internet Protocol (IP), a set of standards used to address and...

Project Nimbus Israel: Reforming Public Sector with Cloud Innovation

The technological evolution in the public sector varies significantly from one country to another. Some countries have made substantial investments in technological modernization and transformation, and have well-developed digital infrastructure in their public sectors. These countries often prioritize digitization  initiatives, employ advanced IT systems, and leverage cloud services to enhance government operations, improve civic-oriented services, and increase transparency and efficiency.

In  Israel, there is a significant disconnect between its reputation as the start-up nation celebrated for innovation, and the untapped potential for further technological improvement of citizen services. Despite Israel's remarkable achievements in cutting-edge technology development and its flourishing high-tech industry, a noticeable gap where the public sector remains shrouded in the shadows, yearning for the transformative touch of technological advancement.

Israel is currently undertaking initiatives to address these challenges. However, before delving into these efforts, we first spotlight the key obstacles that the public sector often encounters.
 

Israeli Public Sector's Main Challenges

  1. Security Concerns

    Israel's geopolitical reality exposes it to constant cyber threats and a wide range of security challenges. These cyberattacks, targeting critical infrastructure, jeopardize citizens' sensitive data and pose major concerns about the reliability and resilience of government systems. These issues raise not only cybersecurity issues, but also privacy concerns, underscoring the need for immediate action. Proactive defense measures are urgently needed to shield government systems, secure vital information, and ensure uninterrupted everyday life.

     

  2. Legacy Applications

    The public sector heavily relies on outdated and legacy IT applications, which were developed years ago and struggle to meet modern governance demands. These systems are inefficient, costly to maintain, and pose security risks due to the lack of updates. It’s crucial to modernize these applications to improve efficiency, reduce operational costs, and enhance security. They need to be aligned with current standards and designed with continuous improvement in mind, adaptable to evolving demands.

  3. Outdated Codes

    Many government systems still operate using outdated and obsolete codebases, leading to slow system performance. This hinders the system’s ability to operate efficiently and responsively, harming the user experience, therefore compelling individuals to spend valuable time by physically visiting offices when they could potentially manage these processes online from the comfort of their home. Just as outdated apps require updates, modernizing these codebases is essential to align with evolving requirements, security standards, and technological advancements.

  4. Lack of Data Accessibility

    Government offices are impaired by isolated data silos and ineffective sharing mechanisms, and therefore struggle to collaborate in an effective manner. This lack of data accessibility directly affects the public sector’s ability to make informed, data-driven decisions. To address this problem and enhance efficiency and coordination among government entities, it’s imperative to break down the existing bureaucratic gridlock and establish more efficient data-sharing practices. Effective data sharing can lead to better policy making, streamlined public services, and better, information-led decision-making processes.

  5. Regulatory Environment

    The regulatory environment in Israel is often stuck in traditional timeframes that have not been conducive to fostering innovation. Some regulations might block innovative companies from entering certain markets or make it difficult for existing competitors to provide services and products that are based on innovative technologies. In addition, traditional regulatory processes can take years, while startups have the ability to develop into global companies within months. This might stall and even prevent innovative technologies from thriving in the market

     

Let’s Talk Resiliency

If we’re looking at the security concerns and the lack of reliability of public sector systems, these must be addressed by prioritizing resiliency. Continued use of redundancy and failover mechanisms can mitigate the impact of above mentioned cyber threats and security challenges. By establishing resilient infrastructure, the public sector can safeguard critical systems and ensure they remain accessible and functional, even in adverse situations. This approach not only safeguards sensitive data but also ensures uninterrupted essential services, meeting citizens' needs and expectations.

 

Let’s Talk Cost Savings

While  it might appear counterintuitive, modernizing legacy applications and outdated codebases can actually result in substantial cost savings for the public sector. By migrating to more efficient and updated systems, the public sector can reduce significant maintenance expenses and improve the overall operational efficiency. Another benefit of this is efficient resource utilization and streamlined processes, which lead to fewer costly incidents. These cost savings enable better allocation of resources to essential public sector initiatives, ultimately benefiting citizens and governance.

 

Let’s Talk Data Security

Enhancing  data security is paramount in addressing the vast majority of challenges faced by the Israeli public sector. For the public sector to protect its sensitive information from cyber threats and breaches, it’s crucial to adopt robust encryption methods, access controls, and regular security updates. Data encryption ensures that even if a security breach occurs, the data remains confidential and secure. Implementing strict security measures goes hand in hand with privacy concerns and instills trust among citizens, assuring them that their information is safe and handled with care.

 

Let’s Talk Cloud-Native

Transitioning to cloud-native technologies aligns seamlessly with addressing these challenges. Cloud-native solutions offer agility, scalability, and flexibility, enabling the public sector to respond swiftly to evolving governance demands. Moreover, they provide automated updates and maintenance, reducing the burden on IT teams. Embracing cloud-native principles not only improves system performance but also enhances the user experience, enabling citizens to conveniently access public sector services online. This shift ensures that public sector operations align with modern standards and cater to the evolving needs of the Israeli population.

 

Let's Talk Cloud Migrations

  • Why?

    Migrating to cloud-based infrastructure is a strategic necessity for the Israeli public sector. This transition allows government entities to break free from the constraints of old, slow legacy systems and embrace modern technologies, aligning with the evolving needs of both citizens and governance. Cloud adoption ensures that public sector operations run in a more fast and efficient manner, but most importantly remain resilient in the face of cyber threats and security challenges. It also offers substantial cost savings, which can be redirected towards essential public initiatives, ultimately benefiting the population.

  • How?

    The process of migrating to the cloud involves a well-thought-out strategy. Public sector organizations need to assess their existing infrastructure, identify critical workloads, and select suitable cloud solutions. It's essential to prioritize data security during migration by implementing robust best practices based guardrails. Moreover, leveraging cloud-native technologies and workflows, simplifies the transition, providing agility, scalability, and maintenance. Collaborating with experienced cloud service providers can streamline the migration process, ensuring a smooth and efficient shift to the cloud.

 

Let’s Talk Accumulated Knowledge Ramp-Up

As the Israeli public sector embarks on its journey of modernization and migration to the cloud, an essential aspect is the accumulation of knowledge and expertise. Government agencies must invest in training and upskilling their workforce, not only to effectively leverage cloud-native technologies but also to create employment opportunities for technical experts within the public sector. This knowledge ramp-up not only ensures better job security for government employees but also strengthens the workforce's overall skill set.

This investment equips professionals to harness the full potential of the cloud, optimize system performance, enhance data security, and deliver citizen-centric services efficiently. By prioritizing knowledge accumulation and workforce development, the public sector can navigate the complexities of cloud adoption successfully while contributing to job growth and stability in the technological domain.

 

Nimbus: Empowering Israel's Public Sector with a Digital Upgrade

Project Nimbus, is a strategic cloud computing initiative undertaken by the Israeli government and its military. Launched in April 2019, this project aims to provide comprehensive cloud solutions for the government, defense establishment, and various other entities. It involves the establishment of secure local cloud sites within Israel's borders, emphasizing stringent security protocols to safeguard sensitive information.

The Nimbus Tender marks a pivotal moment in Israel's technology landscape, signifying the nation's commitment to cloud-based infrastructure and emphasizing the importance of data residency for security. This shift aligns with the government's cloud migration strategy and showcases a growing willingness among Israelis to entrust their data to external cloud providers, fostering investments from tech giants like AWS and Google in local data centers.

Cloudride is proud to serve as a trusted provider for the Nimbus Tender, offering a comprehensive range of services to support the Israeli public sector’s transition to the AWS public cloud. Our expertise encompasses consulting for cloud migration, modernization, and environment establishment within AWS, CI/CD and XOps implementation, and financial optimization (FinOps) to ensure cost-efficiency. To embark on a successful cloud journey and drive your office's digital transformation, contact us today  to explore how we can assist your organization.

uti-teva
2024/01
Jan 23, 2024 4:06:48 PM
Project Nimbus Israel: Reforming Public Sector with Cloud Innovation
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Healthcare, Education, Cloud Computing, WAF

Jan 23, 2024 4:06:48 PM

Project Nimbus Israel: Reforming Public Sector with Cloud Innovation

The technological evolution in the public sector varies significantly from one country to another. Some countries have made substantial investments in technological modernization and transformation, and have well-developed digital infrastructure in their public sectors. These countries often...

10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 2

In our previous article, we explored fundamental concepts like right-sizing, pay-as-you-go models, cost allocation, and resource budgeting — all critical for effective cloud cost management. Now, in this second part of our series, we're taking a step further into the realm of advanced strategies, aiming to help you maximize your cloud savings even more.

Linking cloud costs to business goals lets companies manage their money based on how much profit they're getting back. It also lets companies track how cost increases and savings affect their business. Understanding this crucial link between expenditure and outcomes sets the stage for a deeper exploration. With that foundational knowledge in place, let's look at advanced strategies that can optimize your cloud savings even more.

 

Advanced Strategies for Financial Agility

  1. Commitment Discounts

    Commitment discounts, known as CUDs, present valuable cost-saving options in enterprise cloud plans. By committing to long-term usage, businesses can achieve substantial savings on VM instances and computing resources. These discounts are available when you agree to use a specific amount of resources over a set period, offering more affordable rates. They are particularly beneficial for operations that consistently require substantial resources. 

    Choosing Reserved Instances, simplifies the prediction of future costs, thereby streamlining the budgeting process. This approach allows you to align your cloud spend with actual usage needs, ensuring that you are capitalizing on the full benefits of CUD deals. If your in-house resources are limited in this area, partnering with a company that specializes in analyzing usage trends, like Cloudride, can provide crucial support and insights.

  2. Automating Cost Optimization

    Automation can be used in different ways to help lower cloud costs. The best tools are AWS Instance Scheduler, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Anomaly Detector for cost monitoring. Automation assists in tasks such as analyzing costs, forecasting budgets, and tracking expenses in real-time, offering a more streamlined approach to financial management.

    Another advantage of automation is its ability to provide deeper insights for cloud cost savings. Many tools are equipped to respond automatically under certain conditions, helping teams to maintain their budgets and achieve their financial objectives. This helps teams stay within budget and on track for success. With these tools, you can spot and terminate resource wastage in a matter of a few clicks, enhancing overall efficiency. 

    Implementing automation by utilizing native cloud capabilities has been shown to significantly reduce costs, sometimes by as much as 40%. This approach not only leads to better resource allocation but also improves scalability and the resilience of applications, demonstrating a clear impact on operational success.

  3. Enterprise Agreement Negotiation

    Talk to your provider. Focus on your specific needs and the desire for a lasting partnership. The agreement for cloud services needs to include assurances regarding price increases. Ideally, you should be able to secure your costs and fees if you sign a multi-year deal.  If that's not feasible, at least aim for a predetermined cap on potential price increases.

    AWS presents the Amazon Web Services Enterprise Discount Program (AWS EDP), a program designed for financial savings tailored for substantial business cloud users committed to long-term usage. This program offers straightforward discounts on AWS costs, making it a good choice for businesses trying to reduce their cloud expenses.  

    Trough the AWS EDP, AWS fosters enduring customer relationships. It's designed to benefit consistent, high-volume users over extended periods, aligning long-term usage with financial incentives.

  4. Optimization of Data Transfer and Storage

    A materialized view can help reduce the amount of data transferred between your data warehouse and reporting layers. This happens as a result of computing queries being preprocessed in advance. Materialized views are very helpful in expediting frequent and repeatable queries. Don't forget to archive infrequently used data and reduce its size using compression methods for more efficient storage.

    By staying ready and flexible, you ensure that the costs of data transfer and storage remain low. This approach is vital for cost-efficient cloud management. In the end, this not only helps save money but also keeps things running smoothly. 


  5. Leveraging Spot Instances

    Spot instances on EC2 allow you to bid for extra, unused capacity, allowing workloads to run at prices often substantially lower than the standard spot cost. This pricing advantage lasts until your bid surpasses the current rate. Spot instances can save considerable amounts of money compared to On-Demand instances — usually by over 90%. This approach helps you use the cloud more efficiently and cost-effectively.

    Nevertheless, it’s essential to understand that Spot Instances have a trade-off - they may not always be there. They are ideal for flexible tasks that can tolerate occasional interruptions, and offer a great way to save money on idle EC2s. To maximize cost savings with Spot Instances, it's crucial to understand the specific nature of your workloads and their tolerance levels. This strategic approach helps in optimizing cloud resources while keeping expenses in check.

Further Insights and Assistance

Controlling cloud resource usage effectively demands teamwork between IT professionals and Finance departments, as previously mentioned. Strategies for managing cloud finances can be distinct across different organizations and may even vary within departments of the same company. We trust that these two articles have offered valuable guidance and actionable strategies, empowering you to optimize your cloud investments and financial management.

For tailored support and expert guidance tailored to your unique situation, Cloudride is here to assist. Our team of FinOps experts specializes in helping you navigate cloud cost control and maximize the efficiency of your cloud operations. Contact us today  to help you optimize your business cloud expenses.

nir-peleg
2024/01
Jan 17, 2024 3:15:13 PM
10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 2
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing

Jan 17, 2024 3:15:13 PM

10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 2

In our previous article, we explored fundamental concepts like right-sizing, pay-as-you-go models, cost allocation, and resource budgeting — all critical for effective cloud cost management. Now, in this second part of our series, we're taking a step further into the realm of advanced strategies,...

Secure Your Infrastructure: Working Hybrid

In today’s changing digital landscape, firms are increasingly migrating to hybrid architectures to harness the infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity in the cloud. This cloud model offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-savings that are second to none.

However, as firms face labor disruptions with a considerable number of IT personnel called up for army reserve duty, maintaining the security and efficiency of hybrid models has become a critical matter. Cloudride, in conjunction with AWS, steps in as your trustworthy partner to provide innovative solutions for navigating this complex labyrinth.

 

Pioneering Cloud Agility Practices for DR and Backup

During crises, such as the current war between Israel and Gaza, firms require cloud agility for their applications to adapt and respond quickly to changing situations. Cloudride’s Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) and Cloud Backup powered by AWS ensure smooth data replication, backup, and recovery across environments, especially when most personnel are away on military duties.

In an ever-changing digital environment, cloud agility stands as a cornerstone for business resilience and adaptability. Cloudride’s approach to Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) and Cloud Backup, empowered by AWS technologies, exemplifies the strategic advantage of robust cloud infrastructure. With these services, businesses can ensure seamless data replication, backup, and recovery across diverse environments, proving invaluable in times of unforeseen disruptions. The ability to swiftly adapt to various challenges, be they cyber threats, natural disasters, a pandemic, war, or sudden market shifts, is not just a convenience but a necessity in modern business operations.

Cloudride's cloud solutions enable companies to maintain continuity, support remote workforces, and safeguard critical data with flexibility and scalability. This agility is particularly crucial in maintaining uninterrupted operations and providing a competitive edge in a world where change is the only constant.

 

Navigating Compliance in Hybrid Cloud Environments

Businesses operating in hybrid environments must comply with all existing regulatory requirements or risk legal action against them. Cloudride’s solutions comply with regulations such as the 100 km rule, Multi-Availability Zone (Multi-AZ) redundancy, and international data protection laws like GDPR. For instance, the EU’s GDPR requires all data collected on citizens to be stored within the Eurozone under the governance of European privacy law.

Moreover, our solutions comply with industry-specific regulations like ITAR, HIPAA, SOC, and many others to guarantee your business achieves and maintains a reputation as a trustworthy data custodian. Effective data compliance can also reduce the time and money businesses spend finding, correcting, and replacing data.

 

Seamless Integration for Efficient Workplace Transition

Transitioning to a hybrid architecture shouldn’t be disruptive. However, as the current situation threatens to spill into Lebanon, enterprises might face a shortage of DevOps, IT, and security teams due to the human resource gap caused by the conflict.

Cloudride can work with your current tools to give your employees an easier learning curve. This flexibility facilitates uninterrupted productivity and a smooth hybrid migration, even during a crisis.

 

Strategic Scalability: Managing Costs in Hybrid Systems

Cost management is a critical element of hybrid infrastructure. A recent study by Ernst & Young shows that 57% of firms have already exceeded their cloud budgets for this year. Many companies have been caught unaware when cloud costs spike because they lack a well-articulated management strategy.

That's why Cloudride has strategically partnered with AWS to offer industry-leading availability, durability, security, performance, and unlimited scalability, enabling its customers to pay only for the required storage. This collaboration brings forth a unique blend of Cloudride’s expertise and AWS’s renowned infrastructure capabilities, ensuring that businesses can scale their operations seamlessly while maintaining stringent cost controls and benefiting from top-tier cloud services.

In addition, during critical moments, such as spontaneous traffic surges or increased computational requirements, the speedy launch of EC2 instances becomes possible. This means firms can access their resources precisely during such critical moments. With this agility and responsiveness, businesses can swiftly adapt to changing demands, ensuring continuous operations and the ability to handle unexpected challenges effectively.

 

Resource Management: Achieving Optimal Balance in Hybrid Setups

Managing resources in a hybrid environment is a complex task due to the intricacies involved in orchestrating and aligning resources from various sources. This complexity can often lead to inefficiencies and underutilization of resources, making it challenging for organizations to achieve optimal performance and cost-effectiveness in their IT infrastructure.

Recognizing these challenges, Cloudride offers specialized services to assist organizations in right-sizing their infrastructure and fine-tuning their architectural framework. Our approach focuses on aligning your infrastructure with your business objectives, ensuring that every component is scaled appropriately to meet your needs. This strategic alignment enables us to help you achieve your Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), ensuring that your organization is prepared and resilient in the face of unexpected disruptions.

 

Advancing with Automation

The evolving landscape of work has seen a notable shift towards hybrid models, as reflected in recent statistics from the Office of National Statistics. With fewer employees on-site and an increase in hybrid work arrangements, the demand for advanced cloud automation and remote support tools has become more prominent. Companies looking to enhance efficiency are now recognizing the necessity to integrate automation within their hybrid work strategies.

Cloudride empowers organizations with comprehensive automation capabilities that facilitate everything from deployment to scaling, liberating them from reliance on specific service providers. This automation not only streamlines processes but also bolsters the reliability and responsiveness of DevOps and IT teams in overseeing hybrid work infrastructures. As the work environment continues to adapt, Cloudride's solutions ensure that companies remain agile and resilient, ready to respond to the dynamic needs of their workforce.

 

The Next Steps

Choosing Cloudride is the 1st step towards a full Cloud Migration for organizations set on fast, incident-free migration to AWS. This move is especially critical if your company lacks an internal team with the required knowledge to handle a move of this scale. Cloudride’s team of DevOps and solution architects will set you up to experience the benefits of the cloud without committing entirely while preparing you for a wholly cloud-native future. Reach out to us for further information and support.

shira-teller
2024/01
Jan 3, 2024 10:47:50 AM
Secure Your Infrastructure: Working Hybrid
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Jan 3, 2024 10:47:50 AM

Secure Your Infrastructure: Working Hybrid

In today’s changing digital landscape, firms are increasingly migrating to hybrid architectures to harness the infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity in the cloud. This cloud model offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-savings that are second to none.

However, as...
Amplify AWS Security with Cloudride: Safeguard Your Infrastructure

As IT and DevOps professionals navigate the complexities of their roles, maintaining the security and functionality of AWS environments is crucial. During times when the demands are high and the challenges seem insurmountable, Cloudride offers reliable solutions to ensure operational stability and enhance security measures.

Here's a comprehensive security guide for your AWS infrastructure under heavy workloads.

 

Embrace Cloud Agility in Disaster Recovery Planning

Efficient Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) hinges on cloud agility, enabling organizations to swiftly respond to emergencies. Including Cloud Agility in DRP fosters infrastructures that are robust and adaptable to unexpected disruptions.

Automated backup and recovery processes are crucial in ensuring data security on the cloud, thereby minimizing disruptions during disasters. Leveraging cloud-based disaster recovery tools is key for quick virtual environment creation and speedy operational restoration.

The agility offered by the cloud allows organizations to scale resources up or down based on immediate needs. This flexibility is essential in handling sudden traffic spikes or data loads, ensuring that the system remains resilient under varying conditions. Implementing cloud-based solutions not only provides data security but also aligns with the goals of business continuity and disaster recovery.

 

Comply with Data Residency Regulations

Data residency regulations, such as the 100 km rule for AWS data centers, are essential for maintaining infrastructure security. Compliance with these regulations is crucial in today's global data landscape.

Partnering with cloud service providers having strategically located data centers ensures adherence to these regulations. Selecting providers that align with your organization's data residency needs is a critical step in securing your AWS environment.

A Multi-AZ (Availability Zone) strategy is effective for compliance and geographical redundancy. This approach involves distributing resources across various data centers within a region, offering a balanced mix of compliance and security. By employing a Multi-AZ strategy, businesses can ensure that their data is not only secure but also accessible with minimal latency, enhancing the overall user experience.

 

Optimize Costs with Smart Storage and On-Demand Computing

The "Pay Only for Storage" approach, using Amazon S3, offers an economical solution for managing cloud resources. This strategy is particularly beneficial for organizations looking to optimize their cloud expenditure.

During critical operations, activating necessary Amazon EC2 instances can significantly enhance security. This selective activation, coupled with dynamic scaling, ensures resource efficiency and improved security management.

Utilizing Amazon S3 for data storage provides a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective solution. It's ideal for a wide range of applications from websites to mobile apps, and from enterprise applications to IoT devices. When paired with the on-demand computing power of EC2 instances, businesses have a flexible, scalable environment that can adapt to changing demands without incurring unnecessary costs.

 

Use DevOps On Demand

Ensuring continuous DevOps processes is crucial, especially when facing staffing challenges. On-demand DevOps teams offer a flexible solution to bolster AWS security and address immediate needs. This scalable model allows for rapid response to security issues and efficient resource utilization. It's particularly effective during periods of high demand or when in-house teams are stretched thin.

Automated and standardized procedures play a vital role in maintaining consistent operations and safeguarding against security gaps. This approach reduces reliance on specific personnel and standardizes critical processes like deployments and configurations.

DevOps on Demand provides a flexible solution to manage workloads effectively. This approach allows businesses to respond to development needs and security concerns promptly. With expertise in various AWS services and tools, on-demand teams can implement solutions quickly, ensuring that security and operational efficiency are not compromised.

 

Right Sizing and Correct Architecture

Appropriate scaling and architecture design are key to effective disaster recovery. Aligning infrastructure with RTOs and RPOs ensures that the system is prepared for various scenarios.

Right-sizing is about matching infrastructure to the actual workload. This approach minimizes unnecessary vulnerabilities and optimizes resource utilization. Choosing the correct architecture enhances risk response and operational agility.

Selecting the right architecture involves understanding the specific needs of the application and the business. It's about balancing cost, performance, and security to create an environment that supports the organization's objectives. Whether it's leveraging serverless architectures for cost efficiency or deploying containerized applications for scalability, the right architectural choices can significantly impact the effectiveness of the AWS environment.

 

Automation Tools

Automated incident response, facilitated by cloud-native technology, allows for swift action against security incidents. This rapid response capability is essential for minimizing potential damage.

Regular security audits and compliance checks, integrated into automated workflows, ensure ongoing adherence to security standards. This continuous monitoring is critical for maintaining a secure and compliant AWS environment.

Automation tools such as AWS CloudFormation and AWS Config enable businesses to manage their resources efficiently. These tools provide a way to define and deploy infrastructure as code, ensuring that the environment is reproducible and consistent. They also offer visibility into the configuration and changes, helping maintain compliance and adherence to security policies. By automating the deployment and management processes, organizations can significantly reduce the likelihood of human error, which is often a major factor in security breaches.

 

Improve Instance Availability with Geo-Distribution

AWS's global data center network significantly enhances the availability of instances. By designing an AWS architecture that utilizes geo-distribution across multiple availability zones, organizations can achieve greater redundancy and fault tolerance.

In  instances of zone failure, having a geo-distributed setup ensures that workloads can be quickly shifted to operational zones, thus maintaining continuous service availability. This approach is particularly important for mission-critical applications where downtime can have significant business impacts. Geo-distribution not only provides a strong security posture but also ensures that services remain resilient in the face of regional disruptions.

 

Moving Forward

In an era where digital security is crucial, strengthening AWS environments is key for organizations. Adopting strategies that encompass cloud agility, compliance, cost-efficiency, on-demand DevOps, and advanced automation is vital for maintaining robust, secure operations.

Cloudride is at the forefront of delivering solutions and services to enhance AWS security and operational efficiency. Our expertise is tailored to guide businesses towards a secure, efficient future in cloud computing. Reach out to us for support in elevating the security of your AWS infrastructure.

shira-teller
2023/12
Dec 26, 2023 4:00:00 PM
Amplify AWS Security with Cloudride: Safeguard Your Infrastructure
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Dec 26, 2023 4:00:00 PM

Amplify AWS Security with Cloudride: Safeguard Your Infrastructure

As IT and DevOps professionals navigate the complexities of their roles, maintaining the security and functionality of AWS environments is crucial. During times when the demands are high and the challenges seem insurmountable, Cloudride offers reliable solutions to ensure operational stability and...

Secure Your Infrastructure: Blend of Public Cloud & On-Prem Solutions

Leveraging technical expertise to integrate public cloud services into on-premise infrastructure remains essential for enhancing overall security. The intersection of public cloud and on-premise infrastructure offers increased scaling agility and cost-effectiveness, allowing organizations to seamlessly bridge the gap between their existing environment and the boundless potential of the cloud.

Join us in exploring an understanding of hybrid cloud solutions that provides the necessary tools for success in the evolving digital landscape.

 

Disaster Preparedness

The essence of modern disaster readiness, commonly referred to as Disaster Recovery (DR), lies in cloud agility. This approach allows organizations to rapidly respond to evolving cyber challenges. IT teams, leveraging the public cloud's built-in auto-scaling and deployment capabilities, can proactively address potential disruptions. Such adaptability not only improves incident management but also transforms it into actionable strategies to effectively tackle new challenges.

Easy data backups in the cloud ensure operational continuity, even during on-premise failures. The hybrid model, which combines cloud and on-premise solutions, facilitates continuous data synchronization and backup, significantly reducing the risk of concurrent data loss. In high-load scenarios, cloud-based disaster recovery solutions offer rapid scalability, ensuring efficient utilization of resources and maintaining system resilience.

 

Data Residency Requirements

Utilizing the localized presence of public cloud data centers enables enterprises to store data in compliance with local regulations. This strategy not only prevents legal complications but also aligns with broader data management goals.

Carefully selecting regionally aligned cloud data centers is crucial for proper compliance with AWS’s data residency requirement of 100 km while integrating on-premises infrastructure with public cloud solutions. This consideration ensures adherence to specific regional regulatory requirements and enhances the overall effectiveness of the hybrid cloud strategy.

AWS outsourcing simplifies integration and compliance for on-premises exchange. AWS Local Zones or Wavelength provide ultra-low latency and proximity to end-users concerning data privacy laws. Additionally, AWS Global Accelerator enhances network traffic routing by directing requests within a specified range.

 

Cost Efficiency and Security

Cloud on-demand is the epitome of resource optimization, blending security with cost-effectiveness. By utilizing only what is necessary, organizations can save costs and minimize their attack surface. Scalable resources on demand bolster company security and encourage responsible operation.

Businesses benefit from cloud storage solutions like Amazon S3, paying only for the storage they use, thereby reducing expenses. This on-demand model minimizes initial costs and offers flexibility in managing dynamic storage needs.

Rapid infrastructure scalability is achievable with on-demand EC2 instances during critical events. This approach is more cost-effective and agile compared to traditional infrastructure scaling, enhancing security against potential risks of over-provisioning.

 

Precision in RTO/RPO

AWS's flexible control over backups and recovery points helps prevent significant data loss during disruptions. This capability ensures swift response and recovery, aligning with stringent recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) of many organizations.

Cloud redundancy and failovers enhance the accuracy of these objectives. Additionally, cloud-native security tools improve threat detection and mitigation, offering comprehensive end-to-end security. The combination of on-premise and public cloud resources delivers sophisticated IT security, optimizing RTO/RPO reliability.

 

Strengthening Data Availability and Redundancy

Public cloud solutions enhance on-prem infrastructure by leveraging geolocation to increase redundancy. The global distribution of cloud data centers supports disaster recovery through geodiversity. Distributing data across multiple sites bolsters resistance to regional threats and cybersecurity.

The redundancy capacities of the cloud, including automatic failover and backup services, ensure secure and available data. Geographic dispersion of cloud resources enables organizations to mitigate local failures and outages. The strategic combination of geo and disaster recovery locations enhances risk management, creating a robust synergy between on-premises and cloud infrastructure.

 

Hybrid as a Gateway to Cloud Migrations

For organizations deeply rooted in on-premises setups, adopting a hybrid approach is an effective way to enhance IT security. This method allows for a gradual, staged migration of workloads, ensuring proper safeguards during integration. 

Public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), offer enhanced security features, including IAM, encryption, and threat detection, contributing to an overall defense strategy. By commencing with less critical workloads, you can confidently learn the ropes of cloud security in a controlled environment, building trust before migrating core data. This iterative approach ensures continuous security improvement while mitigating compliance challenges through manageable steps.

Iterative security improvements ensure compliance with evolving requirements and address specific challenges of on-prem infrastructure through a staged approach.   

 

What's Next?

As organizations increasingly recognize the need to fortify their predominantly on-premise infrastructures, Cloudride stands as a trusted ally in this transition. Our expertise lies in seamlessly integrating public cloud solutions into existing on-premise setups, thereby enhancing security and operational efficiency. We offer customized solutions that cater specifically to the unique challenges of on-premise environments.

Reach out to us to discover how we can help bolster the resilience and security of your infrastructure with our specialized hybrid cloud approach.

shira-teller
2023/12
Dec 13, 2023 3:44:30 PM
Secure Your Infrastructure: Blend of Public Cloud & On-Prem Solutions
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Dec 13, 2023 3:44:30 PM

Secure Your Infrastructure: Blend of Public Cloud & On-Prem Solutions

Leveraging technical expertise to integrate public cloud services into on-premise infrastructure remains essential for enhancing overall security. The intersection of public cloud and on-premise infrastructure offers increased scaling agility and cost-effectiveness, allowing organizations to...

Cloud Migration 101: How to Troubleshoot & Avoid Common Errors

Statistics show an ongoing surge in cloud migration in recent years. Public clouds allow the deployment of cutting-edge technologies bundled with several cost-saving solutions. However, to utilize the advantages of the cloud, it is critical to build the migration process from the ground up, rethink the fundamentals and open yourselves for some new doctrines. 

Let us dive deep into some of the most common mistakes and miss-usages of the platform, analyze the errors and try to offer alternatives which may help to perform the cloud migration more smoothly.

 

What's In, What's Out and How

A cloud migration process should start with a discovery session to flag the organizations’ current workloads and a decision as to what should actually be migrated and what should be dropped. One of AWS’ best practices revolves around the 7 R’s principle: Refactor, Replatform, Repurchase, Rehost, Relocate, Retain, and Retire.

Building your strategy around the 7 R’s doctrine allows achieving an optimal architecture and avoiding inefficiencies costs wise.


  • Refactor: Modifying and improving the application to leverage cloud capabilities fully.
  • Replatform: Making minor changes to use cloud efficiencies, but not fully redesigning the app.
  • Repurchase: Switching to a different product, usually a cloud-native service.
  • Rehost: "Lift and shift" approach, moving applications to the cloud as they are.
  • Relocate: Moving resources to a cloud provider's infrastructure with minimal changes.
  • Retain: Keeping some applications in the current environment due to various constraints.
  • Retire: Eliminating unnecessary applications to streamline and focus the migration.

AWS Migration Strategies - Mobilise Cloud

 

Starting with Sensitive Data

You may be too eager to take your sensitive data to the cloud, stripping it off your local servers quickly. That’s a mistake. Even if there’s imminent risk, a hasty migration of sensitive data could lead to bigger problems. 

The first batch of data shifted to the cloud environment is like a guinea pig.  Even experts understand that anything could go wrong. You want to start with less critical data so that if an issue occurs, necessary data won’t be lost. You can also anonymize a small dataset for a PoC. 

 

Speeding the Migration Process

Many IT people mistake enterprise migration for the simple process of shifting to a new server. It's more complicated than that. A Migration leader should understand that the shift is a multi-step process that involves many activities and milestones.

It is crucial to understand the type of migration we are undertaking — specifically, which of the 7 R's we are utilizing in this migration

It would be ideal to start the migration with less critical apps, and gradually move mission-critical apps and workloads. Usually it would be ideal to start a “lift & shift” migration to the cloud and then start a refactor phase after the application was transferred, as it is simpler to change an app once it was moved to the cloud due to vertical growth. You can then figure out whether to refactor some applications. Doing the steps in phases can help you figure out ways to mitigate risk and track and fix issues.

Speeding the Migration Process

 

Underestimate Costs

Companies must understand cloud migration costs before moving. Making radical cost management changes during the migration often doesn’t bode well for the project's outcomes. 

As in any other IT project, there are a number of factors to be considered such as staff training, bandwidth required for the initial sync and later - cost optimization.
Budget governance is always an elephant in the room, but with the required knowledge, you’ll be able to build the path for a successful cloud journey.

 

Data Security

Data security always comes up when first thinking of cloud migration - can we protect our data? Can we build a BCP/DRP when we talk about the cloud?

Obviously the short answer is yes… the long answer is that you probably use cloud services in some of your most intimate corporate services such as emails, data sync & share, etc.

All regulations and requirements can be implemented over the cloud. It is important to pre-build your cloud architecture to align with regulatory demands such as GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC. Solutions and architectural best practices for these regulations are publicly available to help in this process.

 

Forgetting the Network

It's a mistake to think only about the hardware and software and forget the network during cloud migration. The network is important because it facilitates the data migration, your day-to-day cloud experience and data security. For a successful cloud migration, you must optimize the network that will allow you to access all apps and data after the migration. It must be secure and maintain high-performance to ensure a smooth transfer.

Engage with your teams and experts to determine security, accessibility, and scalability needs. It would be best to analyze current network performance and vulnerabilities before jumping in with both feet.

 

Inefficient Testing

Testing the cloud infrastructure for security stability, performance, scalability, interoperability etc., will allow a better project delivery. A correct testing plan will help you avoid mistakes that can create an issue with the planned resources for the project. 

After cloud migration, applications may require reconfiguration to operate smoothly. Additionally, as some team members might not be familiar with all the new features, thorough testing is essential to ensure seamless service functionality.

 

Not Training Staff

Some of the risks associated with untrained employees during the migration process include accidental data leaks and misconfigurations.

But keep in mind that migration training is not a single-day event. You must continually upskill and reskill your teams on cloud security, performance, and cloud capabilities. Document new SOPs for them and set best practices that align with your goals for the migration.   

 

Get in Touch

Cloudride is committed to helping enterprises move to the cloud seamlessly.  We will help you cut costs, improve migration security, and maximize the business value of the cloud. Our team is consisted of migration experts who are also qualified AWS partners. Contact us to request a consultation.

ronen-amity
2023/12
Dec 4, 2023 3:04:11 PM
Cloud Migration 101: How to Troubleshoot & Avoid Common Errors
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Dec 4, 2023 3:04:11 PM

Cloud Migration 101: How to Troubleshoot & Avoid Common Errors

Statistics show an ongoing surge in cloud migration in recent years. Public clouds allow the deployment of cutting-edge technologies bundled with several cost-saving solutions. However, to utilize the advantages of the cloud, it is critical to build the migration process from the ground up, rethink...

AWS Partner Cloudride’s Strategic Guide to Cloud Migration 101

Businesses can choose between a private cloud and public cloud strategies. The choice largely depends on factors such as the specific applications, allocated budget, business needs, and team expertise.

The public cloud grants you access to a wide-range of resources such as storage, infrastructure and servers. The provider operating the physical hardware and offers it to companies based on their needs. Amazon Web Services is the most popular public cloud vendor to date, offering the worlds’ most reliable, flexible and secure public cloud infrastructure alongside the best support led by the “AWS Customer Obsession” strategy.

 

The Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud

Here are some of the many benefits shifting to a public cloud may hold: 

Driving Innovation

One of the greatest advantages of starting the cloud journey is innovation driven by cost savings, resiliency and TCO.

Challenging the traditional IT way-of-thinking, test environments can be launched and dropped in a matter of minutes, allowing true agile, commitment-free experiments and at minimal expense. AWS calls this concept “Failing Fast”.

As a result, you can drive innovation faster without buying the excess compute power needed.


Scalability and Flexibility

Key business outcomes depend on scalability and flexibility.  However, sometimes it's difficult to know whether the business should scale or be agile. Unfortunately, if changes aren’t made at the right time, the business’s performance could be drastically impacted.

The cloud can be a game-changer when it comes to scalability. You can reduce or expand operations quickly without being held down by infrastructure constraints. That means that in the face of supply and demand changes, you can quickly pivot to capitalize on the tide. Because the changes are automated and handled on the provider’s end, all it takes to save or provision additional resources is a few clicks of the button.


Business Governance

Today, companies gather large amounts of data and rely on cloud-based tools to analyze and mine insights from it. These efforts are primary to understanding business processes, forecasting market trends, and influencing customer behaviors.

AWS offers numerous tools allowing data-driven decisions to be made. Utilization of technologies such as Generative AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning have been made accessible for mainstream organization whom previously lacked the ability to adopt a higher form of  Data Analysis.

 

The Benefits of Working with an AWS Partner

Expertise and Cost-Effective Solutions

AWS partners stand out as experts, offering unparalleled expertise in concepts such as cloud database migration. Vetted and verified by Amazon, these partners possess the skills to develop tailored solutions, among them migration strategies that align with specific business needs. They excel in identifying cost-effective solutions for AWS cloud migration, ensuring the efficient allocation of resources. This strategic planning leads to significant cost savings by the end of the migration process, optimizing your investment in cloud technology.


Risk Management and Strategic Business Transformation

Collaborating with these experienced partners also means minimizing risks and avoiding downtime during the migration. Their expertise allows them to skillfully navigate challenges and obstacles, ensuring a seamless transition to the cloud. This partnership is not just about moving to the cloud; it's about transforming your business to leverage the full spectrum of AWS capabilities. This includes enhanced data security, scalability, and agility.

 

Work With Us

Elevate your business with Cloudride’s AWS cloud migration consulting. We will help you leverage the power of the AWS cloud for business, improve data security, and save IT costs. Contact us to learn more.

danny-levran
2023/11
Nov 13, 2023 3:39:19 PM
AWS Partner Cloudride’s Strategic Guide to Cloud Migration 101
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Nov 13, 2023 3:39:19 PM

AWS Partner Cloudride’s Strategic Guide to Cloud Migration 101

Businesses can choose between a private cloud and public cloud strategies. The choice largely depends on factors such as the specific applications, allocated budget, business needs, and team expertise.

The public cloud grants you access to a wide-range of resources such as storage, infrastructure...

Cloud Migration 101: Migration Best Practices and Methodologies

AWS professional service providers have been instrumental in helping companies successfully transition to the cloud. Although each migration case has its own unique requirements, the framework with the minor changes required, will suit every large-scale migration scenario, either at a complete or hybrid migration strategy.

To simplify large-scale application migrations, AWS created, among others, the AWS Migration Acceleration Program to guide their best migration service providers, who have integrated these best practices in their strategies.

 

Pre-Migration Stage

  1. Build a CCoE (Cloud Center of Excellence) team, with selected personas from all sectors within your organization: IT, Data Security, business decision makers and Finance. Have them get acquainted with AWS, cloud concepts and best practices.
    Moving forward, this team will be responsible for your cloud adoption strategy from day one. 

  2. Prepare a cloud governance model assigning key responsibilities: 
    • Ensure the model aligns with your organizations’ security regulations; 
    • Weigh the different pros and cons of various approaches;
    • Seek advice from an AWS partner on the most favorable solutions.

  3. Build an organization-wide training plan for your employees, with a specific learning path and learning curve per persona - this removes fear of the unknown and facilitates a better cloud journey experience.

  4. Chart the best approach to transition your operations to AWS. A migration expert will help you figure out:
    • Processes requiring alteration or renewal
    • Tools beneficial in the cloud
    • Any training to equip your team with the required assets
    • Implementation of services and solutions supporting regulatory requirements over the new cloud environment 
    Considering operational requirements will help keep your focus on the big picture and shape your AWS environment with the company’s overall strategy. 

  5. Create an accurate updated asset inventory to help you set priorities, estimated timeframes and build a cost evaluation for the project. Controlling your information will allow you to set KPIs for the project, the necessary guardrails and even save you consumption costs.

  6. Choose the right partner to assist you along the way. They should have the right technical experience, project management structure and agile methodology. In addition, consider the operational model you plan to implement and task the partner with setting up necessary processes (IaC and CI/CD pipelines). 

 

The Transition Phase

Simplify your cloud transition with a straightforward approach: Score some early victories with data migration and validation to build confidence within your teams. The more familiar they become with the new technology, the faster your stakeholders see the potential the project holds. 

Automation is essential at this stage. Your AWS partner will help you review your existing practices and adapt them to the new environment and to working procedures the automation process would introduce. If automation is not feasible for all aspects, consider which ones can be automated and authorize your team to implement them.

Approach your cloud migration as a modernization process and reconcile your internal processes with it: Use the cloud’s transformative nature to evolve and match stakeholders with this new shift.  

Prioritize managed services wherever possible and delegate mundane tasks to AWS so your your team has the time to focus on what matters - your business.

 

Build an Exit Strategy

Avoid vendor lock-in by preparing a real plan for either a roll back to your current infrastructure environment or to an alternative solution. This will help expediting the process by eliminating common in-house rejections and help you achieve a more resilient Disaster Recovery Plan.

 

Post Cloud Migration

Once you have shifted to the cloud, automate critical processes like provisioning and deployment. This saves time and reduces manual effort while ensuring tasks are completed in a repeatable manner.

Many cloud providers offer tools and services to help you optimize performance and reduce costs. Also, consider using cloud-native technology to maximize the potential of what the cloud provider offers.

Equally important is having an in-house, dedicated support team to help you address the most complex issues and guide you to design and implement cloud infrastructure.

 

Mass Migration Strategies

For effective mass migrations, you may need the help of large teams of experts to develop practical migration tools and to document the progress.

Institute a Cloud Center of Excellence or a Program Management Office to oversee the implementation of all important changes and procedures. Operate with agility to accelerate the process and remember to have a backup for any potential disruptions.

Use a dedicated onboarding process for new team members in the migration process. The process should help you efficiently evaluate, approve tools, and look for patterns during the migration. 

 

Conclusion

Migrating applications to AWS requires the guidance of an AWS Partner who like Cloudride, who are also migration experts. This is because cloud adoption is complex and requires careful planning, education, and collaboration.

Cloudride will guide your organization in every step of the digital migration while keeping your migration in alignment with your organization's objectives and budget. So what are you waiting for? Book a meeting today and experience a smooth and cost-effective digital transformation.

uti-teva
2023/11
Nov 1, 2023 3:11:58 PM
Cloud Migration 101: Migration Best Practices and Methodologies
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Nov 1, 2023 3:11:58 PM

Cloud Migration 101: Migration Best Practices and Methodologies

AWS professional service providers have been instrumental in helping companies successfully transition to the cloud. Although each migration case has its own unique requirements, the framework with the minor changes required, will suit every large-scale migration scenario, either at a complete or...

First Business Cloud Migration: A Strategy Guide by Cloudride

Large cloud migrations can be exhausting, resource-intensive projects, demanding high-touch handling from all compute-related departments such as IT, Data Security, Development, DevOps and Management. Lacking a proper, proven and tech-savvy plan, the project, with all the resources invested, has great chances to fail and crumble in a flash.

Choosing the right partners can be a great hassle if you are an organization set on a quick, incident-free cloud migration to AWS. You would have to filter through large data sets to find the right partner or risk entrusting the wrong people with the future of your business. AWS introduced the different AWS Competency Programs in 2016 to stem this challenge and help you work with people with the right experience and skills in cloud migration.

 

Should You Hire a Cloud Migration Consultant?

AWS partners assist you with your cloud migration. This is especially important if your company lacks the required knowledge to handle a migration project at this magnitude, a team of solution architects and a small army of DevOps at your side. AWS Partners are domain experts in AWS functions and services, giving you the highest value during your cloud migration. 

Prior to to making the critical decision to hire a cloud migration specialist, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is your current team well-resourced to handle the AWS Well-Architected Framework?
  • Does your staff understand the AWS Well-Architected Framework?
  • Do they have prior experience using AWS IaC tools to manage infrastructure as code and automate operations?
  • Does your company feel secure enough to invest the needed funds to migrate to the cloud?
  • Will you need additional funding on top of the AWS offer? 

 

Preparing for an AWS Migration

Cloud migration requires careful planning. The planning stage involves reviewing your existing systems, defining your objectives, and generating a migration approach. 

 

Infrastructure Assessment

A successful AWS migration begins with evaluating a business's on-premises or existing cloud environment. It includes the applications, data infrastructure, security measures, and potential risks. Migration experts who are AWS partners can help you get ready with a checklist of best practices.

 

Map Out Your Cloud Journey

Once you have a clear view of your current environment, build a sweeping migration strategy. It should consider all the important factors, such as downtime tolerance, budgetary constraints, and your specific business objectives.

Your migration expert will help design a complete AWS strategy tailored to your goals and constraints, which will facilitate a smooth migration.

 

Security First

Security is a key element of any enterprise cloud migration in this era of massive data breaches and cyber threats. Your migration to the AWS cloud has to be executed securely and efficiently. The migration expert will help you achieve these objectives by providing the following guardrails:

  • Conducting security assessments to identify and eliminate susceptibilities in your present infrastructure prior to migration to AWS.
  • Implementing AWS's best security protocol practices to protect your cloud. These will include Identity and Access Management (IAM), encryption, and many monitoring tools safeguarding your cloud workloads.
  • Protecting your data on AWS by conforming your migration to industry-specific compliance regulations such as HIPAA, PCI and GDPR.
  • When done correctly, your organization will benefit from threat detection and incident response tools to continuously protect your AWS workloads. 

 

Optimize for AWS

A cloud migration consultant will help you utilize opportunities where applicative modernizations can be achieved, while calculating the risks vs. benefit factors allowing data-driven decisions be made. You'll thus benefit fully from the AWS features and services. Not only will you improve your application's performance and resilience, but also maximize your return of investment.

 

Minimize Disruption

When building a migration strategy, minimal disruption of your enterprise is a priority to be considered. A cloud expert will offer AWS recommended solutions, designed especially for massive migration scenarios to allow smooth, automated processes, reducing downtime and unnecessary resource-investment.

 

Testing and Validation

Testing should be done shortly before the end of the cloud migration process. Your AWS partner will perform an extensive analysis to ensure all data and applications have been successfully migrated and are functioning properly. Your AWS partner will use reliable evaluation protocols to ensure the smooth transition.

 

Post-Migration 

There is still much to do. The completion of your migration is not, by definition, the end of the journey. The cloud expert should provide the means and guidance for ongoing monitoring and optimization services, assist in building a Cloud Center of Excellence, a small, cloud-related decision making team This is important to ensure that your AWS infrastructure remains secure, efficient, and cost-effective to continually meet your business needs.

 

Conclusion

Migrating to AWS is a huge milestone for your business. AWS Partners who are migration experts are indispensable in guaranteeing a secure, efficient, and successful transition. Our expertise at Cloudride, as well as our commitment to maintaining rigid security standards, will greatly benefit your organization. If you’re interested in beginning your cloud journey, please book a consultation meeting with one of our cloud migration champions today

uti-teva
2023/10
Oct 26, 2023 2:31:03 PM
First Business Cloud Migration: A Strategy Guide by Cloudride
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Oct 26, 2023 2:31:03 PM

First Business Cloud Migration: A Strategy Guide by Cloudride

Large cloud migrations can be exhausting, resource-intensive projects, demanding high-touch handling from all compute-related departments such as IT, Data Security, Development, DevOps and Management. Lacking a proper, proven and tech-savvy plan, the project, with all the resources invested, has...

How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure for the Future

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, preparing an IT infrastructure for the future is no longer a luxury — it's a necessity. If you're a CTO, CIO, VP R&D, or other IT leader, staying ahead of the curve is essential.  But with countless options and strategies, where do you start? This guide delves deep, offering expert advice tailored to your advanced understanding.

We'll unravel a step-by-step process to modernize your IT infrastructure, providing actionable tips to enhance efficiency and tackle common pitfalls even seasoned professionals encounter.

 

What Is IT Infrastructure?

IT infrastructure is the brains behind any successful business. It is a cluster of interconnected technologies and services that work together to help the organization keep up with the competition. The type and range of infrastructure may vary according to the organization's resources, operational goals, and other variables. 

 

IT Optimization and Its Role in Today’s Digital Landscape?

Simply put, IT optimization refers to using technology to minimize liability and enhance the agility of your business operations.  If you already have a functional IT infrastructure, optimizing it can make a ton of difference in your business’s success.

  • Optimizing can break down barriers and scale ROI
  • streamline your processes and improve integration
  • enhance scalability and security
  • increase productivity and foster agility and
  • simplify system management while reducing maintenance costs

 

How Can Businesses Go About Optimizing Their IT Infrastructure Effectively?

If you are feeling uncertain about the state of your IT infrastructure, it may be time to upgrade, and here are some best practices to consider when optimizing your infrastructure management.

 

Strengthening Collaboration

As pointed out earlier, optimizing your IT infrastructure is critical to the successful transformation of your business. To make this happen, you need to strengthen business-IT relationships by holding regular meetings, brainstorming sessions, and workshops to share goals, challenges, and insights.

You can also keep up with regular sync-ups to align business goals with IT capabilities, as well as hold cross-training to ensure mutual understanding and create more opportunities in future collaborations.

 

Transitioning from Outdated Systems

Once you have created strong mutual bonds between the business and IT teams, you need to audit your current systems and identify any outdated or unproductive ones. Get your IT team to research the latest solutions and replace your legacy systems with solutions that offer better support and scalability. 

This process could involve upgrading software applications, migrating to newer hardware, or adopting cloud-based systems.

 

Adopt Cloud Systems

Migrating to the cloud and optimizing your cloud infrastructure requires understanding the difference between public, private, and hybrid clouds.  You need to choose a model based on data sensitivity, compliance requirements, and scalability needs. 

For instance, you can choose a private cloud solution if you are dealing with sensitive data and opt for a hybrid model that gives you the flexibility to scale your resources when demand is high.

 

Leverage Automation

Identifying and automating repetitive tasks within IT operations is one of the best ways to improve your organization's efficiency. Mundane tasks such as updates, patch management, and provisioning can easily be automated by your IT team, who deploy automation tools to handle them and free up manpower for more strategic tasks.

 

Build a Robust Architecture

Work with IT architects and engineers to design a flexible, scalable platform that has the capacity to accommodate future trends like AI, edge computing, and IoT. You can also incorporate redundancy into your IT infrastructure to minimize potential downtimes.

 

Troubleshooting and FAQs

How Can Businesses  Avoid High Costs While Using the Cloud?

Businesses can opt for a pay-as-you-go model to ensure they only pay for what they use. This model enables them to review regularly their cloud consumption while adjusting resources as needed to prevent resource shortages.

Why Are My Resources Still Running Even When Not in Use?

Ineffective monitoring can cause resource inefficiency. To limit this problem, you have to integrate tools that offer real-time monitoring and alerts and automate the shutdown of idle resources to save costs. 

 

Conclusion

Optimizing your IT infrastructure isn't just about staying current — it's also about paving the way for innovation, scalability, and efficiency. Cloudride offers public cloud platforms with an emphasis on security and cost optimization.  Book a meeting and let us guide you through the process of optimizing your IT setup. 

shuki-levinovitch
2023/09
Sep 26, 2023 5:10:28 PM
How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure for the Future
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Sep 26, 2023 5:10:28 PM

How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure for the Future

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, preparing an IT infrastructure for the future is no longer a luxury — it's a necessity. If you're a CTO, CIO, VP R&D, or other IT leader, staying ahead of the curve is essential. But with countless options and strategies, where do you start? This guide...

Pivotal Role of CIOs and CTOs in Cloud Navigation: Cloudride

In the golden age of digital evolution, the weight of modern enterprise rests firmly on the shoulders of CIOs and CTOs. From the cobblestone streets of yesterday to the digital highways of today, technology's trajectory has been nothing short of meteoric. But with this revolution comes an intricate web of choices. How do tech leaders sail these vast cloud seas without losing direction?

This article ventures deep into the role of the CIOs and CTOs in the digital era. By the end, you'll comprehend the indispensability of their positions in cloud strategy and understand why professional guidance, like the services offered by Cloudride, is paramount for a smooth, efficient, and cost-effective digital transformation.

The CIO & CTO Symphony

Cloud computing isn't merely a buzzword—it's the compass guiding modern enterprises toward efficiency, scalability, and innovation. The leaders holding this compass? The CIOs and CTOs.

While CIOs focus on internal tech infrastructure, steering the ship of IT toward meeting organizational goals, CTOs, on the other hand, look outward. They're the visionaries, integrating the latest in tech to elevate the company's offerings. Together, their harmony is essential for a successful cloud strategy.

In many companies, the roles of the CIO and CTO are very distinguishable; let me give an illustration. Recently, a certain company wanted to implement a new cloud-based technology to enhance our customer delivery service. 

The CIO was responsible for seeing the implementation of the technology, while the CTO worked closely with the CIO on the design of the new system to ensure it would fit the needs and meet their business goals.

It was great to see the power of collaboration between the CIO and CTO in delivering that new customer-centric application, which ultimately resulted in a 30% increase in customer satisfaction.

The Labyrinth of Cloud Migration

Migrating to the cloud is not a simple linear path—it's a maze. Decisions regarding AWS, cloud cost optimization, and the kind of cloud model best suited for the enterprise can be daunting. 

To transition smoothly and safeguard your data, you must understand the nitty-gritty details of cloud migration, and hiring a professional cloud consultant is your best bet in navigating this journey. These professionals will create a migration plan that fits your organizational goals and make sure you receive the most cost-effective options out there.

Professional Guidance – A Beacon in the Fog

Cloudride, for instance, has consistently demonstrated how the complexity of cloud strategy can be unraveled, simplified, and made agile. They embody the notion that while the cloud's potential is vast, navigation is key.

Having professional intervention can be very beneficial, as evidenced by Company DataRails' partnership with Cloudride for their cloud migration.  Thanks to Cloudride's expertise with efficient cost optimization and strategic planning, the migration process went without a hitch, and they were able to reduce operational costs by 20 % and increase overall IT efficiency.

Integration of Innovative Technologies

Beyond integrating cloud solutions, companies should look to harness the latest technological advancements to help run their business operations faster and more efficiently.  AI, machine learning, big data analytics, and IoT are great tools to actualize this.  Cloud computing simply provides the hardware and software resources needed to integrate all these technologies.

Benefits of Adopting Cloud Services

Adopting cloud services for your business is a great way to save on upfront capital expenditure. Say goodbye to purchasing and upgrading your infrastructure equipment as cloud services steps in to provide the resources you need when you need them.

Cloud services are also great for scalability, flexibility, and mobility, as your staff can access the resources they need from any device. Plus, the extra weight of managing infrastructure has been lifted off your shoulders as cloud service providers take care of that.

These cloud providers don’t just secure your servers and storage, but they also guarantee business continuity in the event of unanticipated events so your employees can continue working remotely and maintain business operations.

Wrap-Up

In the vast expanses of the digital realm, as enterprises evolve and transform, the role of CIOs and CTOs is more crucial than ever. Their decisions, strategies, and vision will determine not just the success of the cloud migration but the very future of the enterprise. Yet, even the best requires guidance. And in the world of cloud computing, expert assistance isn't just an option—it's a requisite.

Ready to embark on a seamless, efficient cloud journey? Chart your course with clarity and precision. Book a consultancy meeting with Cloudride and steer your enterprise towards the future, today. Cloudride's expertise will guide you through the complexities of cloud strategy, ensuring a successful digital transformation.

 

 

ronen-amity
2023/09
Sep 14, 2023 1:09:38 PM
Pivotal Role of CIOs and CTOs in Cloud Navigation: Cloudride
Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Sep 14, 2023 1:09:38 PM

Pivotal Role of CIOs and CTOs in Cloud Navigation: Cloudride

In the golden age of digital evolution, the weight of modern enterprise rests firmly on the shoulders of CIOs and CTOs. From the cobblestone streets of yesterday to the digital highways of today, technology's trajectory has been nothing short of meteoric. But with this revolution comes an intricate...

Guide for migration or upgrade to more secure version of Server

Microsoft's announcement made it clear - it’s coming, the deadline is here and your organization has to prepare for it, Windows 2012 R2 is about to be retired and no future support or updates will be released starting October 10th 2023.

The ramifications of not preparing for this momentous event could be costly, but don’t be discouraged, we got you covered by preparing a quick preparation guide for those who either forgot or postponed the task to the very last moment.  

Overview

As mentioned, the end of extended support (EOS) for Windows Server 2012 means no more security updates, non-security updates, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft. In simpler terms, it's a significant risk for data security, compliance, and system performance. Whether you're a business leader or a technology decision-maker, understanding the implications and planning a migration or upgrade is crucial.

Step-by-Step Explanation

  1. Conduct an Inventory Audit: Know your assets. Identify all servers running Windows Server 2012 in your organization.
  2. Assess Dependencies and Workloads: Categorize the workloads and assess dependencies to make informed decisions about compatibility and migration paths.
  3. Choose a Migration Path: Options include:
    - In-place upgrade
    - Migration to a newer version
    - Cloud migration to services like AWS, Azure, or others
  4. Test the Migration: Never proceed without testing the migration process to ensure data integrity and application compatibility.
  5. Perform the Migration: You may do this yourself, use automated tools, or engage experts for the migration process.
  6. Validate and Optimize: Once migrated, ensure all systems are operational, secure, and optimized for performance.

Leverage AWS

AWS offers a range of options to make your migration process efficient and secure. Here are some key takeaways:

  1. AWS Migration Hub: Consolidate migration tracking, making the overall process easier to manage.

  2. AWS Server Migration Service: Automate, schedule, and track server migrations to reduce downtime and errors.

  3. AWS License Manager: Simplify license management and compliance.

  4. AWS Managed Services: These manage and automate common activities such as patch management, change requests, and monitoring, allowing you to focus on your business.

Conclusion: Future-Proofing with Cloudride

The end of support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 is a critical event that presents both challenges and opportunities. While migration may seem daunting, it's also a chance to modernize your infrastructure. Partnering with experts like Cloudride can smooth this transition. Cloudride offers extensive AWS expertise and a variety of services, such as:

- Cloud Readiness Assessment: Evaluate how prepared your organization is for the cloud.

- Security & Compliance: Ensure your migration meets all regulatory requirements.

- Cost Management: Help your organization understand the cost implications of moving to the cloud and optimize resources.

Facing the end of support for Windows Server 2012 doesn't have to be a crisis. With proper planning, expert support, and the right cloud solutions, it can be an opportunity for digital transformation. The clock is ticking, but the time to act is now.

 

 

uti-teva
2023/09
Sep 7, 2023 1:07:28 PM
Guide for migration or upgrade to more secure version of Server
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Sep 7, 2023 1:07:28 PM

Guide for migration or upgrade to more secure version of Server

Microsoft's announcement made it clear - it’s coming, the deadline is here and your organization has to prepare for it, Windows 2012 R2 is about to be retired and no future support or updates will be released starting October 10th 2023.

The ramifications of not preparing for this momentous event...

Strengthen Your Cloud Security

Cloud security remains a major concern for companies worldwide. A survey by Checkpoint shows that 76 % of companies are in the direct line of attack from cloud-native threats.  

To address these concerns and propose solutions and best practices for optimal cloud security, Cloudride is excited, in collaboration with Skyhawk security, to host a comprehensive webinar on cloud security – Cloud breach prevention

Industry leaders, security analysts, IT experts, and DevOps professionals are invited to attend. The discussion will center on the current challenges in cloud security, why the risks are growing, and the best practices for breach prevention.

The Need for Optimal Approaches

As attractive as the cloud is, it presents new types of risks. Business leaders are today pondering whether cloud providers can guarantee protection for their sensitive data and ensure compliance with regulations.

Today cloud-free organizations are virtually non-existent. Even the most sensitive data resides in the cloud. But companies are as exposed as ever to sophisticated cyber threats, highlighting the need for professionals in this field to update their knowledge and tools to safeguard cloud assets continually.

The bottom line is that you are responsible for your security in the private cloud, and even though this responsibility is shared between you and the provider in the public cloud, the buck stops with you. 

By attending this webinar, you can gain the insights needed to safeguard your organization against the ever-evolving threats lurking in the cloud.

Current Challenges in the Cloud Security Scene

We believe that today CIOs must adopt risk-management approaches tailored to their organizational needs and that can optimize the economic gains from cloud solutions. To thrive in the cloud, data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance requirements are just a few issues businesses must address today. 

The webinar will define the best cybersecurity policies and controls and provide a configuration reference for ensuring your systems run safely and economically. We will help you understand your environment so you can proactively implement robust security measures and protect your critical assets.

Common Types of Threats in the Cloud

The cloud environment is vulnerable to various threats, including malware attacks, account hijacking, and insider threats. 

Identity and Access

Cloud data protection starts and concludes with access control. Today, most attackers pose as authorized users, which helps them avoid detection for a long time. Cloud security teams must continually verify employee identity and implement robust access controls, including zero trust and two-factor authentication.

Insecure interfaces

APIs may carry vulnerabilities from misconfiguration, incorrect code, or insufficient authentication, which can expose your entire cloud environment to malicious activity. Companies must employ optimized change control approaches, API attack surface analysis, and threat monitoring to reduce the risk of this threat.

Misconfiguration 

Incorrect computing asset setup can expose them to internal or external malicious activity. And because of automated CI-CD process misconfigurations and the security risks they pose can get quickly deployed and affect all assets. Security teams must improve their system knowledge and understanding of security settings to prevent such misconfigurations.

Lack of cloud security architecture

Cloud security professionals often grapple with a crucial decision: determining the optimal blend of default controls provided by the cloud vendor, enhanced controls available through premium services, and third-party security solutions that align with their unique risk profile.

An organization's risk profile can vary significantly at the granular application level. Such intricate considerations arise due to the ever-evolving landscape of emerging threats, adding complexity to safeguarding cloud environments.

 

Best Practices for Breach Prevention

Breach prevention is at the forefront of every security professional's mind. In our webinar, we will explore strategies and techniques to prevent breaches, including:

Understand Own Responsibility for Your Cloud Security

The cloud provider is only partly responsible for some aspects of your IT security. But a significant percentage of cloud security responsibility rests with you. The cloud provider will provide documentation listing your responsibilities and theirs regarding crucial deployments. It is critical to review their policies to understand what you need to do as an organization regarding cloud security.

Identity and Access Management 

Deploy an  IAM strategy for defining and enforcing critical access policies based on the principle of least privilege. Everything must be guided by role-based access control, and further, using multi-factor authentication (MFA) can safeguard your system and assets from entry by malicious actors.

Employee Training 

Employees must have skills and knowledge to prevent malicious access to their credentials or cloud computing tools. The training should help them quickly identify threats and respond appropriately. Teach them how to create better and stronger passwords, what social engineering looks like, and shadow IT risks.

Implement Cloud Security Policies

All companies must have documented guidelines that specify the proper usage, access, and storage practices for data in the cloud. The policies should lay down the security best practices required in all cloud operations and the automation tools that can be used to enforce the same to prevent breaches and data losses.

A Gathering of Cloud Security Minds

Knowledge sharing and collaboration in cloud security should never be underestimated. At Cloudride, we are at the forefront of fostering meaningful conversations and partnerships that buttress the collective defense against cyber threats. 

We encourage you to participate in this webinar to leverage this unique opportunity to create connections and learn from the best minds in the industry. 

We'll provide an A-Z comprehensive overview of cloud security, cloud-native threats, and critical insights into cutting-edge security practices employed today.

 

 

ronen-amity
2023/07
Jul 27, 2023 2:39:48 PM
Strengthen Your Cloud Security
Cloud Security

Jul 27, 2023 2:39:48 PM

Strengthen Your Cloud Security

Cloud security remains a major concern for companies worldwide. A survey by Checkpoint shows that 76 % of companies are in the direct line of attack from cloud-native threats.  

AWS Well-Architected Framework. And Why Do You Need It?

As organizations increase cloud adoption, many are turning to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its cost efficiency and scalability advantages. AWS delivers countless tools or features to optimize organizations' cloud advantage and competitive edge, but with its many features and options, knowing what to prioritize and how to leverage that effectively can be challenging.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAFR) is designed to help with this. The framework offers guidance on the best practices for organizations to build and run robustly secure, reliable, and cost-efficient AWS applications.

You need AWS Well-Architected for consistency in your approach for partners and customers to design and implement architectures that can scale with ease. 

What is the AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAFR?)

In summary, the AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAFR) is a combination of best practices and principles to help organizations build and scale apps on the AWS cloud.

When you understand how to use it to review your current architectures, optimizing cloud resources in your environment becomes easier. This system of best practices championed by AWS can improve your cloud security, efficiency, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. 

How the Framework Works

You can access the AWS Well-Architected Tool for free in the AWS management console. Its applications include reviewing workloads and apps using the architectural best practices set by AWS as a benchmark to identify areas of improvement and track progress. Some immediate use cases of the AWS Well-Architected include:

Visibility into High-Risk Issues: The framework allows your teams to quickly gain shared visibility into HRIs in their workloads. Teams can follow the AWS documented Well-Architected best practices to identify potential risks that encumber their cloud applications' performance, security, or reliability. This visibility is a big boost to collaboration among architects, developers, and operations people tasked with handling HRIs in a coordinated manner.

Collaboration: The Well-Architected Framework provides a layered approach to workload reviews, so your stakeholders can collaborate efficiently, speaking a common language around architectural choices. By streamlining collaboration, teams can work together to improve their workloads' overall architecture.

Custom Lenses: The framework is useful for creating custom lenses, which are tailored versions of the Well-Architected best practices specific to organizational requirements and industry standards. You can tailor custom lenses with your organization's internal best practices and the AWS Well-Architected best practices to deliver insights into overall architectural health.

Sustainability: The AWS Well-Architected Framework includes a sustainability objective to minimize the environmental impact of workloads. By implementing AWS Well-Architected framework, teams can learn best practices for optimizing resource usage, lessening energy consumption, and adopting eco-friendly architectural patterns. Collaboration among stakeholders, including architects, developers, and sustainability experts, helps identify opportunities to achieve sustainability goals and drive environmental improvements within the workloads.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework Pillars

The AWS Well-Architected Framework rests on the below six principles or pillars.

Operational Excellence

This pillar aims to help you efficiently run and monitor systems and continually improve processes and procedures. It provides principles and benchmarks for change automation,  event response, and daily operational management. To begin with, it helps your operations team understand the requirements of your customers.

Security

This pillar focuses on enhancing the security of your information and systems in the AWS cloud. The framework can help you learn and implement best practices for confidentiality, data integrity, access control, and threat detection.

Reliability

Cloud apps and systems must deliver the intended functions with minimal failure. The reliability pillar focuses on distributed system design, change adaptability, and recovery planning to reduce failure and its impacts on your operations.

Each cloud system must include processes and plans for handling change. Using the framework can help ensure your plans have the ability of the system to detect and prevent failures and accelerate recovery in the event of the said failure.

Performance Efficiency

The AWS Well-Architected Framework, performance efficiency pillar, focuses on structuring and streamlining compute resource allocation. The focus areas in the guidelines include resource selection best practices for workload optimization, performance monitoring, and efficiency maintenance.

Cost Optimization

Your architecture plan should include processes that optimize costs to help achieve your objectives without overspending. This pillar provides checks and balances, allowing the organization to be innovative and agile on a budget.

The framework focuses on helping companies avoid unnecessary costs. Key topics here range from spending analysis and fund allocation control to optimal resource selection for efficiency without wastage.

Sustainability

The framework has a pillar focused on helping companies reduce the environmental ramifications of their cloud workloads. It provides best practices for shared responsibility, impact assessment, and maximum resource utilization to downstream impacts. 

The AWS Well-Architected Framework gives you a robust six-pillar foundation to build apps, architecture, and systems that meet expectations.

 

To Conclude: 

Cloudride provides tailored consultation services for optimizing costs, efficiency, and security of cloud apps and operations. We can help your team efficiently implement the AWS Well-Architected Framework and assess your cloud optimization needs. Book a meeting today, and be among the first 20 to get a free architecture review and action plan recommendation.

 

uti-teva
2023/07
Jul 18, 2023 10:11:40 PM
AWS Well-Architected Framework. And Why Do You Need It?
WAFR

Jul 18, 2023 10:11:40 PM

AWS Well-Architected Framework. And Why Do You Need It?

As organizations increase cloud adoption, many are turning to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its cost efficiency and scalability advantages. AWS delivers countless tools or features to optimize organizations' cloud advantage and competitive edge, but with its many features and options, knowing what...

Amazon Web Services NoSQL

Did you know that web applications have recently become a key component of workplace collaboration? Databases are essential in building web applications, making NoSQL a popular choice for enterprises. 

Developers need a mastery of various databases and acquaint themselves with various front-end frameworks and back-end technologies. This article sheds more light on what is a NoSQL database. 

What is AWS NoSQL and How Does It Work?

You must understand that NoSQL databases use a non-relational approach to store and retrieve data. Therefore they are designed to handle large-scale and unstructured data. 

It is ideal for web and big analytics DevOps because they use various data models, such as key-value, document, columnar, and graph. They offer high scalability and performance thanks to their distributed nature. Some popular NoSQL databases include MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, and Couchbase,

If you use AWS NoSQL databases --you can store data with flexible schema and various models. You get to have high performance and functionality for modern applications.

And you know what? Unlike other AWS databases, NoSQL databases provide low latency and hold large data volumes, so that you can expect a high throughput and quick indexing. Regarding modern applications, AWS NoSQL databases are a great fit. They are agile-- scalable, flexible, high-performance, and provide great user experiences.

Below are the six types of AWS NoSQL databases models which you can choose from;

Ledger Databases

First, we have the ledger databases, which can store data based on logs that record events based on data values. Ledger databases can be handy in creating tools for registrations, supply chains, and banking systems.

Key-Value Databases

Choose the key-value-chain database if you want to store data in pairs with a unique ID and data value using Key-value databases. Given this functionality, they are primarily used in gaming, high-traffic sites, and eCommerce systems.

Comprehensive Column Databases

What are comprehensive databases? These are databases based on tables, and unlike other databases, they don't have a strict column format. Typical uses include fleet management, route optimization, and industrial maintenance applications.

Document Databases

These special-type databases store keys and values in documents written in markup languages. So you can expect compatibility with YAML, JSON, and XML. Some of the best use cases for document databases include catalogs, user profiles, and content management solutions.

Time Series Databases

Choose a time series database if you need a database to store data in time-ordered streams, which users manage based on time intervals. 

Graph Databases: Graph databases are designed as collections of edges and nodes. They allow users to track related data; some use cases are social networking, recommendation engines, and fraud detection.

What to Consider When Choosing an AWS NoSQL Service

AWS offers different NoSQL database services, and here are key considerations when selecting an AWS NoSQL service.

Look at the data model and querying capabilities: What type of data and querying capabilities does it support? A good example is: Neptune is best suited to manage complex relationships. But DynamoDB is best suited for dealing with large amounts of unstructured data.

It thus makes sense, before selecting a database, to find out what data model and queries you will be working with. This will help you choose an ideal database that best handles your case.

Think about scalability and performance: NoSQL databases scale horizontally, but what does that mean? Depending on your needs, you can have a database that supports more storage capacity and processing power: so when choosing a database, look at what you can afford vs. what you need. Developers prefer automatically scaling databases to those requiring manual intervention to support more nodes.

Consider the costs: Money is a factor too. Consider costs when determining an AWS NoSQL service. What's your budget for the database and other costs associated with maintaining your database? You must understand that different databases have different pricing. For example, Neptune charges depending on the number of nodes, whereas DynamoDB charges depending on the amount of data stored.

Security and Compliance: Security and compliance are crucial when dealing with sensitive data. Choose an AWS NoSQL database with security features and access control, as this can help your industry’s compliance requirements. This way, you will be able to protect your data best and ensure you comply with the law.

Data Consistency and Durability: When choosing NoSQL databases, you must ensure that your data is consistent even with network issues. With NoSQL databases, you can choose from various data consistency and durability options, giving you the required reliability.

 

Summary 

AWS provides various NoSQL databases--you're most likely to find a solution that fits your needs and provides the required service. When choosing an AWS database for your needs, consider the above factors.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/06
Jun 27, 2023 12:40:52 PM
Amazon Web Services NoSQL
NoSQL

Jun 27, 2023 12:40:52 PM

Amazon Web Services NoSQL

Did you know that web applications have recently become a key component of workplace collaboration? Databases are essential in building web applications, making NoSQL a popular choice for enterprises. 

Amazon Neptune Serverless

Has it come to your attention that Amazon’s Neptune has a new technological advancement? Yeah, that's right, the Neptune Serverless is now causing a revolution in graph Databases. It carries the advantage of a serverless architecture and the ability to leverage the flex and power of graph databases. Let's check in on some of the features of the Neptune serverless. But first, 

How Neptune Serverless Works

Alright; imagine you being focused on your app and data modeling. Then Amazon web services handle the infrastructure management. This is the rationale behind Neptune Serverless. The question is, how does it manage a serverless structure? Read on 

On-demand resource allocation 

Neptune Serverless is on automation for provisioning and allocating compute and storage resources. It's not now about manually setting up some servers or clusters. Its dynamics are to scale resources as per your database's workload and requirement. It is equal to saying goodbye to upfront capacity planning and welcoming efficiency. 

Automated scaling 

As your workload fluctuates, so does the scaling function of the Neptune serverless. It's designed to monitor new requests and traffic patterns. In return, it ensures you have sufficient resources for peak load. And it limits overprovisioning in low activity. Suffice it to say it's cost-effective since it aligns resources per the demand. 

Pay-per-use model  

You only pay for what you are going to use. There are no upfront costs or waste of resources. Your payment is calculated based on your database usage per second. As such, in a period met with inactivity, resources scale down or pause to save you from wasteful spending. 

Completely managed service  

Let’s not forget AWS provides Neptune Serverless as a fully managed service. They handle everything involved: maintenance, administration, software patching, and backups. And all that is required of you? Well, it's just focusing on your app and data modeling. You can do query optimization without the stress of management. 

Using Neptune Serverless for optimized performances  

So, Neptune Serverless handles infrastructure. Then at the same time offers performance optimization, which may boost the efficiency of your graph database functions. Here is a breakdown of how it works.

Smart caching  

Neptune serverless query check can store results from frequent queries. In return, the requests from the same data can be attended too quickly. In short, it's cut-off repetition to improve overall speed. 

Adaptive indexing  

Neptune serverless can identify the most accessed data patterns. Then it will create the necessary indexes for you. This means that the most queried data will be readily available, and the responses will be quick. 

Smart query routing  

Neptune serverless intelligently routes queries to the relevant databases. It analyzes patterns and distributes your workload throughout the shared cluster. And guess what? This optimally ensures optimal and efficient usage of your compute resources. It cuts down response latency. 

What are the standout features of Neptune Serverless  

If you thought the flex of Neptune Serverless stops there, I beg to differ. There is much more if you read about its unique features. Let's get started;

Multi-region access 

Neptune is serverless and allows you to replicate data throughout different AWS regions using a read replica. It’s a geographic redundancy that promotes availability. At the same time, it allows for disaster recovery plans. Even in a blackout, your data is still accessible. 

Gremlin and SPARQL integration  

Okay, you might be using Gremlin or SPARQL as your query languages. No problem; Neptune Serverless integrates with them. All left is for you to leverage your existing graph application and query approaches. 

Cost optimization  

Now, talking about money, Neptune Serverless optimizes your spending in two ways. To begin with, you only pay for your actual usage per second. Again, its autoscaling ensures when there is inactivity, overprovisioning is thwarted. So no upfront overestimation of costs. 

 

Let's wrap it up

Amazon Serverless is now on a path to redefining how developers and data scientists work with graph databases. Call it stress-free, cost-efficient, or scalable, but it only manages abstract infrastructure.

Now, it's just for you to focus on building your app and getting insights from your graph data. It's the right time for you to unlock the full potential of graph databases. After all, AWS manages everything from maintenance to backup and optimization. 

yura-vasilevitski
2023/06
Jun 21, 2023 1:12:27 PM
Amazon Neptune Serverless
Serverless

Jun 21, 2023 1:12:27 PM

Amazon Neptune Serverless

Has it come to your attention that Amazon’s Neptune has a new technological advancement? Yeah, that's right, the Neptune Serverless is now causing a revolution in graph Databases. It carries the advantage of a serverless architecture and the ability to leverage the flex and power of graph...

ScaleOps: Solution for Scaling and Optimizing Cloud Workloads

 

In the ever-changing world of cloud-native workloads, organizations of all shapes and sizes strive to optimize their Kubernetes resources. All this while saving costs without compromising their service level agreements (SLAs).

We’ll delve into the innovative ScaleOps platform. This automatic cloud-native resource management platform provides DevOps teams with the ability to seamlessly optimize cloud-native resources, empowering organizations to achieve up to 80% cost savings and enhance workload performance and availability, while providing a hands-free experience for DevOps teams and freeing them from broken repeated manual work. The ScaleOps platform integrates with Karpenter to enhance its resource optimization capabilities, allowing organizations to optimize their cost and performance.

At Cloudride, we are continuously innovating and helping clients to seamlessly integrate cutting-edge technological solutions to elevate their cloud-native operational efficiency.

AWS Cluster Autoscaler?

Cluster Autoscaler is an integral part of the Kubernetes ecosystem, which was developed to support the ideal cluster size in tandem with the changing pod requests. Its primary role is to determine pending pods that cannot be scheduled because of resource constraints and then take proper measures to address them.

You don’t have to worry about pods sitting idle and twiddling their virtual thumbs. When these nodes feel underappreciated and underutilized, the autoscaler evolves into a master of resource optimization. It skillfully rearranges the workload, guaranteeing every pod finds its perfect spot and no precious resources go to waste.

However, Karpenter and ScaleOps take things a little further in terms of efficiency. Karpenter enables quicker node provisioning while eliminating the need for configurations. ScaleOps optimizes the containers' compute resources in real-time and scales Kubernetes pods based on demand.

What is Karpenter?

This open-source autoscaler is designed to optimize cluster resource usage and slash costs in different clouds, including AWS. Karpenter is a custom controller, working behind the scenes to ensure your Kubernetes cluster perfectly harmonizes with your workload.

Using its advanced algorithms and the Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Cluster Autoscaler, Karpenter becomes a dynamic force for:

What is ScaleOps?

ScaleOps automatically adjust computing resources in real-time to enable companies to see significant cost savings of up to 80%, while providing a hands-free experience for scaling Kubernetes workloads, and freeing engineering teams from worrying about their cloud resources.

It intelligently analyzes your container’s needs and scales your pods dynamically and automatically to achieve the ever-growing demands of the real-time cloud. 

The installation takes 2 min and immediately provides visibility to the potential value DevOps team can achieve from the automation using read-only permissions.

ScaleOps, in collaboration with Karpenter, empowers DevOps engineers to overcome the challenges of scaling and optimizing cloud-native workloads.

ScaleOps and Karpenter 

In the ongoing expenses of cloud workloads, satisfying business objectives is the ultimate mission of any DevOps team. 

The powerful combination of ScaleOps and Karpenter ensures smoother workload changes and optimized performance and costs. ScaleOps will help you update compute resource requests and ensure resource utilization matches demand in real-time. Karpenter will focus on eliminating waste by reducing the gap between resource capacity and recommendations. Karpenter enables faster node provisioning, accelerating response times. ScaleOps continuously optimizes HPA triggers to match SLAs, enforcing an optimal replica number for running workloads.

Automated scaling and provisioning: ScaleOps simplifies managing clusters and can help you significantly reduce the number of nodes per cluster. Karpenter tracks resource requests and needs and automatically provisions nodes. This combination of functions is highly recommendable for fluctuating workloads.

Cost cutting: ScaleOps gives insights into your cluster resource usage and patterns and identifies areas for automatic optimization. Karpenter quickly selects instance types and sizes in ways that minimize infrastructure and costs.

Better scheduling: Creating constraints is possible with Karpenter, including topology spread, tolerations, and node taints. ScaleOps helps you manage the constraints to control where pods go in your cluster for better performance and resource usage. 

Cloudride to Success

At Cloudride, our team of professionals and experts have a profound understanding of the complex requirements for performance and cost optimization on AWS and other clouds. This knowledge and wealth of experience enable us to offer custom-made solutions, support, and integration for powerful cloud integrations like ScaleOps and Karpenter.

Starting with the initial assessment and crafting of the perfect architecture, all the way to the seamless deployment, monitoring, and optimization, we can help your cloud-native environment to hit its maximum potential in performance as well as cost efficiency.

Conclusion

In this age of rapid technological advancements, an organization's ability to scale infrastructure with ease is critical. ScaleOps and Karpenter deliver robust solutions to this challenge.

Businesses now have the platform to automate resource allocation, maximize cost efficiency, and improve performance. The best cloud solution integrations can help you unleash your cloud-native initiatives with exceptional confidence, and at Cloudride, we have your back.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/05
May 29, 2023 10:31:26 AM
ScaleOps: Solution for Scaling and Optimizing Cloud Workloads
Auto-Scaling, Scalability

May 29, 2023 10:31:26 AM

ScaleOps: Solution for Scaling and Optimizing Cloud Workloads

OpenSearch Serverless

Finally, the long wait is officially over; Amazon OpenSearch Serverless has recently been launched as a managed search and analytics service, following its initial preview at the recent Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference. During the preview period, we had the chance to analyze this innovative new service and unearth several intriguing features and capabilities.

What is OpenSearch serverless?

The AWS OpenSearch service provides a fully managed solution that easily handles the automatic installation, configuration, and security of petabyte-level data volumes on Amazon's dedicated OpenSearch clusters. 

Each of these clusters has total autonomy over its cluster configurations. However, when it comes to working with unpredictable workloads like search and analytics, users prefer a more streamlined approach. 

It is for this reason that AWS introduced the Amazon OpenSearch serverless option, which is built on the Amazon OpenSearch service and is meant to drive use cases like real-time application monitoring, log analysis, and website search. 

OpenSearch Serverless Features 

Some of the main traits of OpenSearch Serverless include:

Easy set-up

Setting up and configuring Amazon OpenSearch Serverless is a breeze. You can easily create and customize your Amazon OpenSearch Service cluster through the AWS Management Console or AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). Users can also configure their clusters according to their preferences.

In-place upgrades 

Upgrading to the latest versions of OpenSearch and Elasticsearch (all the way to version 7.1) is a piece of cake with the Amazon OpenSearch Service. Unlike the manual effort required for previously upgrading domains, the new service has simplified the process of upgrading clusters without any downtime for users. 

Furthermore, the upgrade ensures that the domain endpoint URL remains the same. This eliminates the need for users to reconfigure their services which communicate with the domain in order to access the updated version, thus ensuring seamless integration.

Event monitoring and alerting 

This feature is used to track data stored in clusters and notifies the user based upon predetermined thresholds. This functionality is powered by the OpenSearch alerting plugin, and users can also use the OpenSearch Dashboards interface or Kibana and REST API to manage it. 

Furthermore, AWS has done a wonderful job of integrating Amazon OpenSearch Service with Amazon EventBridge seamlessly. This has allowed the delivery of real-time events from various AWS services straight into your OpenSearch Service. 

You can also set up your personalized rules to automatically call functions upon the occurrence of the said events. For instance, the triggering of lambda functions, activating Step Functions state machines, and many more!

Security

Amazon OpenSearch Service now offers security and reliability in the manner in which you link your applications to the Elasticsearch or OpenSearch environment. This has opened up a flexible way to connect through your VPC or the public internet.  

You now don’t have to worry because your access policies are specified by either VPC security groups or IP-based policies. What’s more, you can also manage your authentication and access control policies through Amazon Cognito or AWS IAM. If you desire only some basic authentication, you can just use a username and password. 

Unauthorized access has also been sorted out thanks to the OpenSearch security plugin, which delivers fine-grained authorizations for files, indices, and fields. Plus, the new service's built-in encryption for data-at-rest and data-in-transit will always assure you that your data is ever safe. 

To meet all the compliance requirements, Amazon OpenSearch Service has been licensed as HIPAA-eligible and fully complies with SOC, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and ISO standards. This has made it extremely easy for users to create compliant applications that satisfy these regulatory standards. 

Cost

Amazon OpenSearch Service now allows you to search, analyze, visualize, and secure your unstructured data like a boss. All this while paying for only what you use. No more worrying about minimum fees or other usage requirements.

Their pricing model is so simple, and it is based on three dimensions.

  • Instance hours
  • Storage, and 
  • Data transfer

As for their storage costs, they usually fluctuate depending on your storage tier and instance type. 

If you want to get a feel for their services without committing, the AWS Free Tier feature is available for such usage. This implies that you get 750 free hours monthly of a t2.small.search or even a  t3.small.search instance, and upwards to 10 GB per month of the optional Amazon Elastic Block Store storage. 

But what about if you need more resources? AWS  has Reserved Instances where, as the name implies, you can reserve instances for either a one- or three-year span and enjoy substantial savings as compared to the On-Demand instances. All these free trial features provide similar functionality to the On-Demand instances; therefore, you will have the entire suite of features.

 

Conclusion 

OpenSearch Serverless has become a game-changing solution in the world of search applications. Transformative and robust features, including ease of use and low maintenance requirements, have made this service an excellent application for organizations of all shapes and sizes.

With OpenSearch Serverless, you can now effortlessly ingest, secure, search, sum, view, and analyze data for different use cases and run petabyte-scale workloads without worrying about handling clusters. 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2023/05
May 18, 2023 9:46:09 AM
OpenSearch Serverless
Serverless, OpenSearch

May 18, 2023 9:46:09 AM

OpenSearch Serverless

Finally, the long wait is officially over; Amazon OpenSearch Serverless has recently been launched as a managed search and analytics service, following its initial preview at the recent Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference. During the preview period, we had the chance to analyze this innovative...

FinOps on the way vol. 4

 

 

How did we achieve a 0.5 million $ reduction

in cloud costs?

This time We will share How we reduced cloud costs by 0.5 million $ a year. This case is a bit different from the others since it involves a change of configuration from the company.

Background:

The organization operates a Connectivity Platform, using cellular bonding and dynamic encoding. The platform is already deployed and in use by several customers.

The organization’s main services are EC2 running on-demand.

 

image-png-3

So, what did we do?

Since spot instances were not an option for them, a solution out of the box was needed. In this case, it was initiated by the company side.

To make a long story short, they put their customers' servers in their customers' clouds, instead of those servers deploying in the company’s cloud.

The outcome was a massive reduction in the number of servers the company uses.

Now it was our time to attribute to the company's effort to reduce cloud costs and we did it by these methods:

EC2 Rightsizing - We did downsize to EC2 instances with a low CPU utilization, and a low use of memory (Requires shutdown of the instances).

EC2 Stopped Instances - When working with EC2 you pay for every hour the instance is on (on demand), so when you switch the instance off you don’t pay. However, you are still paying for the Volumes attached to the instances and for the IPs.

EBS Outdated snapshots - old snapshots that are no longer needed. It is very important that when applying backups policies, you also define the time limit for saving the snapshots!

EBS Generation Upgrade - We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (for example- from GP2 to GP3). In the EBS upgrade, there is no downtime!

EC2 Generation Upgrade - We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (from t2 to t3).

NAT Gateway Idle - There were several NAT Gateways underutilized.

 

We’re still not done and monthly costs are still dropping by 10%-20% every month. The plan is to finish all those procedures and buy SP/RI.

For now, the monthly costs dropped from $50K to $10K and there is still work to be done, An impressive 80% reduction, and at least half a million $.

Book a meeting with our FinOps team to make your Cloud environment more efficient and cost-effective

 

nir-peleg
2023/05
May 14, 2023 2:58:06 PM
FinOps on the way vol. 4
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Fintech

May 14, 2023 2:58:06 PM

FinOps on the way vol. 4

AWS SQS + Lambda Setup Tutorial – Step by Step

Many cloud applications rely on backends or web apps to trigger external services. But the challenge has always been the reliability and performance concerns that abound when there is an overprovisioned service in high-traffic seasons. 

Lambda has an event source mapping feature that allows you to process items from AWS services queues that don’t invoke Lambda services directly. It then becomes possible to set queues as event sources that get your lambda functions triggered by messages. These queues can help control your data processing rate to increase or reduce computing capacity per the data volume.

This article walks you through the steps of creating Lambda functions that connect with SQS queue events. We’ll begin with the basics of both Lambda and SQS and later get into the tutorial.

What is AWS Lambda?

The AWS Lambda service offered by AWS lets you run code and provision resources without server management requirements.  The event-driven cloud computing services run code when triggered by events – you can use it for any computing task, from processing data streams or serving website pages.

AWS Lambda features include automated administration, auto-scaling, and fault tolerance. 

What is AWS SQS? 

Amazon SQS lets you integrate various software components and systems with scalability, security, and high availability benefits. The hosted solution on AWS eliminates the need to manage your service infrastructure manually.  It excels in the in-transit storage of messages between apps and micro-services –it makes life easier regarding message-oriented AWS software systems.

Users can connect with SQS using an API provided by AWS. It can send requests to available queues by other services. It can receive messages that are pending in the queue. It also allows for the deletion of queue messages following proper processing.

Lambda + SQS

You can have a lambda function as part of the SQS queue. It would become a consumer of the queue using it as an event source. It then polls this queue-invoking function with events that contain queue messages.

Lambda will read the messages in batches and invoke functions for each batch. The functions invoked are within a specific payload threshold set by Lambda.

Lambda sets an invocation payload size quota that is also a threshold for invoking a function. It is 6MB for each response and request.

SQS + Lambda Tutorial

Step 1: Create an SQS Queue

Sign in to your AWS Management Console.

Navigate to the SQS service by searching for "SQS" in the search bar.

Click "Create Queue."

Choose "Standard Queue" for this tutorial and name your queue, such as "MySQSQueue."

Leave the rest of the settings as default and click "Create Queue."

Step 2: Create a Lambda Function 

Navigate to the AWS Lambda service by searching for "Lambda" in the search bar.

Click "Create Function."

Choose "Author from scratch" and give your function a name, such as "MySQSLambdaFunction."

Choose a runtime, such as "Python 3.8."

Under "Function code," you can write your code inline or upload a .zip file containing your code. For this tutorial, let's use the following inline code to process messages from the SQS queue:

Under "Execution role," choose "Create a new role with basic Lambda permissions."

Click "Create Function."

Step 3: Grant Lambda Access to SQS

In the Lambda function's "Configuration" tab, click "Permissions."

Click on the role name under "Execution role."

Click "Attach policies."

Search for "AWSLambdaSQSQueueExecutionRole" and select it.

Click "Attach policy."

Step 4: Configure Lambda Trigger

Go back to your Lambda function's "Configuration" tab.

Click "Add Trigger."

Choose "SQS" from the trigger list.

In the "SQS Queue" field, select the SQS queue you created earlier (e.g., "MySQSQueue").

Set the "Batch size" to a value between 1 and 10. For this tutorial, set it to 5.

Click "Add."

Step 5: Test Your Setup

Go back to the SQS service in the AWS Management Console.

Select your queue (e.g., "MySQSQueue") and click "Send and Receive Messages."

Type a test message in the "Send a message" section and click "Send Message."

Your Lambda function should automatically trigger when messages are added to the queue. To verify this, navigate to the Lambda function's "Monitoring" tab and check the "Invocations" metric.

Now you have successfully set up an AWS SQS and Lambda integration. You can now send messages to your SQS queue, and your Lambda function will automatically process them. This highly scalable and cost-effective serverless architecture allows you to focus on your application's core functionality.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/05
May 2, 2023 7:07:02 PM
AWS SQS + Lambda Setup Tutorial – Step by Step
AWS, Lambda

May 2, 2023 7:07:02 PM

AWS SQS + Lambda Setup Tutorial – Step by Step

Many cloud applications rely on backends or web apps to trigger external services. But the challenge has always been the reliability and performance concerns that abound when there is an overprovisioned service in high-traffic seasons. 

Migrating Databases with AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

AWS Database Migration Service can migrate data to and from the most extensively used commercial and open-source databases. This powerful service can help you migrate your databases to AWS quickly and securely. In this article, we will discuss how to migrate databases using AWS Database Migration Service.

Meet the Prerequisites

Before starting a database migration using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), you should ensure to meet the following prerequisites:

An AWS account

You must have an Amazon Web Services account to use AWS Database Migration Service. If you don't already have one, you can sign up for a free trial account at the AWS website.

Access to the AWS Management Console

If you're an account administrator, you already have this access. Access to the AWS Management Console can help you configure and manage the migration process. You need access to the AWS Management Console. If you don't have access, request access with permission from your account administrator.

Access to source and target databases 

Before migrating data using AWS DMS, ensure that both the source and target databases are accessible. Additionally, the source and target databases must be compatible with the DMS service. Check the AWS DMS documentation here https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dms/latest/userguide/CHAP_Source.html) for a list of supported database engines. You should have the necessary credentials and permissions to access the databases. 

Set up AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

When you open the AWS Management Console, navigate to the AWS Database Migration Service page.

Click the "Create replication instance" button.   Enter a name for the replication instance, choose the appropriate instance class, and select the VPC and subnet.

Select the security group for the replication instance, then click on the Create button to create the replication instance.

Create Database Migration Task  

A migration task defines the source and target databases, as well as other parameters for the migration. Once you have set up the replication instance, create a migration task. 

  1. Enter the AWS Management Console and navigate the AWS Database Migration Service page.
  2. Click on the Create migration task button
  3. Enter a name for the migration task
  4. Select the source and target database engines
  5. Enter the connection details for the source and target databases
  6. Choose the migration type (full load or ongoing replication)
  7. Set the migration settings, including table mappings, data type mappings, and transformation rules.
  8. Click on the Create button to create the migration task.

Start the Migration

Once you have created the migration task, you can start the migration. In the  AWS Management Console, navigate to the AWS Database Migration Service page. Click Start or Resume when choosing the migration task you want to start.

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) supports different ways of migrating data from the source database to the target database, including:

Incremental Migration: Incremental migration is ideal for migrating data to the target database while the source database is still being used. Changes to the source database are captured and continuously replicated to the target database in near real-time.

Full Load Migration: A one-time full load is performed to copy the entire source database to the target database. After the initial load, any changes made to the source database are not replicated in the target database.

Combined Migration: This is a combination of incremental and full-load migration. A full load migration is performed to copy all existing data to the target database. Next, a gradual migration is done to replicate any changes made to the source database continuously.

AWS DMS captures changes to the source database using logs or trigger-based methods. These changes are executed on the target database in one transaction, ensuring data consistency and integrity.

Monitor the Migration 

You can monitor the progress of the migration. In the AWS Management Console and go to the AWS Database Migration Service page and choose the migration task that you want to monitor.

Under the Task Details tab, you can view the migration status. You can also monitor progress through CloudWatch Logs.

What Problems Does DMS AWS Database Migration Solve? 

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) solves several challenges associated with database migration. 

Data Loss: AWS DMS ensures data accuracy and completeness by replicating changes from the source database to the target database. Inaccurate or incomplete data transfer can result in data loss during database migration.

Application Compatibility: AWS DMS allows replicating database changes while preserving the existing data model, reducing application compatibility issues. This saves you from changing the data model or schema, which can lead to application compatibility issues.

Database Downtime: Traditional database migration methods often require significant downtime, during which the database is not accessible to users. AWS DMS minimizes downtime by enabling you to migrate data to the target database while the source database is still running.

Cost: Traditional database migration methods can be expensive, requiring significant resources and expertise. AWS DMS provides a cost-effective way to migrate databases to the cloud, with pay-as-you-go pricing and no upfront costs.

Data Security: Data security is a critical concern during database migration. AWS DMS provides end-to-end encryption for transit data and can mask sensitive data during migration.

Conclusion

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is a powerful service that can help you migrate your databases to AWS quickly and securely. Follow the steps above to set up and run a migration using DMS quickly.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/04
Apr 23, 2023 10:22:35 AM
Migrating Databases with AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
Cloud Migration, Data, DMS

Apr 23, 2023 10:22:35 AM

Migrating Databases with AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

AWS Database Migration Service can migrate data to and from the most extensively used commercial and open-source databases. This powerful service can help you migrate your databases to AWS quickly and securely. In this article, we will discuss how to migrate databases using AWS Database Migration...

FinOps on the way vol. 3

 

 

This is How we achieve a 33% reduction in cloud cost for an SMB fintech business

Background: The company developing a system for the real estate industry.

The company main services were: EC2, R53, Elastic Kubernetes Service, Elasticache

We started their cost opt. when the daily cost was around $42.

In February the daily cost was reduced to $28, a 33% decrease in the monthly bill which means a higher revenue every month.

 

image-png-2

 

So, what did we do?

These are the main methods we used for this account. Obviously, for each account and application, there are different methods that we apply, depending on the customer's needs.

EC2 Rightsizing - We did downsize to EC2 instances with a low CPU utilization, and a low use of memory (Requires shutdown of the instances).

EC2 Generation Upgrade - We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (for example- from t2 to t3).

Compute Saving Plan - Since the company is still considering changing the instances type and considering changing the current region, we choose the compute SP which is the most flexible.

ElastiCache - ElastiCache is a fully managed, Redis- and Memcached-compatible service delivering real-time, cost-optimized performance for modern applications. After a thorough check, it turned out that the elasticate was not needed so we deleted it.

The outcome of the above techniques was a reduction of 33% in monthly costs.

nir-peleg
2023/03
Mar 28, 2023 4:14:35 PM
FinOps on the way vol. 3
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Fintech

Mar 28, 2023 4:14:35 PM

FinOps on the way vol. 3

Elasticity vs. Scalability AWS

 

Scalability and elasticity can be achieved on AWS using various services and tools. AWS Application Auto Scaling, for instance, is a service that can automatically adjust capacity for excellent application performance at a low cost. This allows for easy setup of application scaling for multiple resources across multiple services. Let's talk about the difference between elasticity and scalability. These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they're pretty different.

Elasticity

Cloud elasticity refers to the ability to scale Computing Resources in the cloud up or down based on actual demand. This ability to adapt to increased usage (or decreased usage) allows you to provide resources when needed and avoid costs if they are not.

This capability allows additional capacity to be added or removed automatically instead of manually provisioned and de-provisioned by system administrators. It is possible through an elastic provisioning model.

Scalability

Scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work or its potential to be enlarged in various ways. A scalable solution can get scaled up by adding processing power, storage capacity, and bandwidth.

A cloud can increase or decrease its resource capacity dynamically. With scalability, there is no having to provision new hardware, install operating systems and software, or make any other changes to the running system. Cloud scalability allows a cloud operator to grow or shrink their computing resources as needed.

Cloud scalability helps keep costs down. No more underutilized servers sitting idle while waiting for an application spike. It provides access to a large pool of resources that can be scaled up or down as needed.

Cloud scalability allows you to add and release resources as needed automatically. You can allocate your budget according to workloads, so you only pay for the computing power you use when you need it most.

AWS Scalability

AWS cloud scalability is vital because apps tend to grow over time. You can't predict how much demand they'll receive, so it's best to scale up and down quickly as needed. Here is how to achieve scalability using AWS.

AWS auto-scaling is a feature of AWS that allows you to scale your EC2 instances based on a series of triggers -automatically. Auto-scaling is easy to set up, but there are some things to remember when using it. This can be especially useful if you have an application that requires a lot of resources at peak times and less during off-peak hours.

Use a scalable, load-balanced cluster. This approach allows for the distribution of workloads across multiple servers, which can help to increase scalability.

Leverage managed services. AWS provides various managed services that can help increase scalabilities, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and Amazon RDS.

Enable detailed monitoring. Thorough monitoring allows for the collection of CloudWatch metric data at a one-minute frequency, which can help to ensure a faster response to load changes.

AWS cloud elasticity

Elasticity allows you to allocate and de-allocate computing resources based on your application's needs. It is a crucial feature of cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Ensures you have the right resources available at all times. Achieving elasticity on AWS involves several key steps:

Design for horizontal scaling: One of the most significant advantages of cloud computing is the ability to scale your application using a distributed architecture that can be easily replicated across multiple instances.

Use Elastic Load Balancing: ELB can automatically detect unhealthy instances and redirect traffic to healthy ones. It distributes incoming traffic across multiple instances of your application, helping to ensure that no single model becomes overloaded.

AWS CloudWatch allows you to monitor the performance of your application and the resources it uses. You can set up alarms to trigger Auto Scaling actions based on metrics such as CPU utilization, network traffic, or custom metrics.

Conclusion

Elasticity refers to how fast your application can scale up or down based on demand, while scalability refers to how the system can handle much load. Elasticity and scalability are two critical factors to consider when building your application on the cloud.

nir-peleg
2023/03
Mar 28, 2023 12:08:15 AM
Elasticity vs. Scalability AWS
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Fintech

Mar 28, 2023 12:08:15 AM

Elasticity vs. Scalability AWS

How to Use Dockers in a DR - The Right Flow to Utilize ECR & ECS

This blog post will discuss using the ECS and ECR for your application development and deployment in a DR scenario using Docker. We will also discuss how to configure our systems for a seamless transition from local stateless containers to cloud-based containers on ECR.

Docker makes it possible to create immutable containers.

Docker makes it possible to create immutable containers. This means you can deploy your application once and then use it forever without worrying about updating or patching it.

Docker uses layered file systems so that each new version of an image only contains changes from the previous version -- not all of them. This makes it easier for Docker to save disk space, which is especially important on AWS, where many applications run on ECS due to its high availability features (like Auto Scaling Groups).

Docker is the most popular containerization tool

Docker has a vast community, and it's the de facto standard for containerization. Docker has a large ecosystem of tools, including Docker Swarm (for clustering), Kubernetes (for orchestration), and OpenFaaS (for serverless functions).

Docker is open-source and free to use with no license fees or royalties. You can also get paid support from companies like Red Hat or Microsoft if you want additional features like security scanning or support in your DevOps pipeline. AWS offers docker scanning via the AWS Inspector…

ECR - Amazon Elastic Container Registry

AWS ECR is a fully managed Docker container registry that stores, manages, and distributes Docker container images. ECR can be used to store your private images, or you can use it to distribute public images.

ECR is integrated with AWS CodeCommit and Other pipelines like GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions and others, so you can use them in conjunction with each other if needed.

ECS - Amazon Elastic Container Service

ECS is an AWS service that makes it easy to run, manage, and scale containerized applications on a cluster of instances. ECS allows you to run Docker containers on a cluster of EC2 instances. You can use the ECS console or API to create and manage your clusters and tasks; monitor the overall health of your clusters; view detailed information about each task running in the cluster; stop individual tasks or entire clusters; and get notifications when new versions are available for updates (and more).

Using Docker and ECR/ECS in DR 

Here's a possible flow to utilize ECR and ECS in a DR scenario:

Create ECS cluster

Create an ECS cluster in your primary region, and configure it to use your preferred VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), subnets, and security groups. In a disaster recovery situation, it is highly recommended to have an environment replicating your production environment. This ensures you can access your data and applications when you fail to access the DR site.

Create a Docker image

You should have a Docker image that contains all the software required for your application. Docker images allow you to package your application and its dependencies into a single file that can be stored locally or in a private registry.

This makes it easy to deploy your application anywhere because the image does not require access to any other environment or infrastructure. You can take this image and run it on an EC2 instance or ECS cluster, depending on whether you want to run stateless or stateful applications.       

Create ECR repository

Create an ECR repository in your primary region. You can use the AWS CLI to push the docker image from our local machine to ECR. The following command will push our local repository to the ECR.

This step should be automated so that every new Docker image version is automatically pushed to the ECR repository. Once you have done this step, you must configure your environment variables for your Docker container registry.

Create ECS task definition

To use ECS, you need to create a task definition. The task definition is a JSON file that describes your container and its environment. You can specify which docker image to use, how much memory it should have, what port it should expose, and more.

Create an ECS service that launches the task definition, and configure it to use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic to the containers.

Test the service

Test the service to ensure it works as expected in your primary region. Next, create a replica of the ECS cluster in your secondary region, using the same VPC, subnets, and security groups as the primary region.

Replication pipeline

Create a replication pipeline that replicates the Docker images from the ECR repository in the primary region to the ECR repository in the secondary region. This pipeline should be configured to run automatically when a new Docker image version is pushed to the primary repository.

Configure the ECS service to use the replicated ECR repository in the secondary region. Configure the load balancer to distribute traffic to the containers in the secondary region if the primary region is down.

Test the DR failover

Test the DR failover scenario to ensure that it's working as expected. This should involve simulating a failure of the primary region, and verifying that traffic is successfully rerouted to the secondary region.

 

Conclusion

Overall, this flow involves creating an ECS cluster and an ECR repository in the primary region, deploying Docker containers using an ECS service and load balancer, and replicating the Docker images to a secondary region for DR purposes. The key to success is automating as much of the process as possible so it's easy to deploy and manage your Docker containers in primary and secondary regions.

We will touch the Database replication to other regions in our next blog post.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/03
Mar 1, 2023 8:17:01 PM
How to Use Dockers in a DR - The Right Flow to Utilize ECR & ECS
ecs, Docker, ecr

Mar 1, 2023 8:17:01 PM

How to Use Dockers in a DR - The Right Flow to Utilize ECR & ECS

This blog post will discuss using the ECS and ECR for your application development and deployment in a DR scenario using Docker. We will also discuss how to configure our systems for a seamless transition from local stateless containers to cloud-based containers on ECR.

FinOps on the way vol. 2

 

 

Preface

From $3K to $51... Big yes!

This time I will share How we reduced cloud costs from $3K to $51 in a month of 1 service without harming the functionality of the application.

Background: The organization is a middle business size with multiple finance services, working with cities' payment systems and other national services. Using global developers as well as local ones.

They were using Amazon MQ for a while in 2 accounts: production & development.

Amazon MQ is a managed Message broker that allows software systems, to communicate and exchange information.

The Av. Daily cost for amazon MQ was $105.

 

image-png-1

So, what did we do?

  1. We mapped the use of the service and found out that there is a broker running in the prod environment and 2 bigger brokers running in the Dev environment, which was weird.
  2. We started to buy and downsize one of the Dev brokers and monitor if it had an impact on the activity.
  3. We continue to downsize the Dev brokers and changed the type of machine till we got to a t3.micro.
  4. We did the same with the Prod brokers.

In the end the Av. The daily cost for amazon MQ was $1.65.

 

It turns out that there was no need for the brokers the organization was using.

We handed up reducing the MQ costs from $3K to $51 a month. Meaning the company paid thousands of $ to AWS, for no reason, over the years.

Let's Book a Meeting to see how We can assist and reduce your cloud costs too.

nir-peleg
2023/02
Feb 23, 2023 4:56:12 PM
FinOps on the way vol. 2
FinOps & Cost Opt., saving plans

Feb 23, 2023 4:56:12 PM

FinOps on the way vol. 2

FinOps on the way vol. 1

 

 

Preface

Though the phrase “FinOps” (Financial Operations) became very popular and knowledgeable in the industry, with the rising of cloud usage, not many people understand the profound impact of FinOps on the organization's revenue.

I am not going to explain all FinOps responsibilities (Who cares anyway?) But in a nutshell, FinOps main job is to optimize cloud costs or in other words to reduce costs and increase revenue.

There are many creative and uncreative ways to reduce cloud costs.

In the following blogs, I will share proper live case studies of real customers from verses industries and scales.

With no further ado, let’s begin...

 

Case study #1

How did we achieve a 66% reduction in cloud cost for an SMB healthcare business?

The client's main services were: EC2, Amazon elastic container service, Elastic load balancing, RDS & Amazon document DB (MongoDB).

We started their cost opt when the daily cost was around $62.

In February the daily cost was reduced to $21, a 66% decrease in the monthly bill which means a higher revenue every month.

image-png (1)

So, what did we do?

These are the main methods we used for this account. Obviously, for each account and application, there are different methods that we apply, depending on the customer's needs.

EC2 Rightsizing- We did downsize to EC2 instances with a low CPU utilization, and a common use of memory (Requires shutdown of the instances).

EC2 Generation Upgrade- We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (for example- from t2 to t3).

EC2 Stopped Instances- When working with EC2 you pay for every hour that the instance is on (on demand), so when you switch the instance to off you don’t pay. However, you are still paying for the Volumes attached to the instances and for the IPs.

EBS Generation Upgrade- We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (for example- from GP2 to GP3). In the EBS upgrade, there is no downtime!

EBS Outdated snapshots- old snapshots that are no longer is needed. It is very important that when applying backups policies you also define the time limit for saving the snapshots!

Compute Saving Plan- Since the company is still considering changing the instances type and considering changing the current region, we choose the compute SP which is the most flexible.

In addition to the above methods, we used more techniques that are not listed above, and we examined more cost opt techniques which the company decided not to apply eventually for several reasons like Changing the type of EC2 instances, RDS RI, Elasticache RI, and more.

Let's book a meeting to find out the best cost-saving strategies for your cloud environment to make it more efficient and cost-effective.

 

*This content was not written by chatGPT *

nir-peleg
2023/02
Feb 19, 2023 10:43:07 AM
FinOps on the way vol. 1
FinOps & Cost Opt., saving plans

Feb 19, 2023 10:43:07 AM

FinOps on the way vol. 1

K9S - Manage Your Kubernetes Smart

Kubernetes is one of the most popular deployments of container orchestration. It's also one of the fastest-growing technologies in cloud computing and DevOps communities. As Kubernetes continues to grow, it will be necessary for organizations to have a management platform that can help them manage their workloads on this open-source platform.

Why is it important to automate Kubernetes management?  

Managing Kubernetes can be time-consuming and complex. It's essential to automate your management process so that you can improve efficiency, security, and scale as needed.

K9s is a project that automates everyday tasks in Kubernetes environments. This makes it easier for organizations to manage their clusters without worrying about doing everything manually.

What is K9s?

K9s is an input/output terminal user interface for managing Kubernetes. It allows you to access, navigate and view your deployed applications in a single interface. The command line interface for managing Kubernetes makes it easier to access, navigate and view your deployed applications in one place.

K9s tracks changes made by DevOps teams so they can see how their changes affect production environments while also allowing them to create commands that interact with resources.

With K9s, you can use commands to access and manage your cluster's resources.

K9s is a tool that provides you with commands to access and manage your cluster's resources. It tracks real-time activities on Kubernetes standard and custom resources, handles both Kubernetes standard resources and custom resource definitions, and gives you commands for managing logs, restarts, scaling and port-forwards, etc.

Use the / command to search for resources.

K9s has a / command which you can use to search resources. This eliminates the need for long kubectl output chains and makes it easier to find what you're looking for.

You can use this functionality to search for resources based on their tags or a specific pattern match.

To view a resource, prefix the resource type with a colon (:). For example, if you want to see your pods, type: pods and hit enter.

Use j and k to navigate resources.

K9s makes it easy to navigate through your help. You can use j and k to navigate down and up through the returned resources. You can also use the arrow keys if you have lost your grasp on vim.

It's important because it allows users to quickly find what they're looking for in a sea of information--something that can be difficult when using traditional tools like kubectl or even Helm Charts.

Using the l command to view logs

To view logs in Kubernetes, you can use the l command. This is helpful for quickly tracking errors and issues. For example, if your application is not responding as it should and you want to see what happened before it went down, you can use p on your previous log entries so that they appear in chronological order.

The need for automated log viewing in Kubernetes becomes apparent when dealing with large amounts of data (such as when running multiple instances). The alternatives to K9s K8s log viewers are:

  • Kibana - An open-source tool used primarily by developers who want a graphical interface over their data because they find it easier than using CLI commands or text files;
  • Fluentd - A daemon process that collects logs from various sources, such as syslogs and application logs, into one place where they can be processed or stored;
  • Logstash - A tool used by DevOps teams who want centralized logging capabilities across multiple servers while allowing them flexibility when choosing where those servers will run from, geographically speaking.

Editing configurations 

K9s allows you to edit configurations in real-time. You can use the editor on any resource, from pods to services and custom resources. The changes you make will affect your cluster immediately, but these changes can be overwritten by future CI/CD deployments.

K9s provides a node-level operation called "cordoning" that allows you to pause all containers running on a node until they are drained cleanly or deleted (once drained). This helps prevent accidental termination of running containers during configuration changes or upgrades.

There are also alternatives, such as K8s Config Editor, which provide similar functionality but less flexibility than K9s.

Monitoring and visualizing resources and events

K9s make it easy to monitor and visualize resources and events. Use: pulses mode to visualize resources or Tab to select the exact pulse you want to see more details about. If there are any warnings or errors associated with your cluster, they will be displayed here as well so that you can take action right away!

The d command provides detailed descriptions of all events and warnings generated by the K9s smartwatch monitoring system.

Create command shortcuts with aliases. 

As you start working with K9s, you'll find yourself typing commands repeatedly. To speed up these repetitive tasks, you can create shortcuts with aliases.

To get started, create an alias file in the .k9s/ directory:

  • Run cd $HOME/.k9s to find the correct directory
  • Then create an alias.yml file using your favorite text editor (vim or nano)
  • Define it in the format of alias: group/version/resource

Achieve configuration best practices with Popeye scanning 

Popeye is a tool for scanning Kubernetes configurations. It examines a configuration and generates a report of the findings. You can then open this report using the: popeye command in your terminal, which will open up a scan summary page that lists all components analyzed by Popeye.

The next step would be to dig into each component, but we'll leave that for another time.

 

Conclusion

K9s is an excellent tool for managing your Kubernetes cluster. It allows you to easily manage the resources used by your applications and ensure that they run smoothly.

 

mor-dvir
2023/02
Feb 15, 2023 6:11:41 PM
K9S - Manage Your Kubernetes Smart
Kubernetes, k9s

Feb 15, 2023 6:11:41 PM

K9S - Manage Your Kubernetes Smart

Kubernetes is one of the most popular deployments of container orchestration. It's also one of the fastest-growing technologies in cloud computing and DevOps communities. As Kubernetes continues to grow, it will be necessary for organizations to have a management platform that can help them manage...

The Importance of Cloud Security, and Security Layers

The cloud has opened up new opportunities for organizations of all sizes and industries. With the flexibility to deploy applications and services, IT can more quickly meet the needs of its users. Cloud computing provides organizations with access to a shared pool of virtualized resources, which means no upfront capital expenditures are required.

Having said that, the cloud environment also requires certain measures to be taken, to avoid the challenges of network security and vulnerability to malicious attacks. With so much information available today, it might be difficult to keep up to date with all the relevant threats. With more updates to the system adding new security modules, the Skyhawk Security Platform is taking charge and will put your mind at ease with its advanced protection capabilities.

How important it is to focus on actual threats?

In cybersecurity, it's easy to get caught up in the details. There are so many things that need to be done and they all seem like they're important. But if you're not careful, you can spend too much time on things that aren't that crucial.

The problem is that there are so many ways to protect your company from cyberattacks. Trying them all at once is tempting, but this can lead to wasted time and resources. The best way to protect your business from threats is to focus on the most critical ones, the ones that represent actual breaches, first.

This is where Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform and Cloudride come in handy, allowing businesses to automatically prioritize their security efforts based on what matters most.

Various ways of focusing on real threats

We focus on real threats by offering a comprehensive suite of security solutions including:

Runtime Threat Detection

Skyhawk Synthesis is the only platform to combine threat detection of runtime network anomalies together with user and workload identity access management, to surface actual threats that need to be resolved immediately. Skyhawk’s unique Cloud threat Detection & Response (CDR) approach adds complete runtime observability of cloud infrastructure, applications, and end-user activities.

In addition, the platform’s deep learning technology uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide real-time attack sequences. It uses machine learning algorithms to score potential malicious activities. The platform uses context to create a sequence of runtime events that indicate a breach is, or could be, progressing.

Attack Prevention

Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform alerts users when a threat has been detected but enables security teams to stop the attack before it reaches its target.

Attacks are prevented using the Skyhawk Malicious Behavior Indicators, or MBIs. These are activities that Skyhawk has identified as risky behaviors that pose a threat to your

business based on our own research, as well as the MITRE ATT&CK framework. They are

detected within minutes of log arrival in your cloud.

Policy Implementation

Organizations face several security challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT) era. These include the rising cyber-attacks and data breaches, which require a proactive approach to secure your organization’s digital assets and data against these threats.

Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform provides a comprehensive set of compliance reports and governance tools covering all aspects of cybersecurity management, from prevention to detection, for assets on multiple clouds.

 This means the platform implements policies based on risk assessment, meaning you can customize your security policy depending on what needs protecting or where assets are located within your organization.

Ongoing Threat Monitoring 

Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform is a unique solution that provides a holistic view of the threat landscape, alerts and recommendations. The platform monitors threats and provides insights into the attack methods and their evolution.

This platform includes all three components: monitoring, protection and analysis. The monitoring component allows the security team to take action against new threats before they reach the organization's crown jewels. It also enables them to detect existing threats and track their evolution over time.

The protection component guards against known and unknown threats using an automated approach that adapts to changing threat landscapes. The analysis component provides insights into how attackers are operating so that organizations can anticipate new attacks, adapt defenses in real time and prevent breaches from happening in the first place.

Deployment and management

Cloudride will deploy and manage the Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform for our customers. By working hand in hand with the customer, Cloudride offers a truly innovative solution that takes cybersecurity monitoring to the next level, thus ensuring a secure environment for the customer with AI capabilities.

  

Conclusion

To conclude, Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform and Cloudride incorporate runtime observability and cyber threat intelligence services, which are critical aspects of an organization's overall cyber security strategy. Our solutions provide intelligence-driven security by drawing on expertise and knowledge from an established global community of threat intelligence professionals.

We provide a comprehensive solution that helps you to detect, analyze and respond to threats. Our solutions are designed to be an integrated platform across your entire organization, including the cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2023/01
Jan 29, 2023 6:26:02 PM
The Importance of Cloud Security, and Security Layers
Cloud Security, Security, Skyhawk

Jan 29, 2023 6:26:02 PM

The Importance of Cloud Security, and Security Layers

The cloud has opened up new opportunities for organizations of all sizes and industries. With the flexibility to deploy applications and services, IT can more quickly meet the needs of its users. Cloud computing provides organizations with access to a shared pool of virtualized resources, which...

Cloudride Glossary

A – Aurora

Amazon Aurora is a fully managed MySQL-compatible relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases.

B – Bucket

A bucket is a container for objects. To store your data in Amazon S3, you first create a bucket and specify a bucket name and AWS Region. Then, you upload your data to that bucket as objects in Amazon S3. Each object has a key (or key name), which is the unique identifier for the object within the bucket

C – CI/CD

CI and CD stand for continuous integration and continuous delivery/continuous deployment. CI is a modern software development practice in which incremental code changes are made frequently and reliably. Automated build-and-test steps triggered by CI ensure that code changes being merged into the repository are reliable. The code is then delivered quickly and seamlessly as a part of the CD process. In the software world, the CI/CD pipeline refers to the automation that enables incremental code changes from developers’ desktops to be delivered quickly and reliably to production.

D – DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB Streams is an AWS service that captures a time-ordered sequence of item-level modifications in any Amazon DynamoDB table. This service also stores this information in a log for up to 24 hours. Applications can access this log and view the data items as they appeared before and after they were modified, in near-real time

E – Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web-based service that allows businesses to run application programs in the Amazon Web Services ( AWS ) public cloud. Amazon EC2 allows a developer to spin up virtual machines (VMs), which provide compute capacity for IT projects and cloud workloads that run with global AWS data centers.

F – FinOps

FinOps is an evolving cloud financial management discipline and cultural practice that enables organizations to get maximum business value by helping engineering, finance, technology, and business teams to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions

G – Gateway

A cloud storage gateway is a hardware- or software-based appliance located on the customer premises that serves as a bridge between local applications and remote cloud-based storage.

H – Heroku

Heroku is based on AWS. It supports efficient building, deploying, and fast scaling. It is popular for its add-on capabilities as it supports many alerts and management tools

 

I – Intrusion Detection System (IDS)

An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a monitoring system that detects suspicious activities and generates alerts when they are detected

J – Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source automation server. With Jenkins, organizations can accelerate the software development process by automating it. Jenkins manages and controls software delivery processes throughout the entire lifecycle, including build, document, test, package, stage, deployment, static code analysis, and much more.

K – Kubernetes

Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes automates operational tasks of container management and includes built-in commands for deploying applications, rolling out changes to your applications, scaling your applications up and down to fit changing needs, monitoring your applications, and more—making it easier to manage applications

L – Lambda

AWS Lambda is a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets you run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers. You can trigger Lambda from over 200 AWS services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and only pay for what you use. Use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to trigger AWS Lambda data processing in real-time after an upload, or connect to an existing Amazon EFS file system to enable massively parallel shared access for large-scale file processing.

M – Migration

Cloud migration is the process of moving digital assets — like data, workloads, IT resources, or applications — to cloud infrastructureCloud migration commonly refers to moving tools and data from old, legacy infrastructure or an on-premises* data center to the cloud. Though “cloud migration” typically refers to moving things from on-premises to the cloud, it can also refer to moving from one cloud to another cloud. Migration may involve moving all or just some assets. It also involves a whole lot of other things. That’s why we’ve compiled this guide to cover all things cloud migration.

N – NoSQL

NoSQL databases (aka "not only SQL") are non-tabular databases and store data differently than relational tables. NoSQL databases come in a variety of types based on their data model. The main types are document, key-value, wide-column, and graph. They provide flexible schemas and scale easily with large amounts of data and high user loads.

O – On-Premises

On-premises refers to IT infrastructure hardware and software applications that are hosted on-site. This contrasts with IT assets that are hosted by a public cloud platform or remote data center. Businesses have more control of on-premises IT assets by maintaining the performance, security, and upkeep, as well as the physical location

P – Public Cloud

Public Cloud is an IT model where on-demand computing services and infrastructure are managed by a third-party provider and shared with multiple organizations using the public Internet. Public cloud service providers may offer cloud-based services such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (Saas) to users for either a monthly or pay-per-use fee, eliminating the need for users to host these services on-site in their own data center

Q – Query string authentication

An AWS feature that you can use to place the authentication information in the HTTP request query string instead of in the Authorization header, which provides URL-based access to objects in a bucket

R – Redshift

Amazon Redshift uses SQL to analyze structured and semi-structured data across data warehouses, operational databases, and data lakes using AWS-designed hardware and machine learning to deliver the best price-performance at any scale.

S – Serverless

Serverless is a cloud-native development model that allows developers to build and run applications without having to manage servers. There are still servers in serverless, but they are abstracted away from app development. Your application still runs on servers, but all the server management is done by AWS

T – Terraform

Terraform is an infrastructure as a code tool that lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share. You can then use a consistent workflow to provision and manage all of your infrastructure throughout its lifecycle. Terraform can manage low-level components like computing, storage, and networking resources, as well as high-level components like DNS entries and SaaS features

U – Utility billing

Unit testing is defined as a quality assurance technique where application code is broken down into component building blocks – along with each block or unit's associated data, usage processes, and functions – to ensure that each block works as expected.

V – Vendor

An organization that sells computing infrastructure, software as a service (SaaS), or storage. Vendor Insights helps simplify and accelerate the risk assessment and procurement process

W – WAF

A WAF or web application firewall helps protect web applications by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the Internet. By deploying a WAF in front of a web application, a shield is placed between the web application and the Internet. While a proxy server protects a client machine’s identity by using an intermediary, a WAF is a type of reverse proxy, that protects the server from exposure by having clients pass through the WAF before reaching the server

X – X-Ray

AWS X-Ray is a web service that collects data about requests that your application serves. X-Ray provides tools that you can use to view, filter, and gain insights into that data to identify issues and opportunities for optimization.

Y – YAML

YAML is a digestible data serialization language often used to create configuration files with any programming language. Designed for human interaction, YAML is a strict superset of JSON, another data serialization language. But because it's a strict superset, it can do everything that JSON can and more.

Z – Zone Awareness

Zone awareness helps prevent downtime and data loss. When zone awareness is enabled, OpenSearch Service allocates the nodes and replica index shards across two or three Availability Zones in the same AWS Region. Note: For a setup of three Availability Zones, use two replicas of your index.

 

yura-vasilevitski
2023/01
Jan 16, 2023 9:52:28 AM
Cloudride Glossary
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Migration, CI/CD, Cost Optimization, Lambda, Terraform, Cloud Computing, Kubernetes, WAF

Jan 16, 2023 9:52:28 AM

Cloudride Glossary

A – Aurora

Amazon Aurora is a fully managed MySQL-compatible relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases.

AWS Database migration in 2023

Cloud computing has become increasingly important for many companies in the last few years. However, there are always challenges when moving data between environments. Organizations adopting cloud technologies will only increase the need for effective database migration strategies. In 2023, there are several trends that we expect to see in database migration to AWS:

Increased use of automation

As more organizations move to the cloud, they are looking for ways to automate their database management processes. This includes automating tasks such as provisioning and de-provisioning databases, monitoring performance and availability, and managing backups.

Greater focus on data security

As more and more companies move their workloads into public clouds such as AWS or Microsoft Azure, they're starting to realize that they must take security more seriously than ever before. After all, if you store sensitive data in the cloud, it's only a matter of time before someone steals it through hacking or insider threats.

More hybrid database deployments

Companies are increasingly deploying multiple deployment models in their production environments. This hybrid approach allows IT teams to leverage the best of both worlds without sacrificing availability or performance.

Improved data governance 

Data governance is a key aspect of any database migration project. As large volumes of data are transferred from on-premises databases to the cloud, it is important to ensure that data quality is maintained. By using automated tools, businesses can ensure that data is migrated in a consistent manner across multiple databases and applications.

Increased use of cloud-based solutions

This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to remember that not all databases are suitable for use in the cloud. This is especially true if they require high processing power levels or high availability features that aren’t available through public cloud providers like AWS or Azure.

Increased use of database-as-a-service (DBaaS) tools

Migrating databases from on-premises environments to AWS has always been challenging because it requires expertise in multiple disciplines. But today, companies use database-as-a-service (DBaaS) tools for migration projects. These tools help IT teams quickly move data from one place to another without having to write code or perform complicated tasks manually.

The most popular DBaaS tools include Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Amazon Aurora Serverless, and Amazon DynamoDB Streams.

Increased use of containers 

Container technology is poised to revolutionize database migrations. It allows multiple processes to share a single operating system instance while retaining private resources, such as file systems and network connections. This will enable various databases to be migrated at once without affecting each other's performance or stability.

Greater focus on data quality 

The quality of the migrated data is critical because it affects how well other systems can utilize it in your organization. Cloud migration tools can now perform extract, transform and load (ETL) functions to help ensure that any data migrated into the cloud is high quality.

Many vendors also offer tools that will monitor database performance after the migration so that you can identify any issues before they become serious problems.

Greater use of artificial intelligence 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more common in database management software because it can automate many tasks that require human intervention today, such as detecting anomalies in user behavior patterns and generating recommendations based on those patterns. This gives IT administrators more time to focus on resolving problems instead of performing mundane tasks like monitoring servers or responding to alerts.

More open-source options 

As the cloud-native movement grows, more companies are moving away from traditional database software and choosing open-source solutions. Many leading database vendors are now offering their software as open-source projects with support from community members.

The most popular open-source databases include MongoDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch. These products are gaining popularity because they're easy to install and use. They can also be deployed on various cloud platforms, including AWS.

In addition to these three popular choices, many other open-source databases are available on AWS Marketplace, including MariaDB and PostgreSQL.

Takeaway

By keeping these trends in mind, organizations can develop a successful database migration strategy to AWS in 2023 that meets their business needs and helps them take advantage of the benefits of the cloud. Want to learn more? Book a call with one of our experts!

yura-vasilevitski
2023/01
Jan 9, 2023 10:47:30 AM
AWS Database migration in 2023
Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Jan 9, 2023 10:47:30 AM

AWS Database migration in 2023

Cloud computing has become increasingly important for many companies in the last few years. However, there are always challenges when moving data between environments. Organizations adopting cloud technologies will only increase the need for effective database migration strategies. In 2023, there...

The Full Guide to Cloud Migration for Smooth Sailing Into 2023

Cloud migration is a complex task, but it's necessary. Without the proper planning and strategy, your business could be left behind by competitors who have already moved to cloud computing. We've broken down some of the most critical steps of any cloud migration project in 2023, so you can navigate them confidently and successfully.

What Does Cloud Migration Mean for Your Business?

 Cloud migration is the process of moving resources and applications to the cloud. Cloud migration can help businesses gain access to new services and capabilities, reduce costs, and become more agile and flexible.

The various benefits of cloud migration include the following:

  • Improved security and compliance with regulations 
  • Reduced operational costs 
  • Improved agility
  • flexibility and scalability
  • Improved business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities 
  • Ability to develop new capabilities

Do You Really Need to Migrate in the First Place?

You should move data and workloads to the cloud for many reasons. You may be looking for more cost-effective storage, or you may or looking for better ways to manage applications. 

Whatever the case, it is essential that you know what you’re getting into before making any decisions about migrating.

If considering a cloud migration is the right choice for your business, do some research first and consider whether the cost outweighs any potential benefits—and vice versa!

Most Common Cloud Migration Challenges 

There are many challenges to cloud migration. Here are the most common cloud migration challenges and how to overcome them confidently.

Workload Migration

How do you move workloads from one environment to another? There are many different types of workloads, which means there are multiple ways to migrate them into the cloud. 

And depending on your use case, some of those options may not be feasible for your specific situation. Your best bet is to work with a partner who can help you determine which solution is best suited to your requirements and goals. 

Security and Compliance

How do you ensure your cloud-based data is secure and compliant with industry regulations? This is a common concern for businesses looking to move their workloads into the cloud. And while it can be pretty daunting at first, there are several ways to address this challenge. 

One option is to partner with a managed service provider (MSP) that specializes in helping organizations migrate data securely and stay compliant with industry regulations. 

Cost Savings

How do you ensure that migrating your workloads to the cloud will save you money? This can be a difficult question to answer, as it depends on many different factors (including the size of your organization and how much data needs to be migrated). 

However, there are some ways to determine whether migration is financially viable before diving in.

Is There a Right Way to Migrate?

As a business, you may wonder whether there’s a right way to migrate your data.

This depends on several factors, including:

  • The type of migration you’re doing (e.g., cloud-native to cloud-native or on-premises to the cloud)
  • The technology you’re migrating (e.g., applications and databases)
  • The size of your business and its workload

Is There a Wrong Way to Migrate?

The answer is no; there’s no wrong way to migrate. But you should always be aware of the pitfalls of undertaking such an important and ambitious project.

Underestimation The Scope Required in Migrating

One of the biggest problems seen over the years by cloud migration specialists is that many companies need to realize how much time and resources it takes to get their data ready for moving into the cloud. 

They need to pay more attention to how much work they'll need to put in before they can even start migrating, which results in things falling behind schedule or, worse: failing altogether.

Lack of Enough Resources

 

It's also common for companies not to have enough money set aside for migration costs—but this doesn't mean you should give up! There are many ways to finance cloud migration with minimal cost or effort on your part.

Lack of Planning

 

Finally, one thing that has caused countless delays over the past decade is the need for more planning on behalf of IT teams worldwide. From small businesses to enterprise organizations with tens of thousands of employees worldwide. 

It's vital during this process that everyone involved knows exactly what needs to be done next so that nothing gets overlooked during those busy days ahead. This is especially if there is little budget left after the initial investment.

What Should You Consider Before Migrating?

 

Deciding whether to migrate your applications is a big decision. Here are some things to consider before making a move:

  • What is the goal for your migration? Do you want to reduce costs, increase mobility and agility, or both?
  • What applications are you migrating? How important are they? Is it worth the risk of downtime if something goes wrong during the migration process?
  • What risks are involved in migrating these applications into a cloud platform?
  • How much time do you have available before starting your migration project? Will this affect the cost or schedule management efforts at all?

 

Conclusion 

Cloud migration for smooth sailing in 2023 can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. If you plan ahead and understand the benefits of migrating, you can reduce the risk and ensure a successful transition. Whether you need help deciding whether or not to migrate and how best, we are here for you! Please get in touch with us with any questions or concerns about your next move into the cloud.

yura-vasilevitski
2022/12
Dec 26, 2022 3:16:32 PM
The Full Guide to Cloud Migration for Smooth Sailing Into 2023
Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Dec 26, 2022 3:16:32 PM

The Full Guide to Cloud Migration for Smooth Sailing Into 2023

Cloud migration is a complex task, but it's necessary. Without the proper planning and strategy, your business could be left behind by competitors who have already moved to cloud computing. We've broken down some of the most critical steps of any cloud migration project in 2023, so you can navigate...

Lambda SnapStart

You might be aware of how Cold Starts negatively impact the user experience. Cold Starts are well-known in the serverless space but annoy developers, so they search for solutions and ways to avoid them. The new release of the AWS Lambda Snapstart for Java 11 functions features several improvements aimed at improving Cold Start Latency. In this post, you’ll learn how to take advantage of SnapStart and drastically reduce your App Server start time.

What is a Cold Start?

Cold starts are when an application starts for the first time. This is a common problem for applications that run on Lambda, as AWS does not have access to your application data or configuration to know what to do when you call your function.

There are two ways to handle cold starts:

  1. Use a library like SnapStart that handles cold starts for you by using DynamoDB and other services (like SNS) to track the state of your application. You can then use this state information to optimize future executions of your Lambda functions.
  2. Write your code that handles cold starts for you by using DynamoDB and other services (like SNS) to track the state of your application.

What is Lambda SnapStart?

The Lambda SnapStart feature is a new feature that speeds up your cold start time, which is the time it takes for your app to start up and respond to requests.

This can be particularly useful when you have many users accessing your application at once or hosting a highly interactive site with many users who frequently request resources.

When you use SnapStart, you take advantage of AWS Lambda's ability to run multiple versions of your Lambda function simultaneously and make them available in parallel.

Lambda's SnapStart provides the following:

  • Easily create an AWS Lambda function using a simple drag-and-drop interface
  • Automatically configure and deploy the function to AWS Lambda with one click
  • Inspect your function logs in real time
  • Run multiple instances of your functions locally without incurring any costs

How Lambda SnapStart works?

Initialization occurs when your function starts up, regardless of whether it is a phone app or a serverless Lambda function. All applications require initialization, regardless of their programming languages or applications. When you publish your application on AWS Lambda, SnapStart handles the initialization of your function before it is published.

SnapStart creates a Firecracker micro VM snapshot for low-latency access and caches it for low-latency access. Rather than starting up new execution environments from scratch when your application scales, Lambda resumes them from a cached snapshot, improving startup time.

What’s in a Snapshot? 

A snapshot is a collection of files and metadata that captures the state of your AWS Lambda function. Snapshots are useful for creating backup copies of your code and role configuration, testing new versions of your code, and reverting a deployment to a previous version.

A snapshot contains the following information:

The Lambda Function Code

This includes the ZIP file containing the function code and any additional files, such as packages or dependencies.

The Lambda Role Configuration

This includes IAM permissions, execution role ARN, and other configuration details.

Snapshots are useful for several reasons:

  1. They can be used as backups for recovery from accidental deletion or corruption of objects (such as S3 buckets) or restoring deleted accounts to their previous state after a breach or other incident.
  2. They allow you to create new accounts with identical configurations to existing ones so that you don't have to recreate existing infrastructure when you want to test changes.
  3. Snapshots can be used to speed up the deployment of new applications by providing a snapshot of the current state of an application's environment.

Pricing

There is no extra charge for the use of Lambda SnapStart. You pay only for the AWS resources you provided as part of your Lambda function.

Network connections

One potential pitfall for serverless developers to be aware of is that storing and resuming network connections won't work with Lambda SnapStart. This is because though HTTP or database libraries are initialized, socket connections cannot be transferred or multiplexed. These connections must be re-established.

Conclusion 

Lambda SnapStart is a simple and effective way to get your API up and running quickly, with all the options covered in the API-first workflow. If you're serious about deploying your API more frequently and easily, we encourage you to try Lambda SnapStart and see how it works for you.

 

yonatan-yoselevski
2022/12
Dec 18, 2022 2:45:28 PM
Lambda SnapStart
AWS, Lambda, SnapStart

Dec 18, 2022 2:45:28 PM

Lambda SnapStart

You might be aware of how Cold Starts negatively impact the user experience. Cold Starts are well-known in the serverless space but annoy developers, so they search for solutions and ways to avoid them. The new release of the AWS Lambda Snapstart for Java 11 functions features several improvements...

What is Data Lake and Why Do You Need It

If you work with large amounts of data, you probably know how hard it is to get everything in the right place. Data lake is a solution to this problem. It's a pool of data that you can access from multiple sources. Whenever you need information from your database, all you have to do is call up the data lake and let it provide the information for you. This article explains what a data lake is and why you need it. 

What is Data Lake?

Data Lake is a storage repository that stores all types of data, regardless of the source or format. It is a single, centralized pool of data that anyone in the organization can use.

Data Lake helps to overcome the limitations of the traditional data warehouse. It’s very scalable and has no limits on the data size. It stores structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Data Lake can also store metadata about the stored files, such as when they were created and who had access to them at any time.

The Essential Elements of a Data Lake

Here are some essential elements of Data Lakes:

Data management

A Data Lake provides a secure place for storing data for future use. This process allows the movement of data from one location to another using various techniques like batch processing and real-time streaming. This can be done using tools like Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).

Securely store and catalog data.

A data lake securely stores all types of unstructured and structured data, including text files, images, video, and audio files. The ability to store and catalog all types of data allows users to search for specific files within the lake using different parameters, such as date range or keywords.

Analytics

A data lake can give you access to valuable analytics tools that let you analyze large amounts of data in new ways. These tools may include database management systems like Hadoop and Spark, which let you perform analytics on huge volumes of data at scale. They also include visualization tools, which let you create reports about your business using charts, graphs, and other visuals.

Machine Learning

Data Lake allows companies to use machine learning to analyze data and discover trends or patterns humans would have otherwise missed. Machine learning also creates predictive models that give insights into what may happen in the future.

Benefits of a Data Lake

Data lakes have many benefits that make them attractive to businesses, including:

Cost-efficiency

Data lakes have a lower cost than traditional structured databases because they don't require expensive software licenses and hardware. This means they can be easily scaled up or down as needed, which reduces waste and overhead by eliminating unused capacity.

Flexibility

Data lakes are built on a flexible platform that allows you to store any data in any format, not just structured relational data. This makes it easier to integrate disparate systems and applications into one cohesive system that's easy to analyze later.

Data security

Since all your company's raw data is stored in one location, it's easier to control access permissions on individual files or folders within the lake. You can also control who has access by setting up groups within your organization that include or exclude particular people or departments.

Ease of access

Data lakes help you to make sense of your organization's vast amounts of data by storing everything in one place. This makes it easier to analyze trends over time or compare multiple datasets. It also allows you to create new applications using the data stored within them.

Scalability

Because you can store data in a data lake, its scalability is limitless. If your company grows and you need more storage for your databases, you add more servers and storage space to accommodate the increase in demand.

Conclusion

The Data Lake is not just a standard data warehouse nor a simple file system for unstructured data. It combines the best elements of other technologies by providing a reliable and scalable platform to store data collected from multiple sources. In a nutshell, in Data Lake architecture, information is cleansed, integrated, and analyzed in one place. 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/11
Nov 14, 2022 11:39:54 AM
What is Data Lake and Why Do You Need It
AWS, Cost Optimization, Database, Data Lake

Nov 14, 2022 11:39:54 AM

What is Data Lake and Why Do You Need It

If you work with large amounts of data, you probably know how hard it is to get everything in the right place. Data lake is a solution to this problem. It's a pool of data that you can access from multiple sources. Whenever you need information from your database, all you have to do is call up the...

Auto-Scaling AWS

It was not too long ago, that businesses needed to manage their AWS resources to meet scaling demand manually. You had to purchase hardware, keep track of it, and figure out what resources you needed to meet your customers' needs. This was a lot of work, and it didn't give you full visibility into how much capacity was available at any given time. Fortunately for us, AWS has taken this burden off our shoulders and introduced automatic scaling functionality that can be used with different configurations depending on what kind of workloads you're running on their platform.

Scale based on metrics

It's easy to forget that the entire world is not Amazon Web Services. Scaling up and down based on usage can be trickier when your app resides outside AWS.

Fortunately, third-party services make it possible to scale based on an application metric like CPU or memory usage. You can use these services to trigger scaling events when an event is reached (e.g., if CPU usage reaches 80%) or a specific threshold (e.g., if CPU usage reaches 100%).

For example, you can set up Amazon CloudWatch alarms to notify you when certain metrics reach predefined thresholds and then configure auto-scaling policies to scale out or automatically respond to those notifications!

Scale based on time 

Scaling up or down, depending on what kind of action it is. There are many ways these values can be set depending on what kind of system architecture and performance needs exist within any given organization. 

However, keep in mind that higher values mean more flexibility but also more risk because they allow larger swings above/below their thresholds before triggering actions themselves--which means fewer false positives while still allowing us some room for error. For example, if you wanted my alarm set up so that whenever CPU utilization goes above 80%, then your auto-scaling group would launch another m3 large instance into production. However, if my CPU utilization drops below 50%, then my auto-scaling group would terminate one of its m3 large instances so as not to waste resources any more than necessary.

Launch Configs

A launch configuration is a collection of settings you can use to launch instances. You can use launch configurations to save time when launching instances by giving you the option to configure them once and then replicate them multiple times.

For example, if you want to launch an instance inside the EC2 zone in VPC with a security group that allows SSH connections from anywhere but only from other AWS accounts owned by your company, then all you have to do is create a launch config and attach it as an attribute for each instance type (EC2 Linux) in which you want this specific configuration applied.

Target Groups

So, you've decided that you want to scale up or down? You're in luck because AWS has a handy feature called target groups. Target groups allow you to manage the number of running instances, which can be used in conjunction with autoscaling groups or launch configs.

Target groups come in two flavors: one for scaling services and another for scaling capacity on EC2 instances. The former is used when you want to scale up or down your application's resources; the latter helps optimize your use of Amazon EBS volumes.

AWS will automatically scale to meet the demand

AWS will automatically scale to meet demand. This can be intimidating for some people, but rest assured that AWS will not send an army of servers over to your data center and start using them for crypto mining or something.

The automatic scaling process is based on health checks and monitoring metrics like CPU and memory usage. If there's no activity happening on an instance you're running, it won't be scaled back up again until it is needed.

In addition to this feature being smart enough not to waste time or resources scaling instances when they aren't needed, it also reduces costs by not having unnecessary resources sitting idle in the cloud when they can instead be used elsewhere where they may have been requested.

Conclusion

AWS is a powerful and flexible cloud platform, but it can initially be overwhelming. Luckily for you, we've covered all the ways AWS can automatically scale your application and infrastructure so you can focus on what matters: building great software. For any additional assistance, book a free consultation call today!

yura-vasilevitski
2022/11
Nov 14, 2022 11:34:39 AM
Auto-Scaling AWS
AWS, Cloud Computing, Auto-Scaling

Nov 14, 2022 11:34:39 AM

Auto-Scaling AWS

It was not too long ago, that businesses needed to manage their AWS resources to meet scaling demand manually. You had to purchase hardware, keep track of it, and figure out what resources you needed to meet your customers' needs. This was a lot of work, and it didn't give you full visibility into...

Redshift Serverless

Redshift serverless is a fully managed database service for Amazon Redshift that uses the AWS Lambda serverless computing platform. It enables you to run SQL queries on data stored in Amazon S3 and other sources by executing them from within your application code. With Redshift serverless, you get an easy-to-use web application that lets you define the schema of your tables and then run queries against them.

Serverless Spectrum

Serverless is a term floating around cloud computing for a while now, but what exactly is it? Serverless is a system where you don't have to manage servers or deal with scaling issues. Instead, you can focus on building your application and let the providers handle everything else.

Spectrum is an extension of AWS Lambda that allows you to run serverless applications on multiple clouds at once (currently including Google Cloud Platform). With Spectrum, you can write code using familiar languages like Python, Java, and NodeJS, then run them across multiple platforms without worrying about portability issues or vendor lock-in.

The benefits of using Spectrum include:

No dedicated infrastructure

There are no dedicated resources on Redshift serverless, so you don't need to purchase or manage hardware. You also don't have to worry about hardware failure or upgrades, maintenance, security, and other issues with owning infrastructure.

You can focus on your application rather than managing servers.

Ability to scale storage and compute independently

With Redshift serverless, you can scale storage independently of compute. This means that if you want to add more capacity to your database but don't need more processing power, you can do it without having to provide any new computer.

The same holds true in reverse: you can scale compute independently of storage by scaling up or down simultaneously. This makes Redshift serverless especially useful for workloads with unpredictable traffic patterns and cyclical spikes in usage.

Automatic storage scaling

Redshift Serverless automatically scales storage based on the size of your data and can automatically scale up or down as your data grows or shrinks.

When you create a cluster, it comes with a set amount of disk space from Amazon S3. The minimum disk size is 5 GB, but you can increase that limit by specifying an Amazon S3 bucket name for your cluster in the Redshift Serverless console (e.g., mybucket). The default bucket name is "redshift-cluster-data," which will also be used if you don't specify anything else during setup.

You can manually scale up/down your storage by clicking on the Storage tab in the left navigation bar in the console.

Fully managed by AWS

The first thing to know about Redshift is that AWS fully manages it.

This means you don't have to worry about managing your data warehouse's physical hardware, storage, or security. Instead, you can focus on building your data pipeline and querying your data using SQL-like queries called Amazon Redshift Spectrum Query Language (ASQL).

The second thing to know about Redshift is that it uses shared-everything architecture. This means that all nodes in a cluster share storage and compute power, but each node has its database engine process (known as an instance).

You pay for what you use.

As a user, you pay for what you use. You can scale storage and compute independently. You can scale up or down in real-time. In fact, as a serverless user, there are only two things that are charged: data transfer and data storage.

Supports external tables and UDFs

 Redshift Serverless supports external tables, which means you can use the same Redshift data in a SQL query using traditional SQL. In addition to that, Redshift Serverless also supports UDFs. The usage of UDFs is identical to regular UDFs. You can call them as part of your query, and they will be executed as part of the query plan at runtime.

Redshift serverless is the future.

Redshift serverless is the future. It's a great choice for your data warehouse because it gives you all the power of Redshift but with much less complexity. The only thing you need to manage is an AWS account and an API key or password, and everything else runs itself in the background!

Future proof your next project using Redshift serverless—you'll be glad you did!

Conclusion 

Redshift serverless is the future of data warehousing. In fact, it's already here. Redshift serverless allows you to build a data warehouse without having to manage infrastructure or worry about scaling. It brings together all of the best features from other databases and makes them available in one place — with no upfront commitment!

yura-vasilevitski
2022/10
Oct 15, 2022 11:52:35 PM
Redshift Serverless
AWS, Redshift Serverless

Oct 15, 2022 11:52:35 PM

Redshift Serverless

Redshift serverless is a fully managed database service for Amazon Redshift that uses the AWS Lambda serverless computing platform. It enables you to run SQL queries on data stored in Amazon S3 and other sources by executing them from within your application code. With Redshift serverless, you get...

Terraform State Restoration

Terraform is a powerful tool for building and managing infrastructure, but it's also critical to take steps to back up and restore your state data. You should be aware of the following best practices:

Premise

Terraform State is the state of your infrastructure as defined by Terraform. That can be all kinds of things, like a list of resources created and where they are in AWS or GCP, the specific values they were given, what IP addresses they have been assigned, etc.

This file is called "terraform state," and it lives in your project root folder (in most cases). It's this file that allows us to restore our infrastructure after we make changes because we're not just creating it from scratch every time; we're using what has already been created before! To use Terraform State with HashiCorp Tools (Terraform Enterprise), you need to store it on disk somewhere.

 

What is Terraform State?

Terraform state is the data that Terraform uses to track the state of your infrastructure. It tracks all of your resource configurations and any modules, outputs, and variable values created in this configuration process so that you can apply multiple resources or change existing configurations again and again without causing unexpected changes in your infrastructure.

Terraform state is stored in a local file (or files) or a remote backend. The default location for these files is .terraform/. You can view the contents of this folder by running the terraform show command.

 

Configuration Best Practices

Terraform has built-in state persistence, so if you run terraform apply on a machine and lose power, it will resume from where it left off when the power comes back up. It has a built-in state-checking mechanism that will prevent you from accidentally destroying resources you've created during manual operations or other automated processes like Jenkins jobs.

Use modules for organization and ease of use. This keeps your plans modular and reusable across multiple environments (dev, staging, prod).

Use Terraform's built-in locking system to prevent concurrent access between teams/users/projects.

 

Modules

Terraform modules are the way to organize and reuse your Terraform configurations. They're reusable across multiple environments and projects, so you can share common infrastructure components between multiple environments without duplicating code.

 

Backend Configurations

To back up your Terraform state file, you can do the following:

  • Save the current state to a file. If you're using Terraform 0.13 or later, this can be done by running `terraform save` in any remote directory with elevated privileges.
  • If necessary, copy the file somewhere else, such as an S3 bucket or another cloud service provider. You might even want to keep it on-site so that if there's ever an emergency where you have to rebuild infrastructure from scratch (e.g., a fire), this data will already be available!

 

Backup Best Practices

There are several ways you can back up your Terraform state files, depending on what you're backing up and how much of it you want to keep. You may have some or all of the following:

  • Backup your Terraform backend configurations, which are stored in files named .tfstate. The TFSTATE_DIR environment variable determines where this file is saved.
  • Backup your Terraform backend data (data for backends that use a local datastore like S3), which is stored in bucketed .terraform directories within the .tfstate directory mentioned above. 

 

Disaster Recovery Best Practices

Back up your Terraform state. Using a remote state backend, such as Consul or Vault, it's important to regularly back up the state for disaster recovery. You can do this manually by exporting the values of your resources into files. Or you can automate this process with an application such as Terraform State Backup or TFSBManager.

Use version control. Version control is critical when working with Terraform and creating and managing infrastructure artifacts like AWS IAM IDs, secret keys, and access tokens that are needed during application deployment activities.

By using a versioning system such as Git or Mercurial (Mercurial is better since it doesn't require making commits), you'll be able to easily revert to any previous versions if something goes wrong during deployment/upgrade activities.

Use snapshot tools that support state restoration functions: Snapshots allow users to record their current states so they can restore them later if anything goes wrong during manual upgrades.

 

For any Terraform state, backup and recovery are critical

Terraform state restoration is an important topic to understand and apply. You can use the following best practices to help ensure that you can recover from any failure:

Ensure that your backup process is reliable. A reliable backup system will protect your state data from corruption, allow for easy restores, and provide a way to quickly restore service functionality after a failure.

Use Terraform's built-in backup options whenever possible. When you use the native terraform plan command with the --backup flag, Terraform will automatically generate both file-based backups (JSON files) and S3-compatible backups. This greatly simplifies recovery compared to manually creating backups yourself or writing custom scripts around other tools like Packer or Ansible Vault.

 

Conclusion

We hope this article has helped you better understand the importance of Terraform state and the best practices for managing it.

yura-vasilevitski
2022/10
Oct 15, 2022 11:41:19 PM
Terraform State Restoration
AWS, Terraform

Oct 15, 2022 11:41:19 PM

Terraform State Restoration

Terraform is a powerful tool for building and managing infrastructure, but it's also critical to take steps to back up and restore your state data. You should be aware of the following best practices:

Cloud migration - Q & A

 

On-premise vs Cloud.

Which is the best fit for your business?

Cloud computing is gaining popularity. It offers companies enhanced security, the ability to move all enterprise workloads to the cloud without needing upfront huge infrastructure investment gives much-needed flexibility in doing business, and saves time and money.

Therefore 83% of enterprise workload will be in the cloud and on-premises workloads would constitute only 27% of all workloads by this year, according to Forbes.

But there are factors to consider before choosing to migrate all your enterprise workload to the cloud or choosing an on-premise deployment model.

There is no one size fits it approach. It depends on your business and IT needs. If your business has global expansion plans in place, the cloud provides much greater appeal. Migrating workloads to the cloud enable data to be accessible to anyone with an internet-enabled device.

Without much effort, you are connected to your customers, remote employees, partners, and other businesses.

On the other hand, if your business is in a highly regulated industry with privacy concerns and with the need for customizing system operations then the on-premise deployment model may, at times, be preferable.
To better discern which solution is best for your business needs we will highlight the key differences between the two to help you in your decision-making.

Cloud Security

With cloud infrastructure, security is always the main concern. Sensitive financial data, customers’ data, employees’ data, lists of clients, and much more delicate information are stored in the on-premise data center.

To migrate all this to a cloud infrastructure, you must have conducted thorough research on the cloud provider’s capabilities to handle sensitive data. Renowned cloud providers usually have strict data security measures and policies. 

You can still seek a third-party security audit on the cloud providers you want to choose, or even better yet, consult with a cloud security specialist to ensure your cloud architecture is constructed according to the highest security standards and answers all our needs.

As for on-premise infrastructure, security solely lies with you. You are responsible for real-time threat detection and implementing preventive measures. 

Cost optimization

One major advantage of adopting cloud infrastructure is its low cost of entry. No physical servers are needed, no manual maintenance cost, and no heavy cost incurred from the damage on physical servers. Your cloud providers are responsible for maintaining the virtual servers.

Having said that, Cloud providers use a pay-as-you-go model. This can skyrocket your operational costs when administrators are not familiar with the cloud pricing models. Building, operating, and maintaining a cloud architecture that maximizes your cloud benefits, while maintaining cost control - is not as easy as it sounds, and requires quite a high level of expertise. For that, a professional cloud cost optimization specialist can ensure you get everything you paid for, and are not bill-shocked by any unexpected surplus fees. 

On the other hand, On-premise software is usually charged a one-time license fee. On top of that, in-house servers, server maintenance, and IT professionals deal with any potential risks that may occur. This does not account for the time and money lost when a system failure happens, and the available employees don’t have the expertise to contain the situation. 

Customization 

On-premise IT infrastructure offers full control to an enterprise. You can tailor your system to your specialized needs. The system is in your hands and only you can modify it to your liking and business needs.

With cloud infrastructure, it’s a bit trickier. To customize cloud platform solutions to your own organizational needs, you need high-level expertise to plan and construct a cloud solution that is tailored to your organizational requirement. 

Flexibility 

When your company is expanding its market reach it’s essential to utilize cloud infrastructure as it doesn’t require huge investments. Data can be accessed from anywhere in the world through a virtual server provided by your cloud provider, and scaling your architecture is easy (especially if your initial planning and construction were done right and aimed to support growth). 

With an on-premise system, going into other markets would require you to establish physical servers in those locations and invest in new staff. This might make you think twice about your expansion plans due to the huge costs.

Which is the best? 

Generally, the On-premise deployment model is suited for enterprises that require full control of their servers and have the necessary personnel to maintain the hardware and software and frequently secure the network.

They store sensitive information and rather invest in their own security measures on a system they have full control over than have their data move to the cloud. 

Small businesses and large enterprises - Apple, Netflix, Instagram, alike move their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud due to the flexibility of expansion and growth and low cost of entry. No need for the huge upfront investment in infrastructure and maintenance. 

With the various prebuilt tools and features, and the right expert partner to take you through your cloud journey - you can customize the system to cater to your needs while upholding top security standards and optimizing ongoing costs.

6 steps to successful cloud migration

There are infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity on the cloud. Cloud migration is a process that makes your infrastructure conformable to your modern business environment. It is a chance to cut costs and tap into scalability, agility, and faster market time. Even so, if not done right, cloud migration can produce the opposite results. 

Costs in cloud migration 

This is entirely strategy-dependent. For instance, refactoring all your applications at once could lead to severe downtimes and high costs. For a speedy and cost-effective cloud migration process, it is crucial to invest in strategy and assessments. The right plan factors in costs, downtimes, employee training, and the duration of the whole process. 

There is also a matter of aligning your finance team with your IT needs, which will require restructuring your CapEx / OpEx model. CapEx is the standard model of traditional on-premise IT - such as fixed investments in IT equipment, servers, and such, while OpEx is how public cloud computing services are purchased (i.e operational cost incurred on a monthly/yearly basis). 

When migrating to the public cloud, you are shifting from traditional hardware and software ownership to a pay-as-you-go model, which means shifting from CapEx to OpEx, allowing your IT team to maximize agility and flexibility to support your business’ scaling needs while maximizing cost efficiency. This will, however, require full alignment with all company stakeholders, as each of the models has different implications on cost, control, and operational flexibility.

Cloud Security  

If the cloud is trumpeted to have all the benefits, why isn't every business migrating? Security, that's the biggest concern encumbering cloud migration. With most cloud solutions, you are entrusting a third party with your data. A careful evaluation of the provider and their processes and security control is essential.   

Within the field of cloud environments, there are generally two parties responsible for infrastructure security. 

  1. Your cloud vendor. 
  2. Your own company’s IT / Security team. 

Some companies believe that as cloud customers when they migrate to the cloud, cloud security responsibilities fall solely on the cloud vendors. Well, that’s not the case.

Both the cloud customers and cloud vendors share responsibilities in cloud security and are both liable for the security of the environment and infrastructure.

To better manage the shared responsibility, consider the following tips:

Define your cloud security needs and requirements before choosing a cloud vendor. If you know your requirements, you’ll select a cloud provider suited to answer your needs.

Clarify the roles and responsibilities of each party when it comes to cloud security. Comprehensively define who is responsible for what and to what extent. Know how far your cloud provider is willing to go to protect your environment.

CSPs are responsible for the security of the physical or virtual infrastructure and the security configuration of their managed services while the cloud customers are in control of their data and the security measures, they set in place to protect their data, system, networks, and applications.

Employees buy-in 

The learning curve for your new systems will be faster if there is substantial employee buy-in from the start. There needs to be a communication strategy in place for your workers to understand the migration process, its benefits, and its role in it. Employee training should be part of your strategy. 

Change management to the pay-as-you-go model

Like any other big IT project, shifting to the cloud significantly changes your business operations. Managing workloads and applications on the cloud significantly differ from how it is done on rem. Some functions will be rendered redundant, while other roles may get additional responsibilities. With most cloud platforms running a pay-as-you-go model, there is an increasing need for businesses to be able to manage their cloud operations in an efficient manner. You’d be surprised at how easy it is for your cloud costs to get out of control.

In fact, according to Gartner, the estimated global enterprise cloud waste is appx. 35% of their cloud spend, is forecasted to hit $21 Billion wasted (!!!) by 2021. 

Migrating legacy applications 

These applications were designed a decade ago, and even though they don't mirror the modern environment of your business, they host your mission-critical process. How do you convert these systems or connect them with cloud-based applications? 

Steps to a successful cloud migration 

You may be familiar with the 6 R’s, which are 6 common strategies for cloud migration. Check out our recent post on the 6 R’s to cloud migration.  

Additionally, follow these steps to smoothly migrate your infrastructure to the public cloud: 

  1. Define a cloud migration roadmap 

This is a detailed plan that involves all the steps you intend to take in the cloud migration process. The plan should include timeframes, budget, user flows, and KPIs. Starting the cloud migration process without a detailed plan could lead to a waste of time and resources. Effectively communicating this plan improves support from senior leadership and employees. 

Application assessment 

Identify your current infrastructure and evaluate the performance and weaknesses of your applications. The evaluation helps to compare the cost versus value of the planned cloud migration based on the current state of your infrastructure. This initial evaluation also helps to decide the best approach to modernization, whether your apps will need re-platforming or if they can be lifted and shifted to the cloud. 

Choose the right platform 

Your landing zone could be a public cloud, a private cloud, a hybrid, or a multi-cloud. The choice here depends on your applications, security needs, and costs. Public clouds excel in scalability and have a cost-effective pay-per-usage model. Private clouds are suitable for a business with stringent security requirements. A hybrid cloud is where workloads can be moved between the private and public clouds through orchestration. A multi-cloud environment combines IaaS services from two or more public clouds.  

Find the right provider 

If you are going with the public, hybrid, or multi-cloud deployment model, you will have to choose between different cloud providers in the market (namely Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) and various control & optimization tools. Critical factors for your consideration in this decision include security, costs, and availability.  

There are fads in fashion and other things but not technology. Trends such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote working can have extensive implications for a business's future. Business survival, recovery, and growth are dependent on your agility in adopting and adapting to the ever-changing business environment. Moving from on-prem to the cloud is one way that businesses can tap into the potential of advanced technology.

The key drivers 

Investment resources are utilized much more efficiently on the cloud. With the advantage of on-demand service models, businesses can optimize efficiency and save software, infrastructure, and storage costs.

For a business that is rapidly expanding, cloud migration is the best way to keep the momentum going. There is a promise of scalability and simplified application hosting. It eliminates the need to install additional servers, for example, when eCommerce traffic surges.

Remote working is the current sole push factor. As COVID-19 lays waste to everything, businesses, even those that never considered cloud migration before, have been forced to implement either partial or full cloud migration. Employees can access business applications and collaborate from any corner of the world. 

Best Practices

Choose a secure cloud environment 

The leading public cloud providers are AWS, Azure, and GCP (check out our detailed comparison between the 3) They all offer competitive hosting rates favorable to small and medium-scale businesses. However, resources are shared, like in an apartment building with multiple tenants, and so security is an issue that quickly comes to mind.

The private cloud is an option for businesses that want more control and assured security. Private clouds are a stipulation for businesses that handle sensitive information, such as hospitals and DoD contractors. 

A hybrid cloud, on the other hand, gives you the best of both worlds. You have the cost-effectiveness of the public cloud when you need it. When you demand architectural control, customization, and increased security, you can take advantage of the private cloud. 

Scrutinize SLAs

The service level agreement is the only thing that states clearly what you should expect from a cloud vendor. Go through it with keen eyes. Some enterprises have started cloud migration only to experience challenges because of vendor lock-in. 

Choose a cloud provider with an SLA that supports the easy transfer of data. This flexibility can help you overcome technical incompatibilities and high costs. 

Plan a migration strategy

Once you identify the best type of cloud environment and the right vendor, the next requirement is to set a migration strategy. When creating a migration strategy, one must consider costs, employee training, and estimated downtime in business applications. Some strategies are better than others:

  • Rehosting may be the easiest moving formula. It basically lifts and shifts. At such a time, when businesses must quickly explore the cloud for remote working, rehosting can save time and money. Your systems are moved to the cloud with no changes to their architecture. The main disadvantage is the inability to optimize costs and app performance on the cloud. 
  • Replatforming is another strategy. It involves making small changes to workloads before moving to the cloud. The architectural modifications maximize performance on the cloud. An example is shifting an app's database to a managed database on the cloud. 
  • Refactoring gives you all the advantages of the cloud, but it does require more investment in the cloud migration process. It involves re-architecting your entire array of applications to meet your business needs, on the one hand, while maximizing efficiency, optimizing costs, and implementing best practices to better tailor your cloud environment. It optimizes app performance and supports the efficient utilization of the cloud infrastructure.

 Know what to migrate and what to retire 

A cloud migration strategy can have all the elements of rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring. The important thing is that businesses must identify resources and the dependencies between them. Not every application and dependencies needs to be shifted to the cloud. 

For instance, instead of running SMTP email servers, organizations can switch to a SaaS email platform on the cloud. This helps to reduce wasted spend and wasted time in cloud migration.

 Train your employees

Workflow modernization can only work well for an organization if employees support it. Where there is no employee training, workers avoid the new technology or face productivity and efficiency problems.

A cloud migration strategy must include employee training as a component. Start communicating the move before it even happens. Ask questions on the most critical challenges your workers face and gear the migration towards solving their work challenges. 

Further, ensure that your cloud migration team is up to the task. Your operations, design, and development teams are the torchbearers of the move. Do they have the experience and skill sets to effect a quick and cost-effective migration?

To Conclude: 

Cloud migration can be a lengthy and complex process. However, with proper planning and strategy execution, you can avoid challenges and achieve a smooth transition. A fool-proof approach is to pick a partner that possesses the expertise, knowledge, and experience to see the big picture of your current and future needs, thus tailoring a solution that fits you like a glove, in all aspects. 

At Cloudride, we have helped many businesses attain faster and more cost-effective cloud migrations.
We are MS-AZURE and AWS, partners, and are here to help you choose a cloud environment that fits your business demands, needs, and plans. 

We provide custom-fit cloud migration services with special attention to security, vendor best practices, and cost efficiency. 

Click here for a free one-on-one consultation call!

yura-vasilevitski
2022/10
Oct 6, 2022 12:32:58 PM
Cloud migration - Q & A
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing

Oct 6, 2022 12:32:58 PM

Cloud migration - Q & A

DevOps as a service and DevOps security

 

DevOps as a service is an emerging philosophy in application development. DevOps as a service moves traditional collaboration of the development and operations team to the cloud, where many of the processes can be automated using stackable virtual development tools.

As many organizations adopt DevOps and migrate their apps to the cloud, the tools used to build, test, and deploy processes change towards making ‘continuous delivery’ an effective managed cloud service. We’ll take a look at what such a move would entail, and what it means for the next generation of DevOps teams.

DevOps as a Managed Cloud Service

What is DevOps in the cloud? Essentially it is the migration of your tools and processes for continuous delivery to a hosted virtual platform. The delivery pipeline becomes a seamless orchestration where developers, testers, and operations professionals collaborate as one, and as much of the deployment process as possible is automated. Here are some of the more popular commercial options for moving DevOps to the cloud on AWS and Azure.

AWS Tools and Services for DevOps

Amazon Web Services has built a powerful global network for virtually hosting some of the world’s most complex IT environments. With fiber-linked data centers arranged all over the world and a payment schedule that measures exactly the services you use down to the millisecond of computing time, AWS is a fast and relatively easy way to migrate your DevOps to the cloud.

Though AWS has scores of powerful interactive features, three particular services are the core of continuous cloud delivery.

AWS CodeBuild

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed service for compiling code, running quality assurance testing through automated processes, and producing deployment-ready software. CodeBuild is highly secure, as each customer receives a unique encryption key to build into every artifact produced.

CodeBuild offers automatic scaling and grows on-demand with your needs, even allowing the simultaneous deployment of two different build versions, which allows for comparison testing in the production environment.

Particularly important for many organizations is CodeBuild’s cost efficiency. It comes with no upfront costs and customers pay only for the milliseconds of compute time required to produce releases and connect seamlessly with other Amazon services to add power and flexibility on demand without spending six figures on hardware to support development.

AWS CodePipeline

With a slick graphical interface, you set parameters and build the model for your perfect deployment scenario and CodePipeline takes it from there. With no servers to provision and deploy, it lets you hit the ground running, bringing continuous delivery by executing automated tasks to perform the complete delivery cycle every time a change is made to the code.

AWS CodeDeploy

Once a new build makes it through CodePipeline, CodeDeploy delivers the working package to every instance outlined in your pre-configured parameters. This makes it simple to synchronize builds and instantly patch or upgrade them at once. CodeDeploy is code-agnostic and easily incorporates common legacy code. Every instance of your deployment is easily tracked in the AWS Management Console, and errors or problems can be easily rolled back through the GUI.
Combining these AWS tools with others in the AWSinventory provides all the building blocks needed to deploy a safe, scalable continuous delivery model in the cloud. Though the engineering adjustments are daunting, the long-term stability and savings make it a move worth considering sooner rather than later.

DevOps and Security

 

Transitioning to DevOps requires a change in culture and mindset. In simple words, DevOps means removing the barriers between traditionally siloed teams: development and operations. In some organizations, there may not even be a separation between development, operations, and security teams; engineers are often required to do a bit of all. With DevOps, the two disciplines work together to optimize both the productivity of developers and the reliability of operations.

DevOps_feedback-diagram

The alignment of development and operations teams has made it possible to build customized software and business functions quicker than before, but security teams continue to be left out of the DevOps conversation. In a lot of organizations, security is still viewed as or operates as a roadblock to rapid development or operational implementations, slowing down production code pushes. As a result, security processes are ignored or missed as the DevOps teams view them as an interference toward their pending success. As part of your organization's strategy toward security, automated and orchestrated cloud deployment and operations - you will need to unite the DevOps and SecOps teams in an effort to fully support and operationalize your organization's cloud operations.

devsecopspipeline

A new word is here, DevSecOps

Security teams tend to be an order of magnitude smaller than developer teams. The goal of DevSecOps is to go from security being the “department of no” to security being an enabler.

“The purpose and intent of DevSecOps are to build on the mindset that everyone is responsible for security with the goal of safely distributing security decisions at speed and scale to those who hold the highest level of context without sacrificing the safety required,” describes Shannon Lietz, co-author of the “DevSecOps Manifesto.”

DevSecOps refers to the integration of security practices into a DevOps software delivery model. Its foundation is a culture where development and operations are enabled through process and tooling to take part in a shared responsibility for delivering secure software.

For example, if we take a look at the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, we see that we as a customer of AWS have a lot of responsibility in securing our environment. We cannot expect someone to do that job for us.

Shared_Responsibility_Model_V2.59d1eccec334b366627e9295b304202faf7b899b

The definition of the DevSecOps Model is to integrate security objectives as early as possible in the lifecycle of software development. While security is “everyone’s responsibility,” DevOps teams are uniquely positioned at the intersection of development and operations, empowered to apply security in both breadth and depth. 

Nowadays, scanners and reports simply don't cover the whole picture. As part of the testing that is done in a pipeline, the developer adds a penetration test to validate that the new code is not vulnerable and our application stays secure.

Organizations can not wait to fall victim to mistakes and attackers. The security world is changing, development teams are leaning in over saying “No”, nor open to hearing and working with Open Contribution & Collaboration over Security-Only Requirements.

Best practices for DevSecOps

DevSecOps should be the natural incorporation of security controls into your development, delivery, and operational processes.

Shift Left

DevSecOps are moving engineers towards security from the right (at the end) to the left (beginning) of the Development and Delivery process. In a DevSecOps environment, security is an integral part of the development process from the get-go. An organization that uses DevSecOps brings in its cybersecurity architects and engineers as part of the development team. Their job is to ensure every component, and every configuration item in the stack is patched, configured securely, and documented.

Shifting left allows the DevSecOps team to identify security risks and exposures early and ensure that these security threats are addressed immediately. Not only is the development team thinking about building the product efficiently, but they are also implementing security as they build it.

Automated Tests 

The DevOps Pipeline performs several tests and checks for the code before the code deploys to production workloads, so why not add security tests such as static code analysis and penetrations tests? The key concept here is to understand that passing a security test is as important as passing a unit test. The pipeline will fail if a major vulnerability will be found.

Slow Is Pro

A common mistake is to deploy several security tools at once such as AWS config for compliance and a SAST (Static application security testing) tool for code analysis or deploy one tool with a lot of tests and checks. This method only creates an extra load of problems for developers which slows the CI/CD process and is not very agile. Instead, when an organization is implementing tools like those mentioned above they should start with a small set of checks which will slowly get everybody on board and get the developers used so that their code is tested.

Keep It A Secret

“Secrets” in Information Security often means all private information a team should know such as API Keys, Passwords, Databases connection strings, SSL certificates, etc. Secrets should be kept in a safe place and not hard-coded in a repo for example. Another issue is to keep the secret rotated and generate new ones every once in a while. A compromised access key can cause devastating results and major business impact, constantly rotating these keys is a mechanism determined to protect against old secrets being miss used. There are a lot of great tools for these purposes such as Keepass, AWS Secret manager, or Azure Key Vault.

Security education

Security is a combination of engineering and compliance. Organizations should form an alliance between the development engineers, operations teams, and compliance teams to ensure everyone in the organization understands the company's security posture and follows the same standards.

Everyone involved with the delivery process should be familiar with the basic principles of application security, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10, application security testing, and other security engineering practices. Developers need to understand thread models, compliance checks, and have a working knowledge of how to measure risks, exposure, and implement security controls

At Cloudride, we live and breathe cloud security, and have supported numerous organizations in the transition to the DevSecOps model. From AWS, MS Azure, and other ISV’s, we can help you migrate to the cloud faster yet securely, strengthen your security posture and maximize business value from the cloud. 

It's safe to say that AWS certifications are some of the most coveted certifications in the industry. There are many different certification opportunities to choose from. And the best part about AWS certifications is that they're all very comprehensive, so you can start at any level and work your way up from there.

AWS Certified - Cloud Practitioner

The AWS Certified - Cloud Practitioner certification is the most entry-level of all the certifications that AWS offers. It's designed to test your knowledge of basic cloud services and features and how they can be used together. This certification isn't as comprehensive as others, so it's better suited for people just starting with AWS.

The exam consists of a multiple-choice exam with 50 questions and an essay question (100 points total). The multiple-choice exam lasts 90 minutes, while the essay portion takes 60 minutes to complete. There's no minimum score required to pass this test; however, you must meet certain benchmarks to earn up to 11 bonus points on your final scorecard from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS Certified FinOps Practioner

The value of an AWS Certified FinOps Practioner is at an all-time high. This is because the world is going digital, and everything from finance to accounting has to change.

FinOps (short for financial operations) allows businesses and organizations to automate their financial processes using new technologies like cloud computing, blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

The AWS Certified FinOps Practioner certification covers topics like how to build a cost model for your business using AWS services; how to use Amazon Quick Sight for analytics; how to integrate data into an application by using Amazon Athena; or how you can use Amazon Kinesis Streams to make sense of streaming data generated by various systems within your organization.

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

For junior developers, the AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification is a great first step into cloud computing. Having this certification on your resume shows that you have a basic understanding of AWS, can program in some of its most popular languages—JavaScript and Python—and understand how to use tools like DynamoDB.

This certification can be a good starting point for developers looking to move into DevOps roles because it requires an understanding of programming languages (and not just AWS services) and an awareness of security issues in the cloud.

If you're interested in moving into security roles such as penetration testing or system administration, completing this coursework shows that you understand some core concepts about how AWS works and what types of threats are present when working within it.

AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty

Advanced Networking is a specialization that adds to the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate certification. It provides specialized knowledge of designing, securing, and maintaining AWS networks.

The Advanced Networking – Specialty certification will validate your ability to design highly available and scalable network architectures for your customers that meet their requirements for availability, performance, scalability, and security.

The AWS Advanced Networking exam tests your ability to use complex networking services such as Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon Route 53 in an enterprise environment built upon Amazon VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud). You must have passed the Solutions Architect – Associate level before taking this exam because it covers advanced topics that are not covered in the associate level courseware or exam.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional certification is the most popular of all of the AWS certifications. It is designed for those who want to be or are already architects and need to design scalable and secure cloud computing solutions.

This certification requires you to have mastered designing and building cloud-based distributed applications. You will also need to understand how to build an application that can scale horizontally while minimizing downtime.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

DevOps is a software development process focusing on communication and collaboration between software developers, QA engineers, and operations teams. DevOps practitioners aim to improve the speed of releasing software by making it easy for members of each team to understand what their counterparts do and how they can help.

DevOps Engineer has mastered this practice in their organization and can lead others through it. A good DevOps Engineer can adapt quickly as requirements change or new technologies emerge—and will always work toward improving the delivery process overall.

The value of becoming a certified professional in this field is clear. Businesses are increasingly reliant on technology. There will always be a demand for experts to ensure that all systems run smoothly at every level (software design through deployment). In short: if you want a job where your skills are never outmoded or obsolete, choose DevOps!

 

 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/10
Oct 3, 2022 3:48:19 PM
DevOps as a service and DevOps security
DevOps, AWS Certificates, Security

Oct 3, 2022 3:48:19 PM

DevOps as a service and DevOps security

FinOps and Cost Optimization

FinOps is the cloud operation model that consolidates finance and IT, just like DevOps synergizes developers and operations. FinOps can revolutionize accounting in the cloud age of business, by enabling enterprises to understand cloud costs, budgeting, and procurements from a technical perspective.

The main idea behind FinOps is to double the business value on the cloud through best practices for finance professionals in a technical environment and technical professionals in a financial ecosystem.

What is FinOps?

In the cloud environment, different platforms and so many moving parts can make the cost-optimization of cloud resources a challenge. This challenge has given rise to a new discipline: financial operations or FinOps. Here’s how the FinOps Foundation, a non-profit trade association for FinOps professionals, describes the discipline:

FinOps is the operating model for the cloud. FinOps enables a shift — a combination of systems, best practices, and culture — to increase an organization’s ability to understand cloud costs and make tradeoffs. In the same way that DevOps revolutionized development by breaking down silos and increasing agility, FinOps increases the business value of the cloud by bringing together technology, business, and finance professionals with a new set of processes.

How to optimize your cloud costs?

If you’re a FinOps professional – or if you’re an IT or business leader concerned about controlling expenses – here are several ways to optimize cloud costs.

#1 Make sure you’re using the right cloud. Your mission-critical applications might benefit from a private, hosted cloud or even deployment in an on-premises environment, but that doesn’t mean all your workloads need to be deployed in the same environment. In addition, cloud technologies are getting more sophisticated all the time. Review your cloud deployments annually to make sure you have the right workloads in the right clouds.

#2 Review your disaster recovery strategy. More businesses than ever are leveraging AWS and Azure for disaster recovery. These pay-as-you-go cloud solutions can ensure your failover site is available when needed without requiring that you duplicate resources.

#3 Optimize your cloud deployment. If you’re deploying workloads on a cloud platform such as AWS or Azure for the first time, a knowledgeable partner who knows all the tips and tricks can be a real asset. It’s easy to overlook features, like Reserved Instances, that can help you lower monthly cloud costs.

#4 Outsource some or all of your cloud management. Many IT departments are short-staffed with engineers wearing multiple hats. While doing business, it’s easy for cloud resources to be underutilized or orphaned. The right cloud partner can help you find and eliminate these resources to lower your costs.

#5 Outsource key roles. Many IT roles, especially in areas like IT security and system administration, are hard to fill. Although you want someone with experience, you may not even need them full-time. Instead of going in circles trying to find and recruit the right talent, the use of a professional service company with a wide knowledge base can give you the entire solution, it's a huge advantage and can save you a lot of money.

# 6 Increase your visibility. Even if you decide to place some or all cloud management, you still want to keep an eye on things. There are several platforms today such as Spotinst cloud analyzer that can address cloud management and provide visibility across all your cloud environments from a single console.  Nevertheless, the use of these platforms should be part of the FinOps consultation. 

AWS Lambda Cost Optimization

Although moving into the cloud can mean that your IT budget increases, cloud computing helps you customize how it runs. There are many advantages to using AWS - whether you're using it for just one application or using the cloud as a data center. The advantage of using AWS is that you save money on other aspects of your business, allowing you to spend more wisely on AWS services. For example, monitoring time zones to the only charge for the services used at peak times means that costs can be managed anytime.

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of understanding how to lower costs, let's review how Amazon determines the price of AWS Lambda. Amazon's Lambda has several indicators to calculate how much it will cost to run them. The duration is measured according to the time your code began executing until it completes or otherwise ends. The price depends on how much memory your function requires.

The AWS Lambda service is part of Compute Savings Plans, which provide low prices for Amazon EC2, Amazon Fargate, and AWS Lambda if you commit to using them consistently for a period of one or three years. You can save up to 17% on Amazon Lambda when you use Compute

Request pricing

  • Free Tier: 1 million monthly requests
  • Then $0.20 for every million requests

Duration pricing

  • 400,000 GB-seconds free per month
  • $0.00001667 for each GB-second afterward

 Function configuration memory size.

An invocation consumes 1.5 GB or less of memory, multiplied by the duration. In practice, GB-sec proves to be rather complicated, despite its simple appearance. If you want to see what your function might cost, you can try an Amazon Lambda cost calculator.

How to Optimize AWS Lambda Costs?

 Monitor All AWS Lambda Workloads

There are over 120,000 AWS Lambda functions in the wild. Let's say you own a business. If you want to see every single function, you'd need over 2000 computers in your network just to keep up with what's running. While that's a horrible amount of computer resources, many of us don't have that capability. You can create instances with many cores, memory, storage, and other resources to monitor what's going on.

Your Lambda function will keep running, but as long as you can monitor the outcome, it's effortless to see what's going on in there. AWS Lambda dashboard from AWS allows you to view metrics from your Lambda functions. You can see live logs of how long functions run and which parts of your code are processing or not.

 Reduce Lambda Usage

Lambda usage can be easily optimized and significantly cut down, by simply turning off and downing Lambda services whenever they are not in use. You can configure AWS Lambda to function on a per-task basis. It might even inspire you to do the same for your other services. Don't use lambdas for simple transforms, or you will find yourself paying more than $0.20 per 1000 calls. If you are deploying a serverless API using AWS AppSync & API Gateway, this happens quite often.

 Cache Lambda Responses

Instead of sending a static string to all API endpoints, developers can send response headers that include the exact value the user needs and even identify the intended application using a unique ID.

One of the keys to delivering a very efficient response is to cache those responses, so your endpoints don't need to send them all the time.  A function that is not called doesn't add to your bill. Further, this allows developers to save time and energy and achieve implementations that enhance user experience.

 Use Batch Lambda Calls

Sometimes, a server may be under heavy load, and the peak traffic will fluctuate due to intermittent events. Good use of queue could be utilized to make this an effective, fast solution to pause Lambda execution and "batch" code executions. Instead of calling functions on every event, you will be calling only a set number of times during a specific event period. If the function call rate is constant, the other requests can wait until the function is called.  For outstanding performance, Lambda has native support for AWS queuing services such as Kinesis and SQS. It's essential to test your function optimally and follow these best practices to ensure your data is batched properly.

 Never Call Lambda Directly from Lambda

If you want to change the AWS Lambda endpoint on the server, you can't call it directly. This is another example of why Lambda isn't meant to be a transactional backend or database but rather a real-time event-sourced service. You may be using AWS Lambda today without knowing this, but it's easy to minimize your AWS Lambda costs with this knowledge in mind. There are many options available when it comes to AWS queuing services. SQS, SNS, Kinesis, and Step Functions are just a few that set AWS apart for those tasks that require heavy-hitting responses. You can notify clients with WebSockets or email as your needs arise.

Cloudride specializes in providing professional consultancy & implementation planning services for all cloud environments and providers. Whether the target environment is AWS, Azure  GCP, or others, Cloudride specialists are experienced experts with these systems and cater to any need. You no longer have to worry about reducing cloud costs or improving efficiency—just leave that to us. Give us a call today for your free consultation!

Book a meeting today. 

 

 

michael-kahn-blog
2022/09
Sep 29, 2022 4:17:39 PM
FinOps and Cost Optimization
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Financial Services

Sep 29, 2022 4:17:39 PM

FinOps and Cost Optimization

FinOps is the cloud operation model that consolidates finance and IT, just like DevOps synergizes developers and operations. FinOps can revolutionize accounting in the cloud age of business, by enabling enterprises to understand cloud costs, budgeting, and procurements from a technical perspective.

AWS Cloud Computing for Startups

With a cloud computing-based solution, you can set up your systems and scale them up or down depending on your needs. This allows you to plan for peak loads or unexpected surges in traffic. In this article, we will discuss why AWS is a game changer for startups, how AWS cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem, and, more importantly, why it makes sense to go with AWS as your primary infrastructure provider.

Powering startups with the cloud

The cloud is a game changer for startups. It's the best way to ensure your company's success by ensuring that you are prepared for anything, from growth spurts and technical difficulties to business expansion.

AWS has revolutionized the startup ecosystem by providing scalable and flexible technology at an affordable price. This makes it easy for all kinds of companies—from enterprise businesses, nonprofits, and small businesses to large enterprises—to take advantage of what the cloud offers.

As a founder who deals with many systems and platforms daily, it is important to have access to reliable infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) like AWS Marketplace or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

These services allow you to help customers perform better and free up time so that you can focus more on improving processes internally rather than worrying about server maintenance tasks such as manually provisioning instances or performing upgrades manually when they become necessary.

How cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem

 

Cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem by helping entrepreneurs to focus on their core business, customers, employees, and products. The cloud allows you to run applications in a shared environment so that your infrastructure costs are spread across multiple users rather than being borne by you alone. This allows startups to scale up quickly without worrying about being able to afford the necessary hardware upfront.

In addition, it also provides them access to new technology such as AI and machine learning which they would not have been able to afford on their own. This helps them innovate faster and stay ahead of the competition while enjoying reduced costs simultaneously!

Reasons for AWS for startups

 There are many reasons why a startup should consider using AWS.

AWS is reliable and secure: The Cloud was built for just that, to ensure that your critical data is safe, backed up, and accessible from anywhere. It's not just about technology. Amazon provides excellent customer support.

Cost-effective: There are many benefits when pricing as well; you pay only for what you use hourly, so there are no long-term commitments or upfront fees. You also get access to all features that come with AWS operating system, including backups, monitoring systems, and security tools, at no extra cost!​

How AWS is a game changer 

Cost savings. AWS saves money by running your applications on a highly scalable, pay-as-you-go infrastructure. Using AWS is typically lower than maintaining your own data center, allowing you to focus on the business rather than the infrastructure aspects of running an application.

Speed - When you use AWS, it takes just minutes to spin up an instance and start creating your application on their platform. That's compared to building out servers and networking equipment in the house, which could take weeks or even months!

Changes - As soon as you make a change, it gets reflected instantly across all environments – staging or production – so there's no need for error-prone manual processes or lengthy approvals before rolling out updates. This makes it easier for teams within companies that use this service because they don't have to wait around until someone else finishes making changes before moving forward (which doesn't happen often).

AWS Global Startup program 

The AWS Global Startup program is a new initiative that provides startups access to AWS credits and support for a year. The program assigns Partner Development Managers (PDMs) to each startup, who will help them use AWS services and best practices. 

PDMs help startups with building and deploying their applications on AWS. They can also provide valuable assistance for startups that are looking for partners in the AWS Partner Network or want to learn more about marketing and sales strategies.

Integration with Marketplace Tools

Amazon enables startups to integrate their applications with Marketplace Tools. This set of APIs enables startups to integrate their applications with Amazon's marketplaces.

Marketplace Tools are available for all AWS regions and service types, enabling you to choose the right tools for your use case.

Fast Scalability 

When you're building a business from scratch and don't have any funding, every second counts—and cloud computing speeds up your development process. You can get to market faster than ever before and focus on your product or service and its customers. You don't need to worry about managing servers or storing data in-house; AWS does all this for you at scale.

This frees up time for other important tasks like meeting with investors, hiring new employees, researching competitors' services (or competitors themselves), or perfecting marketing copy.

Conclusion

The cloud is a very flexible environment that can be adapted to suit the needs of your business. With AWS, you have access to a wide range of services that will help make your startup stand out from the crowd.

 

Need help getting started? Book a free call today! 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/09
Sep 7, 2022 8:26:07 PM
AWS Cloud Computing for Startups
AWS, Cloud Computing, Startups

Sep 7, 2022 8:26:07 PM

AWS Cloud Computing for Startups

With a cloud computing-based solution, you can set up your systems and scale them up or down depending on your needs. This allows you to plan for peak loads or unexpected surges in traffic. In this article, we will discuss why AWS is a game changer for startups, how AWS cloud computing has...

Amazon Cognito - Solutions to Control Access

When you need to control access to your AWS resources, Amazon Cognito offers a variety of solutions. If you want to federate or manage identities across multiple providers, you can use Amazon Cognito user pools and device synchronization. If your app requires an authorized sign-in process before providing temporary credentials to users, then the AWS Amplify library simplifies access authentication.

Identity management for developers 

Amazon Cognito is a fully managed service that makes it easy to add user sign-up and sign-in functionality to your apps. You can use Amazon Cognito to create, manage, and validate user identities within your app.

With Amazon Cognito, you can:

Easily add new users by allowing them to sign up with their email addresses or phone numbers. After signing up, you can associate them with an AWS account or provide other custom attributes like first and last names.

Automatically recognize returning customers using Amazon Cognito Sync or federated identity providers such as Facebook or Google Sign-In (GSI). This allows existing users who have been previously verified in another service provided by Amazon or one of its partners (e.g., Facebook) to be automatically recognized/identified when logging into multiple applications using different credentials.

Backend 

You can use Amazon Cognito to deliver temporary, limited-privilege credentials to your applications. You no longer have to manage user credentials in your application code.

You also get flexible integration options with other AWS services (such as Amazon S3 storage buckets), allowing you to easily build secure web applications without writing any server-side code.

Client frontend Cognito 

You can create new user accounts, update existing user accounts, and reset passwords using Amazon Cognito.

With Amazon Cognito, you don’t need to write any code to manage users; instead, you can use an API that abstracts the complexities of authentication out of your application’s infrastructure. You provide the parameters for your users (such as names) or groups (for example, “members”), and Amazon Cognito handles everything else—including signing in or signing up the user on behalf of your application.

AWS amplify simplifies access authentication

AWS amplify simplifies access authentication. It’s a cloud-based service that Amazon manages, so you don’t have to worry about setting up a separate identity system or managing user credentials.

Amazon offers a free tier of amplifying, allowing you to authenticate users and control access to resources, including AWS services. In addition, the service integrates with other components of the AWS enterprise suite, such as IAM (Identity Access Management), CloudFront CDN (Content Distribution Network), CloudWatch Logs Event Notification Service, and S3 (Simple Storage Solution).

User pools and device synchronization

User pools and device synchronization are two separate features within Cognito. User pools manage user identity, while device synchronization manages device identity. They can be used together or independently of one another, but you need to choose which one works best for your organization’s needs before proceeding with the steps in this tutorial.

The following sections describe how each feature works:

User Pool Identity - This identity system allows you to create groups of users and assign them roles as needed. You can choose from predefined roles like “Admin” or “Guest” or create custom ones that best suit your organization’s needs.

Device Identity - This feature lets developers associate a user account with one or more devices, so they know which app sessions belong to which devices (and vice versa).

Federate identities 

Federate identities within Cognito enable you to use your existing credentials to sign in and access other applications. With this feature, you can connect your AWS account with other services that support SAML 2.0 federation protocols or JWT bearer tokens for authentication.

  • Federated identity is an authentication model that allows users to use their existing credentials to sign in to multiple applications.
  • A federated identity provider is a third party that authenticates users and issues security tokens that can be used to access other applications.

You can use Amazon Cognito to deliver temporary, limited-privilege credentials

Amazon Cognito is a secure and scalable user identity and access management solution that allows you to easily add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your website or mobile app. This can be useful if you are building an application that needs to store data in an Amazon DynamoDB table or make calls against Amazon S3 buckets.

To use Amazon Cognito to control access:

  • Create an App Client ID with the appropriate permissions for your application’s use cases
  • Create a Cognito User Pool containing the users who your applications will grant temporary credentials
  • Generate temporary credentials for those users

When you use Amazon Cognito, instead of requesting new temporary security credentials every time they need access to AWS resources, users sign in once through a custom authentication process. They only need to provide their unique identifier for the service that authenticated them, and all subsequent requests can be made with this identifier. This means that users don’t have to enter their credentials again when accessing AWS resources from your application.

Amazon Cognito has no upfront costs. 

Amazon Cognito has no upfront costs and charges based on monthly active users (MAUs). Active is defined as any unique user who accesses your app in a given calendar month.

The Amazon Cognito pricing structure is based on the number of MAUs you have, including all users who use your app without being prompted to sign in or authenticate their identity before using it.

There are lots of ways to control access to Amazon resources

 There are lots of ways to control access to Amazon resources. Developers can use identity management APIs that provide robust functionality, including single sign-on (SSO), session management, and role-based access control.

To reduce the time and effort developers need to spend managing user identities, Cognito simplifies access authentication by abstracting out common tasks like implementing the web flow or sending an email message after sign-in.

In addition to providing a simpler developer experience through AWS Amplify, you can also use other tools on the AWS Marketplace, such as Cognito User Pools and Device Sync, if you want more control over your users who are authenticated within your app.

Let's talk! 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/09
Sep 7, 2022 8:18:32 PM
Amazon Cognito - Solutions to Control Access
Cloud Security, Cognito, Access Control

Sep 7, 2022 8:18:32 PM

Amazon Cognito - Solutions to Control Access

When you need to control access to your AWS resources, Amazon Cognito offers a variety of solutions. If you want to federate or manage identities across multiple providers, you can use Amazon Cognito user pools and device synchronization. If your app requires an authorized sign-in process before...

Best AWS Certifications

It's safe to say that AWS certifications are some of the most coveted certifications in the industry. There are many different certification opportunities to choose from. And the best part about AWS certifications is that they're all very comprehensive, so you can start at any level and work your way up from there.

AWS Certified - Cloud Practitioner

The AWS Certified - Cloud Practitioner certification is the most entry-level of all the certifications that AWS offers. It's designed to test your knowledge of basic cloud services and features and how they can be used together. This certification isn't as comprehensive as others, so it's better suited for people just starting with AWS.

The exam consists of a multiple-choice exam with 50 questions and an essay question (100 points total). The multiple-choice exam lasts 90 minutes, while the essay portion takes 60 minutes to complete. There's no minimum score required to pass this test; however, you must meet certain benchmarks to earn up to 11 bonus points on your final scorecard from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS Certified FinOps Practioner

The value of an AWS Certified FinOps Practioner is at an all-time high. This is because the world is going digital, and everything from finance to accounting has to change.

FinOps (short for financial operations) allows businesses and organizations to automate their financial processes using new technologies like cloud computing, blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

The AWS Certified FinOps Practioner certification covers topics like how to build a cost model for your business using AWS services; how to use Amazon Quick Sight for analytics; how to integrate data into an application by using Amazon Athena; or how you can use Amazon Kinesis Streams to make sense of streaming data generated by various systems within your organization.

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

For junior developers, the AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification is a great first step into cloud computing. Having this certification on your resume shows that you have a basic understanding of AWS, can program in some of its most popular languages—JavaScript and Python—and understand how to use tools like DynamoDB.

This certification can be a good starting point for developers looking to move into DevOps roles because it requires an understanding of programming languages (and not just AWS services) and an awareness of security issues in the cloud.

If you're interested in moving into security roles such as penetration testing or system administration, completing this coursework shows that you understand some core concepts about how AWS works and what types of threats are present when working within it.

AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty

Advanced Networking is a specialization that adds to the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate certification. It provides specialized knowledge of designing, securing, and maintaining AWS networks.

The Advanced Networking – Specialty certification will validate your ability to design highly available and scalable network architectures for your customers that meet their requirements for availability, performance, scalability, and security.

The AWS Advanced Networking exam tests your ability to use complex networking services such as Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon Route 53 in an enterprise environment built upon Amazon VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud). You must have passed the Solutions Architect – Associate level before taking this exam because it covers advanced topics that are not covered in the associate level courseware or exam.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional certification is the most popular of all of the AWS certifications. It is designed for those who want to be or are already architects and need to design scalable and secure cloud computing solutions.

This certification requires you to have mastered designing and building cloud-based distributed applications. You will also need to understand how to build an application that can scale horizontally while minimizing downtime.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

DevOps is a software development process focusing on communication and collaboration between software developers, QA engineers, and operations teams. DevOps practitioners aim to improve the speed of releasing software by making it easy for members of each team to understand what their counterparts do and how they can help.

DevOps Engineer has mastered this practice in their organization and can lead others through it. A good DevOps Engineer can adapt quickly as requirements change or new technologies emerge—and will always work toward improving the delivery process overall.

The value of becoming a certified professional in this field is clear. Businesses are increasingly reliant on technology. There will always be a demand for experts to ensure that all systems run smoothly at every level (software design through deployment). In short: if you want a job where your skills are never outmoded or obsolete, choose DevOps!

 

Conclusion

If you're looking for the best AWS certifications, this article has covered it for you. If you want more in-depth information about the different paths and programs – book a quick call and we’ll walk you through.

yura-vasilevitski
2022/08
Aug 16, 2022 11:24:06 PM
Best AWS Certifications
AWS, AWS Certificates

Aug 16, 2022 11:24:06 PM

Best AWS Certifications

It's safe to say that AWS certifications are some of the most coveted certifications in the industry. There are many different certification opportunities to choose from. And the best part about AWS certifications is that they're all very comprehensive, so you can start at any level and work your...

AWS Recommended Security Tools

Security is one of the most important aspects of any cloud-based solution. It's your responsibility to ensure the security of your data and applications, and AWS provides several tools that you can use to improve your security posture.

Utilizing these tools can detect and respond to threats more quickly, reduce false positives and avoid unnecessary alerts, and help protect your environment from vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection attacks.

Here are some of the best tools that AWS recommends for enhancing your cloud security:

GuardDuty

The GuardDuty service is a fully managed threat detection service that monitors malicious or even unauthorized behavior to assist you to protect your AWS accounts and workloads. GuardDuty analyzes your AWS account activity to detect anomalies that might indicate unauthorized and unexpected behaviors. It also generates detailed security reports containing information about the detected threats, including potential root causes and recommended mitigation actions.

You can use Amazon GuardDuty to find unauthorized Amazon S3 bucket access, access to your EC2 instances and security groups, unauthorized Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) health checks, and other risky actions that indicate a possible compromise. With Amazon GuardDuty, you can scan your AWS accounts in near real-time for threats with no configuration required; it is fully integrated with AWS CloudTrail, so you don't need any additional tools or services.

Inspector 

The Inspector service helps you automatically identify security weaknesses in your AWS resources, including Amazon S3 buckets, Amazon EC2 instances or groups of instances, and Amazon RDS databases. You can use Inspector to test your security policies by simulating attacks such as brute force password guessing and SQL injection on your resources. 

The results of these tests can help you determine whether you need to strengthen your security policy or adjust permissions on your resources. For example, Inspector can help you determine whether an attacker could gain access to confidential data stored in Amazon S3 buckets by guessing their passwords through brute force attacks.

Cognito

Cognito provides authentication, authorization, and user management for mobile devices. Cognito supports using Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) for push notifications and Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) for background processing. 

It enables you to easily create an identity pool representing a group of users, such as customers in an e-commerce application, and then securely manage their credentials and permissions.

With Cognito, you can easily add authentication to existing web applications using Amazon Cognito Identity Pools. The developer console guides you through creating an identity pool for your application, associating it with an API Gateway endpoint, creating app client credentials for accessing the API gateway endpoint through a web browser or mobile device SDKs (such as Android or iOS), and configuring login screens for users to enter their credentials.

Macie

Macie is a security tool that helps you discover sensitive information stored in your AWS cloud environment. You can search for data using a variety of parameters such as file type, ownership, or location. For example, if you have an Amazon S3 bucket that contains sensitive data, then Macie can help you identify it quickly so you can take action on it before someone else finds it first!

Macie also analyzes user, device, and application behavior to detect risky or anomalous activities. You can use Macie to create custom policies based on your unique compliance requirements. This can help reduce risk to your organization by allowing only compliant access to sensitive data.

Audit Manager

Audit Manager monitors AWS CloudTrail events for suspicious activity. It does this by comparing current events against historical events and alerts you when something looks out of place. This means that the Audit Manager can help protect against data breaches like accidental deletions or unauthorized access (data leaks).

Audit Manager collects information about all changes made within a given timeframe for each resource type or group of resources. This information can be used to detect suspicious activities such as unauthorized access attempts or changes made by malicious actors who have gained access to your account through stolen credentials.

To Conclude: 

The AWS recommended security tools are very user-friendly and deliver enormous value. The tools make it much easier to investigate attacks, compliance monitoring, and more. They provide comprehensive protection and prepare your company for meeting increased regulatory requirements. 

to learn more, book a free call with us here

yura-vasilevitski
2022/07
Jul 18, 2022 10:20:22 AM
AWS Recommended Security Tools
Cloud Security, AWS

Jul 18, 2022 10:20:22 AM

AWS Recommended Security Tools

Security is one of the most important aspects of any cloud-based solution. It's your responsibility to ensure the security of your data and applications, and AWS provides several tools that you can use to improve your security posture.

AWS Cost Tagging

It’s no secret that AWS is a minefield of hidden costs. Pricing structures change frequently, and new services and features are constantly added. Even the best-intentioned vendors are forced to update their pricing structures so that they can continue to offer new products at competitive prices. The good news is that it’s easier to avoid hidden costs by using tagging properly.

What are cost allocation tags in AWS?

The goal of cost allocation tagging is to enable you to track and control how AWS charges you for your resources. The tags are labels that help you track the resources you use. You can either have AWS charge you for each resource you use or have AWS charge you for a set amount of resources you use.

For example, if you have a micro instance with 1 CPU and 1 GPU running on AWS and then use that instance to run an application, then AWS will charge you for both CPU and GPU hours. To decide which to charge you for, AWS calculates an allocation rate for CPU and GPU hours. 

How to tag an AWS resource

There are two ways to tag resources in AWS. The first is using tags that are part of the AWS Billing System. Billing tags are the standard tags that AWS vendors use to manage their billing. You can see some examples of these tags in the AWS Billing System. The second way to tag resources is by using tags that AWS generates.

This is done through AWS CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk, and OpsWorks. This tag type is known as a “user-defined cost allocation tag.” User-defined tags allow you to track cost allocation for non-standard resources in AWS. For example, you can track cost allocation for an instance you use for a custom application or for an S3 bucket that you use for archiving.

When to use Cost tracking with AWS tags

 When you launch your account, using cost allocation tags in AWS is a critical first step. This is because it allows you to track the costs associated with resources that you launch. If you don’t do this now, you’ll be guessing at your costs in the future.

Another reason you should start using cost allocation tags right away is that the cost allocation of a particular resource will change over time.

For example, if you’re using an instance with 1 CPU and 1 GPU, the cost allocation of that instance may change over time as AWS scales up its service offerings without increasing the number of instances. In this scenario, your cost allocation is changing, and it’s essential to track it now.

Lookup and use a tag in your billing report.

If you choose to use tags from the AWS Billing System, you’ll be able to look up the cost allocation for specific resources. We have an easy-to-use web app for this purpose. All you have to do is go to your AWS Management Console and click on the Billing tab.

You can click on the Resources tab and select the resource you want to look up costs for. Once you’ve selected the resource, you can click on the Tags tab, click on the Cost Allocation Tracking dropdown, and select the cost allocation tag you want to look up costs for.

For example, if you want to look up costs for an RDS instance, you’d select the RDS tag. You can also look up costs for resources you don’t use directly. For example, if you want to look up costs for an S3 bucket, then you can use the S3 tag. If you also want to look up costs for an EBS volume that you use with that S3 bucket, then you can add the EBS tag to that lookup.

Critical challenges with AWS cost allocation tags

As a rule of thumb, tracking the cost allocation for each resource you use is essential. This makes it easy to understand your cost exposure and forces you to be strategic about your resources. Unfortunately, managing the cost allocation for all your resources can be pretty challenging.

AWS offers a large number of different resources, and they change frequently. Most of the time, you’ll want to track the cost allocation for AWS costs, but you may also want to track costs for other things associated with an AWS resource. This can quickly become a critical challenge.

Best Practices for Using AWS Cost Allocation Tags

Start by looking up the cost allocation for all your resources. This will allow you to track costs for everything associated with them. Once you know the cost allocation for each resource, you can start tracking costs associated with other things that are associated with them.

You can use tag management tools to simplify this process. For example, you can use AWS CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk, or OpsWorks to manage your tags. You can also use AWS Data Pipeline to manage your data flow.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that AWS is a cost-prohibitive investment for most organizations. With such a high cost and constant change in pricing structures, it can be tough to control your costs. Fortunately, cost allocation tagging can help you track your AWS costs and also help you track costs for other things associated with AWS resources.

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/07
Jul 11, 2022 9:58:36 AM
AWS Cost Tagging
AWS, Cost Optimization

Jul 11, 2022 9:58:36 AM

AWS Cost Tagging

It’s no secret that AWS is a minefield of hidden costs. Pricing structures change frequently, and new services and features are constantly added. Even the best-intentioned vendors are forced to update their pricing structures so that they can continue to offer new products at competitive prices....

Why AWS WAF?

WAF (Web Application Firewall) is an extremely powerful technology built into the AWS Cloud that allows you to protect your web applications from attacks such as SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). It gives developers visibility into the activity within their web application, reduces the risk of being attacked by a DDoS attack, and protects against DoS (Denial of Service) attacks.

What is AWS WAF?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall (WAF) service designed to protect against web attacks and keeps your website secure. It helps protect your web applications from several attacks. You can also use AWS WAF to enforce custom security policies to allow some traffic while blocking others.

AWS WAF Classic 

AWS WAF Classic protects from common attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF). You can also use it to block common malicious URLs, IP addresses, and domains.

It's easy to get started with AWS WAF Classic —enable the service in the Security Hub console and select "classic" mode. Then select one of these three options:

Block known bad requests; automatically block only those requests blocked previously by other applications or your own customs policies. This option is ideal for protecting against common web application vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).

Block known bad requests and new threats; automatically block all unknown requests that have been blocked previously by other applications or your own customs policies and new threats that may not be present in those lists yet.

What does it do?

It analyzes inbound and outbound HTTP requests to detect and block malicious requests before reaching your web applications. The service uses a combination of rules and machine learning to determine whether an HTTP request is potentially harmful or not. 

If AWS WAF detects a potential threat, it blocks the request and sends you an email notification so that you can investigate further. If AWS WAF doesn't detect anything suspicious, it allows the request through your web application without interruption.

You can create rules to block malicious requests, mitigate the impact of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, or prevent users from accessing known malicious sites. You can also use AWS WAF to detect potential security issues in your traffic, such as SQL injection attempts or cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.

Why don't we keep building our web application firewall?

Building your own WAF is hard! It requires significant time and effort to build a complex solution that works well enough for most people. AWS WAF has been designed from the ground up to be easy and efficient for developers to use, so you can focus on building your apps instead of building security infrastructure.

It comes with a library of preconfigured rules that make it easier to protect your web apps against common vulnerabilities like SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting (XSS). You can also easily add custom rules for more complex attacks that the predefined rules library doesn't cover.

What are some of the benefits of using AWS WAF?

There are several reasons why you might choose to use AWS WAF. Some of these include:

Cost savings: You can control the costs by setting up rules that block unwanted traffic and allow only the traffic you want. This is important because AWS WAF charges based on the number of requests that you block. There's no cost for using it if you aren't blocking any requests.

Security: AWS WAF protects your applications from common web attacks by blocking malicious requests before they reach your application. The service automatically learns about known threats and updates itself with new attack patterns as they emerge. It uses machine learning models to identify unique characteristics of known attack patterns and signature-based detection for all other attacks to ensure maximum protection against known and unknown threats.

Performance: AWS WAF has been designed to be fast, reliable, and scalable so that it doesn't adversely affect your application performance or availability.

Why would someone be technically inclined to love AWS WAF? 

If you have a team of engineers and security professionals interested in learning how to secure their web applications, then AWS WAF could be a good fit for you. The service provides easy-to-use and configured rules that will help protect your applications from common web application vulnerabilities. You can also easily automate the creation of new rule sets based on specific events or requests.

What happens if I start with AWS WAF and then decide it's not for me?

AWS WAF offers a free tier to test out the service before making any commitments. This way, even if you decide it's not for you after testing out the free tier, it won't cost you anything!

AWS WAF gives you the ability to protect your website with comprehensive and flexible web application firewall (WAF) rules, allowing you to implement security policies as unique as your web applications themselves.

 

Want to learn more? Let's talk!

 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/06
Jun 16, 2022 12:24:48 AM
Why AWS WAF?
AWS, WAF

Jun 16, 2022 12:24:48 AM

Why AWS WAF?

WAF (Web Application Firewall) is an extremely powerful technology built into the AWS Cloud that allows you to protect your web applications from attacks such as SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). It gives developers visibility into the activity within their web application, reduces the...

AWS Database Solutions

Amazon has a variety of database services that can help you build cutting-edge apps, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Redshift. You can build web-scale applications and run them on the same infrastructure powers, Amazon.com and Netflix.

Amazon DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for all your data storage needs. Amazon DynamoDB gives you low latency performance at 1 millisecond or less and delivers single-digit millisecond latency on all actions. You can easily scale your throughput capacity using the AWS Management Console, AWS SDK, or command-line tools.

Because Amazon DynamoDB is fully managed, it can be used in serverless architectures. The AWS Lambda functions or the AWS Step Functions state machines can directly call the Amazon DynamoDB API using the lambda function proxy integration model.

Amazon RDS

Working with AWS is like baking a cake. Amazon RDS, AWS's database technology, is like the eggs in the batter. The eggs are reliable, they perform well no matter what, and they only need to be put in one place. Now it's time to add flour (Amazon EC2) and sugar (Amazon EBS) to start making our cake rise up right.

With Amazon RDS, you get:

  • Scale capacity with just a few clicks without having to worry about upgrading hardware
  • A fully managed service so you can deploy applications faster;
  • Ease of use with point-and-click management features that enable seamless integration between your applications and databases;
  • Automated backups for high availability

Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift is a managed, petabyte data service that makes it quite easy and cost-effective to efficiently analyze your own data using the same familiar SQL-based business tools. Amazon Redshift was designed from the ground up for the cloud and optimized for commodity hardware, making it fast and cost-effective to operate.

Redshift is a columnar data warehouse. It's designed to perform well for queries that are aggregations over large amounts of data. As such, it's not a good fit for applications that need to perform small, fast queries on individual records or transactions.

Amazon Database Services

On top of the above-mentioned AWS database solutions, Amazon cloud offers the below database services:

Amazon Aurora

Amazon Aurora offers up to five times better performance than standard MySQL. It provides consistent, low-latency performance at 1/10th of a second for every SQL query, regardless of data volume or workload. Amazon Aurora also offers up to 99.999999999% (11 9's) of durability, so you never have to worry about losing data.

Amazon Aurora is available as part of AWS Database Services, which include Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift. You can get started with these services by signing up for AWS!

Amazon ElastiCache

Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store service that scales automatically to match the size of your largest workloads, delivering blazingly fast performance at any scale. This service is available in multiple configurations—from a single node to more than 500 nodes—with each node having up to 64 TB of memory capacity per node (2 TB per core), delivering an average 8X performance improvement over traditional disk-based systems for reads and writes!

Amazon Neptune

Neptune is a graph database service that allows you to store and query relationships between entities using property graphs instead of RDF triples or SPARQL statements like most other NoSQL databases do today. Neptune supports both transactional and non-transactional queries over the same graph data model, allowing you to choose which form of query best fits your application needs.

The Benefits:

1. Purpose-built:

AWS is designed for the cloud and has been since its inception in 2006. AWS Database Services provides a suite of purpose-built services for the cloud and help you build, operate, and scale databases in the cloud.

2. Scalable performance:

With Amazon Aurora, you get up to five times more performance than with MySQL at a price that's about 60 % less than Oracle. Depending on your needs, you can also choose between General Purpose or Storage Optimized configurations.

3. Available and secure:

Amazon RDS is designed from the ground up to be highly available and secure by default. In addition to being fully managed, so you don't have to worry about managing patches, upgrades, or backups, Amazon RDS continuously monitors your DB instance health, automatically provisions capacity as needed, and performs automatic failover if required — all without any application changes or downtime for you or your users.

4. Fully managed

One of the main advantages of using AWS is a fully managed service. This means that Amazon takes everything from hardware to software maintenance and security updates. The only thing you need to worry about is what kind of workloads you want to run on AWS, which isn't much at all!

There are numerous reasons to use the right database for your application, with AWS giving developers access to a range of options. No matter what choice you make, keep in mind the suggestion that Amazon's guide provides: finding the solution that works best for your application is a lengthy and thoughtful process.

Want to learn more? Let's talk!

 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/06
Jun 16, 2022 12:16:56 AM
AWS Database Solutions
AWS, Database

Jun 16, 2022 12:16:56 AM

AWS Database Solutions

Amazon has a variety of database services that can help you build cutting-edge apps, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Redshift. You can build web-scale applications and run them on the same infrastructure powers, Amazon.com and Netflix.

Recap: Cloudride - AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022

Last week, the Cloudride team was at the AWS Summit in Tel Aviv. The conference felt like a huge gathering of cloud computing specialists and product managers from all over the country. There were many interesting talks and opportunities to meet hundreds of professionals from local start-ups and global companies using cloud services for their business and looking for ways to improve their applications.

It was an amazing opportunity to introduce the company and our services to the Israeli market, meet our partners and customers, and hear from AWS product leaders.

In addition to the keynote address by Harel Ifhar, we heard from many other executives at Amazon Web Services in Israel. The event included breakout sessions with topics such as Artificial Intelligence on AWS, Serverless Computing on AWS, and more.

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Cloud Migration

In the opening keynote, there were discussions on cloud migration strategies for massive databases. Cloud migration is a complex topic, and there are many factors to consider when moving workloads to the cloud. This talk was aimed at helping you make better decisions about which database architecture fits your use case best.

We looked at some common patterns that arise when dealing with large-scale databases and how they might fit into your business model or application needs. Then we provided an overview of several options available on AWS in terms of cost efficiency, performance efficiency, and flexibility so that you can make informed decisions about where (and how) to run your data platform.

 

Cloudride Presentation on VPC Endpoints Services

We are experts in cloud computing, and we develop custom solutions for different customers using AWS services. One of our main goals is to make it easy for our customers to use AWS services without dealing with security issues or architecture problems from different accounts or regions.

With  VPC endpoints, we create a hotspot that various AWS clients can connect securely with their AWS accounts on a private medium (VPC). The VPC Endpoint Services are updated by Amazon automatically, so you don't need any manual work.

 

Using WAF automation 

Amazon's WAF (Web Application Firewall) automation sits at the endpoints of Amazon worldwide. The WAF improves the performance of an application by forcing it to use CloudFront and reducing response time to a single-digit number of milliseconds.

The WAF knows how to give labels to incoming requests, so if you have an application like ours that receives traffic from many different sources and we need to differentiate between them for our security rulesets to apply correctly, we can do this with this mechanism.

 

Automations for Reducing Cloud Usage Waste

We also discussed a few possible automations for reducing Cloud Usage Waste. The first one was the AWS Instance Scheduler for cost optimization. Although this is not new, it's still worth mentioning since it's so effective and easy to use. You can set up an automation that will run every day or week and terminate any idle instances of your choice (for example, those with no network activity in 30 days). 

This is especially useful when you have many EC2 or RDS servers that are often forgotten once they're launched and forgotten forever. You don't need to worry about these servers anymore because AWS will take care of them by terminating them after 30 days without any activity.

Another important tool that helps reduce costs is the AWS Limit Monitor, which allows you to monitor all limits associated with your account (such as Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances purchases). For example, suppose you purchased too many RI's than required by your application. In that case, there may be some unused ones sitting around somewhere in S3 storage, costing money without making any difference for your business! 

With this tool, we'll know exactly how many reservations were purchased during each month and their price tag so we can easily identify unnecessary spending!

 1652941919406

To conclude

It was a great honor to exhibit at this year’s AWS Summit TLV, especially for the first in-person event in a long time… The Cloudride team looks forward to more opportunities in the future to share our message about how we deliver powerful applications that solve problems for companies that handle large amounts of data. We are excited to meet more partners and customers, hear from AWS product leaders, and discuss the latest innovations.

Want to learn more? Contact us here

danny-levran
2022/05
May 30, 2022 11:48:36 PM
Recap: Cloudride - AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022
AWS Summit

May 30, 2022 11:48:36 PM

Recap: Cloudride - AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022

Last week, the Cloudride team was at the AWS Summit in Tel Aviv. The conference felt like a huge gathering of cloud computing specialists and product managers from all over the country. There were many interesting talks and opportunities to meet hundreds of professionals from local start-ups and...

Cloudride Exhibiting at the AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022

The AWS Summit is coming to Tel Aviv on May 18, 2022. The event brings together the cloud computing community to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Attendees will participate in the latest technical sessions with industry-leading speakers, hands-on use-cases, training sessions, and more.

Cloudride is excited to be exhibiting at this year's event!

Join us at our booth #8B, where we will demo Cloudride’s wide array of services and capabilities and discuss how to maximize your cloud performance, while maximizing cost control, and scalable agility.

2022 AWS Summit Agenda

The AWS summit includes a keynote to the Global Vice President of the AWS S3 team, followed by breakout sessions targeted at beginners, mid-level, or advanced users. This year's topics cover everything from AWS products and services to building and deploying infrastructure and applications on the cloud. So, whether your organization is well along its journey to the cloud or just beginning one, there's something for everyone at these events!

Cloudride will be exhibiting in booth 8b, showcasing our migration management services and tools that help companies optimize costs and performance in the cloud faster.

Cloudride is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and an APN Launchpad Member. We are excited to be attending the 2022 AWS Summit in Tel Aviv. If you're planning on attending this event and want to set up a meeting with us at our booth, please reach out here!

The Cloudride team has extensive experience helping startups, SMB’s and enterprises maximize & optimize their use of cloud infrastructure, whether they're just getting started with cloud migration or seeking ways to more effectively leverage the capabilities of their cloud platforms.

 

Let's Show You How We Migrate and Optimize Your Cloud Environment 

Cloudride solutions and services include cloud migration and environment optimization.

Migration

Our expert engineers can help companies develop a migration strategy, assess their application portfolio, design a target cloud architecture, perform the actual migration and make sure everything works as expected in the new environment.

Our ready-to-use services are designed to assist our customers at every step of their transformation, from developing a roadmap to executing the migration strategy. They were created for companies that need an experienced partner for their digital transformation journey. We can help you learn how to execute your strategy and create new business models in the cloud era by transforming your infrastructure and operations and accelerating your innovation.

Cloud Management as a Service (CMaaS)

Our company provides comprehensive solutions for migrating entire application portfolios or individual workloads to the public clouds. In addition, Cloudride offers full suit CMaaS for managing cloud infrastructure and reducing operational costs.

DevOps as a Service

At Cloudride we specialize in Planning, building, and automating complex, large-scale, distributed systems on public cloud platforms. As such, we are happy to invite you to one of our focus tracks - "Infrastructure at Scale" that covers continuous deployment and integration, microservice architecture, data analytics, and server-less applications.

Environment optimization 

Our award-winning solutions provide easy ways to optimize cloud environment usage, ensure compliance and improve productivity. These benefits help our clients accelerate their digital transformation efforts while reducing costs associated with managing and maintaining on-premises infrastructure.

Security 

Cloudride is excited to share our expertise on cloud security, especially regarding securing data across multiple clouds and hybrid environments. We'll be discussing how organizations can better manage their multi-cloud strategy by leveraging a common security posture throughout their entire environment—including public clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and on-premises data centers.

Whether your organization uses 10 or 10,000 accounts, we can help you maintain consistent security and compliance policies throughout.

We can't wait to talk with you at the conference!

We are excited to meet those of you who haven't already had the pleasure of working with us. If you are one of our existing clients, just come by for a coffee!

We are looking forward to seeing many of you at the conference! It is a great event that brings together thousands of people and allows them to collaborate on some amazing projects across the AWS ecosystem! Here’s a signup link 

 

danny-levran
2022/05
May 15, 2022 10:42:24 PM
Cloudride Exhibiting at the AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022
AWS, AWS Summit

May 15, 2022 10:42:24 PM

Cloudride Exhibiting at the AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022

The AWS Summit is coming to Tel Aviv on May 18, 2022. The event brings together the cloud computing community to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Attendees will participate in the latest technical sessions with industry-leading speakers, hands-on use-cases, training sessions, and more.

CI/CD AWS way

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment. It is a development process aiming to automate software delivery. It allows developers to integrate changes into a central repository, then tests and deploy. In other words, every change made to the code is tested and automatically deployed to the production environment if it passes all tests.

AWS CI/CD Pipeline and its use cases

AWS Code Pipeline is a hassle-free way to automate your application release process on the AWS cloud. You can define your process through visual workflows, and AWS Code Pipeline will execute those for you. This means you only have to define your pipeline once and then run it as many times as required. AWS Code Pipeline offers support for integrating with other services like Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, and AWS Lambda.

Use Cases for CI/CD Pipeline in AWS

  • Static code analysis
  • Unit tests
  • Functional tests
  • System tests
  • Integration tests
  • UI testing
  • Sanity tests
  • Regression tests

 

Benefits of using AWS CI/CD Workflows

With Continuous Deployment, teams can achieve the following benefits:

No deployment bottlenecks: Once you are ready with your code changes, you can deploy it. There is no waiting for a specific time or day to deploy your code. Deployment can happen at any time during the day. Furthermore, frequent deployments also help increase confidence in the software quality in production, which leads to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Customers get additional value from the software quicker: Continuously delivering small increments of value to customers allows them to provide feedback on what is important for them and increase focus on high-value work. Quicker feedback cycles also reduce rework because issues are discovered earlier in development when they are cheaper to fix.

Less risky releases: Small changes that get gradually integrated into the mainline over time are less likely to cause major problems when they go out with other features than large changes developed separately over long periods before being released.

Implementing CI/CD Pipeline with AWS 

AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, and AWS CodeDeploy are three separate services that can be deployed within any environment. 

CodePipeline helps in continuous integration and deployment of applications. It supports popular programming languages such as Java, Python, Ruby, Node.js, etc.

CodeBuild is used to build output artifacts of your application on demand when needed by other services such as CodePipeline or Lambda.

CodeCommit is a fully-managed source control service that makes it easy for companies to store and share Git repositories on AWS.

This is how you implement a CI/CD pipeline with these services.

Step 1: Create a new project in the AWS console, e.g., myproject

Step 2: Allocate a resource to the project (AWS CodePipeline)

Step 3: Choose the type of build you want to perform, e.g., Minimal testing or Full deployment

Step 4: Configure build settings for your build configuration, e.g., source control repositories and automated builds (e.g., GitLab)

How to Integrate Security into CI/CD Pipeline In AWS 

Many organizations are now using static code analysis tools like OWASP    to regularly test the code for vulnerabilities. You can easily set up a SAST pipeline using AWS CodeBuild. CodeBuild is an AWS-managed service used to build and test the software. 

If you are using Jenkins, you can use the CodeBuild plugin to trigger the build job within Jenkins. You can use AWS Lambda to trigger the build job when a new push happens to source control for other build tools. Also, please set up pre-commit hooks so that you don’t have to wait until a push happens to trigger the build.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is another security test performed in the CI/CD pipeline. The test identifies the potential vulnerabilities by interacting with the applications at runtime. It is also known as grey-box testing. The test can be configured to fail the build if any vulnerability is identified. 

The tools used for DAST in AWS can be either commercial or open-source. Open-source tools like OWASP ZAP have an option to fail builds when a critical severity vulnerability is found, while other tools like Burp Suite require custom scripts to perform this functionality.

Runtime Application Security Testing (RASP) is a new security test that analyzes application behavior in real-time while an application runs in its production environment and detects anomalies from normal behavior that could indicate a security issue. It can also be used to detect and block attacks. 

Some teams use runtime scanners such as Arachni or OWASP ZAP inside their pipelines, while others choose to run security scans as part of their performance tests to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities present during stress testing.

CI/CD best practices in Amazon Web Service

The best practices you can follow are as follows:

  • Continuously verify your infrastructure code to ensure no security flaws are introduced in the system and allow teams to fix them faster than before.
  • Implement a continuous delivery pipeline for your applications using AWS CodePipeline, with AWS CodeBuild for building and testing.
  • Use AWS Lambda functions to run tests by adding them into CodeBuild projects or integrate with third-party tools like Sauce Labs or BlazeMeter to run performance tests on-demand or as part of your pipelines.
  • Set up notifications (e-mail/Slack) between phases so team members can respond quickly when something goes wrong in any pipeline phase.
  • Implementing CI/CD in AWS helps to improve code quality, hasten delivery, reduce human intervention, enhance collaboration and reduce integration errors.

Want to learn more? Book a free consultation call right here 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/05
May 12, 2022 12:11:47 AM
CI/CD AWS way
Cloud Security

May 12, 2022 12:11:47 AM

CI/CD AWS way

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment. It is a development process aiming to automate software delivery. It allows developers to integrate changes into a central repository, then tests and deploy. In other words, every change made to the code is tested and automatically...

2022 – The Year of Kubernetes

While still a relatively young technology, Kubernetes has seen rapid adoption by IT organizations around the world. In 2017, Gartner predicted that by 2022 half of enterprises' core services would run in a container orchestration environment. This has already proven to be the case. According to Google Trends, Kubernetes is at its highest popularity since it was open-sourced in 2014. This article will explain why Kubernetes is important, how it works, and the challenges that lie ahead, primarily around security and scalability.

The history and development of Kubernetes

 Google launched the Kubernetes project in 2014. Google used containers in its production environment long before that time and had developed an internal container management system called Borg, which inspired Kubernetes. In June 2014, Google announced that it was making Kubernetes available as open source. In March 2015, Google partnered with Red Hat, CoreOS, and others to form the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The CNCF is the umbrella organization for Kubernetes and other cloud-native technologies such as Prometheus and Envoy.

The following are some popular benefits of using Kubernetes: 

Cross-cluster deployment with ease – One of the biggest advantages that Kubernetes offers is cross-cluster deployments. This means that developers can deploy their app on any cloud provider they want, which provides them with incredible flexibility while also making deployment simple.

Easily scalable applications – Another big advantage offered by Kubernetes is its scalability. Developers can easily scale up or down on-demand as traffic fluctuates, making it a versatile tool for application deployment.

High availability - This feature allows you to ensure that all your apps are highly available from different zones or regions.

Self-healing - When an application crashes or gets stuck on a node, Kubernetes helps replace them with new pods automatically, so there is no downtime for applications.

Load Balancing - With the load balancing feature, all the containers get equal CPU and memory resources as per their need. Hence, it balances the load across all the containers running within a cluster.

Kubernetes has been around since 2014, so why is 2022 labeled as 'the year of Kubernetes'?

Kubernetes provides all the necessary tools for developers to deploy and manage their applications at scale. This service is ideal for teams looking to scale in terms of the number of containers or the number of nodes in their deployment.

Even though Microsoft Azure, VMware, and Google Cloud have been offering the service for a while, AWS has announced that it will be adding full support for Kubernetes in 2022.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) has officially confirmed that they will be expanding support for Kubernetes in 2022. That means users will finally be able to run containers without worrying about extensive underlying platform adjustments. 

Improvements or changes you expect to see with Kubernetes in 2022

 As Kubernetes is becoming the standard for container orchestration, it's important to know what to expect as it continues to mature.

Here are some areas where we expect Kubernetes will improve:

Its networking model will improve.

Kubernetes' current networking model, the Container Network Interface (CNI), is not the most flexible or scalable option and leaves room for improvement. A new networking model called Service Mesh Interface (SMI) has been proposed and will be a welcome addition to Kubernetes.

The SMI provides a specification that enables different service mesh providers to integrate with Kubernetes and allows developers to choose their preferred mesh without making changes at the infrastructure level.

It will become easier to use and manage.

 Kubernetes is complex by design, but that complexity becomes less with good tooling and documentation. As more and more developers start using Kubernetes, tools like Compose can help those already familiar with Docker Compose get started immediately with minimal effort. In addition, as more people start using Kubernetes, we'll see more detailed documentation that helps answer questions related to specific use cases.

The complexity of stateful applications will be easier to manage

Kubernetes is a great tool for running stateless applications which don't store data. But when you need to store data, it's more work — with Kubernetes, you have to set up your storage system.

Developers will be able to build apps faster with it

Another thing that makes it hard to use Kubernetes is that it takes a lot of time to learn and configure. As the platform sees more adoption and more developers become familiar with it, this learning curve should flatten out, making it easier for new users to get started.

Security will be more robust.

Kubernetes has received criticism as being insecure by default. The platform itself has various security features, but they are disabled by default and require configuration and careful management. This means that many Kubernetes clusters aren't very secure. Shortly we'll likely see the platform become more secure by default.

For now, Kubernetes remains a young project - still subject to rapid change and innovation. But by 2022, that's likely to change. We may look back on this post someday and compare it to the early days of discussion around the open-source platform.

Want to learn more? Book a call today

yura-vasilevitski
2022/04
Apr 13, 2022 9:24:41 PM
2022 – The Year of Kubernetes
Cloud Computing, Kubernetes

Apr 13, 2022 9:24:41 PM

2022 – The Year of Kubernetes

While still a relatively young technology, Kubernetes has seen rapid adoption by IT organizations around the world. In 2017, Gartner predicted that by 2022 half of enterprises' core services would run in a container orchestration environment. This has already proven to be the case. According to...

Server-Less AWS – Making Developers' Life Easy In 2022

Serverless computing is a cloud model where customers do not have to think about servers. In the server-less model, the cloud provider fully manages the servers, and the customer only pays for the resources used by their application. AWS Serverless computing takes care of all the operational tasks of provisioning, configuring, scaling, and managing servers.

What is serverless?

Serverless is an architectural style that allows developers to focus on writing code instead of worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Serverless computing comes in two different flavors:

Backend as a service (BaaS) offers pre-built cloud-based functions that developers can use to build applications without configuring servers or hosting them on their own hardware.

Function as a service (FaaS) provides developers a way to build and run event-driven functions within stateless containers that a third party fully manages.

Serverless computing applies to any compute workload. It works well for applications with a variable workload or needs to scale up or down quickly and independently from other applications running in the same environment.

Why go serverless?

Serverless eliminates the need to provision or manage infrastructure. You upload your code to AWS Lambda, and the service will run it for you.

The service scales your application dynamically by running code in response to each trigger. You pay only for what you use, with no minimum fees and automatic scaling, so you save money.

Here are some of the benefits of using Server-Less architecture:

Cost-Effective: When you use a serverless application, you don't need to manage it. It automatically scales with the number of events. You can pay only for the resources used by your application.

Focus On Core Business: Serverless architecture allows you to focus on your core business logic without worrying about infrastructure details or other technical issues.

Ease of Development: You no longer have to worry about infrastructure management, as you do not need to create or maintain any servers

How AWS Server-less Makes Developer's Life Easy In 2022

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda helps build backend applications and scalable server implementations, triggered by numerous events that sometimes occur all at once. One could use AWS Lambda to build in-depth applications as well as powerful servers not only quickly but also easily – adding new products and services with simple voice commands from Alexa!

AWS Lambda runs your code on a compute infrastructure and does all of the administration of the compute resources, including both server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling, logging and code monitoring.

AWS Lambda supports up to 10 GB ephemeral storage

 In addition to the 512 MB of memory and 100 ms of execution time previously offered, AWS Lambda now offers 1.5 GB of memory and 300 ms of execution time at no additional cost. You can now create functions that require up to 3,008 MB of memory and up to 5 minutes of execution time for a fraction of the price previously offered.

Ephemeral storage is temporary storage used for testing and short-time processing. It is suitable for workloads that require temporary storage with low latency. Amazon Redshift Serverless - run analytics without managing infrastructure.

Amazon Redshift Serverless

A few years ago, AWS introduced Amazon Redshift, an easy-to-use, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. It delivers faster performance than other data warehouses using machine learning, column storage, and parallel query execution on a high-performance disk.

Now, you can have the same performance as Redshift at a fraction of the cost with no infrastructure to manage and pay only for what you use with Amazon Redshift Serverless.

Amazon Redshift Serverless automatically starts, scales, and shuts down your data warehouse cluster while charging you on a per-second basis for as long as your queries run. Redshift Serverless provides simplicity and flexibility with no upfront costs, enabling you to pay only for what you use during interactive query sessions.

Serverless application repository

Amazon has developed a new repository for serverless applications called AWS Serverless Application Repository. It offers a collection of serverless application components that developers can use to build and deploy their apps quickly.

AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) extends AWS CloudFormation, infrastructure, as a code service that allows you to model your application resources using a simple text file.

SAM makes it easy to define the resources needed by your application in a simple, declarative format. It also provides a simplified syntax for expressing functions and APIs, defines the mapping between API requests and function invocations, and handles deployment details such as resource provisioning and access policy creation.

AWS serverless has made servers unnecessary and effectively uses the capacity and power available on cloud computing systems. With Server-less developing applications, the development process becomes much faster as developers don't need to worry about setting up a server, configuration, and functionalities.

Want to learn more? Book a call today

yura-vasilevitski
2022/04
Apr 13, 2022 9:17:51 PM
Server-Less AWS – Making Developers' Life Easy In 2022
Cloud Computing, Server-Less

Apr 13, 2022 9:17:51 PM

Server-Less AWS – Making Developers' Life Easy In 2022

Serverless computing is a cloud model where customers do not have to think about servers. In the server-less model, the cloud provider fully manages the servers, and the customer only pays for the resources used by their application. AWS Serverless computing takes care of all the operational tasks...

What can we expect in EdTech 2022?

The cloud has made possible many of the advances in EdTech that we have seen over the last few years and those that will come in the future. We're likely to see greater automation in the cloud, which will enable organizations to focus on their core strategic goals rather than on maintaining their data centers. Here are more trends to watch out for.

Newer capabilities for remote learning  

The pandemic has forced educational institutes to adopt remote learning technologies with little or no time for preparation. This led to many teething problems like difficulty adapting the technology, poor internet connectivity, lack of proper tools for teachers and students, etc. 

We can expect the coming years to address these issues by introducing more sophisticated technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). These technologies are already being widely adopted in other industries and are showing great promise in EdTech. VR will help create immersive experiences for students, while AR will help them with real-time data at their fingertips.

Greater adoption of the cloud 

The popularity of online courses and online degree programs is likely to increase the need for cloud-based education services. According to the Education Cloud Market Forecast 2019-2024 report, the industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 25% from 2019 to 2024. The growth will be driven by increased use of e-learning, adoption of analytics in education, and improved access to broadband internet across the globe.

Big data  

Cloud computing can make it easier for schools to adopt new technology applications in the classrooms. Cloud computing offers schools a new way of providing learning materials, whether through interactive lessons or online homework assignments.

This provides access to data and information needed for better decision-making based on previous experience and trends. Data also plays an important role in understanding how students learn best and how they respond to different learning techniques.

Cloud automation 

Cloud automation is expected to be the next big thing in tech in the coming years. It will enable a single system to manage various cloud-based services. Cloud automation will help simplify and streamline the deployment of workloads across multiple clouds and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of different processes. The number of educational institutes deploying cloud services is increasing, which has led to an increased demand for cloud automation services.

Zero trust cloud security

The number of threats targeting the public cloud has increased dramatically over the past few years. This is due mostly to how popular the public cloud has become in enterprise environments and because attackers are now going after big targets like AWS S3 buckets. Although there are many challenges to overcome regarding security on the public cloud (such as monitoring, patching, etc.), one solution that can help secure your data is zero trust security architecture.

Multicloud and hybrid cloud models 

After most universities were forced to move their teaching and learning online due to COVID-19, they had no choice but to adopt cloud applications and infrastructure. There are lessons learned from this experience that will have a lasting impact on how the EdTech sector approaches cloud adoption. 

For instance, there is an understanding that all cloud applications don't have to be hosted on the same model. Hence, we expect more educational institutions to look at a mix of public clouds (AWS/Azure/GCP), private clouds (VMware/OpenStack), and managed services.

Nano learning (micro-lessons that last 10 minutes)

 Nano learning involves quick bursts of information and is designed for easy consumption on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Nano learning allows people to learn without devoting long periods to educational activities.

The Internet of Things

In 2022, the internet of things will most likely be accessible to all schools. This is something that is already becoming popular in today's world, but it hasn't yet become a popular trend in the education world. The internet of things allows you to connect various devices over the internet for remote control and monitoring. Think about how easily you’ll be to manage your school if you had a device that could control your classroom from anywhere.

Artificial intelligence 

Artificial intelligence is one thing that we can expect to see incorporated into educational systems by 2022. Imagine having an artificial intelligence system that will create a personalized learning plan for each student based on their own personal abilities and knowledge level. It wasn't long ago that artificial intelligence was just something that was seen in the movies. Nowadays, it's becoming more of a reality in our everyday lives with products such as Siri and Alexa.

In a nutshell 

In 2022 the EdTech market will continue to evolve, and we feel that the larger distinctions between Edtech and e-learning software will become even less defined over time. It will likely be an event-driven market, with vendors needing to keep up with constantly changing technology to remain relevant.

Want to learn more? Book a call today

yura-vasilevitski
2022/03
Mar 23, 2022 9:23:22 PM
What can we expect in EdTech 2022?
Cloud Computing, Edtech

Mar 23, 2022 9:23:22 PM

What can we expect in EdTech 2022?

The cloud has made possible many of the advances in EdTech that we have seen over the last few years and those that will come in the future. We're likely to see greater automation in the cloud, which will enable organizations to focus on their core strategic goals rather than on maintaining their...

Cloud Meets Education

Cloud computing is redefining how we do business. It's also transforming education, offering new opportunities to learn and grow. This article explores the impact of the Cloud on K-12 learning, higher education, and corporate training.

Why now?

Historically, educational institutions have been slow to adopt new technologies. This can be attributed to several factors: a lack of budget, the need to maintain legacy infrastructure, and the time required to change processes and procedures. However, these obstacles are being removed by cloud computing.

Cloud in Higher Education

Learning is increasingly personalized. Once we were taught as part of a group, today's technology enables adaptive learning. This means students can have their own unique learning experience at their own pace and in their own time. The Cloud makes this possible by bringing together all the elements needed for learning - teacher, student, and content – to create an educational ecosystem where everyone can learn and share knowledge.

Cloud enables education to be adaptive and flexible. It helps educators make learning more student-centric and personalized, allows them to discover new teaching methods, and enables learners to take full responsibility for their own learning.

How the Cloud is transforming K-12 Learning 

Today's K-12 students are digital natives who want to learn in a way that matches their lifestyle. They want to collaborate with other students and share ideas, use the Internet to get information, and access content anywhere and anytime. The Cloud is making this possible.

In addition, education institutions have to deal with shrinking budgets, so they are looking for innovative ways to deliver learning at a lower cost. It's also why they're taking a closer look at the Cloud as a means of sharing resources and providing more flexible learning options.

The benefits of the Cloud in Corporate Training 

Cloud-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) are key tools for corporate training. They allow trainers to store their content and manage their courses from any device, anywhere. LMSs enable collaborative learning in real-time, making communication easier and more efficient between all parties. 

When you bring artificial intelligence (AI) to the mix, you have an even more powerful set of capabilities. Using AI, you can automatically detect where your audience is disengaging with content or identify language barriers that may be impeding comprehension. 

The Overall Impact of the Cloud in Education 

More Connectivity

The Cloud provides greater connectivity for teachers and students. The Cloud allows students to log in from any computer with internet access, unlike in previous years when students had to use the computers at their schools or be at home to access their files. 

Now, students and teachers have more flexibility to work on school assignments or projects and still have access to all of their materials. They can go home early due to illness, travel, or even a family emergency, which would otherwise have meant missing out on lessons and assignments. Still, now they can make up that work without skipping a beat.

Improved collaboration

One of the biggest impacts of cloud computing in education is improving collaboration among students and teachers alike. This has been attributed to cloud-based learning tools' ability to connect students with each other and their teachers via real-time video conferencing, instant messaging, and virtual classrooms where they can share ideas and work together.

Improved storage for recorded content/learning materials

The education sector has benefitted tremendously from the Cloud. The Cloud has allowed students to access their learning resources in files, documents, and images from anywhere in the world.

This flexibility and freedom to study at a time and place that suit you, along with a much more diverse range of learning materials that can be accessed, have led to significant improvements in student performance across the board.

Easier access to equitable education 

Education is not always available for every student around the world. However, through technology like cloud computing, it is now possible for students from all walks of life to have equal access to high-quality education programs. For example, if you wanted to complete a master's degree but were unable to because of work or family commitments, or perhaps because you are located overseas, online courses are now available to everyone through platforms such as LinkedIn Learning.

Analytics for Better Student Performance

Educators now have access to data about student performance. Instead of guessing what each student needs, teachers, can pull up detailed analytics about how well each learner is doing in each subject area and use that information to tailor lessons accordingly.

In a nutshell

Cloud is transforming conventional learning models and helping teachers and educators improve engagement with their students, create personalized learning experiences, and enable everyone to develop digital skills for tomorrow's jobs.

Want to learn more? Contact us here

yura-vasilevitski
2022/03
Mar 23, 2022 9:17:25 PM
Cloud Meets Education
Cloud Computing, Edtech

Mar 23, 2022 9:17:25 PM

Cloud Meets Education

Cloud computing is redefining how we do business. It's also transforming education, offering new opportunities to learn and grow. This article explores the impact of the Cloud on K-12 learning, higher education, and corporate training.

Cloud Computing Top 2022 Trends

Cloud computing is changing how we view technology and the world.  At Cloudride, we continue to see more and more innovations around cloud computing every day. The evolution of cloud computing will be interesting to watch over the next decade. So, what can companies expect to see this year? 

Cloud computing will continue to grow. 

Today, the cloud is a major part of doing business. Companies are expected to spend $232 billion on public cloud services alone in 2022, increasing nearly 80 percent over 2017 spending levels, According to IDC.

By 2022, IDC predicts total enterprise IT spending will reach $3.7 trillion, with almost half (48 percent) of those funds going toward cloud infrastructure and operational expenses.

Cloud computing will scale with demand.

There are strong indications cloud computing is becoming an integral part of many businesses. However, companies still have to figure out how they can effectively use cloud solutions and how they can get their workers trained on this new technology.

Therefore, businesses also need to figure out how to keep up with cloud solutions if their demands increase or decrease quickly. 

Because cloud computing is built for scalability, we expect to see more companies building their applications on the cloud.

Data centers will go mobile.

Since cloud computing is all about flexibility, organizations will be able to move their data center anywhere they need it to be. This means that organizations can set up shop in areas where labor or real estate is less expensive. They'll be able to scale up or down as needed without spending millions of dollars on purpose-built infrastructure.

A focus on Artificial Intelligence

We predict Artificial Intelligence getting a major boost in popularity as the technology becomes more refined and accessible for businesses. One of the biggest benefits for businesses will be that AI allows cloud computing solutions to scale automatically with demand – something that small businesses won't be able to afford on their own.

Therefore, we believe that AI will help businesses cope with extreme uncertainty by providing greater predictive decision-making capabilities.

Cybersecurity in the cloud will take center stage. 

Every day, we witness high-profile breaches making cyber security an even greater priority than ever before, and this trend will continue to grow as businesses continue to rely on the cloud for storage and processing capabilities.

But cloud computing service providers (CSPs) will double their efforts to make their platforms more secure. 

We can predict that the threats to cybersecurity and attacks on CSPs will increase as the volume of data they manage increases. In response, CSPs will start to move away from perimeter security approaches toward multi-layered defense approaches based on trust, transparency, and automation.

In addition, the perceived risk of moving sensitive information into the cloud will decline, but the lack of trust in cloud vendors' security capabilities will persist. This trend is primarily driven by an inability for CSPs to demonstrate their ability to detect and prevent data breaches effectively.

Enterprise cloud will still lead the charge in 2022

Enterprise cloud services will be considered mainstream in terms of their business value. “The value of cloud services available to consumers through SaaS and IaaS platforms will increase from $408 billion to $474 billion," reads a Gartner report. 

Although there is a lot of discussion around public cloud services and how small businesses can use them, we think the reality is that enterprise cloud will continue to dominate through 2022. The largest growth will be seen in small business enterprise cloud use for simple applications rather than heavy-duty graphics or other resource-intensive applications.

Cloud and containers will grow with small business uses 

Our internal data shows that smaller businesses may currently not have the IT staff or experience to implement these technologies independently, but still, many are successfully using services from Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure for hosting or content delivery purposes.

Containers and tech will grow in the cloud.

Containers and cloud-native technologies will grow in the cloud due to its scalability as a platform to build and deploy applications using containers. Containers have been around for a long time and have become an integral part of DevOps processes. The market is still in its early days for containers, but I think the technology has huge potential.

Cloudride has witnessed the vendors we represent, such as AWS, Microsoft, and GCP, add features such as database services and middleware, and this bundling strategy has also helped increase adoption. 

Hybrid Cloud from Public Cloud Vendors is offering a single interface for cloud usage across multiple public providers. Therefore, businesses are increasingly using public clouds for computing, storage, database, and application hosting purposes. The hybrid cloud strategy is gaining popularity among enterprises due to its low-cost structure compared to private clouds.

At Cloudride, we know that businesses want faster time to value, increased flexibility, and better cost control. We can help you achieve all of this with expert cloud migration and performance and cost optimization services. Contact us here to get started!

 

danny-levran
2022/03
Mar 7, 2022 9:40:03 PM
Cloud Computing Top 2022 Trends
Cloud Computing, Top Trends

Mar 7, 2022 9:40:03 PM

Cloud Computing Top 2022 Trends

Cloud computing is changing how we view technology and the world.  At Cloudride, we continue to see more and more innovations around cloud computing every day. The evolution of cloud computing will be interesting to watch over the next decade. So, what can companies expect to see this year? 

AWS Saving Plans Benefits

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a wide range of products and services for all your enterprise computing needs. Whether you are hosting a website or developing an app, AWS provides the infrastructure, platform and software stack you need to scale and grow most cost-effectively.

AWS Savings Plans

AWS offers savings plans for EC2, SageMaker and Amazon EC2 for Compute in exchange for a specific usage commitment. You can choose from hourly or two-year commitments. The amount of discount varies depending on the plan you select. 

For example, if you commit to running 10 instances for one year at $0.15/hour on an m4.large instance, you will get a discounted rate of $0.105/hour (15% off). Compute Savings Plans can slash your costs by up to 66%, EC2Instance Plans by up to 72% and SageMaker Savings Plans by an average of 64%.

You can choose from hourly or two-year commitments. 

The amount of discount varies depending on the plan you select. You can save more by paying upfront instead of receiving the discounted rate over time. AWS will optimize your usage to get you up to that commitment level – this could mean that your use is either greater than or less than the initial commitment. 

For example, if you commit to using 1,600 hours per month in the T2 instance family (compute optimized), the upfront pricing discount will be 50% off the demand price. If you pay upfront by making a prepayment equal to three months' worth of this commitment ($8,400 per month), then your total cost for those three months would be $4,800 (three months at $1,200 per month). This is a savings of $4,000 over what it would cost if you paid hourly for those same three months ($12,000).

The amount of discount is flexible depending on the plan you select

If you are an enterprise user and have a big data project with high cost, Amazon provides you with different saving plans. These plans are flexible with the amount of discount, which is good for large scale users.

The AWS saving plans provide for auto-scaling of computing resources and are ideal for any scenario where you don't know how many loads you'll need to handle at any given time. The saving plans provide the ability to scale up or down depending on the number of resources used by your application. This makes sure that AWS won't charge you any more than what your application is using.

You can save more money by paying upfront. 

You pay a one-time fee for the right to use an AWS resource, like an EC2 instance or RDS database, for a certain period or until the instance comes out of its one- or three-year Reserved Instance term. You can buy a Reserved Instance in exchange for partial up-front payment and balance later.

Suppose you're not in a hurry to launch your application and don't need immediate access to your Reserved Instance resources. In that case, you can let your current term expire and then re-launch with a new term when AWS releases its next price reductions, typically every July and January.

AWS will proactively notify you when your Reserved Instance is about to expire so that you have time to act on any price reductions. You can buy an extended-term at the current rates, renew the current term at lower rates from a previous year (called "reseller pricing") or request AWS's best price for a future 12-month period (called "future pricing").

It's easy to get started. 

Signing up for a Savings Plan is easy. Just visit the AWS Cost Explorer and click on the blue "Sign Up" button at the top of the page. You'll see plans based on your usage, and you can purchase either a one-time or annual plan. 

The AWS team has made it easy to choose the right plan by introducing a new Cost Explorer tool called Savings Calculator. With this tool, you can evaluate the cost savings based on your actual usage and compare it with the cost savings available from other plans.

Log into the AWS Console and click on 'the Cost Explorer' tab under 'Tools' to use this feature. Then click on the 'Savings Calculators' tab and select the calculator based on your region (e.g., US East or the Asia Pacific). For example, if you are located in US East (Northern Virginia), you have to select US East (Northern Virginia) because that is the location of your data center. When you select a calculator, it will show your current plan details and also provide cost savings available from other plans.

AWS will optimize your usage to get you up to that commitment level – this could mean that your use is either greater than or less than the initial commitment

The AWS service limits and pricing options are updated regularly based on usage patterns of other customers. This keeps costs down for everyone.

Even when you only use up 10% of your committed resources, AWS will optimize your usage to get you up to that commitment level – this could mean that your usage is either greater than or less than the initial commitment.

The Takeaway 

AWS has a wide variety of different services that can be used to save costs and improve the performance of your business's cloud infrastructure. Looking to save money on AWS services? contact us today!

Interested to learn more? Book a call here today.

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/02
Feb 16, 2022 8:03:05 PM
AWS Saving Plans Benefits
AWS, Cost Optimization

Feb 16, 2022 8:03:05 PM

AWS Saving Plans Benefits

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a wide range of products and services for all your enterprise computing needs. Whether you are hosting a website or developing an app, AWS provides the infrastructure, platform and software stack you need to scale and grow most cost-effectively.

How Cloud Computing Benefits the Sports Industry | Cloudride

Cloud Computing is a game-changer for a lot of industries. In the last decade, it has been a significant factor in the evolution of technology. The benefits are enormous, not only from an operational perspective but also from a strategic one. Cloud computing can help teams better organize their data and make them more efficient. With cloud-based storage, data is accessible from anywhere at any time. They can also be accessed by anyone who needs it with the right security measures in place to protect sensitive information.

The benefits of the cloud for sports:

Fewer injuries thanks to real-time tracking

NFL players are not allowed to play with GPS trackers. However, many coaches use such devices during their training. GPS is far from a foolproof system. This is the reason why the NFL decided to update itself using an RFID system. Each player will be equipped with two RFID chips incorporated into their shoulder pads. These chips will send location and speed data measured using accelerometers.

It is, for example, possible to set up new formations, imagine new trajectories, or understand the particular style of each player. However, the real power of these chips lies in the ability to make sense of numbers and statistics. Cloud computing solutions help to transform sports data into concrete visuals allowing decisions to be made. This sport and Big Data tool makes it possible to visualize the teams' performance and their main qualities.

Thanks to player tracking, it is also possible to better prevent injuries. The players and coaches are more aware of their hydration rate and physical condition in general. Likewise, for the NFL, blows to the head can be detected. Despite the awareness of the danger of concussions in professional sport, little has changed in a few years. Coaches can turn data into preventative measures. Many hope that tracking will reduce the number of injuries.

Predict fan preferences

Cloud-based analytical technologies can improve the experience for sports fans. The more ticket sellers and teams know about fan preferences, the more they can pamper them. Fans today come to stadiums with smartphones and want technology to improve their experience. In response, sporting event organizers and stadium owners are turning to the cloud, mobile, and analytics technologies to deliver a never-before-seen experience.

Shortly, several changes are expected. The spectator can be guided to the nearest parking space using a mobile application when arriving at the stadium. In the field, it will be possible to access instant replays, alternate views, and close-up videos. With a mobile device, the fan will order food and drinks and have them delivered to their place without wasting a moment of the match. The smartphone will also be able to indicate the nearest toilets. Finally, after the game, the app will provide traffic directions and suggest the fastest home route.

Player health

Using cloud solutions, data from the connected objects wearables type, such as the connected bracelets, glasses AR, or smartwatches, provide statistical information in real-time on each player. The speed, rhythm, or acceleration of the heart are all data that these devices can measure. Likewise, wearables help reduce the number of injuries. The sensors record the impact of collisions and the intensity of the activity and compare them with historical data from a database to determine if the player is at risk of injury.

The rise of network science

The science of networks is playing an increasingly important role in sports and big data analysis. This science considers each player as a knot. It draws a line between them as the ball moves from one to the other. Many mathematical tools have already been developed to analyze such networks, and this technique is therefore beneficial for sports science.

For example, it is easy to determine the most critical nodes in the network using the so-called centrality measure. In football, goalkeepers and forwards have the lowest centrality, while defenders and midfielders have the highest.

This science also helps to divide the network into clusters. This way, team members can pass the ball or act more efficiently. However, the problem with network science is that there are many ways to measure centrality and determine clusters. The most effective method is not always clear, depending on the circumstances. It is, therefore, necessary to systematically evaluate and compare these different methods to determine their usefulness and value.

Looking forward

In the future, cloud-driven and Machine Learning will add context to sports data. In addition to measuring speed and distance, it will provide insights, for instance, on how many sprints were made by the athlete or if these accelerations were carried out under pressure.

By adding context to the data collected, coaches and analysts will spend more time focusing on strategic elements such as the correlation between actions or the quality of the opportunities created.

Interested to learn more? Book a call here today.

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/02
Feb 3, 2022 2:41:36 PM
How Cloud Computing Benefits the Sports Industry | Cloudride
Cloud Computing, Sports

Feb 3, 2022 2:41:36 PM

How Cloud Computing Benefits the Sports Industry | Cloudride

Cloud Computing is a game-changer for a lot of industries. In the last decade, it has been a significant factor in the evolution of technology. The benefits are enormous, not only from an operational perspective but also from a strategic one. Cloud computing can help teams better organize their...

How Cloud Computing Has Changed the World of Games and Gaming

Technological innovations are constantly evolving. Cloud computing is now crucial in a fast-paced world to be able to keep up with market demands. In particular, the online entertainment sector has needed to change its concepts: accessibility at any time and from any place has become the priority for gaming and gambling platforms.

Both for the most classic video games and online casino platforms, the advent of Cloud Computing, a real revolution for the entire gaming world, impacts the sector's evolution. Cloud computing is nothing more than a remote server made available by a supplier via the internet, in which software and hardware resources of various kinds can be loaded. The user, usually upon subscription, has access to an ample virtual space, which allows overcoming the physical and memory limitations of a classic hard disk.

Improved gaming experience

Cloud computing has many benefits for players, especially gamers who are looking for an immersive experience. It's easier to store different saves of games. Players don't have to worry about losing their progress because cloud saves can be restored at any time.

Once you understand cloud technology, it becomes easy to understand the concept of cloud gaming: the loading of entire video games on a virtual server that players can access at any time. Various platforms already use the service. It aims to replace the various hardware components of PCs and consoles, improving performance and eliminating the need for a powerful physical medium that processes information. A step that could be no small feat if we consider the increasing heaviness of games on a graphic level and beyond.

Statistical predictions

An exciting innovation such as data modeling can be developed through cloud computing. It is mainly used in the economic field to predict trends thanks to statistical and historical data and finds applications in the gambling sector.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the Gambling Commission has designed data modeling to predict lottery sales over the next three years. Building models is costly, but the advent of data modeling will allow you to work without fainting too much and, above all, recording significant economic savings.

In the field of gambling, data modeling allows the development of a game that approaches a user's needs to satisfy him in all his requests. In this sense, a company that is making great strides is Betfair, which has launched the Betfair Predictions program. The system allows players to create their betting and horse racing models and is enjoying considerable success.

Virtual reality

Also worth noting is the novelty of Loot Box's virtual reality. The developed model aims to decrease the difference between video games and games of chance through a fusion in which the user can bet while playing actual gameplay. This revolution aims to bring the experience that is lived inside a casino directly to the home of those who play.

Efficiency in development

Cloud computing is beneficial for game developers because they can develop games more quickly, and they don't need to worry about the hardware that their game will be played on.

Last year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it would be launching its cloud-based game service - AWS GameLift. With AWS GameLift, developers can focus on their games rather than spending time and resources on managing their own servers.

Theoretically, you don't need to buy any equipment or hire expensive staff to run your game development project with cloud computing services. You just need a good internet connection, and then you can start playing with cloud gaming software!

Live to stream

AWS powers cost-effective and low latency live streaming, now available on all major platforms, including Twitch and YouTube Gaming. This has grown exponentially in popularity in recent years as people can stream their games and play with others online. The world of games and gaming will continue to evolve and change as we rely more heavily on cloud computing than ever before.

In nutshell

Modern gaming as we know it would be impossible without the Cloud. Cloud gaming services are cheaper than most consoles, more scalable, don't require expensive hardware, can be accessed by almost anyone with a decent internet connection, and play games with graphics that are at least on par with what consoles can offer.

A game's progress is saved in the Cloud, so you never have to worry about losing your data again. They also allow for cross-platform multiplayer, so you can play against or team up with other players on any platform of your choice.

Want to get your head in the game? Contact us here today!

yura-vasilevitski
2022/01
Jan 24, 2022 4:14:27 PM
How Cloud Computing Has Changed the World of Games and Gaming
Cloud Computing, Gaming

Jan 24, 2022 4:14:27 PM

How Cloud Computing Has Changed the World of Games and Gaming

Technological innovations are constantly evolving. Cloud computing is now crucial in a fast-paced world to be able to keep up with market demands. In particular, the online entertainment sector has needed to change its concepts: accessibility at any time and from any place has become the priority...

AWS Cloud control API

AWS Cloud Control is a unified API that enables developers to automate the management of AWS resources. Amazon Web Service recently released the API. It allows developers to access a centralized API for managing the lifecycle of tons of AWS resources and more third-party resources. With this API, developers will be able to manage the lifecycle of these resources consistently and uniformly, eliminating the need to manage them separately.

Find and update resources.

The API can create, retrieve, update, and delete AWS resources. It can also list resources or check the current resource state. The API contains various resource types representing different AWS services and third-party products that integrate with AWS. For example, the Amazon S3 bucket is a resource type.

The advantage here is that you can make sure that your application will interact with AWS resources without having to code it yourself. For example, the Amazon EC2 service offers many different instance types and sizes, making it hard to develop an application capable of working with all possible EC2 instances. However, by using the EC2 API's you can discover what instance types exist on AWS and how they should be addressed in your application code.

Discover resources and identify resource type schema

The Amazon Web Services control API provides an interface for creating, reading, updating, and deleting AWS resources. This API is used to discover resources and identify resource-type schema.

These API calls allow you to retrieve the descriptive metadata for a specified resource, such as its name, kind, associated tags, or any other user-defined tags. You can also use these API calls to determine the resource type of a specified Amazon EC2 instance image or Amazon EBS volume.

Create and manage resources

The AWS API provides a set of web services that enable you to create and manage AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon S3 buckets, and Amazon DynamoDB tables. You can use the API when you need programmatic or automated access to AWS resources.

The AWS API enables you to control your AWS resources with simple HTTP requests, which means you can automate many of the tasks that you would otherwise have to perform manually. Because AWS uses REST-based access, you can also use any programming language and development environment that support HTTP calls to integrate it into your application infrastructure.

Expose AWS resources to clients  

There are many reasons you might want to expose new AWS resources to your customers automatically. Maybe you want to give them a self-service way to create their own IAM policies and roles, or you need to launch a new database for them and don't want them to have to contact you.

Whatever the case may be, it is possible through the AWS Cloud control API. The API was designed for this exact use case: automating things so that customers can do it themselves without going through support.

One of the most common use cases is creating additional security groups for an EC2 instance. To illustrate this, imagine that our company has launched an EC2 instance with two security groups: one for public access and another for internal access only.

When customers launch an EC2 instance with our AMI, they will default to the public security group. However, they may want the option to change this group type at run time, depending on their needs. They could request this change via email or chat, but it's much more convenient if they can just do it themselves!

Provision resources with third-party infrastructure tools

Cloud control APIs let you provision AWS resources with third-party tools. These tools can be used to manage infrastructure as code (IaC). You can manage your resources through configuration files and scripts. These scripts are versioned and executed by CI/CD system.

The Cloud control API provides a consistent interface for provisioning cloud resources across multiple regions with different partners. It minimizes errors while creating order management and deployment in the AWS cloud.

In a nutshell

Cloud control API helps developers automate many routine tasks associated with cloud computing. Tasks like creating on-demand instances or deleting them when they are no longer needed can be automated using the Cloud control API. This makes it easier for developers to focus on writing their own applications without having to worry about every little detail that comes with managing operations in the cloud.

Want to learn more? Schedule here with one of our experts today

kirill-morozov-blog
2022/01
Jan 16, 2022 8:59:35 PM
AWS Cloud control API
AWS, API

Jan 16, 2022 8:59:35 PM

AWS Cloud control API

AWS Cloud Control is a unified API that enables developers to automate the management of AWS resources. Amazon Web Service recently released the API. It allows developers to access a centralized API for managing the lifecycle of tons of AWS resources and more third-party resources. With this API,...

The Latest Updates from AWS re:Invent: Cloudride’s Insight

In our last blog post reporting from AWS re:Invent, we covered The Most Prominent Innovation and Tech Developments in the Field of Backup & Storage.This week we’re all about Networking, Content Delivery and Next Generation Compute. So let’s get down to business with the most important highlights for 2022:

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) IP Address Manager (IPAM)

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) IP Address Manager (IPAM) is a simple and secure way to connect applications running in a VPC to resources outside of the VPC. This new feature, in addition to existing connectivity options such as VPN connections and AWS Direct Connect, helps customers extend their existing network infrastructure into the AWS cloud. In addition, VPC with PrivateLink makes it easier for customers to manage their expanding IP address needs by introducing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) IP Address Manager (IPAM).

You can use IPAM to discover and monitor the IP addresses in your VPCs and manage address space across multiple VPCs. IP addresses can include static IP addresses and Amazon Elastic IP addresses (EIPs). You can use IPAM to find unused addresses in your VPCs so that you can consolidate IP addresses. IPAM provides visibility into an organization's IP usage, allowing administrators to see IP address utilization across their AWS environment and control and automation tools that allow them to manage IP address requests.

The feature is part of Amazon's larger effort to make it easier for companies of all sizes to move workloads into the cloud. IPAM uses native VPC functionality to provide subnet-level visibility into each customer's entire public IPv4 address space. Customers simply create a VPC and then add their subnets, and IPAM automatically provisions IP addresses for each subnet, without any further configuration required by the customer.

Kinesis Data Streams On-Demand

Tectonic shifts are happening in cloud computing: with serverless computing on the rise and SaaS applications becoming increasingly dependent on streaming data, AWS's new Kinesis Data Streams service is designed to help companies capture and analyze this data.

Kinesis Data Streams enables you to build and run real-time data applications by using a serverless approach. That means you can have a data stream up and running in minutes without having to provision or manage any infrastructure. The service scales automatically and runs your code when events occur. It also handles the operational details of running your code, like monitoring for failures, managing upgrades, and applying security patches.

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams enables you to capture a high volume of data in real-time, process the data for custom analytics, and store the data for batch-oriented analytics. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams can stream data for various use cases, from microservices to operational analytics and Data Lake storage, among other scenarios. You can build and host your own applications to process and store data or use the AWS SDKs to build custom applications in Java, .Net, PHP, Python, or Node.js.

Graviton3

New Amazon EC2 C7g instances, powered by Graviton 3, are designed to deliver the performance and cost savings that allow you to run more of your workloads on AWS while also providing lower latency, higher IOPS, and higher memory bandwidth than previous generations of EC2 compute instances.

The new C7g instances include eight Graviton3 CPU cores, each with 128 KB of L2 cache and SSE4.1 support for improved floating-point performance. Each core is independently multithreaded and can run simultaneous threads at 2.5 GHz.

Custom-designed AWS Graviton3 processors provide greater compute density and power efficiency than general-purpose processors. They allow for more CPU cores per rack unit, more RAM per instance, and higher I/O bandwidth per instance than in previous generations of EC2 compute instances.

Tests have shown that with a mixed workload of MySQL and Memcached technologies, EC2 C7g instances can achieve up to a 75% reduction in latency for applications with increased throughput and reduced tail latencies.

 

AWS Karpenter; a new open-source Kubernetes cluster autoscaling project

AWS Karpenter is a new open source project that makes setting up and manages Kubernetes clusters across multiple AWS regions. Karpenter can be used to provision and manage AWS EC2 instances to autoscaling in response to traffic. It uses Amazon CloudWatch Events as an input to trigger scaling operations on Kubernetes clusters running on AWS.

If you're in the process of migrating to a containerized platform, or you're looking for a way to help your developers build and deploy applications faster, Karpenter might be an interesting project to check out.

The cluster management system allows users to allocate resources across a set of Kubernetes cluster instances. The key benefit of the cluster manager is it allows users to scale the number of nodes in the cluster dynamically according to traffic patterns. This results in lower running costs and higher throughput during peak periods.

Users can easily specify their application requirements, select the best infrastructure and software configuration, receive a deployment plan, and have their cluster ready in minutes.

As a Certified AWS partner, we expect AWS to be previewing even more new technology and innovation on an ongoing basis. If you are interested in AWS services, be sure to give the book a free call here for white-glove consultation on migration, cost, and performance optimization.

 

danny-levran
2022/01
Jan 9, 2022 7:13:13 PM
The Latest Updates from AWS re:Invent: Cloudride’s Insight
AWS, AWS re:Invent

Jan 9, 2022 7:13:13 PM

The Latest Updates from AWS re:Invent: Cloudride’s Insight

In our last blog post reporting from AWS re:Invent, we covered The Most Prominent Innovation and Tech Developments in the Field of Backup & Storage.This week we’re all about Networking, Content Delivery and Next Generation Compute. So let’s get down to business with the most important highlights...

What's new in Backups & Storage from AWS re:Invent

This year’s AWS re: invent conference held in Las Vegas on November 29th – December 3rd of 2021, was incredible, presenting dozens of new innovations and technologies, covering practically every aspect of the public cloud. To make things easier on you – here’s a series of several posts where we’ve gathered the most important highlights, and we’re proud to open with (drumroll) – The Most Prominent Innovation and Tech Developments in the Field of Backup & Storage.

AWS announces Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval 

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval will allow users to access archived data in less than five minutes, thanks to intelligent access technology. The service will also offer up to 90 percent savings on storage costs compared with Amazon S3 SIA.

Amazon S3 Glacier offers the following storage classes: one for frequent access with the lowest per-gigabyte retrieval costs; one for long-term archive and infrequent access; and one for use cases that require even lower retrieval costs.

Tiered storage will be available to all AWS customers in all AWS regions and supported by S3 and Amazon Glacier. Archive-IA's pricing is similar to that of the Simple Storage Service (S3) Standard-IA storage class. Both offer a lower per GB price and per request price than S3 Standard-Infrequent Access, which offers faster retrieval times at a higher price.

IMG-20211227-WA0016

AWS Develops Amazon Dynamo DB Standard-Infrequent Access 

In Amazon's cloud database, DynamoDB, the company has recently introduced a new database storage class called DynamoDB Standard-IA. This Infrequent Access storage class reduces database storage costs by up to 60 percent. DynamoDB tables using the Standard-IA storage class provide the same high throughput, low latency performance, and throughput capacity units as the existing Provisioned I/O and Throughput Optimized storage classes. Data in this storage class is stored on the same replicated storage infrastructure that provides the high availability and durability that DynamoDB customers expect.

Implementing the DynamoDB key-value store will use less capacity and cost less money for apps that don't need high write performance and low latency. It's still in preview mode but will become generally available early next year. Developers will get to build applications that retrieve infrequently accessed data directly from Amazon DynamoDB tables at a fraction of the cost of other options such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

AWS Unveils AWS Backup for Amazon S3

AWS Backup for S3 further simplifies the backup data management with built-in compression and encryption, policy-based retention, flexible restore, and retrieval options. You can easily create a backup policy in AWS Backup that backs up data in an Amazon S3 bucket associated with an Amazon EC2 instance or an RDS database.

The protection you can get by backing up an Amazon S3 bucket is the same as when backing up an Amazon EC2 instance or an RDS database. You can recover to the most recent point in time, you can recover individual files and folders, and you can protect data from malware with VMR.

The first step to using AWS Backup for Amazon S3 (Preview) is creating a backup policy. You can then assign the Amazon S3 buckets to be included in a backup job. You can specify filters that limit the Amazon S3 buckets that are backed up. You can use the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface to get started.

AWS Backup offers advanced functionality to ensure that you can maintain and demonstrate compliance with your organizational data protection policies to auditors.

AWS announces Amazon Redshift Serverless  

Amazon Redshift Serverless is a fully managed data warehouse that makes it easy to quickly analyze large amounts of data using your existing business intelligence tools. Amazon Redshift Serverless automatically provisions the right compute resources for you to get started. You only pay for the processing time you use, and there are no upfront costs or commitments.

You don't need to provide the infrastructure because Amazon Redshift does it for you. You can focus on getting your data loaded, performing queries, and processing results, without having to worry about provisioning resources and managing servers.

The platform is built upon PostgreSQL, an implementation of the Structured Query Language (SQL), which means you can use the same skills and knowledge you have built up over the years to access the information in your company's data warehouse. 

Amazon Redshift offers scale and performance that traditional data warehouses do not, using a columnar storage system that allows for faster data processing. Whether you want to use it for a big data project or a small project, this is the tool for you to use.

VS. (9)

Takeaway:

As a trusted AWS Partner, we know first-hand that Amazon Web Services is always coming up with new ideas and innovations. Wait for the next chapter in our AWS re:Invent series or just book a call here to find out more.

 

danny-levran
2021/12
Dec 28, 2021 8:50:37 PM
What's new in Backups & Storage from AWS re:Invent
AWS, AWS re:Invent

Dec 28, 2021 8:50:37 PM

What's new in Backups & Storage from AWS re:Invent

This year’s AWS re: invent conference held in Las Vegas on November 29th – December 3rd of 2021, was incredible, presenting dozens of new innovations and technologies, covering practically every aspect of the public cloud. To make things easier on you – here’s a series of several posts where we’ve...

Ways Cloud Computing Can Help the Agriculture Industry Grow

Agriculture can be considered a perfect field in which the main emerging technologies, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, IoT, robotics, and edge computing, can find immediate application quickly and on a large scale.

Innovating agriculture and food production systems is one of the most critical and complex challenges that modern society must face in the short term. The progressive increase of the world population and the consequent further erosion of already limited resources to meet billions of individuals' increasingly elaborate and sophisticated needs could lead to the collapse of the entire system in the absence of a digital revolution capable of completely innovating.

It is, therefore, necessary to introduce tools, technologies, and solutions capable of reducing the environmental impact and automating production processes. They should make the complex and articulated agro-food chain efficient, streamlined, safe, and "traceable" to promptly provide everyone with healthy products, fast and at controlled prices.

Imagine the possibility of having a fleet of agribots capable of plowing fields, of drones capable of accurately mapping the territory and starting photo-interpretation processes. Think of animals interconnected with an operations center thanks to the Internet of Things, to self-driving tractors.  Finally, picture a fully integrated system in which all the actors described so far coexist harmoniously. All these systems will rely on dependable and scalable operations on the cloud instead of traditional data centers.

Emerging Cloud Technologies in Transformative Agriculture: Case Studies

Grove Technologies AWS CEA

Let’s take a closer look at  Grove Technologies who uses AWS to unlock multi-faceted solutions that offer insights into crop performance. Using AWS IoT Greengrass, they connected intelligent edge devices to the cloud, for instance, for anomaly detection in an expertly designed controlled agriculture environment. Their software and configuration can now be deployed and managed remotely and at scale without updating firmware.

Growers use wireless sensors placed in the fields for various tasks, including estimating agricultural parameters that are critical such as temperature, watering levels, and yield estimates.

By using AWS IoT Greengrass, the data is streamed into AWS IoT Core. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon DynamoDB store ingested data using AWS IoT rules. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams are also used to batch and process incoming data. Technology is applied to send regular updates on crop/animal details,  farm conditions, or weather.

Solerfertigation

The Solarfertigation project, to which three universities have contributed in various capacities, indeed represents an important example of collaboration and strategic partnership between the private sector and the public administration.

Cloud operations and solutions helped to ensure a lower consumption of water resources and fertilizers by integrating a software module to support the farmer's decisions. Systems were deployed capable of concretely implementing the identified solutions based on analyzing the data from the network of “intelligent” sensors.

Fascinating is their integration of a photovoltaic system, which makes the product energy self-sufficient and allows farmers to arrive even in areas of their land not served by electricity. Furthermore, the system is equipped with an automatic module for the dosage of fertilizers to manage different crops in different parts of the same field.

To continuously improve irrigation activities and calibrate them based on soil conditions.  Solarfertigation also allows farmers to collect environmental data from the field, integrate with meteorological information and develop the correct fertigation solution to increase the productivity of the land, simplify the management of the field and recover fertile areas.

Accenture hybrid Agri cloud integration

A different approach is based not on specific "vertical" applications but aimed at guaranteeing a "holistic" vision of an agricultural company.  This approach is adopted by the famous  multinational Accenture, which has implemented a service to overcome the transition period towards digital.

Farmers get to manage multiple IT tools and solutions separately to start a new era in which technology does not produce sectorial information but coordinates the entire activity through a series of correlated actions based on the data collected and processed in real-time.

Specifically, Accenture's goal is to help farmers make data-driven operational decisions to optimize yield and increase revenue by minimizing expenses, crop failure chances, and environmental impact while increasing profitability. Total of an estimated $ 55 to $ 110 per acre.

The digital agriculture service by Accenture, in particular, aggregates granular data in real-time from multiple heterogeneous sources such as environmental sensors. It combined data from images obtained by remote sensing (which show the stress of the crop before it is visible to the naked eye), "equipment from the field,” meteorological information, and soil database supported on different clouds.

 

To Conclude,

Many customers today seek to leverage the cloud’s never ending storage capacity and strong compute abilities.

 Agro-tech like many other industries processes incredible amounts of data from their sensors and devices and what can be better than storing then in an available & durable manner like the cloud? We recommend on using S3 for object storing and the ability to run queries on the data with services such as Amazon Athena. You can setup integration with Sage Maker to build and train models based on that data and many more applications, helping you leverage the cloud storage and ML pre-built tools.

 

Want to learn more? Book a meeting today. 

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/11
Nov 23, 2021 6:00:59 PM
Ways Cloud Computing Can Help the Agriculture Industry Grow
Cloud Computing, Agriculture

Nov 23, 2021 6:00:59 PM

Ways Cloud Computing Can Help the Agriculture Industry Grow

Agriculture can be considered a perfect field in which the main emerging technologies, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, IoT, robotics, and edge computing, can find immediate application quickly and on a large scale.

Guide for Preparing Your Infrastructure for Black Friday Surges

Black Friday is becoming a longer sales marathon, and that of 2021 is the first post-pandemic. For brands that want to take the opportunity to increase sales, increase and retain their customers, it's imperative to bolster infrastructure in readiness for massive web traffic.

For many people, the shopping season is the best time of the year, but it is certainly the busiest for retailers. Hordes of eager gift shoppers flock to stores and websites during November and December, with sales that can account for up to 30 % of a company's annual sales. And especially on peak shopping days, such as Black Friday. Online merchants see three times more traffic than usual.


This figure is destined to grow further this year, given the eCommerce boom linked to the pandemic. To take advantage of this increased activity on the web, retailers must rapidly expand their infrastructures and operations to cope with the surge in demand. It is not an easy task, but AWS provides an architecture center that delivers deep architecture insights, diagrams, solutions, patterns, and best practices for optimal enhancements before, during, and after Black Friday.

AWS Best Practices Framework Helps You Not Miss a Single Sale

We know that increasingly customers want frictionless shopping experiences. Forward-thinking eCommerce stores and retailers will leverage AWS Well-Architected Framework to help users effortlessly and comfortably complete their online shopping. 

Imagine the frustration that a potential customer might feel, perhaps already ready to click on "Buy now" to see that the site collapses and is no longer reachable. No, no, no. Bad sign! And often, this will lead him to give up and turn to a competitor.

AWS Well-Architected Framework helps sellers and retailers figure out what is working and what is not and what could be better in their entire infrastructure. This delivers opportunities for efficiency in the face of extreme traffic spikes and ways to cut costs and improve security. 

AWS Solutions for Black Friday IT

To avoid losing customers and damaging the brand image due to an unplanned website block, the most experienced technology leaders test their infrastructures well in advance. Many rely on AWS cloud solutions to dynamically add more compute and storage resources as site traffic rises and then automatically scale down as demand decreases. In addition to preventing outages, the transfer of traffic often reduces the cost of hosting the infrastructure.

Furthermore, another aspect not to be underestimated is related to speed. While smartphone purchases are overtaking desktop purchases, over 50% of sites are abandoned when it takes more than three seconds to load.

To reduce latency on their mobile sites and apps during the holidays, retailers can use  AWS cloud solutions that deliver content across all points of presence distributed globally. AWS' fault injection simulator empowers retailers to test their websites (undertones of pressure) for failures before the actual high traffic day. This is the famous chaos engineering that could save you thousands of dollars in losses this Black Friday.

But it's not just about online sales. AWS high-speed hosting can help shorten waiting times - and long queues - even for in-store shoppers, now that many retailers have adopted cloud-based solutions that allow salespeople to make payments by card. Because all the information gets stored in the cloud rather than locally, these systems have the added benefit of seamlessly integrating with other data sources, such as loyalty program records and recommendation engines.

What Are the Characteristics of The Ideal Cloud Server for Black Friday?

Even when you can seamlessly adjust the computing power of your cloud server or, more generally, of your architecture in time, the importance of careful and continuous monitoring, which is a sort of operational supervision, must be considered.

Suppose the campaign you have in mind for Black Friday, for example, was to be very successful. In the face of particular traffic spikes, a slowdown in the loading times of the landing pages or even their unreachability would cause severe damage to your business. You will witness a practically immediate abandonment of users, not to mention the reputation of your brand.

Hence technical factor, i.e., the adequacy of the cloud infrastructure and the human one, i.e., the adequacy of the type of assistance offered by the provider, is essential.

To summarize in a few points, the below characteristics make AWS an ideal cloud for Black Friday and the optimal reaction to traffic spikes:

  • It has immediate scalability that does not involve variations of any kind: where it is enough, in short, to adapt the resources with vertical upgrades 
  • You can add other virtual machines and scale those machines that already make up the web architecture
  • Ease of use and flexible, good infrastructure optimization/tuning 
  • Reliable security and encryptions 
  • Amazon Cloudfront helps with low latency and seamless content delivery
  • Workload sharing enables seamless collaboration for robust architecture implementation for transparency, efficiency, and security
  • Fast response one-on-one support

Do you want to know more about how AWS solutions can empower you to create a high-performing infrastructure for Black Friday? We have helped many eCommerce providers optimize efficiency and profitability with cloud solutions. Book a meeting today. 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2021/11
Nov 7, 2021 3:36:03 PM
Guide for Preparing Your Infrastructure for Black Friday Surges
AWS, E-Commerce, Black-Friday

Nov 7, 2021 3:36:03 PM

Guide for Preparing Your Infrastructure for Black Friday Surges

Black Friday is becoming a longer sales marathon, and that of 2021 is the first post-pandemic. For brands that want to take the opportunity to increase sales, increase and retain their customers, it's imperative to bolster infrastructure in readiness for massive web traffic.

CloudFormation vs Terraform: Which One is Better for business?

Code-based infrastructure is on the rise. Essentially, it means that you're deploying IT on servers and managing it as software instead of as hardware. Instead of buying or configuring individual servers, which may be an up-front cost but later require subsequent costs for upkeep and maintenance, you can simply use another server with your virtual environment - it's easier to upgrade this way.

AWS has a tool named CloudFormation, which is used for provisioning and managing EC2 instances along with storage devices, security features, and networking components. There is also an open-source alternative called Terraform. This article will go over the differences and similarities between these two tools and provide you with information to help you choose the right one for your business needs.

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation refers to an AWS service that changes how you manage your cloud infrastructure, providing security and ensuring that your enterprise cloud environment is efficient. In addition, you can build AWS or third-party apps easier with this framework, allowing you to view the entire deployment library as one unit of the whole application.

CloudFormation allows individuals and teams to quickly provide a well-defined application stack that can create predictable destruction of cloud-provided resources accurately and predictably, enabling teams to change their infrastructure more efficiently.

Terraform‍

Terraform is an open-source software tool for managing several remote cloud services simultaneously while allowing users to control their configurations more effectively. Terraform will enable clients to devise plans that interface with each service's specific configuration parameters, then automatically generate documentation-compliant responses.

This open-source software tool was built by HashiCorp and helped users set up and provision data center infrastructure. In Terraform, APIs are codified into declarative configurations that team members can share, edit, review, and version.

State management

The Amazon CloudFormation service allows users to track and report on changes to provisioned infrastructure. It is possible, for instance, to change some parameters of an AWS resource without destroying or rebuilding some help, but some parameters must be reconstructed. AWS CloudFormation will determine if dependency on the resource exists before it deletes the resource.

The Terraform infrastructure state is stored locally on the working computer or remotely (for team access). A Terraform state file describes which service manages resources and how they are configured. The state file is in JSON format.

AWS CloudFormation won't stop the deployment if it suddenly realizes that one of your provisioned resources has become unavailable. On the other hand, Terraform will roll back the deployment to the last update if there is a glitch.

Language

Terraform is written in HashiCorp Configuration Language, HCL, while AWS CloudFormation is written in JSON or YAML. Overall, YAML is an easier format than JSON because it has fewer requirements and it's far more readable. However, there's still one thing that you must watch out for, and that's indentation because things go wrong if you mess up. HCL only has a handful of validators, and they all enforce basic formatting requirements. This helps developers to go through the most fundamental parts of their projects quickly.

Modularity

Terraform helps developers create reusable templates by allowing them to keep their code in self-contained modules. Since the templates are maintained at high levels, you can quickly build your infrastructure without being bogged down by details.

Nested stacks are used in CloudFormation, allowing a templated way to create or change infrastructure resources. You can call one template within another, which becomes even more complex if multiple templates call each other. Stack sets help with this by following some extra guidelines to ensure everything runs smoothly without human error.

Compared with CloudFormation, Terraform is more module-centric. Companies can create their modules or pull in modules from any provider who supports them.

Configuration

Terraform works with data providers of all kinds responsible for returning the data required to describe the managed infrastructure. This is done modularly, allowing users to use data and functionality outside Terraform to generate or retrieve information that Terraform then uses to update or provision infrastructure.

CloudFormation has a limit of 200 parameters (previously 60) for every template. Each of these parameters is referenced by an 'id' you choose for it at the time of creation, and CloudFormation uses this id to recognize which variables are which when they appear in templates. The different variable ids are handy when your templates start growing in size since it's easy to spot the IDs in place of total words when writing them into template language. This makes writing these templates much easier when using dynamics id’s that change with every loop statement, etc. - hopefully making it easier for new users to get up to speed more quickly.

In a nutshell, neither tool is inferior to the other when it comes to managing cloud infrastructure. AWS CloudFormation might be a better choice if you already use AWS tools and want no external ties to 3rd parties. On the other hand, Terraform might be more valuable for you if you are interested in integrating a platform that works across multiple cloud providers.

With Cloudride, you can rest easy knowing that we work with cloud providers to help you choose the solution that meets your needs. We will assist you in finding the best performance, high security, and cost-saving cloud solutions to maximize business value.

Book a meeting today. 

 

yarden-shitrit
2021/10
Oct 17, 2021 9:25:28 AM
CloudFormation vs Terraform: Which One is Better for business?
AWS, CloudFormation, Terraform

Oct 17, 2021 9:25:28 AM

CloudFormation vs Terraform: Which One is Better for business?

Code-based infrastructure is on the rise. Essentially, it means that you're deploying IT on servers and managing it as software instead of as hardware. Instead of buying or configuring individual servers, which may be an up-front cost but later require subsequent costs for upkeep and maintenance,...

AWS Lambda Cost Optimization Strategies That Work

Although moving into the cloud can mean that your IT budget increases, cloud computing helps you customize how it runs. There are many advantages to using AWS - whether you're using it for just one application or using the cloud as a data center. The advantage of using AWS is that you save money on other aspects of your business, allowing you to spend more wisely on AWS services. For example, monitoring time zones to the only charge for the services used at peak times means that costs can be managed anytime.

This means there are great opportunities to save money if users pay only for what they need, making sure that costs are minimized while also providing abilities to scale back when things are quiet.

AWS Lambda Cost Optimization

With AWS Lambda, you only pay for the time your code is running. More time means more money. The best part about this billing model is that it removes virtually all of the guesswork that used to go into planning your infrastructure costs. Since server capacity is provisioned automatically when needed, there's no need for expensive hardware allocations to handle surges in demand!

How AWS Lambda Pricing Works

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of understanding how to lower costs, let's review how Amazon determines the price of AWS Lambda. Amazon's Lambda has several indicators to calculate how much it will cost to run them. The duration is measured according to the time your code began executing until it completes or otherwise ends. Price depends on how much memory your function requires.

The AWS Lambda service is part of Compute Savings Plans, which provide low prices for Amazon EC2, Amazon Fargate, and AWS Lambda if you commit to using them consistently for a period of one or three years. You can save up to 17% on Amazon Lambda when you use Compute

Request pricing

  • Free Tier: 1 million monthly requests
  • Then $0.20 for every million requests

Duration pricing

  • 400,000 GB-seconds free per month
  • $0.00001667 for each GB-second afterward

Function configuration memory size.

An invocation consumes 1.5 GB or less of memory, multiplied by the duration. In practice, GB-sec proves to be rather complicated, despite its simple appearance. If you want to see what your function might cost, you can try an Amazon Lambda cost calculator.

Ways to Optimize AWS Lambda Costs

 

Monitor All AWS Lambda Workloads

There are over 120,000 AWS Lambda functions in the wild. Let's say you own a business. If you want to see every single function, you'd need over 2000 computers in your network just to keep up with what's running. While that's a horrible amount of computer resources, many of us don't have that capability. You can create instances with many cores, memory, storage, and other resources to monitor what's going on.

Your Lambda function will still keep running, but as long as you can monitor the outcome, it's effortless to see what's going on in there. AWS Lambda dashboard from AWS allows you to view metrics from your Lambda functions. You can see live logs of how long functions run and which parts of your code are processing or not.

Reduce Lambda Usage

Lambda usage can be easily optimized and significantly cut down, by simply turning off and downing Lambda services whenever they are not in use.

You can configure AWS Lambda to function on a per-task basis. It might even inspire you to do the same for your other services. Don't use lambdas for simple transforms, or you will find yourself paying more than $0.20 per 1000 calls. If you are deploying a serverless API using AWS AppSync & API Gateway, this happens quite often.

Cache Lambda Responses

Instead of sending a static string to all API endpoints, developers can send response headers that include the exact value the user needs and even identify the intended application using a unique ID.

One of the keys to delivering a very efficient response is to cache those responses, so your endpoints don't need to send it all the time.  A function that is not called doesn't add to your bill. Further, this allows developers to save time and energy and achieve implementations that enhance user experience.

Use Batch Lambda Calls

Sometimes, a server may be under heavy load, and the peak traffic will fluctuate due to intermittent events. Good use of queue could be utilized to make this an effective, fast solution to pause Lambda execution and "batch" code executions. Instead of calling functions on every event, you will be calling only a set number of times during a specific event period.

If the function call rate is constant, the other requests can wait until the function is called.  For outstanding performance, Lambda has native support for AWS queuing services such as Kinesis and SQS. It's essential to test your function optimally and follow these best practices to ensure your data is batched properly.

Never Call Lambda Directly from Lambda

If you want to change the AWS Lambda endpoint on the server, you can't call it directly. This is another example of why Lambda isn't meant to be a transactional backend or database but rather a real-time event-sourced service. You may be using AWS Lambda today without knowing this, but it's easy to minimize your AWS Lambda costs with this knowledge in mind.

There are many options available when it comes to AWS queuing services. SQS, SNS, Kinesis, and Step Functions are just a few that set AWS apart for those tasks that require heavy-hitting responses. You can notify clients with WebSockets or email as your needs arise.

 

Cloudride specializes in providing professional consultancy & implementation planning services for all cloud environments and providers. Whether the target environment is AWS, Azure  GCP, or others, Cloudride specialists are experienced experts with these systems and cater to any need. You no longer have to worry about reducing cloud costs or improving efficiency—just leave that to us. Give us a call today for your free consultation!

Book a meeting today. 

 

haim-yefet
2021/10
Oct 6, 2021 10:23:20 PM
AWS Lambda Cost Optimization Strategies That Work
AWS, Cost Optimization, Lambda

Oct 6, 2021 10:23:20 PM

AWS Lambda Cost Optimization Strategies That Work

Although moving into the cloud can mean that your IT budget increases, cloud computing helps you customize how it runs. There are many advantages to using AWS - whether you're using it for just one application or using the cloud as a data center. The advantage of using AWS is that you save money on...

AWS Fintech Architecture

Rapid innovation, lean six sigma processes, flexible working conditions for employees, and the end of expensive IT infrastructure in-house: cloud computing can be a real cost-saver in a fintech company. In this article, we will review the advantages of AWS for Fintech.

Requirements for Implementing the Cloud in Fintech systems

Many fintech companies have adopted the cloud, and SaaS solutions are being used mainly in peripheral, non-core solution areas, like collaboration, customer relationship management, and the human resources department.

Several capabilities can be identified as related to the infrastructure and tools that can contribute to the Cloud adoption process from an infrastructure standpoint. Cloud Computing will proceed as long as the business strategy and business model are in place. As part of the Cloud Computing model, the key drivers are agility, lower barriers of entry, cost-efficacy, and efficiency. Business innovation, estimated costs, coordinating principles, and desired benefits are the other deciding factors.  

AWS for Fintech:

Since Fintech startups are not dependent on legacy systems, they can take advantage of the cloud, the blockchain, and other revolutionary technologies. The low capital expenditure prices associated with Amazon Web Services Cloud are hugely beneficial for companies in the Fintech sector.

AWS Benefits for Fintech:

  • One-click regulatory compliance 
  • The backup of all transaction data is seamless and secure
  • Scalability and performance guarantee
  • Full-time availability
  • Promotes the DevOps culture

The AWS Fintech Architecture

AWS makes it possible to establish a configuration server, map each server, and set up pricing. Applications are secured using a private virtual server. Redundancy is provided by resource storage in multiple availability zones. AWS EC2 instances are used to host web servers. 

The architecture uses Elastic Load Balancer to balance traffic on your servers. The architecture minimizes latency with CloudFront distribution. It maintains edge locations by acting as a cache for traffic and streaming and web traffic. 

The architecture uses Elastic Load Balancer to balance traffic on your servers. The architecture minimizes latency with CloudFront distribution. It maintains edge locations by acting as a cache for traffic and streaming and web traffic.

Key Components of AWS Architecture for Fintech

Amazon S3

Banks usually have a web of siloed systems, making data consolidation difficult. But auditors expect detailed data presented understandably under Basel IV standards.

Creating a data pipeline will allow us to overcome this first challenge. Fintechs must inventory each data source as it is added to the pipeline. They should determine the key data sources, both internal and external, from which the initial landing page will be populated. 

Amazon S3 provides a highly reliable, durable service. S3 offers capabilities like S3 Object Lock and S3 Glacier Vault for WORM storage. Using Amazon S3, you can organize your applications so that each event triggers a function that populates DynamoDB. Developers can implement these functions using AWS Lambda, which can be used with languages like Python.

Amazon S3 provides a highly reliable, durable service. S3 offers capabilities like S3 Object Lock and S3 Glacier Vault for WORM storage

CI/CD pipeline

CI/CD helps development teams remain more productive. Rework and wait times are eliminated with CI/CD in FinTech. By automating routine processes, software developers can focus on more important code quality and security issues.

But to implement CI/CD, Your workflow will have to change, your testing process will have to be automated, and you will have to convert your repository to Git. Fortunately, this can be all handled on AWS—with ease.

CloudSageMaker pipelines automate and deploy software for teams. The AWS SageMaker service provides machine learning capabilities. Engineers and data scientists can use it to create in-depth models.

Using AWS CodeCommit, teams can create a git-based repository to store, train, and evaluate models. AWS CloudFormation can be used to deploy code and configuration files stored in the repository. The endpoint can be created and updated using AWS CodeBuild and AWS CodePipeline based on approved and reviewed changes.

Every time a new model version is added to the Model Registry, AWS CodeCommit automatically deploys any update it finds in the repository. Amazon S3 allows models, historical data, and model artifacts to be stored.

AWS Fargate

Under the soon-to-be-enforced Basel IV reforms, banks' capital ratios are supposed to be more comparable and transparent. They also call for more credibility in calculating risk-weighted assets (RWAs).

AWS Fargate empowers auditors to rerun Basel credit risk models under specified conditions using a lightweight application. AWS Fargate automates container orchestration and instance management, so you don't have to manage it yourself. Based on demand, tasks will get scaled up or down automatically, optimizing availability and cost-efficiency.

The scalability of Fargate reduces the need for choosing instances and scaling cluster capacities. Fargate separates and isolates each task or pod by running each within its kernel. Thus, fintechs can isolate workloads to evaluate different risk models. 

FinTech and AWS: A perfect match

AWS is a great fit for Fintech companies with an eye on ultimate digital transformations, thanks to its impeccable capabilities and full life cycle support.

At Cloudride, we simplify day-to-day cloud operations and migrations while also offering assistance with AWS cloud security and cost optimization and performance monitoring for Fintech companies.

Book a meeting today. 

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/08
Aug 16, 2021 1:20:23 PM
AWS Fintech Architecture
AWS, Financial Services, Fintech

Aug 16, 2021 1:20:23 PM

AWS Fintech Architecture

Rapid innovation, lean six sigma processes, flexible working conditions for employees, and the end of expensive IT infrastructure in-house: cloud computing can be a real cost-saver in a fintech company. In this article, we will review the advantages of AWS for Fintech.

Cloud Computing in Financial Services AWS Guide

You can’t afford to wait when it comes to shifting to reliable infrastructure. Technological change is happening faster today than at any other time in history, and in order to thrive, businesses must embrace digital transformation through leveraging cloud computing. Banks and other financial institutions need reliable, fast, scalable, and secure cloud computing to maintain a competitive edge in the industry. 

A case in point is the steady rise of the Fintech industry that has brought efficiency, accountability, and transparency in the ways the Banking & Finance industry operates. Banks and their Fintech must now modernize and leverage cutting-edge technologies in Mobile, Cloud computing, and crypto wallet technology like blockchain to survive in a market driven by disruptive tech.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) brings the universe’s most adopted comprehensive cloud resources to provide organizations with easy access to IT services like security, storage, networking, and more. This helps businesses to lower IT costs, transform operations and focus on delivering market demands.

Reasons for IT Decision-Makers in Finance to Adopt the AWS Cloud

Easy Compliance 

Security is critical for cloud financial service companies when migrating sensitive client data to cloud servers. AWS Cloud Financial Services ensure client data security is strengthened from their data center to their network and architecture. This cloud is designed for security-conscious organizations. AWS enables deployment of securer cloud architectures.

In an instant, IT executives can:

  • Deploy a secure architecture
  • Secure your apps by customizing your security requirements to protect applications, systems, platforms, and networks
  • Design virtual banking simulations that meet strict compliance requirements in the finance sector
  • Automate all banking processes securely in a short period

Integrating DevOps Culture 

Companies that churn out new finance features—such as money management apps—for their markets have been able to stay ahead of the curve and own the most significant share of the market. The only way for Fintech companies to achieve quick roll-outs is to embrace DevOps processes. 

AWS cloud services for Fintech offers inbuilt support for DevOps by providing a ready-to-use complete toolchain to provide developers with a private hosting git for their codebase to build automatically, test, etc.

Full-time availability

Speed and availability are critical in addressing today’s business challenges in finance. The market needs to access financial services all the time without encountering downtime, delays, or technical hitches and through internet accessing devices of all shapes and forms. Therefore, Fintech Companies have to be available 24/7, 365 days a year. 

AWS cloud services for Fintech are stored in secure servers to ensure the availability of client data and allow their customers to scale their EC2 capacity up or down according to the usage demands of their consumers. Virtualization enables Fintech companies to run apps on multiple AWS EC2 instances and has their services available 24 x 7 x 365.

Efficient, safe, and seamless data backups

The finance industry runs on transactions. Everyday transactional data must be managed efficiently in databases for future access. Transactional databases must be stored in line with localized disaster management and recovery protocols. In addition, processes dealing with data recovery in case of data loss must be accomplished instantaneously.

AWS’s industry-approved data recovery policies will ensure you recover your data in case of disruptions like natural disasters, power failures, etc., with the click of a button; thus you need not concern yourself with long bureaucratic procedures for data Backup associated with data centers.

Scaling and Performance

Fintech companies mostly deal with the consumer directly. Most likely, the load reliance of their digital apps will experience fluctuations in peak period use as the level of demand for these resources fluctuate with customer demand. 

Therefore, the AWS cloud services for Fintech have servers that downgrade or upgrade automatically to provide constant performance based on traffic. If your organization makes use of applications with predictable server demand patterns in usage, auto-scaling is the most cost convenient resource you can migrate to.

How agile is your current infrastructure? 

The future of financial services is cloud computing, and legacy IT infrastructure will be completely phased out as it can no longer support the needs of the financial market. Let Cloudride help build your infrastructure and network on AWS with guaranteed optimizations in costs, security, and performance. Click here to book a meeting. 

 

haim-yefet
2021/08
Aug 8, 2021 6:24:13 PM
Cloud Computing in Financial Services AWS Guide
AWS, Financial Services

Aug 8, 2021 6:24:13 PM

Cloud Computing in Financial Services AWS Guide

You can’t afford to wait when it comes to shifting to reliable infrastructure. Technological change is happening faster today than at any other time in history, and in order to thrive, businesses must embrace digital transformation through leveraging cloud computing. Banks and other financial...

Key Challenges Facing the Education Sector as Cloud Usage Rises

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, more than one-half of in-person education programs were postponed or canceled around the world. As a result, academic institutions are accelerating cloud adoption efforts to support demand for online and blended learning environments.

73% of respondents in the higher education sector reported an increase in the “rate of new product/new service introduction” as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gartner, Inc. 2021 CIO Agenda: A Higher Education Perspective

The rapid adoption of cloud computing by academic institutions and education technology organizations provides significant advantages when it comes to collaboration, efficiency, and scalability, but it also comes with a new set of challenges. It’s critical for organizations to understand the financial, security, and operational implications of the cloud and what steps they need to take to optimize their investment.

Benefits of cloud computing for education and digital learning

Cloud computing offers several benefits for academic institutions—students have the opportunity to access courses and research materials from any internet-connected device and collaborate with fellow students over projects. Similarly, educators can better monitor online coursework and assess each student’s progress without having to meet face-to-face.

Behind the scenes, online courses can be updated with the click of a mouse, student management is more efficient, collaboration tools can enhance cooperation and productivity between departments, and institutions don’t have to worry about managing their own servers or paying for maintenance and upkeep of on-premises data centers—they have access to nearly unlimited cloud-based storage with data copied across different locations to prevent data loss. This is also true for students who no longer need to purchase physical books or carry around external hard drives.

In short, the benefits of cloud computing in education can be boiled down to the following: 

  • Improved collaboration and communication
  • Easier access to resources
  • Long-term cost savings
  • Less operational and management overhead
  • Scalability and flexibility

Potential challenges of cloud computing for the education sector

Despite its many benefits, the cloud also comes with its own set of challenges for educational institutions—all of which are compounded and accelerated with the rapid pace and scale of adoption. Below we’ll cover the primary challenges these organizations may face when it comes to cloud financial management, operations, and security, and compliance, along with recommendations and solutions to help solve them. 

Cloud financial management

Colleges and universities often rely on donations and tuition to pay for campus facilities and day-to-day operations. It’s critical that these organizations are not wasteful with the money they have and are making every effort to optimize where and how they’re spending for the greatest return on investment.

The potential to save money in the cloud, as compared to on-premises, is huge. But once organizations are up and running, many find that they’re not saving as much as they anticipated, or they’re even spending more than they were before. This doesn’t mean moving to the cloud is a mistake. Overspending in the cloud often stems from a few primary reasons: 

  • The complexity of cloud pricing 
  • Legacy solutions and processes for allocating resources and spend
  • Lack of governance and policies to keep costs in control
  • Insufficient or incomplete visibility into cloud resources and activity 

This is not by any means a complete list, but it covers the primary reasons why we see organizations in the education sector struggle to keep cloud costs in check.

Cloud security and compliance

Security is constantly top of mind for universities and academic institutions—they collect, host, and manage massive amounts of confidential data, including intellectual property, financial records, and the personal information of students and staff. Cybercriminals are actively looking to profit from this information by exploiting security vulnerabilities in the organization’s infrastructure and processes.

As criminals become more sophisticated in their abilities to exploit cloud misconfiguration vulnerabilities, security teams need a smarter approach to adhere to regulations and prevent security breaches. Organizations cannot afford to rely on traditional security methods that might’ve worked with on-premises infrastructure.

Security owners need to rethink classic security concepts and adopt approaches that better address the needs of a dynamic and distributed cloud infrastructure. This includes rethinking how security teams engage with developers and IT, identifying new security and compliance controls, and designing automated processes that help scale security best practices without compromising user experience or slowing down day-to-day operations. 

Cloud operations

The cloud enables education institutions to create a customized infrastructure that is more efficient and flexible, where they can quickly and easily scale up during peak usage times, (e.g. enrollment, back-to-school season, and graduation) and scale down over breaks when usage isn’t as high (spring break, winter holidays, summer, etc.). 

However, managing fluctuations in cloud usage and juggling reservations and discounts across several different departments, cost centers, locations, and needs can be overwhelming, especially when administrators are more accustomed to the traditional way of managing data centers and physical servers. 

Without holistic visibility into cloud activity or a centralized governance program, it’s not hard to see how cloud usage and spending can quickly get out of control. Cloud operations teams need to strike a delicate balance between giving cloud consumers what they need exactly when they need it, while also putting rules in place to govern usage. Continuous governance defines best practices, socializes them, then takes action when a policy or standard is violated. There are several methods for accomplishing continuous governance, including:

  • Creating guidelines and guardrails for efficient cloud operations
  • Setting policies and notifications for when assets drift from the desired state
  • Establishing good tagging hygiene 
  • Grouping all cloud assets by teams, owner, application, and business unit
  • Identifying misconfigured, unsanctioned, and non-standard assets, and rightsizing infrastructure accordingly
  • Establishing show back/chargeback
  • Integrate continuous governance to development and operations workflows

Cloud management solutions to consider

If this all still seems a bit overwhelming, don’t worry—you’re not alone! At CloudHealth, we’ve worked with thousands of organizations worldwide to effectively scale and govern their multi-cloud environments while keeping costs under control. 

The CloudHealth platform provides complete visibility into cloud resources, enabling schools, universities, and education technology organizations to improve collaboration across departments, boost IT efficiency, and maximize the return on their cloud investment.

  • Move faster in your cloud migration process
  • Align business context to cloud data
  • Optimize resource cost and utilization
  • Centralize cloud governance

K-12 schools, E-learning, and higher education institutions depend on Cloudride for experienced help in cloud migration and workflow modernization to improve the quality of the service given to students. We specialize in public and private cloud migration and cost and performance optimization. Contact us here to learn more!

ohad-shushan/blog/
2021/08
Aug 3, 2021 10:03:20 AM
Key Challenges Facing the Education Sector as Cloud Usage Rises
AWS, Education

Aug 3, 2021 10:03:20 AM

Key Challenges Facing the Education Sector as Cloud Usage Rises

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, more than one-half of in-person education programs were postponed or canceled around the world. As a result, academic institutions are accelerating cloud adoption efforts to support demand for online and blended learning environments.

Five Reasons Why Educational Institutions Are Moving to AWS

Cloud migration has increased steadily over the last few years as K–12 schools and colleges, and universities realized the cost benefits and flexibility of virtual workspaces. However, 2020 saw an unprecedented shift to the cloud in both higher education and K–12 learning as the coronavirus pandemic forced virtual learning to the forefront.

As K–12 schools and colleges, and universities make complex decisions around future technology needs, many administrators look to the cloud for answers. This article identifies the five top motivators that are driving institutions to embrace the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud—not just as an emergency solution but as a long-term answer to ongoing student and staff needs. Real-world implementations are included to exemplify how AWS Education Competency Partners can give schools fast, flexible access to the cloud.

Top Five Motivators

1. Cost Savings

With shrinking government funding, enrollment pressure, and unplanned costs, budgets are an ongoing concern for both K–12 school districts and higher education institutions. Schools are looking for the most cost-effective technology solutions. Today, technology needs to do more and cost less, be more flexible, and scale easily. The AWS Cloud offers scalability and pay-as-you-go opportunities that make it simple for schools to quickly and efficiently adjust costs based on budget restrictions and shifting priorities.

2. Data Insights

Increasingly, institutional leadership is recognizing that making smart, efficient decisions requires having access to the right data in real-time. Data lakes and simple-to-use data visualization tools are essential not only for making decisions but also for communicating those decisions effectively with communities and stakeholders.

3. Innovation

A key differentiator for the cloud is innovation. Schools want the flexibility to explore and experiment with new systems in a way that is simple and cost-adaptive, and AWS answers the call. During the COVID-19 pandemic, innovation has become an even higher priority as schools realized they could no longer rely on traditional systems or delivery methods used during in-person instruction. From enabling small-group discussions to handing back grades on tests, administrators needed innovations to empower teachers and professors to move their entire teaching model online.

4. Workplace Flexibility and Security

The role of schools and higher education institutions goes way beyond teaching, and non-teaching staff also need support. In 2020, schools started looking for ways to make it easier for staff to work from home—and for systems that work securely on any home device at any time. Migrating to the AWS Cloud brings greater workplace flexibility. App streaming and virtual desktops allow employees to use the applications they need on their home devices without compromising security.

5. Learning Continuity

After a lengthy school shutdown, staff, teachers, and administrators have one goal in mind: to maintain learning continuity. To do so, schools need to provide students with the resources they need to thrive, including accessible systems that allow students to leverage their own devices for use at home. Leveraging AWS Cloud technology like Amazon AppStream 2.0 enables learning to continue through any emergency and gives students equal access to the tools they need to thrive.

A Long-Term Solution

Many K–12 schools and colleges, and universities have migrated to the cloud in 2020 to respond to the crisis, but the benefits of AWS extend well beyond the current pandemic. The scalability, cost-effectiveness, and innovation of the AWS Cloud that has been a lifesaver during COVID-19 will continue to be relevant as schools and higher education institutions face a fundamental shift in their approach to education. Tapping an AWS Education Competency Partner helps schools get there faster and more efficiently, helping to make sure that they are leveraging every advantage that the cloud has to offer.

K-12 schools, E-learning, and higher education institutions depend on Cloudride for experienced help in cloud migration and workflow modernization to improve the quality of the service given to students. We specialize in public and private cloud migration and cost and performance optimization. Contact us here to learn more!



ohad-shushan/blog/
2021/08
Aug 3, 2021 9:45:02 AM
Five Reasons Why Educational Institutions Are Moving to AWS
AWS, Cloud Migration, Education

Aug 3, 2021 9:45:02 AM

Five Reasons Why Educational Institutions Are Moving to AWS

Cloud migration has increased steadily over the last few years as K–12 schools and colleges, and universities realized the cost benefits and flexibility of virtual workspaces. However, 2020 saw an unprecedented shift to the cloud in both higher education and K–12 learning as the coronavirus...

Cloud IoT for Medical Devices and Healthcare

As digitization advances, cloud computing and IoT are becoming increasingly crucial for the medical field. Making in-depth diagnoses and successful treatments in hospitals and monitoring patients at home are made possible by the Internet of Medical Things (IoT). The patient's data is collected and analyzed through the use of cloud-based medical solutions and connected devices. 

IoT Changes the Equation in Healthcare

Bringing together key technical and business trends such as mobility, automation, and data analytics to improve patient care outcomes is the key to transforming healthcare with the Internet of Things (IoT). A physical object is connected to a network of actuators, sensors, and other medical devices that capture and transmit real-time data about its status. These devices can collect data, which the health center then analyzes to:

  • Improve patient care by offering new or improved healthcare delivery and services to help data handling healthcare organizations differentiate themselves from the competition. 
  • Learn more about patient needs and preferences, enabling healthcare organizations to deliver better care and a personalized care experience. 
  • Make hospital networks smarter by the real-time monitoring of critical medical infrastructure and the automation of the deployment and management of IT infrastructure.

In 2025, the Internet of Medical Things will be worth $543B

IoT medical device providers that provide reliable, secure, and safe products will win, while those that do not will be left behind on the Internet of Medical Things market, which is will grow at a CAGR of 19.9% by 2025.

Cloud IoT Scenarios and the Benefit for Healthcare

Cloud IoT solutions for healthcare can make healthcare organizations smarter and enable them to attain success in patient outcomes and patient experience. Medical IoT can redefine the interaction and connection between users, technology, and equipment in healthcare environments, thereby facilitating the promotion of better care, reducing costs, and improving outcomes.

Applications of MIoT solutions: 

  • Connected medical equipment, such as MRIs and tomography scanners. These devices generate vast streams of data that interact with other IT infrastructures within the network, providing processing such as analysis and visualization.
  • Portable medical devices and remote patient monitoring provide safer and more efficient healthcare through real-time patient vital signs monitoring, post-operative follow-up, and treatment adherence, both in the hospital and remotely. With portable sensors on the body, physicians monitor remotely and can respond to patient's health status in real-time
  • CCTV cameras and security doors with electronic ID card readers increase security and prevent threats and unauthorized entry and exit.
  • Monitoring medical assets, using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to monitor and locate medical equipment, drugs, and supplies. 
  • Preventive maintenance solutions for medical equipment to avoid unplanned repairs to medical equipment, devices, and systems.

The Challenges of Deploying IoT 

MIoT enables unprecedented data flow management, posing a real challenge for the performance, operation, and management of the cloud network infrastructure, with security risks of all origins.

In addition, it increases the risk of cybercrime for healthcare organizations. As a result of the proliferation of sensors and connected devices in the healthcare industry, there has been an explosion of cybersecurity threats.

In healthcare, IoT devices might face particular security risks since many IoT devices aren't built with security requirements in mind or are manufactured by companies who don't know what these requirements are. This is resulting in IoT systems becoming weak links in hospital and healthcare cybersecurity.

IoT cloud network infrastructures for healthcare have to be built securely to protect devices, traffic, and IoT networks, a challenge not addressed by existing security technology. Multiple security measures are needed to achieve this goal.

Healthcare organizations must adapt their traditional network designs to provide the network with a higher level of intelligence, automation, and security to solve these problems.

Managing and operating a cloud network infrastructure suitable for hospitals, clinics, and healthcare facilities need to be secure and privacy-compliant. Infrastructural requirements include:

  • Must enable the integration of IoT devices in an automated and simple manner. A large number of devices and sensors make managing large IoT systems difficult and error-prone. An automatic integration system recognizes and assigns devices within a secure network to proper locations.
  • In order for the IoT system to work properly and efficiently, cloud network resources should be sufficient. An important aspect of the IoT system is the provision of crucial data, which needs a certain level of quality of service (QoS). The provision of reliable service is dependent on the reservation of an appropriate bandwidth over a high-performance cloud network infrastructure.
  • Protect your data and network from cyberattacks. Cybercrime is a serious concern due to the vulnerability of IoT and cloud devices. Security is crucial to reduce the risks. 

 

Cloudride helps hospitals, clinics, and healthcare facilities deploy cloud IoT systems to optimize their products and services, processes, save staff time, make workflows more efficient, and improve the quality of patient service. Contact us here to learn more! 

kirill-morozov-blog
2021/07
Jul 29, 2021 10:39:27 AM
Cloud IoT for Medical Devices and Healthcare
Cloud Security, Cloud Compliances, Healthcare

Jul 29, 2021 10:39:27 AM

Cloud IoT for Medical Devices and Healthcare

As digitization advances, cloud computing and IoT are becoming increasingly crucial for the medical field. Making in-depth diagnoses and successful treatments in hospitals and monitoring patients at home are made possible by the Internet of Medical Things (IoT). The patient's data is collected and...

CEO Report - Cloud Computing Benefits for The Healthcare Industry

Healthcare has shifted from the episodic interventions necessary for contagious diseases and workplace accidents during the post-World War II era. In today's health care system, prevention and management of chronic conditions are the primary goals.

The use of cloud technologies in the healthcare sector provides a way to unlock digital and analytics capabilities. Through better innovation, digitization (such as the digital transformation of stakeholder journeys), and strategic objectives, healthcare practices have the performance leverage they need.

We are witnessing the acceleration of digital health driven by increased consumer adoption, regulatory shifts, greater interoperability and healthcare offerings from tech giants, and business model innovations from healthcare industry incumbents. Ecosystems are evolving. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to transform healthcare digitally by leveraging cloud solutions and services.

Healthcare organizations use cloud technologies to overcome challenges such as interoperability by deploying easily scaled HIPAA-compliant APIs to execute tasks that ingest large quantities of health information at scale without requiring physical infrastructure.

 

How Cloud Computing is Helping Healthcare Organizations Overcome their Challenges

Security and HIPAA compliance 

Nowadays, healthcare information is derived from big data analytics, information from healthcare, and patient engagement. These advancements offer multiple advantages, such as improved accessibility, individualized care, and efficiency. Those same factors, however, can also be risky.

Healthcare providers need to protect sensitive patient information, which can have serious consequences if data privacy violations occur. Additionally, medical devices connected to the internet are vulnerable to attack by hackers because they lack necessary defense mechanisms. On-premise systems may not offer the same level of data security as the cloud.

Flexibility 

Cloud computing is an option that is both flexible and scalable for organizations handling huge amounts of data. The ability to move and manage workloads on multiple clouds facilitates a huge advantage to healthcare businesses, as does the ability to develop new services more quickly and seamlessly. The cloud can provide elasticity, allowing users to increase or decrease the capacity and features required by their business. 

Accessibility

In the cloud, healthcare providers have easy access to their patient data and can manage it efficiently. Access to the data, the assessment of medical experts, and the creation of treatment protocols are vital for all stakeholders.

A cloud-based data storage solution can also simplify the transition between consultations, treatments, insurance, and payments. Telehealth services and post-hospitalization care management are among the advantages of cloud computing.

Tele-health  

Patients and healthcare professionals can save a lot of time and eliminate the need to drive and wait in line through telehealth services. A medical device at home performs assessment of the patient's health, uploads the indicators to the cloud, then the doctor analyzes them and provides a diagnosis.

New research 

Medical devices, from a data perspective, represent small data pools today. This big data becomes readily available and useful for better healthcare delivery when providers switch to the cloud.

The cloud makes it possible to transition the research environment to the clinic environment. The available data can be analyzed using big data machine learning algorithms to research new therapies and care models.

Data-driven cloud medical compliance 

IoT technologies allow clinicians to easily capture and analyze data related to health management. It's hard to see the big picture without a way to centralize and review this data. In contrast, when clinical devices are connected to a cloud and data is sent to the cloud, clinicians can review all available patient data and make better data-driven decisions.

Better device management

IoT makes certain medical devices - like wellbeing trackers - even more effective. An individual's biological function must be monitored at all times with these medical devices. Through IoT integration, clinicians can monitor the performance of these devices "always on." The provider can examine the data if aberrations are detected to determine whether the issue is with the patient or the device.

Bringing predictive analytics to the cloud will allow healthcare providers to identify devices at risk of failure to take action proactively.

Better healthcare is tenable where there are systems in place to help people maintain their wellness, with customized care available when needed. The cloud offers healthcare organizations solutions that help them accomplish their objectives.

 

Are you interested in the feasibility and application of the cloud in the health industry? Contact us here to learn how to help you move to the cloud and accelerate your cloud healthcare compliance.




danny-levran
2021/07
Jul 22, 2021 9:40:38 AM
CEO Report - Cloud Computing Benefits for The Healthcare Industry
Cloud Compliances, Healthcare

Jul 22, 2021 9:40:38 AM

CEO Report - Cloud Computing Benefits for The Healthcare Industry

Healthcare has shifted from the episodic interventions necessary for contagious diseases and workplace accidents during the post-World War II era. In today's health care system, prevention and management of chronic conditions are the primary goals.

The use of cloud technologies in the healthcare...

HIPAA Compliance in the Cloud

Healthcare organizations have massive regulatory obligation and liability risk when using cloud services to store, or process protected health information (PHI) or building web-based applications that handle PHI, and therefore are subject to the strictest security requirements.

Risk Analysis of Platforms 

HIPAA certification does not guarantee the cloud provider's compliance. And even when they claim to be HIPAA compliant or support HIPAA compliance, covered entities must perform a risk assessment of the risks associated with using the platform with ePHI.

Risk Management 

Creating risk management policies related to a service is the next step after performing a risk analysis. There should be a reasonable and appropriate level of risk management for all risks identified.

The covered entity must fully comprehend cloud computing and the platform provider's services to perform a comprehensive, HIPAA-compliant risk analysis.

Business Associate Agreement (BAA) 

As a result of the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, businesses that create, receive, maintain, or transmit PHI are part of the HIPAA business associates' definition. Cloud computing platforms providers clearly fall under the latter two categories.

Therefore, an entity covered by a cloud platform must obtain a business associate agreement (BAA) from the provider. BAAs are contracts between covered entities and service providers. Platform providers must explain all elements of HIPAA Rules that apply to them, establish clear guidelines on the permitted uses and disclosures of PHI, and implement appropriate safeguards to prevent unauthorized disclosures of ePHI.  

Common Challenges for Covered Entities

A BAA doesn't automatically make you HIPAA compliant.

It is still possible to violate the HIPAA Rules even with a BAA in place. As a result, no cloud service by itself can truly comply with HIPAA. The responsibility for compliance falls on the covered entity. If an entity misconfigures or does not enforce the right access controls, it is the entity that is faulted for non-compliance, not Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.  

Complex requirements for access controls

Access to ePHI must be verified and authenticated before anyone is allowed access to it. That means that you must secure the infrastructure containing electronic health information in all its aspects—from servers to databases, load balancers, and more.

Extensive audit logs and controls

Reporting on all attempts to access ePHI, whether successful and unsuccessful, is mandatory. 

Security concerns in storage 

ePHI is stored in a lot of healthcare information systems. A document scan, X-ray, or CT scan are all classified under this category. Encryption and access management controls are mandatory to prevent unauthorized access to these files when they are sent over a network. 

Requirements for encryption of data-in-transit

To prevent the transmission of ePHI over an open wire on an open connection, all messages and data that leave a server must be encrypted.

Requirements for encryption of data-at-rest

There is no HIPAA requirement for encryption at rest. However, data encryption at rest is a best practice to protect it from external users with physical access to hardware. 

Access controls

One of the most robust ways of securing your servers is to firewall them so that only people with appropriate access can log on and use them to enable Active Directory integration. The result is a double layer of protection. This prevents operation system vulnerabilities from getting exploited by hackers.

Audit logs and controls

The software you write must allow for audit logging of every access to HIPAA data and when it was accessed. You can create a log file (or SQL database table) to track these logs.

Secure storage 

It's possible to store files in a secure manner using the following options:

Amazon S3: Amazon Simple Storage Service provides industry-leading storage, scalability, availability, security, and performance of data.

AWS EBS: AWS offers Amazon EBS (Amazon Elastic Block Store), which allows persistent block storage across Amazon EC2 instances

Encrypt data-in-transit

You can encrypt all traffic over NFS with an industry-standard AES-256 cipher and Transport Layer Security 1.2 (TLS). AWS's EFS mount helper simplifies using EFS, including configuring data encryption in transit through an open-source utility. 

Encrypt data at rest

The option for disk encryption is available when cloud providers provision disk storage for databases, file storage, disk storage, and virtual machines. If a hard drive were stolen from a cloud data center (highly unlikely), the data would be rendered useless by the encryption.

Conclusion

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 requires compliance by many organizations in the healthcare industry. Use this guide to set the foundation of your HIPAA compliance for your cloud-based health services and solutions, or contact us here for more information. 




kirill-morozov-blog
2021/07
Jul 13, 2021 6:12:24 PM
HIPAA Compliance in the Cloud
Cloud Compliances, Healthcare

Jul 13, 2021 6:12:24 PM

HIPAA Compliance in the Cloud

Healthcare organizations have massive regulatory obligation and liability risk when using cloud services to store, or process protected health information (PHI) or building web-based applications that handle PHI, and therefore are subject to the strictest security requirements.

RBAC to Manage Kubernetes

RBAC is an acronym for Role-Based Access Control. You can restrict users and applications to certain areas of the system or network using this approach. Access to valuable resources can be restricted based on a user's role when using role-based access control.

Control of access to network resources by role-based access control (RBAC) is determined by the roles of individual users within the organization. For example, an individual user's access refers to his or her ability to perform specified tasks, such as creating, reading, or editing a file.

Using this approach, IT administrators can create more granular security controls, but they must follow certain processes so they do not unintentionally create a cumbersome system.

For proper implementation of Kubernetes RBAC, the following approaches are recommended:

  • Enforce the principle of least privilege: RBAC disables all access by default. Administrators determine user privileges at a finer level. Ensure you only grant the necessities to users; granting additional permissions can pose a security risk and increase attack surfaces. 
  • Continually adjust your RBAC strategy: RBAC rules and roles are not autonomous - IT teams cannot simply put RBAC policies and walk away. Validating RBAC at a slow pace is the best approach. If a satisfactory state cannot be reached, implement RBAC in phases. 
  • Create fewer roles and reuse existing ones. The purpose of RBAC permissions should not be defeated by customizing Kubernetes roles to suit individual user needs. In RBAC, roles are used rather than users as the determining factor. Identical permissions should be assigned to groups of users, and roles should be reusable. It simplifies role assignments for existing roles, enhancing the efficiency of the role assignment process.

Authentication and Authorization in RBAC

Authentication

pasted image 0 (1)

Authentication occurs after the TLS connection has been established. This is the first step. Next, API servers are configured to run one or more Authenticator Modules by the cluster creation script or cluster admin. Passwords, Plain Tokens, and Client certificates are included in the authentication modules.

Users in Kubernetes

Users in Kubernetes clusters typically fall into two categories: service accounts that Kubernetes manages and normal users. 

Authorization

Authorizing the request should follow after verifying that it is coming from the selected user.  The request must indicate the user's name, the action requested, and the object affected by the request. If the user is authorized to perform the requested action by a policy, then the request is approved.

Admission Control

Modules for modifying or rejecting admission requests are known as Admission Control Modules. Admission Controller Modules can access the contents of the object being created or modified in addition to all the attributes that are available to Authorization Modules. Admission controller modules reject requests instantly, unlike authentication and authorization modules.

 

Role In RBAC

The role you assume in Kubernetes RBAC determines which resources you will access, manage and change. The Kubernetes RBAC model consists of three main components: subjects, roles and rolebindings:

Role and ClusterRoles

This set of permissions defines how permissions can be accessed. Roles govern permissions at the namespace level, while ClusterRoles govern permissions at the cluster level or for all namespaces within a cluster.

RoleBinding and ClusterRoleBinding.

Subjects are listed according to their groups and service accounts, and their associated roles are outlined. There are three types of role bindings: roles, ClusterRoles, and ClusterRoleBindings. RoleBindings bind roles; ClusterRoles  manage permissions on namespaced resources and ClusterRoleBindings bind ClusterRoles to namespaces.

Subjects

Traditionally, subjects in RBAC rules are users, groups, or service accounts.

Aggregated ClusterRoles

Combining several ClusterRoles is possible. ClusterRole objects with aggregate rules are monitored by a controller that runs within the cluster control plane. The rules field of this object provides a label selector that the controller can use to combine other ClusterRole objects.

Referring to subjects

Subjects and roles are bound by RoleBindings or ClusterRoleBindings. Groups, users, and ServiceAccounts are all valid subjects.

A username in Kubernetes is represented as a string. It might be a plain name such as "Ruth," an email name such as "kelly@example.com"; or a string of numbers representing the user's ID. Configuring authentication modules to produce usernames in the format you want is up to you as a cluster administrator.

Role bindings and default roles

API servers often create ClusterRoleBinding and ClusterRoles objects by default. The control plane manages many of these resources directly, as they are system: prefixed.

Auto-reconciliation

Each time the API server starts, missing permissions and missing subjects are added to the default cluster roles. As subjects and permissions change in Kubernetes releases, it allows the cluster to fix accidental modifications.

RBAC authorizers enable auto-reconciliation by default. Default cluster roles or role bindings can be set to false, preventing internal reconciliation. It is important to remember that clusters can become unusable when subjects and default permissions are missing.

 

To Conclude

Kubernetes implementation across organizations is at an all-time high. It is mission-critical, and it demands strict security and compliance rules and measures. By defining which types of actions are allowed for each user based on their role within your organization, you can ensure that your cluster is managed correctly.



ran-dvir/blog/
2021/06
Jun 30, 2021 11:08:38 AM
RBAC to Manage Kubernetes
Cloud Security

Jun 30, 2021 11:08:38 AM

RBAC to Manage Kubernetes

RBAC is an acronym for Role-Based Access Control. You can restrict users and applications to certain areas of the system or network using this approach. Access to valuable resources can be restricted based on a user's role when using role-based access control.

Transit Gateway in the Cloud

Ever wondered how to allow multiple applications that are on separate networks to use the same Shared Resources?

Networking in cloud computing can be complex. The cloud lets us create applications faster and in a more durable fashion without worrying about configuring infrastructure too much with services like AWS Lambda with Api Gateway for serverless architecture or Elastic Beanstalk for Paas and AWS Batch for containers. 

It is as simple as uploading our code and AWS creates the servers behind the scenes for us. 

When deploying many applications in AWS there is a lot of added value to separate them logically, use dedicated VPC for each application. 

 

When deploying an application to AWS we would like to create several environments for dev and production, once again separated logically to VPC's. This method allows us to protect our production environment from accidents and limit access to it so the production will stay available and keep profiting for us.

 

This is great but, proper networking will be creating subnets both public and private with network components such as Internet Gateways and NAT Gateways, Elastic ip's and more. Yes, it will be great because our network will be strong and highly available but also expensive. For example, NAT Gateway pricing is based per  instance, data processed by the NAT Gateway and the data transfer.  

 

So, what can we do? And why do we even want this NAT Gateway?

NAT Gateways allows us to access the internet from instances in private subnets. Without it we either use:

  • instances in public subnets (which is not so great for security reasons) 
  • VPC endpoints to access AWS resources outside our VPC for example, a DynamoDB table or S3 bucket.
  • Not go out to the public internet.

These options are not optimal, but there is a solution. We can set up a management VPC that will hold all of our shared assets such as NAT Gateways and let all VPC's in this region use it.

 

What does a  A Management VPC Look like?

This kind of a VPC will hold all of our shared resources, like Active Directory Instances, Antivirus Orchestrators and more. We will use it as a centralized location to manage and control all of our applications in the cloud, all the VPC will connect to it using a private connection such as peering or VPN. An example can be seen in the following figures:

This kind of a VPC will hold all of our shared resources, like Active Directory Instances, Antivirus Orchestrators and more

We will use it as a centralized location to manage and control all of our applications in the cloud, all the VPC will connect to it using a private connection such as peering or VPN

 


So, we just need to put a route in the route table for the Management VPC?

 

No, sadly it won't work. We do need to configure routing but this is not the way. There is an option to connect VPC's securely using VPC peering but it won't work. When using VPC Peering Traffic must either originate or terminate from a network interface in the VPC.

When using VPC Peering Traffic must either originate or terminate from a network interface in the VPC

We need to use a Transit Gateway!

Transit Gateway is a network component that allows us to transfer data between VPCs and On-premises networks.

 

Traffic Gateway has a few concepts such as:

    • Attachments - VPCs, Direct connect, Peering to another TGW, VPN Connection
  • Transit gateway Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) - the largest packet size allowed to pass in the connection.
  • Transit gateway route table  - route table that includes dynamic and static routes that decide the next hop based on the destination IP address of the packet
  • Associations - Each attachment is associated with exactly one route table. Each route table can be associated with zero to many attachments
  • Route propagation -  A VPC, VPN connection, or Direct Connect gateway can dynamically propagate routes to a transit gateway route table. With a Connect attachment, the routes are propagated to a transit gateway route table by default.

 

In the following example you can see an example of 3 VPCs sharing one NAT Gateway for outbound internet access. VPC A and VPC B are both isolated and can’t be accessed from the outside world. 

 

VPC A and VPC B are both isolated and can’t be accessed from the outside world

 

Transit Gateway pricing is based on hourly charge per attachment and for the amount of traffic processed on the transit gateway.

About the routing, we will need to add the following Route Tables:

  • Application VPCc needs to have in the private subnet route to 0.0.0.0/0 to the Transit Gateway

Destination

Target

VPC-CIDR

local

0.0.0.0/0

TGW- Attachment for VPC

 

  • The Egress or Management VPC needs to have two Route Tables:
    • Private Subnets that will point 0.0.0.0/0 to a NAT Gateway

Destination

Target

VPC-CIDR

local

0.0.0.0/0

NAT-GW

 

  • Public  Subnets that will point 0.0.0.0/0 to a IGW Gateway

Destination

Target

VPC-CIDR

local

0.0.0.0/0

IGW

 

Here is an example of that:

Application VPCc needs to have in the private subnet route to 0.0.0.0/0 to the Transit Gateway

 

What are the other use cases of Transit Gateway?

We can use  the Transit Gateway as centralized router, Network Hub, As a substitute of peering connection and more, all these use cases will direct traffic from our management vpc that users connect to via VPN to our resources in the isolated VPCs:

We can use  the Transit Gateway as centralized router, Network Hub, As a substitute of peering connection and more

 

Not sure if you need a Transit Gateway?

You can depend on Cloudride for experienced help in cloud migration and workflow modernization. We specialize in public and private cloud migration and cost and performance optimization. Contact us here

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/06
Jun 17, 2021 7:10:08 PM
Transit Gateway in the Cloud
AWS, Transit Gateway, High-Tech

Jun 17, 2021 7:10:08 PM

Transit Gateway in the Cloud

Ever wondered how to allow multiple applications that are on separate networks to use the same Shared Resources?

Data Protection in the Cloud and on the Edge

Confidential computing is the promise of working with hypersensitive information in the cloud without anyone being able to access it, even while the data is being processed. The booming field has seen the leading cloud providers’ launch offers since 2020. 

Google, Intel, and similar big players have all rallied behind confidential computing for the secure exchange of documents in the cloud. To be precise, we should rather speak of a hyper-secure and, above all, secret exchange. Unlike traditional cloud security solutions that encrypt data at rest and on transit, confidential computing goes a step further to encrypt your data in processing.

For businesses running operations on the cloud and the Edge, there is no shortage of potential uses of the technology, starting with the transmission of confidential documents liable to be stolen or modified, such as payment-delivery contact details between commercial partners. Or the exchange of give-and-take information between two companies through a smart contract prevents one of the partners from consulting the other's data without revealing their own.

Hardware isolation is used for encryption.

Confidential computing encrypts your data in processing by creating a TEE (Trusted Execution Environment), a secure enclave that isolates applications and operating systems from untrusted code.

Incorporated hardware keys provide data encryption in memory, and cloud providers cannot access these keys. By keeping the data away from the operating system, the TEE enables only authorized code to access the data. Upon alteration of code, the TEE blocks access.

Privacy and security 

This technology allows part of the code and data to be isolated in a "private" region of memory, inaccessible to higher software layers and even to the operating system. With a relatively straightforward concept: protect data while being processed and no longer encrypt it while in storage or transit.

Technologies offering this new type of protection are of interest to the leading developers of microprocessors (ARM, AMD, and NVIDIA) and the cloud leaders (Microsoft, Google, IBM via Red Hat or VMware).

One less barrier to the cloud

Confidential IT removes the remaining barrier to cloud adoption for highly regulated companies or those worried about unauthorized access by third parties to data. This paradigm shift for data security in the cloud spells greater cost control in matters of compliance.

Market watchers also believe that confidential IT will be a deciding factor in convincing companies to move their most sensitive applications and data to the cloud. Gartner has thus placed "privacy-enhancing computing" in its Top 10 technological trends in 2021.

Confidential computing is the hope that the Cloud and the Edge will increasingly evolve into private, the encrypted services where most users can be certain that their applications and data are safe from cloud providers or even unauthorized actors within their organizations. In such a cloud-based environment, you could collaborate on genome research with competitors from across several geographic areas while not revealing any of your sensitive records. The secure collaboration will allow, for example, vaccines to be developed and diseases to be cured faster. Possibilities are endless.

Cloud giants are all in the running.

As businesses move more workloads and data to the cloud, confidential computing makes it possible to do so with the most sensitive applications and data. The cloud giants have understood this, and the leaders have all launched an offer in 2020.

A pioneer in the field, Microsoft, announced in April 2020 the general availability of DCsv2 series virtual machines. These are based on Intel's SGX technology so that neither the operating system, nor the hypervisor, nor Microsoft can access the data being processed. The Signal encrypted messaging application already relies on confidential Microsoft Azure VMs.

A few months later, Google also launched in July 2020 a confidential computing offer, for the moment in beta. Unlike Microsoft, confidential Google Cloud VMs are based on AMD SEV technology. Unlike Intel's, AMD's technology does not protect the integrity of memory, but the solution would be more efficient for demanding applications. In addition, the Google-AMD solution supports Linux VMs and works with existing applications, while the Microsoft-Intel solution only supports Windows VMs and requires rewriting the applications.

Finally, the leader Amazon announced at the end of October 2020 the general availability of AWS Nitro Enclaves on EC2 with similar features. Unlike offers from Microsoft and Google, which use secure environments at the hardware level, AWS's confidential IT solution is based on a software element: its in-house hypervisor Nitro, the result of the takeover in 2015 of the start-up Israeli company Annapurna Labs. While the use of a software enclave is a subject of discussion, the advantage is that it works with all programming languages.

 

To Conclude:

These confidential computing solutions on the market will undoubtedly quickly give rise to many complementary solutions. Whether they are management tools that simplify the use of these environments or development tools to design applications that make the most of these technologies, confidential computing will not remain a secret for long. Contact us here for more details on the best solution for your business. 

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2021/06
Jun 10, 2021 10:54:14 PM
Data Protection in the Cloud and on the Edge
Cloud Security

Jun 10, 2021 10:54:14 PM

Data Protection in the Cloud and on the Edge

Confidential computing is the promise of working with hypersensitive information in the cloud without anyone being able to access it, even while the data is being processed. The booming field has seen the leading cloud providers’ launch offers since 2020. 

Google, Intel, and similar big players...

Cloud at the Heart of Digital Strategies

The cloud has changed the way of consuming and operating computing resources. More and more companies are using the cloud strategy to improve business performance and accelerate digital transformation.

The cloud driving innovation within companies

91% of business and IT decision-makers say they have already implemented innovative projects based on cloud computing solutions. Decision-makers working for operators (telecoms, energy, etc.) and the distribution sector are the first to have taken the plunge to innovate with the cloud.

These solutions allow them to accelerate access to the resources and technological environments necessary to implement advanced digital projects and improve them over time.

 

The promise of the cloud: cheaper, easier, and more agile

From the outset, cloud security presents a strong economic tropism that echoes the performance ambitions of CIOs. With the enrichment of the service catalogs of cloud service providers and the expectations of businesses in terms of digital transformation, the cloud has built its promise around several invariants:

Digital transformation and cost reduction

If done right - Cloud innovations ignite an overall reduction in costs and improved investment capacity enabled by new business capabilities. However, the economic assessment of cloud transformation, "all other things being equal," is complex to draw up and must be interpreted with caution and depends on cost efficiency measures getting implemented from the on-set.

The appeal of agility

Cloud innovations support the growth goals of businesses with a better time to market and a fluidity of the ATAWADAC (Any Time, Anywhere, Any Device, Any Content) experience for end-users.

The promise of cloud service providers thus perfectly echoes the challenges of CIOs. They also say that the primary triggers of their cloud transformation are economic performance and project acceleration. Behind the relatively monolithic promise lies an assortment of different suppliers and technologies. It is up to CIOs to choose which path to lead the digital transformation.

Business differentiation

There have been many disruptions and problems due to the pandemic, including issues in the enterprise. The constant challenges that businesses face have caused them to increase the pace of their digital transformation, resulting in an unprecedented demand for new business models, remote working solutions, and collaboration services.

In a context where digital transformation is emerging as a decisive competitive advantage and a factor of resilience in times of crisis, CIOs find hope in the possibilities of the cloud. Cloud transformation makes rapid strategic changes, extensive integrations, and boundless automaton leveraging ML and AI – possible. 

Operational efficiency 

For businesses focusing on process optimization for operational performance, the cloud gives CIOs a new state-of-the-art perspective. It also offers them an opportunity to rethink the activity in a transversal way to initiate transformations.

First, they can rethink their operation in the light of the expectations of the businesses to meet the need for responsiveness and flexibility. That means breaking down the silos of traditional hyper-specialized activities for performance purposes. This enables the implementation of DevOps and, more broadly, a redefinition of all development, integration, deployment, and operations in integrated multidisciplinary teams.

 

To Conclude: 

While the digital transformation of companies initially represents a significant financial, organizational and technical investment, it is truly one of the levers for future growth. It quickly leads to savings and gains in growth and competitiveness, therefore in a return on investment and an increase in market share. 

A McKenzie study shows that the most mature companies in their digital transformation have grown six times higher than the most backward companies. “A company that succeeds in its digital transformation could potentially see a 40 % gross increase in operating income while those that fail to adapt risk a 20 % reduction in operating income".

The goal of digital transformation is to go beyond the initial investment. It should not be approached as a necessary constraint that does not bring much to the company in the end. Cloud technology can be the springboard for the creation of new capabilities and new services.

Currently, the health crisis has put the continuity of economic activity to the test by forcing everyone to implement teleworking. In the long term, the tense economic context will require IT departments to find new approaches to efficiency and growth. Workflow automation by cloud migration is a sure bet for cost savings, efficiency, and the unlocking of new business opportunities.

You can depend on Cloudride for experienced help in cloud migration and workflow modernization. We specialize in public and private cloud migration and cost and performance optimization. Click here to schedule a meeting!



 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2021/05
May 31, 2021 11:59:17 PM
Cloud at the Heart of Digital Strategies
Cloud Migration

May 31, 2021 11:59:17 PM

Cloud at the Heart of Digital Strategies

The cloud has changed the way of consuming and operating computing resources. More and more companies are using the cloud strategy to improve business performance and accelerate digital transformation.

Architecture for A Cloud-Native App and Infrastructure

"Cloud-native" has become a concept integrated into modern application development projects. A cloud-native application is an application that has been designed specially for the cloud. Such applications are developed and architectured with cloud infrastructure and services in mind. These applications rely on services that ignore the hardware layers and their maintenance. The Cloud Native Foundation  is a community of doers who push to enable more Open-Source vendor-free applications

 

How to Design a Cloud-Native App and Environment

Design as a loosely coupled micro-service

As opposed to creating a huge application, the microservices design consists of developing several smaller applications that run in their processes and communicate using a lightweight protocol such as HTTP. Fully automated deployment tools make it possible for these services to be deployed independently of business capabilities. for example, see AWS Serverless Architecture for loosely coupled applications:

Cloudride 1

Develop with the best languages and frameworks.

An application developed using cloud-native technology should use the language and framework best suited to the functionality. For example, a streaming service could be developed in Node.js with WebSockets, while a deep learning-based service could be built-in Python and REST APIs using Spring-boot.

Connect APIs for collaboration and interaction

Typically, cloud-native services should draw their functionality from lightweight APIs based on REST protocols. Service communication between the internal services is based on binary protocols such as Thrift, Protobuff, GRPC, etc, a great tool for collaboration is Postman, which also runs on AWS

Make it scalable and stateless.

Any instance of the app should process a request in a cloud-native app because it stores its state in an external entity. Unlike the underlying infrastructure, these apps are not bound to it. They can run distributedly while maintaining their state autonomous of it.

Your architecture should be built with resilience at its core

Resilient systems can recover from failures and continue to function, no matter how significant they may be. But it is not just about preventing failures but responding to them in a way that prevents downtime or data loss. this is AWS’s suggestion on Resilience Architecture

cloudride 2

Build for scalability

The flexibility of the cloud allows cloud-native apps to scale in response to an increase in traffic rapidly. A cloud-based e-commerce app can be configured to use additional compute resources when traffic spikes and then turn those resources off once traffic decreases. for example see this Azure Web Application Architecture:

Cloudride 3

Cloud-Native Application Architecture Development Requirements

Cloud-native DevOps architectures are designed for managing an application and its infrastructure consistently, verifiably, and automatically between non-production environments (testing and development) and production environments (operations). DevOps dissolves the gap between the development, testing, and production environments as the norm of organizational culture.

Architecture for Cloud-Native App and Infrastructure with DevOps

DevOps principles for cloud-native web development mean building CI/CD pipelines by integrating DevOps technologies and tools. Consistent integration processes result in teams committing code changes to their repository more often, leading to lower costs and higher software quality.

An Example architecture form the Argo CD Project

Cloudride 4

DevOps architecture prototype components

Amazon EKS

EKS is an Amazon Web Services' container-as-a-service offering for Kubernetes. To automatically clear out any abnormal instances of control planes that might be causing issues within Availability Zones within a Region, Amazon EKS checks whether they are running across Availability Zones and restarts them as necessary. Through AWS Regions architecture, EKS enables Kubernetes clusters to be highly available by avoiding single points of failure.

OpenShift Container Platform

Known as a private PaaS platform, RedHat's OpenShift is a containerization system deployed on-premise or on public cloud infrastructure like AWS.

Hard Kubernetes cluster

Using a Kubernetes cluster to build a complex environment is recommendable. Dedicated clusters offer more flexibility and robustness and can be managed by highly automated tools.

AWS KMS Key Management

The KMS software creates and manages cryptographic keys quickly and easily, controlling their use across AWS services and within the cloud-native application. An application must meet the requirements that hardware security modules are conformant to FIPS 140-2 or in the process of being validated against it. 

Development Tools

  • AWS ECR: For reliable deployment of containers and the ability to manage individual repositories based on resource access, much like https://hub.docker.com/
  • Terraform: an Infrastructure as code software tool much like AWS CloudFormation or Azure Resource Manager, but they beauty of it is that it can support multi clouds.
  • Helm: It runs on top of Kubernetes to describe and administer an app according to its structure.
  • Argo CD: To enhance the process of identifying, defining, configuring, and managing app lifecycles with declarative and version-controlled definitions and environments.
  • CodeCommit: To host the Git repository, so the DevOps team does not have to run their source control system, creating a bottleneck when scalability is needed
  • Harbor: the trusted cloud native repository for Kubernetes
  • CoreDNS: a DNS server which can be used in a multitude of environments because of its flexibility.
  • Prometheus: an open source monitoring solution used for event monitoring and alerting in real-time metrics.

and many more can be found in:  the periodic table of DevOPS

SonarQube code quality and security analysis

A tool called SonarQube, available under the Apache open-source license can help with automated code review to identify errors in code, bugs, and vulnerabilities. In addition to enhancing coding guideline compliance, the tool can be used to assess general quality issues.

AWS IAM Cloud Identity & Access Management

Another security pillar is the management of identities and access. Because we're using AWS, IAM from AWS makes perfect sense. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Identity and Access Management (IAM) governs who can access the cloud environment and sets the permissions each signed-in user has.

DevOps Teams & Consulting

If your organization can benefit from expert consulting in DevOps or need a flexible, experienced team to deliver cloud-native applications or manage Kubernetes clusters, Cloudride is here to help. Get in touch with us!

ido-ziv-blog
2021/05
May 20, 2021 5:10:27 PM
Architecture for A Cloud-Native App and Infrastructure
Cloud Native, High-Tech

May 20, 2021 5:10:27 PM

Architecture for A Cloud-Native App and Infrastructure

"Cloud-native" has become a concept integrated into modern application development projects. A cloud-native application is an application that has been designed specially for the cloud. Such applications are developed and architectured with cloud infrastructure and services in mind. These...

How to Build Your IOT Architecture in the Cloud

Internet of Things is riddled with the challenges of managing heterogeneous equipment and processing and storing large masses of data. Businesses can solve many of the problems by building IoT in a scalable and flexible cloud architecture. The major cloud vendors - AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP - provide high-performance capabilities for such cloud architectures.

The Cloud Native Approach

Cloud-native approach involves building and managing applications that leverage the benefits of the cloud computing delivery model. So, it's a question of knowing how to create and deploy applications, not where. Thus, these applications can be delivered in both public and private clouds.
The cloud-native approach, defined by the CNCF, is characterized by microservices architectures, container technology, continuous deliveries, development pipelines, and infrastructure expressed in code (Infrastructure as a Code), an essential practice of the DevOps culture.

Picture1-May-09-2021-02-50-12-47-PMCritical Aspects of an IoT Architecture

An IoT infrastructure has three major components:
• A park of fixed or mobile connected objects, distributed geographically
• A network that allows objects to be connected by transmitting messages; it can be wired or short wireless (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.) or long-range, mobile (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, etc.)
• An application, most often developed in web technology that collects data from the network of objects to provide aggregated and reprocessed information.

Ingestion System: Data ingestion system is at the core of the architecture as it is mostly responsible for consuming data from assets (sensors, cars, and other IoT devices), validating the data and then storing the data in a specified database. The ingestion system receives data using the MQTT protocol. The MQ Telemetry Transport is a lightweight protocol, simple and capable of functioning in networks with limited bandwidth and high latency.

Reporting: This component is fundamentally responsible for showing/generating information about the assets and transmitting out alerts about them. It is best to split the reporting into three services: time series aggregation offline, stream time series online, and rules service (system triggers). Time series aggregation service offline queries the data of the assets. Stream time-series online monitors in real-time the activities of a given asset. The rule service will alert the asset owner whenever a rule is triggered by SMS or email.

Embedded system: The embedded system's role is to transmit data from IoT devices to Edge / Ingestion Service. Each IoT device can send a JSON with assets (id, token, tenantId) to the Edge / Ingestion Service. Devices convey a JSON document to Edge / Ingestion Service with asset information (id, token, tenantId) from the embedded system.

Building an IoT-Ready Cloud Architecture

The gateway function: The Gateway function is the gateway for exchanging messages between the application and the park of objects. The first objective is to authenticate and authorize the objects to communicate with the application. The second objective is to encrypt the messages passing through the network to prevent them from being intercepted.

Message processing: Once the Gateway has been passed, it will be necessary to receive, process, and integrate the messages. Here the question of scalability is critical for seamless IoT cloud computing. This function must be able to absorb a highly fluctuating volume of messages. The success of an initial deployment can lead to a rapid expansion.

Park management: This function, internal as opposed to the data presentation application, must evolve at its own pace and independently from the rest of the application. Thus, it is good that it is designed as a separate module that can be updated without redeploying the entire application.

Database: The fleet of connected objects will feed the application with an increasing flow of data that will have to be stored, indexed, and analyzed. In this block, there must be relational databases and rapid databases of key-value types, indexing or search engine tools, etc. The security and integrity of data are critical. Being able to share databases between several front-end servers is essential to ensure the availability and scalability of the application. In terms of design, an N-tier architecture with an isolated database server is therefore essential. In particular, we could have an architecture that makes it possible to have a very short RPO (Recovery Point Objective) in the event of an incident.

Data virtualization: The objective of an IOT application is to process and present data to users who will connect to it, mainly via web access. The volume of connections to the application server will depend on its audience: limited for a professional application on a targeted audience, it can become significant on a general audience. In the latter case, it may be necessary to provide an auto-scaling system to add one or more servers in the event of load peaks and guarantee response times.

IoT devices can operate without a lot of resources upon connection to the cloud. Costs can be reduced, thus making IoT convenient for business usage. With the right architecture, the potential business value from your IoT implementation is invaluable.

Call us today, or better yet – click here to book a meeting.

 



 

kirill-morozov-blog
2021/05
May 9, 2021 5:57:47 PM
IoT
How to Build Your IOT Architecture in the Cloud
IoT

May 9, 2021 5:57:47 PM

How to Build Your IOT Architecture in the Cloud

Internet of Things is riddled with the challenges of managing heterogeneous equipment and processing and storing large masses of data. Businesses can solve many of the problems by building IoT in a scalable and flexible cloud architecture. The major cloud vendors - AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP -...

Serverless VS Microservices

Monochromatic Photo Yellow Typography Linkedin Banner

A good friend asked me last week, “Ido, as a DevOps Engineer, what do you prefer: a serverless architecture or a microservices one?”

My friend is a software engineer with knowledge and experience in both, but he is confused (much like several of our customers), so, I’ll try to help.

First, a small explanation on both

Microservices is a very popular concept right now, from the beginning of Docker in 2013 and the Kubernetes project everybody in the Tech community is talking about moving from Monolith applications to microservices such as containers. The Idea of microservices is decoupling the application to small pieces of code, each runs on its own server. When we want to develop a new feature or deploy a new upgrade to the application, working with microservices is idle. Simply update the part you want and redeploy the container while the other parts of the app remain available.

Picture33

The Concept of Serverless was introduced to the world in 2015 at the announcement of AWS Lambda. Serverless computing in general is event driven, the serverless code is running as a response to triggers. AWS Lambda can be triggered by more than 50 different services for example. The main Idea here is that developers and DevOps engineers can run small functions and perform small actions that only happen when needed, without the need to launch, configure, maintain and pay for a server.
Picture34

Next, find the differences

Although the two are different, they have a lot in common. They both were invented to minimize operational costs as well as the application deployment cycle, handle ever-altering development requirements, and optimize everyday time- and resource-sensitive tasks. The main difference is that microservices are eventually servers no matter how small they are, this fact has its own benefits such as accessing the underlying infrastructure and granting developers full access to relevant libraries. But, there are two sides to every coin: , the access to infrastructure comes with great responsibility of course.
Serverless and especially Lambda functions are limited to the libraries the cloud provider offers, for example not all Python libraries are available and sometimes you’ll need to improvise. In addition, Serverless is an automated way to respond to events, performing long calculations and processing might not be a great idea with Serverless because you pay-as-you-go and you are limited to max execution time.  

Now, how do I choose?

When architecting a new solution that will be deployed to the cloud we need to think of the traffic we are expecting to the application. The more we can anticipate the traffic it will be more cost effective to use servers such as containers or a kubernetes cluster. Serverless is a pay-as-you-go model that grants the business advantages such as small to almost no cost when the traffic is slow. But Serverless has it’s limitations such as concurrent executions for Lambda functions. Sure these limitations can be increased but for steady high intensive workloads Serverless is not the answer.

On the other hand, if the average usage of our servers is small and unpredictable, a serverless architecture is a better choice rather than servers, The infrastructure will be ready to absorb workloads without pre-worming or launching new servers. As a rule, if the average cpu utilization of your fleet is under 30% consider Serverless.

Keep in mind that serverless is meant for automated responses to events in our environment, so the use of both is important. The best solution will always consist a little bit of both. A company will deploy their application on a containers fleet with a load balancer and auto scaling and use Lambda and API Gateway as a serverless mechanism to deploy WAF rules on top of the Fleet. Another example is creating a Lambda to isolate and tighten the Security Groups of a compromised instance.

In a world that rapidly changes, in cloud environments that enable you to grow fast and reach clients all over the world, a business must know how to launch their applications faster.

Not sure which architecture is best suited for you? Give us a call

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/04
Apr 4, 2021 10:59:38 PM
Serverless VS Microservices
Serverless, microservices, High-Tech

Apr 4, 2021 10:59:38 PM

Serverless VS Microservices

A good friend asked me last week, “Ido, as a DevOps Engineer, what do you prefer: a serverless architecture or a microservices one?”My friend is a software engineer with knowledge and experience in both, but he is confused (much like several of our customers), so, I’ll try to help.

DevSecOps

Transitioning to DevOps requires a change in culture and mindset. In simple words, DevOps means removing the barriers between traditionally siloed teams: development and operations. In some organizations, there may not even be a separation between development, operations and security teams; engineers are often required to do a bit of all. With DevOps, the two disciplines work together to optimize both the productivity of developers and the reliability of operations.

DevOps_feedback-diagram

 

The alignment of development and operations teams has made it possible to build customized software and business functions quicker than before, but security teams continue to be left out of the DevOps conversation. In a lot of organizations, security is still viewed as or operates as roadblocks to rapid development or operational implementations, slowing down production code pushes. As a result, security processes are ignored or missed as the DevOps teams view them as an interference toward their pending success. As part of your organization strategy towards a security, automated and orchestrated cloud deployment and operations - you will need to unite the DevOps and SecOps teams in an effort to fully support and operationalize your organizations cloud operations.

devsecopspipeline

A new word is here, DevSecOps

Security teams tend to be an order of magnitude smaller than developer teams. The goal of DevSecOps is to go from security being the “department of no” to security being an enabler.

“The purpose and intent of DevSecOps is to build on the mindset that everyone is responsible for security with the goal of safely distributing security decisions at speed and scale to those who hold the highest level of context without sacrificing the safety required,” describes Shannon Lietz, co-author of the “DevSecOps Manifesto.”

DevSecOps refers to the integration of security practices into a DevOps software delivery model. Its foundation is a culture where development and operations are enabled through process and tooling to take part in a shared responsibility for delivering secure software.

For example, if we take a look on the AWS Shared responsibility Model, we see that us as a customer of AWS have a lot of responsibility in securing our environment. We cannot expect someone to do that job for us.

Shared_Responsibility_Model_V2.59d1eccec334b366627e9295b304202faf7b899b

The definition of DevSecOps Model, is to integrate security objectives as early as possible in the lifecycle of software development. While security is “everyone’s responsibility,” DevOps teams are uniquely positioned at the intersection of development and operations, empowered to apply security in both breadth and depth. 

Nowadays, scanners and reports simply don't cover the whole picture. As part of the testing that is done in a pipeline, the devsecops adds a penetration test to validate that the new code is not vulnerable and our application stays secure.

Organizations can not wait to fall victim to mistakes and attackers. The security world is changing, devsecops teams are leaning in over saying “No”, nor open to hear and work with Open Contribution & Collaboration over Security-Only Requirements.

Best practices for DevSecOps

DevSecOps should be the natural incorporation of security controls into your development, delivery, and operational processes.

Shift Left

DevSecOps are moving engineers towards security from the right (at the end) to the left (beginning) of the Development and Delivery process. In a DevSecOps environment, security is an integral part of the development process from the get go. An organization that uses DevSecOps brings in their cybersecurity architects and engineers as part of the development team. Their job is to ensure every component, and every configuration item in the stack is patched, configured securely, and documented.

Shifting left allows the DevSecOps team to identify security risks and exposures early and ensure that these security threats are addressed immediately. Not only is the development team thinking about building the product efficiently, but they are also implementing security as they build it.

Automated Tests 

The DevOps Pipeline performs several tests and checks for the code before the code deploys to production workloads, so why not add security tests such as static code analysis and penetrations tests? The key concept here is to understand that passing a security test is as important as passing a unit test. The pipeline will fail if a major vulnerability will be found.

Slow Is Pro

A common mistake is to deploy several security tools at once such as AWS config for compliance and a SAST (Static application security testing) tool for code analysis, or deploy one tool with a lot of tests and checks. This method only creates an extra load of problems for developers which slows the CI/CD process and is not very agile. Instead, when an organization is implementing tools like those mentioned above they should start with a small set of checks which will slowly get everybody on board and get the developers used so that they’re code is tested.

Keep It A Secret

“Secrets” in Information Security often means all private information a team should know such as API Keys, Passwords, Databases connection strings, SSL certificates etc. Secrets should be kept in a safe place and not hard coded in a repo for example. Another issue is to keep the secret rotated and generate new ones every once in a while. A compromised access key can cause devastating results and major business impact, constantly rotating these keys is a mechanism determined to protect against old secrets being missly used. There are a lot of great tools for these purposes such as Keepass, AWS Secret manager or Azure Key Vault.

Security education

Security is a combination of engineering and compliance. Organizations should form an alliance between the development engineers, operations teams, and compliance teams to ensure everyone in the organization understands the company's security posture and follows the same standards.

Everyone involved with the delivery process should be familiar with the basic principles of application security, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10, application security testing, and other security engineering practices. Developers need to understand thread models, compliance checks, and have a working knowledge of how to measure risks, exposure, and implement security controls

At Cloudride, we live and breathe cloud security, and have supported numerous organizations in the transition to the DevSecOps model. From AWS, MS Azure, and other ISV’s, we can help you migrate to the cloud faster yet securely, strengthen your security posture and maximize business value from the cloud. 

Check out more information on the topic here, and Book a free consultation call today here!

 

 

 

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/03
Mar 11, 2021 2:56:07 PM
DevSecOps
DevOps, Cloud Security, High-Tech

Mar 11, 2021 2:56:07 PM

DevSecOps

Transitioning to DevOps requires a change in culture and mindset. In simple words, DevOps means removing the barriers between traditionally siloed teams: development and operations. In some organizations, there may not even be a separation between development, operations and security teams;...

Cloud Cost Anomaly Detection Deep Dive

Amazon Web Service’s Cost Anomaly Detection is a complimentary service that screens your spending trends to identify anomalous spending and provide in-depth cause analysis. Cost Anomaly detection helps to reduce unexpected cost surprises for customers.

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection is backed by sophisticated AI and machine learning algorithms and can recognize and distinguish between gradual increases in cloud costs and one-off expense spikes. You can create your cost anomaly detection parameters and cost anomaly alerts in simple steps. You can make different subscription alerts for a similar cost monitor or various cost monitors for one subscription alert based on your business needs.

With every anomaly discovery, this free service gives a deep dive analysis so users can rapidly identify and address the cost drivers. Users can also provide input by submitting reviews to improve the precision of future anomaly identification. 

As a component of AWS’s Cost Management solution offering, Cost Anomaly Detection is incorporated into Amazon Web Service Cost Explorer so users can scan and identify their expenses and utilization on a case-by-case basis.

Steps to Use Cost Anomaly Detection

1. Enable Cost Explorer

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection is an element inside Cost Explorer. To get to AWS Cost Anomaly Detection, activate Cost Explorer. After you enable Cost Explorer at the admin account level, you can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to oversee admittance to your billing data for individual IAM clients.

You would then be able to give or deny access on an individual level for each account instead of allowing access to all accounts. An IAM client should have access to pages in the Billing and Cost Management dashboard. With the proper permissions, the IAM client should also see costs for his/her AWS account.

When you finish the setup, you should have access to AWS Cost Anomaly Detection. To get to AWS Cost Anomaly Detection, sign in to the AWS Management Console and open AWS Cost Management at https://aws.amazon.com/console/ .

Choose Cost Anomaly Detection on the navigation pane. After you enable the Cost Explorer, AWS prepares the data related to your expenses for the current month and year and projected figures for the following year. The current month's information is accessible for reviewing in around 24 hours. 

Yearly data takes a few days longer. Cost Explorer refreshes your cost information once every hour.

Cloudride cost anomaly detection - explorer

2. Create Monitor

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection right now supports four diverse monitor types:

  • Linked subscription account
  • AWS services (the only one that scans individual services for anomalies)
  • Cost categories
  • Cost allocation tag

Cloudride cost anomaly detection - monitor

 

Linked Account: This monitor assesses the spending of linked individual or group accounts. This type of monitoring can help your company segment cloud costs by teams, services, or environments attributable to an individual or group of linked accounts.

AWS Services: This monitor is recommendable for users who don't want to segment AWS costs through internal usage and environment. The AWS service monitor individually assesses AWS services for oddities. As you use new AWS services, this monitor will automatically begin to assess that service for cost inconsistencies without any configuration obligations from you.

Cost Allocation Tag – Like the Linked accounts monitor type; the cost allocation tag monitor is ideal when you need to segment spend by groups (environment, product, services). This screen type limits you to one tag key with multiple tag values.

Cost Categories: Since the start of Cost Categories, numerous clients have begun utilizing this service to intelligently create custom groups that can allow them to efficiently monitor and budget spend as indicated by their company structure. If you currently use Cost Categories, you can choose Cost Categories as your cost anomaly detection type. This monitor type limits you to the Cost Category values.

Cloudride cost anomaly detection - monito

3. Set alerts

When you enable anomaly detection for a metric, Cost Explorer applies machine learning and statistical calculations. These calculations evaluate system and application spend data in real-time to decide typical normal benchmarks and anomalies with minimal user intervention. The calculations produce a cost anomaly identification model. The model produces a scope of expected values that represent the typical trends of the metrics.

You can make anomaly detection alerts dependent on the typical, expected metric values. These kinds of alerts don't have a static limit to decide the alarm state. All things being equal, they continuously compare the metric value to the expected value based on the anomaly discovery model. You can configure notification alerts when the measurement value is less or more than the normal value band.

Cloudride cost anomaly detection - alerts

To Conclude:

Cost Anomaly Detection by AWS provides a practical way to track and reduce costs in the cloud environment. IT, DevOps, and CostOps teams can now get a holistic understanding of cloud costs and budgeting and implement strategies that optimize resource utilization. Cost Anomaly Detection is the key to a profitable cloud.

michael-kahn-blog
2021/03
Mar 4, 2021 5:32:14 PM
Cloud Cost Anomaly Detection Deep Dive
Cost Optimization

Mar 4, 2021 5:32:14 PM

Cloud Cost Anomaly Detection Deep Dive

Amazon Web Service’s Cost Anomaly Detection is a complimentary service that screens your spending trends to identify anomalous spending and provide in-depth cause analysis. Cost Anomaly detection helps to reduce unexpected cost surprises for customers.

Automated Security In the AWS Cloud

Amid Covid19 pandemic, and even prior, it seems as though cloud computing has become common grounds for companies of various fields, types and sizes, from small startups to enterprises - everyone is migrating to the cloud.

And this trend is happening for good reason.  Benefits such as high availability, scalability and reliability, are some of the cloud’s strong points.  Today it is so simple to launch a web application in the cloud, it takes a mere 10 minutes with AWS. 

During the Corona pandemic, more and more businesses started e-commerce and online retail to keep their businesses alive, so they created web and mobile applications. The need for a speedy launch has, unfortunately, also caused a huge gap in the implementation of security best practices, making many such sites vulnerable to security hazards. So, how do you ensure security for that Web application which obviously will be exposed to the internet?

Cloud computing has Security as one of it’s core concepts and thus to keep your cloud environment secure, you as a business need to follow several rules such as limit access to least privilege, encrypt data at rest and in transit and also harden your Infruscure and keep those machines patched up. Web Applications are exposed to the internet and need to be accessed today from all over the world, using any platform. To add security to that application there is a use of a Web Application Firewall - WAF.

Cloud Providers have their solutions and best practices and there are several great 3rd party applications out there in the market to help companies with that. But, these kinds of products and services need constant maintenance, update signatures and block off attackers. Not all businesses can, nor do they know how to do that according to best practices. Configuring WAF rules can be challenging and burdensome to large and small organizations alike, especially for those who do not have dedicated security teams.

 

How can my business automate the Security of its web application?

AWS WAF is a security service that enables customers to create custom application-specific rules that can block common attacks on their web application. 

AWS WAF Security Automations is an additional set of configurations made by CloudFormation template to help deploy a set of WAF rules to filter common web attacks.

At the core of the design is an AWS WAF web ACL that acts as a central inspection and decision point for all incoming requests. The WAF is made with pass-through nature, using services and basic rules to prevent simple attacks such as simple SQL-Injections. The additional layer of security with the automation is made with two main components:

  1. Analyzing logs for traces of suspicious behavior that can slow or harm the application, in addition to the inspection of the request content the rate per time interval is measured and gets blocked if a DDOS attack is suspected.  
  2. Using API-Gateway as a honeypot and Lambda Functions the WAF automatically adds malicious IP’s to it’s web ACL and blocks them.

For example, if a bot is scanning your site for open api’s it will search for the “admin” access, something like admin.your-web-application.com, the security automations template detects this non-valid user action and triggers a lambda function that adds the IP of that bot to the block list.

 

But, what happens to valid users?

The automation is not interfering with valid-user actions, every request made to the application is inspected and compared to the normal behavior, only non-valid actions are blocked. 

 

What kind of web-attacks are we talking about?

The system is built and made to block all kinds of common web attacks such as:

  • HTTP Flood
  • SQL Injection
  • XSS
  • Bad Bots
  • DDOS
  • Scanners and Probes

Even interaction with an IP recognized by one of the cybersecurity experts as malicious will be blocked.

The solution is made to protect Internet facing within the AWS infrastructure such as CloudFront and Application Load Balancers.

 

OK, How do I do that?

AWS published  cloudformation templates that can be deployed via bash scripts. The documentation can be found here: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-waf-security-automations 

 

The architecture:111

Not sure if this solution is the right one for you?

Book a free consultation call right here 

Read our Cloudride & Radware’s Workload Protection services - eBook here

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/02
Feb 25, 2021 3:01:03 PM
Automated Security In the AWS Cloud
Cloud Security

Feb 25, 2021 3:01:03 PM

Automated Security In the AWS Cloud

Amid Covid19 pandemic, and even prior, it seems as though cloud computing has become common grounds for companies of various fields, types and sizes, from small startups to enterprises - everyone is migrating to the cloud.

2021 Cloud Security Threats

The worldwide pandemic has hugely affected businesses, the biggest challenge being the need for telecommuting. Numerous organizations have moved to the cloud much faster, and in many cases, this implies that the best security controls have not been implemented. Herein is an overview of the cloud security threats that may be identified as problematic in the upcoming months.

Persistency Attacks 


Cloud environments facilitate full adaptability when running virtual machines and creating instances that match any development capabilities needed. However, if not appropriately controlled, this flexibility can allow threat actors to launch attacks that give them long-term control over company data and assets on the cloud. 

An example is how Amazon Web Services makes it possible for designers to execute a script with each restart of an Amazon EC2 instance. If malicious programmers figure out how to misuse an instance leveraging a corrupted shell script, they can have unauthorized access and use of a server for a long time. 

The programmers can quickly move between the servers from that opening, corrupting, stealing, and manipulating data or using this as a launchpad for more sophisticated attacks. The first obvious solution: Administrators should configure the instances such that users must log in every time they access them. 

Generally, such cloud environments' agility is a significant shortcoming that businesses should watch out for. There are many chances of larger threats arising out of misconfiguration.

Data Breach and Data Leak

80 % of businesses surveyed in a 2020 data breach study confirmed that they had experienced a data breach in the previous 18 months. 

A data breach is a mishap where the data is gotten to and extricated without approval. Data breaches may lead to data leaks where private information is found where it shouldn't be. When organizations move to the cloud, many assume that the job of protecting their data falls on the cloud provider. 

This assumption is not absurd. By transferring sensitive data to a third party, the cloud provider, in this case, is required to have robust security controls where the data will reside. However, the data owners have a role to play in their data safety and security as well.

Therefore, public cloud platforms use the “Shared Responsibility” model. The provider takes care of some layers of software and infrastructure security, but the customer is responsible for how they access/use their data.

Sadly, even though the public cloud providers make comprehensive information on cloud security best practices widely available, the number of public cloud data leaks continues to rise. The error is on the customer's end; lack of proper controls and proper administrative maintenance, and poor configurations.

The threat of bots is real.

With increased automation today, bots are taking over computing environments, even on the cloud. But 80 % of these are bad bots, according to data by Global Dots. Threat actors could leverage bad bots to capture data, send spam, delete content or mount a denial-of-service attack.

Bots can use the servers they attack to launch attacks on new servers and users. As a form of advanced persistent threats, bots—as seen in attacks such as crypto mining—can take hostage an entire cloud asset to perform the functions of their malicious owners.

The risk with bot attacks isn't just confined to loss of computing resources. Newer forms of crypto mining malware can extract credentials from unencrypted CLI files. Administrators should consider implementing a zero-trust security model.

Misconfiguration in the cloud 

2020 and the years past have taught us many things concerning misconfigurations. For example, although As a default setting, Amazon S3 buckets are private and can only be accessed by individuals who have explicitly been granted access, Unsecured AWS S3 data buckets can cause costly data leaks. But this is not the only misconfiguration risk on the cloud. 

Threat actors are leveraging the advantage of the cloud to cause expansive mayhem with a single compromise. It calls for companies to secure their servers, tighten access rules and keep an updated inventory of systems and assets on the cloud. If businesses don't understand how to configure services and control access permissions, they expose themselves to more risks.

To Conclude

If you are reading this article, you are most probably already aware of the many advantages of the cloud environment, but security is a factor that cannot be overlooked at any given moment. Without the right security expertise, controls, and proper configurations, this environment poses significant risks as well. The good news is – they are preventable. 

At Cloudride, we live and breathe cloud security. From AWS, MS Azure, and other ISV’s, we can help you migrate to the cloud faster yet securely, strengthen your security posture and maximize business value from the cloud. 

Let's talk!

 



 

kirill-morozov-blog
2021/02
Feb 3, 2021 10:42:59 PM
2021 Cloud Security Threats
Cloud Security

Feb 3, 2021 10:42:59 PM

2021 Cloud Security Threats

The worldwide pandemic has hugely affected businesses, the biggest challenge being the need for telecommuting. Numerous organizations have moved to the cloud much faster, and in many cases, this implies that the best security controls have not been implemented. Herein is an overview of the cloud...

CI/CD as a Service

CI/CD and the cloud are like peas in a pod. The cloud eliminates the agony of introducing and keeping up actual servers. CI/CD automates much of the functions in building, testing, and deploying code. So why not join them and eliminate sweated labor in one go?

There are many CI services, and they all do the same things from a theoretical perspective. They start with a rundown of tasks like building or testing. And when you submit your code lines, the tools work through the list until they run into errors. If there are no errors, both IT and developers are happy.

CI is probably the best new operation model for DevOps groups. Likewise, it is a collaboration best practice, as it empowers app engineers to zero in on business needs, code quality, and security since all steps are automated.

Anybody can use CI in software development. Though, its biggest benefactors are large teams that are collaborating on the same and interlocking code blocks.

The introduction of CI allows software developers to work independently on the same features. When they are ready to incorporate these features into a final product, they can do so independently and quickly.

CI is an important and well-established practice in modern, highly efficient software engineering organizations.

Using CI enables development tasks to be done independently and uniformly among designated engineers. When a task is completed, the engineer will introduce that new work into the CI chain to be combined with the rest of the work.

The most intensive executions of a CI build and edit code before testing and retesting it, all looking for new mistakes and conflicting qualities that may have been made as various colleagues submit their code.

CI servers synchronize the work of the software engineers and assist the teams with recognizing issues.

Tasks for the CI server end with the tests. However, of late, an ever-increasing number of teams are stretching out lists to incorporate the new code's deployment. This has been dubbed continuous deployment.

Automated deployment worries some people, and they will regularly add in some manual pauses. Injecting a shot of human assurance and accountability into the process puts them at ease. This is dubbed Continuous Delivery. It conveys the code to testing where they trust that a human will make the last push to deployment.

If CI is excellent in the server room, it can be much better in the cloud, where there is a good chance of faster delivery and greater efficiency and speed.

Clouds can split a function and perform tasks in parallel. Services start with an enormous hardware pool and are shared by multiple groups.

As always, there are some risks and worries, and the biggest can be the a sense of loss of control. All cloud services demand that you give your code to a third party, a choice that may cause one to feel uncomfortable. This being said – security is a huge part of the cloud services offering in this sense.

Apart from all major languages' support, SaaS CI/CD services include much smaller, rarer, and newer ones. Task lists are more likely to be included as commands for another shell or command line, so continuous integration tools continue to issue commands until the list is exhausted or a particular road is invincible. Some languages like Java offer complex options, but the tools can accomplish anything you can do with the command line for the most part.

CI/CD as service means that developers can:

  • Use the company self-service portal to find the CI / CD chain they want and get it delivered quickly. They get to focus on building apps and features and not configuring elements in the pipeline.
  • Get all the CI / CD items of their choice; SVN Jenkins, Gits, jFrog Artifactor. The elements are automatically shipped and ready to work together without the extra effort required, contrary to the traditional method where they will have to prepare each item manually.

And IT teams can:

  • Deploy CI / CD chains error-free and without misconfiguration. IT Ops can serve multiple CI / CD configurations for individual LoB groups.
  • Send a CI / CD chain wherever they want, as it can work on any infrastructure. They spend less time on manual configurations and more time serving their internal customers.

 

So, we’ve established that Continuous Integration (CI) enables you to continuously add code into a single shared and readily accessible repository. On the other hand, Continuous Delivery (CD) empowers you to continuously take the code in the repository and deliver it to production.

And you already know, that as CI/CD pipelines may be amazing in the server room - they are mind-blowing on the cloud.

From GitLab to Bitbucket and AWS to CodePipeline, herein are some of the best CI/CD SaaS services to transform your app-building, testing, and deployment:

AWS CodePipeline

This is Amazon's CI/CD tool. AWS CodePipeline effectively conveys code to an AWS server while being available to more intricate pathways for your data and code. The tool offers a decent choice of pre-customized build environment for the leading languages: Java, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, .Net Core Android. It drops the result in an S3 bucket before directing it to a server for deployment.

There are so many layers with various names. For instance, CodeBuild gets your most recent code from CodeCommit when its CodePipeline starts it and afterward hands it off to CodeDeploy. If you must save time on configuration, you can start with CodeStar, which offers another automation layer. It's an advantage that you don't have to pay for these Code layers. AWS charges you only for computing and storage assets used in the cycle.

 

CloudBees

CloudBees Core began with Jenkins, the most notable open-source project for CI/CD. They now enable testing, support, plus assurance that the code will run optimally. The organization winnowed out the entirety of the test modules, added a couple, and afterward cleaned the correct ones, so expect them to function perfectly when you need them.

CloudBees uses 80 % of the Jenkins engineering team, and they as often as possible contribute code to the open-source project. You can be confident they have tons of expertise on this cutting-edge platform. To speed things up, CloudBees added broad parallelization just as instrumentation to follow your building cycle.

CloudBees offers different price packages that range from free trial plans to starter kits. The organization additionally helps with Jenkins for any individual who needs assistance with the service without cloud computing.

 

GitLab CI/CD

Perhaps the greatest contender on this list is GitLab, another organization that invests in automating your building and deployments. GitLab's building, testing, and deployment mechanisms are also linked to its Git repositories so that you can trigger them with commitment. The cycle is designed around Docker containers with a caching that dramatically simplifies the configurations that must be done on Jenkins builds.

The builds can be in any language. You have to trigger these via GitLab Runner. This adaptability helps you start any job on different machines, which may be great for architectures designed to do more than delivering microservices.

There are different price tiers based on your needs. Gold users get the entirety of the best features, including security dashboards and more than 40,000 minutes of building on a shared machine. You are not charged for using your own machines for part of the cycle or separate instances in a different cloud.

 

Bitbucket Pipelines

Atlassian, the owners of repository Bitbucket and job tracker, board Jira, chose to endow the engineering world with Bitbucket Pipelines. The latter is a CI/CD tool on the Bitbucket cloud. The magic wand here is extensive integration between build mechanism and Atlassian tools. Bitbucket Pipelines isn't so much as different. It's mostly an additional menu alternative for each task in Bitbucket. Another menu alternative focuses on organizations, allowing you to choose where the tasks end.

The extended integration is both a bane and a boon. When you select one of the formats previously characterized for the primary languages, you get to build and deploy your code in a snap. But it gets tough when you veer off the trodden path. Your options are limited.

Even so, Atlassian supports a marketplace of applications, including charts and webhooks, into different administrations. The top application links Bitbucket with Jenkins, which can help you accomplish more unrestrictedly.

Speed is the strongest selling proposition for Pipelines. The provider has pre-designed the greater part of the pathways from code to deployment, and you can leverage their templates for only a couple of dollars. It's challenging to analyze the expense of using Bitbucket because the builds are billed in minutes, as most serverless models, thus the hours add up even on weekends and evenings.

 

CircleCI

A significant number of the CI/CD tools center around code is in the Linux environment. While CircleCI can build and deploy in the Linux world, it likewise supports the building of Android applications and anything that emerges from Apple's Xcode; iOS, tvOS, macOS, or watchOS. If your teams are building for these platforms, you can submit your code and let CircleCI do the testing.

Tasks are defined in YAML documents. CircleCI utilizes Docker in the entirety of its multi-layered architecture to configure the test conditions for the code. You start the builds and tests with new containers. The tasks run in virtual machines that have a comparatively short life. This removes many issues with configuration because the perfect environments don't have junk codes lying around.

The billing is centered around the amount of CPU you use. The quantity of clients and the quantity of repositories is not capped. Build minutes and containers are metered, though. Your first container, which can run one build test, is free. But when you need more quantity and multitasking, be prepared to pay more.

 

Azure Pipelines

This is Microsoft's own CI/CD cloud service. The branding states, "Any platform, any language." While this is in all likelihood a bit of exaggeration and Azure presumably doesn't support ENIAC developers, it does noticeably offer Microsoft, macOS, and Linux paths for code. The Apple corner targets MacOS builds (not iOS or tvOS or watchOS).

Theoretically, the framework is like the others. Expect agents for executing tasks and delivering artifacts, with some being self-hosted. The stack embraces Docker containers that have no trouble running in Azure's hardware. These can be clicked along with a visual planner incorporated into a website page or named with YAML.

There is a free version with 1800 minutes of build time. For teams that need more parallelism or build time, prepare to pay. There is a free tier plan for open-source projects underlining Microsoft's longing to participate in the overall open-source network. However, on the off chance that Microsoft will burn through $ 8 billion to get a seat at the table by buying GitHub, all things considered, it makes sense.

 

Travis CI

Do your teams produce code that should be tested in Windows boxes? If yes, Travis CI should be top among your options for CI/CD as a service. The service supports Linux and macOS and recently Windows making it easier to deliver multiplatform code.

Tasks lists are named as YAML files and run in neat VMs with a standard design. Your Linux code gets some basic Ubuntu versions, and your Mac code runs in one of twelve versions of OS X and Xcode and JDK. Your Windows code ends up in Windows Server (1803). Travis CI offers a long list of 30 languages and assembles. Build rules are preconfigured and ready to run.

Pricing is based on the number of tasks you simultaneously execute. Minutes are not metered. There is no free version, but open-source projects are free.

 

Codeship

Designing your list of tasks is frequently the greatest test when utilizing a CI/CD solution. CodeShip adopts two distinct strategies to this in two stages of service. With the Basic plan, expect plenty of pre-configuration and automation plus a graphical UI for sketching task outlines.

All the other things are practically accomplished for you. With the Pro version, expect the capability to reach in the engine and play around with the design and the Docker containers used to characterize the build environments. One can choose the number of build machines and the degree of provisioning they need for their tasks.

This is something contrary to how the CI/CD business world typically functions. You pay more to accomplish more tasks. Here the Basic client gets everything automated. It doesn't seem real, but soon, you discover that you need something that is only available in Pro to accomplish a task.

The Basic tier offers a free plan with one build machine, limitless projects, and many users, but builds are metered at 100 per month. So, if you have more than 100 tasks, you will have to pay. When you begin playing, there's no cap on builds or build times. You pick the number of build machines, and test machines will deal with your tasks. The Pro tier also starts with a free version. However, once you begin paying, the price is dictated by the size and number of cloud instances devoted to your work.

 

Jenkins and Hudson

You can do it yourself. One of the fastest ways to create a CI/CD pipeline in the cloud is to lease a server instance and start Jenkins. There is always a prebuilt image from suppliers like Bitnami merely sitting tight for you to push start.

Jenkins and Hudson began as programs for testing Java code for bugs long ago in the past. They split when conflict occurred between some of the designers and Oracle. The split shows how open-source licenses enable designers to settle on choices about the code by restricting the control of the nominal proprietors.

And keeping in mind that Jenkins and Hudson may have begun as a platform for Java projects, they have long since diversified. Today you can use them to build in any language while using countless plugins to speed up building testing and deployment. The code is open source, so there's no charge for utilizing it. You only pay for the server and time.

 

Sauce Labs

Many of the solutions on this list recorded here focus on coordinating the code from repository to deployment. If you want something focused on testing, choose Sauce Labs. The cloud-based service offers many combinations for guaranteed efficiency. Would you like to test on Firefox 58 running on Windows 10? Or maybe about Firefox 56 on macOS? They are arranged for you with combinatorics that rapidly produce an enormous assortment of platform alternatives for testers.

The scripts can be written in the language you like—as long as you choose among Ruby, Node, Java, or PHP. Sauce Labs additionally integrates the tests with other CI instruments or pipelines. You can run Jenkins locally and afterward assign the testing to Sauce Labs.

Pricing starts at a discounted rate for (manual) live testing. You'll pay more for automated tests, estimated in minutes and number of paths. Sauce Labs additionally has an alternative to test your app on any of the many gadgets in the organization's cloud.

 

To Conclude

Switching to CI/CD as a service can be scary. However, our engineers and DevOps team at CloudRide have thorough expertise on CI/CD best practices. Together we can optimize and accelerate your DevOps tasks and shorten your deployment cycles to the Cloud.

Call us today, or better yet – click here to book a meeting.

 



 

ran-dvir/blog/
2021/01
Jan 7, 2021 6:36:34 PM
CI/CD as a Service
DevOps, CI/CD

Jan 7, 2021 6:36:34 PM

CI/CD as a Service

CI/CD and the cloud are like peas in a pod. The cloud eliminates the agony of introducing and keeping up actual servers. CI/CD automates much of the functions in building, testing, and deploying code. So why not join them and eliminate sweated labor in one go?

There are many CI services, and they...

Was Your Business Impacted by the AWS Outage?

Perhaps the critical takeaway from 2020 is that reliability, flexibility, and security in cloud computing are the key determinants of business success. From the massive surges in consumer usage of data centers driven by the need for remote working and stay home mandates, multi-cloud environments have stood as more reliable, secure, and cost-effective. 

Wednesday last week, the need for reliability was highlighted clearly by an AWS blackout. From early Wednesday to Thursday morning, websites, apps, and services on Amazon Web Service experienced a significant outage with incalculable losses. Sites and services including Adobe, Roku, Washington, and Flickr were rendered unavailable. 

An expansion of servers to Amazon's predominant distributed computing network set off a chain reaction of errors that caused the massive outage. Amazon said in a statement that “a small addition of capacity to Amazon Kinesis real-time data processing service” set off the widespread AWS blackout.

This made all the servers in the armada surpass the threshold of strings permitted by an OS design, says Amazon, leading to a domino of errors that took down countless websites and services. 

"In the present moment, we will be shifting to bigger CPU and memory servers, decreasing the number of servers and, consequently, strings needed by every server to communicate in the fleet,” said the company in describing their response strategy. “This will allow headroom in string count utilized given the number of strings every server must maintain is proportional to the number of servers in the fleet."

It is quite evident that it's time for companies to be proactive in their risk management approach, and look into multi-cloud implementation. The AWS outage is a wake-up call for companies to minimize risk and attain reliability in performance by using more than one cloud provider.

 

If you pack all your data on a cloud server and that server goes down, you clearly can't get to your data. That is, except if that information is additionally put away elsewhere. Numerous organizations execute methodologies that save data in different locations to maintain a strategic distance from issues on the off chance that one of the servers goes down. With a multi-cloud strategy, you store data on at least two separate cloud environments, so on the off chance that one goes down, your data isn't lost. 

Find cloud providers with server farms in different areas who spread workloads across different geographies. This strategy increases performance by topographically conveying traffic to the data center nearest to the end-user. It can likewise radically diminish the risk of unforeseen downtime. If one server farm goes down because of human mistake, malware, fire, or cataclysmic event, your workloads will securely failover to another area. 

The benefits of a multi-cloud environment include:

Advanced Risk Management 

Risk management is the most incredible advantage that accompanies embracing a multi-cloud system. Suppose one service provider has an infrastructural issue or is targeted by a cyberattack. In that case, a multi-cloud client can rapidly change to another cloud provider or back up to a private cloud. 

Multi-cloud environments enable the use of independent, redundant, and autonomous frameworks that offer robust verification systems, threat testing, and API resource combinations. When coupled with a robust risk-managed system, multi-cloud environments can guarantee reliable uptime for your business. 

Performance Improvements 

Multi-cloud environments allow you to create fast, low-latency systems while diminishing the costs of coordinating the cloud with your IT systems. By empowering businesses to stretch out their cloud computing needs to different vendors, a multi-cloud approach enables localized, fast, and low latency connections that improve application response time, leading to a better customer experience. 

Security 

A multi-cloud strategy can help secure an organization's primary business applications and data by offering backup and recovery capabilities that give business continuity when a disaster strikes, regardless of whether brought about by a cyber-attack, power blackout, or weather event. Adding a multi-cloud strategy to your business recovery plan gives it a higher sense of security by storing resources in several unrelated data centers.

Avoid vendor lock-in

You may discover a reliable cloud provider and bet everything on them, tuning your system to be entirely compatible with their infrastructure. But what happens if your enterprise outgrows the performance and features offered by this vendor? You will need to keep things moving at the speed that your clients expect.

If you focus on building compatibility with only one cloud provider, you make it both tedious and costly to move your system to a new provider when the need arises. You empower the vendor to control you. You will have to accept their pricing, restructurings, and features because moving to a new provider means starting from zero. You can avoid these problems by using a multi-cloud approach from the very beginning.

Cost control 

Each organization has cost as a central concern, and with the rate that innovation is developing nowadays, it is critical to measure need versus cost. Moving to the cloud can allow you to lessen capital costs on your equipment, workers, and so on. 

Nonetheless, downtimes and inefficient performance on a given cloud can cost you more time, money, and a bad reputation among customers. Finding a perfect blend of cloud providers that meet your specific needs and work with your budget can significantly reduce costs and improve performance. 

 

To Conclude: 

Implementing a multi-cloud strategy is not a simple assignment. Numerous organizations battle with legacy IT frameworks, on-premise infrastructure, and hardware providers. They are frequently restricted in their capacity to create and implement a multi-cloud strategy. Having said that, going multi-vendor will enable you to diversify your deployment, achieve better performance, and prevent service disruptions, and this can be a cost-effective and speedy undertaking with the right expert consultation. 

At Cloudride, we are experts in AWS, Azure, and other independent service providers. We provide cloud migration, security, and cost optimization services tailored to your needs. 

Let's help you create, test, and implement a multi-cloud strategy. Contact us here to learn more!

 



 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/12
Dec 6, 2020 7:36:08 PM
Was Your Business Impacted by the AWS Outage?
AWS, Multi-Cloud

Dec 6, 2020 7:36:08 PM

Was Your Business Impacted by the AWS Outage?

Perhaps the critical takeaway from 2020 is that reliability, flexibility, and security in cloud computing are the key determinants of business success. From the massive surges in consumer usage of data centers driven by the need for remote working and stay home mandates, multi-cloud environments...

3 ways you can cut your cloud consumption costs in half with FinOps

In challenging economic climates, cost control quickly rises up the executive agenda. The current crisis will, if it hasn’t yet, result in many organizations looking to reduce costs as they aim to weather the storm.

Complex billing systems and limited budget verification capabilities are already impacting companies, which struggle to understand their company’s cloud spend, with consumption potentially unlimited and purchasing fragmented. On top of that, the huge rise in remote working, (we’re not just talking Microsoft Teams here, everything now has to be accessed remotely) and therefore Microsoft Azure cloud consumption, means finance teams may find themselves hit with significant bills in the near future.

It’s easy to over-purchase cloud services without realizing it. 

Enter FinOps, often also referred to as cloud cost optimization. FinOps creates an environment where organizations can optimize their cloud expenditure and breaks down the barriers between finance, development, and operations teams. The end results? Lower costs, and the ability to move rapidly to take advantage of opportunities without over-provisioning.

Based on Cloudride’s direct experience, there are three core elements to effectively managing cloud costs:

  1. Optimization – reviewing current spend and reducing wastage quickly
  2. Visibility and control – a custom dashboard that gives you a constant overview, showing you what you are spending and where
  3. Governance – take back control with well-defined processes and roles so you can take action when you need to

It’s important to recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Every organization will need a custom optimization strategy with a clear direction to cut its Microsoft Azure cloud costs.

We’ve found that the vast majority of organizations are significantly overspending on their cloud consumption, this is also confirmed by analysts like Gartner, which states that companies are going to waste 75% of their cloud budget in the first 18 months of implementation. There are a few areas to focus on initiatives that can provide almost instant cost savings. 

The three most effective ways to cut costs quickly will be:

  1. Review and streamline
    • Streamline your subscriptions
    • Turn off your virtual machines when they’re not in use
    • Stop all unnecessary premium services
    • Delete orphan-managed disks
  2. Consume on demand
    • Autoscaling
    • Power scheduling
    • Storage optimization
  3. Check your sizing and fit size to your needs (you may not need everything you are paying for)
    • Azure Cosmos DB
    • Services pooling
    • VM resizing
    • Service resizing
    • Disk resizing

We’ve found that these steps can save around 50% of expenditure, within a few weeks. There are numerous other ways that initial savings can be made as well, too many to list in a blog, and every organization is different. Containers, building cloud-native applications, and knowing how to accurately estimate the costs when moving workloads to the cloud will help you to avoid surprises in the future.

To Summarize

While costs and efficiency are the key drivers for cloud adoption, these two can quickly become a problem for businesses. FinOps’ best practices are geared towards increasing financial visibility and optimization by aligning teams and operations.

At Cloudride, speed, cost, and agility are what define our cloud consultation services. Our teams will help you adopt cloud providers, infrastructures, by enabling solutions that deliver not only the best cost efficiency but also assured security and compliance.

Find out more.

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/10
Oct 19, 2020 3:56:11 PM
3 ways you can cut your cloud consumption costs in half with FinOps
FinOps & Cost Opt.

Oct 19, 2020 3:56:11 PM

3 ways you can cut your cloud consumption costs in half with FinOps

In challenging economic climates, cost control quickly rises up the executive agenda. The current crisis will, if it hasn’t yet, result in many organizations looking to reduce costs as they aim to weather the storm.

Best Practices for On-Prem to Cloud Migration

There are fads in fashion and other things but not technology. Trends such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote working can have extensive implications on a business's future. Business survival, recovery, and growth are dependent on your agility in adopting and adapting to the ever-changing business environment. Moving from on-prem to the cloud is one way that businesses can tap into the potential of advanced technology.

The key drivers 

Investment resources are utilized much more efficiently on the cloud. With the advantage of on-demand service models, businesses can optimize efficiency and save software, infrastructure, and storage costs.

For a business that is rapidly expanding, cloud migration is the best way to keep the momentum going. There is a promise of scalability and simplified application hosting. It eliminates the need to install additional servers, for example, when eCommerce traffic surges.

Remote working is the current sole push factor. As COVID 19 lays waste to everything, businesses, even those that never considered cloud migration before, have been forced to implement either partial or full cloud migration. Employees can access business applications and collaborate from any corner of the world.

 

Best Practices

Choose a secure cloud environment 

The leading public cloud providers are AWS, Azure, and GCP (check out our detailed comparison between the 3) They all offer competitive hosting rates favorable to small and medium scale businesses. However, resources are shared, like an apartment building with multiple tenants, and so security is an issue that quickly comes to mind.

The private cloud is an option for businesses that want more control and assured security. Private clouds are a stipulation for businesses that handle sensitive information, such as hospitals and DoD contractors. 

A hybrid cloud, on the other hand, gives you the best of both worlds. You have the cost-effectiveness of the public cloud when you need it. When you demand architectural control, customization, and increased security, you can take advantage of the private cloud. 

 

Scrutinize SLAs

The service level agreement is the only thing that states clearly what you should expect from a cloud vendor. Go through it with keen eyes. Some enterprises have started cloud migration only to experience challenges because of vendor-lock in. 

Choose a cloud provider with an SLA that supports the easy transfer of data. This flexibility can help you overcome technical incompatibilities and high costs. 

 

Plan a migration strategy

Once you identify the best type of cloud environment and the right vendor, the next requirement is to set a migration strategy. When creating a migration strategy, one must consider costs, employee training, and estimated downtime in business applications. Some strategies are better than others:

  • Rehosting may be the easiest moving formula. It basically lifts and shifts. At such a time, when businesses must quickly explore the cloud for remote working, rehosting can save time and money. Your systems are moved to the cloud with no changes to their architecture. The main disadvantage is the inability to optimize costs and app performance on the cloud. 
  • Replatforming is another strategy. It involves making small changes to workloads before moving to the cloud. The architectural modifications maximize performance on the cloud. An example is shifting an app's database to a managed database on the cloud. 
  • Refactoring gives you all the advantages of the cloud, but it does require more investment in the cloud migration process. It involves re-architecting your entire array of applications to meet your business needs, on the one hand, while maximizing efficiency, optimizing costs and implementing best practices to better tailor your cloud environment. It optimizes app performance and supports the efficient utilization of the cloud infrastructure.

 

Know what to migrate and what to retire 

A cloud migration strategy can have all the elements of rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring. The important thing is that businesses must identify resources and the dependencies between them. Not every application and dependencies need to be shifted to the cloud. 

For instance, instead of running SMTP email servers, organizations can switch to a SaaS email platform on the cloud. This helps to reduce wasted spend and wasted time in cloud migration.

 

Train your employees

Workflow modernization can only work well for an organization if employees support it. Where there is no employee training, workers avoid the new technology or face productivity and efficiency problems.

A cloud migration strategy must include employee training as a component. Start communicating the move before it even happens. Ask questions on the most critical challenges your workers face and gear the migration towards solving their work challenges. 

Further, ensure that your cloud migration team is up to the task. Your operations, design, and development teams are the torch bearers of the move. Do they have the experience and skillsets to effect a quick and cost-effective migration?

If not, we are here to help.

At Cloudride, we have helped many businesses successfully plan, execute, and optimize their cloud migration processes. We are partners with AWS, Azure, and GCP, accelerating cloud migration, and cloud business value realization through a focus on security, cost optimization, and vendor best practices.

Click here for a free consultation call!

 

 



 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/10
Oct 15, 2020 5:15:43 PM
Best Practices for On-Prem to Cloud Migration
Azure, AWS, E-Commerce, Cloud Migration, Healthcare, Education

Oct 15, 2020 5:15:43 PM

Best Practices for On-Prem to Cloud Migration

There are fads in fashion and other things but not technology. Trends such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote working can have extensive implications on a business's future. Business survival, recovery, and growth are dependent on your agility in adopting and...

Everything you Need to Know about Cloud Containers

Cloud containers are an improvement on virtual machines. They make it possible to run software dependably and independently in all types of computing environments. 

Cloud containers are trendy technology in the IT world. The world's top technology organizations, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and many others all use containers. Containers have also seen expanded use in software supply chains and eCommerce. They guarantee a seamless, easy, and surefire way to deploy apps on the cloud without the limitations of infrastructural requirements.

What are Cloud Containers? 

Containers share server operating systems in a lightweight, resource-free cycle that can be started instantaneously. This essentially improves agility and resource usage during application deployment. Container images carry an application and its system components and designs in a standardized and isolated arrangement. When applications are deployed through container images, the applications can be run reliably in various environments.

 

The Evolution: Physical machine > Virtual Machines> Containers

Decades ago, applications used to be installed in physical machines in data centers. Back then, the ability to run business applications on such physical infrastructure was seen as next-level innovation. Then, costs climbed over the roof: too many apps, too many machines, and limited flexibility and speed in resource utilization.

Cloud computing entered the scene with new possibilities. Among them was the virtualization technology. Applications would be run on virtual machines (VMs) with improved and agile resource utilization. Even so, VMs were nearly just as laborious as physical machines; apps need to be manually configured, installed, and managed. This limited delivery speed and increased costs.

Cloud computing technology matured, and this maturation introduced containers. 

 

Containers are like virtual machines but better. An application's code, dependencies, and configurations can be packaged into a single unit and run in a container. Unlike VMs that require an operating system installed in each, containers share a single OS on the server. Containers operate as resource-isolated processes. They are agile and reliable and lead to efficient app deployment. 

 

Why Use Containers Rather Than VMs? 

Containers help to save costs. Contrasted with VMs, cloud containers utilize fewer assets since they don't use a complete OS, they have quicker startup times, require less upkeep, and are genuinely compact. A container application can be written only a single time and afterward deployed repeatedly in any place. 

  • Compact 

A container is no more than a few megabytes in terms of size, on the other hand, a virtual machine with its whole working frame-work might be several gigabytes in size. Along these lines, one server can hold unquestionably a more significant number of containers than virtual machines. 

  • Economical 

Another significant advantage is that virtual machines may take a long time to boot up their working frameworks and start running their applications. In contrast, containerized applications can be started in a split second. That implies that cloud containers can be started up instantly when required and can be removed when they are not needed, helping to free up assets and save costs.

  • Available 

Another advantage is that containerization leads to better isolation and modularity. As opposed to running a whole intricate application inside one container, the application can be divided into modules. 

This is the microservices approach, and applications run this way are much easier to oversee because every module is generally simpler. Changes can be made to modules without rebuilding the whole application. Since containers are lightweight, singular modules (or microservices) can be started up just when required. Availability is instantaneous. 

  • Scalable 

IT frameworks regularly experience both surprising and unexpected traffic surges in the digital era, for example, eCommerce operations over the holidays. Cloud containers give full play to distributed computing versatility and decrease costs by optimizing resource consumption and deployment flexibility. 

For instance, with the current exponential growth of online traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic, learning institutions can use cloud containers to effectively support online classes for thousands of students across the country.

Suppose you have to deploy an application that was initially intended to run on a dedicated server into a cloud domain. In that case, odds are you will have to use a virtual machine in light of the OS, code, libraries, and dependencies needs of the app.

But if you are writing new code to run in cloud architecture, containers will make your work easy. Today most businesses have their cloud-native apps deployed in containers. 



One Important thing to bear in mind…

Above we’ve reviewed the most prominent pros of cloud containers, but we cannot conclude this article without mentioning the security issue. Containers are more vulnerable than VM’s in the sense that they have a larger attack surface than VMs.  Because they share an OS, a single compromised container can affect the entire machine. 

 

Container management solutions exist today to help businesses secure and manage containers hands-free. 

At Cloudride, we can help guide you through on everything related to the best utilization of cloud containers and other solutions, and help you better manage your cloud environment in the most secure and cost-effective manner. We specialize in AWS, MS-AZURE, GCP, and other ISVs. 

Click here to schedule a call to learn more! 

avner-vidal-blog
2020/10
Oct 6, 2020 2:06:29 PM
Everything you Need to Know about Cloud Containers
Cloud Container

Oct 6, 2020 2:06:29 PM

Everything you Need to Know about Cloud Containers

Cloud containers are an improvement on virtual machines. They make it possible to run software dependably and independently in all types of computing environments. 

Cloud containers are trendy technology in the IT world. The world's top technology organizations, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon,...

AWS ECS Fargate

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is indispensable. The scalability and high performance of ECS reduce costs and improve compatibility in container orchestration. 

Having said that, there is a great deal of manual infrastructure configuration, management, and oversight that goes into it. That's why AWS launched Fargate. 

AWS Fargate is a serverless container management service (container as a service) that allows developers to focus on their application and not their infrastructure. Fargate allows you to spend less time managing Amazon EC2 instances and more time building and helping with container orchestration. 

With AWS ECS Fargate, there is no server provisioning and managing. You can seamlessly meet your application's computing needs with auto-scaling, and benefit from enhanced security and better resource utilization. 

Before AWS Fargate, ECS required more of a hands-on approach, manual server configurations, management, and monitoring, which greatly impacted efficiency. One ended up with many clusters of VMs that reduced speed and complicated things.

Now with AWS Fargate, you can run containers without crashing under infrastructure management requirements. 

Let's explore this potential:

 

Reduced operational overhead 

When you run Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate, your focus shifts from managing infrastructure to managing apps. Once you pay for the containers, server management, scaling, and patching are taken care of. AWS Fargate will keep everything up to date.

In this compute engine, you can build and manage apps with both ECS and EKS. You can work from anywhere with assured efficient resource utilization, thanks to auto-scaling.

AWS Fargate makes work easy for IT staff and developers. Unlike before, there is no tinkering with complicated access rules or server selection. You get to invest more time and expertise in development and deployment. 

 

More cost savings

AWS Fargate automatically right-sizes resources based on the compute requirements of your apps. That makes it a cloud cost optimization approach worth exploring. There is no overprovisioning, for example, because you only pay for the resources that you use. 

Further, you can take advantage of Fargate Spot to save up to 70% on fault-tolerant applications. It works well for big data apps, batch processing, and CI/CD apps. On the other hand, the Compute Savings Plan gives you a chance to slash costs by up to 50% for your persistent workloads. 

Additionally; 

  • With Fargate, you only incur charges when your container workloads are running inside the VM
  • Cost isn't based on the total run time of the VM instance
  • Scheduling on Fargate is much better compared to standard ECS; that makes it easier to budgetize containers based on time for more savings 

 

Security enhanced and simplified 

AWS calls it "Secure isolation by design." Your ECS tasks run in their isolated underlying kernel. The isolation boundary dedicates CPU resources, memory, and storage to individual workloads, significantly enhancing each task's security.

With ECS, this isolation led to complexities. Having several layers of containers and tasks meant that you would need security for each one. Fargate simplifies things, in terms of infrastructure security. Using AWS ECS Fargate, you worry less about:

  • Compromised ports
  • API exposure
  • Data leaks from remote code execution

 

Monitoring and insights

You get improved monitoring of applications with AWS ECS Fargate. The compute engine has built-in integrations with Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights and other services. You will stay up to date on metrics and logs concerning your applications to detect threats and enhance your cloud infrastructure compliance.

You get ready compatibility with third-party tools for;

  • Collecting and correlating security telemetry from containers and orchestration 
  • Monitoring AWS ECS Fargate processes and apps
  • Tracking network activity in AWS Fargate
  • Viewing AWS CloudTrail Logs across AWS Fargate

 

There has to be a bit of a But:

Customization

Fargate reduces customization to improve ease of use. You may find, therefore, that your control is much limited when deploying ECS on Fargate. An alternative container-as-service management platform may offer greater fine-tuning. 

Regional availability

AWS Fargate is not available everywhere. By mid-2020, the compute engine for EKS and ECS is not available in more than a dozen regions for their data centers. Businesses in these regions have no other option but to use alternative container management services. 



To Summarize: 

Fargate allows for building and deployment in a scalable, secure, and cost-effective manner. This is a fast-growing solution that reduces the infrastructure management needs for developers and IT staff. At Cloudride, we can guide you on Fargate and other container-as-service solutions to help you adequately deal with the challenges of cloud cost and security. We specialize in AWS, Azure, GCP, and other ISVs

Click here to schedule a call to learn more! 

avner-vidal-blog
2020/09
Sep 17, 2020 2:10:15 PM
AWS ECS Fargate
AWS, Cloud Container

Sep 17, 2020 2:10:15 PM

AWS ECS Fargate

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is indispensable. The scalability and high performance of ECS reduce costs and improve compatibility in container orchestration. 

AWS for eCommerce

Fact: Consumers expect lightning speed performance and seamless eCommerce experiences. 

The competition in online commerce has heated up in massive ways too. Consumers nowadays are far more knowledgeable about their shopping wishes. They know what they want, how much they should be paying for it, how fast they can expect to receive it, and with competition a mere click away – you are expected to provide a shopping experience that is no-less than perfect – every step of the way. 

ECommerce business owners are increasingly turning to cloud hosting solutions to supercharge online shop performance by taking advantage of its scalability and advantages to create a seamless user journey. 

Let’s review some of the AWS advantages for eCommerce applications

 

AWS Capabilities that Improve eCommerce Potential

AWS has numerous unassailable capabilities that position it as a reliable eCommerce cloud solution. These include security, scalability, server uptime, and a favorable pricing model. 

Security and Compliance 

It’s like a data breach Armageddon out there. Data security is the biggest agonizing factor for startups that focus on eCommerce. Business processes online involve the handling of sensitive customer data, such as credit card information. A recent data breach report shows that 62% of consumers do not trust the confidence of their data with retailers. 

AWS bolsters cloud security with absolute compliance with global data security and data privacy regulations. The provider can speed up your compliance through certifications such as SOC 1,2 & 3. You can run your eCommerce store knowing that your business and customer data are safe.

The commerce cloud computing solution will reliably secure your eCommerce store as you focus on securing the data you put on it. It is a shared responsibility model that speeds up compliance for businesses while reducing operating costs. To learn more about how to implement security best practices on the cloud – check out this ebook

AWS security features include:

  • AWS compliance program – It helps businesses attain compliance through best practices and audits 
  • Physical security—AWS guarantees the security of data centers across the world 
  • Data backup—This is an automated function on AWS and is critical for business continuity and disaster recovery. 
  • Transmission protection — the provider uses a cryptographic protocol that protects against eavesdropping and tampering 
  • 24-7-365 network and infrastructure monitoring and incidence response
  • Multifactor authentication, passwords, and access keys 
  • 509 certificates
  • Security logs 

 

Auto-scaling

Ecommerce traffic can be as unpredictable as the weather. For success in this digital business environment, one needs a hosting solution with limitless auto-scaling capabilities to handle sudden bandwidth surges in the middle of the night or holidays. 

The AWS cloud hosting solution is architectured to expand or shrink based on business demand. It helps to ensure that your eCommerce store doesn’t crash on peak season. The auto-scaling function covers all resources, including bandwidth, memory, and storage, guaranteeing steady and predictable performance for your cyber business.

How it works

  • AWS auto-scaling tracks the usage demand for your apps and auto-adjusts capacity 
  • You can budgetize and build auto-scaling plans for resources across your eCommerce platform 
  • You get scaling recommendations that can help to optimize performance and costs



On-demand pricing model

One great advantage of using AWS for eCommerce is cost-effectiveness. The provider uses a pay for consumption billing model, which means that you only pay for what you use. There are no upfront costs, and in the face of business uncertainties today, you might appreciate that clients are not tied with long term contracts on AWS. 

The pay per consume model empowers small startups to keep costs low and achieve business survivability. On top of that, you can explore other ways to reduce costs such as:

  • Using Compute Savings Plans 
  • Using Reserved Instances (RI)
  • Review and modifying the auto-scaling configuration
  • Leveraging lower-cost storage tiers

 

Global hosting for consistent brand performance 

AWS has data centers around the world. It makes it easy to deliver a consistent and seamless eCommerce performance for customers in any corner of the globe.  

This globalized hosting capability means that you can serve customers from each country uniquely in their languages. You can gather relevant regional data for accurate operations. All the while, you will be able to meet the global speed and performance demands and safeguard your business from costly downtimes. 

 

Consistent speed with a new and improved CDN

The AWS CDN will enable your eCommerce website to deliver images, videos, and the entire website faster regardless of bandwidth or geographical location. The CDNs speeds up load times and the overall user experience on your eCommerce store. Requests for content are automatically routed to the nearest server location, saving customers from high latency.

 

AWS eCommerce Support 

AWS provides customer support through people and tools that can help you amplify performance and reduce costs. Depending on your AWS SLA, you can get human support with a response rate of under 15 minutes, 24-7-365.

Types of support you can get on AWS  include:

  • Architectural guidance and introduction 
  • Operational and security guidance 
  • Dashboard monitoring solutions
  • Other benefits of the AWS architecture for eCommerce 

 

Broader cataloging 

ECommerce customers expect thousands of product options when browsing. Extensive cataloging is one of the reasons why Amazon is the leading eCommerce store. AWS can grant you a similar capability with its auto-scaling features.

 

A smooth and faster checkout process

Checkout service is a critical building block for any eCommerce store. AWS enables better coordination of checkout workflows and compliant storage and processing of credit card data and purchase history, leading to faster order processing. 

 

Ecommerce integration:

Several third-party providers have built platforms on the AWS infrastructure. You can leverage these integrations, including CRM, email marketing, and analytics solutions for better eCommerce. 

 

To Summarize

Hosting on the AWS eCommerce cloud computing solution can simplify your online business and accelerate growth in diverse ways. You are assured of security, availability, scalability, speed, and seamless shopping experience for your customers.

Need some more in-depth advice to get you started? Click here to schedule a free consultation call. 

yarden-shitrit
2020/09
Sep 15, 2020 11:02:40 AM
AWS for eCommerce
AWS, E-Commerce

Sep 15, 2020 11:02:40 AM

AWS for eCommerce

Fact: Consumers expect lightning speed performance and seamless eCommerce experiences. 

Cloud Computing - Top 10 Security Issues, Challenges, and Solutions

Cloud computing is oftentimes the most cost-effective means to use, maintain, and upgrade your infrastructure, as it removes the need to invest in costly in-house infrastructure. It can be defined as the outsourced IT infrastructure that improves computing performance. 

However, despite its many benefits in cost and scalability, cloud computing has various security challenges that businesses must be prepared for. Let’s explore:

  • Guest-hopping/ VM jumping

This is a cloud security challenge that arises when someone gets into your Virtual Machine and host computer by breaching a nearby Virtual Machine in the VMware server. Ways to reduce the risk of VM jumping attacks include regularly updating your operating system and separating database traffic from web-facing traffic. 

 

  • SQL injections

A website hosted on the cloud can be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, where the cyber vandals inject malicious SQL commands into the database of a web app. To prevent an SQL injection attack, you will have to remove all unused stored procedures. Further, assign the least possible privileges to the persons that have access permissions to the database.

 

  • Backdoor attacks 

The backdoor is intentional open access to an application created by developers for updating code and troubleshooting apps. This access poses a security challenge when attackers use it to access your sensitive data. The primary solution to backdoor attacks is to disable debugging on apps.

 

  • Malicious employees

Humans are the biggest risk to cloud computing and data security. Security challenges may arise when an employee with ill intentions is granted access to sensitive data. These people may compromise business and customer data or sell access privileges to the highest bidder. Regular and rigorous security auditing is critical to minimize this security threat.

 

  • CSP data security concerns

With public and hybrid cloud models, you hand over your data to the Cloud Service Provider (CSP). Depending on their compliance and integrity, these businesses might abuse your data or expose it to cloud threats through improper storage and processing. You can reduce the risk of that through:

  • Restricting your CSPs control over your data
  • Employing robust access authentication mechanisms 
  • Working with a CSP that is regulatory compliant 
  • Choosing a CSP that has a well-defined Data backup system 

 

  • Domain hijacking 

Attackers might change the name of your domain without your knowledge or permission. This cloud security challenge allows intruders to access sensitive data and undertake illegal activities on your system. One way to prevent domain hijacking is to use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), which uses an owner-only authorization key to prevent unauthorized name changes.

 

  • Denial of service attacks (DoS): 

DOS attacks will make your network or computing resources unavailable. In a DOS attack, the cyber threat actors flood your system with many packets in a short amount of time. The packets take over all of your bandwidth, and the attackers use a spoofed IP address to make tracking and stopping DOS difficult. 

DOS attacks can be advanced to multiple machines, in which case it becomes a Distributed DOS or DDOS. These attacks can be prevented using firewalls for packet filtering, encryption, and authentication.

 

  • Phishing and social fraud

There might be attempts to steal data such as passwords, usernames, and credit card information. The threat actors send an email containing a link to users leading them to a fraudulent website that looks like the real deal, where they freely disclose their information. Counter-measures to phishing include frequent system scanning, using spam filter and spam blockers, and training employees not to respond to suspicious emails. 

 

  • Physical security 

Physical security in CSP data centers directly plays a role in client data security. Datacenter facilities can be physically accessed by intruders that can tamper with or transfer data without your knowledge and approval. In order to mitigate physical cybersecurity concerns, businesses must work with CSPs with adequate physical security measures in their data centers and near-zero incidence response time. 

 

  • Domain Name System (DNS) attacks

DNS attacks exploit vulnerabilities in the domain name system (DNS), which translates hostnames into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for a web browser to load internet resources. DNS servers can be exposed to many attacks since all networked apps, from email to browsers and eCommerce apps, operate on the DNS. Attacks to watch out for here include Man in the Middle attacks, DNS Tunneling, Domain lock-up and UDP Flood attacks.

 

To Summarize: 

Unlike on-premise infrastructural security, cloud security threats come from multiple angles. Maintaining data integrity on the cloud takes collaboration between CSPs and business. At all times you must bear in mind that the responsibility for your company’s data is always your own. Consider adopting security best practices, monitoring solutions, and expert consultation for a secure cloud environment.

Want to talk to one of our experts? Click here to schedule a free consultation call.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/09
Sep 9, 2020 11:11:49 AM
Cloud Computing - Top 10 Security Issues, Challenges, and Solutions
Cloud Security

Sep 9, 2020 11:11:49 AM

Cloud Computing - Top 10 Security Issues, Challenges, and Solutions

Cloud computing is oftentimes the most cost-effective means to use, maintain, and upgrade your infrastructure, as it removes the need to invest in costly in-house infrastructure. It can be defined as the outsourced IT infrastructure that improves computing performance. 

However, despite its many...

5 Serverless Development Best Practices with AWS Lambda


Application development is changing and improving with new serverless technologies. You can shorten the amount of code needed to write and reduce or eliminate the issues associated with a traditional server-based model when you use a serverless model. But with this development model, there are some key aspects to focus on to ensure you are building robust applications.

We’re going to talk about Infrastructure as Code, Testing functions Locally, Managing Code, Testing, and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) and do a high-level recap of what serverless means.

What is Serverless?

A serverless application is an app that doesn’t require the provisioning or management of any servers. Your application code still runs on a server, of course; you just don’t need to worry about managing it. You can just write code and let AWS handle the rest.

Lambda code is stored in S3, and when a function is invoked, the code is downloaded onto a server, managed by AWS, and executed.

AWS also covers the scalability and availability of your code. When you receive traffic to your lambda functions, AWS will scale up or down based on the number of requests to your application.

This approach to application development makes it easier to build and scale your application quickly. You don’t have to worry about servers, you just write code.

1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

When creating your infrastructure, you can use the AWS CLI, the AWS Console, or IaC. IaC is what AWS recommends as a best practice when developing new applications.

When you build your infrastructure as code, you have more control overyour environment in terms of audibility, automatability, and repeatability. You could create a Dev environment with IaC templates and then replicate that environment exactly for stage or prod. (while with the alternative you increase the likelihood to do something incorrectly and not replicate environments). When testing your application, it’s important to replicate what’s in prod to be sure that your code does what you intend for itto do.

Traditionally when using AWS, you would write CloudFormationTemplates. CloudFormationTemplates can become very long and hard to read so AWS came out with a solution to this if you’re writing a serverless app. You can use AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model). These templates can be written in JSON or YAML format and AWS SAM has it’s own CLI to help you build your applications. SAM is built on top of CloudFormation. Designed to shorten the amount of code needed to build your serverless infrastructure.

2. Testing Locally — AWS SAM Local

Before making deployments and updates to your application you should be testing everything to make sure you’re getting the desired outcome.

AWS SAM Local offers command-line tools that you can use to test your serverless applications before deploying them to AWS. SAM Local uses Docker behind the scenes enabling you to test your functions.

You can locally test an API you defined in your SAM template before creating it in API Gateway. You can validate templates you create to make sure you don’t have issues with deployment. Using these tools can help reduce the risk of error with your application. You can view logs locally and debug your code, allowing you to iterate changes quickly & smoothly.

3. Optimizing Code Management

Ideally, Lambda functions shouldn’t be overly complicated and coupled together. There are some specific recommendations around how you should write and organize your code.

Coding Best Practices
  • Decoupling Business Logic from the Handler

When writing your Lambda functions, you should receive parameters from within the “handler.” This is the root of Lambda functions. For example, if you had an API Gateway endpoint as the event source, you may have parameter values that are passed into the endpoint. Your handler should take those values and pass them to another function that handles the business logic. Doing this enables you to have code that is decoupled. This makestesting your code much more accessible, because the code is more isolated. Also, this allows you to reuse business logic through your app.

  • Fail Fast

Configure short timeouts for your functions. You don’t want to have a function spinning helplessly while waiting for a dependency to respond. Lambda is billed based on the duration of your function’s execution time. There is no reason to incur a higher charge when your functions’ dependencies are unresponsive.

  • Trim Dependencies

To reduce cold start times, you should trim the dependencies included to just the essentials at runtime. Lambda function code packages are permitted to be at most 50 MB compressed and 250 MB when extracted in the runtime environment.

Code Management Best Practices

Writing good code is only a battle, now you need to manage it properly to win the war. Like stated earlier, the development speed of serverless applications is generally much faster than a typical environment. Having a good solution for source control and management of your Lambda code will help ensure secure, efficient, and smooth change management processes.

AWS recommends having a 1:1 relationship between Lambda functions and code repositories and organizing your environment to be very fine-grained.

If you were developing multiple environments for your Lambda code, Dev and Prod, it makes sense to separate those into different release branches. The primary purpose of organizing your code this way is to ensure that each environment has it’s own separate, decoupled, environment. You don’t want to work on developing a modern application only to be left with a monolithic coupled code-base.

4. Testing

Testing your code is the best way to ensure quality when you are developing a serverless architecture.

  • Unit Tests

AWS recommends that you unit test your Lambda function code thoroughly, focusing mostly on the business logic outside your handler function. The bulk of your logic and tests should occur with mock objects and functions that you have full control over within your code-base.

You can create local test automation using AWS SAM Local, which can serve as local end-to-end testing of your function code.

  • Integration Tests

For integration tests, AWS recommends that you create lower life-cycle versions of your Lambda functions where your code packages are deployed and invoked through sample events that your CI/CD pipeline can trigger and inspect the results of.

5. Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

AWS recommends that you programmatically manage all of your serverless deployments through CI/CD pipelines. Because the speed of development with a serverless architecture will be much more frequent. Creating manual deployments and updates along with the need to deploy more often can result in bottlenecks and errors.

AWS provides a suite of tools for setting up a CI/CD pipeline.

  • AWS CodeCommit

CodeCommit is AWS’s equivalent to GitHub or BitBucket. Providing private Git repositories and the ability to create branches. Allowing for best practices of code management with fine-grained access control.

  • AWS CodePipeline

CodePipeline automates the build, test, and deploy phases of your release process every time there is a code change. CodePipeline integrates with CodeCommit or other third-party services such as GitHub.

  • AWS CodeBuild

CodeBuild can be used for the build stage of your pipeline. You can use it to execute unit tests and create a new Lambda code package. Integrating it with AWS SAM to push your code to Amazon S3 and push the new packages to Lambda via CodeDeploy.

  • AWS CodeDeploy

CodeDeploy is used to automate deployments of new code to your Lambda functions, eliminating the need for error-prone manual operations. CodeDeploy has different deployment preferences you can use depending on what your needs are. For example, you can create a “Linear10PercentEvery1Minute” deployment, transferring 10% of your functions’ traffic to the new version of the function every one minute for 10 minutes.

  • AWS CodeStar

CodeStar is a unified user interface that allows you to create a new application with best practices already implemented. When you create a CodeStar project, it creates a fully implemented CI/CD pipeline from the start with tests already defined. CodeStar is the easiest way to get started building an application.

Sample Serverless Architectures

Now that we’ve covered some best practices for developing serverless applications, you should get some hands-on experience building applications. Here is a repository of tutorials for sample serverless applications.

Recap

Serverless applications take away the restraints of managing servers and allow you to focus on your application code. You can develop applications that meet business needs faster than ever. AWS provides a whole host of serverless technologies and tools to help you maintain and deploy your applications.

Need to dive fast into app development and deployment? At Cloudride, we provide end-to-end AWS Lambda serverless and other comprehensive services that help optimize the performance, business value, cost, and security of your cloud solution.

Contact us to learn more.

 

ran-dvir/blog/
2020/08
Aug 23, 2020 10:28:02 AM
5 Serverless Development Best Practices with AWS Lambda
AWS, High-Tech, Lambda

Aug 23, 2020 10:28:02 AM

5 Serverless Development Best Practices with AWS Lambda

Application development is changing and improving with new serverless technologies. You can shorten the amount of code needed to write and reduce or eliminate the issues associated with a traditional server-based model when you use a serverless model. But with this development model, there are some...

DevOps As A Service

DevOps as a service is an emerging philosophy in application development. DevOps as a service moves traditional collaboration of the development and operations team to the cloud, where many of the processes can be automated using stackable virtual development tools.

As many organizations adopt DevOps and migrate their apps to the cloud, their tools used to build, test, and deploy processes change towards making ‘continuous delivery’ an effective managed cloud service. We’ll take a look at what such a move would entail, and what it means for the next generation of DevOps teams.

DevOps as a Managed Cloud Service

What is DevOps in the cloud? Essentially it is the migration of your tools and processes for continuous delivery to a hosted virtual platform. The delivery pipeline becomes a seamless orchestration where developers, testers, and operations professionals collaborate as one, and as much of the deployment process as possible is automated. Here are some of the more popular commercial options for moving DevOps to the cloud on AWS and Azure.

AWS Tools and Services for DevOps

Amazon Web Services has built a powerful global network for virtually hosting some of the world’s most complex IT environments. With fiber linked data centers arranged all over the world and a payment schedule that measures exactly the services you use down to the millisecond of computing time, AWS is a fast and relatively easy way to migrate your DevOps to the cloud.


Though AWS has scores of powerful interactive features, three particular services are the core of continuous cloud delivery.

AWS CodeBuild

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed service for compiling code, running quality assurance testing through automated processes, and producing deployment-ready software. CodeBuild is highly secure, as each customer receives a unique encryption key to build into every artifact produced.

CodeBuild offers automatic scaling and grows on-demand with your needs, even allowing the simultaneous deployment of two different build versions, which allows for comparison testing in the production environment.

Particularly important for many organizations is CodeBuild’s cost efficiency. It comes with no upfront costs and customers pay only for the milliseconds of compute time required to produce releases and connect seamlessly with other Amazon services to add power and flexibility on demand without spending six figures on hardware to support development.

AWS CodePipeline

With a slick graphical interface, you set parameters and build the model for your perfect deployment scenario and CodePipeline takes it from there. With no servers to provision and deploy, it lets you hit the ground running, bringing continuous delivery by executing automated tasks to perform the complete delivery cycle every time a change is made to the code.

AWS CodeDeploy

Once a new build makes it through CodePipeline, CodeDeploy delivers the working package to every instance outlined in your pre-configured parameters. This makes it simple to synchronize builds and instantly patch or upgrade at once. CodeDeploy is code-agnostic and easily incorporates common legacy code. Every instance of your deployment is easily tracked in the AWS Management Console, and errors or problems can be easily rolled back through the GUI.
Combining these AWS tools with others in the AWSinventory provides all the building blocks needed to deploy a safe, scalable continuous delivery model in the cloud. Though the engineering adjustments are daunting, the long term stability and savings make it a move worth considering sooner rather than later.

 

Microsoft Azure Tools and Services for DevOps

Microsoft is bringing it’s a potent punch to the DevOps as a managed service space with Azure. Azure offers an impressive set of innovative and interoperable tools for DevOps.

With so many organizations having existing investment in Microsoft products and services, Azure may offer the easiest transition to hybrid or full cloud environments. Microsoft has had decades to build secure global infrastructure and currently hosts about two-thirds of the world’s Fortune 500 companies. Some of Microsoft’s essential DevOps tools include:

Azure App Service

As a trusted platform around the world with partners in every aspect of the IT industry, Microsoft’s Azure App Service provides endless combinations of options for development. Whether apps are developed in the ubiquitous Visual Studio app or the cloud’s largest offering of program languages, DevOps teams can create secure, enterprise-quality apps with this service.

Azure DevTest Labs

Azure DevTest Labs makes it easy for your DevOps team to experiment. Quickly provision and build out your Azure DevOps environment using prebuilt and customizable templates and get to work in a viable sandbox immediately. Learn the ins and outs of Azure in repeatable, disposable environments, then move your lessons to production.

Azure Stack

For shops that want to partially migrate to cloud-based DevOps, Azure Stack is a tool for integrating Azure services with your existing datacenter. Move current segments of your production pipeline like virtual machines, Docker containers, and more from in-house to the cloud with straightforward migration paths. Azure lets you unify app development by mirroring resources locally and in the cloud, enabling easy collaboration for teams working in a hybrid cloud environment.

Microsoft provides a wide array of tools for expanding your environment’s capabilities and keeping it secure.

To Summarize

The continuing evolution and merger of DevOps and cloud-based architecture open a world of possibilities. Some industry experts believe that DevOps itself was built around on-premise tools and practices and that migrating to the cloud will bring the end of DevOps and mark the beginning of the ‘NoOps’ era, where developers will have all the knowledge and resources they need to provision their own environments on the fly without breaking form the task of development. In the industry, there is concern that this may be the death knell for the operations aspect of DevOps.

But regardless of the tools and methods used, development has always been driven by human thinking and needs, and developers who focus on creating and improving software will always benefit from teammates whose primary aim is keeping infrastructure operating.

Contact us to learn more.

ran-dvir/blog/
2020/08
Aug 16, 2020 10:36:04 AM
DevOps As A Service
DevOps

Aug 16, 2020 10:36:04 AM

DevOps As A Service

DevOps as a service is an emerging philosophy in application development. DevOps as a service moves traditional collaboration of the development and operations team to the cloud, where many of the processes can be automated using stackable virtual development tools.

Automating your production workloads

As companies achieve better market penetration and expansion, they face challenges in efficiency, scalability, visibility, and speed in business processes. Unless they effectively unify and automate processes, costs begin to soar, and the quality of customer service declines. Workload automation is about improving back-office efficiency and streamlining transactions and processes.  

The process of workflow automation is grounded in technology. It involves establishing a single source of control for operations, process scheduling, and the introduction of self-service capabilities.  

Why bother with workload automation? 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning today lead to faster, precise, and cost-effective business processes. The cloud simplifies and accelerates the production workload automation process. Forbes reports that 83% of business workloads will be shifted to the cloud by the end of the year. 

Workload automation leads to streamlined and highly productive business operations while elevating the customer experience. The process removes routine, redundant, and inefficient tasks opening the way for purpose-driven, data-driven, timely, impactful, customer-centric, and cost-efficient operations. The process is closely related to job scheduling, and it involves making changes to your technology infrastructure and the way you gather, access, and use data.  

The use cases of workload automation include:

  • The sales process in marketing: SaaS software solutions can accelerate your lead generation and lead nurturing. The automation of sales and marketing processes leads to consistency in the buyer journey, even when messaging must be handled by diverse teams of staff, agencies, and consultants.  
  • Employee onboarding: Onboarding is a repetitive procedure fraught with the risk of human error. Self-learning cloud solutions can help remove the need to record an employee's personal and payment information manually.  
  • Self-service platforms: You can get access to automated customer service solutions that link to a knowledge database. It becomes easier to build bots that empower customers to serve themselves with guaranteed intelligent and accurate responses.  
  • Retail: An automated point of sales system automatically feeds sales data into a pricing or audit system daily. It leads to better tracking of sales and automated updating of retail pricing.
  • Security and resource utilization on the cloud: Automated provisioning and access control can lead to efficient cloud resource utilization and better security.  

Achieving workload automation 

In technology, workloads comprise data, application configuration, and the configuration of hardware resources, support services, and network connectivity. The process of automation requires a comprehensive audit of each of these components.  

Identify the right cloud solutions  

Modernization of business processes can cause severe disruptions. An incremental approach to cloud migration can help you get there cheaply and without impacting productivity. You can start the process by finding manual business operations that can benefit from self-enablement cloud solutions. 

Analyze application function and current environment 

Some workloads need high performing network storage and may thus not be suitable for the cloud. Some others are legacy in nature and are not designed for operation in distributed computing environments. The same is the case for seasonal needs apps such as those used for short term projects. A workload automation framework is less burdened when you leave these out. 

Assess computing resources and costs  

Batch workloads such as those designed to pore over your transaction data require a lot of memory and storage capacity. These workloads run in the background and are not time-sensitive. Online workloads need more computing and network resources. When creating the business case for the automation process, analyze the costs involved in running them on the cloud versus leaving them on-prem. 

Think about security and compliance 

Security itself is a task that can be automated in the cloud, but it should nonetheless be an underlying principle in workload automation and orchestration. Carefully evaluate the security and compliance risks of the cloud options - including public, private, and hybrid - that you choose for the destination of your business processes. 

Assess connectivity needs  

Moving workloads to the cloud require network reconfiguration with regards to availability & accessibility security. Only a secure, highly available and high performing network can support reliable and impactful automation of production workloads. 

Automate by department  

The easiest workloads to automate are the processes in marketing, HR, and finance. Even though your business has its unique pain points, the hurdles to efficiency in these processes are common in most enterprises. 

To Summarize: 

Cloud computing is a compelling option for production workload automation. But cloud workloads are vulnerable to data breaches, account compromise, and resource exploitation. In partnership with Radware, which provides an agentless, cloud-native solution to protect both the overall security posture of cloud environments, as well as protect individual cloud workloads against cloud-native attack vectors, Cloudride can help you automate workloads and achieve superior efficiency without compromising security.  

Radware’s Cloud Workload Protection Service detects promiscuous permissions to your workloads, hardens security configurations before data exposure occurs, and detects data theft using advanced machine-learning algorithms.

Together we offer end-to-end migration & production workload automation, helping companies just like yours get the best value from the cloud with services such as architecture design, cost optimization, and security, and a full suite SaaS solution for cloud workload security. The Radware cloud workload security solution automates and optimizes permission monitoring, data theft detection, and workload protection, complete with alerts and reports. 

Schedule an exploratory call. 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/07
Jul 26, 2020 4:13:51 PM
Automating your production workloads
Cloud Security

Jul 26, 2020 4:13:51 PM

Automating your production workloads

As companies achieve better market penetration and expansion, they face challenges in efficiency, scalability, visibility, and speed in business processes. Unless they effectively unify and automate processes, costs begin to soar, and the quality of customer service declines. Workload automation is...

5 Best Practices to reduce your bills in Azure

Cloud cost-saving should be part of the implementation and management strategies from the get-go. Businesses that transition to the cloud is increasingly realizing that cloud computing and cost management must go hand-in-hand. The pay-as-you-go structure of cloud computing can work in your favor, but it could also be what causes costs jumping through the roof. CIOs and CTOs should lead the cost optimization discussion and champion cost-aware computing across teams.

 

When working with MS-Azure, there a more than a few must-have Best Practices you need to implement to Reduce Bills, and we’re happy to bring about the 5 most important ones:

 

1. Optimize resources

Cost discussions should be part and parcel of technical discussions and strategies. Adopting FinOps and CostOps models is one such approach to create a cost evangelist out of everyone, from the finance teams to the development and operation squads. Developers have a natural affinity for selecting large and powerful resources that sometimes go unused or underused. Having the cost optimization discussion early on can help to steer a cost-efficient awareness and resource utilization.

Right-sizing virtual machines is among the most effective initiatives in optimizing resource and cost efficiency on Azure. Most developers spin up VMs that are larger than what is needed. Over-provisioning a VM can lead to higher costs. Stay on top of costs, the schedule starts, and stop times for these VMS. Embrace a performance monitoring approach for the under or over-utilization of the resource to guide a cost reduction that doesn't compromise performance.

2. Terminate unused assets

There are tools for auto-scaling your resources, but this can only be as effective as the metrics used to employ in the scaling. Use the parameters reported by the application, including page response time and queue length. These metrics can reveal idle resources maintained but not being used.

One of the most significant cost drivers in Microsoft Azure is unattached disk storage. When you launch VMs, disk storage gets assigned to act as the local storage for the application. This disk storage remains active even after you terminate a VM, and Microsoft continues to charge for it. Regularly checking for and deleting unused assets in your infrastructure, such as disk storage, can significantly reduce your Azure bill.

3. Use reserved instances

Pricing optimization is one other critical consideration for reducing spend in Azure. The provider offers reserved instances for workloads that you are confident will be running for a long & consistent time period, such as websites and customer apps. If you identify and anticipate such apps and their usage in advance, you can save a great deal by reserving instances. Reserved instances are an indispensable tool for companies that want to stay on top of their cloud budgets.

You get to take advantage of the great discounts offered when you pay for capacity upfront. Depending on how long you make the reservation for, both Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and Azure Hybrid can enable you to save up to:

  • 72% on Linux VMs
  • 80% on Windows VMs
  • 65% on Cosmos DB databases
  • 55% on SQL Databases

The best thing is that you can get out of the agreement anytime, and Microsoft will reimburse you for any unused credit.

4. Move workloads to containers

Azure VMs is a popular computing option for performance efficiency, but the Azure Kubernetes is more cost-efficient. The containers are lighter and thus cheaper than the VMs. They have a low footprint and support fast operability.

AKS will enable you to combine several tasks into a small number of servers. You will get features such as wizard-based resource optimization, built-in monitoring, role-based access control, and one-click updates. Containers are quicker to deploy than VMs.

5. Right-size SQL database

Your Azure cost management strategy is not complete without looking at your PaaS assets. Many developers use the Azure SQL database to manage apps. It's essential to track the utilization of the SQL Databases and the workloads running on them. Azure pricing for SQL Databases follows a DTU model that encompasses memory, compute, and IO resources.

There are three tiers, including Basic for development and testing, Standard for multi-user apps, and Premium for high-performance multi-user apps. Choose a service tier that gives you the best cost efficiency without sacrificing performance.

To Conclude:

Organizations need the right plans and automation tools for reducing Azure cloud computing costs. These five best practices are the basic techniques to adopt on the path to cost maturity based on Microsoft's 3 part formula:

  • Measure
  • Snooze
  • and Resize.

For a scaled evaluation and optimization of the Azure environment, you might need to invest in an intelligent cloud management solution that can drill down costs and track resource utilization and performance.

At Cloudride, we help our clients to plan and execute a comprehensive and hands-on cost optimization strategy in the cloud environment. From migration to architecture design and container management, we pay a close eye on costs and security to achieve an agile infrastructure that delivers the most business value.

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/07
Jul 14, 2020 5:15:40 PM
5 Best Practices to reduce your bills in Azure
Azure

Jul 14, 2020 5:15:40 PM

5 Best Practices to reduce your bills in Azure

Cloud cost-saving should be part of the implementation and management strategies from the get-go. Businesses that transition to the cloud is increasingly realizing that cloud computing and cost management must go hand-in-hand. The pay-as-you-go structure of cloud computing can work in your favor,...

Go Serverless With AWS Lambda

Go Serverless With AWS Lambda
Going serverless is the new tech trend for businesses. It helps with consolidated functionality in all use cases, speedy development, and automatic scalability, among other advantages. AWS Lambda is one of the leading cloud solutions that can spare you the time-consuming complexities of creating your server environment.

What does serverless mean?
Going serverless doesn't mean running code with no servers. That's a technical impossibility. Serverless computing means that your cloud provider creates and manages the server environment, taking the problem off your mind. This computing model significantly makes it simple and fast to deploy code into production with all maintenance and administration tasks handled by the provider.

How to go serverless with AWS Lambda: Example

In the AWS serverless world, there is:

● No server provisioning and management
● No managing hosts
● No pathing
● No OS bootstrapping

Lambda supports different programming languages. You can use python, Node.js Go, Ruby, C#, and Java for this serverless function example. To create and deploy a serverless function with AWS Lambda, go to the Services Menu of your AWS account and choose ‘Lambda’. Choose ‘Create Function’ to get started.

Use the integrated code editor in the Function Code section. Replace that code in the edit pane with this simple function example for starters:

exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {

const result = event.number1 + event.number2;

callback (null, result);
};

Picture1-3



In the upper right corner of the interface, navigate to ‘Test and Save’ and click on ‘Configure Test Events’. In the dialog box that comes up, choose Hello World as the Node.js blueprint and update it to:
{
"number1": 3,
"number2": 2
}

Picture1-2


Click the create button to test this function. Save and check to confirm that the created function features in the dropdown of functions. Once you click the Test button, this function will execute, giving you a result of 5.

Picture1-4


Use cases of a serverless cloud

● Day to day operations: You can leverage the platform for daily business functions such as report generations or automated backups.
● Real-time notifications: You can set SNS alerts that trigger under specific policies. You can integrate that with Slack and other services that add a mobility aspect to the Lambda alerts.
● Customer service: One other use case for the serverless cloud is chatbots. You can configure code such that it triggers when a user inputs a query. Like the rest of the features, you only pay when the bot is used.
● Processing S3 objects: The serverless AWS Lambda is the right platform for image-heavy applications. Thumbnail generation is a quick process. You can further expect advanced capabilities in resizing images and delivering all types of image formats.

Advantages

Reducing costs
The AWS Lambda serverless service operates on a pay-as-you-go model. You pay for what you use, and that helps to slash a significant fraction of your operating costs. The billing you get at the end of the month is in every cent equal to the time your apps were used. No resource wastage.
Unlike other cloud providers, AWS calculates your server time used and rounds up the figure to the nearest 100 milliseconds. That transparency improves your visibility on operating costs. Small and medium scale businesses have reported being able to save close to $30,000 every month by going serverless with AWS Lambda.

On-time scalability

The AWS Lambda serverless service is for businesses that want agile scalability. That means that if the use case of your app doubles overnight, you will have enough capacity to handle the server requests. AWS Lambda serverless is designed for your apps to scale automatically. Your app can jump from 4 server requests this minute to 3000 the next minute, without you having to step in to configure it anew.

Accelerated iterative development
With the AWS Lambda serverless platform, you can ship codes straight from the vendor console. That removes the need for continuous delivery tools. Developers, therefore, get the time to improve product features and capabilities. Further, you can move from the idea to production in a few days as opposed to months.
The steps involved in code ideation, testing, and deployments are shorter. For a business trying to save costs, the automaticity of the system means that you can maintain a lean team.

Better security
By switching to a serverless cloud, developers develop code that is in line with best practices and security protocols. That's because all development is forced to use code that functions within the serverless environment.

Centralized functions
There are limitless ways to consolidate business functions with AWS Lambda. For instance, you can integrate your marketing applications with a mass mailing service such as SES. Such functionality can enable your teams to work as one for better outcomes. It translates to efficient and streamlined operations.

Need to dive fast into app development and deployment? At Cloudride, we provide end-to-end AWS Lambda serverless and other comprehensive services that help optimize the performance, business value, cost, and security of your cloud solution. Contact us to learn more.

 

yarden-shitrit
2020/07
Jul 8, 2020 1:21:51 PM
Go Serverless With AWS Lambda
AWS, Lambda

Jul 8, 2020 1:21:51 PM

Go Serverless With AWS Lambda

Go Serverless With AWS Lambda Going serverless is the new tech trend for businesses. It helps with consolidated functionality in all use cases, speedy development, and automatic scalability, among other advantages. AWS Lambda is one of the leading cloud solutions that can spare you the...

AWS S3 - How to Secure Your Storage

Amazon S3 is one of the largest cloud storage solutions. Over the past few years, there have been countless security breaches on this platform, most of them stemming from S3 security setting misconfigurations.

Let's explore some of the S3 storage security challenges, their solutions, and best practices.

S3 Security Challenges

ACLs

This is an older access control mechanism on AWS S3. It has limited flexibility when it comes to usability. The XML document sets up the first layer of access. Even though only the owner has access, the account can be opened up to the public.

Bucket Policies

Bucket policy is the latest access control mechanism after ACLs. It uses a JSON format that makes it a bit more reliable than ACLs. There is the AWS Policy Generator that simplifies configuration with Bucket Policies. Nonetheless, ACLs are on the first tab, and it's easier to make something public than it is to change and review permissions on Bucket Policies.

IAM Policies

These are the permissions that you use to govern access throughout your AWS account. These permissions only apply to AWS users, so you cannot make your buckets public with them. Nonetheless, the service will expose your content when you allow access to another AWS service account.

Object ACLs and Policy Statements

These object-level controls use XML just like bucket ACL. These controls can grant access to anyone in any corner of the world with an AWS S3 account. There is a further risk of data leak with your policy statements. Both your Bucket and IAM Policy statements can override the object ACL and open up your buckets to the public.

Pre-Signed URLs

These are short-lived object-level policies used to share files. They are created using code, and anyone with the URL will have open access to your data.

How to protect data stored in AWS S3 buckets

Amazon Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) is among the oldest cloud services by AWS. Started in 2006, the service’s flexibility in storage sizes has made it popular among businesses regardless of the security challenges. The AWS 3 security model may be partially to blame for the cloud storage security challenges, but a large number of the breaches happen because users misunderstand the configurations.

Here are some possible solutions:

Use Amazon S3 block public access.

You can set up unified controls that limit access to your S3 resources. When you use Amazon S3 block access, the security controls are enforced regardless of how your resources are set up.

Use multi-factor authentication (MFA)

MFA works reliably well. Enforce MFA on your AWS Identity, Root user, and IAM users. You can similarly use MFA at your federate identity provider. That helps you to utilize the same MFA processes that currently exist in your organization.

Enforce least privilege policies

Control who gets permission to each of your AWS 3 resources. Set up actions that you want to allow and restrict. That will ensure that people only get the permission they need to perform a task.

Use IAM roles for applications

Do not store AWS credentials in the application. Instead, work with IAM roles to manage the temporary credentials for apps that need to access AWS S3. Do not distribute passwords to AWS service or Amazon EC2 instance.

Security Best Practices for AWS S3

S3 is not necessarily an insecure storage solution. The security and reliability of your resources depend on how well you secure, access, and use your data. Use these S3 best practices to enhance your AWS services security:

  • Protect data at rest and on transit with encryption
  • Configure life policy to move unwanted data and secure it
  • Identify and audit your S3 buckets
  • Identify and audit the encryption status of all your Amazon S3 buckets with Amazon S3 inventory
  • Use AWS S3 security monitoring solutions and metrics to maintain the security and reliability of your Amazon S3 resources.
  • Use Cloud Trail to log and maintain each event across AWS services.

Whether you are facing security, compliance, or performance challenges on AWS or any other cloud service, Cloudride has got your back. We provide comprehensive consultancy and implementation cloud solution services and have handled dozens of cloud migrations and optimization initiatives for businesses across all industries. We can help you optimize and maximize your business value from the cloud with assured security, compliance, and best practices.

Contact us to learn more.

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/06
Jun 23, 2020 2:48:25 PM
AWS
AWS S3 - How to Secure Your Storage
AWS

Jun 23, 2020 2:48:25 PM

AWS S3 - How to Secure Your Storage

Amazon S3 is one of the largest cloud storage solutions. Over the past few years, there have been countless security breaches on this platform, most of them stemming from S3 security setting misconfigurations.

GitOps - One For All

GitOps is an IaC (infrastructure as code) methodology where your Git repository is your one single source of truth, offers a central place for managing your infrastructure and application code. GitOps can apply to containerized applications (e.g YAML files for Kubernetes) and non-containerized applications (e.g Terraform for AWS). That allows DevOps to harness the power of Git including versioning, branches, pull requests, and incorporate that into their CI/CD pipelines. Adopting GitOps enhances developer experience, speeds up compliance and stability, and ensures consistency and repeatability.

GitOps help you manage your infrastructure close with your application code and allow your teams to collaborate easily and quickly. Here is an example of infrastructure change using the GitOps methodology:

  • A developer needs a larger instance type for his application.
  • He opens a pull request In the relevant Git repository with the updated instance type.
  • the pull request triggers the CI pipeline to verify that the code is valid.
  • The DevOps team reviews the changes and the pull request is approved and merged.
  • After a new commit was added to the master branch, the CD pipeline is triggered and the changes take effect automatically.

The above is what is described as a GitOps workflow. It makes it possible to achieve faster deployment without having to apply manual and “of the record” changes to your infrastructure.

GitOps vs. DevOps

GitOps is a subset of DevOps that leverages Git as the source control software, following best practices as the operating model for building cloud-native apps. The purpose of GitOps is to help the DevOps teams to take control over his infrastructure by making code configuration management and deployments more efficient.

On the other hand, GitOps makes it easier for DevOps to take on IT's self-service roles, developers can easily push new changes and after the DevOps approved the change it applies immediately and automatically.

When adopting GitOps, here is how your life becomes easier:

  • DevOps can implement new changes to the infrastructure safely and quickly.
  • Developers can collaborate with DevOps.
  • All changes are audited and can be reviewed and revert.
  • Enforcing ONE idle state of your infrastructure.
  • Each change is documented and approved.
  • Integrations to CI/CD systems.
  • Easily replicate your infrastructure across environments.
  • Best suits for Disaster Recovery scenarios.

But there are some drawbacks in GitOps:

  • All manual changes will be overridden.
  • When the workflow is not defined correctly, changes can impact your application performance.
  • Security best practices need to be enforced and regularly checks.
  • Small and quick changes need to go through all the GitOps processes before applied to production.

GitOps For Kubernetes

GitOps processes are often used with containerized applications because Kubernetes can take declarative input as the desired state and apply the changes. By using Git as the version control system, DevOps and Developers teams can collaborate more easily and manage their environments deployments because GitOps make the deployment process shorter and transparent. Kubernetes is the most known with GitOps because it became the container orchestration standard, the same desired state files can be applied to various environments (EKS, AKS, GKE, OpenShift, etc...) with almost no changes and prevent “vendor lock”.

GitOps In The Cloud

Cloud providers natively support GitOps processes, using Git with a combination of various IaC tools (e.g Terraform, Ansible, etc) and CI/CD systems you can automatically create and manage your cloud infrastructure (including Load Balancers, Auto Scaling Groups, Object Storage, etc). GitOps can also help you gain more control over your monthly bill, by enforcing only one state and override manual creation of instances, clusters, etc. that can accrue cost very quickly.

GitOps can also help you gain more control over the security and cost of your cloud account, by enforcing one state that complies with the company security requirements and override manual creation of instances, clusters, etc. that can accrue cost very quickly.

Adopting GitOps processes can be intimidating, but our DevOps team at CloudRide has in-depth expertise in security best practices and GitOps processes. together we can simplify and speed up your DevOps workflows and shorten your deployment cycles to the Cloud.

 

Set a call today.

 

avner-vidal-blog
2020/06
Jun 16, 2020 5:54:32 PM
GitOps - One For All
DevOps

Jun 16, 2020 5:54:32 PM

GitOps - One For All

GitOps is an IaC (infrastructure as code) methodology where your Git repository is your one single source of truth, offers a central place for managing your infrastructure and application code. GitOps can apply to containerized applications (e.g YAML files for Kubernetes) and non-containerized...

Private or Public Cloud - Which is Right for Your Business?

It wasn’t long ago when cloud computing was a niche field that only the most advanced organizations were dabbling with. Now the cloud is very much the mainstream, and it is rare to find businesses that use IT that doesn’t rely, in whole or in part, on cloud environments for their infrastructure. But if you’re going to add cloud services to your company, you'll need to choose between the private cloud and the public cloud.

Of course, cloud computing is dominated by some of the biggest names, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure – all of which offer private and public cloud services. So, how do you know which one is right for you?

Here we take a look at the public cloud and the private cloud so as to establish the strengths and weaknesses of each, and try to help you decide which is most suitable for your business.

Public Cloud

The public cloud is the more commonly used form of cloud computing. It’s essentially a server that shares resources between a number of different customers. As such, public cloud environments can be perfect for smaller businesses or those organizations that are just looking into the prospect of cloud computing and want to see how it can potentially benefit them. The public cloud can offer enormous infrastructure resources at no set-up cost and with a simple cost structure moving forward.

Having said that, cost structures in public cloud platforms can get complicated rather quickly once you start to scale, so check out our cost optimization best practices to make sure you are able to keep it simple from start to finish. 

Of course, there are downsides to the public cloud, such as loss of control and high volume capacity prices. It is sometimes believed that because the cloud is public, it’s not secure. But that’s not necessarily true.

High-quality public cloud providers keep up-to-date with all the latest security regulations. This means it’s important for organizations to look into the specifics of their provider, but there are many excellent cloud computing companies offering highly secure services. There may be some instances where a public cloud may not be deemed secure enough, mostly because of regulations, but for the vast majority of businesses and organizations, it’s sufficient.

As we see it, regarding security, if not taken seriously it’s really easy to become vulnerable to security threats in the public cloud environment.

The security of your cloud environment is a joint responsibility between your cloud provider and you, so you need to be knowledgeable of the shared responsibility model of your provider, and set in place the means to maintain security on your end.

There are, however, some issues and concerns you need to be aware of. For example, without proper monitoring and enforcement, the bill can accumulate very fast without noticing. 

Public clouds also have a lot of benefits. For example, using serverless infrastructure that allows you to pay only for what you actually use. Smaller companies that don’t have the capital can benefit enormously from the reliability, simplicity, and scalability of the public cloud.

 

Private Cloud

The private cloud is the opposite of the public cloud. A public cloud is shared by multiple businesses and organizations, whereas a private cloud is entirely dedicated to the needs of a single company. Private clouds are often preferred by larger companies with more complicated IT needs and requirements, that have the resources to maintain a private cloud infrastructure.

If your business has very specific security regulations that it needs to follow, a private cloud might be your answer (if your preferred public cloud provider doesn’t have a data center in your region).

The main reasons to choose a private cloud are price and customization, on an enterprise-scale, you can benefit from the high volume discounts from vendors (some cloud providers also offer enterprise-level agreements), and that allows you to customize your physical and virtual infrastructure for your exact needs.

 

With the benefit of customization and price, there are also disadvantages, from securing the data center from the physical aspect to the virtual aspect. And most important you need to develop or purchase all the software that allows you to have the “modern” cloud experience and services while managing your capacity to answer the demand.

Typically, private clouds are used by larger businesses with complex requirements. However, if your organization does not have the technical expertise to work with a private cloud alone, you can opt for fully-managed third-party providers.

 

Hybrid Cloud

Another commonly-held myth is that you must choose between the public or private cloud. In fact, you can opt for hybrid cloud services that take a little from both. These can be extremely useful for business continuity and data resilience. For example, if your applications require high availability and you only have one private data center, you can use the public cloud infrastructure for disaster recovery or backup storage purposes, a hybrid cloud environment could be perfect.

 

Which cloud to choose?

The choice between public, private, and hybrid cloud solutions depends on a variety of factors, use cases, and limitations. In the real world, it’s not an either/or situation, especially since organizations tend to leverage all three types of cloud solutions considering the inherent value propositions and tradeoffs.

 

If you are not certain which form of cloud computing is right for your business, then you should discuss the needs of your business with professionals. Choose a cloud service provider that has expertise in working with businesses similar to yours. They will be able to recommend the best form of cloud services for you.

At Cloudride, we work with AWS, Azure as well as other cloud vendors and can help you choose a solution that delivers the best performance, reliable security, and cost savings.

Find out more.

 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/06
Jun 4, 2020 11:30:00 AM
Private or Public Cloud - Which is Right for Your Business?
AWS, E-Commerce, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Healthcare, Education

Jun 4, 2020 11:30:00 AM

Private or Public Cloud - Which is Right for Your Business?

It wasn’t long ago when cloud computing was a niche field that only the most advanced organizations were dabbling with. Now the cloud is very much the mainstream, and it is rare to find businesses that use IT that doesn’t rely, in whole or in part, on cloud environments for their infrastructure....

Your Guide to FinOps and CostOps

FinOps is the cloud operation model that consolidates finance and IT, just like DevOps synergizes developers and operations. FinOps can revolutionize accounting in the cloud-age of business, by enabling enterprises to understand cloud costs, budgeting, and procurements from a technical perspective.

The main idea behind FinOps is to double the business value on the cloud through best practices for finance professionals in a technical environment and technical professionals in a financial ecosystem.

What is FinOps?

FinOps can be defined as the guide to a profitable cloud through processes and practices that harmonize business, engineering, and leadership teams. According to FinOps.Org, this operating model has three phases that include information, optimization, and operations.

Accountability and visibility

The information part of the FinOps lifecycle targets to create accountability through visibility and empowerment. Businesses can develop or adopt processes that help them see sources of cloud expenditure and how resources are spent. It is possible to leverage customized cloud pricing models to make efficient budgetary allocation and create expenditure projections based on cloud data usage stats.

  • Some of the FinOps best practices in accountability include:
  • Each team must take ownership of their cloud usage
  • Each team must align their cloud usage to budget
  • There must be tracking and visibility in spending
  • Reports must be continuously generated and be fully accessible

Optimization

The optimizations that follow are based on the visibility gained in the information part of the FinOps journey. By using the spend analysis, businesses can tune performance and spend money where a considerable return is guaranteed. FinOps cost optimization helps to minimize resource wastage through strategies such as reservation planning and Committed Use Discounts.

Further, FinOps optimization relies on measures such as:

  • Centralizing the management of Reserved Instances, Saving plans and Committed Use Discounts and Volume with cloud providers
  • Centralizing discount buying process
  • Granular cost allocations to the teams and their direct cost centers
  • Search for idle or underutilized resources and take action, This could result in significant savings.

Harmonized Operations

FinOps is not complete without a multi-disciplinary approach to operations to set business objectives and evaluate cloud business performance based on those metrics for efficiency in resource usage. This task requires financial experts, developers, and management on board for a refined cloud resource balancing. Businesses can deploy automation that streamlines these processes for accuracy and time-saving.

The best FinOps operation structure in an organization is defined as one where:

  • Finance works at the speed of IT
  • Costs is one of the new metrics for the engineering team
  • Efficiency and innovation are the primary goals of all cloud operations
  • There are clear governance and controls for cloud usage

Sound FinOps needs a Cultural Shift

FinOps cloud operations rely on the successful merging of all teams that partake in cloud resources and expenses. When these teams come together, old accounting models are broken, giving rise to new cost optimization procedures that lead to operational control and financial gain.

Intensified collaboration and cultural shift was the critical message in the 2019 AWS FinOps summit in Sidney. The cloud provider believes that there is a need for distributed decision making along with empowering feature teams to manage their resource usage, budgeting, and accountability.

As cost becomes everyone's agenda, enterprises must also focus on cloud providers' availed opportunities for cost savings. These include the Azure FinOps components such as the Hybrid Benefit and Reserved Instances that help to make accurate calculations and flexibly control spending. FinOps Amazon cloud considerations for your teams include AWS Volume Discounts and EC2 Saving plans and Reserved Instances.

The FinOps foundation

FinOps is all about breaking down the silos between finance, development, and operations teams. The FinOps foundation is the non-profit organization set up to help companies develop, implement, and monitor best practices for cloud financial management.

According to a study by 451 research, “most enterprises that spend over $100,000 per month on cloud expenses remain unprepared to manage cloud spending.

Seeing as the vast majority of companies lack capacity and expertise for the proper financial management of cloud costs, the FinOps Foundation has defined a set of FinOps values and principles and offers certifications to individuals, helping to validate a person's FinOps knowledge after they have gone through the training course the organization provides.

The FinOps course is encouraged for your finance, IT, engineering, and management personnel, and relies on learning resources such as the O'Reilly cloud FinOps book to comprehensively define what FinOps entails for an organization.

To Summarize

While costs and efficiency are the key drivers for cloud adoption, these two can quickly become a problem for businesses. FinOps best practices are geared towards increasing financial visibility and optimization by aligning teams and operations.

At Cloudride, speed, cost, and agility are what define our cloud consultation services. Our teams will help you adopt cloud providers, infrastructures, by enabling solutions that deliver not only the best cost efficiency but also assured security and compliance.

Find out more.

michael-kahn-blog
2020/06
Jun 1, 2020 1:29:30 PM
Your Guide to FinOps and CostOps
FinOps & Cost Opt.

Jun 1, 2020 1:29:30 PM

Your Guide to FinOps and CostOps

6 Steps to a successful cloud migration

There are infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity on the cloud. Cloud migration is a process that makes your infrastructure conformable to your modern business environment. It is a chance to cut costs, tap into scalability, agility, and faster time to market. Even so, if not done right, cloud migration can produce the opposite results. 

Challenges in cloud migration 

Costs 

This is entirely strategy-dependent. For instance, refactoring all your applications at once could lead to severe downtimes and high costs. For a speedy and cost-effective cloud migration process, it is crucial to invest in strategy and assessments. The right plan factors in costs, downtimes, employee training, and the duration of the whole process. 

There is also a matter of aligning your finance team with your IT needs, which will require restructuring your CapEx / OpEx model. CapEx is the standard model of traditional on-premise IT - such as fixed investments in IT equipment, servers, and such, while OpEx is how public cloud computing services are purchased (i.e as operational cost incurred on a monthly/yearly basis). 

When migrating to the public cloud, you are shifting from traditional hardware and software ownership to a pay-as-you-go model, which means shifting from CapEx to OpEx, allowing your IT team to maximize agility and flexibility to support your business’ scaling needs while maximizing cost efficiency. This will, however, require full alignment with all company stakeholders, as each of the models has different implications on cost, control, and operational flexibility.

Security  

If the cloud is trumpeted to have all the benefits, why isn't every business migrating? Security, that's the biggest concern encumbering cloud migration. With most cloud solutions, you are entrusting a third party with your data. A careful evaluation of the provider and their processes and security control is essential.   

Within the field of cloud environments, there are generally two parties responsible for infrastructure security. 

  1. Your cloud vendor. 
  2. Your own company’s IT / Security team. 

Some companies believe that as cloud customers, when they migrate to the cloud, cloud security responsibilities fall solely on the cloud vendors. Well, that’s not the case.

Both the cloud customers and cloud vendors share responsibilities in cloud security and are both liable to the security of the environment and infrastructure.

To better manage the shared responsibility, consider the following tips:

Define your cloud security needs and requirements before choosing a cloud vendor. If you know your requirements, you’ll select a cloud provider suited to answer your needs.

Clarify the roles and responsibilities of each party when it comes to cloud security. Comprehensively define who is responsible for what and to what extent. Know how far your cloud provider is willing to go to protect your environment.

Basically, CSPs are responsible for the security of the physical or virtual infrastructure and the security configuration of their managed services while the cloud customers are in control of their data and the security measures they set in place to protect their data, system, networks and applications.

Employee buy-in 

The learning curve for your new systems will be faster if there is substantial employee buy-in from the start. There needs to be a communication strategy in place for your workers to understand the migration process, its benefits, and their role in it. Employee training should be part of your strategy. 

Change management 

Just like any other big IT project, shifting to the cloud significantly changes your business operations. Managing workloads and applications on the cloud significantly differ from how it is done on rem. Some functions will be rendered redundant, while other roles may get additional responsibilities. With most cloud platforms running a pay-as-you-go model, there is an increasing need for businesses to be able to manage their cloud operations in an efficient manner. You’d be surprised at how easy it is for your cloud costs to get out of control.

In fact, according to Gartner, the estimated global enterprise cloud waste is appx. 35% of their cloud spend, forecasted to hit $21 Billion wasted (!!!) by 2021. 

The good news is, that cloud management and monitoring platforms help you gain better control over your cloud infrastructure applications and obtain better cost control. A good example for one is our partner Spot.io, which ensures our customers obtain the infrastructure scalability they need for their cloud applications, while monitoring and minimizing cost at all time.

Migrating legacy applications 

These applications were designed a decade ago, and even though they don't mirror the modern environment of your business, they host your mission-critical process. How do you convert these systems or connect them with cloud-based applications? 

Steps to a successful cloud migration 

You may be familiar with the 6 R’s, which are 6 common strategies for cloud migration. Check out our recent post on the 6 R’s to cloud migration.  

Additionally, follow these steps to smoothly migrate your infrastructure to the public cloud: 

  1. Define a cloud migration roadmap 

This is a detailed plan that involves all the steps you intend to take in the cloud migration process. The plan should include timeframes, budget, user flows, and KPIs. Starting the cloud migration process without a detailed plan could lead to wastage of time and resources. Effectively communicating this plan improves support from senior leadership and employees. 

  1. Application assessment 

Identify your current infrastructure and evaluate the performance and weaknesses of your applications. The evaluation helps to compare the cost versus value of the planned cloud migration based on the current state of your infrastructure. This initial evaluation also helps to decide the best approach to modernization, whether your apps will need re-platforming or if they can be lifted and shifted to the cloud. 

  1. Choose the right platform 

Your landing zone could be a public cloud, a private cloud, hybrid, or multi-cloud. The choice here depends on your applications, security needs, and costs. Public clouds excel in scalability and have a cost-effective pay-per-usage model. Private clouds are suitable for a business with stringent security requirements. A hybrid cloud is where workloads can be moved between the private and public clouds through orchestration. A multi-cloud environment combines IaaS services from two or more public clouds.  

  1. Find the right provider 

If you are going with the public, hybrid, or multi-cloud deployment model, you will have to choose between different cloud providers in the market (namely Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) and various control & optimization tools. Critical factors for your consideration in this decision include security, costs, availability.  

 To Conclude: 

Cloud migration can be a lengthy and complex process. However, with proper planning and strategy execution, you can avoid challenges and achieve a smooth transition. A fool-proof approach is to pick a partner that possess the expertise, knowledge and experience to see the big picture of your current and future needs, thus tailoring a solution that fits you like a glove, on all aspects. 

At Cloudride, we have helped many businesses attain faster and cost-effective cloud migrations.
We are MS-AZURE and AWS, partners, and are here to help you choose a cloud environment that fits your business demands, needs, and plans. 

We provide custom-fit cloud migration services with special attention to security, vendor best practices, and cost-efficiency. 

Contact us to get started.  

 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/05
May 24, 2020 11:56:34 AM
6 Steps to a successful cloud migration
Azure, AWS, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Cloud Native, Healthcare, Education

May 24, 2020 11:56:34 AM

6 Steps to a successful cloud migration

There are infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity on the cloud. Cloud migration is a process that makes your infrastructure conformable to your modern business environment. It is a chance to cut costs, tap into scalability, agility, and faster time to market. Even so, if...

AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP | Detailed Comparison

Self-hosted cloud infrastructure comes with many constraints, from costs to scalability, and businesses worldwide are making the switch to public and multi-cloud configurations. The top cloud providers in the market, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, provide full infrastructural support plus security and maintenance. But how do these cloud services compare to each other? Let's investigate. 

Amazon Web Services 

AWS is the leading platform with a 30 % stake in the public cloud market. AWS boasts high computing power, extensive data storage, and backup services, among other functionalities for business processes and DevOps.  

AWS storage  

AWS has a hybrid storage model through the Storage Gateway. The latter synergistically combines with Amazon's back up feature, Glacier. There are options for simple block S3 storage or block storage with E2B. AWS elastic file storage expands at the speed of file creation and addition. 

Computation 

The AWS compute service, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, is integrable with other Amazon Web Services. The resultant agility and compatibility help with cost-saving in data management. You can scale these services in minutes, depending on your business needs. There is also the Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) that can be used to manage your applications, website IP addresses, and access security groups. AWS has a Kubernetes container service as well.  

AWS ML & AI 

Amazon Web Service champions machine learning and artificial intelligence through features such as Sage, Comprehend, Translate, and a dozen others. These ML and AI tools help with analytics and automation. And a Lambda serverless computing function gives you the freedom to deploy your apps straight from their server repositories. AWS security features include API activity monitoring, vulnerability assessments, and firewalls. 

 

AWS Security 

AWS security features include API activity monitoring, vulnerability assessments, and firewalls. You can expect other controls for data protection, access management, and threat detection and monitoring. The AWS cloud also lets you filter traffic based on your rules and track your compliance status by benchmarking against AWS best practices and CIS benchmarks.

 AWS pricing 

AWS offers a tiered pricing model that accommodates startups and Fortune 500 companies. A free tier option offers small startups 750 Hours of EC2 service every month. 

AWS SLA

The monthly uptime is 99.95 %. Service credits are computed as a percentage of the total amount paid by customers for AWS EC2 or EBS if they were unavailable in the region affected for the billing cycle in which unavailability occurred. 

 

AWS Features

  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud 
  • AWS Elastic Beanstalk 
  • Amazon Relational Database Service 
  • Amazon DynamoDB 
  • Amazon SimpleDB 
  • Amazon Simple Storage Service 
  • Amazon Elastic Block Store 
  • Amazon Glacier 
  • Amazon Elastic File System 
  • Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC  
  • Elastic Load Balancer  
  • Direct Connect 
  • Amazon Route 53 

 

Microsoft Azure 

Azure has a 16 % stake in the market and is the second most popular cloud platform. Azure has a full set of solutions for day-to-day business processes and app development. There is no limitation to computing capacity on MS Azure. You can scale that in minutes. The cloud service provider also accommodates apps that must run parallel batch computing. Most azure features can integrate with your existing system, delivering unlimited power and capacity for your enterprise business processes.  

MS Azure storage  

The MS cloud platform offers Blob Storage, a storage option dedicated to REST-based objects. You can also expect storage solutions for large scale data and high volume workloads from Queue storage to disk storage, among others. Like AWS, Azure has a large selection of SQL databases for extra storage. MS Azure offers hybrid storage capabilities for cloud and on-prem Microsoft SQL Server functions.

MS Azure computation  

Azure cloud computing solutions run on virtual machines and range from app deployment to development, testing, and datacenter extensions.  

Azure compute features are compatible with Windows servers, Linux, SQL Servers, Oracle, and SAP. You can also choose a hybrid Azure model that blends on-prem and public cloud functionalities. The Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on the other hand is a serverless orchestration platform for faster containerization, deployment, and management of apps 

MS Azure ML & AI 

Like AWS, azure offers select ML and AI tools. These tools are API-supported and can be integrated with your on-prem software and apps. Their serverless Function platform is event-driven and is useful in the orchestration and management of complex workloads. Azure IoT features like Sage are tuned towards high-level analytics and business management. The Azure Security Center covers tenant security, and you also get an activity log monitoring. 

MS Azure Security 

The Azure Security Center covers tenant security, and you also get an activity log monitoring. The security controls are built-in and multilayered, enabling protection for workloads, cryptographic keys, emails, documents, and common web vulnerabilities. The continuous protection extends to hybrid environments.

MS Azure Pricing 

The hourly server on the Azure cloud starts from $0.099 per hour. In terms of GB and RAM, azure pricing is comparable to AWS.  

 

MS Azure SLA

The monthly uptime percentage is 99.99 %. The provider has service credits, including 25 % for 99 per cent availability and 100% for less than 95% uptime. 

MS Azure Features 

  • Virtual Machines 
  • App Service and Cloud Services 
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 
  • Azure Functions 
  • SQL Database 
  • Table Storage 
  • Azure Cosmos DB 
  • Disk Storage 
  • Blob Storage 
  • Azure Archive Blob Storage 
  • Azure File Storage 
  • Virtual Networks (VNets) 
  • Load Balancer 
  • ExpressRoute 
  • Azure DNS 

 

Google Cloud Platform 

GCP entered the public cloud market a little later than AWS and Azure, and therefore its market share is still at an infant stage. Even so, this cloud platform excels in technical capabilities and AI and ML tools. GCP also boasts undersea server deployment and a user-friendly console that makes setup an easy task. 

GCP Storage 

GCP provides cloud storage, disk storage, and a transfer service along with SQL and NoSQL database support.  

GCP Computation 

Google was the original developer of the Kubernetes platform, and it is, therefore, their primary service function. GCP supports Docker containers, and they can deploy and manage apps for you, monitor performance and scalability based on traffic and run code from Google Cloud, Assistant, or Firebase. 

GCP ML & AI 

Google Cloud has robust ML and AI capabilities and features. These include speech recognition, natural language processing, and video intelligence, among others. GCP includes custom security features within its Cloud Security Control Center. 

GCP Security

GCP includes custom security features within its Cloud Security Control Center. GCP is built on a secure architecture from hardware infrastructure to storage and Kubernetes. IT logs and tracks each workload, providing 24/7 monitoring for all data elements and communication channels. Identity and data security are two of the most critical parameters for Google Cloud Platform. 

GCP Pricing 

GCP uses a pay-as-you-go model of pricing. The platform has excellent discount offers for clients that work with it for more than a month. 

GCP SLA

The GCP SLA guarantees a monthly uptime of not less than 99.5% for all its cloud services. If that's not met, you are guaranteed credits of up to 50% in the final bill. 

GCP Features

  • Google Compute Engine 
  • Google App Engine  
  • Google Kubernetes Engine  
  • Google Cloud Functions 
  • Google Cloud SQL 
  • Google Cloud Datastore  
  • Google Cloud Bigtable 
  • Google Cloud Storage 
  • Google Compute Engine Persistent Disks 
  • Google Cloud Storage Nearline 
  • ZFS/Avere 
  • Virtual Private Cloud 
  • Google Cloud Load Balancing 
  • Google Cloud Interconnect 
  • Google Cloud DNS 

 

To Summarize

You realize that not every cloud platform is designed the same. Even the best provider might not have features that adequately address your business needs. AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP comparisons should be about weighing what works well for your business.  

At Cloudride, we work with AWS, Azure & GCP as well as other cloud vendors and can help you choose a solution that delivers the best performance, reliable security, and cost savings. 

 

Contact us to learn more. 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/05
May 8, 2020 9:16:34 AM
AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP | Detailed Comparison
Azure, AWS, E-Commerce, Multi-Cloud, Healthcare, Education

May 8, 2020 9:16:34 AM

AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP | Detailed Comparison

Self-hosted cloud infrastructure comes with many constraints, from costs to scalability, and businesses worldwide are making the switch to public and multi-cloud configurations. The top cloud providers in the market, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, provide full infrastructural support plus...

Kubernetes Security 1O1

Kubernetes is a popular orchestration platform for multi-cloud applications that need to be deployed with versatile scalability. The adoption of cloud Kubernetes services has been steadily increasing over the past few years. But as more companies implement open source software, security emerges as a critical point of interest.

In March 2019, the high and medium severity issues, CVE-2019-1002101 and CVE-2019-9946, were discovered. These vulnerabilities can allow attackers to edit code on any path of the user's machine or delete and replace files in the tar-binary container.

These two followed closely on the discovery of the runC vulnerability that can enable an attacker to acquire root privileges in a container environment. Given such concerns, Kubernetes security should be a priority for all operations in cloud-native application development. 

 

The Kubernetes Architecture

Google initially developed this open-source and portable platform for managing containerized workloads. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is now the body in charge of Kubernetes. The software does not discriminate between hosts, any host by a cloud provider or a single-tenant server can be utilized in Kubernetes. 

The platform interfaces a cluster of virtual machines using shared networks for server-to-server communication. In this cluster, all Kubernetes capabilities, components, and application lifecycles can be configured. This is where you can define how your applications run and how they can be configured.

The Kubernetes ecosystem has a master server that exposes an API for users and provides methods for container deployments and cluster administration. The other machines in the cluster are the slave servers or nodes that dedicatedly run the containers delegated by the master.

 

Kubernetes Security Risks

The security challenges and vulnerabilities on a multi-cloud Kubernetes architecture include:

  • Unvetted images

Misused images pose a significant security risk on the containerization platform. Organizations must ensure that only vetted and approved images registries run and that there are robust policies on vulnerability severities, malware, and image configurations.

  • Attackers listening on ports

Containers and pods must talk to each other in a Kubernetes ecosystem. It can be easier for attackers to intrude on this communication by listening to distinctive ports. It's critical, therefore, to monitor multi-directional traffic for all signs of breaches. Consider vendors that provide a Kubernetes load balancer service during deployment. How a breach spreads from one container to the other depends on how broadly it communicates with the other containers.

  • Kubernetes API is exposed

The API service in Kubernetes is the front door to each cluster. Because this API is needed for management, it is always exposed during Kubernetes deployment. Robust role-based access authentication is needed, along with policies for managing kubectl command operations. The best access control system leverages Kubernetes webhook admission controller for attaining upstream computability in Kubernetes implementation.

  • Hackers can execute code in your container 

The Kubelet API, used for managing containers on separate nodes in clusters, has no access authentication. Attackers can use this as a gateway to execute codes in your container, delete files, or overrun your cluster. Incidences of Kubelet exploits have been on the increase since 2016.

  • Compromised containers lead to compromised clusters

When an attacker achieves a remote code execution within a node, then automatically, clusters become susceptible to attacks. These attacks propagate in cluster networks targeting both nodes and pods. Organizations need Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), preferably the types that combine anomaly and signature-based mechanisms. Many vendors provide IDS capabilities as part of their software suites.



What Measures to Take? 

AWS solves the Kubernetes security complexity with policy-driven controls based on native Kubernetes capabilities, run time protection, network security control, and service and image assurance. The EKS load balancer provides for traffic observability, while they have EKS security policies for access control and compliance checks. The elastic cloud on Kubernetes also has CI/CD pipelines that are benchmarked with internal and external policy frameworks and guided by the AWS global network security procedures.

The Azure Kubernetes service has similar security concepts for nodes and clusters in the orchestration platform. To the native Kubernetes security components, AKS Kubernetes adds orchestrated cluster patches and network security groups. You can strengthen access control on your master API server with the Azure Active Directory that's integrable with AKS services.

GCP leverages the principle of least privilege in access control on Kubernetes workloads. You can use the Google Cloud Service Account to manage and configure Kubernetes security through RBA. The vendor similarly offers protection through a load balancer service, network policies, Cloud IAM, and Cloud Audit Logging.


To Conclude 

Kubernetes as a service allows for the deployment and management of cloud-native apps in a scalable manner. This is a fast-growing technology, but it's also fraught with complexities that can compromise security. 

At Cloudride, we will help you find a cloud Kubernetes solution that solves your business challenges with regards to security and cost-efficiency. We specialize in MS-AZURE, AWS, GCP, and other ISVs. 

Contact us to learn more.

avner-vidal-blog
2020/04
Apr 30, 2020 5:03:39 PM
Kubernetes Security 1O1
DevOps

Apr 30, 2020 5:03:39 PM

Kubernetes Security 1O1

Kubernetes is a popular orchestration platform for multi-cloud applications that need to be deployed with versatile scalability. The adoption of cloud Kubernetes services has been steadily increasing over the past few years. But as more companies implement open source software, security emerges as...

The Rise of FinOps & Cost Optimization

Cost optimization of IT resources is one of the benefits that first attracts enterprises to the cloud. CFOs and CEOs love how converting CapEx to a more easily managed and predictable OpEx can help them gain tighter control over finances and free up capital for other investments.

Cloud computing can also help organizations better utilize their human as well as non-human resources. IT leaders love the idea of not having to staff and maintain an on-premises data center. Outsourcing IT responsibilities to a knowledgeable managed service provider means important tasks are getting done – and getting done right. IT leaders no longer have to deal with the shortage of qualified IT technicians in areas like IT security nor pay the six-figure salaries those roles command.

But, many organizations still struggle with the cost optimization of cloud resources. 80% of companies using the cloud acknowledge that poor financial management related to cloud cost has had a negative impact on their business. This is where FinOps comes in. 

What is FinOps?

In the cloud environment, different platforms and so many moving parts can make cost-optimization of cloud resources a challenge. This challenge has given rise to a new discipline: financial operations or FinOps. Here’s how the FinOps Foundation, a non-profit trade association for FinOps professionals, describes the discipline:

FinOps is the operating model for the cloud. FinOps enables a shift — a combination of systems, best practices, and culture — to increase an organization’s ability to understand cloud costs and make tradeoffs. In the same way that DevOps revolutionized development by breaking down silos and increasing agility, FinOps increases the business value of cloud by bringing together technology, business and finance professionals with a new set of processes.

We expect to see a growing number of organizations of all sizes using FinOps services as part of their business life cycle. This is irrelevant if you are a small company that uses one person from your IT team or a large enterprise using individuals, the responsibility, accountability, and involvement of the FinOps expert should enhance the use of cloud resources.

6 Ways to Optimize Cloud Costs

If you’re a FinOps professional – or if you’re an IT or business leader concerned about controlling expenses – here are several ways to optimize cloud costs.

#1 Make sure you’re using the right cloud. Your mission-critical applications might benefit from a private, hosted cloud or even deployment in an on-premises environment, but that doesn’t mean all of your workloads need to be deployed in the same environment. In addition, cloud technologies are getting more sophisticated all the time. Review your cloud deployments annually to make sure you have the right workloads in the right clouds.

#2 Review your disaster recovery strategy. More businesses than ever are leveraging AWS and Azure for disaster recovery. These pay-as-you-go cloud solutions can ensure your failover site is available when needed without requiring that you duplicate resources.

#3 Optimize your cloud deployment. If you’re deploying workloads on a cloud platform such as AWS or Azure for the first time, a knowledgeable partner who knows all the tips and tricks can be a real asset. It’s easy to overlook features, like Reserved Instances, that can help you lower monthly cloud costs.

#4 Outsource some or all of your cloud management. Many IT departments are short-staffed with engineers wearing multiple hats. In the course of doing business, it’s easy for cloud resources to be underutilized or orphaned. The right cloud partner can help you find and eliminate these resources to lower your costs.

#5 Outsource key roles. Many IT roles, especially in areas like IT security and system administration, are hard to fill. Although you want someone with experience, you may not even need them full-time. Instead of going in circles trying to find and recruit the right talent, the use of a professional service company with a wide knowledge base, that can give you the entire solution, it's a huge advantage and can save you a lot of money.

# 6 Increase your visibility. Even if you decide to place some or all cloud management, you still want to keep an eye on things. There are several platforms today such as Spotinst cloud analyzer that can address cloud management and provide visibility across all your cloud environments from a single console.  Never the less, the use of these platforms should be part of the FinOps consultation. 

   

About Cloudride

Cloudride specialized cost optimization solution methodology which consists of two parallel capabilities.
Cloud FinOps - Our analyst will work with your technology and finance governance teams and will create, under best practices knowledge, a user-friendly dashboard divided per organization/tag/product / P&L or any other organization structure tailor-made to you.
Reporting per division on schedule weekly/monthly base.
Building a cost strategy - Spot, reserve capacity or on-demand and other valid saving capabilities, based on current and future technology needs - We will build a strategy for you.

To learn more about FinOps services, or just get some expert advice, we’re a click away.

michael-kahn-blog
2020/04
Apr 20, 2020 5:28:17 PM
The Rise of FinOps & Cost Optimization
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Financial Services

Apr 20, 2020 5:28:17 PM

The Rise of FinOps & Cost Optimization

Cost optimization of IT resources is one of the benefits that first attracts enterprises to the cloud. CFOs and CEOs love how converting CapEx to a more easily managed and predictable OpEx can help them gain tighter control over finances and free up capital for other investments.

Five-Phase Migration Process

Visualizing the five-phase migration process

 

Picture1

 

The five-phase migration process can help guide your organizational approach to migrating tens, hundreds, or thousands of applications. This serves as a way to envision the major milestones of cloud adoption during your journey to AWS.

 

Phase 1 - Migration Preparation and Business Planning

Establish operational processes and form a dedicated team

Developing a sound mission-driven case requires taking your objectives into account, along with the age and architecture of your existing applications, and their constraints.

Engaged leadership, frequent communication, and clarity of purpose, along with aggressive but realistic goals and timelines, make it easier for your entire company to rally behind the decision to migrate.

You will want to establish operational processes and form a team dedicated to mobilizing the appropriate resources. This team is your Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), and they will be charged with leading your agency through the organizational and mission-driven transformations over the course of the migration effort.

The CCoE identifies and implements best practices, governance standards, automation, and also drives change management.

An effective CCoE evolves over time, starting small and then growing as the migration effort ramps up. This evolution helps to establish migration teams within your organization, and decide which ones will be responsible for migrating specific portions of your IT portfolio to AWS. The CCoE will also communicate with the migration teams to determine areas where you may need to work with AWS Professional Services, an APN Partner, or a vendor offering a solution on AWS Marketplace to help you offset costs and migrate successfully.

Picture1-1

 

Phase 2 - Portfolio Discovery and Planning

Begin the process with less critical and complex applications

Full portfolio analysis of your environment, complete with a mapping of interdependencies, and migration strategies and priorities, are all key elements to building a plan for a successful migration.

The complexity and level of impact of your applications will influence how you migrate. Beginning the migration process with less critical and complex applications in your portfolio creates a sound learning opportunity for your team to exit their initial round of migration with:

  • Confidence they are not practicing with mission critical applications in the early learning stages.
  • Foundational learnings they can apply to future migration iterations.
  • Ability to fill skills and process gaps, as well as positively reinforce best practices based on experience.

The CCoE plays an integral role in beginning to identify the roles and responsibilities of the smaller migration teams in this phase of the migration process. It is important to gain familiarity with the operational processes that your organization will use on AWS. This will help your workforce build experience and start to identify patterns that can help accelerate the migration process, simplifying the method of determining which groups of applications can be migrated together.

 

Phase 3 + Phase 4 - Application Design, Migration and Validation

Each application is designed, migrated and validated

These two phases are combined because they are often executed at the same time. They occur as the migration effort ramps up and you begin to land more applications and workloads on AWS. During these phases the focus shifts from the portfolio level to the individual application level. Each application is designed, migrated, and validated according to one of the six common application strategies. (“The 6 R’s” will be discussed in greater detail below.)

A continuous improvement approach is often recommended. The level of project fluidity and success frequently comes down to how well you apply the iterative methodology in these phases.

 

Phase 5 - Modern Operating Model

Optimize new foundation, turn off old systems

As applications are migrated, you optimize your new foundation, turn off old systems, and constantly iterate toward a modern operating model. Think about your operating model as an evergreen set of people, processes, and technologies that constantly improves as you migrate more applications. Ideally, you will be building off the foundational expertise you already developed. If not, use your first few application migrations to develop that foundation, and your operating model will continually improve and become more sophisticated as your migration accelerates.

 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/03
Mar 30, 2020 12:12:44 PM
AWS
Five-Phase Migration Process
AWS

Mar 30, 2020 12:12:44 PM

Five-Phase Migration Process

Visualizing the five-phase migration process

Six Common Migration Strategies: “The 6 Rs”

Organizations considering a migration often debate the best approach to get there. While there is no one-size-fits all approach, the focus should be on grouping each of the IT portfolio’s applications into buckets defined by one of the migration strategies.

At this point in the migration process, you will want to have a solid understanding of which migration strategy will be best suited for the different parts of your IT portfolio. Being able to identify which migration strategies will work best for moving specific portions of your on-premises environment will simplify the process. This is done by determining similar applications in your portfolio that can be grouped together and moved to AWS at the same time.

Screen Shot 2020-03-27 at 14.50.12

 

Diagram: Six Common Migration Strategies

 

The “Six R’s” – Six Common Migration Strategies

1 - Rehost

Also known as “lift-and-shift”

In a large legacy migration scenario where your organization is looking to accelerate cloud adoption and scale quickly to meet a business case, we find that the majority of applications are rehosted. Most rehosting can be automated with tools available from AWS, or by working with an APN Partner who hold an AWS public sector competency or a vendor offering from AWS Marketplace.

2 – Replatform

Sometimes referred to as “lift-tinker-and-shift”

This entails making a few cloud optimizations in order to achieve some tangible benefit, without changing the core architecture of the application.

3 – Repurchase

Replacing your current environment, casually referred to as “drop and shop”

This is a decision to move to a newer version or different solution, and likely means your organization is willing to change the existing licensing model it has been using.

4 – Refactor (Re-Architect)

Changing the way the application is architected and developed, usually done by employing cloud-native features

Typically, this is driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in the application’s existing environment.

5 - Retire

Decommission or archive unneeded portions of your IT portfolio

Identifying IT assets that are no longer useful and can be turned off will help boost your business case and help focus your team’s attention on maintaining the resources that are widely used.

6 - Retain

Do nothing, for now - revisit later

Organizations retain portions of their IT portfolio because there are some that they are not ready (or are too complex or challenging) to migrate, and feel more comfortable keeping them on-premises.

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/03
Mar 27, 2020 2:54:35 PM
AWS
Six Common Migration Strategies: “The 6 Rs”
AWS

Mar 27, 2020 2:54:35 PM

Six Common Migration Strategies: “The 6 Rs”

Organizations considering a migration often debate the best approach to get there. While there is no one-size-fits all approach, the focus should be on grouping each of the IT portfolio’s applications into buckets defined by one of the migration strategies.

Azure Migrate Server Assessment with CSV File

Overview: Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate facilitates migration to Azure cloud. The service offers a centralized hub for assessment and migration of on-premises infrastructure, data, and applications to Azure.

Azure Migrate allows the assessment and migration of servers, databases, data, web applications, and virtual desktops. The service has a wide range of tools, including server assessment and server migration tools.

Azure Migrate can integrate with other Azure services, tools, and ISV offerings. The service offers a unified migration platform capable of starting, running, and tracking your entire cloud migration journey.

 

Azure Migrate: Server Assessment

Azure Migrate server assessment tool discovers and assesses on-premises physical servers, VMware VMs and Hyper-V VMs to determine if they are ready to be migrated to Azure. The tool helps to identify the readiness of on-premises machines for migration, sizing (size of Azure virtual machines or VMs after migration), cost estimate of running the on-premises servers, and dependency visualization (cross-server dependencies and the best way to migrate dependent servers).

 

Azure Migrate server assessment with CSV file

Microsoft announced new Azure Migrate server assessment capabilities with CSV at Microsoft Ignite Conference in November 2019. Previously, there was no functionality that allowed server inventory stored in CSV files to be used within Azure Migrate to conduct an assessment.

This means you had to set up an appliance in your premises to discover and assess physical servers, VMware VMs and Hyper-V VMs. Currently, Azure Migrate also supports import and assessment of servers without deploying any appliance.

The CSV import based assessment allows Azure Migrate server assessment to take advantage of features such as sustainability analysis, performance-based rightsizing, and migration cost planning. The import-based assessment offers a cloud migration planning solution when you aren’t able to deploy an appliance because of security or pending organizational constraints preventing you from installing the appliance and opening a tunnel to Azure.

Importing servers is easy with CSV. Simply upload server inventory via a CSV file according to the Azure Migrate template provided. You need four data points only, namely: the server name, # of cores, OS name, and size of memory. Although it's possible to run an assessment using minimal information (four data points only), it is important to run an assessment with other information i.e., disk data to allow disk sizing assessment. You can begin creating assessments ten minutes after the CSV import is complete.

If a server isn't ready for migration, remediation guidance is provided automatically. Server assessment can be customized by changing properties such as target location, target storage disk, reserved instances and sizing criteria. Assessment reports can also be regenerated. They offer detailed cost estimation and sizing.

You can optimize cost through performance-based rightsizing assessments. By specifying performance utilization values of on-premises servers, migrating servers that may be overprovisioned in your data center get an appropriate Azure VM and disk SKU.

 

MS Azure Migrate server assessment with CSV in 4 simple steps:

Step 1: Setup an Azure Migrate Project & add server assessment to the project.

Step 2: Gather inventory data from your vCenter server, Hyper-V environment, or CMDB. Proceed and convert this data into the CSV file format (using Azure Migrate CSV file template).

Step 3: Import the servers by uploading the inventory in a CSV file according to the template.

Step 4: On successful importation, create assessments and review assessment reports.

 

Cloudride is a cloud migration expert team that provides hands-on professional cloud services for MS AZURE, AWS, and GCP and other independent software vendors. Our engineers will study your needs, helping you plan and implement your cloud migration in the optimal, most cost-effective way while maintaining security best practices and standards.

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/03
Mar 22, 2020 11:44:10 AM
Azure Migrate Server Assessment with CSV File
Azure

Mar 22, 2020 11:44:10 AM

Azure Migrate Server Assessment with CSV File

Overview: Azure Migrate

ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System

ISO/IEC 27701 PIMS aligns with a wide range of data protection regimes. Implementing the privacy information and management system requirements can help organizations accelerate or automatically achieve compliance with GDPR, the DBA 2018, California Consumer Privacy Act, among other data protection regulations for cloud operations.

ISO 27701 details the specific requirements and outlines guidelines for creating, implementing, managing, and enhancing your PIMS in the cloud environment. This information system privacy and data safety standard borrows heavily from the controls and objectives of ISO 27001.

The new standard outlines the policies and processes for capturing personal data, ensuring integrity, achieving accountability, safeguarding confidentiality, and guaranteeing the availability of the same data at all times. The new standards create a convenient integration point for cloud security and data protection by establishing a uniform framework for handling personal data for both data controllers and processors.

Data safety and security on the cloud often become precarious because the data is located in multiple locations across the globe. Some of the data safety and security challenges for businesses on the cloud include:

  • Hard to prove vendor compliance with data privacy policies.
  • It is not very easy to know who has access to your data on the vendors’ end.
  • Hard to prove fair, lawful and transparent handling of data in the cloud.
  • Too many data security and privacy regulations at a given time.
  • Technical challenges in security and data safety, systems and processes.
  • Expensive audit processes for each regulation.

The ISO 27701 certification has operational advantages that businesses can leverage to solve these security and data privacy concerns. This is a certifiable standard by independent auditors and can, therefore, attest to a business’s compliance with a full set of cloud security regulations.

 

Summary of requirements for ISO/IEC 27701 certification

  • Identifying internal and external issues that threaten data privacy and security.
  • Leadership participation in data privacy policy creation, implementation, and documentation.
  • Information security risk assessments.
  • Employee awareness and communication.
  • Operationalization of a broad set of technical controls for secure cloud architecture.
  • Continuous testing.
  • Constant improvement.

The ISO 27701 reconciles contrasting privacy regulatory requirements. It may also help businesses work on a single standard at home and abroad. While GDPR and DBA are regional-specific, ISO offers an opportunity for worldwide adoption and adherence to data protection principles that are key to all cloud operations.

Additionally, PIMS provides customers the blueprint for attaining compliance with new data privacy regulations fast and cost-effectively. The ISO/IEC 27701 certification eliminates the need for further audits and certifications for new data laws. That can be crucial in complex supply chain relationships, especially where there is a cross-border movement of data.

In January, Azure became the first US Cloud provider to achieve certification for ISO/IEC 27701 as a data processor. The certification conducted through a third party and independent audit confirms the cloud provider’s reliable set of management and operational controls in personal data security, privacy, and safety.

Apart from being the first cloud provider to obtain the ISO/IEC 27701 certification, Azure is also the first in the US to attain compliance with EU Model Contract Clauses. The cloud provider is also the first to extend the GDPR compliance requirements to its customers across the world.

One of the critical requirements for data security and safety in the cloud for all regulations is that businesses work with a compliant vendor. Azure customers can get to build upon Microsoft’s certification and compliance score to speed up their process of compliance with all major global privacy regulations.

 

At Cloudride LTD, we provide hands-on professional cloud services for MS AZURE, AWS, and GCP and other independent software vendors. Our engineers are experts in global security and privacy policies and compliance requirements, helping you choose and implement the best solution for your business needs with the most cost-effective compliance to regulatory policies.

 

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/03
Mar 18, 2020 9:56:27 PM
ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System
Azure

Mar 18, 2020 9:56:27 PM

ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System

ISO/IEC 27701 PIMS aligns with a wide range of data protection regimes. Implementing the privacy information and management system requirements can help organizations accelerate or automatically achieve compliance with GDPR, the DBA 2018, California Consumer Privacy Act, among other data protection...

Everything you need to know about CIS Benchmarks and Azure Blueprints

Transformative and empowering as cloud platforms might be, they come with significant security challenges in the front end and back end of their architectures. Successful deployment of business processes and applications on the cloud requires planning and understanding of all the relevant risks and vulnerabilities and their possible solutions.

Top seven critical Security Concerns on the Cloud

  • Malware-injection attacks
  • Flooding attacks
  • Identity and access management
  • Service provider security issues
  • Web applications security threats
  • Privacy and personal data protection and compliance challenges
  • Data encryption on transmission and processing challenges

 

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) outlines the best practices for secure deployment and protection of your IT system at the enterprise level or on the cloud. Key international players in cybersecurity collaboratively create these globally recognized standards. The CIS benchmarks provide a roadmap for establishing and measuring your security configurations. Azure Cloud customers can leverage these standards to test and optimize the security of their systems and applications.

 

The benchmarks by the nonprofit organization support hundreds of technologies from web servers to operating systems, databases, web browsers, and mobile devices. The configuration guidelines take account of the latest evolved cyber threats and the complex requirements of cloud security.

 

Benefits of the CIS Benchmarks for Cloud Security

  • They enable easy and quick configuration of security controls on the cloud.
  • They entail mapped out steps that address critical cloud security threats.
  • You can customize benchmark recommendations to fit your company standards and compliance policies.
  • Automatic tracking of compliance using the benchmarks save time.

 

CIS Microsoft Azure Foundations Benchmark

The Microsoft-CIS partnership taps into Microsoft’s proven experience and best practices in internal and customer level Azure deployments while leveraging the CIS’s consensus-driven model of sharing configurations.

 

The new Azure blueprint for CIS Benchmark prescribes expert guidelines that cloud architects can use to define their internal security standards and assess their compliance with regulatory requirements.

 

The CIS Microsoft Azure Foundations Benchmark includes policy definitions on:

 

  • Access control - multifactor authentication and managing subscription roles on privileged and non-privileged accounts.
  • Vulnerability monitoring on virtual machines.
  • Monitoring storage accounts that allow insecure connections, unrestricted access and those that limit access from trusted Microsoft services.
  • SQL Server auditing and configuration.
  • Activity log monitoring.
  • Network monitoring where resources are deployed.
  • Recoverability of key vaults in the event of accidental deletion.
  • Encryption of web applications.

 

Azure Blueprints

Azure Blueprints are the templates used by cloud architects to design and implement the appropriate cloud resources for adhering to company standards and regulatory requirements. These Blueprints are pivotal in attaining a robust cloud security posture. You can design and deploy compliant-ready environments in the shortest time, and be confident that you are meeting all the right standards with minimal risk and resource wastage.

Critical applications of Azure Blueprints:

Simplifying Azure deployment

You get a single blueprint definition for your policies, access controls, and Azure Resource Manager templates, which simplify large scale application deployments on the Azure environment. You can use PowerShell or ARM Templates to automate the deployment process, but without having to retain large declarative files and long scripts. The versioning capability within these blueprints means that you can edit and fine-tune the control and management of new subscriptions.

Streamlining your creation environment

Azure blueprints enable the deployment of several subscriptions in one click, which results in a uniform environment from production to development and QA subscriptions. One can also track and manage all blueprints in a centralized location. The integrated tooling makes it easier to maintain control over every resource and deployment specifications. The resource locking feature is especially critical in ensuring that new resources are not interfered with.

 

Achieving compliant development

The Azure blueprint has a self-service model that helps to speed up compliance with your application deployment. You can create custom templates or use the blueprints to meet standards where there is no established framework. The built-in compliance capabilities of Azure Blueprints target internal requirements and external regulations, including ISO 27001, FedRAMP Moderate, and HIPAA HITRUST, among others.

 

The new Azure blueprint for CIS benchmark sets a foundational security level for businesses deploying or developing workloads on the Azure Cloud. Nonetheless, it’s not exhaustive in its scope of security configurations. Site-specific tailoring is required to attain full compliance with CIS controls and requirements.

 

Cloudride LTD provides cloud consulting services, including security and networking blueprint, architecture design, migration, and cost optimization, among others. Our cloud partners include MS-AZURE, AWS, and GCP alongside other independent service providers. We’re happy to help you achieve a competitive advantage with a robustly secure and agile cloud infrastructure.

Contact us to learn more.

 

 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/03
Mar 16, 2020 12:41:16 AM
Everything you need to know about CIS Benchmarks and Azure Blueprints
Azure

Mar 16, 2020 12:41:16 AM

Everything you need to know about CIS Benchmarks and Azure Blueprints

Transformative and empowering as cloud platforms might be, they come with significant security challenges in the front end and back end of their architectures. Successful deployment of business processes and applications on the cloud requires planning and understanding of all the relevant risks and...

Advancing safe deployment practices | Cloudride

Cloud computing certainly has a lot of perks. From scalability, through cost-effectiveness (when done right), flexibility, scalability and much more. However, these great benefits might come at the price of service reliability.

Service reliability issues are the various types of failures that may affect the success of a cloud service.

Below are some of the causes:

  • Computing resources missing
  • Timeouts
  • Network failure
  • Hardware failure

But above all, the primary cause of service reliability issues is change.

Changes in the cloud encompass various advantages including new capabilities, features, security and reliability enhancements and more.

These changes are also subject to setbacks such as regression, downtime and bugs.

Much like in our everyday lives, change is inevitable. Change signifies cloud platforms such as Azure are evolving and improving in performance, so we can’t afford to ignore change, rather we need to expect it and plan for it.

Microsoft strives to make updates as transparent as possible and deploy changes safely.

In this post, we will look at the safe deployment practices they implement to make sure you, the customer, is not affected by the setbacks caused by such changes.

How Azure deploys changes safely

How does Azure deploy their releases / changes / updates?

Azure assumes upfront there is an unknown problem that would arise as a result of the change being deployed. They therefore plan in a way that enables the discovery of the problem and automate mitigation actions for when the problem arises. Even the slightest of change can pose a risk to the stability of the system.

Since we’ve already agreed that change is inevitable, how can they prevent or minimize the impact of change?

  1. By ensuring the changes meet the quality standard before deployment. This can be achieved through test and integration validations.
  2. After the quality check, Azure gradually rolls out the changes or updates to detect any unexpected impact that was not foreseen during testing.

The gradual deployment gives Azure an opportunity to detect any issues on a smaller scale before the change is deployed on a broad production level and causes a larger impact on the system.

Both code and configuration changes go through a life cycle of stages where health metrics are monitored and automatic actions are triggered when any anomalies are detected.

These stages reduce any negative impact on the customers’ workloads associated with the software updates.

Canary regions / Early Updates Access Program

An Azure region is an area within a geography, containing one or more data centres.

Canary regions are just like any other Azure regions.

One of the canary regions is built with availability zones and the other without. Both regions are then paired to form a “paired region” to validate the data replication capabilities.

Several parties are invited to the program, from first-party services like Databricks, third-party services (from the azure marketplace) like Barracuda WAF-as-a-service to a small set of external customers.

All these diverse parties are invited to cover all possible scenarios.

Untitled design-3These canary regions are run through tests and end-to-end validation, to practice the detection and recovery workflows that would be run if any anomalies occur in real life. Periodic fault injections or disaster recovery drills are carried out at the region or Availability Zone Level, aimed to ensure the software update is of the highest quality before the change rolls out to broad customers and into their workloads.

Pilot phase

Once the results from canary indicate that there are no known issues detected, deployment to production phase begins. Starting off with the pilot phase.

This phase enables Azure to try out the changes, still on a relatively small scale, but with more diversity of hardware and configurations.

This phase is especially important for software like core storage services and core compute infrastructure services, that have hardware dependencies.

For example, Azure offers servers with GPUs, large memory servers, commodity servers, multiple generations and types of processors, Infiniband, and more, so this enables flighting the changes and may enable detection of issues that would not surface during the smaller scale testing.

In each step along the way, thorough health monitoring and extended 'bake times' enable potential failure patterns to surface, and increase confidence in the changes while greatly reducing the overall risk to customers.

Once it’s determined that the results from the pilot phase are good, deployment of the changes progresses to more regions gradually. changes deploy only as long as no negative signals surface.

The deployment system attempts to deploy a change to only one availability zone within a region and due to region pairing, a change is first deployed to a region then its pair.

Safe deployment practices in action

Given the scale of Azure, it has more global regions than any other cloud provider, the entire rollout process is completely automated and driven by policy.

These policies include mandatory health signals for monitoring the quality of software. This shows that the same policies and processes determine how quickly software can be rolled out.

These policies also include mandatory ‘bake times’ between the stages outlined above.

Why the mandatory ‘bake times’?

The reason to have software sitting and baking for different periods of time across each phase is to make sure to expose the change to a full spectrum of load on that service.

For example, diverse organisational users might be coming online in the morning, gaming customers might be coming online in the evening, and new virtual machines (VMs) or resource creations from customers may occur over an extended period of time.

Below are some instances of safe deployment practices in action:

  1. Global services, which cannot take the approach of progressively deploying to different clusters, regions, or service rings, also practice a version of progressive rollouts in alignment with SDP.

These services follow the model of updating their service instances in multiple phases, progressively deviating traffic to the updated instances through Azure Traffic Manager.

If the signals are positive, more traffic gets deviated over time to updated instances, increasing confidence and unblocking the deployment from being applied to more service instances over time.

  1. the Azure platform also has the ability to deploy a change simultaneously to all of Azure instead of the gradual deployment.

Although the safe deployment policy is mandatory, Azure can choose to accelerate it when certain emergency conditions are met.

For example, for a fix where the risk of regression is overcome by the fix mitigating a problem that’s already very impactful on customers.

Conclusion

As we earlier said, change is inevitable. The agility and continual improvement of cloud services is one of the key value propositions of the cloud. Rather than trying to avoid change we should plan for it, by implementing safe deployment practices and mitigating negative impact.

We recommend keeping up to date with the latest releases, product updates, and the roadmap of innovations, and if you need help to better plan and rollout your architecture to control impact of change on your own cloud environment, we’re a click away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/03
Mar 8, 2020 12:53:59 PM
Advancing safe deployment practices | Cloudride
Azure

Mar 8, 2020 12:53:59 PM

Advancing safe deployment practices | Cloudride

Cloud computing certainly has a lot of perks. From scalability, through cost-effectiveness (when done right), flexibility, scalability and much more. However, these great benefits might come at the price of service reliability.

Cloud computing cheat sheet

When you start with a cloud provider it’s easy and straight-forward, you pay for what you use.

But as you start scaling, maybe have a number of developers or even several accounts, it’s hard to keep track of your expenses and as we know the biggest chunk of the bill at the end of the month is usually the computing section.

l laid out the most fundamental best-practices to optimise your compute resources and maybe even leave you with a few spare bucks in your pocket.

Right-Sizing

The aim of right-sizing is to match instance size and type to your workloads and capacity requirements at the lowest possible cost. It is also aimed to identify opportunities to eliminate, turn off idle instances and right-size instances poorly matched to the workload.

How do you choose the right size?

You can do this by monitoring and analysing your use of services to have an insight into performance data then locate the idle instances and instances that are under-utilised.

When analysing your compute performance (e.g. CloudWatch), two key metrics to look for are memory usage and CPU usage.

Identify instances with a maximum memory and CPU usage of less than 40% over a period of four weeks. These are the instances you would want to right-size to reduce cost.

 
** Pro tip: create alarms to get notified when your utilisation is low or high so you can have your finger on the trigger at any time.

 

Reserved Instances

Compute workloads vary over time making it difficult to predict, but in most situations, we can predict the “minimum” capacity that we’ll need for a long period of time.

Amazon Reserved Instances / Azure Reserved VM Instances allow you to make-instance workload reservations for workloads like these.

Reserved Instance pricing is calculated using three key variables:

  1. Instance attributes
  2. Term commitment
  3. Payment option

Instance attributes that determine pricing include instant type, tenancy availability zone, and platform.

To illustrate, purchasing a reserved instance with instance type m3.xlarge, availability zone us-east-1a, default tenancy, and Linux platform would allow you to automatically receive the discounted reserved instance rate anytime you run an instance with these attributes.

Reserved instances can be purchased on either 1 year or 3-year term commitment. The 3-year commitment offers a larger discount.

By using Reserved Instances for these workloads you can save up to 60% when compared to standard on-demand cloud computing pricing.

Having said that, it is important to state that purchasing and managing reserve instances requires expertise. Purchasing the wrong type of instances, under-utilisation or other such mishaps, may end up increasing your costs, rather than reducing them.

 

Spot Instances

Spot instances are excessive capacity of compute in a region, that are priced as low as 90% off the on-demand price, but with a catch:.

Spot instances are subject to interruption, meaning that you should not use spot instances for long running mission-critical workloads.

 

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So, how does that work? You bid for the number of EC2 instances of a particular type you wish to run.

When your bid beats the market spot price - your instances are run. The current spot price is determined by supply and demand.

When the current spot price increases above your bid price, the cloud vendor reclaims the spot instances and gives them to another customer.

Spot instances can be a cost-effective option for short-term stateless workloads.

 

Serverless

Instead of paying for servers that are idle most of the time, you can consider moving to on-demand serverless services in the form of

Event-driven compute service.

Although not suitable for all businesses’ needs, for many developers serverless computing offers a number of advantages over traditional cloud-based or server-centric infrastructure, such as greater scalability, more flexibility, and quicker time to release, all at a reduced cost.

In a serverless environment, You pay only for what you actually use, as code only runs when backend functions are needed by the application, and scaling up is automatic on need.

 

On/Off Scheduling

We all know the situation that we set up a server in our development environment only to find out after returning from the weekend that we forgot to turn off the machine.

You can save around 60% on running these instances if you maintain an “on” schedule on prime operation hours. If your teams work irregular hours/patterns and you adjust your on/off schedule accordingly - you can save even more.

You can save even more by utilising measures to determine prime-time usability or apply a schedule that is by default stopped unless interrupted upon the need of access.

 

Single cloud vs. Multi-cloud

A multi-cloud environment certainly has its drawbacks, from complex infrastructure, through central visibility, but a well-planned multi-cloud strategy can lead to great cost savings. E.g. Different prices for the same instance types and numerous spot markets.

Having said that, volume-related perks when spending with a single cloud vendor are not to be overlooked either. Weigh the pro’s and con’s of your cloud environment needs and capabilities, and you can benefit significant savings with one or the other.

 

Update your Architecture regularly

Cloud environments are dynamic, new products and services are released regularly.

There is a good chance you can harness this new Serverless service or Auto Scaling group feature to better utilise your workloads or remove overhead from your developers while minimising costs.

 

Conclusion

Optimising your cloud cost is an ongoing process. You constantly need to monitor the services you use and the computing power you need to effectively leverage the excess capacity or unused EC2 instances to benefit from significant savings. It’s important to set in place real-time monitoring tools that will enable you to stay on top of your infrastructure performances and utilisation.

To learn more about Cloud Optimization, or just get some expert advice, we’re a click away.

 

 

 

avner-vidal-blog
2020/03
Mar 1, 2020 4:33:20 PM
Cloud computing cheat sheet
DevOps

Mar 1, 2020 4:33:20 PM

Cloud computing cheat sheet

When you start with a cloud provider it’s easy and straight-forward, you pay for what you use.

On-premise vs Cloud. Which is the best fit for your business?

Cloud computing is gaining popularity. It offers companies enhanced security, ability to move all enterprise workloads to the cloud without needing upfront huge infrastructure investment, gives the much-needed flexibility in doing business and saves time and money.


This is why 83% of enterprise workload will be in the cloud and on-premise workloads would constitute only 27% of all workloads by this year, according to Forbes.


But there are factors to consider before choosing to migrate all your enterprise workload to the cloud or choosing on-premise deployment model.


There is no one size fits it all approach. It depends on your business and IT needs. If your business has global expansion plans in place, the cloud provides much greater appeal. Migrating workloads to the cloud enables data to be accessible to anyone with an internet-enabled device.

Without much effort, you are connected to your customers, remote employees, partners and other businesses.


On the other hand, if your business is in a highly regulated industry with privacy concerns and with the need for customising system operations then the on-premise deployment model may, at times, be preferable.
To better discern which solution is best for your business needs we will highlight the key differences between the two to help you in your decision making.

Security

With cloud infrastructure, security is always the main concern. Sensitive financial data, customers’ data, employees’ data, list of clients and much more delicate information is stored in the on-premise data center.

To migrate all this to a cloud infrastructure, you must have conducted thorough research on the cloud provider’s capabilities to handle sensitive data. Renowned cloud providers usually have strict data security measures and policies. 

You can still seek a third-party security audit on the cloud providers you want to choose, or even better yet, consult with a cloud security specialist to ensure your cloud architecture is constructed according to the highest security standards and answers all our needs.

As for on-premise infrastructure, security solely lies with you. You are responsible for real-time threat detection and implementing preventive measures. 

Cost

One major advantage of adopting cloud infrastructure is its low cost of entry. No physical servers are needed, no manual maintenance cost and no heavy cost incurred from the damage on physical servers. Your cloud providers are responsible for maintaining the virtual servers.

Having said that, Cloud providers use a pay as you go model. This can skyrocket your operational costs when administrators are not familiar with the cloud pricing models. Building, operating and maintaining a cloud architecture that maximises your cloud benefits, while maintaining cost control - is not as easy as it sounds, and requires quite a high level of expertise. For that, a professional cloud cost optimization specialist can ensure you get everything you paid for, and not bill-shocked by any unexpected surplus fees. 

On the other hand, On-premise software is usually charged on a one-time licence fee. On top of that, in-house servers, server maintenance and IT professionals to deal with any potential risks that may occur. This does not account the time and money lost when a system failure happens, and the available employees don’t have the expertise to contain the situation. 

Customisation 

On-premise IT infrastructure offers full control to an enterprise. You can tailor your system to your specialized needs. The system is in your hands and only you can modify it to your liking and business needs.

With cloud infrastructure, it’s a bit more tricky. In order to customise cloud platform solutions to your own organisational needs, you need high level expertise to plan and construct a cloud solution that is tailored to your organisational requirement. 

Flexibility 

When your company is expanding its market reach it’s essential to utilise cloud infrastructure as it doesn’t require huge investments. Data can be accessed from anywhere in the world through a virtual server provided by your cloud provider, and scaling your architecture is fairly easy (especially if your initial planning and construction were done right and aimed to support growth). 

With an on-premise system, going into other markets would require you to establish physical servers in those locations and invest in new staff. This might make you think twice on your expansion plans due to the huge costs.

Which is the best? 

Generally, On-premise deployment model is suited for enterprises which require full control of their servers and have the necessary personnel to maintain the hardware and software and frequently secure the network.

They store sensitive information and rather invest in their own security measures on a system they have full control over than have their data move to the cloud. 

Small businesses and large enterprises- Apple, Netflix, Instagram, alike move their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud due to the flexibility of expansion and growth and low cost of entry. No need for the huge upfront investment on infrastructure and maintenance. 

With the various prebuilt tools and features, and the right expert partner to take you through your cloud-journey - you can customise the system to cater to your needs, while upholding top security standards, and optimising ongoing costs.

Still not sure which model is best for you? 

We are a conversation away. Handling all your cloud migration, cloud security and cloud cost optimization needs.

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/02
Feb 4, 2020 6:17:22 PM
On-premise vs Cloud. Which is the best fit for your business?
E-Commerce, Cloud Migration, Multi-Cloud, Healthcare, Education

Feb 4, 2020 6:17:22 PM

On-premise vs Cloud. Which is the best fit for your business?

Cloud computing is gaining popularity. It offers companies enhanced security, ability to move all enterprise workloads to the cloud without needing upfront huge infrastructure investment, gives the much-needed flexibility in doing business and saves time and money.

Taking the cloud workload security off your mind

As much as cloud environments come with their perks; High speed, effective collaborations, cost-saving, mobility and reliability, they do have their share of challenges, cloud security being one of the most prominent ones.

 

What is cloud security?

Cloud security refers to a broad set of policies, technologies, applications, and controls utilized to protect data, applications, services, and the associated architecture of cloud infrastructure. When companies are looking to migrate all or part of their operations to the cloud environment, they encounter the inevitable matter of security: “Does the cloud environment make our company extra susceptible to cyber attacks? Will we have in place measures to prevent and handle such cyber attacks? What's the best way to implement cloud security for our organizational needs?” are only some of the questions facing every CIO, IT manager or CTO when considering their cloud architecture.

 

 

How cloud security risks can affect your business

When a security breach happens in your company you might be quick to point a finger at hackers.

“We were hacked!”

Yes, you might be hacked but your employees play a part in the breach of data. They might not have knowingly given out information to hackers but inadvertently contributed to the breach.

Promiscuous permissions are the #1 threat to computing workloads hosted on the public cloud. Public cloud environments make it very easy to grant extensive permissions, and very difficult to keep track of them. As a result, cloud workloads are vulnerable to data breaches, account compromise and resource exploitation.

 

Once you realise this, it is too late.

With cloud security, you have to be proactive, not reactive.

 

How can you stay ahead in cloud security?

This basically means being able to identify threats and devising measures to prevent any attacks before they happen.

Cloud security done right ensures various layers of infrastructure controls, such as safety, consistency, continuity, availability and regulatory compliance to your cloud based assets.

Measures you can take include traffic monitoring, intrusion detection, identity management and many more according to your security needs.

All this can be time-consuming and requires skills and knowledge to effectively set in place the needed protective measures.

That’s where Cloudride steps in, providing you with tailored cloud service solutions for your organizational needs.

Driven by market best practices approach and uncompromised security awareness, Cloudride’s team of experts works together with you to make sure all your company needs are met. Cloudride provides cloud migration and cloud-enabling solutions, with special attention to security, cost efficiency and vendor best practices.

With promiscuous permissions being the number one threat to computing workloads hosted on the public cloud, Cloudride recently announced it has partnered with Radware, a globally leading provider of centralized visibility and control over large numbers of cloud-hosted workloads, that helps security administrators quickly understand where the attack is taking place and what assets are under threat. Cloudride’s partnership with Radware will now enable Cloudride customers to benefit from agentless, cloud-native solutions for comprehensive protection of AWS assets, to protect both the overall security posture of cloud environments, as well as protect individual cloud

Taking cloud security off your mind so you can focus on streamlining business processes.

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/01
Jan 23, 2020 4:52:21 PM
Taking the cloud workload security off your mind
Cloud Security

Jan 23, 2020 4:52:21 PM

Taking the cloud workload security off your mind

As much as cloud environments come with their perks; High speed, effective collaborations, cost-saving, mobility and reliability, they do have their share of challenges, cloud security being one of the most prominent ones.

Your Guide to a Resilient WAF: Essential Steps for Website Protection

 

In short:

1. Constant Cyber Threats: Websites are constantly targeted by attacks like DDoS, SQL injections, and XSS, demanding strong security measures.

2. WAF as First Defense:A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a critical filter, examining traffic and stopping harmful requests.

3. Key Implementation Tips: To build a resilient WAF, customize settings, update regularly, ensure it scales, and integrate it with other security tools.

4. Beyond Basic Protection: A properly implemented WAF is crucial for website security, meeting regulations, and keeping user trust.

5. Proactive Security Wins: Staying vigilant and having a robust WAF strategy are essential for protecting your website in today's changing cyber environment.

Given the dynamic nature of today’s cyber world, organizations are constantly exposed to many cyber threats. The digital landscape has become a minefield of potential vulnerabilities, from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to SQL injections and cross-site scripting (XSS) exploits. In this high-stakes environment, shielding your website has become a top priority.

One of the most effective tools available is the Web Application Firewall (WAF). A WAF is a formidable filter, meticulously analyzing every incoming request and intercepting potential threats before they can breach your defenses. This durable solution stands as a sturdy shield, adapting to the ever-evolving cyber attacks and ensuring your website remains secure and accessible.

Here are some key tips to consider when implementing a resilient WAF solution:

  1. Customized Configuration: One size does not fit all when it comes to WAF protection. Tailor your WAF settings to the unique needs and vulnerabilities of your website, ensuring that it is optimized to defend against the specific threats your site faces.
  2. Continuous Monitoring and Updating: Cyber threats are constantly changing, and your WAF must adapt accordingly. Regularly monitor your WAF's performance and update its rules and signatures to ensure it remains effective against the latest attack vectors.
  3. Scalable and Flexible: As your website grows and evolves, your WAF must be able to scale to meet the increased demands. Opt for a solution that can seamlessly handle fluctuations in traffic and adapt to changes in your web application's architecture.
  4. Integrated Security Approach: While a WAF is a crucial component of your website's security, it should not be the only layer of defense. Combine your WAF with other security measures, such as network firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and regular vulnerability assessments, to create a comprehensive security ecosystem.

  5. Compliance and Regulatory Requirements: Depending on your industry and the type of data you handle, your website may be subject to various compliance regulations. Ensure that your WAF solution is designed to meet these requirements, safeguarding your website and your customers' sensitive information.

By implementing a resilient WAF solution, you can rest assured that your website is well-protected against the constantly changing cyber threat landscape. With the right tools and strategies in place, you can confidently navigate the cyber era, ensuring the safety and integrity of your online presence.

Remember, in the face of cyber threats, vigilance and proactive security measures are the keys to safeguarding your website and maintaining the trust of your users.


Our Advantage

Securing your cloud applications from evolving cyber threats doesn't have to be a headache. Whether you need tailored WAF configurations, continuous monitoring, or seamless integration into your existing cloud infrastructure, we've got the knowledge to protect you. Let's discuss how our focused WAF solutions can provide you with superior security and peace of mind. Book a quick meeting with our team today.

ronen-amity
2025/04
Apr 24, 2025 3:16:21 PM
Your Guide to a Resilient WAF: Essential Steps for Website Protection
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Compliances, Cloud Computing, WAF, Security, cyber attack

Apr 24, 2025 3:16:21 PM

Your Guide to a Resilient WAF: Essential Steps for Website Protection

Mastering Identity Management in AWS: IAM Identity Center

 

In short:

  1. Centralized AWS Identity: IAM Identity Center simplifies managing access and permissions across multiple AWS accounts from a single location.

  2. Seamless Hybrid Integration: Connecting IAM Identity Center with Active Directory (AD) creates a unified identity system for both on-premises and cloud resources.

  3. Simplified Administration: Effortlessly grant/revoke access and manage users/groups across AWS through centralized control.

  4. Enhanced Security & User Experience: Leverage AD security policies in the cloud and enable single sign-on (SSO) for a consistent user experience.

  5. Improved Efficiency: Reduce administrative overhead and streamline access management in hybrid cloud environments.


At the heart of AWS IAM's offerings is the IAM Identity Center, previously known as AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO). This service excels in centralizing identity management across multiple AWS accounts, significantly simplifying the administrative overhead. But its true power is unleashed when integrated with Active Directory (AD). This integration creates a harmonious link between your on-premises and cloud-based identity systems, ensuring a seamless and secure user experience across both environments.

For businesses grappling with the dual challenges of secure access management and operational efficiency in a hybrid cloud environment, the IAM Identity Center, coupled with AD integration, presents a compelling solution. It's not just about managing identities; it's about transforming the way you secure and access your AWS resources, paving the way for a more agile and secure cloud journey.

What is IAM Identity Center?

IAM Identity Center simplifies the administration of permissions across multiple AWS accounts. It allows you to manage access to AWS accounts from a central location, ensuring a consistent and secure AWS console user experience.

Simplifying Multi-Account Permissions

In a multi-account setup, managing permissions can become complex. IAM Identity Center provides a unified view, enabling you to grant or revoke access rights across all accounts effortlessly. This centralized approach not only saves time but also reduces the risk of human error in permission management.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up IAM Identity Center

  1. Enable IAM Identity Center: Log into your organization's root AWS Console, search for “IAM Identity Center”, and enable it.

  2. Configure Your Directory: Choose to connect to an existing directory (like Active Directory) or create a new AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

  3. Create Permission Sets: Define the level of access users will have across your AWS accounts.

  4. Assign Users and Groups: Map your users and groups from the directory to the permission sets.

  5. Enable SSO Access: Provide users with a URL to access the AWS Management Console using their existing credentials.

Best Practices for Managing Centralized Identity
  • Least Privilege Principle: Assign only the permissions required for users to perform their tasks.

  • Regular Audits: Conduct periodic reviews of permission sets and access rights.

  • Use Groups for Management: Leverage group-based access control to simplify management and ensure consistency.

  • Integrating IAM Identity Center with Active Directory

Connecting the IAM Identity Center with your on-premises Active Directory or Microsoft Entra ID offers several advantages. It enables single sign-on (SSO) across your AWS resources and on-premises applications, streamlining the user experience and enhancing security.

How to Connect IAM Identity Center with On-Premises Active Directory

  1. Directory Setup: Ensure your Active Directory is configured correctly and accessible.

  2. Configure Trust Relationship: Establish trust between your Active Directory and AWS.

  3. Sync Users and Groups: Use AWS Directory Sync to synchronize your Active Directory users and groups with IAM Identity Center.

Test the Configuration: Verify that users can sign in to AWS using their Active Directory credentials.

Benefits of Integrating with Active Directory for SSO

  • Unified User Experience: Users can access both on-premises and cloud resources with a single set of credentials.

  • Simplified Management: Centralized identity management, reducing the overhead of managing multiple systems.

  • Enhanced Security: Leverage existing Active Directory security policies and controls in the cloud.

Security Implications and Best Practices

  • Maintain Strong Authentication: Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for added security.

  • Monitor Access: Use AWS CloudTrail and other monitoring tools to keep track of access patterns and detect anomalies.

  • Regularly Update Policies: Align your access policies with changing business needs and security standards.

Conclusion

IAM Identity Center, when combined with Active Directory integration, offers a robust solution for managing identities across your AWS environment. It not only simplifies multi-account permissions but also ensures that your cloud identity management remains aligned with your on-premises practices. By following best practices and leveraging the power of centralized identity management, you can enhance security, improve efficiency, and provide a seamless user experience across your AWS ecosystem.


Our Advantage

Managing cloud access doesn't have to be complicated. Let's work together to make identity and access management simple, secure, and scalable. Whether you're working across multiple AWS accounts or integrating with your on-prem systems, we’ve got you covered. Let’s talk about how we can tailor a solution for your needs. Book a quick meeting with our team today.

ronen-amity
2025/04
Apr 7, 2025 5:55:55 PM
Mastering Identity Management in AWS: IAM Identity Center
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Compliances, Cloud Computing, Security

Apr 7, 2025 5:55:55 PM

Mastering Identity Management in AWS: IAM Identity Center

Reliable Backup Solutions: Keep Your Business Running

 

In short:

  1. Businesses rely on vast amounts of data, and losing it can severely disrupt operations.
  2. A well-structured backup strategy is essential for Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP).
  3. Organizations must determine acceptable downtime (RTO) and data loss tolerance (RPO).
  4. Backup retention periods and costs must be balanced to meet business and regulatory needs.
  5. Clear ownership and decision-making are crucial for an effective backup strategy.

Modern businesses generate and depend on enormous volumes of data to drive daily operations and strategic decisions. Whether it's customer records, financial transactions, or operational systems, losing data can cause severe disruptions. To maintain resilience and ensure continuity, a well-structured backup strategy must be part of your Business strategy.

Understanding Business Continuity Through Backup

A well-designed backup plan isn't just about saving copies of files—it’s about ensuring your organization can recover from disruptions with minimal downtime. Here are the key considerations when building a backup strategy:

1. Defining Acceptable Downtime: How Long Can You Be Offline?

Every business needs to define its Recovery Time Objective (RTO)—the maximum time an organization can afford to be down before operations must resume. Some businesses can tolerate a few hours, while others require immediate recovery. The answer will influence the type of backup and DR solutions you implement.

2. Data Loss Tolerance: How Much Data Can You Afford to Lose?

Another critical factor is your Recovery Point Objective (RPO)—the amount of data you can afford to lose between backups. If you run frequent transactions (e.g., an e-commerce platform), you may need real-time backups to prevent data loss. For other industries, a daily or weekly backup may suffice.

3. Retention Period: How Long Should You Keep Backups?

Regulatory requirements and business needs dictate how long you must store backup copies. Some industries require data retention for years, while others might only need a rolling backup of 30 to 90 days. Your backup retention policy should balance compliance needs with storage costs.

4. Cost Considerations: What’s the Right Backup Investment?

Backup solutions vary in cost depending on storage capacity, backup frequency, and recovery speed. Businesses must evaluate:

  • On-premise vs. cloud backup costs
  • The price of high-availability DR solutions
  • Storage costs for long-term archiving
  • The impact of extended downtime on revenue

5. Decision-Making: Who Takes Responsibility?

Building a resilient backup plan requires clear ownership. IT leaders, security teams, and executive stakeholders must align on:

  • Backup frequency and retention policies
  • Budgeting for BCP and DR infrastructure
  • Responsibilities for monitoring and testing backups
  • Protocols for activating disaster recovery procedures

Building a Backup Strategy Aligned with Business Goals

To ensure business continuity, organizations should develop a tiered backup strategy:

  1. Daily backups for critical operational data
  2. Weekly full backups stored off-site
  3. Long-term archival backups for compliance and auditing
  4. Regular backup testing to validate recoverability
  5. Hourly backups for Ultra-Critical data when needed.

With a resilient backup plan, businesses can confidently navigate disruptions, minimize financial losses, and recover swiftly when incidents occur. Investing in a well-defined BCP and DR strategy today ensures your organization remains prepared for the unexpected.

Plan to test your backups at least once a year as part of your Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). Ensure your DRP is effective by testing across different regions, VPCs, and other configurations so that when disaster strikes, your plan is foolproof.

Our Advantage

Implementing these strategies takes planning and attention to detail. Regular testing and a well-structured backup plan ensure your data is protected and accessible when needed. Set up a meeting with our team to review your backup plan and make sure you’re fully prepared for any disruption.

ronen-amity
2025/03
Mar 31, 2025 4:31:50 PM
Reliable Backup Solutions: Keep Your Business Running
AWS, Disaster Recovery, backup

Mar 31, 2025 4:31:50 PM

Reliable Backup Solutions: Keep Your Business Running

Beyond the Cloud Bill Panic: 13 Ways to Build a FinOps-First Culture

 

Picture this: your engineering team just deployed an exciting new feature. Everyone's celebrating... until Finance storms in with this month's cloud bill. Sound familiar? This scenario plays out in companies everywhere, but it doesn't have to be your story. Here are 13 practical strategies to build a FinOps culture where cost optimization becomes everyone's business, not just Finance's headache.

Core Strategic Approaches

  1. Establish Cross-Functional Collaborations

    Success in FinOps begins with breaking down silos. By bringing together teams from finance, technology, product, and business units, organizations can create a unified approach to cloud cost management. This near-real-time collaboration ensures all stakeholders are actively involved in optimization decisions.

  2. Maintain Data Transparency

    Implementing accessible FinOps data is crucial for success. When teams have clear visibility into cloud spend and utilization metrics, they can make informed decisions quickly and establish efficient feedback loops for continuous improvement.

  3. Form a Dedicated FinOps Team

    A dedicated FinOps team serves as the cornerstone of your cloud financial management strategy. This team drives initiatives, maintains standards, and ensures consistent implementation across your organization.

Engagement and Implementation Strategies

4. Launch Interactive Learning Events

Transform learning into engagement through themed FinOps parties. Similar to LinkedIn's approach, these events can focus on specific aspects like Graviton optimization, resource cleanup, or EBS policy implementation, making technical concepts more accessible and memorable.

5. Develop Common Language Guidelines

Establishing a common FinOps language across your organization eliminates misunderstandings and streamlines communication between technical and business teams.

6. Drive Engineering Cost Ownership

Empower your engineering teams to take ownership of cloud costs from design through operations. This responsibility creates a direct link between technical decisions and financial outcomes.

Measurement and Business Alignment

7. Implement Value-Based Decision Making
Align cloud investments with business objectives by implementing unit economics and value-based metrics. This approach helps demonstrate the direct business impact of your cloud spending decisions.

8. Set Clear Performance Metrics
Define clear KPIs to measure FinOps success, including financial metrics for engineering teams based on unit economics. These measurements provide concrete evidence of progress and areas for improvement.

Organizational Integration

9. Create Strong Policy Guidelines

Implement organizational policies that support and reinforce FinOps principles across all levels of your organization.

10. Launch Recognition Programs

Celebrate FinOps achievements to maintain momentum. Recognizing teams and individuals who successfully implement FinOps practices encourages continued engagement and innovation.

11. Integrate FinOps into Your Strategy

Embed FinOps considerations into your organization's strategic planning processes, ensuring that cost optimization aligns with broader business objectives.

12. Establish Centers of Excellence

Create dedicated FinOps centers of excellence to provide specialized expertise, tools, and resources supporting organization-wide implementation.

13. Deploy Internal Communications

Maintain engagement through regular newsletters inside your company sharing success stories, case studies, and upcoming events, keeping FinOps at the forefront of organizational consciousness.


Our Advantage

Implementing these strategies requires commitment and expertise. As cloud optimization specialists, we understand organizations' challenges in building a FinOps culture. Our approach combines technical expertise with practical implementation strategies, helping you create a sustainable FinOps practice that drives both efficiency and innovation.

Ready to transform your organization's approach to cloud financial management? Save your spot on our meetup to learn how to build a strong FinOps culture that delivers lasting results.

reThinking Cost Control | March 27th | AWS TLV

 

nir-peleg
2025/02
Feb 26, 2025 5:14:52 PM
Beyond the Cloud Bill Panic: 13 Ways to Build a FinOps-First Culture
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cost Optimization, Financial Services, Fintech

Feb 26, 2025 5:14:52 PM

Beyond the Cloud Bill Panic: 13 Ways to Build a FinOps-First Culture

How Can I Migrate from On-Prem to the Cloud? A Practical Guide

 

In Short: Ready to move to the cloud but feeling overwhelmed? This guide breaks down the essential steps for a successful migration, from planning and choosing the right provider to ensuring security and optimizing performance. We'll cover key strategies (like "lift and shift" and "re-architecting"), explain how to build a smooth deployment pipeline and show you how to keep your systems running flawlessly. Think of it as your cheat sheet for cloud migration success.

Moving from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud is no longer just an option—it’s a necessity for businesses looking to stay competitive. Whether you're aiming for business continuity, greater security, or an optimized development cycle, cloud migration presents a world of opportunities. But with great potential comes great complexity. How do you ensure a seamless transition while maintaining high availability and resilience? Let’s break it down.

1. Assess Your Current Environment

Before making the move, conduct a thorough assessment of your existing on-prem infrastructure. Identify critical applications, dependencies, and data workloads. Consider factors such as security, compliance requirements, and performance expectations.

2. Choose a Suitable Cloud Services Provider

Not all cloud providers are the same, and selecting the right one is crucial for a successful migration. Evaluate providers based on factors such as security features, cost efficiency, scalability, and support for CI/CD pipelines. Major players like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud each offer unique advantages—align their strengths with your business needs.

3. Define a Migration Strategy

There are multiple cloud migration strategies, often categorized as the "7 Rs":

  • Rehost (Lift-and-Shift) – Moving applications to the cloud with minimal modifications.
  • Replatform – Making slight optimizations while migrating.
  • Refactor (Re-architect) – Redesigning applications to leverage cloud-native capabilities.
  • Repurchase – Switching to a cloud-based SaaS solution.
  • Retire – Phasing out redundant applications.
  • Retain – Keeping certain workloads on-premises.
  • Relocate - Hypervisor level lift and shift.

Your choice will depend on business needs, development cycle efficiency, and long-term scalability.

Photo credit: AWS

4. Prioritize Security and Compliance

Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility between you and your cloud provider. Implement identity and access management (IAM), encryption, and security policies that align with your compliance requirements.

5. Establish a CI/CD Pipeline for Seamless Deployment

A successful cloud migration requires automation and agility. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) help streamline software delivery, reduce manual errors, and accelerate time to market. Leveraging tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or AWS CodePipeline ensures efficiency in your development cycle.

6. Ensure High Availability and Resilience

Cloud platforms offer built-in capabilities for high availability and resilience. Utilize multi-region deployments, auto-scaling, and failover strategies to maintain uptime and performance.

7. Test, Monitor, and Optimize

Post-migration, continuously monitor performance, security, and cost optimization.
Cloud-native monitoring tools like AWS CloudWatch Suite help ensure smooth operations.

8. Migration in a Box

Migrating to the cloud is more than just a technical shift—it’s a strategic move toward business continuity, security, and operational efficiency. Every business has unique needs and IT demands. Cloudride's "Migration in a Box" is designed to adapt to those needs. Our agile approach ensures a smooth and successful cloud transition, regardless of your current infrastructure's complexity.

Don't know where to start? We’ll take you there. Schedule a meeting with our team, and we’ll handle your cloud migration from start to finish!

ronen-amity
2025/02
Feb 6, 2025 9:07:57 PM
How Can I Migrate from On-Prem to the Cloud? A Practical Guide
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Migration, CI/CD, Cloud Computing

Feb 6, 2025 9:07:57 PM

How Can I Migrate from On-Prem to the Cloud? A Practical Guide

Redefining Search with Gen AI: Amazon OpenSearch

In today's data-driven landscape, users find themselves inundated with an overwhelming amount of information. The sheer volume of data can be intimidating, leaving organizations struggling to quickly derive actionable insights. Legacy search tools frequently fall short of expectations, requiring convoluted queries or yielding results that fail to hit the mark. For businesses, this translates into diminished productivity, missed opportunities, and frustrated employees.

Enter Amazon OpenSearch—a solution designed to tackle these pain points head-on by bringing a new level of intelligence and efficiency to search and data exploration.

Enhancing Search with Natural Language Understanding

At its core, Amazon OpenSearch leverages advanced natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning via Amazon Q for OpenSearch, to reshape how users interact with data. Instead of wrestling with rigid syntax or deciphering Boolean logic, employees can simply phrase their queries in plain language. This intuitive approach makes search more inclusive, bridging the gap for professionals who aren’t steeped in technical expertise.  This combination allows businesses to build powerful search solutions that can understand user intent, provide accurate and relevant results, and ultimately enhance the user experience.

Precision-Driven and Context-Aware Search Results

Amazon OpenSearch doesn’t just deliver results; it provides actionable insights. By analyzing the context and intent behind each query, the platform surfaces the most relevant information from vast datasets. This capability is especially valuable for decision-makers who need accurate insights at their fingertips without wading through irrelevant noise. Imagine having your business intelligence dashboard tailored precisely to your needs—that’s the edge Amazon OpenSearch offers.

Seamless Integration with the AWS Ecosystem

Amazon OpenSearch integrates seamlessly with the AWS ecosystem, including services like Amazon Elasticsearch, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Lambda, and Amazon CloudWatch. This interconnectedness enables businesses to process, index, and analyze data streams in real-time, ensuring agility in a fast-paced environment. Whether it’s tracking customer trends, operational metrics, or predictive analytics, the service ensures uninterrupted data flow and actionable outcomes.

Scalable and Resilient for Every Organization

From startups managing modest datasets to enterprises operating at massive scale, Amazon OpenSearch adapts to meet diverse needs. Its high-performance architecture ensures reliable results, whether powering customer-facing applications or supporting internal analytics teams. With options like Graviton2-based instances and cost-effective storage tiers like UltraWarm, OpenSearch provides scalable, budget-friendly solutions that grow with your business.

Cost-effective and Flexible Storage Options

Amazon OpenSearch offers innovative storage solutions to optimize costs and performance. Features like UltraWarm and cold storage allow businesses to retain large volumes of data affordably without compromising on usability. UltraWarm uses Amazon S3-backed nodes for long-term data storage, while cold storage is perfect for historical or compliance-driven data, accessible when needed for analytics.

Transforming Search in the Gen AI Era

The demand for smarter, faster, and more intuitive search solutions is only increasing. Amazon OpenSearch exemplifies the potential of Gen AI to not just enhance search capabilities but to fundamentally shift how organizations harness their data. With built-in integrations, flexible storage options, and context-aware insights, OpenSearch is setting a new standard for search in the modern era.


Want to learn more about how Amazon OpenSearch can drive value for your business?
Contact us at info@cloudride.co.il to get started.

You might also like: Turn Your Company’s Data into Business Insights with Amazon Q Business

 

ronen-amity
2025/01
Jan 13, 2025 4:49:44 PM
Redefining Search with Gen AI: Amazon OpenSearch
AWS, Gen AI, Amazon OpenSearch

Jan 13, 2025 4:49:44 PM

Redefining Search with Gen AI: Amazon OpenSearch

In today's data-driven landscape, users find themselves inundated with an overwhelming amount of information. The sheer volume of data can be intimidating, leaving organizations struggling to quickly derive actionable insights. Legacy search tools frequently fall short of expectations, requiring...

Turn Your Company’s Data into Business Insights with Amazon Q Business

The evolution of Amazon Q can be traced back to AWS's pioneering efforts in the realm of machine learning, beginning with the introduction of Amazon SageMaker. This groundbreaking service empowered business users to independently extract insights from their data, paving the way for the next stage of innovation. The launch of Amazon Bedrock further streamlined the process, enabling organizations to leverage pre-built code and solutions developed by others. Now, Amazon Q Business represents the latest leap forward, allowing business users to harness the power of conversational Gen AI to unlock valuable insights from a wide range of data sources utilizing Amazon Bedrock models.

Extracting Insights from Diverse Data Sources

Amazon Q allows you to comprehensively understand operations, customer behavior, and market trends by extracting insights from diverse data sources, including databases, data warehouses, and unstructured documents.

Data Made Simple and Accessible for Everyone

With Amazon Q Business, you can receive quick, accurate, and relevant answers to complex questions based on your documents, images, files, and other application data, as well as data stored in databases and data warehouses. The service's natural language processing allows you to use simple conversational queries to interact with your data, making exploring and analyzing complex data sets more intuitive and accessible. So Amazon Q Business enables everyone in your organization, regardless of their technical background, to uncover valuable insights from your company's data.

Streamlining Workflows with Automation and Integration

Moreover, Amazon Q for Business includes pre-built actions and integrations with popular business applications, allowing organizations to automate routine tasks and streamline workflows. This seamless integration boosts productivity and enables businesses to act quickly on generated insights.

Embracing the Gen AI Revolution with Amazon Q for Business

As the demand for data-driven decision-making continues to grow, Amazon Q for Business stands as a testament to the transformative power of Gen AI in the business world. By empowering organizations to harness the full potential of their data, this service paves the way for a new era of strategic decision-making and competitive advantage.

Want to learn more about how Amazon Q Business can drive value for your business? Contact us at info@cloudride.co.il to get started.

You might also like: Exploring Amazon Q Developer

ronen-amity
2025/01
Jan 5, 2025 1:19:09 PM
Turn Your Company’s Data into Business Insights with Amazon Q Business
AWS, Gen AI, Amazon Q

Jan 5, 2025 1:19:09 PM

Turn Your Company’s Data into Business Insights with Amazon Q Business

The evolution of Amazon Q can be traced back to AWS's pioneering efforts in the realm of machine learning, beginning with the introduction of Amazon SageMaker. This groundbreaking service empowered business users to independently extract insights from their data, paving the way for the next stage...

Unleash Your Coding Superpowers: Amazon Q Transforms Software Development with Gen AI

In the constantly advancing realm of cloud computing, a new champion has emerged, poised to revolutionize how developers approach their craft. Introducing: Amazon Q Developer, a cutting-edge Gen AI service designed for building, operating, and transforming software, with advanced capabilities for managing data and AI/ML.

The Evolution of Amazon Q: From SageMaker to Bedrock to Gen AI 

Amazon's AI journey showcases a remarkable evolution in technology. Starting with Amazon SageMaker, which provided tools for machine learning, the company progressed to Amazon Bedrock, offering pre-built AI components. The latest innovation, Amazon Q, represents a significant leap forward, allowing users to generate solutions through simple verbal requests. This progression from specialized tools to user-friendly AI assistance demonstrates Amazon's commitment to making artificial intelligence more accessible and efficient for everyone.

Seamless Integration with Existing Technologies

Amazon Q stands out as a powerful developer agent that changes the game for the coding process. It acts as an intelligent assistant, understanding complex programming requirements and generating tailored code snippets on demand. By leveraging natural language processing, Q can interpret developers' intentions, offering solutions that align with best practices and project-specific needs. This AI-driven approach not only accelerates development cycles but also helps bridge knowledge gaps, making advanced coding techniques more accessible to developers of all skill levels. With Amazon Q, Amazon has effectively created a virtual coding partner that enhances productivity and fosters innovation in software development.

Enhancing Productivity and Efficiency

One of the key features of Amazon Q is its ability to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up valuable time and resources for developers to focus on more strategic initiatives. By leveraging the service's advanced natural language processing and machine learning capabilities, developers can streamline their workflows, improve code quality, and accelerate project delivery. Moreover, Amazon Q's integration with popular AWS development IDE tools and platforms, such as Visual Studio and others, ensures a seamless user experience for developers, further enhancing their productivity and efficiency.

Thinking Ahead: Catering to Evolving Business Needs

Importantly, every developer should consider that when developing something, they must think ahead to cater to their company's evolving business needs, ensuring their solutions are ready to scale and grow with the organization. Additionally, Amazon Q for developers can be customized to a company's specific code and compliance requirements, ensuring that developers can seamlessly integrate the service into their existing infrastructure and workflows.

Embracing the Transformative Power of Gen AI with Amazon Q Developer Agent

Amazon Q Developer Agent exemplifies the transformative potential of generative AI in software development. By enabling developers to harness Gen AI's capabilities through natural language interactions, Q streamlines the entire development lifecycle - from coding and unit testing to documentation creation and code review. It integrates seamlessly into CI/CD workflows, enhancing productivity across all stages. This powerful tool accelerates development processes while making advanced techniques accessible, with the potential to reshape the future of software creation and set new standards for AI-assisted programming.

Where Cloudride Steps In

If you're ready to unlock the full potential of Gen AI and revolutionize your software development processes, Amazon Q is the solution you've been waiting for. Our team of AWS experts at Cloudride can help you maximize the benefits of Amazon Q and elevate your cloud infrastructure to the next level.

Cloudride uses Amazon Q to empower developers, boost productivity, and drive innovation. We'll guide you through the seamless integration and implementation of this transformative service, ensuring your organization can harness the power of Gen AI to gain a competitive edge.

Reach out to us today to learn how Cloudride can help you leverage the cutting-edge capabilities of Amazon Q and take your software development to new heights.

ronen-amity
2024/12
Dec 16, 2024 10:52:33 PM
Unleash Your Coding Superpowers: Amazon Q Transforms Software Development with Gen AI
AWS, Gen AI, Amazon Q

Dec 16, 2024 10:52:33 PM

Unleash Your Coding Superpowers: Amazon Q Transforms Software Development with Gen AI

In the constantly advancing realm of cloud computing, a new champion has emerged, poised to revolutionize how developers approach their craft. Introducing: Amazon Q Developer, a cutting-edge Gen AI service designed for building, operating, and transforming software, with advanced capabilities for...

Graviton: AWS's Secret Weapon for Performance and Cost Efficiency

Last Thursday, our team participated in a deep technical session that explored the capabilities of AWS's Graviton family of processors. Over the years, Graviton has become a pivotal CPU architecture for companies seeking to cut cloud costs while maintaining high levels of performance. With each new generation, AWS has pushed the envelope in terms of what's possible in cloud infrastructure, and this session shed light on Graviton's potential to transform how businesses operate in the cloud.

From Graviton 1 to Graviton 4: A Journey of Continuous Improvement

AWS first introduced the Graviton processor to bring significant cost reductions to cloud operations, offering up to 45% savings compared to Intel-based instances. Built on ARM architecture, Graviton was particularly effective for Linux workloads, where it reduced CPU costs without sacrificing operational efficiency.

Graviton 2 followed with a notable 40% performance increase, bringing improved memory access and core efficiency. This made Graviton 2 a strong choice for a variety of workloads, including those requiring parallel data processing and large-scale computation.

When AWS released Graviton 3, users saw an additional 25% performance boost, particularly in floating-point calculations. This upgrade further solidified Graviton's status as a top-tier option for compute-intensive tasks such as AI training and big data analytics.

Most recently, Graviton 4 was launched, offering a 50% increase in core scaling compared to Graviton 3, with up to 192 cores for the largest R8g instance type with dual sockets. This makes Graviton 4 a powerful architecture for workloads that demand high CPU throughput, such as parallel computing. Graviton 4 not only provides a performance boost but also allows businesses to scale more efficiently than ever before. 

Graviton vs. Intel and AMD: The Power of Full-Core Utilization

One of the key advantages of Graviton processors is their ability to utilize full dedicated cores rather than relying on hyper-threading, which is common with Intel and AMD processors. Hyper-threading simulates multiple threads per core, but under heavy load, this can cause performance bottlenecks, with CPU utilization spiking prematurely.

Graviton’s architecture eliminates this problem by using dedicated cores, which ensures consistent and predictable performance even during high-demand workloads. In the technical session, benchmark tests showed Graviton’s superiority when handling millions of queue requests. In a certain model tested, the Intel instances began to fail at around 120 requests per second, while the Graviton instances managed up to 250 requests per second without crashing. This makes Graviton not only more powerful but also far more reliable for mission-critical applications.


Real-World Benefits: Cost Savings and Efficiency Gains

During the session, we discussed how Graviton offers more than just raw performance—it also delivers substantial cost savings. Businesses that have switched from Intel or AMD to Graviton-based instances, such as C7g, have reported cost reductions of around 20%. The savings come from two main areas: lower per-instance costs and the ability to run more workloads on fewer machines.

One example shared during the session involved a customer who switched from AMD’s C5A instance to Graviton’s C7g, resulting in a 24% cost reduction. This customer was able to consolidate workloads, reducing the overall number of instances required while simultaneously improving performance.

In addition to cost savings, Graviton processors also offer reduced latency and faster request handling, which is crucial for organizations scaling their operations. Graviton has also been integrated into AWS’s managed services, including RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, and ElasticCache. This means customers using these services can benefit from the increased efficiency and lower costs associated with Graviton processors without needing to modify their applications.

A reminder is that the Graviton instances are also available at the AWS’s Spot market, where businesses can take advantage of unused EC2 capacity at reduced prices. This creates additional savings for companies with flexible workload requirements.

Graviton and the Future: Expanding Beyond CPU Workloads

AWS isn’t stopping at CPU performance with Graviton. During the session, we also explored how Graviton can work its way into AI and machine learning workloads, which traditionally rely on GPU processing. With frameworks like TensorFlow, businesses can run machine learning models directly on Graviton processors, further reducing the need for expensive GPUs.

For organizations that rely on machine learning, this shift opens up exciting possibilities. Graviton’s efficient CPU architecture can now handle workloads previously reserved for GPUs, offering a cost-effective solution for medium to large-scale AI applications.

Why Graviton is the Future of Cloud Optimization

The insights from the technical session clearly highlighted AWS’s commitment to developing high-performance, cost-efficient processors that meet the growing demands of cloud infrastructure. From Graviton 1 to Graviton 4, each generation has brought improvements that enable businesses to optimize their workloads, reduce operational costs, and scale efficiently.

For any organization looking to modernize its cloud infrastructure, Graviton offers a clear path to doing so. Its unique combination of full-core utilization, improved performance with each iteration, and lower costs makes it an ideal choice for companies that demand both speed and efficiency.

Where Cloudride Steps In

If you're ready to take advantage of the impressive performance and cost savings that Graviton can offer, Cloudride is here to assist. Our team of AWS experts specializes in optimizing cloud infrastructures to harness the full capabilities of Graviton processors, ensuring your workloads run more efficiently and cost-effectively. Whether you're looking to transition from your current instances or want to enhance your cloud environment, we provide tailored solutions that meet your specific business needs.

Reach out to us today to learn how Cloudride can help you maximize the benefits of AWS Graviton and elevate your cloud infrastructure to the next level.

ronen-amity
2024/09
Sep 29, 2024 3:44:40 PM
Graviton: AWS's Secret Weapon for Performance and Cost Efficiency
AWS, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing

Sep 29, 2024 3:44:40 PM

Graviton: AWS's Secret Weapon for Performance and Cost Efficiency

Last Thursday, our team participated in a deep technical session that explored the capabilities of AWS's Graviton family of processors. Over the years, Graviton has become a pivotal CPU architecture for companies seeking to cut cloud costs while maintaining high levels of performance. With each new...

Achieve Unparalleled Resilience with Scalable Multi-Region Disaster Recovery

Effective disaster recovery (DR) strategies are critical for ensuring business continuity and protecting your organization from disruptions. However, traditional DR approaches often fall short when faced with unexpected demand spikes or regional outages. This is where the power of AWS Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing comes into play, offering a dynamic, scalable solution that takes your disaster recovery capabilities to new heights.

Why Scaling Matters for Disaster Recovery

Conventional disaster recovery methods frequently rely on static infrastructure provisioned for peak demand. This approach leads to inefficiencies, with resources being either underutilized during normal operations or potentially insufficient during unexpected traffic surges. The inability to rapidly scale resources can result in service disruptions, longer recovery times, and potentially devastating consequences for your business.

AWS Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing provide a solution by allowing your infrastructure to automatically adjust based on real-time conditions across multiple AWS regions. When integrated into your DR strategy, these services ensure that your mission-critical applications remain highly available and performant, even when faced with unpredictable workloads or regional outages.

Building a Resilient Multi-Region DR Architecture

At Cloudride, we leverage Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing to design and implement scalable, multi-region disaster recovery solutions tailored to your unique business needs. Our proven approach includes the following key steps:

  1. Define Scalable Auto Scaling Groups: We set up separate Auto Scaling Groups for your application and database tiers across your primary and disaster recovery regions. This includes configuring the database tier for multi-AZ replication, defining scaling policies based on metrics like CPU, memory and network utilization, and setting capacity thresholds to control costs during traffic spikes.
  2. Implement Elastic Load Balancing: Our team sets up Application Load Balancers (ALBs) or Network Load Balancers (NLBs) in both regions, ensuring traffic is distributed across multiple Availability Zones for redundancy and fault tolerance.
  3. Establish Database Replication: We leverage AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) or native replication features to establish and maintain database replication from your primary region to the disaster recovery region, ensuring data consistency.
  4. Automate Failover with Route 53: Cloudride integrates AWS Route 53 into your DR solution, creating primary and secondary DNS records that alias to your load balancers in each region. We configure health checks and failover rules to automatically redirect traffic to your DR environment if the primary region becomes unavailable.
  5. Comprehensive Monitoring and Optimization: Our experts implement comprehensive monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch or other monitoring tools (like DataDog), tracking key metrics across your infrastructure. We create alarms, review scaling policies, and make optimizations to ensure optimal performance and cost-efficiency.
  6. Regular DR Testing: We work closely with your team to periodically (at least once per year) simulate disaster scenarios, test failover to your DR region, and validate scaling and failover mechanisms. This includes verifying database replication, scaling standby resources, and promoting the DR database to the primary role.


Optimizing Costs with Scalable DR

One of the key advantages of using AWS Auto Scaling Groups in your disaster recovery strategy is cost optimization. Unlike traditional DR methods that require maintaining idle resources, Auto Scaling allows you to pay for what you need, when you need it.

At Cloudride, we implement several cost optimization strategies, including:

  1. Right-Sizing Instances: We leverage AWS recommendations and CloudWatch metrics to select the most cost-effective instance types and sizes for your applications.
  2. Scaling Down in DR Region: We configure your standby Auto Scaling Groups in the DR region to maintain a minimum of zero instances when not in active use, minimizing costs.
  3. Leveraging Spot Instances: For non-critical workloads, we explore the use of Spot Instances, which can provide significant cost savings compared to On-Demand instances.
  4. Setting Maximum Capacity Thresholds: We set maximum capacity limits on your Auto Scaling Groups to prevent excessive scaling and maintain control over costs during traffic spikes.
  5. Cost Allocation Tagging: Our team implements cost allocation tagging to provide you with granular visibility into your AWS spending per application and environment.

Best Practices for Scalable Multi-Region DR

We follow industry best practices to ensure your scalable disaster recovery solution is secure, reliable, and optimized for your business needs:

  1. Security-First Approach: We secure your infrastructure with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, VPC peering, and security groups across regions.
  2. Automation and Reproducibility: We automate deployment processes with Terraform and back up your DR configurations to Amazon S3 for versioning and reproducibility.
  3. Regular Testing and Documentation: Our team works closely with you to conduct regular DR testing, including failover, scaling, and data replication scenarios. We also provide detailed documentation of your DR runbooks and procedures.
  4. Continuous Improvement: We implement AWS Config rules to audit your DR configurations and identify opportunities for optimization, ensuring your solution stays at the forefront of cloud technology.

 

Our Advantage

As an AWS certified partner, we specialize in helping businesses design and implement scalable, cost-effective disaster recovery solutions that align with their unique needs. Our team of experts combines deep technical AWS expertise with a nuanced understanding of your business objectives to ensure your mission-critical applications and data are protected, while providing you with the peace of mind that comes from knowing your business is prepared for any eventuality.

By leveraging the power of AWS Auto Scaling Groups and Elastic Load Balancing, we can help you achieve unparalleled resilience and availability across multiple AWS regions. Our solutions automate scaling and failover processes, reducing downtime and optimizing costs, ensuring your business can weather any disruption and keep running smoothly.

If you're ready to take your disaster recovery strategy to new heights, Contact Cloudride today. Let us show you how scalable multi-region DR can help you build a resilient, future-proof infrastructure that's prepared for anything.

ronen-amity
2024/09
Sep 22, 2024 2:38:49 PM
Achieve Unparalleled Resilience with Scalable Multi-Region Disaster Recovery
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Sep 22, 2024 2:38:49 PM

Achieve Unparalleled Resilience with Scalable Multi-Region Disaster Recovery

Effective disaster recovery (DR) strategies are critical for ensuring business continuity and protecting your organization from disruptions. However, traditional DR approaches often fall short when faced with unexpected demand spikes or regional outages. This is where the power of AWS Auto Scaling...

Harness Your Competitive Edge with Our AWS SMB and MAP Competencies

Today, businesses of all sizes are turning to cloud solutions to drive innovation, scalability, and efficiency. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), leveraging the right expertise can make all the difference in navigating the cloud journey successfully. This is where our AWS Competencies in Small and Medium Business (SMB) and Migration and Modernization (as part of the Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)) come into play, allowing us to offer you a competitive edge for your digital transformation.

Leverage Our Cloud Expertise for Your Business Success

1) Specialized Expertise for SMBs 

Our AWS SMB Competency demonstrates our deep understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities faced by small and medium-sized businesses. You can expect:

  • Cost-effective solutions that fit within your budget constraints
  • Scalable architectures that grow with your business
  • Hands-on support throughout the cloud adoption process

2) Accelerated Migration with MAP 

The Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Competency streamlines your transition to the AWS Cloud. Our expertise in this will guide you through:

  • Assessing your current infrastructure and applications
  • Developing comprehensive migration strategies
  • Executing seamless transitions with minimal disruption

3) End-to-End Cloud Transformation 

By combining SMB and MAP competencies, you gain access to a holistic approach to cloud adoption. From initial planning to post-migration optimization, you'll receive guidance on:

  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) implementation
  • Containerization strategies
  • Serverless architecture design

4) Access to AWS Resources 

The AWS Competencies we've achieved ensure you benefit from our:

  • Priority access to AWS resources, including advanced technical support and early access to new features
  • Collaboration opportunities with AWS solution architects
  • A proven track record of successful implementations across various industries

5) Optimized Costs and Maximized ROI 

With deep expertise in AWS pricing models and cost management tools, we can help you implement cost-effective solutions that maximize your return on investment (ROI). We will set up regular monitoring and alerts to help you stay on top of your AWS usage and costs, ensuring you are notified of any spikes or issues.

6) Robust Security and Compliance 

As we're well-versed in AWS's robust security features and compliance standards, we'll assess you in maintaining a secure cloud environment by leveraging these capabilities. Cloudride can help you scan your environment on a regular basis,  and fix items found to keep your environment as secure as possible.. Our regular scanning and remediation services ensure your environment remains secure and adheres to stringent compliance requirements.

7) Continuous Innovation 

AWS competencies require ongoing education, ensuring we're always at the forefront of cloud technology and best practices, keeping your business right up there with the latest innovations and industry-leading methodologies. By continuously expanding our knowledge and skills, we can provide you with cutting-edge solutions that leverage the most advanced cloud capabilities, empowering your organization to stay ahead of the curve and gain a competitive advantage in your market.

8) Scalability and Flexibility

For startups seeking to scale operations rapidly or well-established SMBs with growth plans on the horizon, our solutions are meticulously designed with flexibility at the core. We understand that business needs are dynamic, and our architectures can seamlessly adapt and expand as your requirements evolve. Whether you need to accommodate surging demand, integrate new technologies, or explore new markets, our scalable and flexible solutions provide the agility to pivot without constraints, ensuring your cloud infrastructure remains a catalyst for innovation rather than a limiting factor.

9) Streamlined Processes

By leveraging our AWS SMB and MAP competencies, you gain access to streamlined processes that encompass your entire cloud adoption journey, from the initial assessment phase through to ongoing management and optimization. This streamlined approach ensures a seamless transition to the cloud for your organization, minimizing disruptions and saving you valuable time and resources. With our expertise handling the intricate details of your cloud transformation, you can focus on driving your core business objectives while benefiting from a hassle-free experience tailored to your specific needs.


10) Bridging the Gap: From On-Premises to AWS Cloud for SMBs

At Cloudride, we understand that many SMBs are still operating with on-premises infrastructure or legacy systems. Our expertise in both SMB and MAP competencies uniquely positions us to guide you through this transformation. With a deep understanding of SMB culture and challenges, such as limited IT resources, budget constraints, and concerns about business disruption, you'll receive a tailored approach that aligns with your business goals and culture.

Leveraging the Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)

The Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) methodology, adapted specifically for SMBs, includes:

  1. Assessment: We evaluate your current infrastructure, applications, and business processes to understand your unique needs and challenges.
  2. Readiness and Planning: We develop a comprehensive migration plan that minimizes disruption and aligns with your business objectives.
  3. Migration: Our team executes the migration using AWS tools and best practices, ensuring data integrity and minimal downtime.
  4. Modernization: Post-migration, we help you leverage AWS services to modernize your applications and infrastructure, unlocking new capabilities and efficiencies.


Empowering Your SMB for Cloud Success

Throughout your cloud journey, you'll gain:

  1. Education and Empowerment: We provide training and knowledge transfer to your team, ensuring you're comfortable with the new cloud environment.
  2. Cost-Effective Solutions: We design solutions that provide immediate value while setting the stage for future growth.
  3. Simplified Management: We implement tools to simplify ongoing management and governance.
  4. Security-First Mindset: We ensure your cloud environment is secure from day one.
  5. Scalability for Growth: Our solutions are designed to scale with your business.
  6. Continuous Optimization: We continuously optimize your cloud environment to ensure you're getting the most value from AWS services.

Real-World Impact:

At Cloudride, our AWS SMB and MAP competencies have enabled us to deliver transformative results for numerous small and medium-sized businesses. Our clients have experienced:

  1. Modernized Architecture: Successfully transitioned to cloud-native designs, significantly enhancing operational efficiency, agility, and scalability.
  2. Exceptional Reliability: Consistently achieved 99.99% uptime for critical applications, ensuring business continuity and superior customer experiences.
  3. Enhanced Security and Compliance: Substantially improved security postures and met stringent compliance requirements, providing peace of mind in an increasingly complex regulatory landscape.

These tangible outcomes demonstrate our ability to not only facilitate a smooth AWS migration but also to unlock the full potential of cloud computing for SMBs, driving real business value and competitive advantage.

Seize the Power of Cloud Transformation

Moving to the cloud is more than a technical challenge – it's a business transformation. With our dual AWS SMB and MAP competencies, you gain access to expertise, empathy, and a focus on your unique business needs.

Whether you're taking your first steps into cloud computing or optimizing your existing AWS environment, Cloudride is your trusted partner.  We combine deep technical expertise with a nuanced understanding of SMB culture to ensure your cloud migration is successful, cost-effective, and aligned with your business objectives.


Key AWS services we leverage include:
  • AWS Organizations and Control Tower for multi-account management
  • AWS Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing for scalability
  • AWS Application Discovery Service for assessment
  • AWS Database Migration Service and Server Migration Service for seamless transitions
  • Amazon ECS, EKS, and Lambda for modern application architectures
  • Amazon S3, RDS, and DynamoDB for storage and database solution
  • AWS IAM, GuardDuty, Security Hub and KMS for security

Ready to start your cloud journey or optimize your current AWS environment? Contact Cloudride today to learn how our SMB and MAP competencies can accelerate your digital transformation and drive your business forward in the cloud era.

ronen-amity
2024/09
Sep 4, 2024 9:44:23 AM
Harness Your Competitive Edge with Our AWS SMB and MAP Competencies
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing, AWS Certificates, Startups

Sep 4, 2024 9:44:23 AM

Harness Your Competitive Edge with Our AWS SMB and MAP Competencies

Today, businesses of all sizes are turning to cloud solutions to drive innovation, scalability, and efficiency. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), leveraging the right expertise can make all the difference in navigating the cloud journey successfully. This is where our AWS Competencies...

Accelerate Your Cloud Journey with AWS MAP: Why does It Matter and How Cloudride Can Help

Cloud migration is one of the most effective ways for businesses to innovate, streamline operations, and reduce cost. However, this type of cloud journey is not always straightforward and can set a few challenges - complexities involved in moving legacy systems, applications, and data can make cloud migration a daunting task for even the most tech-savvy organizations. This is where the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) comes into play, offering a structured, outcome-driven methodology that simplifies and accelerates the cloud migration process.

Understanding the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)

The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) is a comprehensive and proven cloud migration program that leverages AWS’s extensive experience in migrating thousands of enterprise customers to the cloud. MAP is designed to help organizations navigate the complexities of cloud migration by providing a clear, phased approach that reduces risks, controls costs, and ensures a successful transition.

The MAP framework is built around three key phases: Assess, Mobilize, and Migrate & Modernize. Each phase is designed to address specific challenges and requirements, ensuring that the migration process is smooth and aligned with the organization’s business goals.

  1. Assess: In this initial phase, [your AWS partner will assess the business justification of undergoing such a significant transformation of your digital assets]. The process helps identify gaps in capabilities across six dimensions: business, process, people, platform, operations, and security. This comprehensive evaluation provides a roadmap for addressing these gaps and building a strong foundation for migration.
    One of the tools generated by AWS is the Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) that evaluates your current infrastructure, applications, and operational readiness for cloud migration. 
  2. Mobilize: The Mobilize phase focuses on closing the gaps identified in the Assess phase. During this phase, organizations work on building the operational foundations needed for a successful migration. This includes developing a migration plan, addressing technical and organizational challenges, and preparing the team with the necessary training and resources. The goal of this phase is to create a clear and actionable migration plan that sets the stage for a smooth and efficient transition to the cloud.
  3. Migrate and Modernize: The final phase of MAP is where the actual migration takes place. Using the plan developed in the Mobilize phase, organizations begin migrating their workloads to the cloud. This phase also includes modernization efforts, such as re-architecting applications to fully leverage cloud-native capabilities. The Migrate and Modernize phase is where the benefits of cloud migration—such as cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and increased agility—are fully realized.

MAP: The Crucial Path to Cloud Success for Businesses

Research indicates that organizations leveraging the AWS Migration Acceleration Program framework experience substantially higher cloud migration success rates compared to those not utilizing the program; This comprehensive solution addresses the unique challenges of cloud migration and guides you how the program can help your organization with a smooth transition to the cloud:

  1. Cost Efficiency: One of the biggest concerns for organizations considering cloud migration is the cost. The MAP framework includes tools and resources that help control and even reduce the overall cost of migration by automating and accelerating key processes. Additionally, AWS offers service credits and partner investments that can offset one-time migration expenses, making the transition to the cloud more affordable.
  2. Risk Reduction: Cloud migration is inherently risky, with potential challenges such as data loss, downtime, and security vulnerabilities. MAP’s structured approach helps mitigate these risks by providing a clear, phased methodology that addresses potential issues before they arise. This risk-averse approach ensures that businesses can migrate to the cloud with confidence.
  3. Tailored Expertise: MAP offers businesses access to AWS’s extensive expertise in cloud migration, as well as the knowledge and experience of certified AWS partners. This includes specialized tools, training, and support tailored to the specific needs of the organization. Whether it’s migrating legacy applications, modernizing infrastructure, or ensuring compliance with industry regulations, MAP provides the resources needed to achieve a successful migration.
  4. Comprehensive Support: MAP is not just about getting to the cloud—it’s about ensuring that businesses fully realize the benefits of cloud computing. From optimizing applications to improving operational resilience, MAP provides ongoing support to help organizations maximize their cloud investment. This comprehensive approach ensures that businesses are not just migrating to the cloud but are also set up for long-term success.

     

Cloudride’s Achievement: What This Competency Means for You

At Cloudride, we are proud to have achieved the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Competency, a recognition that underscores our expertise in cloud migration and modernization. But what does this achievement mean for our clients?

  1. Proven Expertise in Cloud Migration: Earning the AWS Migration and Modernization Competency is no small feat. It requires a demonstrated track record of successfully guiding medium and large enterprises through complex cloud migrations. At Cloudride, we have the hands-on experience and technical know-how to manage even the most challenging migration projects using the MAP framework, ensuring minimal disruption and maximum benefit for our clients.
  2. A Trusted Partner for Enterprise-Level Projects: The AWS Migration and Modernization Competency is one of the most difficult competencies to achieve, requiring a deep understanding of AWS technologies, a proven methodology, and a commitment to delivering results. By achieving this competency, Cloudride has demonstrated that we have the expertise and resources necessary to handle enterprise-level cloud migration projects. AWS’s trust in us is a testament to our ability to deliver on complex, large-scale migrations with precision and efficiency.
  3. Your Partner in End-to-End Modernization: Cloudride’s Migration and Modernization Competency isn’t just about migration—it’s about modernization across all stages of your product and production lifecycle. Whether it’s enhancing operational efficiency, driving innovation, or re-architecting applications to leverage cloud-native features, Cloudride is your partner in ensuring that your cloud journey is transformative and aligned with your business goals.
  4. Commitment to Your Success: Our commitment to our clients goes beyond just providing services. We are dedicated to ensuring your success at every stage of your cloud journey. Our Migration and Modernization Competency means that we are recognized by AWS as experts who can deliver on complex projects, providing you with the confidence that your migration will be handled by the best in the industry.

Why Choose Cloudride for Your Cloud Migration?

When it comes to cloud migration, the choice of partner can make all the difference. With Cloudride, you’re choosing a partner that:

  1. Is Trusted by AWS: Our MAP Competency is a direct reflection of the trust that AWS places in us. We are recognized as experts who can deliver on complex cloud projects, ensuring a seamless transition for your business.
  2. Supports SMBs and Large Enterprises: We specialize in helping business of all sizes, from SMBs to enterprises, through the navigation of their cloud journey. Our tailored solutions ensure that your migration is not just successful but also aligned with your broader long-term business objectives.
  3. Drives Innovation Across Your Organization: From migrating your infrastructure to modernizing your applications, Cloudride is equipped to support your organization at every stage of its cloud journey. We bring innovative solutions that drive business agility and operational excellence.
  4. Provides End-to-End Support: Cloudride’s expertise doesn’t stop at migration. We provide end-to-end support that ensures your business can fully leverage the power of the cloud. From ongoing optimization to modernization efforts, we are with you every step of the way.

Embrace Cloud Migration with Confidence

Cloud migration is a critical step in any enterprise’s digital transformation journey, but it’s one that requires careful planning, expertise, and the right tools. The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) provides a proven framework to guide businesses through this complex process, and Cloudride’s recent Migration and Modernization Competency achievement positions us as a trusted partner in this journey.

With Cloudride by your side, you can accelerate your cloud migration, reduce risks, and unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth. If you’re ready to take the next step in your cloud journey, connect with us today. Let’s explore how we can make your migration smoother, more efficient, and ultimately, more successful.

uti-teva
2024/09
Sep 2, 2024 3:57:20 PM
Accelerate Your Cloud Journey with AWS MAP: Why does It Matter and How Cloudride Can Help
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing, AWS Certificates

Sep 2, 2024 3:57:20 PM

Accelerate Your Cloud Journey with AWS MAP: Why does It Matter and How Cloudride Can Help

Cloud migration is one of the most effective ways for businesses to innovate, streamline operations, and reduce cost. However, this type of cloud journey is not always straightforward and can set a few challenges - complexities involved in moving legacy systems, applications, and data can make...

Building an Automated DR Solution with AWS Backup and Terraform

Maintaining business continuity in the face of disruptions is paramount, as losing critical data can lead to severe consequences, ranging from financial losses to reputational damage. In exploring disaster recovery (DR) strategies, we have refined a method that aligns with the Cloudride philosophy—utilizing AWS Backup and Terraform to automate disaster recovery processes. This approach not only helps safeguard your data but also ensures rapid business continuity with minimal manual intervention. In this article, we'll detail how to create an automated, resilient DR solution using these advanced technologies, reflecting the practices that have consistently supported our clients' success.

What is AWS Backup?

AWS Backup is a fully managed backup service that makes it easy to centralize and automate data protection across AWS services. It allows you to create backup plans, define backup schedules, and retain backups for as long as you need, all while providing centralized monitoring and reporting capabilities.

What is Terraform?

Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that allows you to define and provision infrastructure resources in a declarative manner. With Terraform, you can manage your infrastructure as code, ensuring consistent and repeatable deployments across different environments.

Why Use AWS Backup and Terraform for Your DR Solution

  1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform allows you to define your entire infrastructure, including your DR solution, as code. This IaC approach ensures consistency, repeatability, and version control for your infrastructure deployments, making it easier to manage and maintain your DR environment.
  2. Automation: Terraform automates the provisioning and management of your DR infrastructure, reducing manual effort and minimizing the risk of human error. With Terraform, you can quickly spin up or tear down resources as needed, ensuring efficient resource utilization and cost optimization.
  3. Multi-Cloud and Multi-Provider Support: While our blog focuses on AWS, Terraform supports a wide range of cloud providers and services, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more. This flexibility allows you to create a DR solution that spans multiple cloud providers, enabling true disaster recovery across different platforms.
  4. Scalability and Flexibility: Both Terraform and AWS Backup are designed to scale seamlessly, allowing you to adjust your DR solution to meet changing business demands. AWS Backup can handle backups for a wide range of AWS services, while Terraform can manage infrastructure resources across multiple cloud providers.
  5. Cost Optimization: By leveraging Terraform's automation capabilities and AWS's pay-as-you-go pricing model, you can optimize your DR solution costs. With Terraform, you can easily spin up and tear down resources as needed, ensuring you only pay for what you use.
  6. Centralized Backup Management: AWS Backup provides a centralized backup management solution, allowing you to create backup plans, define schedules, and retain backups for as long as needed. This centralized approach simplifies the management of your backups and ensures consistent backup policies across your infrastructure.
  7. Monitoring and Reporting: AWS Backup offers centralized monitoring and reporting capabilities, enabling you to track backup jobs, identify issues, and ensure compliance with your backup policies.
  8. Disaster Recovery Testing: By combining Terraform and AWS Backup, you can easily simulate disaster scenarios and test your DR solution by provisioning resources, restoring backups, and validating the restored environment, all in an automated and repeatable manner.
  9. Version Control and Collaboration: Terraform configurations are stored as code files, which can be version-controlled using tools like Git. This enables collaboration among team members and facilitates tracking changes and rolling back to previous versions if needed.


Implementing the Automated DR Strategy - Step by Step

Step 1: Create a Terraform for Your Production Environment

Before setting up your DR solution, you'll need to have a Terraform configuration for your production environment. Here's how you can do it:
  1. Define your infrastructure resources: Create a main.tf file and define the resources required for your production environment, such as EC2 instances, RDS databases, VPCs, and more.
  2. Configure variables and outputs: Create variables.tf and outputs.tf files to define input variables and output values, respectively.
  3. Initialize and apply Terraform: Run terraform init to initialize the working directory, and then run terraform apply to provision the resources defined in your configuration.

Step 2: Test Your Terraform Configuration in Another Region

To ensure that your Terraform configuration is reliable and can be used for your DR solution, it's recommended to test it in another AWS region. Here's how you can do it:

  1. Create a new Terraform workspace: Run terraform workspace new <workspace_name> to create a new workspace for your test environment.
  2. Update your configuration: Modify your main.tf file to use the new AWS region for your test environment.
  3. Apply your configuration: Run terraform apply to provision the resources in the new region.
  4. Validate your test environment: Ensure that all resources are created correctly and that your applications and services are running as expected in the test environment.

Step 3: Add AWS Backup to Your Terraform Configuration

Now that you have a tested Terraform configuration for your production environment, you can integrate AWS Backup to create a DR solution. Here's how you can do it: 

  1. Define AWS Backup resources: In your main.tf file, define the AWS Backup vault, backup plan, and backup selection resources using Terraform's AWS provider.
  2. Configure backup schedules and retention policies: Customize your backup plan to specify the backup schedules and retention policies that align with your organization's requirements.
  3. Apply your updated configuration: Run terraform apply to create the AWS Backup resources and associate them with your production environment resources.

Step 4: Test and Validate Your DR Solution

Wiih AWS Backup integrated into your Terraform configuration, you can now test and validate your DR solution. Here's how you can do it:

  • Simulate a disaster scenario: Intentionally fail over to your DR environment by terminating or stopping resources in your production environment.
  • Restore backed-up resources: Use the AWS Backup service to restore the backed-up resources from your AWS Backup vault.
  • Validate your DR environment: Ensure that the restored resources are functioning correctly and that your applications and services are running as expected in the DR environment.
  • Validate your DR environment: Once you have validated your DR solution, you can fail back to your original production environment by promoting the DR environment or restoring the production resources from AWS Backup.

Building Resilience with Automated Disaster Recovery

Leveraging automated disaster recovery solutions like AWS Backup and Terraform not only streamlines the recovery process but fundamentally enhances the resilience of your business operations. By implementing these tools, organizations can efficiently safeguard their data and ensure continuous operational readiness with minimal downtime. This approach to disaster recovery reduces the manual overhead and potential for human error, allowing businesses to focus on growth and innovation with confidence.

At Cloudride, we're dedicated to helping you build a robust disaster recovery strategy that aligns with your specific business needs, contact us and let's work together to fortify your infrastructure against unexpected disruptions and keep your business resilient in the face of challenges.

ronen-amity
2024/08
Aug 12, 2024 11:59:18 AM
Building an Automated DR Solution with AWS Backup and Terraform
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Aug 12, 2024 11:59:18 AM

Building an Automated DR Solution with AWS Backup and Terraform

Maintaining business continuity in the face of disruptions is paramount, as losing critical data can lead to severe consequences, ranging from financial losses to reputational damage. In exploring disaster recovery (DR) strategies, we have refined a method that aligns with the Cloudride...

Disaster Recovery in the Cloud Age: Transitioning to AWS Cloud-Based DR Solutions

The evolution of cloud computing has revolutionized many aspects of IT infrastructure, notably including disaster recovery (DR) strategies. As organizations increasingly migrate to the cloud, understanding the transition from traditional DR solutions to cloud-based methods is critical. This article explores the pivotal shift to AWS cloud-based disaster recovery, highlighting its advantages, challenges, and strategic implementation.

The Shift to Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery

Traditional DR methods often involve significant investments in duplicate hardware and physical backup sites, which are both cost-intensive and complex to manage. Cloud-based DR solutions, however, leverage the flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of cloud services. This paradigm shift is not merely about technology but also encompasses changes in strategy, processes, and governance.

The Benefits of AWS Cloud-Based DR

  1. Cost Efficiency: AWS cloud DR significantly reduces upfront capital expenses and ongoing maintenance costs by utilizing shared resources. Organizations no longer need to invest in redundant hardware, facilities, and personnel dedicated solely to DR. Instead, they can leverage AWS's infrastructure and pay only for the resources they consume.
  2. Scalability: AWS provides the ability to dynamically scale resources up or down as needed, which is particularly advantageous during a disaster scenario when resources might need to be adjusted quickly. This elasticity ensures that organizations can rapidly provision additional computing power, storage, and network resources to meet surging demand during a crisis.
  3. Simplified Management: With AWS cloud DR, the complexity of managing DR processes is greatly diminished. AWS offers automated solutions and managed services like AWS Backup and AWS Disaster Recovery Services that simplify routine DR tasks, such as data replication, failover testing, and recovery orchestration. This frees up IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than being bogged down by operational tasks.
  4. Improved Reliability and Availability: AWS invests heavily in redundant infrastructure, robust security measures, and advanced disaster recovery capabilities across its global network of Availability Zones and Regions. By leveraging these resources, organizations can achieve higher levels of reliability and availability for their critical systems and data.
  5. Faster Recovery Times: AWS cloud-based DR solutions can significantly reduce recovery times compared to traditional on-premises approaches. With data and applications already hosted in the AWS Cloud, failover and recovery processes can be initiated more quickly, minimizing downtime and its associated costs.


Challenges in Transitioning to Cloud-Based DR

Data Security:
Ensuring security when transferring and storing sensitive information offsite in a cloud environment continues to be a major concern. Organizations must carefully evaluate the security measures implemented by cloud providers and ensure that they align with their own security policies and regulatory requirements. 

  • Solution: Leverage AWS data protection services like AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for encryption and access control. Implement strict security policies, multi-factor authentication, and least-privilege access principles. Regularly review and update security configurations to address evolving threats.

Compliance Issues:
Adhering to various regulatory and compliance requirements can be more challenging when data and applications are managed and stored remotely. Organizations must work closely with cloud providers to understand their compliance obligations and ensure that the provider's services and practices meet those requirements.

  • Solution: Understand the compliance requirements specific to your industry and region. Utilize AWS services and features designed for compliance, such as AWS Artifact, AWS Config, and AWS CloudTrail. Implement robust monitoring, auditing, and reporting mechanisms to demonstrate compliance.

Dependency on Internet Connectivity:
Cloud-based DR solutions heavily rely on stable internet connections, making them vulnerable to disruptions in connectivity. Organizations should consider implementing redundant internet connections and explore options for failover to alternative connectivity providers to mitigate this risk.

  • Solution: Implement redundant internet connectivity providers and failover mechanisms to achieve resiliency in connectivity. Explore AWS Direct Connect for dedicated network connectivity to AWS. Evaluate the use of AWS Site-to-Site VPN or AWS Transit Gateway for secure and redundant connectivity options.

Integration and Compatibility:
Integrating cloud-based DR solutions with existing on-premises infrastructure and applications can present challenges. Organizations must ensure that their cloud provider offers seamless integration and compatibility with their existing systems and tools.

  • Solution: Leverage AWS integration and migration services like AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), AWS Server Migration Service (SMS), and AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to streamline the migration of on-premises workloads to AWS. Conduct thorough compatibility testing and address any integration issues before migrating production workloads.

Strategic Implementation of Cloud-Based DR

  1. Assessment of Business Needs: Identify critical applications and data, and understand their specific recovery requirements, such as Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs). This assessment will help determine the appropriate AWS cloud DR solution and configuration.
  2. Choosing the Right AWS Services: Select AWS services that meet your security, compliance, and service level requirements. Evaluate factors such as AWS Availability Zones, Regions, and support for specific workloads and applications.
  3. Develop a Cloud DR Plan: Create a comprehensive AWS cloud DR plan that outlines the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders, recovery procedures, testing schedules, and communication protocols. This plan should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure its effectiveness.
  4. Test and Validate: Regularly test and validate your cloud DR solution to ensure that it functions as expected. Conduct failover and failback tests to identify and address any issues or gaps in your DR strategy.
  5. Continuous Monitoring and Optimization: Continuously monitor and optimize your AWS cloud DR solution to ensure it remains effective and aligned with your evolving business needs. Leverage AWS tools and services like AWS CloudWatch and AWS Systems Manager for monitoring, automation, and optimization.
  6. Training and Awareness: Provide adequate training and awareness programs for IT staff and stakeholders involved in the AWS cloud DR process. Ensure that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities during a disaster scenario.
  7. Governance and Compliance: Establish robust governance and compliance frameworks to ensure that your AWS cloud DR solution adheres to relevant industry regulations and internal policies. Regularly review and update these frameworks to address evolving regulatory landscapes.

Embrace the Future of Disaster Recovery with AWS

As cloud computing continues to reshape the IT landscape, the shift to AWS cloud-based disaster recovery provides organizations with an opportunity to enhance resilience and agility. Embracing AWS cloud-based solutions doesn't require a complete overhaul of existing infrastructure. By selecting the right AWS tools and strategies, businesses can streamline their transition and optimize disaster preparedness with efficiency.

For more detailed guidance and personalized advice, contact us at Cloudride to discover how we can elevate your disaster recovery strategy with AWS. Let's work together to ensure your business remains robust and responsive in the face of adversity, achieving both security and scalability effortlessly.

uti-teva
2024/08
Aug 5, 2024 4:58:16 PM
Disaster Recovery in the Cloud Age: Transitioning to AWS Cloud-Based DR Solutions
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing, DMS, Disaster Recovery

Aug 5, 2024 4:58:16 PM

Disaster Recovery in the Cloud Age: Transitioning to AWS Cloud-Based DR Solutions

The evolution of cloud computing has revolutionized many aspects of IT infrastructure, notably including disaster recovery (DR) strategies. As organizations increasingly migrate to the cloud, understanding the transition from traditional DR solutions to cloud-based methods is critical. This article...

Addressing the CrowdStrike Boot Issue A Temporary Recovery Guide

Last Friday, a seemingly routine update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered an unexpected global IT crisis. This update, aimed at bolstering security protocols, inadvertently caused a critical error that led to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on countless Windows systems worldwide. Among the affected, Israel’s infrastructure faced significant disruptions, impacting hospitals, post offices, and shopping centers—essentially paralyzing essential services.

Interestingly, this incident unfolded just days after we had emphasized the importance of robust disaster recovery planning in our discussions. The timing underscored how crucial proactive measures and preparedness are in mitigating the impacts of such unforeseen disruptions.

What Went Wrong?

The root of the problem lay in an error within the update that interfered with the Windows boot configuration. This flaw prevented computers from booting up normally, disrupting business operations and critical services alike. The immediate effects were chaotic, with institutions like the Shaare Zedek Medical Center and the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv struggling to maintain operational continuity.

The Scope of Impact

The scale of the disruption was vast:

  • Healthcare: Several major hospitals had to switch to manual systems to keep running.
  • Postal Services: Israel Post reported complete halts in service at numerous locations.
  • Retail: Shopping centers and malls saw shutdowns, affecting both retailers and consumers.


How to Recover from the CrowdStrike Boot Issue: A Step-by-Step Guide

In response to this sweeping disruption, IT professionals and system administrators have been diligently working to mitigate the impact. Recognizing the severity of the situation, our CTO at Cloudride developed a detailed, easy-to-follow solution to help our customers recover their systems. We now wish to share this solution more broadly to assist others facing similar challenges.

How to Recover from the CrowdStrike Boot Issue: A Step-by-Step Guide

  1. Ensure Access and Permissions: Verify that you have the necessary administrative rights to access the EC2 instances and EBS volumes involved. Both servers should ideally be in the same VPC and availability zone.

  2. Stopping Server1:
    • Navigate to the EC2 console in your AWS Management Console.
    • Select Server1, go to “Instance State,” and choose “Stop.”
    • Wait until the instance has fully stopped.

  3. Detaching the EBS Volume from Server1:
    • In the EC2 console, go to the "Volumes" section.
    • Identify and select the root EBS volume of Server1, noting its volume ID.
    • Proceed with “Actions” > “Detach Volume.”

  4. Attaching the EBS Volume to Server2:
    • Still in the "Volumes" section, select the previously detached EBS volume.
    • Click on “Actions” > “Attach Volume” and choose Server2 as the destination.
    • Assign it a new drive letter, for instance, D:.

  5. Deleting the Problematic Files:
    • Connect to Server2 via Remote Desktop using its public IP or DNS.
    • Access the attached volume and navigate to the directory containing the
    • CrowdStrike files, likely under D:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike.
    • Delete the specific files (e.g., 'del C-0000291*.sys').

  6. Reattaching the EBS Volume to Server1:
    • Back in the "Volumes" section, detach the volume from Server2.
    • Reattach it to Server1, ensuring to specify it as the root volume ('/dev/sda1').

  7. Restarting Server1:
    • In the EC2 dashboard, select Server1.
    • Opt for “Instance State” > “Start” and allow the system to boot.

This method should effectively resolve the boot issue. It's a good practice to create backups before proceeding with such operations to prevent data loss.

Forward-Looking Reflections

The CrowdStrike incident underscores the critical importance of robust IT systems and the potential ramifications of even minor disruptions in our increasingly digital world. As we move forward, it's essential to learn from these incidents and strengthen our system's resilience against future challenges.

At Cloudride, we are dedicated to supporting you in enhancing your system's security and ensuring a smooth operational flow. For more insights and solutions, feel free to contact us. We are committed to making your cloud journey secure and efficient.

ronen-amity
2024/07
Jul 21, 2024 11:35:21 AM
Addressing the CrowdStrike Boot Issue A Temporary Recovery Guide
AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Jul 21, 2024 11:35:21 AM

Addressing the CrowdStrike Boot Issue A Temporary Recovery Guide

Last Friday, a seemingly routine update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered an unexpected global IT crisis. This update, aimed at bolstering security protocols, inadvertently caused a critical error that led to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on countless Windows systems worldwide. Among...

Cost-Effective Resilience: Mastering AWS Disaster Recovery without Cutting Corners

Robust disaster recovery (DR) plans are essential for businesses to protect their critical data assets, especially with the increasing cyber threats and data breaches happening lately. However, the costs involved in implementing such strategies can be a significant barrier. AWS offers a variety of tools and services designed to help organizations establish effective and cost-efficient disaster recovery solutions. This article will explore the fundamental aspects of utilizing AWS for disaster recovery and discusses ways to optimize costs without compromising on the reliability and effectiveness of your DR approach.

Understanding the Need for Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery is a critical component of any organization's overall business continuity plan (BCP), a term we will look further into moving forward. It involves setting up systems and processes that ensure the availability and integrity of data in the event of a hardware failure, cyberattack, natural disaster, or any other type of disruptive incident. The goal is not just to protect data but also to ensure the quick recovery of operational capabilities.

In AWS, disaster recovery's importance is amplified by the cloud's inherent features such as scalability, flexibility, and global reach. These features allow businesses to implement more complex DR strategies more simply and cost-effectively than would be possible in a traditional data center environment.

Key Timelines in Disaster Recovery

Two important concepts in disaster recovery that are crucial for tailoring a disaster recovery plan to your business needs and capabilities within AWS are RTO and RPO. Understanding these metrics is essential for ensuring efficient and effective data recovery, helping to minimize both downtime and data loss in alignment with specific operational requirements.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective)

This is the maximum tolerable downtime before business impact becomes unacceptable. It sets a target for rapid restoration of operations.

RPO (Recovery Point Objective)

This specifies the oldest backups that can be used to restore operations after a disaster, essentially defining how much data loss is acceptable. For example, an RPO of 30 minutes means backups must be at most 30 minutes old.


Key AWS Services for Disaster Recovery

AWS provides several services that can be utilized to architect a disaster recovery solution. Understanding these services is the first step towards crafting a DR plan that not only meets your business requirements but also aligns with your budget.

  1. Amazon S3 and Glacier: For backing up and archiving data, Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier offer highly durable storage solutions as explained in our previous article about cost efficiency in S3. These services are ideal for data that needs to be accessed quickly and frequently, addressing RTO needs, while Glacier is cost-effective for long-term storage that aligns with longer RPO, accessed less frequently.
  2. AWS Backup: This service offers a centralized place to manage backups across AWS services. It automates and consolidates backup tasks that were previously performed service-by-service, saving time and reducing the risk of missed backups, thus supporting stringent RPOs.
  3. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (EDR): Formerly known as CloudEndure Disaster Recovery, this service minimizes downtime and data loss by providing fast, reliable recovery into AWS. It is particularly useful for critical applications that require RTOs of seconds and RPOs of minutes.
  4. AWS Storage Gateway: This hybrid storage service facilitates the on-premises environment to seamlessly use AWS cloud storage. It's an effective solution for DR because it combines the low cost of cloud storage with the speed and familiarity of on-premises systems, optimizing both RTO and RPO strategies.


Optimizing Costs in AWS Disaster Recovery

Cost optimization is a crucial consideration when deploying disaster recovery solutions in AWS. Here are some strategies to ensure cost efficiency:

  1. Right-Sizing Resources: Avoid over-provisioning by using the right type and size of AWS resources. Utilize AWS Cost Explorer to monitor and forecast spending, aligning resource allocation with your RTO requirements efficiently.
  2. Utilizing Multi-Tiered Storage Solutions: Move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage options like Amazon S3 Infrequent Access or Glacier to cut costs. This approach helps in maintaining RPO by ensuring data availability without excessive expenditure.
  3. Automating Replication and Backups: Automate replication and backups during off-peak hours with AWS services to reduce costs and meet RPOs effectively. This minimizes impact on production workloads and optimizes resource use during less expensive times.
  4. Choosing the Right Region: Select regions with lower storage costs while ensuring compliance with data sovereignty laws. This strategy helps in managing RTO and RPO by storing data cost-effectively in strategically appropriate locations.

Best Practices for Disaster Recovery on AWS

  • Regularly test your DR plan to ensure it meets the required recovery times (RTO) and data recovery points (RPO) your business mandates, at least annually.
  • Leverage AWS’s global infrastructure to position your DR site strategically for cost-effectiveness and swift accessibility, aligning with your RTO needs.
  • Implement automation wherever possible to reduce the manual overhead and potential for human error, supporting consistent RPO and RTO targets.
  • Maximize use of IaC extensively, to streamline deployments and ensure consistency, reducing time and enhancing reproducibility and maintaining defined RTO and RPO.

 

Wrapping Up: Secure Your Future with AWS

AWS offers an array of services that can help design a disaster recovery plan that is not only robust and scalable but also cost-effective. By understanding and utilizing the right AWS tools and best practices, businesses can ensure that they are prepared to handle disasters without excessive spending while keeping their RPO and RTO. This introductory guide lays the groundwork for exploring deeper into specific AWS disaster recovery strategies, which can further enhance both cost efficiency and reliability.

If you're looking to optimize your AWS disaster recovery strategy or need personalized guidance on leveraging AWS for your business needs, contact Cloudride today. Our team is ready to help you ensure that your data is safe and your systems are resilient against disruptions.

ronen-amity
2024/07
Jul 17, 2024 6:36:04 PM
Cost-Effective Resilience: Mastering AWS Disaster Recovery without Cutting Corners
AWS, Cost Optimization, Disaster Recovery

Jul 17, 2024 6:36:04 PM

Cost-Effective Resilience: Mastering AWS Disaster Recovery without Cutting Corners

Robust disaster recovery (DR) plans are essential for businesses to protect their critical data assets, especially with the increasing cyber threats and data breaches happening lately. However, the costs involved in implementing such strategies can be a significant barrier. AWS offers a variety of...

Maximizing AWS S3 Cost Efficiency with Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies

Amazon S3 stands out as one of the most versatile and widely used cloud storage solutions. However, with great power comes the challenge of managing costs effectively. As stored data capacity grows, so do the associated costs, meaning that ensuring the data is managed in a cost effective manner is critical for many organizations. This blog post explores three key features for S3 cost optimization: Amazon S3 Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies. These tools not only simplify the process but also ensure substantial savings without compromising on performance.

The Importance of Cost Optimization in Amazon S3

Amazon S3 is renowned for its scalability, durability, and availability. However, without a proper cost management strategy, the expenses can quickly add up. Cost optimization is not just about reducing expenses; it's about making informed decisions that lead to the best return on investment (ROI). In the context of FinOps (Financial Operations), predictability and efficiency are paramount. By leveraging the right tools and strategies, organizations can achieve significant cost savings while maintaining optimal performance.

Amazon S3 Storage Lens: A Comprehensive View of Your Storage

Amazon S3 Storage Lens is a powerful tool designed to provide a comprehensive view of your storage usage and activity trends in multiple dimensions of cost optimization, security, governance, compliance and more. It offers detailed insights into various aspects of your S3 storage, helping you identify cost-saving opportunities and optimize your storage configuration.

Key Benefits of Amazon S3 Storage Lens

  1. Visibility and Insights: Storage Lens provides visibility into your storage usage and activity across all your accounts. It helps you understand your storage patterns and identify inefficiencies.
  2. Actionable Recommendations: Based on the insights, Storage Lens offers actionable recommendations to optimize your storage costs. These include identifying underutilized storage, recommending appropriate storage classes, and highlighting potential savings.
  3. Customizable Dashboards: You can create customizable dashboards to monitor key metrics and trends. This allows you to track your progress and make data-driven decisions.
  4. Comprehensive Reporting: Storage Lens provides detailed reports on your storage usage, including data on object counts, storage size, access patterns, and more. These reports help you understand the impact of your storage policies and make informed adjustments.


Intelligent Tiering: Automate Cost Savings

Amazon S3 Intelligent Tiering is designed to help you optimize storage costs automatically when data access patterns are unpredictable. It moves data between multiple access tiers based on usage patterns, ensuring you only pay for the access you need.

Key Benefits of Intelligent Tiering

  1. Automatic Cost Optimization: Intelligent Tiering automatically moves data to the most cost-effective storage tier based on changing access patterns. This eliminates the need for manual intervention and ensures optimal cost savings.
  2. No Retrieval Fees: Unlike other storage classes, Intelligent Tiering does not charge retrieval fees when accessing data from the infrequent access tier. This makes it an ideal choice for unpredictable access patterns.
  3. Seamless Integration: Intelligent Tiering integrates seamlessly with your existing S3 workflows, making it easy to implement and manage.


Lifecycle Policies: Efficient Data Management

Lifecycle Policies in Amazon S3 allow you to define rules for transitioning objects to different storage classes or expiring them after a certain period, based on an intelligent policy engine with fine grained filters and rules. This helps you manage your data lifecycle efficiently and reduce storage costs.

Key Benefits of Lifecycle Policies

  1. Automated Data Management: Lifecycle Policies automate the transition of data between storage classes based on predefined rules. This ensures that data is stored in the most cost-effective class without manual intervention.
  2. Cost Reduction: By transitioning data to less expensive storage classes or deleting unnecessary data, you can significantly reduce your storage costs.
  3. Customizable Rules: You can create custom rules based on your specific needs. For example, you can transition data to Glacier for archival purposes after a certain period of inactivity.
  4. Enhanced Data Governance: Lifecycle Policies help you manage data retention and compliance requirements by automatically expiring data that is no longer needed.


Implementing Cost Optimization Strategies

To achieve significant cost savings in Amazon S3, it is essential to implement these strategies effectively. Here are some practical steps to get started:

  1. Analyze Your Storage Usage: Use Amazon S3 Storage Lens to gain visibility into your storage usage and activity. Identify the buckets with the highest savings potential and focus your optimization efforts on them.
  2. Enable Intelligent Tiering: For data with unpredictable access patterns, enable Intelligent Tiering to automate the cost optimization process. This ensures that your data is always stored in the most cost-effective tier.
  3. Monitor and Adjust: Continuously monitor your storage usage and costs using Storage Lens. Adjust your policies and settings as needed to maintain optimal cost efficiency.


The 80-20 Rule in S3 Cost Management

Experience shows that the 80-20 rule often applies to S3 cost management. This principle suggests that approximately 80% of your savings may come from optimizing just 20% of your buckets. By strategically focusing on these key areas, you can achieve substantial cost reductions without getting bogged down in excessive details.

The Importance of Predictability in FinOps

For FinOps professionals, predictability in cost management is crucial. Being able to forecast costs and savings accurately allows for better financial planning and decision-making. The ability to present clear ROI calculations to management justifies cost-saving actions and ensures alignment with organizational goals.

Simplifying the Message

When communicating these strategies to stakeholders or customers, simplicity is key. Instead of overwhelming them with a long list of tips, focus on the most impactful tools: Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies. Providing concrete examples and potential savings can make the message more compelling and easier to understand.

 

In Conclusion

Effective S3 cost optimization doesn't require mastering every aspect of AWS. By leveraging Amazon S3 Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies, you can achieve significant cost savings with minimal effort. These tools provide a clear path to optimizing your S3 storage, ensuring you get the best return on your investment.

For more detailed guidance and personalized advice, contact us at Cloudride. to learn how we can help your business soar to new heights. Let's work together to make your Amazon S3 usage as cost-efficient as possible and achieve significant savings!

nir-peleg
2024/07
Jul 11, 2024 1:50:07 PM
Maximizing AWS S3 Cost Efficiency with Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing

Jul 11, 2024 1:50:07 PM

Maximizing AWS S3 Cost Efficiency with Storage Lens, Intelligent Tiering, and Lifecycle Policies

Amazon S3 stands out as one of the most versatile and widely used cloud storage solutions. However, with great power comes the challenge of managing costs effectively. As stored data capacity grows, so do the associated costs, meaning that ensuring the data is managed in a cost effective manner is...

Our Highlights from the AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit

The AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit was a remarkable event, filled with innovation, learning, and collaboration. It was wonderful to network with our co-pilots at AWS, ecosystem partners, customers, prospects, and even potential job candidates looking to join our high-flying crew.

The energy and innovation at the summit perfectly showcased the exceptional resilience and drive of the Israeli tech community. This summary won't even begin to capture the full scope of the event, especially the atmosphere and the spirit of technological advancement and creativity, but we'll give it a try:

A First-Class Experience

Our booth was designed to transport attendees into the world of aviation and cloud computing. Dressed as pilots, our team took everyone on a first-class journey to the cloud. We handed out exclusive flight cushions, which were a big hit.

Additionally, we offered branded bags of peanuts for grabs, paired with the alcohol served at the conference, to give guests the feeling of flying in business class. Not to mention the delicious food and coffee available. These small touches were designed to create a memorable and unique experience, and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.

Engaging Sessions and Workshops

The summit featured a variety of engaging sessions and workshops designed to provide valuable insights into the latest AWS services and best practices. These sessions covered a range of topics, including API design, serverless architectures, real-time data strategies, and digital transformation, all of which are crucial for businesses looking to leverage modern cloud technologies.

Workshops on building APIs using infrastructure as code and advanced serverless architectures offered practical, hands-on experiences. These sessions provided a deep understanding of key concepts and ensured businesses could directly apply them to enhance operations and ensure a seamless transition to cloud-based solutions.

Hands-On Workshops

Hands-on workshops offered in-depth knowledge and direct interaction with AWS tools, covering API design and cost optimization. The interactive nature of these workshops ensures businesses can apply learned concepts to real-world scenarios, enhancing their cloud technology implementation.

Gamified Learning Events

Gamified learning events provided a unique and engaging way to explore AWS solutions. These events challenged participants to solve real-world technical problems in a dynamic, risk-free environment. Experiences like the Generative AI challenge allowed businesses to experiment with AI technologies, fostering innovative thinking and showcasing AWS tools' practical applications in driving innovation.

Sessions on Data and AI

Sessions focused on the importance of real-time data strategies and their role in driving innovation. Businesses gained insights into the latest AWS data services and their applications in predictive analytics and real-time decision-making. These sessions emphasized leveraging modern data architectures to gain a competitive edge and provided actionable insights on harnessing data for improved performance and customer satisfaction.

Architecting on AWS

Sessions dedicated to best practices for architecting solutions on AWS covered creating resilient multi-region architectures, optimizing performance, and ensuring security and compliance. These insights are invaluable for businesses developing robust and scalable solutions, offering strategies to manage dependencies, data replication, and consistency across regions.

Digital Transformation

Digital transformation was a key theme, with presentations highlighting how AWS Cloud drives innovation and efficiency. Businesses learned about modernizing IT infrastructures with AWS, gaining insights into cost savings, operational efficiencies, increased agility, and innovation. Case studies showcased successful digital transformation journeys, offering practical insights and lessons learned.

Community and Collaboration

The AWS Community panel emphasized the impact of tech communities on developers, highlighting how these communities foster skill development, networking, and collaboration. Discussions demonstrated the value of tech community involvement for professional growth and staying updated with industry trends. The collaborative spirit within these communities reinforced the importance of active engagement and contribution to the tech community.

Ready for Takeoff: What's Next

The AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit was an experience to remember. The event provided valuable learning and networking opportunities, reinforcing the importance of innovation and collaboration in the tech industry.

Is your business ready to take off with the cloud? Partner with Cloudride for expert guidance and cutting-edge solutions tailored to your needs. Let's navigate the future of cloud technology together. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business soar to new heights.

summit2024group-1-1-1

shira-teller
2024/07
Jul 4, 2024 6:47:11 PM
Our Highlights from the AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing, AWS Summit

Jul 4, 2024 6:47:11 PM

Our Highlights from the AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit

The AWS Tel Aviv 2024 Summit was a remarkable event, filled with innovation, learning, and collaboration. It was wonderful to network with our co-pilots at AWS, ecosystem partners, customers, prospects, and even potential job candidates looking to join our high-flying crew.

The energy and...

Unlocking Business Agility: The Imperative of Evolving to Cloud-Native Architectures

Adapting to change is no longer a choice; it's a necessity for businesses to thrive in today's competitive landscape. As customer expectations evolve and market dynamics shift rapidly, traditional approaches to application development and deployment are struggling to keep up. Monolithic architectures, once the go-to solution for software engineering, now face significant challenges.

Tightly coupled components and a single codebase characterize these monolithic architectures, leading to slow deployment cycles, difficulty scaling individual components, and resistance to adopting new technologies. Furthermore, as applications grow more complex and user-centric, performance bottlenecks, reliability issues, and the inability to meet changing customer needs become prevalent – hindering innovation and posing risks to business continuity and growth.

The Emergence of Cloud-Native Architectures: A Paradigm Shift

Recognizing the limitations of monolithic architectures, forward-thinking organizations are embracing a paradigm shift towards cloud-native architectures. This modern approach, which encompasses microservices and serverless computing, offers a multitude of benefits that directly address the challenges faced by traditional architectures.

Cloud-native architectures thrive in the dynamic and distributed nature of cloud environments. By breaking down monolithic applications into smaller, independently deployable services, organizations can achieve greater agility, faster deployment cycles, and better fault isolation. This modular approach enables teams to develop, test, and deploy individual services independently, reducing the risk of disrupting the entire application and accelerating time-to-market for new features and updates.

Furthermore, cloud-native architectures inherently promote scalability, a critical requirement for businesses operating in today's rapidly evolving markets. With microservices and serverless computing, organizations can scale individual components up or down based on demand, ensuring optimal resource utilization and cost-effectiveness. This level of granular scalability is simply not achievable with monolithic architectures, where scaling often involves scaling the entire application, leading to inefficiencies and increased operational costs.

Unlocking Competitive Advantage with Cloud-Native

Embracing cloud-native architectures is not merely a technological shift; it is a strategic imperative for businesses seeking to remain agile, innovative, and competitive in today's rapidly evolving markets. By breaking free from the constraints of monolithic architectures, organizations can unlock a world of possibilities, enabling them to respond quickly to changing customer needs, rapidly deploy new features and services, and scale their operations seamlessly to meet fluctuating demand.

Moreover, cloud-native architectures foster a culture of innovation and experimentation, empowering teams to rapidly iterate and test new ideas without risking the stability of the entire application. This agility not only drives innovation but also enhances customer satisfaction, as businesses can rapidly adapt to evolving preferences and deliver personalized, high-quality experiences.

Navigating the Cloud-Native Journey

While the benefits of cloud-native architectures are clear, the journey to adoption can be complex and challenging. Transitioning from a monolithic architecture to a cloud-native approach requires careful planning, execution, and a deep understanding of the underlying technologies and best practices.

Organizations must start by conducting a comprehensive assessment of their existing monolithic application, identifying components, dependencies, and potential bottlenecks. This critical step ensures that informed decisions are made about which parts of the application should be refactored or migrated first, minimizing disruption and maximizing efficiency.

Next, teams must identify bounded contexts and candidate microservices, analyzing the codebase to uncover logical boundaries and evaluating the potential benefits of decoupling specific functionalities. This process lays the foundation for a modular, scalable, and resilient architecture.

Establishing a robust cloud-native infrastructure is also crucial, leveraging the right tools and services to optimize performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency. This may involve leveraging container orchestration platforms, serverless computing services, and other cloud-native technologies.

Throughout the journey, organizations must prioritize asynchronous communication patterns, distributed data management, observability and monitoring, security and compliance, and DevOps practices. By implementing best practices and leveraging the right tools and services, businesses can ensure that their cloud-native architecture is resilient, secure, and optimized for continuous improvement.

Partnering for Success

While the rewards of embracing cloud-native architectures are substantial, the path to success can be daunting for organizations navigating this complex transformation alone. This is where partnering with an experienced and trusted cloud service provider can be invaluable.

By leveraging the expertise of a cloud service provider with deep knowledge and hands-on experience in guiding organizations through the process of modernizing their applications and embracing cloud-native architectures, businesses can significantly increase their chances of success. These partners can provide tailored guidance, architectural recommendations, and hands-on support throughout the entire transformation journey, ensuring a smooth transition and maximizing the benefits of cloud-native architectures.

In an era where agility, scalability, and innovation are paramount, embracing cloud-native architectures is no longer an option – it is a necessity. By recognizing the limitations of monolithic architectures and proactively evolving towards a cloud-native approach, businesses can future-proof their operations, drive innovation, and gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing digital landscape.

If you're ready to embark on the journey to cloud-native, consider partnering with an experienced and trusted cloud service provider such as Cloudride. Our expertise and guidance can be invaluable in navigating the complexities of this transformative journey, ensuring a successful transition. Contact us now to unlock the full potential of cloud-native architectures for your business.

ronen-amity
2024/06
Jun 3, 2024 4:22:21 PM
Unlocking Business Agility: The Imperative of Evolving to Cloud-Native Architectures
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing

Jun 3, 2024 4:22:21 PM

Unlocking Business Agility: The Imperative of Evolving to Cloud-Native Architectures

Adapting to change is no longer a choice; it's a necessity for businesses to thrive in today's competitive landscape. As customer expectations evolve and market dynamics shift rapidly, traditional approaches to application development and deployment are struggling to keep up. Monolithic...

The Vital Importance of Enabling MFA for All AWS Users

As cloud computing continues to grow in popularity, the need for robust security measures has never been more critical. One of the most effective ways to enhance the security of your AWS environment is to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users, including both root users and IAM users.

AWS has announced that beginning mid-May of 2024, MFA will be required for the root user of your AWS Organizations management account when accessing the AWS Console. While this new requirement is an important step forward, we strongly recommend that you take action now to enable MFA for all of your AWS users, not just the root user.

Enhancing Security with MFA

MFA is one of the simplest and most effective mechanisms to protect your AWS environment from unauthorized access. By requiring users to provide an additional form of authentication, such as a one-time code from a mobile app or a hardware security key, you can significantly reduce the risk of account compromise, even if a user's password is stolen.

This security feature has become common across many platforms and services. Its adoption is driven by the need to secure access in a variety of digital environments, from online banking to social media platforms, highlighting its effectiveness as a security measure in both personal and professional contexts.

Critical Importance for Root and IAM Users

The  root user of your management account is particularly critical, as it is the key to privileged administrative tasks for all other accounts in your organization. If this account is compromised, the entire AWS environment could be at risk. That's why it's so important to secure the root user with MFA.

But the importance of MFA extends far beyond just the root user. Every IAM user in your AWS environment should also be required to use MFA when accessing the AWS Console or making API calls. This includes developers, administrators, and any other users who have access to your AWS resources.

By  enabling MFA for all of your AWS users, you can help ensure that only authorized individuals are able to access your critical systems and data. This not only enhances your overall security posture, but it also helps you meet important compliance requirements, such as those outlined in the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.

Best Practices for MFA Implementation

Fortunately, enabling MFA in AWS is a relatively straightforward process. You can choose from a variety of MFA options, including virtual authenticator apps, hardware security keys, and even physical security tokens. The AWS Management Console provides a user-friendly interface for configuring and managing MFA devices for both root users and IAM users.

One best practice is to enable multiple MFA devices per user, which can provide an additional layer of redundancy and resilience. This way, if one device is lost, stolen, or becomes unavailable, the user can still access the AWS Console or make API calls using another registered device.

Another important consideration is the user experience. By providing a range of MFA options, you can ensure that your users are able to choose a solution that works best for their needs, whether that's a mobile app, a hardware key, or a physical token. This can help to minimize friction and improve user adoption, which is essential for the success of any security initiative.

Of course, enabling MFA for all of your AWS users is just one part of a comprehensive cloud security strategy. You'll also need to implement other best practices, such as regular security audits, access management controls, and incident response planning.

But by making MFA a top priority for all users, you can take a significant step towards protecting your AWS environment from a wide range of threats. And with the May 2024 deadline looming, there's no better time to get started than right now.

Getting Started

For organizations unsure about how to proceed or lacking in-house expertise, who need help navigating the process of enabling MFA for all AWS users, don't hesitate to reach out to our team of cloud experts at Cloudride. We can provide guidance, support, and tailored solutions to help you enhance the security of your AWS environment and protect your organization from the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats.

Remember, the security of your AWS environment is not just a technical challenge – it's a strategic imperative that can have far-reaching consequences for your business. By taking action now to enable MFA for all of your users, you can help to ensure that your organization is well-positioned to thrive in the cloud for years to come.

nir-peleg
2024/05
May 29, 2024 1:08:27 PM
The Vital Importance of Enabling MFA for All AWS Users
Cloud Security, AWS, Security

May 29, 2024 1:08:27 PM

The Vital Importance of Enabling MFA for All AWS Users

As cloud computing continues to grow in popularity, the need for robust security measures has never been more critical. One of the most effective ways to enhance the security of your AWS environment is to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users, including both root users and IAM...

Evolving Monolithic Architectures to Microservices: A Step-by-Step Guide for AWS

Microservices have emerged as a popular architectural pattern for building modern, scalable, and resilient applications. By breaking down a monolithic application into smaller, independent services, organizations can achieve greater agility, faster deployment cycles, and better fault isolation. However, adopting a microservices architecture can be a complex undertaking, especially when considering the intricate details and best practices required for successful implementation. In this article, we'll explore a step-by-step guide to building microservices on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

Step 1: Design and Decompose Your Application

The first step in adopting microservices is to design and decompose your application into distinct, loosely coupled services. Identify the bounded contexts or functional domains within your application and determine the appropriate service boundaries. This process involves analyzing the application's codebase, identifying logical boundaries, and evaluating the potential benefits of decoupling specific functionalities.

Step 2: Establish a Cloud-Native Infrastructure on AWS

Leverage the appropriate AWS services based on the application's requirements and workload characteristics. Options include AWS Lambda for serverless computing, Amazon EKS and ECR for container orchestration, or EC2 for virtual machines. Choose serverless for event-driven architectures and unpredictable workloads or containers for microservices and complex dependencies. Align the infrastructure choice with the application's usage needs to optimize performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency.

Step 3: Develop and Deploy Microservices

Utilize infrastructure as code (IaC) tools like Terraform or CloudFormation to provision and manage resources. Implement continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines with tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or AWS CodePipeline. Automate configuration management with Ansible or Puppet. Package and distribute application artifacts using tools like Packer or Docker. 

Step 4: Implement Asynchronous Communication Patterns

Microservices communicate with each other using lightweight protocols like HTTP or message queues. Implement asynchronous communication patterns using AWS services like Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) or Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK) to decouple microservices and improve resilience.

Step 5: Implement Distributed Data Management

In a microservices architecture, data management becomes more complex as each microservice may have its own data storage requirements. Leverage AWS services like Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), or Amazon Elasticsearch Service to implement distributed data management strategies that align with your application's needs.

Step 6: Implement Observability and Monitoring

With multiple microservices running in a distributed system, observability and monitoring become critical for maintaining system health and performance. Implement monitoring and logging solutions using AWS services like Amazon CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, and AWS CloudTrail to gain visibility into your microservices and infrastructure.  If you want to implement advanced observability and monitoring, you can go to tools like Datadog and AppDynamics to get a better view of your environment.

Step 7: Implement Security and Compliance

Microservices architectures introduce new security and compliance challenges. Leverage AWS services like AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Secrets Manager, and AWS Security Hub to implement robust security controls, manage secrets and credentials, and ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations. 

Step 8: Automate and Implement DevOps Practices

Embrace DevOps practices and leverage external tools to streamline microservices development and deployment. Implement CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, or CircleCI, integrating with source control systems like GitHub or GitLab. Automate build processes with tools like Maven or Gradle, and containerize applications using Docker.

Utilize configuration management tools like Ansible or Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and deployment. Implement monitoring and observability with solutions like Prometheus, Grafana, and Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK) stack. Leverage external tools like Spinnaker or Argo CD for continuous delivery and automated deployments. Embrace practices like infrastructure as code, automated testing, and continuous monitoring to foster collaboration, agility, and rapid iteration.

Step 9: Continuously Evolve and Improve

Microservices architectures are not a one-time implementation but rather an ongoing journey of continuous improvement. Regularly review and refine your architecture, processes, and tooling to ensure alignment with evolving business requirements and technological advancements.

In Conclusion

By following this step-by-step guide, you can successfully build and deploy microservices on AWS, unlocking the endless benefits. However, navigating the complexities of microservices architectures can be challenging, especially when considering the intricate details and best practices specific to your application and business requirements.

That's where Cloudride, an AWS Certified Partner, can be an invaluable asset. Our team of AWS experts has extensive experience in guiding organizations through the process of adopting microservices architectures on AWS. If you're ready to embrace the power of microservices, we invite you to contact Cloudride today. We understand that every organization's needs are unique, which is why we offer tailored architectural guidance, implementation strategies, and end-to-end support to ensure your success.

ronen-amity
2024/05
May 23, 2024 1:52:07 PM
Evolving Monolithic Architectures to Microservices: A Step-by-Step Guide for AWS
AWS, Cloud Container, microservices, Cloud Computing, IaC

May 23, 2024 1:52:07 PM

Evolving Monolithic Architectures to Microservices: A Step-by-Step Guide for AWS

Microservices have emerged as a popular architectural pattern for building modern, scalable, and resilient applications. By breaking down a monolithic application into smaller, independent services, organizations can achieve greater agility, faster deployment cycles, and better fault isolation....

Best Practices for Upgrading Terraform: Ensure a Smooth Transition to the Latest Version

As the DevOps landscape continues to evolve,  staying current with tools like Terraform, a cornerstone infrastructure-as-code (IaC) platform, is vital. Regularly updating Terraform not only maintains compatibility with the latest cloud innovations but also leverages new features and enhancements for more efficient infrastructure management.

This guide looks into best practices for upgrading Terraform, providing insights into the process and the perks of keeping your system up-to-date.

Establish a Parallel Terraform Environment

Begin by setting up a parallel Terraform environment. This method allows you to run the newest version alongside the existing one, facilitating thorough testing without disrupting your current setup. This safe, controlled testing ground helps pinpoint any compatibility issues, enabling adjustments before fully transitioning.

Update Your Resources

Once your parallel environment is operational, align your resources with the updates in the new Terraform version. Terraform's frequent updates often include modifications to providers, resources, and functionalities.

Diligently review the release notes and update your configurations accordingly. This might mean modifying resource attributes, phasing out deprecated options, or incorporating new functionalities to optimize your setup. Testing these changes in the parallel environment is crucial to ensure they perform as expected without adverse effects.

Utilize Terraform's Built-in Upgrade Command

The terraform provider upgrade command is a useful tool in the upgrading arsenal. It automatically updates the provider versions in your configurations to ensure compatibility with the new Terraform release. While this tool simplifies the process, some complex scenarios might require manual adjustments to ensure all aspects of your infrastructure are up-to-date.

For example, there could be a mandatory argument to be used on a specific Terraform resource, while after upgrading to a newer version it is no longer necessary, or even the opposite - this has to be changed manually.

Implement Continuous Monitoring and Upgrading

Terraform updates are not merely occasional adjustments but should be part of a continuous improvement strategy. Regular updates help leverage the latest functionalities, bug fixes, and security enhancements, minimizing compatibility issues and security risks.

Integrating regular updates into your DevOps workflows or setting up automated systems to handle these updates can keep your Terraform infrastructure proactive and updated.

The Benefits of Upgrading Terraform

  • Compatibility with New Cloud Services: New cloud services and features continually emerge, and keeping Terraform updated ensures that your configurations are compatible, allowing you to leverage the latest technological advancements.
  • Enhanced Functionality and Performance: Each update brings enhancements that improve the functionality, performance, and reliability of managing your infrastructure.
  • Security Improvements: Regular updates include critical security patches that protect your infrastructure from vulnerabilities.
  • Streamlined Workflows: Advances in Terraform's tooling and automation streamline the upgrade process, reducing the potential for errors and manual interventions.

Leverage Expert Terraform Guidance

If upgrading Terraform seems daunting, our team of experts is ready to assist. We offer comprehensive support through every step—from establishing a parallel environment to continuous monitoring—to ensure your infrastructure is efficient, secure, and leverages the full capabilities of the latest Terraform versions.

Upgrading Terraform is a strategic investment in your infrastructure’s future readiness. Reach out to our Terraform specialists to seamlessly transition to the latest version and optimize your cloud resource management.

segev-borshan
2024/05
May 16, 2024 4:06:31 PM
Best Practices for Upgrading Terraform: Ensure a Smooth Transition to the Latest Version
Cloud Compliances, Terraform, Cloud Computing, IaC

May 16, 2024 4:06:31 PM

Best Practices for Upgrading Terraform: Ensure a Smooth Transition to the Latest Version

As the DevOps landscape continues to evolve, staying current with tools like Terraform, a cornerstone infrastructure-as-code (IaC) platform, is vital. Regularly updating Terraform not only maintains compatibility with the latest cloud innovations but also leverages new features and enhancements for...

Mastering Cloud Network Architecture with Transit Gateways

Efficient cloud networking is essential for deploying robust, scalable applications. Utilizing advanced cloud services like AWS Lambda for serverless operations, Elastic Beanstalk for seamless Platform as a Service (PaaS) capabilities, and AWS Batch for container orchestration significantly reduces the infrastructure management burden. These services streamline the deployment process: developers simply upload their code, and AWS manages the underlying servers and backend processes, providing a seamless integration between development and deployment.

Strategic Application Deployment in AWS

The strategic deployment of applications on AWS, using separate AWS accounts for each environment, offers significant advantages. This approach goes beyond enhancing security by isolating resources; it also boosts management efficiency by clearly segregating development and production environments into distinct accounts. Such segregation shields production systems from the potential risks associated with developmental changes and testing, thereby preserving system integrity and ensuring consistent uptime. This method of environment segregation ensures that administrative boundaries are well-defined, which simplifies access controls and reduces the scope of potential impact from operational errors.

Advanced Networking Configurations and Their Impact

Implementing sophisticated network setups that include both public and private subnets, equipped with essential components such as Internet Gateways, NAT Gateways, Elastic IPs, and Transit Gateways, enhances network availability and security. These configurations, while beneficial, come with higher operational costs. For instance, the cost of maintaining NAT Gateways escalates with the increase in data volume processed and transferred, which can be significant in complex network architectures. Additionally, incorporating Transit Gateways facilitates more efficient data flow across different VPCs and on-premise connections, further solidifying the network's robustness but also adding to the overall expense due to their pricing structure based on the data throughput and number of connections.

The Essential Role of NAT Gateways

NAT Gateways play a pivotal role in securely accessing the internet from private subnets, shielding them from the security vulnerabilities commonly associated with public subnets. These gateways enable secure and controlled access to external AWS services via VPC endpoints, effectively preventing direct exposure to the public internet and enhancing overall network security.

Solution: Management Account/VPCs

To reduce the complexity and overhead associated with managing individual NAT Gateways across multiple AWS accounts, adopting a landing zone methodology is highly advisable. This approach involves setting up a centralized management account that acts as a hub, housing shared services such as NAT Gateways and, when applicable, site-to-site VPN connections. This facilitates secure and streamlined connections between all other accounts in the organization and on-premise, ensuring they align with predefined configurations and best practices. This strategic implementation not only optimizes resource utilization but also simplifies the management and scalability of network architectures across different accounts, enhancing overall security and operational efficiency.

This kind of a VPC will hold all of our shared resources, like Active Directory Instances, Antivirus Orchestrators and more We will use it as a centralized location to manage and control all of our applications in the cloud, all the VPC will connect to it using a private connection such as peering or VPN

VPC Peering vs. Transit Gateway Routing

Deep Dive into Management Account Configuration

A Management Account encompasses critical shared resources such as firewalls, Active Directory instances, and antivirus orchestrators. It serves as the administrative center for all cloud applications, connected through secure networking methods such as site-to-site VPNs, aligning with the landing zone methodology. This centralized management not only simplifies administrative tasks but also significantly enhances the security of the entire network. By splitting environments between accounts, we ensure a clean separation of duties and resources, further enhancing operational control and security compliance.

The Advantages of Transit Gateways

Transit Gateways are crucial for enabling comprehensive data transfer between accounts and on-premise networks, providing a more scalable and flexible solution than traditional methods. They support a variety of connection types, including Direct Connect, site-to-site VPNs, and peering, and feature dynamic and static routing capabilities within their route tables to efficiently manage data flows. This integration is particularly effective in environments where landing zone strategies are employed, allowing for better scalability and isolation between different operational environments.

Cost Analysis and Transit Gateway Utilization

Although implementing Transit Gateways incurs costs based on the number of attachments and the volume of traffic processed, the benefits in operational efficiency and security often justify these expenses. These gateways serve as centralized routers and network hubs, facilitating seamless integration across the network architecture of multiple accounts and significantly improving the manageability and scalability of cloud operations. The use of landing zones further optimizes cost management by aligning with AWS best practices, potentially reducing unnecessary expenditures and improving resource allocation.

Final Thoughts

Utilizing Transit Gateways within a structured landing zone framework offers a formidable solution for managing complex cloud environments across multiple accounts. This strategic approach not only enhances operational efficiency and bolsters security but also ensures a scalable infrastructure well-suited to support modern application demands. As cloud technologies continue to evolve, staying informed and consulting with specialists like Cloudride provides essential insights for leveraging these advancements.

For expert guidance on cloud migration, securing and optimizing your network architecture, and implementing effective landing zone strategies, do not hesitate to contact us. Our team specializes in both public and private cloud migrations, aiming to facilitate sustainable business growth and enhanced cloud infrastructure performance.

ronen-amity
2024/05
May 8, 2024 6:17:52 PM
Mastering Cloud Network Architecture with Transit Gateways
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing

May 8, 2024 6:17:52 PM

Mastering Cloud Network Architecture with Transit Gateways

Efficient cloud networking is essential for deploying robust, scalable applications. Utilizing advanced cloud services like AWS Lambda for serverless operations, Elastic Beanstalk for seamless Platform as a Service (PaaS) capabilities, and AWS Batch for container orchestration significantly reduces...

Cloud-Driven Success: How Startups Thrive with AWS

With a cloud computing-based solution, you can set up your systems and scale them up or down depending on your needs. This allows you to plan for peak loads or unexpected surges in traffic. In this article, we will discuss why AWS is a game changer for startups, how AWS cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem, and, more importantly, why it makes sense to go with AWS as your primary infrastructure provider.

Powering Startups With the Cloud

The cloud is a game changer for startups. It's the best way to ensure your company's success by ensuring that you are prepared for anything, from growth spurts and technical difficulties to business expansion.

AWS has revolutionized the startup ecosystem by providing scalable and flexible technology at an affordable price. This makes it easy for all kinds of companies—from enterprise businesses, nonprofits, and small businesses to large enterprises—to take advantage of what the cloud offers.

As a CTO who deals with many systems and platforms daily, it is important to have access to reliable infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or software-as-a-service (SaaS) like the Marketplace in AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

These services allow you to help customers perform better and free up time so that you can focus more on improving processes internally rather than worrying about server maintenance tasks such as manually provisioning instances or performing upgrades manually when they become necessary.

 

How Cloud Computing Has Revolutionized the Startup Ecosystem

Cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem by helping entrepreneurs to focus on their core business, customers, employees, and products. The cloud allows you to run applications in a shared environment so that your infrastructure costs are spread across multiple users rather than being borne by you alone. This allows startups to scale up quickly without worrying about being able to afford the necessary hardware upfront.

In addition, it also provides them access to new technology such as AI and machine learning which they would not have been able to afford on their own. This helps them innovate faster and stay ahead of the competition while enjoying reduced costs simultaneously!

 

Reasons for AWS for Startups

There are many reasons why a startup should consider using AWS.

AWS is reliable and secure: The Cloud was built for just that, to ensure that your critical data is safe, backed up, and accessible from anywhere. It's not just about technology. Amazon provides excellent customer support.

Cost-effective: There are many benefits when pricing as well; you pay only for what you use hourly, so there are no long-term commitments or upfront fees. You also get access to all features that come with an AWS operating system, including backups, monitoring systems, and security tools.

 

How AWS Is a Game Changer

Cost savings: AWS saves money by running your applications on a highly scalable, pay-as-you-go infrastructure. Using AWS is typically lower than maintaining your own data center, allowing you to focus on the business rather than the infrastructure aspects of running an application.

Speed: When you use AWS, it takes just minutes to spin up an instance and start creating your application on their platform. That's compared to building out servers and networking equipment in the house, which could take weeks or even months!

Change implementation: As soon as you make a change, it gets reflected instantly across all environments – staging or production – so there's no need for error-prone manual processes or lengthy approvals before rolling out updates. This makes it easier for teams within companies that use this service because they don't have to wait around until someone else finishes making changes before moving forward (which doesn't happen often).

 

AWS Global Startup Program

The AWS Global Startup program is an initiative that provides startups access to AWS credits and support for a year. The program assigns Partner Development Managers (PDMs) to each startup, who will help them use AWS services and best practices. 

PDMs help startups with building and deploying their applications on AWS. They can also provide valuable assistance for startups that are looking for partners in the AWS Partner Network or want to learn more about marketing and sales strategies.

 

Integration With Marketplace Tools

Amazon enables startups to integrate their applications with Marketplace Tools. This set of APIs enables startups to integrate their applications with Amazon's marketplaces. Marketplace Tools are available for all AWS regions and service types, enabling you to choose the right tools for your use case.


Fast Scalability

When you're building a business from scratch and don't have any funding, every second counts—and cloud computing speeds up your development process. You can get to market faster than ever before and focus on your product or service and its customers. You don't need to worry about managing servers or storing data in-house; AWS does all this for you at scale.

This frees up time for other important tasks like meeting with investors, hiring new employees, researching competitors' services (or competitors themselves), or perfecting marketing copy.

Conclusion

The cloud's flexibility is unparalleled, seamlessly adapting to your business's unique needs. AWS provides a vast array of services tailored to distinguish your startup and accelerate its success. As an AWS SMB Partner with extensive experience supporting startups, Cloudride offers expert guidance to optimize these resources effectively. Don't wait, contact Cloudride today and start harnessing the transformative power of AWS cloud computing for your startup

ronen-amity
2024/04
Apr 30, 2024 9:10:55 AM
Cloud-Driven Success: How Startups Thrive with AWS
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Native, Cloud Computing

Apr 30, 2024 9:10:55 AM

Cloud-Driven Success: How Startups Thrive with AWS

With a cloud computing-based solution, you can set up your systems and scale them up or down depending on your needs. This allows you to plan for peak loads or unexpected surges in traffic. In this article, we will discuss why AWS is a game changer for startups, how AWS cloud computing has...

Unlock AWS Database Performance & Efficiency in 2024 | Cloudride

As we navigate the ever-evolving cloud computing landscape in 2024, the strategic selection and optimization of database services have become pivotal to driving business success. Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to lead the charge, offering a plethora of database solutions that empower organizations to build cutting-edge applications, unlock new insights, and stay ahead of the curve.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the latest advancements in the AWS database ecosystem, highlighting the key services and capabilities that can elevate your cloud strategy in the year ahead.

Navigating the Evolving AWS Database Landscape

AWS has consistently expanded and refined its database offerings, catering to the diverse needs of modern businesses. Let's review the standout services that are shaping the future of data management in the cloud.

 

Amazon RDS: Streamlining Relational Database Management

In the realm of AWS database offerings, the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) remains a pivotal solution, simplifying the deployment, operation, and scaling of relational databases in the cloud environment. As we approach 2024, RDS is poised to undergo significant enhancements, solidifying its position as the premier choice for enterprises seeking a reliable, fully managed relational database solution.

One of the notable updates is the introduction of new database engine versions, ensuring that RDS stays at the forefront of technological advancements. Additionally, enhanced security features and advanced monitoring capabilities will be implemented, further strengthening the service's robustness and providing organizations with greater visibility and control over their database operations.

RDS will continue to support a comprehensive range of eight popular database engines, including Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition, Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition, RDS for PostgreSQL, RDS for MySQL, RDS for MariaDB, RDS for SQL Server, RDS for Oracle, and RDS for Db2. This diverse offering ensures that organizations can seamlessly migrate their existing databases or choose the engine that best aligns with their specific requirements.

Furthermore, the Amazon Aurora database, renowned for its high-performance and compatibility with MySQL and PostgreSQL, is set to revolutionize the cloud database landscape with the introduction of Aurora Serverless v2. This innovative offering will enable organizations to seamlessly scale their database capacity up and down based on demand, optimizing costs while ensuring optimal performance for their most critical applications. This dynamic scalability will empower businesses to respond swiftly to fluctuating workloads, ensuring efficient resource utilization and cost-effectiveness.

 

Amazon DynamoDB: Scaling New Heights in NoSQL

Amazon DynamoDB has solidified its position as the go-to NoSQL database service, delivering unparalleled performance, scalability, and resilience. In 2024, DynamoDB has introduced several game-changing features, including support for global tables, on-demand backup and restore, and the ability to run analytical queries directly on DynamoDB data using Amazon Athena. These advancements empower organizations to build truly scalable, low-latency applications that can seamlessly adapt to changing business requirements.

 

Amazon Redshift: Powering Data-Driven Insights

Amazon Redshift, the cloud-native data warehousing service, has undergone a significant transformation in 2024. The launch of Redshift Serverless has revolutionized the way organizations can leverage the power of petabyte-scale data analytics, eliminating the need for infrastructure management and enabling on-demand, cost-effective access to Redshift's industry-leading performance.

 

Amazon ElastiCache: Accelerating Real-Time Applications

Amazon ElastiCache, the in-memory data store service, has solidified its position as a crucial component in building low-latency, high-throughput applications. In 2024, ElastiCache has expanded its support for additional open-source engines, such as Memcached 1.6 and Redis 6.2, empowering organizations to leverage the latest advancements in in-memory computing.

 

Amazon Neptune: Unlocking the Power of Graph Databases

Amazon Neptune, the fully managed graph database service, has continued to evolve, introducing support for the latest versions of Apache TinkerPop and W3C SPARQL. These advancements have made it easier than ever for organizations to build and deploy applications that leverage the power of connected data, unlocking new insights and driving innovation.

 

Optimizing Your Cloud Database Strategy in 2024

As you navigate the ever-expanding AWS database ecosystem, it's essential to align your choices with your organization's specific requirements and long-term goals. Here are some key considerations to keep in mind:

  • Workload-Centric Approach: Evaluate your application's performance, scalability, and data management needs to identify the most suitable database service.
    Cost Optimization: Leverage the latest cost-optimization features, such as Amazon Redshift Serverless and Aurora Serverless v2, to ensure your database infrastructure aligns with your budget and business objectives.
  • High Availability and Resilience: Prioritize database services that offer built-in high availability, disaster recovery, and data durability features to safeguard your mission-critical data.
  • Seamless Integration: Explore the integration capabilities of AWS database services with other cloud-native offerings, such as AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Athena and AWS OpenSearch, to build comprehensive, end-to-end solutions. 
  • Future-Proofing: Stay informed about the latest advancements in the AWS database ecosystem and plan for the evolving needs of your business, ensuring your cloud infrastructure remains agile and adaptable.


Partnering for Success in 2024 and Beyond

The AWS database ecosystem continues to evolve, offering a comprehensive suite of services that can empower your organization to build, operate, and scale mission-critical applications with unparalleled performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. By staying informed about the latest advancements and aligning your database strategy with your specific business needs, you can unlock new opportunities for growth, innovation, and competitive advantage in 2024 and beyond.

Our team of cloud experts can help you assess your database requirements, design optimal cloud-native architectures, and implement tailored solutions that unlock the full potential of AWS database services .To learn more about how Cloudride can support your journey into the future of cloud-based data management, we invite you to explore our other resources or  schedule a consultation  with our team. Together, we'll chart a course that positions your organization for long-term success.

ronen-amity
2024/04
Apr 16, 2024 1:36:14 PM
Unlock AWS Database Performance & Efficiency in 2024 | Cloudride
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Native, Database, Data Lake, NoSQL

Apr 16, 2024 1:36:14 PM

Unlock AWS Database Performance & Efficiency in 2024 | Cloudride

As we navigate the ever-evolving cloud computing landscape in 2024, the strategic selection and optimization of database services have become pivotal to driving business success. Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to lead the charge, offering a plethora of database solutions that empower...

Slash Your AWS Networking Costs with VPC Endpoints

Efficiently managing networking costs without compromising on security is a significant challenge in cloud infrastructure design. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Endpoints provide a streamlined solution to this issue, offering secure, direct connections to AWS services that bypass expensive, traditional data transfer methods. This piece delves into the mechanics and benefits of VPC Endpoints, highlighting their crucial role in reducing operational overhead while maintaining the integrity of private subnet communications.

When designing your AWS infrastructure, it’s essential to consider the costs associated with data transfer, particularly when using private subnets. Many customers rely on NAT Gateway to enable communication between resources in private subnets and AWS services, but this convenience comes at a significant cost. By leveraging AWS VPC Endpoints, you can dramatically reduce your networking expenses while maintaining the security and isolation of your private subnets.

The High Price of NAT Gateway

NAT Gateway is a solution for allowing resources in private subnets to communicate with AWS services. However, it comes with a hefty price tag. AWS charges $0.045 per GB of data processed by NAT Gateway. This may not seem like much, but it can quickly accumulate, especially if you have substantial volumes of data being transferred between your private resources and AWS services.

 

Real-World Example: Networking Cost Savings with VPC Endpoints

Let's consider an example to showcase the networking cost savings achieved by using VPC Endpoints. Imagine you have an application running on an EC2 instance in a private subnet. The application needs to communicate with AWS services such as S3 and DynamoDB.
The application transfers 500 GB of data to S3 and 200 GB of data to DynamoDB per day.

Without VPC Endpoints, you would need to use a NAT Gateway to enable the EC2 instance to communicate with S3 and DynamoDB. The monthly networking costs with NAT Gateway would be:

- NAT Gateway: (500 GB + 200 GB) * 30 days * $0.045 per GB = $945
Total monthly networking cost with NAT Gateway: $945

Now, let’s explore how VPC Endpoints can significantly reduce these networking costs:

 

Option 1: S3 VPC Endpoint:

  • Create an S3 VPC Endpoint to establish a direct connection between your VPC and S3.
  • Eliminates NAT Gateway costs for S3 traffic.
  • No data transfer charges between EC2 and S3 within the same region.

Option 2: DynamoDB VPC Endpoint:

  • Create a DynamoDB VPC Endpoint to establish a direct connection between your VPC and DynamoDB.
  • Eliminates NAT Gateway costs for DynamoDB traffic.
  • No data transfer charges between EC2 and DynamoDB within the same region.


With VPC Endpoints, the monthly networking costs for accessing S3 and DynamoDB would be:

  • S3 VPC Endpoint: $0
  • DynamoDB VPC Endpoint: $0

Total monthly networking cost with VPC Endpoints: $0


By using VPC Endpoints instead of NAT Gateway, you save $945 per month on networking costs, a 100% reduction!

Conclusion

AWS VPC Endpoints offer a cost-effective solution for enabling communication between resources in private subnets and AWS services. By eliminating the need for an expensive NAT Gateway, VPC Endpoints can lead to substantial savings on your AWS networking expenses. As illustrated in the real-world example, utilizing VPC Endpoints for services like S3 and DynamoDB can result in significant cost reductions. When architecting your AWS environment, consider implementing VPC Endpoints for supported services to optimize networking costs without sacrificing security or performance.

For optimal cloud efficiency and security, consider partnering with experts like Cloudride. Our expertise in deploying VPC Endpoints and other cloud optimization strategies can help unlock even greater savings and performance gains, ensuring your infrastructure not only meets current needs but is also poised for future growth. Contact us today to explore how your organization can benefit from tailored cloud solutions.

tal-helfgott
2024/04
Apr 4, 2024 1:31:17 PM
Slash Your AWS Networking Costs with VPC Endpoints
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cloud Native, Transit Gateway, Cloud Computing

Apr 4, 2024 1:31:17 PM

Slash Your AWS Networking Costs with VPC Endpoints

Efficiently managing networking costs without compromising on security is a significant challenge in cloud infrastructure design. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Endpoints provide a streamlined solution to this issue, offering secure, direct connections to AWS services that bypass expensive,...

Unlock Cloud Efficiency: Migrating to Karpenter on Amazon EKS

Recognizing the imperative for efficiency in today’s digital landscape, businesses are constantly on the lookout for methods to enhance their cloud resource management. Within this context, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) distinguishes itself as a robust platform for orchestrating containerized applications at scale. However, the real challenge lies in optimizing infrastructure management, especially in scaling worker nodes responsively to fluctuating demands.

Traditionally, the Cluster Autoscaler (CA) has been the go-to solution for this task. It dynamically adjusts the number of worker nodes in an EKS cluster based on resource needs. While effective, a more efficient and cost-effective solution has risen to prominence: Karpenter.

Karpenter represents a paradigm shift in compute provisioning for Kubernetes clusters, designed to fully harness the cloud's elasticity with fast and intuitive provisioning. Unlike CA, which relies on predefined node groups, Karpenter crafts nodes tailored to the specific needs of each workload, enhancing resource utilization and reducing costs.

Embarking on the Karpenter Journey: A Step-by-Step Guide

Prepare Your EKS Environment:

To kickstart your journey with Karpenter, prepare your EKS cluster and AWS account for integration. This step is crucial and now simplified with our custom-developed Terraform module. This module is designed to deploy all necessary components, including IAM roles, policies, and the dedicated node group for the Karpenter pod, efficiently and without hassle. Leveraging Terraform for this setup not only ensures a smooth initiation but also maintains consistency and scalability in your cloud infrastructure.

Configure Karpenter:

Integrate Karpenter with your EKS cluster by updating the aws-auth ConfigMap and tagging subnets and security groups appropriately, granting Karpenter the needed permissions and resource visibility. 

Deploy Karpenter:

Implement Karpenter in your EKS cluster using Helm charts. This step deploys the Karpenter controller and requisite custom resource definitions (CRDs), breathing life into Karpenter within your ecosystem.

Customize Karpenter to Your Needs:

Adjusting Karpenter to align with your specific requirements involves two critical components: NodePool and NodeClass.In the following sections, we'll dive deeper into each of these components, shedding light on their roles and how they contribute to the customization and efficiency of your cloud environment.

NodePool – What It Is and Why It Matters

A NodePool in the context of Karpenter is a set of rules that define the characteristics of the nodes to be provisioned. It includes specifications such as the size, type, and other attributes of the nodes. By setting up a NodePool, you dictate the conditions under which Karpenter will create new nodes, allowing for a tailored approach that matches your workload requirements. This customization ensures that the nodes provisioned are well-suited for the tasks they're intended for, leading to more efficient resource usage.

NodeClass – Tailoring Node Specifications

NodeClass goes hand in hand with NodePool, detailing the AWS-specific configurations for the nodes. This includes aspects like instance types, Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), and even networking settings. By configuring NodeClass, you provide Karpenter with a blueprint of how each node should be structured in terms of its underlying AWS resources. This level of detail grants you granular control over the infrastructure, ensuring that each node is not just fit for purpose but also optimized for cost and performance.

Through the thoughtful configuration of NodePool and NodeClass, you can fine-tune how Karpenter provisions nodes for your EKS cluster, ensuring a perfect match for your application's needs and operational efficiencies.

Advancing Further: Next Steps in Your Karpenter Journey

Transition Away from Cluster Autoscaler:

With Karpenter operational, you can phase out the Cluster Autoscaler, transferring node provisioning duties to Karpenter.

Verify and Refine:

Test Karpenter with various workloads and observe the automatic node provisioning. Continually refine your NodePools and NodeClasses for optimal resource use and cost efficiency.

The Impact of Karpenter's Adaptive Scaling

The transition to Karpenter opens up a new realm of cloud efficiency. Its just-in-time provisioning aligns with the core principle of cloud computing - pay for what you use when you use it. This approach is particularly advantageous for workloads with variable resource demands, potentially leading to significant cost savings.

Moreover, Karpenter's nuanced control over node configurations empowers you to fine-tune your infrastructure, matching the unique requirements of your applications and maximizing performance.

Your Partner in Kubernetes Mastery: Cloudride

Navigating the complexities of Kubernetes and cloud optimization can be overwhelming. That's where Cloudride steps in. As your trusted partner, we're dedicated to guiding you through every facet of the Kubernetes ecosystem. Our expertise lies in enhancing both the security and efficiency of your containerized applications, ensuring you maximize your return on investment.

Embrace the future of Kubernetes with confidence and strategic advantage. Connect with us to explore how we can support your journey to Karpenter and help you unlock the full potential of cloud efficiency for your organization.

inbal-granevich
2024/03
Mar 25, 2024 4:21:06 PM
Unlock Cloud Efficiency: Migrating to Karpenter on Amazon EKS
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes, Karpenter

Mar 25, 2024 4:21:06 PM

Unlock Cloud Efficiency: Migrating to Karpenter on Amazon EKS

Recognizing the imperative for efficiency in today’s digital landscape, businesses are constantly on the lookout for methods to enhance their cloud resource management. Within this context, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) distinguishes itself as a robust platform for orchestrating...

Unlock Business Potential with Kubernetes: Guide to Economic Benefits

Businesses are on a perpetual quest for operational streamlining, cost reduction, and heightened efficiency. Kubernetes (K8s) steps into this quest as a formidable ally, wielding its power as a transformative technology. As an open-source container orchestration system, Kubernetes has redefined application deployment, management, and scaling, offering robust and cost-effective solutions for organizations across the spectrum. This technological force has become an essential instrument for businesses looking to gain a competitive edge in today’s dynamic market.

The Power of Pay-as-You-Go: Scaling on Demand

One of the most significant advantages of Kubernetes is its ability to leverage a Pay-as-You-Go (PAYG) model for container services. This approach shifts the responsibility of capacity planning from your business to the service provider, allowing you to scale effortlessly without the burden of finding the most efficient hosting solution or optimizing resource allocation.

With Kubernetes, you can seamlessly scale up or down based on your evolving needs, ensuring that you only pay for the resources you actually consume. This adaptability not only saves costs but also ensures that your business is always prepared to meet changing market demands, giving you a competitive edge.

Maximizing Resource Utilization: The Key to Financial Efficiency

Resource utilization is at the core of Kubernetes' financial advantage. By ensuring that each asset is utilized to its maximum potential, Kubernetes makes the costs per container server unit more budget-friendly. This is achieved through continuous monitoring and dynamic scaling, which guarantee that your resources are always put to the best use.

Kubernetes excels in tackling the challenging aspect of resource maximization, eliminating waste and optimizing your investments. 

Precision Resource Balancing: A Fine-Tuned Approach

Kubernetes shines in its ability to balance resource allocation with precision. It effectively manages computing resources, ensuring that each application receives exactly what it needs – no more, no less. This balance means you avoid over-provisioning, which leads to wasted resources, and under-provisioning, which can result in performance issues.

By dynamically adjusting resources to fit each application's requirements, Kubernetes not only optimizes usage but also translates into direct savings for every dollar spent on infrastructure.

Minimizing Downtime: Safeguarding Revenue and Customer Satisfaction

Downtime is a major adversary for businesses, leading to lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction, and operational hiccups. Kubernetes' innate resilience and fault tolerance play a crucial role in minimizing downtime. It allows for deployments across multiple nodes, offering redundancy and resilience. When a node fails, Kubernetes swiftly redirects the workload, enhancing application reliability and reducing the need for manual interventions. This rapid response capability not only boosts operational agility but also safeguards against revenue loss and maintains customer satisfaction – two critical factors that directly impact your bottom line.

Accelerating Time-to-Market: A Competitive Edge

In today's fast-paced business environment, the ability to rapidly deploy applications and updates can be a game-changer. Kubernetes excels in this regard, enabling businesses to quickly adapt to market changes and customer needs.

By streamlining the deployment process, Kubernetes allows you to introduce new features, services, or products to the market at an accelerated pace. This agility not only translates into faster revenue generation but also positions your business as a leader in your industry, potentially dominating the market and leaving competitors behind.

Return on Investment (ROI): The Economic Litmus Test

When assessing Kubernetes' economic impact, Return on Investment (ROI) is a crucial metric. Kubernetes offers tangible savings by optimizing resources, minimizing downtime, and accelerating time-to-market. These savings directly contribute to infrastructure cost reduction, whether in the cloud or on-premises, marking a positive ROI. Additionally, by reducing downtime and enabling rapid deployments, Kubernetes safeguards against revenue loss, reputational damage, and customer churn – all of which can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

Moreover, the competitive edge gained through Kubernetes' agility can lead to increased market share, customer acquisition, and revenue growth, further boosting your ROI. By leveraging Kubernetes, businesses can not only cut costs but also unlock new revenue streams and monetization opportunities, solidifying their position in the market.

The Catalyst to Kubernetes-Driven Economic Growth

Adopting Kubernetes transcends mere technological advancement; it's a strategic move with profound economic implications. By optimizing resources, reducing downtime, accelerating time-to-market, and fostering agility, Kubernetes positions businesses for financial prosperity and long-term success. Whether you're a startup or an established enterprise, embracing Kubernetes can redefine your organization's economic landscape, propelling you towards greater profitability and sustained growth.

At Cloudride, we specialize in leveraging Kubernetes to help companies transform economically. Our team of experts is dedicated to helping you unlock the full potential of this powerful technology, ensuring that you maximize its benefits and stay ahead of the curve. Reach out to us today to discover how Kubernetes can revolutionize your business operations and drive sustainable economic growth.

segev-borshan
2024/03
Mar 19, 2024 4:23:56 PM
Unlock Business Potential with Kubernetes: Guide to Economic Benefits
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes

Mar 19, 2024 4:23:56 PM

Unlock Business Potential with Kubernetes: Guide to Economic Benefits

Businesses are on a perpetual quest for operational streamlining, cost reduction, and heightened efficiency. Kubernetes (K8s) steps into this quest as a formidable ally, wielding its power as a transformative technology. As an open-source container orchestration system, Kubernetes has redefined...

Mastering the Art of Kubernetes Performance Optimization

Over the recent years, Kubernetes has emerged as the ‘de facto’ standard for orchestrating containers. It enables developers to manage applications running in a cluster of nodes by allowing them to handle, deploy, and scale applications, making the management of applications in a distributed environment much easier. However, as with any system, optimization of Kubernetes is necessary for maximum efficiency. This practical manual will take a close look at the strategies for optimizing Kubernetes, with the goal of getting the most out of this container orchestration tool.


Resource Limits and Requests

Resource management is the foundation for Kubernetes optimization. Implementing resource limits and requests in individual containers within pods makes it possible to control the effective allocation and utilization of computing resources.

Resource requests define the minimum CPU and memory needed for a container’s run, limits define the maximum CPU and memory a container might consume. Finding a reasonable balance is necessary; requests that are set too low can cause a performance decrease, while too-generous requests may lead to a waste of resources. Also, if the limits are set too low, containers may be throttled, whereas setting limits too high may result in resource contention and instability.

Resource utilization should be optimized by monitoring the application performance and applying necessary adjustments to the resource limits and requests. Tools such as Prometheus and Grafana provide vital information on resource utilization trends and allow you to choose the right allocation decisions accordingly.


Pod Affinity and Anti-Affinity

Pod affinity and anti-affinity allow you to control how pods are scheduled onto nodes inside your Kubernetes cluster. Pod affinity enables you to establish policies for placing pods on nodes with particular traits, including the presence of specific labels or other pods. Alternatively, pod anti-affinity guarantees that pods are not placed with others that have particular qualities.

Proper use of pod affinity and anti-affinity will allow you to improve the performance and resilience of your Kubernetes cluster. For instance, you can use affinity rules to make sure that related pods are scheduled near each other, reducing network latency and the availability of communication between their components. In contrast, anti-affinity rules ensure the distribution of pods across various nodes, thereby improving fault tolerance and availability.

Creating efficient affinity and anti-affinity policies needs to understand the application architecture as well as the deployment needs. One way of achieving this is by trying out different rule configurations and observing how the changes affect performance.

Harnessing the Power of Horizontal Pod Autoscaling

HPA is one of the essential components of Kubernetes that enables automatic adjusting of the number of pod replicas according to the observed CPU or memory usage. HPA ensures that your application is resilient for periods of uneven demand on workload.

For the effective application of HPA, it is necessary to define suitable metrics and thresholds, which reflect the characteristics of your application’s performance. For instance, you can define CPU utilization thresholds to initiate scaling actions according to the expected patterns of load. Also, think about the combination of HPA with custom metrics and external scaling triggers for more sophisticated scaling techniques.

Through the combination of HPA along with pod affinity and anti-affinity, you can get better control over the resource allocation and workload distribution in terms of optimizing the performance and efficiency in your Kubernetes environment.

External Tools to Improve Monitoring

Although Kubernetes provides its own tools to help you understand, using tools from outside can assist in following things and troubleshooting problems:

Prometheus:
Prometheus is a widely used software that is available at zero cost. It records information from multiple sources, stores it in a particular type of database, and allows for easy interrogation. This can be very useful for checking how good your Kubernetes system is doing.

Gafana:
Grafana is a data visualization tool. It can partner with Prometheus, so it will be easy to create visual dashboards and get notified if something isn’t right. This collaboration between Prometheus and Grafana enables teams to watch over many factors.

Getting Better All the Time: Tips and Tricks

Ensuring that your Kubernetes system works amazingly should always be a matter of concern. Here are some easy steps to follow:

Keeping an Eye on Things
It is critical to observe events as they unfold. Configuring alerts that notify you when things go beyond prescribed limits allow you to capture and resolve issues even before they affect your app.

Using Resources Wisely 
Refining how much space and power your pods consume on a frequent basis is a smart move. Giving them too much is like having too much food at a party, where it is just thrown away. It’s like not having enough chairs, things get slow. Utilities such as Kubernetes HPA and VPA can ensure that your pods get only as much as they require.

Understanding Every Detail
Digging into the details can help make your applications work more effectively. With tools such as Jaeger, Zipkin, and Pprof, you find out the exact points where things might slow down. It is like having a detective for your software solving and eliminating the problems.

Conclusion: Optimizing for Excellence

Continuous monitoring and experimentation can help you perfect your optimization mechanisms and adapt to the varying requirements of the workload. If you adhere to good practices and keep abreast of the latest changes in Kubernetes technology, your containerized applications will perform well, even in challenging environments.

Contact Cloudride for white-glove Kubernetes and cloud optimization assistance. 

inbal-granevich
2024/03
Mar 13, 2024 4:51:12 PM
Mastering the Art of Kubernetes Performance Optimization
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes

Mar 13, 2024 4:51:12 PM

Mastering the Art of Kubernetes Performance Optimization

Over the recent years, Kubernetes has emerged as the ‘de facto’ standard for orchestrating containers. It enables developers to manage applications running in a cluster of nodes by allowing them to handle, deploy, and scale applications, making the management of applications in a distributed...

The Future of Kubernetes: Navigating the Evolving Container Landscape

As we venture further into the era of containerization, Kubernetes stands at the forefront of a transformative wave, poised to redefine the landscape of cloud-native application development. This evolution is driven by a fusion of emerging trends and technological advancements that promise to enhance efficiency, scalability, and innovation across diverse sectors.

Enhanced Cloud-Native Application Development

The shift towards cloud-native application development within Kubernetes is marked by a deeper integration of microservices architectures and container orchestration. This transition emphasizes building resilient, scalable, and easily deployable applications that leverage the inherent benefits of cloud environments. Kubernetes facilitates this by offering dynamic service discovery, load balancing, and the seamless management of containerized applications across multiple clouds and on-premise environments.


The Rise of Serverless Computing within Kubernetes

Serverless computing is transforming the Kubernetes landscape by abstracting server management and infrastructure provisioning tasks, allowing developers to focus solely on coding. This paradigm shift towards serverless Kubernetes, facilitated by frameworks such as Knative, empowers developers to deploy applications without concerning themselves with the underlying infrastructure. It not only enhances developer productivity but also optimizes resource utilization through automatic scaling, thereby leading to significant cost efficiencies.

Kubernetes at the Edge: Expanding the Boundaries

The integration of Kubernetes with edge computing represents a pivotal advancement in deploying and managing applications closer to data sources. This strategic convergence addresses latency challenges and bandwidth constraints by distributing workloads to edge locations. Kubernetes' orchestration capabilities extend to edge environments, enabling consistent deployment models and operational practices across a diverse set of edge devices. This uniformity is crucial for sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, and smart cities, where real-time data processing and analysis are paramount.

AI and ML Workflows: A New Frontier in Kubernetes

The incorporation of AI and ML workflows into Kubernetes signifies a monumental leap in harnessing computational resources for data-intensive tasks. Kubernetes' adeptness at managing resource-heavy workloads offers an optimal environment for deploying AI and ML models, ensuring scalability and efficiency. Through custom resource definitions (CRDs) and operators, Kubernetes provides specialized orchestration capabilities that tailor resource allocation, scaling, and management to the needs of AI/ML workloads, facilitating the seamless integration of intelligent capabilities into applications.

The Significance of Declarative YAML in Kubernetes Evolution

The adoption of declarative YAML manifests epitomizes the movement towards simplification and efficiency in Kubernetes management. This approach allows developers to specify desired states for their deployments, with Kubernetes orchestrating the necessary actions to achieve those states. The declarative nature of YAML, coupled with version control systems, enhances collaboration, ensures consistency between configuration and code, and simplifies rollback processes to maintain system integrity.

Addressing Challenges and Considerations

Despite the promising advancements, transitioning to these new paradigms poses challenges, particularly for teams accustomed to traditional infrastructure management practices. The adoption of serverless models and the integration of AI/ML workflows demand a shift in mindset and the acquisition of new skills. Moreover, the expansion into edge computing introduces complexities in managing distributed environments securely and efficiently.

The Vibrant Future of Kubernetes

As we look towards the future, Kubernetes emerges as a pivotal force in the evolution of cloud-native development, serverless computing, edge computing, and the integration of AI and ML workflows. Its ability to adapt and facilitate these cutting-edge technologies positions Kubernetes as a critical enabler of innovation and efficiency. For organizations seeking to navigate this evolving landscape, partnering with experts who understand the intricacies of Kubernetes can unlock unprecedented value, driving enhanced performance, scalability, and return on investment in containerized environments.

When it comes to Kubernetes adoption and optimization, Cloudride stands as a trusted partner. We are committed to guiding you through the complexities of the Kubernetes ecosystem, assisting you in maximizing your ROI by enhancing the security and performance of your containers. With Cloudride by your side, navigate the future of Kubernetes with confidence and strategic advantage. Contact us for more information.

tal-helfgott
2024/03
Mar 7, 2024 4:22:22 PM
The Future of Kubernetes: Navigating the Evolving Container Landscape
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes

Mar 7, 2024 4:22:22 PM

The Future of Kubernetes: Navigating the Evolving Container Landscape

As we venture further into the era of containerization, Kubernetes stands at the forefront of a transformative wave, poised to redefine the landscape of cloud-native application development. This evolution is driven by a fusion of emerging trends and technological advancements that promise to...

Transforming Business with Kubernetes and Cloud-Native Technologies

The heightened discussion around containerizing in the AWS cloud ecosystem has now grown enough to make it a signature practice of the contemporary business scene. Fueled by the quest for improved utilization of resources, increased portability, and advanced operational efficiency, companies are tactically modernizing workloads from traditional physical or virtual machines to containerized environments.

The Container Revolution

The swift embrace of container technology is pivotal in reshaping how companies deploy and manage their applications. Containers offer a streamlined approach for businesses to swiftly deploy and scale applications within complex landscapes.

Before the transition to containers, the management of both machine and application lifecycles was intertwined. However, the introduction of containers enabled the separation of application lifecycles from machine management. This separation empowered distinct operation and development teams to work more independently and efficiently.

Kubernetes: The Cornerstone of Container Orchestration

In the midst of the container revolution, Kubernetes became a de-facto standard for container orchestration and set the foundation for a new ecosystem of cloud-native technologies. Developed specifically to complement Kubernetes, tools such as Prometheus for monitoring, Istio for service mesh, and Helm for package management, are integral parts of this ecosystem, enhancing Kubernetes' capabilities for application deployment and management. 

Evolution of Cloud-Native App Lifecycle

Managing applications within containers offers a transformative approach to the application lifecycle, far beyond traditional cloud subscriptions. It centralizes the planning, building, deployment, and execution of cloud-native applications, fostering coordination and efficiency. This dynamic principle continually adapts to emerging tools and practices, ensuring the IT system remains agile and future-proof.

EKS as a Strategic Imperative

Many cloud providers recognize the importance of facilitating a smooth and cost-efficient transition to their cloud services for customers working with Kubernetes. Providing them with tools such as EKS (AWS's Kubernetes as a Service) that streamline this process is essential, supporting their need to navigate the transition into the cloud ecosystem with minimum effort while gaining cluster management features.

Policy-Based User Management for Security Improvement

When utilizing a managed cluster like Amazon EKS, cloud providers enable seamless integration with their services in the most secure manner. For example, EKS integrates with AWS products using IAM services, allowing you to manage permissions at the service level.

Cost-Efficiency: Saving on Investment for Resources

Transferring to a cluster managed on a service like Amazon offers a significant advantage in terms of resource allocation and scalability. With a wide variety of available nodes, you can provision them according to your workloads, optimizing resource usage and minimizing costs. This ensures that your applications utilize precisely the resources they require without overspending, while also providing the flexibility to scale resources up or down as needed to accommodate changing demands.

Hybrid Application Systems with EKS

Kubernetes plays a central role in modern software development by establishing the benchmark for container orchestration. In addition to EKS, AWS offers "EKS Anywhere," enabling cluster management on-premise as well as in the cloud. This unified approach facilitates seamless architecture development in a one centralized location, allowing for smooth management of both on-premise and cloud-based EKS clusters.

What to Expect with Kubernetes in Cloud Deployment

  • Simplified application deployment and management
  • Automation of cloud-based practices for development and deployment
  • Real-time deployment capabilities for increased developer productivity
  • Reduced time and effort spent on service provisioning and configuration
  • Continuous integration and deployment automation for efficient software delivery
  • Innovation and growth opportunities through next-generation software development
  • Multi-cloud portability for increased flexibility and resilience
  • Centralized management for better operational insight and monitoring

 

Our Strategic Edge in Kubernetes Optimization

To sum up, the constantly changing environment of Kubernetes and cloud-native applications needs a strong ally in robust security, speed, and resilience. Cloudride stands as that essential partner, and offers its expertise to optimize Kubernetes for unmatched scalability, agile development, and fast deployment. Contact us for more information and customized solutions.

izchak-oyerbach
2024/02
Feb 26, 2024 3:46:07 PM
Transforming Business with Kubernetes and Cloud-Native Technologies
AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Native, Kubernetes

Feb 26, 2024 3:46:07 PM

Transforming Business with Kubernetes and Cloud-Native Technologies

The heightened discussion around containerizing in the AWS cloud ecosystem has now grown enough to make it a signature practice of the contemporary business scene. Fueled by the quest for improved utilization of resources, increased portability, and advanced operational efficiency, companies are...

10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 1

In an era where cloud computing has become the backbone of modern business operations, mastering cost efficiency in cloud computing is not just a smart strategy, it's an essential survival skill. As businesses increasingly pivot to cloud-based solutions, the ability to effectively manage and reduce expenses can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving financially.

This is the first article in a two-part series where we delve into the art of cost savings on the cloud. Here we will lay the groundwork with the first 5 strategies, and in the next article we will explore 5 more advanced strategies and savings opportunities.

 

Foundational Concepts

The cloud lets you shift from big costs (like data centers and physical servers) to variable expenses, only paying for IT when you use it. Whether you were cloud-native from the start or are just moving to the cloud now, AWS has resources for managing and improving your spend.

More and more businesses that had mostly on-site setups are switching to cloud services. This change has caused a big move from spending money upfront (CapEx) to paying for what they need when they need it in operations costs (OpEx). We've come to a turning point where we need new ways to understand, control and manage IT costs. To master cloud costs, finance and IT leaders must leverage practical strategies: right sizing, pay as you go models and clear budgeting.

 

FinOps Strategies for Cost Mastery

  1. Resource Right-sizing

    A basic method to save money is using cloud resources exactly as needed. This helps control costs by matching the demand with what's needed in reality. This means finding the right type and size of storage for workloads, ensuring efficient operations without spending too much. 

    Regularly examining the cloud instances already in use is also crucial. This includes checking instances already in use and finding ways to remove or reduce provisions without hurting operational efficiency. Consistently monitoring and adjusting their cloud resources allows businesses to achieve real cost savings.

  2. Adoption of a Usage-based Model

    With use-based pricing, IT costs are only incurred when they actually use the products or services. Customers typically receive a bill at the end of their billing cycle, paying for the services even if they didn’t use them, often using a yearly charge model. In contrast, billing based on usage changes according to how many resources are used.

    With AWS, you only pay for the services you take when you use them. You don't need to sign long-term agreements or handle complex permissions. Once you stop using them, there are no extra charges. Using this plan makes it easy to add or remove resources according to your need. This is helpful when your business requirements shift over time. It not only makes things cheaper, but also improves general work processes.

  3. Cost Visibility and Allocation

    Knowing how money is spent on cloud services helps control these costs better. IT managers should implement strong tools and systems that will help their professionals track and learn about their spending habits. Assigning costs to the responsible teams contributes to their sense of ownership over these resources. 

    This approach also motivates teams to explore smarter and more efficient ways to utilize cloud services. By making each team accountable for their cloud spending, it promotes overall cost savings and responsible financial management within the organization.

  4. Budgeting and Forecasting

    With AWS Budgets, you can create spending plans that effectively manage and control both costs and resource usage. If expenses go over the limit, you get an email or SNS notification to help you course correct. This AWS service can help you predict how much you're set to spend, or how many resources you are going to use, allowing you to make unique decisions for reducing cloud waste.

    When budgeting, it’s imperative to match resources with business goals. This keeps cloud costs in check and helps the company reach its goals. By anticipating upcoming cloud expenses, FinOps teams can better optimize resource allocation, prevent surprises and keep a closer watch on their budget.


  5. Improving Financial Governance

    Cloud cost control has climbed to the top of the agenda for many organizations, with 61 percent of cloud users claiming that cost optimization is a priority. Therefore, advocating for and implementing this practice in organizations is an urgent thing to do. Financial management drives responsible cloud spending by leveraging detailed cost analyses, aligning resource allocation with business priorities, and continuously optimizing technical aspects of cloud environments.

    Tighter financial control in the cloud is mission-critical for maximizing ROI and avoiding budget overruns. IT leaders must take proactive steps to establish robust financial controls by implementing spending limits, granular resource allocation policies, and automated cost alerts

    This also involves making rules, putting controls in place, and encouraging a sense of financial responsibility within the business. Good money management in the cloud makes sure costs match big goals and follow set spending rules.

Basic Cloud Cost Efficiency: Key Takeaways

Mitigating the overuse of cloud resources requires a collaborative effort between IT and Finance teams. Financial management strategies in the cloud are highly diverse, often differing substantially from one organization to another and even among various departments within the same company.

At Cloudride, we also specialize in offering bespoke guidance and solutions. Our team of FinOps experts is ready to provide personalized advice and services. Contact us to optimize your cloud expenses and drive your business forward.

nir-peleg
2024/02
Feb 26, 2024 12:38:42 PM
10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 1
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing

Feb 26, 2024 12:38:42 PM

10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 1

In an era where cloud computing has become the backbone of modern business operations, mastering cost efficiency in cloud computing is not just a smart strategy, it's an essential survival skill. As businesses increasingly pivot to cloud-based solutions, the ability to effectively manage and reduce...

IPv6 Adoption & Cost Optimization: Cloudride, Your Key to the Future.

The digital landscape today is highly dynamic, making the need for a robust communication infrastructure more crucial if you want to stay competitive. One of the essential frameworks that support communication infrastructure is the Internet Protocol (IP), a set of standards used to address and route data over the Internet. The IP address is a unique identifier assigned to devices connected to a network, enabling them to send and receive data. 

IPv4 is the most widely used version and has been the backbone of internet addressing. However, due to the depletion of available addresses following massive internet growth, there is an on-going deployment of the newer standard, IPv6. On the heels of IPv4 address exhaustion, many companies and organizations are making the shift to IPv6, which offers unlimited address space, among other benefits.

The Big Update

In light of these developments, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced a new charge for public IPv4 addresses starting February 1, 2024. Up until now, the service provider only charged IPv4 public addresses when not attached to a virtual server within the AWS cloud (EC2 instance). Under the new policy, a fee of $0.005 per hour will apply to all public IPv4 addresses, whether active or not, across all AWS services.

With this new policy, AWS is looking to encourage users to adopt IPv6 into their infrastructure. As an AWS partner, Cloudride aims to be at the forefront of this change, helping our clients adopt the latest IP standard. Cloudride is also helping businesses create effective IPv6 implementation strategies, ensuring a seamless transition from IPv4. Our services aim to mitigate the financial implications of AWS's new charging policy.

Understanding AWS's New IPv4 Charging Policy

AWS's policy change has a global impact, applying to all its services utilizing public IPv4 addresses in all regions. The $0.005/hour charge may seem low, but for large-scale business operations, the cumulative effect is significant. Even for small businesses, it can translate to a considerable increase in monthly expenses, affecting the bottom line. 

The policy change highlights a shift in operational cost dynamics for many businesses. As such, a strategic usage of IP solutions and a reassessment of IT budgets is necessary. Overall, AWS’s new policy highlights the importance of incorporating a FinOps strategy for such developments.

AWS offers a free tier option to cushion the blow despite the push towards an upgrade. This includes 750 hours of free public IPv4 addresses for the first 12 months. This option offers businesses a temporary solution, affording them time to adapt to the policy change and the space to transition to IPv6.

The Push Towards IPv6: An Opportunity for Modernization

IPv6 has a number of notable advantages over IPv4, with scalability being the primary one. IPv6 utilizes 128-bit addresses, allowing for a larger address space with a theoretical 340 undecillion addresses (3.4 by 1038), while IPv4 offers about 4.29 billion (232) unique addresses. IPv6 also provides other technical benefits. IPv6 has enhanced security features, including built-in network layer security. It also facilitates more efficient routing with packet fragmentation. 

In addition, IPv6 has an inherent Quality of Service (QoS) feature that filters and differentiates data packets. This capability allows to prioritize traffic and helps control congestion, bandwidth, and packet loss. Furthermore, network administration becomes easier with IPv6, as it enables stateless address auto-configuration. This grants you better control over your scaling operations, making network resource management much more effective.

The Drive for IPv6 Adoption and Network Modernization

The scarcity and rising acquisition costs of IPv4 addresses is what drove AWS into implementing this new policy. The cloud service provider is pushing its users towards IPv6 to mitigate these costs. AWS states that the policy change seeks to encourage users to re-evaluate their usage of IPv4 addresses and consider the move to IPv6.  

Adopting IPv6 is an important step in future-proofing your network infrastructure. With networking technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, IoT, and M2M (machine-to-machine) communication seeing increased proliferation, IPv6 offers a flexible approach to network communication. 

Future-Proofing and Operational Efficiency with IPv6

All  things considered, upgrading to the latest IP version protects your investment, ensuring your infrastructure is ready for future technological advancements and innovations. Not to mention, avoid time-consuming and costly migrations in the future under time pressure. In addition to being economical, it improves operational efficiencies by laying a foundation for future rolled out improved services.  

Another benefit of IPv6 is enabling devices to update servers continuously which improves performance, reliability, and mobility. As such, collaboration and mobility and services dealing with these issues will be easier to develop and deploy, increasing employee productivity. Lastly, newer devices’ default will be IPv6 by default, allowing you to implement a ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) strategy into your network. 

How Cloudride Can Help

  1. Smooth transition to IPv6

    Cloudride is a leading provider of consultancy and implementation planning services for cloud environments and service providers. Our team comprises experts in cloud platforms, including AWS and Azure and can help formulate and implement a migration roadmap to IPv6.  We work with your in-house IT team to analyze your use cases and evaluate your network capabilities. This helps us determine and plan the most appropriate transition strategy that suits your business demands.


    Cloudride takes over and handles all the technical aspects of the transition to the newer network communication standard. Our cloud engineers are well trained and experienced in cloud architecture and transition technologies. Our expertise ensures a smooth and seamless transition with minimal disruption to your business operations.

     

  2. AWS Cost Optimization with FinOps Services

    AWS’s new IPv4 charges add to your overall cloud expenses. As such, it’s crucial that you reassess your business’s cloud cost management practices to mitigate these and other costs. 


    Cloudride’s FinOps services aim to help you implement best practices regarding budgeting and optimizing your cloud computing costs from both a financial and technical perspective. We work collaboratively with our customers to bring together IT, business, and finance professionals to control cloud expenses. Our FinOps services encompass:
    ☁︎ Reviewing and optimizing cloud deployments
    ☁︎ Monitoring workloads
    ☁︎ Finding and eliminating underutilized or abandoned cloud resources
    ☁︎ Linking cloud costs to business goals 

    We provide best-in-class professional managed services for public cloud platforms, including AWS. The primary focus of our services is security and cost optimization. 

    Our experts employ a variety of tools to conduct comprehensive cost analysis, budgeting, and forecasting. These critical services help optimize your cloud expenditure by identifying key areas where you can make cost savings.

Leveraging Cloudride’s Expertise for Strategic Advantage

As a business or organization, it’s important to carefully plan and execute the migration to IPv6 cost-efficiently with minimum impact on your operations. Enlisting the services of a professional services company is crucial if you seek a successful transition. A strategic partner to advise and guide you on all aspects of the move is an invaluable asset. 

A professional service provider can also help you with ongoing maintenance of a cost-efficient cloud environment once you transition to IPv6. Cloudride specializes in developing and implementing comprehensive cost-saving strategies for our clients.

Start Your IPv6 Journey Now

Overall, deploying IPv6 in your enterprise networks can offer your business a competitive edge, among other operational benefits. AWS’s new charges for public IPv4 addresses necessitate both small and large businesses to accelerate IPv6 adoption and implement a proper cost-management strategy. Professional services can help your business make a successful transition to IPv6 and optimize your cloud computing costs. 

Here is where Cloudride comes in. As a specialist in managed cloud services, we help businesses make hassle-free transitions through tailored migration and technical support. Our FinOps experts also help you navigate cloud cost-management and on-going optimization following the transition.

Feel free to contact Cloudride today and book a meeting with one of our experts. We are looking forward to helping you maximize the efficiency of your network infrastructure and AWS expenditure.

guy-rotem
2024/02
Feb 14, 2024 10:54:36 AM
IPv6 Adoption & Cost Optimization: Cloudride, Your Key to the Future.
Cloud Security, AWS, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing, Security

Feb 14, 2024 10:54:36 AM

IPv6 Adoption & Cost Optimization: Cloudride, Your Key to the Future.

The digital landscape today is highly dynamic, making the need for a robust communication infrastructure more crucial if you want to stay competitive. One of the essential frameworks that support communication infrastructure is the Internet Protocol (IP), a set of standards used to address and...

Project Nimbus Israel: Reforming Public Sector with Cloud Innovation

The technological evolution in the public sector varies significantly from one country to another. Some countries have made substantial investments in technological modernization and transformation, and have well-developed digital infrastructure in their public sectors. These countries often prioritize digitization  initiatives, employ advanced IT systems, and leverage cloud services to enhance government operations, improve civic-oriented services, and increase transparency and efficiency.

In  Israel, there is a significant disconnect between its reputation as the start-up nation celebrated for innovation, and the untapped potential for further technological improvement of citizen services. Despite Israel's remarkable achievements in cutting-edge technology development and its flourishing high-tech industry, a noticeable gap where the public sector remains shrouded in the shadows, yearning for the transformative touch of technological advancement.

Israel is currently undertaking initiatives to address these challenges. However, before delving into these efforts, we first spotlight the key obstacles that the public sector often encounters.
 

Israeli Public Sector's Main Challenges

  1. Security Concerns

    Israel's geopolitical reality exposes it to constant cyber threats and a wide range of security challenges. These cyberattacks, targeting critical infrastructure, jeopardize citizens' sensitive data and pose major concerns about the reliability and resilience of government systems. These issues raise not only cybersecurity issues, but also privacy concerns, underscoring the need for immediate action. Proactive defense measures are urgently needed to shield government systems, secure vital information, and ensure uninterrupted everyday life.

     

  2. Legacy Applications

    The public sector heavily relies on outdated and legacy IT applications, which were developed years ago and struggle to meet modern governance demands. These systems are inefficient, costly to maintain, and pose security risks due to the lack of updates. It’s crucial to modernize these applications to improve efficiency, reduce operational costs, and enhance security. They need to be aligned with current standards and designed with continuous improvement in mind, adaptable to evolving demands.

  3. Outdated Codes

    Many government systems still operate using outdated and obsolete codebases, leading to slow system performance. This hinders the system’s ability to operate efficiently and responsively, harming the user experience, therefore compelling individuals to spend valuable time by physically visiting offices when they could potentially manage these processes online from the comfort of their home. Just as outdated apps require updates, modernizing these codebases is essential to align with evolving requirements, security standards, and technological advancements.

  4. Lack of Data Accessibility

    Government offices are impaired by isolated data silos and ineffective sharing mechanisms, and therefore struggle to collaborate in an effective manner. This lack of data accessibility directly affects the public sector’s ability to make informed, data-driven decisions. To address this problem and enhance efficiency and coordination among government entities, it’s imperative to break down the existing bureaucratic gridlock and establish more efficient data-sharing practices. Effective data sharing can lead to better policy making, streamlined public services, and better, information-led decision-making processes.

  5. Regulatory Environment

    The regulatory environment in Israel is often stuck in traditional timeframes that have not been conducive to fostering innovation. Some regulations might block innovative companies from entering certain markets or make it difficult for existing competitors to provide services and products that are based on innovative technologies. In addition, traditional regulatory processes can take years, while startups have the ability to develop into global companies within months. This might stall and even prevent innovative technologies from thriving in the market

     

Let’s Talk Resiliency

If we’re looking at the security concerns and the lack of reliability of public sector systems, these must be addressed by prioritizing resiliency. Continued use of redundancy and failover mechanisms can mitigate the impact of above mentioned cyber threats and security challenges. By establishing resilient infrastructure, the public sector can safeguard critical systems and ensure they remain accessible and functional, even in adverse situations. This approach not only safeguards sensitive data but also ensures uninterrupted essential services, meeting citizens' needs and expectations.

 

Let’s Talk Cost Savings

While  it might appear counterintuitive, modernizing legacy applications and outdated codebases can actually result in substantial cost savings for the public sector. By migrating to more efficient and updated systems, the public sector can reduce significant maintenance expenses and improve the overall operational efficiency. Another benefit of this is efficient resource utilization and streamlined processes, which lead to fewer costly incidents. These cost savings enable better allocation of resources to essential public sector initiatives, ultimately benefiting citizens and governance.

 

Let’s Talk Data Security

Enhancing  data security is paramount in addressing the vast majority of challenges faced by the Israeli public sector. For the public sector to protect its sensitive information from cyber threats and breaches, it’s crucial to adopt robust encryption methods, access controls, and regular security updates. Data encryption ensures that even if a security breach occurs, the data remains confidential and secure. Implementing strict security measures goes hand in hand with privacy concerns and instills trust among citizens, assuring them that their information is safe and handled with care.

 

Let’s Talk Cloud-Native

Transitioning to cloud-native technologies aligns seamlessly with addressing these challenges. Cloud-native solutions offer agility, scalability, and flexibility, enabling the public sector to respond swiftly to evolving governance demands. Moreover, they provide automated updates and maintenance, reducing the burden on IT teams. Embracing cloud-native principles not only improves system performance but also enhances the user experience, enabling citizens to conveniently access public sector services online. This shift ensures that public sector operations align with modern standards and cater to the evolving needs of the Israeli population.

 

Let's Talk Cloud Migrations

  • Why?

    Migrating to cloud-based infrastructure is a strategic necessity for the Israeli public sector. This transition allows government entities to break free from the constraints of old, slow legacy systems and embrace modern technologies, aligning with the evolving needs of both citizens and governance. Cloud adoption ensures that public sector operations run in a more fast and efficient manner, but most importantly remain resilient in the face of cyber threats and security challenges. It also offers substantial cost savings, which can be redirected towards essential public initiatives, ultimately benefiting the population.

  • How?

    The process of migrating to the cloud involves a well-thought-out strategy. Public sector organizations need to assess their existing infrastructure, identify critical workloads, and select suitable cloud solutions. It's essential to prioritize data security during migration by implementing robust best practices based guardrails. Moreover, leveraging cloud-native technologies and workflows, simplifies the transition, providing agility, scalability, and maintenance. Collaborating with experienced cloud service providers can streamline the migration process, ensuring a smooth and efficient shift to the cloud.

 

Let’s Talk Accumulated Knowledge Ramp-Up

As the Israeli public sector embarks on its journey of modernization and migration to the cloud, an essential aspect is the accumulation of knowledge and expertise. Government agencies must invest in training and upskilling their workforce, not only to effectively leverage cloud-native technologies but also to create employment opportunities for technical experts within the public sector. This knowledge ramp-up not only ensures better job security for government employees but also strengthens the workforce's overall skill set.

This investment equips professionals to harness the full potential of the cloud, optimize system performance, enhance data security, and deliver citizen-centric services efficiently. By prioritizing knowledge accumulation and workforce development, the public sector can navigate the complexities of cloud adoption successfully while contributing to job growth and stability in the technological domain.

 

Nimbus: Empowering Israel's Public Sector with a Digital Upgrade

Project Nimbus, is a strategic cloud computing initiative undertaken by the Israeli government and its military. Launched in April 2019, this project aims to provide comprehensive cloud solutions for the government, defense establishment, and various other entities. It involves the establishment of secure local cloud sites within Israel's borders, emphasizing stringent security protocols to safeguard sensitive information.

The Nimbus Tender marks a pivotal moment in Israel's technology landscape, signifying the nation's commitment to cloud-based infrastructure and emphasizing the importance of data residency for security. This shift aligns with the government's cloud migration strategy and showcases a growing willingness among Israelis to entrust their data to external cloud providers, fostering investments from tech giants like AWS and Google in local data centers.

Cloudride is proud to serve as a trusted provider for the Nimbus Tender, offering a comprehensive range of services to support the Israeli public sector’s transition to the AWS public cloud. Our expertise encompasses consulting for cloud migration, modernization, and environment establishment within AWS, CI/CD and XOps implementation, and financial optimization (FinOps) to ensure cost-efficiency. To embark on a successful cloud journey and drive your office's digital transformation, contact us today  to explore how we can assist your organization.

uti-teva
2024/01
Jan 23, 2024 4:06:48 PM
Project Nimbus Israel: Reforming Public Sector with Cloud Innovation
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Healthcare, Education, Cloud Computing, WAF

Jan 23, 2024 4:06:48 PM

Project Nimbus Israel: Reforming Public Sector with Cloud Innovation

The technological evolution in the public sector varies significantly from one country to another. Some countries have made substantial investments in technological modernization and transformation, and have well-developed digital infrastructure in their public sectors. These countries often...

10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 2

In our previous article, we explored fundamental concepts like right-sizing, pay-as-you-go models, cost allocation, and resource budgeting — all critical for effective cloud cost management. Now, in this second part of our series, we're taking a step further into the realm of advanced strategies, aiming to help you maximize your cloud savings even more.

Linking cloud costs to business goals lets companies manage their money based on how much profit they're getting back. It also lets companies track how cost increases and savings affect their business. Understanding this crucial link between expenditure and outcomes sets the stage for a deeper exploration. With that foundational knowledge in place, let's look at advanced strategies that can optimize your cloud savings even more.

 

Advanced Strategies for Financial Agility

  1. Commitment Discounts

    Commitment discounts, known as CUDs, present valuable cost-saving options in enterprise cloud plans. By committing to long-term usage, businesses can achieve substantial savings on VM instances and computing resources. These discounts are available when you agree to use a specific amount of resources over a set period, offering more affordable rates. They are particularly beneficial for operations that consistently require substantial resources. 

    Choosing Reserved Instances, simplifies the prediction of future costs, thereby streamlining the budgeting process. This approach allows you to align your cloud spend with actual usage needs, ensuring that you are capitalizing on the full benefits of CUD deals. If your in-house resources are limited in this area, partnering with a company that specializes in analyzing usage trends, like Cloudride, can provide crucial support and insights.

  2. Automating Cost Optimization

    Automation can be used in different ways to help lower cloud costs. The best tools are AWS Instance Scheduler, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Anomaly Detector for cost monitoring. Automation assists in tasks such as analyzing costs, forecasting budgets, and tracking expenses in real-time, offering a more streamlined approach to financial management.

    Another advantage of automation is its ability to provide deeper insights for cloud cost savings. Many tools are equipped to respond automatically under certain conditions, helping teams to maintain their budgets and achieve their financial objectives. This helps teams stay within budget and on track for success. With these tools, you can spot and terminate resource wastage in a matter of a few clicks, enhancing overall efficiency. 

    Implementing automation by utilizing native cloud capabilities has been shown to significantly reduce costs, sometimes by as much as 40%. This approach not only leads to better resource allocation but also improves scalability and the resilience of applications, demonstrating a clear impact on operational success.

  3. Enterprise Agreement Negotiation

    Talk to your provider. Focus on your specific needs and the desire for a lasting partnership. The agreement for cloud services needs to include assurances regarding price increases. Ideally, you should be able to secure your costs and fees if you sign a multi-year deal.  If that's not feasible, at least aim for a predetermined cap on potential price increases.

    AWS presents the Amazon Web Services Enterprise Discount Program (AWS EDP), a program designed for financial savings tailored for substantial business cloud users committed to long-term usage. This program offers straightforward discounts on AWS costs, making it a good choice for businesses trying to reduce their cloud expenses.  

    Trough the AWS EDP, AWS fosters enduring customer relationships. It's designed to benefit consistent, high-volume users over extended periods, aligning long-term usage with financial incentives.

  4. Optimization of Data Transfer and Storage

    A materialized view can help reduce the amount of data transferred between your data warehouse and reporting layers. This happens as a result of computing queries being preprocessed in advance. Materialized views are very helpful in expediting frequent and repeatable queries. Don't forget to archive infrequently used data and reduce its size using compression methods for more efficient storage.

    By staying ready and flexible, you ensure that the costs of data transfer and storage remain low. This approach is vital for cost-efficient cloud management. In the end, this not only helps save money but also keeps things running smoothly. 


  5. Leveraging Spot Instances

    Spot instances on EC2 allow you to bid for extra, unused capacity, allowing workloads to run at prices often substantially lower than the standard spot cost. This pricing advantage lasts until your bid surpasses the current rate. Spot instances can save considerable amounts of money compared to On-Demand instances — usually by over 90%. This approach helps you use the cloud more efficiently and cost-effectively.

    Nevertheless, it’s essential to understand that Spot Instances have a trade-off - they may not always be there. They are ideal for flexible tasks that can tolerate occasional interruptions, and offer a great way to save money on idle EC2s. To maximize cost savings with Spot Instances, it's crucial to understand the specific nature of your workloads and their tolerance levels. This strategic approach helps in optimizing cloud resources while keeping expenses in check.

Further Insights and Assistance

Controlling cloud resource usage effectively demands teamwork between IT professionals and Finance departments, as previously mentioned. Strategies for managing cloud finances can be distinct across different organizations and may even vary within departments of the same company. We trust that these two articles have offered valuable guidance and actionable strategies, empowering you to optimize your cloud investments and financial management.

For tailored support and expert guidance tailored to your unique situation, Cloudride is here to assist. Our team of FinOps experts specializes in helping you navigate cloud cost control and maximize the efficiency of your cloud operations. Contact us today  to help you optimize your business cloud expenses.

nir-peleg
2024/01
Jan 17, 2024 3:15:13 PM
10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 2
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing

Jan 17, 2024 3:15:13 PM

10 Cloud Cost-Saving Strategies, Part 2

In our previous article, we explored fundamental concepts like right-sizing, pay-as-you-go models, cost allocation, and resource budgeting — all critical for effective cloud cost management. Now, in this second part of our series, we're taking a step further into the realm of advanced strategies,...

Secure Your Infrastructure: Working Hybrid

In today’s changing digital landscape, firms are increasingly migrating to hybrid architectures to harness the infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity in the cloud. This cloud model offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-savings that are second to none.

However, as firms face labor disruptions with a considerable number of IT personnel called up for army reserve duty, maintaining the security and efficiency of hybrid models has become a critical matter. Cloudride, in conjunction with AWS, steps in as your trustworthy partner to provide innovative solutions for navigating this complex labyrinth.

 

Pioneering Cloud Agility Practices for DR and Backup

During crises, such as the current war between Israel and Gaza, firms require cloud agility for their applications to adapt and respond quickly to changing situations. Cloudride’s Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) and Cloud Backup powered by AWS ensure smooth data replication, backup, and recovery across environments, especially when most personnel are away on military duties.

In an ever-changing digital environment, cloud agility stands as a cornerstone for business resilience and adaptability. Cloudride’s approach to Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) and Cloud Backup, empowered by AWS technologies, exemplifies the strategic advantage of robust cloud infrastructure. With these services, businesses can ensure seamless data replication, backup, and recovery across diverse environments, proving invaluable in times of unforeseen disruptions. The ability to swiftly adapt to various challenges, be they cyber threats, natural disasters, a pandemic, war, or sudden market shifts, is not just a convenience but a necessity in modern business operations.

Cloudride's cloud solutions enable companies to maintain continuity, support remote workforces, and safeguard critical data with flexibility and scalability. This agility is particularly crucial in maintaining uninterrupted operations and providing a competitive edge in a world where change is the only constant.

 

Navigating Compliance in Hybrid Cloud Environments

Businesses operating in hybrid environments must comply with all existing regulatory requirements or risk legal action against them. Cloudride’s solutions comply with regulations such as the 100 km rule, Multi-Availability Zone (Multi-AZ) redundancy, and international data protection laws like GDPR. For instance, the EU’s GDPR requires all data collected on citizens to be stored within the Eurozone under the governance of European privacy law.

Moreover, our solutions comply with industry-specific regulations like ITAR, HIPAA, SOC, and many others to guarantee your business achieves and maintains a reputation as a trustworthy data custodian. Effective data compliance can also reduce the time and money businesses spend finding, correcting, and replacing data.

 

Seamless Integration for Efficient Workplace Transition

Transitioning to a hybrid architecture shouldn’t be disruptive. However, as the current situation threatens to spill into Lebanon, enterprises might face a shortage of DevOps, IT, and security teams due to the human resource gap caused by the conflict.

Cloudride can work with your current tools to give your employees an easier learning curve. This flexibility facilitates uninterrupted productivity and a smooth hybrid migration, even during a crisis.

 

Strategic Scalability: Managing Costs in Hybrid Systems

Cost management is a critical element of hybrid infrastructure. A recent study by Ernst & Young shows that 57% of firms have already exceeded their cloud budgets for this year. Many companies have been caught unaware when cloud costs spike because they lack a well-articulated management strategy.

That's why Cloudride has strategically partnered with AWS to offer industry-leading availability, durability, security, performance, and unlimited scalability, enabling its customers to pay only for the required storage. This collaboration brings forth a unique blend of Cloudride’s expertise and AWS’s renowned infrastructure capabilities, ensuring that businesses can scale their operations seamlessly while maintaining stringent cost controls and benefiting from top-tier cloud services.

In addition, during critical moments, such as spontaneous traffic surges or increased computational requirements, the speedy launch of EC2 instances becomes possible. This means firms can access their resources precisely during such critical moments. With this agility and responsiveness, businesses can swiftly adapt to changing demands, ensuring continuous operations and the ability to handle unexpected challenges effectively.

 

Resource Management: Achieving Optimal Balance in Hybrid Setups

Managing resources in a hybrid environment is a complex task due to the intricacies involved in orchestrating and aligning resources from various sources. This complexity can often lead to inefficiencies and underutilization of resources, making it challenging for organizations to achieve optimal performance and cost-effectiveness in their IT infrastructure.

Recognizing these challenges, Cloudride offers specialized services to assist organizations in right-sizing their infrastructure and fine-tuning their architectural framework. Our approach focuses on aligning your infrastructure with your business objectives, ensuring that every component is scaled appropriately to meet your needs. This strategic alignment enables us to help you achieve your Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), ensuring that your organization is prepared and resilient in the face of unexpected disruptions.

 

Advancing with Automation

The evolving landscape of work has seen a notable shift towards hybrid models, as reflected in recent statistics from the Office of National Statistics. With fewer employees on-site and an increase in hybrid work arrangements, the demand for advanced cloud automation and remote support tools has become more prominent. Companies looking to enhance efficiency are now recognizing the necessity to integrate automation within their hybrid work strategies.

Cloudride empowers organizations with comprehensive automation capabilities that facilitate everything from deployment to scaling, liberating them from reliance on specific service providers. This automation not only streamlines processes but also bolsters the reliability and responsiveness of DevOps and IT teams in overseeing hybrid work infrastructures. As the work environment continues to adapt, Cloudride's solutions ensure that companies remain agile and resilient, ready to respond to the dynamic needs of their workforce.

 

The Next Steps

Choosing Cloudride is the 1st step towards a full Cloud Migration for organizations set on fast, incident-free migration to AWS. This move is especially critical if your company lacks an internal team with the required knowledge to handle a move of this scale. Cloudride’s team of DevOps and solution architects will set you up to experience the benefits of the cloud without committing entirely while preparing you for a wholly cloud-native future. Reach out to us for further information and support.

shira-teller
2024/01
Jan 3, 2024 10:47:50 AM
Secure Your Infrastructure: Working Hybrid
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Jan 3, 2024 10:47:50 AM

Secure Your Infrastructure: Working Hybrid

In today’s changing digital landscape, firms are increasingly migrating to hybrid architectures to harness the infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity in the cloud. This cloud model offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-savings that are second to none.

However, as...
Amplify AWS Security with Cloudride: Safeguard Your Infrastructure

As IT and DevOps professionals navigate the complexities of their roles, maintaining the security and functionality of AWS environments is crucial. During times when the demands are high and the challenges seem insurmountable, Cloudride offers reliable solutions to ensure operational stability and enhance security measures.

Here's a comprehensive security guide for your AWS infrastructure under heavy workloads.

 

Embrace Cloud Agility in Disaster Recovery Planning

Efficient Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) hinges on cloud agility, enabling organizations to swiftly respond to emergencies. Including Cloud Agility in DRP fosters infrastructures that are robust and adaptable to unexpected disruptions.

Automated backup and recovery processes are crucial in ensuring data security on the cloud, thereby minimizing disruptions during disasters. Leveraging cloud-based disaster recovery tools is key for quick virtual environment creation and speedy operational restoration.

The agility offered by the cloud allows organizations to scale resources up or down based on immediate needs. This flexibility is essential in handling sudden traffic spikes or data loads, ensuring that the system remains resilient under varying conditions. Implementing cloud-based solutions not only provides data security but also aligns with the goals of business continuity and disaster recovery.

 

Comply with Data Residency Regulations

Data residency regulations, such as the 100 km rule for AWS data centers, are essential for maintaining infrastructure security. Compliance with these regulations is crucial in today's global data landscape.

Partnering with cloud service providers having strategically located data centers ensures adherence to these regulations. Selecting providers that align with your organization's data residency needs is a critical step in securing your AWS environment.

A Multi-AZ (Availability Zone) strategy is effective for compliance and geographical redundancy. This approach involves distributing resources across various data centers within a region, offering a balanced mix of compliance and security. By employing a Multi-AZ strategy, businesses can ensure that their data is not only secure but also accessible with minimal latency, enhancing the overall user experience.

 

Optimize Costs with Smart Storage and On-Demand Computing

The "Pay Only for Storage" approach, using Amazon S3, offers an economical solution for managing cloud resources. This strategy is particularly beneficial for organizations looking to optimize their cloud expenditure.

During critical operations, activating necessary Amazon EC2 instances can significantly enhance security. This selective activation, coupled with dynamic scaling, ensures resource efficiency and improved security management.

Utilizing Amazon S3 for data storage provides a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective solution. It's ideal for a wide range of applications from websites to mobile apps, and from enterprise applications to IoT devices. When paired with the on-demand computing power of EC2 instances, businesses have a flexible, scalable environment that can adapt to changing demands without incurring unnecessary costs.

 

Use DevOps On Demand

Ensuring continuous DevOps processes is crucial, especially when facing staffing challenges. On-demand DevOps teams offer a flexible solution to bolster AWS security and address immediate needs. This scalable model allows for rapid response to security issues and efficient resource utilization. It's particularly effective during periods of high demand or when in-house teams are stretched thin.

Automated and standardized procedures play a vital role in maintaining consistent operations and safeguarding against security gaps. This approach reduces reliance on specific personnel and standardizes critical processes like deployments and configurations.

DevOps on Demand provides a flexible solution to manage workloads effectively. This approach allows businesses to respond to development needs and security concerns promptly. With expertise in various AWS services and tools, on-demand teams can implement solutions quickly, ensuring that security and operational efficiency are not compromised.

 

Right Sizing and Correct Architecture

Appropriate scaling and architecture design are key to effective disaster recovery. Aligning infrastructure with RTOs and RPOs ensures that the system is prepared for various scenarios.

Right-sizing is about matching infrastructure to the actual workload. This approach minimizes unnecessary vulnerabilities and optimizes resource utilization. Choosing the correct architecture enhances risk response and operational agility.

Selecting the right architecture involves understanding the specific needs of the application and the business. It's about balancing cost, performance, and security to create an environment that supports the organization's objectives. Whether it's leveraging serverless architectures for cost efficiency or deploying containerized applications for scalability, the right architectural choices can significantly impact the effectiveness of the AWS environment.

 

Automation Tools

Automated incident response, facilitated by cloud-native technology, allows for swift action against security incidents. This rapid response capability is essential for minimizing potential damage.

Regular security audits and compliance checks, integrated into automated workflows, ensure ongoing adherence to security standards. This continuous monitoring is critical for maintaining a secure and compliant AWS environment.

Automation tools such as AWS CloudFormation and AWS Config enable businesses to manage their resources efficiently. These tools provide a way to define and deploy infrastructure as code, ensuring that the environment is reproducible and consistent. They also offer visibility into the configuration and changes, helping maintain compliance and adherence to security policies. By automating the deployment and management processes, organizations can significantly reduce the likelihood of human error, which is often a major factor in security breaches.

 

Improve Instance Availability with Geo-Distribution

AWS's global data center network significantly enhances the availability of instances. By designing an AWS architecture that utilizes geo-distribution across multiple availability zones, organizations can achieve greater redundancy and fault tolerance.

In  instances of zone failure, having a geo-distributed setup ensures that workloads can be quickly shifted to operational zones, thus maintaining continuous service availability. This approach is particularly important for mission-critical applications where downtime can have significant business impacts. Geo-distribution not only provides a strong security posture but also ensures that services remain resilient in the face of regional disruptions.

 

Moving Forward

In an era where digital security is crucial, strengthening AWS environments is key for organizations. Adopting strategies that encompass cloud agility, compliance, cost-efficiency, on-demand DevOps, and advanced automation is vital for maintaining robust, secure operations.

Cloudride is at the forefront of delivering solutions and services to enhance AWS security and operational efficiency. Our expertise is tailored to guide businesses towards a secure, efficient future in cloud computing. Reach out to us for support in elevating the security of your AWS infrastructure.

shira-teller
2023/12
Dec 26, 2023 4:00:00 PM
Amplify AWS Security with Cloudride: Safeguard Your Infrastructure
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Dec 26, 2023 4:00:00 PM

Amplify AWS Security with Cloudride: Safeguard Your Infrastructure

As IT and DevOps professionals navigate the complexities of their roles, maintaining the security and functionality of AWS environments is crucial. During times when the demands are high and the challenges seem insurmountable, Cloudride offers reliable solutions to ensure operational stability and...

Secure Your Infrastructure: Blend of Public Cloud & On-Prem Solutions

Leveraging technical expertise to integrate public cloud services into on-premise infrastructure remains essential for enhancing overall security. The intersection of public cloud and on-premise infrastructure offers increased scaling agility and cost-effectiveness, allowing organizations to seamlessly bridge the gap between their existing environment and the boundless potential of the cloud.

Join us in exploring an understanding of hybrid cloud solutions that provides the necessary tools for success in the evolving digital landscape.

 

Disaster Preparedness

The essence of modern disaster readiness, commonly referred to as Disaster Recovery (DR), lies in cloud agility. This approach allows organizations to rapidly respond to evolving cyber challenges. IT teams, leveraging the public cloud's built-in auto-scaling and deployment capabilities, can proactively address potential disruptions. Such adaptability not only improves incident management but also transforms it into actionable strategies to effectively tackle new challenges.

Easy data backups in the cloud ensure operational continuity, even during on-premise failures. The hybrid model, which combines cloud and on-premise solutions, facilitates continuous data synchronization and backup, significantly reducing the risk of concurrent data loss. In high-load scenarios, cloud-based disaster recovery solutions offer rapid scalability, ensuring efficient utilization of resources and maintaining system resilience.

 

Data Residency Requirements

Utilizing the localized presence of public cloud data centers enables enterprises to store data in compliance with local regulations. This strategy not only prevents legal complications but also aligns with broader data management goals.

Carefully selecting regionally aligned cloud data centers is crucial for proper compliance with AWS’s data residency requirement of 100 km while integrating on-premises infrastructure with public cloud solutions. This consideration ensures adherence to specific regional regulatory requirements and enhances the overall effectiveness of the hybrid cloud strategy.

AWS outsourcing simplifies integration and compliance for on-premises exchange. AWS Local Zones or Wavelength provide ultra-low latency and proximity to end-users concerning data privacy laws. Additionally, AWS Global Accelerator enhances network traffic routing by directing requests within a specified range.

 

Cost Efficiency and Security

Cloud on-demand is the epitome of resource optimization, blending security with cost-effectiveness. By utilizing only what is necessary, organizations can save costs and minimize their attack surface. Scalable resources on demand bolster company security and encourage responsible operation.

Businesses benefit from cloud storage solutions like Amazon S3, paying only for the storage they use, thereby reducing expenses. This on-demand model minimizes initial costs and offers flexibility in managing dynamic storage needs.

Rapid infrastructure scalability is achievable with on-demand EC2 instances during critical events. This approach is more cost-effective and agile compared to traditional infrastructure scaling, enhancing security against potential risks of over-provisioning.

 

Precision in RTO/RPO

AWS's flexible control over backups and recovery points helps prevent significant data loss during disruptions. This capability ensures swift response and recovery, aligning with stringent recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) of many organizations.

Cloud redundancy and failovers enhance the accuracy of these objectives. Additionally, cloud-native security tools improve threat detection and mitigation, offering comprehensive end-to-end security. The combination of on-premise and public cloud resources delivers sophisticated IT security, optimizing RTO/RPO reliability.

 

Strengthening Data Availability and Redundancy

Public cloud solutions enhance on-prem infrastructure by leveraging geolocation to increase redundancy. The global distribution of cloud data centers supports disaster recovery through geodiversity. Distributing data across multiple sites bolsters resistance to regional threats and cybersecurity.

The redundancy capacities of the cloud, including automatic failover and backup services, ensure secure and available data. Geographic dispersion of cloud resources enables organizations to mitigate local failures and outages. The strategic combination of geo and disaster recovery locations enhances risk management, creating a robust synergy between on-premises and cloud infrastructure.

 

Hybrid as a Gateway to Cloud Migrations

For organizations deeply rooted in on-premises setups, adopting a hybrid approach is an effective way to enhance IT security. This method allows for a gradual, staged migration of workloads, ensuring proper safeguards during integration. 

Public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), offer enhanced security features, including IAM, encryption, and threat detection, contributing to an overall defense strategy. By commencing with less critical workloads, you can confidently learn the ropes of cloud security in a controlled environment, building trust before migrating core data. This iterative approach ensures continuous security improvement while mitigating compliance challenges through manageable steps.

Iterative security improvements ensure compliance with evolving requirements and address specific challenges of on-prem infrastructure through a staged approach.   

 

What's Next?

As organizations increasingly recognize the need to fortify their predominantly on-premise infrastructures, Cloudride stands as a trusted ally in this transition. Our expertise lies in seamlessly integrating public cloud solutions into existing on-premise setups, thereby enhancing security and operational efficiency. We offer customized solutions that cater specifically to the unique challenges of on-premise environments.

Reach out to us to discover how we can help bolster the resilience and security of your infrastructure with our specialized hybrid cloud approach.

shira-teller
2023/12
Dec 13, 2023 3:44:30 PM
Secure Your Infrastructure: Blend of Public Cloud & On-Prem Solutions
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery

Dec 13, 2023 3:44:30 PM

Secure Your Infrastructure: Blend of Public Cloud & On-Prem Solutions

Leveraging technical expertise to integrate public cloud services into on-premise infrastructure remains essential for enhancing overall security. The intersection of public cloud and on-premise infrastructure offers increased scaling agility and cost-effectiveness, allowing organizations to...

Cloud Migration 101: How to Troubleshoot & Avoid Common Errors

Statistics show an ongoing surge in cloud migration in recent years. Public clouds allow the deployment of cutting-edge technologies bundled with several cost-saving solutions. However, to utilize the advantages of the cloud, it is critical to build the migration process from the ground up, rethink the fundamentals and open yourselves for some new doctrines. 

Let us dive deep into some of the most common mistakes and miss-usages of the platform, analyze the errors and try to offer alternatives which may help to perform the cloud migration more smoothly.

 

What's In, What's Out and How

A cloud migration process should start with a discovery session to flag the organizations’ current workloads and a decision as to what should actually be migrated and what should be dropped. One of AWS’ best practices revolves around the 7 R’s principle: Refactor, Replatform, Repurchase, Rehost, Relocate, Retain, and Retire.

Building your strategy around the 7 R’s doctrine allows achieving an optimal architecture and avoiding inefficiencies costs wise.


  • Refactor: Modifying and improving the application to leverage cloud capabilities fully.
  • Replatform: Making minor changes to use cloud efficiencies, but not fully redesigning the app.
  • Repurchase: Switching to a different product, usually a cloud-native service.
  • Rehost: "Lift and shift" approach, moving applications to the cloud as they are.
  • Relocate: Moving resources to a cloud provider's infrastructure with minimal changes.
  • Retain: Keeping some applications in the current environment due to various constraints.
  • Retire: Eliminating unnecessary applications to streamline and focus the migration.

AWS Migration Strategies - Mobilise Cloud

 

Starting with Sensitive Data

You may be too eager to take your sensitive data to the cloud, stripping it off your local servers quickly. That’s a mistake. Even if there’s imminent risk, a hasty migration of sensitive data could lead to bigger problems. 

The first batch of data shifted to the cloud environment is like a guinea pig.  Even experts understand that anything could go wrong. You want to start with less critical data so that if an issue occurs, necessary data won’t be lost. You can also anonymize a small dataset for a PoC. 

 

Speeding the Migration Process

Many IT people mistake enterprise migration for the simple process of shifting to a new server. It's more complicated than that. A Migration leader should understand that the shift is a multi-step process that involves many activities and milestones.

It is crucial to understand the type of migration we are undertaking — specifically, which of the 7 R's we are utilizing in this migration

It would be ideal to start the migration with less critical apps, and gradually move mission-critical apps and workloads. Usually it would be ideal to start a “lift & shift” migration to the cloud and then start a refactor phase after the application was transferred, as it is simpler to change an app once it was moved to the cloud due to vertical growth. You can then figure out whether to refactor some applications. Doing the steps in phases can help you figure out ways to mitigate risk and track and fix issues.

Speeding the Migration Process

 

Underestimate Costs

Companies must understand cloud migration costs before moving. Making radical cost management changes during the migration often doesn’t bode well for the project's outcomes. 

As in any other IT project, there are a number of factors to be considered such as staff training, bandwidth required for the initial sync and later - cost optimization.
Budget governance is always an elephant in the room, but with the required knowledge, you’ll be able to build the path for a successful cloud journey.

 

Data Security

Data security always comes up when first thinking of cloud migration - can we protect our data? Can we build a BCP/DRP when we talk about the cloud?

Obviously the short answer is yes… the long answer is that you probably use cloud services in some of your most intimate corporate services such as emails, data sync & share, etc.

All regulations and requirements can be implemented over the cloud. It is important to pre-build your cloud architecture to align with regulatory demands such as GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC. Solutions and architectural best practices for these regulations are publicly available to help in this process.

 

Forgetting the Network

It's a mistake to think only about the hardware and software and forget the network during cloud migration. The network is important because it facilitates the data migration, your day-to-day cloud experience and data security. For a successful cloud migration, you must optimize the network that will allow you to access all apps and data after the migration. It must be secure and maintain high-performance to ensure a smooth transfer.

Engage with your teams and experts to determine security, accessibility, and scalability needs. It would be best to analyze current network performance and vulnerabilities before jumping in with both feet.

 

Inefficient Testing

Testing the cloud infrastructure for security stability, performance, scalability, interoperability etc., will allow a better project delivery. A correct testing plan will help you avoid mistakes that can create an issue with the planned resources for the project. 

After cloud migration, applications may require reconfiguration to operate smoothly. Additionally, as some team members might not be familiar with all the new features, thorough testing is essential to ensure seamless service functionality.

 

Not Training Staff

Some of the risks associated with untrained employees during the migration process include accidental data leaks and misconfigurations.

But keep in mind that migration training is not a single-day event. You must continually upskill and reskill your teams on cloud security, performance, and cloud capabilities. Document new SOPs for them and set best practices that align with your goals for the migration.   

 

Get in Touch

Cloudride is committed to helping enterprises move to the cloud seamlessly.  We will help you cut costs, improve migration security, and maximize the business value of the cloud. Our team is consisted of migration experts who are also qualified AWS partners. Contact us to request a consultation.

ronen-amity
2023/12
Dec 4, 2023 3:04:11 PM
Cloud Migration 101: How to Troubleshoot & Avoid Common Errors
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Dec 4, 2023 3:04:11 PM

Cloud Migration 101: How to Troubleshoot & Avoid Common Errors

Statistics show an ongoing surge in cloud migration in recent years. Public clouds allow the deployment of cutting-edge technologies bundled with several cost-saving solutions. However, to utilize the advantages of the cloud, it is critical to build the migration process from the ground up, rethink...

AWS Partner Cloudride’s Strategic Guide to Cloud Migration 101

Businesses can choose between a private cloud and public cloud strategies. The choice largely depends on factors such as the specific applications, allocated budget, business needs, and team expertise.

The public cloud grants you access to a wide-range of resources such as storage, infrastructure and servers. The provider operating the physical hardware and offers it to companies based on their needs. Amazon Web Services is the most popular public cloud vendor to date, offering the worlds’ most reliable, flexible and secure public cloud infrastructure alongside the best support led by the “AWS Customer Obsession” strategy.

 

The Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud

Here are some of the many benefits shifting to a public cloud may hold: 

Driving Innovation

One of the greatest advantages of starting the cloud journey is innovation driven by cost savings, resiliency and TCO.

Challenging the traditional IT way-of-thinking, test environments can be launched and dropped in a matter of minutes, allowing true agile, commitment-free experiments and at minimal expense. AWS calls this concept “Failing Fast”.

As a result, you can drive innovation faster without buying the excess compute power needed.


Scalability and Flexibility

Key business outcomes depend on scalability and flexibility.  However, sometimes it's difficult to know whether the business should scale or be agile. Unfortunately, if changes aren’t made at the right time, the business’s performance could be drastically impacted.

The cloud can be a game-changer when it comes to scalability. You can reduce or expand operations quickly without being held down by infrastructure constraints. That means that in the face of supply and demand changes, you can quickly pivot to capitalize on the tide. Because the changes are automated and handled on the provider’s end, all it takes to save or provision additional resources is a few clicks of the button.


Business Governance

Today, companies gather large amounts of data and rely on cloud-based tools to analyze and mine insights from it. These efforts are primary to understanding business processes, forecasting market trends, and influencing customer behaviors.

AWS offers numerous tools allowing data-driven decisions to be made. Utilization of technologies such as Generative AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning have been made accessible for mainstream organization whom previously lacked the ability to adopt a higher form of  Data Analysis.

 

The Benefits of Working with an AWS Partner

Expertise and Cost-Effective Solutions

AWS partners stand out as experts, offering unparalleled expertise in concepts such as cloud database migration. Vetted and verified by Amazon, these partners possess the skills to develop tailored solutions, among them migration strategies that align with specific business needs. They excel in identifying cost-effective solutions for AWS cloud migration, ensuring the efficient allocation of resources. This strategic planning leads to significant cost savings by the end of the migration process, optimizing your investment in cloud technology.


Risk Management and Strategic Business Transformation

Collaborating with these experienced partners also means minimizing risks and avoiding downtime during the migration. Their expertise allows them to skillfully navigate challenges and obstacles, ensuring a seamless transition to the cloud. This partnership is not just about moving to the cloud; it's about transforming your business to leverage the full spectrum of AWS capabilities. This includes enhanced data security, scalability, and agility.

 

Work With Us

Elevate your business with Cloudride’s AWS cloud migration consulting. We will help you leverage the power of the AWS cloud for business, improve data security, and save IT costs. Contact us to learn more.

danny-levran
2023/11
Nov 13, 2023 3:39:19 PM
AWS Partner Cloudride’s Strategic Guide to Cloud Migration 101
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Nov 13, 2023 3:39:19 PM

AWS Partner Cloudride’s Strategic Guide to Cloud Migration 101

Businesses can choose between a private cloud and public cloud strategies. The choice largely depends on factors such as the specific applications, allocated budget, business needs, and team expertise.

The public cloud grants you access to a wide-range of resources such as storage, infrastructure...

Cloud Migration 101: Migration Best Practices and Methodologies

AWS professional service providers have been instrumental in helping companies successfully transition to the cloud. Although each migration case has its own unique requirements, the framework with the minor changes required, will suit every large-scale migration scenario, either at a complete or hybrid migration strategy.

To simplify large-scale application migrations, AWS created, among others, the AWS Migration Acceleration Program to guide their best migration service providers, who have integrated these best practices in their strategies.

 

Pre-Migration Stage

  1. Build a CCoE (Cloud Center of Excellence) team, with selected personas from all sectors within your organization: IT, Data Security, business decision makers and Finance. Have them get acquainted with AWS, cloud concepts and best practices.
    Moving forward, this team will be responsible for your cloud adoption strategy from day one. 

  2. Prepare a cloud governance model assigning key responsibilities: 
    • Ensure the model aligns with your organizations’ security regulations; 
    • Weigh the different pros and cons of various approaches;
    • Seek advice from an AWS partner on the most favorable solutions.

  3. Build an organization-wide training plan for your employees, with a specific learning path and learning curve per persona - this removes fear of the unknown and facilitates a better cloud journey experience.

  4. Chart the best approach to transition your operations to AWS. A migration expert will help you figure out:
    • Processes requiring alteration or renewal
    • Tools beneficial in the cloud
    • Any training to equip your team with the required assets
    • Implementation of services and solutions supporting regulatory requirements over the new cloud environment 
    Considering operational requirements will help keep your focus on the big picture and shape your AWS environment with the company’s overall strategy. 

  5. Create an accurate updated asset inventory to help you set priorities, estimated timeframes and build a cost evaluation for the project. Controlling your information will allow you to set KPIs for the project, the necessary guardrails and even save you consumption costs.

  6. Choose the right partner to assist you along the way. They should have the right technical experience, project management structure and agile methodology. In addition, consider the operational model you plan to implement and task the partner with setting up necessary processes (IaC and CI/CD pipelines). 

 

The Transition Phase

Simplify your cloud transition with a straightforward approach: Score some early victories with data migration and validation to build confidence within your teams. The more familiar they become with the new technology, the faster your stakeholders see the potential the project holds. 

Automation is essential at this stage. Your AWS partner will help you review your existing practices and adapt them to the new environment and to working procedures the automation process would introduce. If automation is not feasible for all aspects, consider which ones can be automated and authorize your team to implement them.

Approach your cloud migration as a modernization process and reconcile your internal processes with it: Use the cloud’s transformative nature to evolve and match stakeholders with this new shift.  

Prioritize managed services wherever possible and delegate mundane tasks to AWS so your your team has the time to focus on what matters - your business.

 

Build an Exit Strategy

Avoid vendor lock-in by preparing a real plan for either a roll back to your current infrastructure environment or to an alternative solution. This will help expediting the process by eliminating common in-house rejections and help you achieve a more resilient Disaster Recovery Plan.

 

Post Cloud Migration

Once you have shifted to the cloud, automate critical processes like provisioning and deployment. This saves time and reduces manual effort while ensuring tasks are completed in a repeatable manner.

Many cloud providers offer tools and services to help you optimize performance and reduce costs. Also, consider using cloud-native technology to maximize the potential of what the cloud provider offers.

Equally important is having an in-house, dedicated support team to help you address the most complex issues and guide you to design and implement cloud infrastructure.

 

Mass Migration Strategies

For effective mass migrations, you may need the help of large teams of experts to develop practical migration tools and to document the progress.

Institute a Cloud Center of Excellence or a Program Management Office to oversee the implementation of all important changes and procedures. Operate with agility to accelerate the process and remember to have a backup for any potential disruptions.

Use a dedicated onboarding process for new team members in the migration process. The process should help you efficiently evaluate, approve tools, and look for patterns during the migration. 

 

Conclusion

Migrating applications to AWS requires the guidance of an AWS Partner who like Cloudride, who are also migration experts. This is because cloud adoption is complex and requires careful planning, education, and collaboration.

Cloudride will guide your organization in every step of the digital migration while keeping your migration in alignment with your organization's objectives and budget. So what are you waiting for? Book a meeting today and experience a smooth and cost-effective digital transformation.

uti-teva
2023/11
Nov 1, 2023 3:11:58 PM
Cloud Migration 101: Migration Best Practices and Methodologies
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Nov 1, 2023 3:11:58 PM

Cloud Migration 101: Migration Best Practices and Methodologies

AWS professional service providers have been instrumental in helping companies successfully transition to the cloud. Although each migration case has its own unique requirements, the framework with the minor changes required, will suit every large-scale migration scenario, either at a complete or...

First Business Cloud Migration: A Strategy Guide by Cloudride

Large cloud migrations can be exhausting, resource-intensive projects, demanding high-touch handling from all compute-related departments such as IT, Data Security, Development, DevOps and Management. Lacking a proper, proven and tech-savvy plan, the project, with all the resources invested, has great chances to fail and crumble in a flash.

Choosing the right partners can be a great hassle if you are an organization set on a quick, incident-free cloud migration to AWS. You would have to filter through large data sets to find the right partner or risk entrusting the wrong people with the future of your business. AWS introduced the different AWS Competency Programs in 2016 to stem this challenge and help you work with people with the right experience and skills in cloud migration.

 

Should You Hire a Cloud Migration Consultant?

AWS partners assist you with your cloud migration. This is especially important if your company lacks the required knowledge to handle a migration project at this magnitude, a team of solution architects and a small army of DevOps at your side. AWS Partners are domain experts in AWS functions and services, giving you the highest value during your cloud migration. 

Prior to to making the critical decision to hire a cloud migration specialist, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is your current team well-resourced to handle the AWS Well-Architected Framework?
  • Does your staff understand the AWS Well-Architected Framework?
  • Do they have prior experience using AWS IaC tools to manage infrastructure as code and automate operations?
  • Does your company feel secure enough to invest the needed funds to migrate to the cloud?
  • Will you need additional funding on top of the AWS offer? 

 

Preparing for an AWS Migration

Cloud migration requires careful planning. The planning stage involves reviewing your existing systems, defining your objectives, and generating a migration approach. 

 

Infrastructure Assessment

A successful AWS migration begins with evaluating a business's on-premises or existing cloud environment. It includes the applications, data infrastructure, security measures, and potential risks. Migration experts who are AWS partners can help you get ready with a checklist of best practices.

 

Map Out Your Cloud Journey

Once you have a clear view of your current environment, build a sweeping migration strategy. It should consider all the important factors, such as downtime tolerance, budgetary constraints, and your specific business objectives.

Your migration expert will help design a complete AWS strategy tailored to your goals and constraints, which will facilitate a smooth migration.

 

Security First

Security is a key element of any enterprise cloud migration in this era of massive data breaches and cyber threats. Your migration to the AWS cloud has to be executed securely and efficiently. The migration expert will help you achieve these objectives by providing the following guardrails:

  • Conducting security assessments to identify and eliminate susceptibilities in your present infrastructure prior to migration to AWS.
  • Implementing AWS's best security protocol practices to protect your cloud. These will include Identity and Access Management (IAM), encryption, and many monitoring tools safeguarding your cloud workloads.
  • Protecting your data on AWS by conforming your migration to industry-specific compliance regulations such as HIPAA, PCI and GDPR.
  • When done correctly, your organization will benefit from threat detection and incident response tools to continuously protect your AWS workloads. 

 

Optimize for AWS

A cloud migration consultant will help you utilize opportunities where applicative modernizations can be achieved, while calculating the risks vs. benefit factors allowing data-driven decisions be made. You'll thus benefit fully from the AWS features and services. Not only will you improve your application's performance and resilience, but also maximize your return of investment.

 

Minimize Disruption

When building a migration strategy, minimal disruption of your enterprise is a priority to be considered. A cloud expert will offer AWS recommended solutions, designed especially for massive migration scenarios to allow smooth, automated processes, reducing downtime and unnecessary resource-investment.

 

Testing and Validation

Testing should be done shortly before the end of the cloud migration process. Your AWS partner will perform an extensive analysis to ensure all data and applications have been successfully migrated and are functioning properly. Your AWS partner will use reliable evaluation protocols to ensure the smooth transition.

 

Post-Migration 

There is still much to do. The completion of your migration is not, by definition, the end of the journey. The cloud expert should provide the means and guidance for ongoing monitoring and optimization services, assist in building a Cloud Center of Excellence, a small, cloud-related decision making team This is important to ensure that your AWS infrastructure remains secure, efficient, and cost-effective to continually meet your business needs.

 

Conclusion

Migrating to AWS is a huge milestone for your business. AWS Partners who are migration experts are indispensable in guaranteeing a secure, efficient, and successful transition. Our expertise at Cloudride, as well as our commitment to maintaining rigid security standards, will greatly benefit your organization. If you’re interested in beginning your cloud journey, please book a consultation meeting with one of our cloud migration champions today

uti-teva
2023/10
Oct 26, 2023 2:31:03 PM
First Business Cloud Migration: A Strategy Guide by Cloudride
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Oct 26, 2023 2:31:03 PM

First Business Cloud Migration: A Strategy Guide by Cloudride

Large cloud migrations can be exhausting, resource-intensive projects, demanding high-touch handling from all compute-related departments such as IT, Data Security, Development, DevOps and Management. Lacking a proper, proven and tech-savvy plan, the project, with all the resources invested, has...

How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure for the Future

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, preparing an IT infrastructure for the future is no longer a luxury — it's a necessity. If you're a CTO, CIO, VP R&D, or other IT leader, staying ahead of the curve is essential.  But with countless options and strategies, where do you start? This guide delves deep, offering expert advice tailored to your advanced understanding.

We'll unravel a step-by-step process to modernize your IT infrastructure, providing actionable tips to enhance efficiency and tackle common pitfalls even seasoned professionals encounter.

 

What Is IT Infrastructure?

IT infrastructure is the brains behind any successful business. It is a cluster of interconnected technologies and services that work together to help the organization keep up with the competition. The type and range of infrastructure may vary according to the organization's resources, operational goals, and other variables. 

 

IT Optimization and Its Role in Today’s Digital Landscape?

Simply put, IT optimization refers to using technology to minimize liability and enhance the agility of your business operations.  If you already have a functional IT infrastructure, optimizing it can make a ton of difference in your business’s success.

  • Optimizing can break down barriers and scale ROI
  • streamline your processes and improve integration
  • enhance scalability and security
  • increase productivity and foster agility and
  • simplify system management while reducing maintenance costs

 

How Can Businesses Go About Optimizing Their IT Infrastructure Effectively?

If you are feeling uncertain about the state of your IT infrastructure, it may be time to upgrade, and here are some best practices to consider when optimizing your infrastructure management.

 

Strengthening Collaboration

As pointed out earlier, optimizing your IT infrastructure is critical to the successful transformation of your business. To make this happen, you need to strengthen business-IT relationships by holding regular meetings, brainstorming sessions, and workshops to share goals, challenges, and insights.

You can also keep up with regular sync-ups to align business goals with IT capabilities, as well as hold cross-training to ensure mutual understanding and create more opportunities in future collaborations.

 

Transitioning from Outdated Systems

Once you have created strong mutual bonds between the business and IT teams, you need to audit your current systems and identify any outdated or unproductive ones. Get your IT team to research the latest solutions and replace your legacy systems with solutions that offer better support and scalability. 

This process could involve upgrading software applications, migrating to newer hardware, or adopting cloud-based systems.

 

Adopt Cloud Systems

Migrating to the cloud and optimizing your cloud infrastructure requires understanding the difference between public, private, and hybrid clouds.  You need to choose a model based on data sensitivity, compliance requirements, and scalability needs. 

For instance, you can choose a private cloud solution if you are dealing with sensitive data and opt for a hybrid model that gives you the flexibility to scale your resources when demand is high.

 

Leverage Automation

Identifying and automating repetitive tasks within IT operations is one of the best ways to improve your organization's efficiency. Mundane tasks such as updates, patch management, and provisioning can easily be automated by your IT team, who deploy automation tools to handle them and free up manpower for more strategic tasks.

 

Build a Robust Architecture

Work with IT architects and engineers to design a flexible, scalable platform that has the capacity to accommodate future trends like AI, edge computing, and IoT. You can also incorporate redundancy into your IT infrastructure to minimize potential downtimes.

 

Troubleshooting and FAQs

How Can Businesses  Avoid High Costs While Using the Cloud?

Businesses can opt for a pay-as-you-go model to ensure they only pay for what they use. This model enables them to review regularly their cloud consumption while adjusting resources as needed to prevent resource shortages.

Why Are My Resources Still Running Even When Not in Use?

Ineffective monitoring can cause resource inefficiency. To limit this problem, you have to integrate tools that offer real-time monitoring and alerts and automate the shutdown of idle resources to save costs. 

 

Conclusion

Optimizing your IT infrastructure isn't just about staying current — it's also about paving the way for innovation, scalability, and efficiency. Cloudride offers public cloud platforms with an emphasis on security and cost optimization.  Book a meeting and let us guide you through the process of optimizing your IT setup. 

shuki-levinovitch
2023/09
Sep 26, 2023 5:10:28 PM
How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure for the Future
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Sep 26, 2023 5:10:28 PM

How to Optimize Your IT Infrastructure for the Future

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, preparing an IT infrastructure for the future is no longer a luxury — it's a necessity. If you're a CTO, CIO, VP R&D, or other IT leader, staying ahead of the curve is essential. But with countless options and strategies, where do you start? This guide...

Pivotal Role of CIOs and CTOs in Cloud Navigation: Cloudride

In the golden age of digital evolution, the weight of modern enterprise rests firmly on the shoulders of CIOs and CTOs. From the cobblestone streets of yesterday to the digital highways of today, technology's trajectory has been nothing short of meteoric. But with this revolution comes an intricate web of choices. How do tech leaders sail these vast cloud seas without losing direction?

This article ventures deep into the role of the CIOs and CTOs in the digital era. By the end, you'll comprehend the indispensability of their positions in cloud strategy and understand why professional guidance, like the services offered by Cloudride, is paramount for a smooth, efficient, and cost-effective digital transformation.

The CIO & CTO Symphony

Cloud computing isn't merely a buzzword—it's the compass guiding modern enterprises toward efficiency, scalability, and innovation. The leaders holding this compass? The CIOs and CTOs.

While CIOs focus on internal tech infrastructure, steering the ship of IT toward meeting organizational goals, CTOs, on the other hand, look outward. They're the visionaries, integrating the latest in tech to elevate the company's offerings. Together, their harmony is essential for a successful cloud strategy.

In many companies, the roles of the CIO and CTO are very distinguishable; let me give an illustration. Recently, a certain company wanted to implement a new cloud-based technology to enhance our customer delivery service. 

The CIO was responsible for seeing the implementation of the technology, while the CTO worked closely with the CIO on the design of the new system to ensure it would fit the needs and meet their business goals.

It was great to see the power of collaboration between the CIO and CTO in delivering that new customer-centric application, which ultimately resulted in a 30% increase in customer satisfaction.

The Labyrinth of Cloud Migration

Migrating to the cloud is not a simple linear path—it's a maze. Decisions regarding AWS, cloud cost optimization, and the kind of cloud model best suited for the enterprise can be daunting. 

To transition smoothly and safeguard your data, you must understand the nitty-gritty details of cloud migration, and hiring a professional cloud consultant is your best bet in navigating this journey. These professionals will create a migration plan that fits your organizational goals and make sure you receive the most cost-effective options out there.

Professional Guidance – A Beacon in the Fog

Cloudride, for instance, has consistently demonstrated how the complexity of cloud strategy can be unraveled, simplified, and made agile. They embody the notion that while the cloud's potential is vast, navigation is key.

Having professional intervention can be very beneficial, as evidenced by Company DataRails' partnership with Cloudride for their cloud migration.  Thanks to Cloudride's expertise with efficient cost optimization and strategic planning, the migration process went without a hitch, and they were able to reduce operational costs by 20 % and increase overall IT efficiency.

Integration of Innovative Technologies

Beyond integrating cloud solutions, companies should look to harness the latest technological advancements to help run their business operations faster and more efficiently.  AI, machine learning, big data analytics, and IoT are great tools to actualize this.  Cloud computing simply provides the hardware and software resources needed to integrate all these technologies.

Benefits of Adopting Cloud Services

Adopting cloud services for your business is a great way to save on upfront capital expenditure. Say goodbye to purchasing and upgrading your infrastructure equipment as cloud services steps in to provide the resources you need when you need them.

Cloud services are also great for scalability, flexibility, and mobility, as your staff can access the resources they need from any device. Plus, the extra weight of managing infrastructure has been lifted off your shoulders as cloud service providers take care of that.

These cloud providers don’t just secure your servers and storage, but they also guarantee business continuity in the event of unanticipated events so your employees can continue working remotely and maintain business operations.

Wrap-Up

In the vast expanses of the digital realm, as enterprises evolve and transform, the role of CIOs and CTOs is more crucial than ever. Their decisions, strategies, and vision will determine not just the success of the cloud migration but the very future of the enterprise. Yet, even the best requires guidance. And in the world of cloud computing, expert assistance isn't just an option—it's a requisite.

Ready to embark on a seamless, efficient cloud journey? Chart your course with clarity and precision. Book a consultancy meeting with Cloudride and steer your enterprise towards the future, today. Cloudride's expertise will guide you through the complexities of cloud strategy, ensuring a successful digital transformation.

 

 

ronen-amity
2023/09
Sep 14, 2023 1:09:38 PM
Pivotal Role of CIOs and CTOs in Cloud Navigation: Cloudride
Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Sep 14, 2023 1:09:38 PM

Pivotal Role of CIOs and CTOs in Cloud Navigation: Cloudride

In the golden age of digital evolution, the weight of modern enterprise rests firmly on the shoulders of CIOs and CTOs. From the cobblestone streets of yesterday to the digital highways of today, technology's trajectory has been nothing short of meteoric. But with this revolution comes an intricate...

Guide for migration or upgrade to more secure version of Server

Microsoft's announcement made it clear - it’s coming, the deadline is here and your organization has to prepare for it, Windows 2012 R2 is about to be retired and no future support or updates will be released starting October 10th 2023.

The ramifications of not preparing for this momentous event could be costly, but don’t be discouraged, we got you covered by preparing a quick preparation guide for those who either forgot or postponed the task to the very last moment.  

Overview

As mentioned, the end of extended support (EOS) for Windows Server 2012 means no more security updates, non-security updates, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft. In simpler terms, it's a significant risk for data security, compliance, and system performance. Whether you're a business leader or a technology decision-maker, understanding the implications and planning a migration or upgrade is crucial.

Step-by-Step Explanation

  1. Conduct an Inventory Audit: Know your assets. Identify all servers running Windows Server 2012 in your organization.
  2. Assess Dependencies and Workloads: Categorize the workloads and assess dependencies to make informed decisions about compatibility and migration paths.
  3. Choose a Migration Path: Options include:
    - In-place upgrade
    - Migration to a newer version
    - Cloud migration to services like AWS, Azure, or others
  4. Test the Migration: Never proceed without testing the migration process to ensure data integrity and application compatibility.
  5. Perform the Migration: You may do this yourself, use automated tools, or engage experts for the migration process.
  6. Validate and Optimize: Once migrated, ensure all systems are operational, secure, and optimized for performance.

Leverage AWS

AWS offers a range of options to make your migration process efficient and secure. Here are some key takeaways:

  1. AWS Migration Hub: Consolidate migration tracking, making the overall process easier to manage.

  2. AWS Server Migration Service: Automate, schedule, and track server migrations to reduce downtime and errors.

  3. AWS License Manager: Simplify license management and compliance.

  4. AWS Managed Services: These manage and automate common activities such as patch management, change requests, and monitoring, allowing you to focus on your business.

Conclusion: Future-Proofing with Cloudride

The end of support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 is a critical event that presents both challenges and opportunities. While migration may seem daunting, it's also a chance to modernize your infrastructure. Partnering with experts like Cloudride can smooth this transition. Cloudride offers extensive AWS expertise and a variety of services, such as:

- Cloud Readiness Assessment: Evaluate how prepared your organization is for the cloud.

- Security & Compliance: Ensure your migration meets all regulatory requirements.

- Cost Management: Help your organization understand the cost implications of moving to the cloud and optimize resources.

Facing the end of support for Windows Server 2012 doesn't have to be a crisis. With proper planning, expert support, and the right cloud solutions, it can be an opportunity for digital transformation. The clock is ticking, but the time to act is now.

 

 

uti-teva
2023/09
Sep 7, 2023 1:07:28 PM
Guide for migration or upgrade to more secure version of Server
AWS, Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Sep 7, 2023 1:07:28 PM

Guide for migration or upgrade to more secure version of Server

Microsoft's announcement made it clear - it’s coming, the deadline is here and your organization has to prepare for it, Windows 2012 R2 is about to be retired and no future support or updates will be released starting October 10th 2023.

The ramifications of not preparing for this momentous event...

Strengthen Your Cloud Security

Cloud security remains a major concern for companies worldwide. A survey by Checkpoint shows that 76 % of companies are in the direct line of attack from cloud-native threats.  

To address these concerns and propose solutions and best practices for optimal cloud security, Cloudride is excited, in collaboration with Skyhawk security, to host a comprehensive webinar on cloud security – Cloud breach prevention

Industry leaders, security analysts, IT experts, and DevOps professionals are invited to attend. The discussion will center on the current challenges in cloud security, why the risks are growing, and the best practices for breach prevention.

The Need for Optimal Approaches

As attractive as the cloud is, it presents new types of risks. Business leaders are today pondering whether cloud providers can guarantee protection for their sensitive data and ensure compliance with regulations.

Today cloud-free organizations are virtually non-existent. Even the most sensitive data resides in the cloud. But companies are as exposed as ever to sophisticated cyber threats, highlighting the need for professionals in this field to update their knowledge and tools to safeguard cloud assets continually.

The bottom line is that you are responsible for your security in the private cloud, and even though this responsibility is shared between you and the provider in the public cloud, the buck stops with you. 

By attending this webinar, you can gain the insights needed to safeguard your organization against the ever-evolving threats lurking in the cloud.

Current Challenges in the Cloud Security Scene

We believe that today CIOs must adopt risk-management approaches tailored to their organizational needs and that can optimize the economic gains from cloud solutions. To thrive in the cloud, data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance requirements are just a few issues businesses must address today. 

The webinar will define the best cybersecurity policies and controls and provide a configuration reference for ensuring your systems run safely and economically. We will help you understand your environment so you can proactively implement robust security measures and protect your critical assets.

Common Types of Threats in the Cloud

The cloud environment is vulnerable to various threats, including malware attacks, account hijacking, and insider threats. 

Identity and Access

Cloud data protection starts and concludes with access control. Today, most attackers pose as authorized users, which helps them avoid detection for a long time. Cloud security teams must continually verify employee identity and implement robust access controls, including zero trust and two-factor authentication.

Insecure interfaces

APIs may carry vulnerabilities from misconfiguration, incorrect code, or insufficient authentication, which can expose your entire cloud environment to malicious activity. Companies must employ optimized change control approaches, API attack surface analysis, and threat monitoring to reduce the risk of this threat.

Misconfiguration 

Incorrect computing asset setup can expose them to internal or external malicious activity. And because of automated CI-CD process misconfigurations and the security risks they pose can get quickly deployed and affect all assets. Security teams must improve their system knowledge and understanding of security settings to prevent such misconfigurations.

Lack of cloud security architecture

Cloud security professionals often grapple with a crucial decision: determining the optimal blend of default controls provided by the cloud vendor, enhanced controls available through premium services, and third-party security solutions that align with their unique risk profile.

An organization's risk profile can vary significantly at the granular application level. Such intricate considerations arise due to the ever-evolving landscape of emerging threats, adding complexity to safeguarding cloud environments.

 

Best Practices for Breach Prevention

Breach prevention is at the forefront of every security professional's mind. In our webinar, we will explore strategies and techniques to prevent breaches, including:

Understand Own Responsibility for Your Cloud Security

The cloud provider is only partly responsible for some aspects of your IT security. But a significant percentage of cloud security responsibility rests with you. The cloud provider will provide documentation listing your responsibilities and theirs regarding crucial deployments. It is critical to review their policies to understand what you need to do as an organization regarding cloud security.

Identity and Access Management 

Deploy an  IAM strategy for defining and enforcing critical access policies based on the principle of least privilege. Everything must be guided by role-based access control, and further, using multi-factor authentication (MFA) can safeguard your system and assets from entry by malicious actors.

Employee Training 

Employees must have skills and knowledge to prevent malicious access to their credentials or cloud computing tools. The training should help them quickly identify threats and respond appropriately. Teach them how to create better and stronger passwords, what social engineering looks like, and shadow IT risks.

Implement Cloud Security Policies

All companies must have documented guidelines that specify the proper usage, access, and storage practices for data in the cloud. The policies should lay down the security best practices required in all cloud operations and the automation tools that can be used to enforce the same to prevent breaches and data losses.

A Gathering of Cloud Security Minds

Knowledge sharing and collaboration in cloud security should never be underestimated. At Cloudride, we are at the forefront of fostering meaningful conversations and partnerships that buttress the collective defense against cyber threats. 

We encourage you to participate in this webinar to leverage this unique opportunity to create connections and learn from the best minds in the industry. 

We'll provide an A-Z comprehensive overview of cloud security, cloud-native threats, and critical insights into cutting-edge security practices employed today.

 

 

ronen-amity
2023/07
Jul 27, 2023 2:39:48 PM
Strengthen Your Cloud Security
Cloud Security

Jul 27, 2023 2:39:48 PM

Strengthen Your Cloud Security

Cloud security remains a major concern for companies worldwide. A survey by Checkpoint shows that 76 % of companies are in the direct line of attack from cloud-native threats.  

AWS Well-Architected Framework. And Why Do You Need It?

As organizations increase cloud adoption, many are turning to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its cost efficiency and scalability advantages. AWS delivers countless tools or features to optimize organizations' cloud advantage and competitive edge, but with its many features and options, knowing what to prioritize and how to leverage that effectively can be challenging.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAFR) is designed to help with this. The framework offers guidance on the best practices for organizations to build and run robustly secure, reliable, and cost-efficient AWS applications.

You need AWS Well-Architected for consistency in your approach for partners and customers to design and implement architectures that can scale with ease. 

What is the AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAFR?)

In summary, the AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAFR) is a combination of best practices and principles to help organizations build and scale apps on the AWS cloud.

When you understand how to use it to review your current architectures, optimizing cloud resources in your environment becomes easier. This system of best practices championed by AWS can improve your cloud security, efficiency, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. 

How the Framework Works

You can access the AWS Well-Architected Tool for free in the AWS management console. Its applications include reviewing workloads and apps using the architectural best practices set by AWS as a benchmark to identify areas of improvement and track progress. Some immediate use cases of the AWS Well-Architected include:

Visibility into High-Risk Issues: The framework allows your teams to quickly gain shared visibility into HRIs in their workloads. Teams can follow the AWS documented Well-Architected best practices to identify potential risks that encumber their cloud applications' performance, security, or reliability. This visibility is a big boost to collaboration among architects, developers, and operations people tasked with handling HRIs in a coordinated manner.

Collaboration: The Well-Architected Framework provides a layered approach to workload reviews, so your stakeholders can collaborate efficiently, speaking a common language around architectural choices. By streamlining collaboration, teams can work together to improve their workloads' overall architecture.

Custom Lenses: The framework is useful for creating custom lenses, which are tailored versions of the Well-Architected best practices specific to organizational requirements and industry standards. You can tailor custom lenses with your organization's internal best practices and the AWS Well-Architected best practices to deliver insights into overall architectural health.

Sustainability: The AWS Well-Architected Framework includes a sustainability objective to minimize the environmental impact of workloads. By implementing AWS Well-Architected framework, teams can learn best practices for optimizing resource usage, lessening energy consumption, and adopting eco-friendly architectural patterns. Collaboration among stakeholders, including architects, developers, and sustainability experts, helps identify opportunities to achieve sustainability goals and drive environmental improvements within the workloads.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework Pillars

The AWS Well-Architected Framework rests on the below six principles or pillars.

Operational Excellence

This pillar aims to help you efficiently run and monitor systems and continually improve processes and procedures. It provides principles and benchmarks for change automation,  event response, and daily operational management. To begin with, it helps your operations team understand the requirements of your customers.

Security

This pillar focuses on enhancing the security of your information and systems in the AWS cloud. The framework can help you learn and implement best practices for confidentiality, data integrity, access control, and threat detection.

Reliability

Cloud apps and systems must deliver the intended functions with minimal failure. The reliability pillar focuses on distributed system design, change adaptability, and recovery planning to reduce failure and its impacts on your operations.

Each cloud system must include processes and plans for handling change. Using the framework can help ensure your plans have the ability of the system to detect and prevent failures and accelerate recovery in the event of the said failure.

Performance Efficiency

The AWS Well-Architected Framework, performance efficiency pillar, focuses on structuring and streamlining compute resource allocation. The focus areas in the guidelines include resource selection best practices for workload optimization, performance monitoring, and efficiency maintenance.

Cost Optimization

Your architecture plan should include processes that optimize costs to help achieve your objectives without overspending. This pillar provides checks and balances, allowing the organization to be innovative and agile on a budget.

The framework focuses on helping companies avoid unnecessary costs. Key topics here range from spending analysis and fund allocation control to optimal resource selection for efficiency without wastage.

Sustainability

The framework has a pillar focused on helping companies reduce the environmental ramifications of their cloud workloads. It provides best practices for shared responsibility, impact assessment, and maximum resource utilization to downstream impacts. 

The AWS Well-Architected Framework gives you a robust six-pillar foundation to build apps, architecture, and systems that meet expectations.

 

To Conclude: 

Cloudride provides tailored consultation services for optimizing costs, efficiency, and security of cloud apps and operations. We can help your team efficiently implement the AWS Well-Architected Framework and assess your cloud optimization needs. Book a meeting today, and be among the first 20 to get a free architecture review and action plan recommendation.

 

uti-teva
2023/07
Jul 18, 2023 10:11:40 PM
AWS Well-Architected Framework. And Why Do You Need It?
WAFR

Jul 18, 2023 10:11:40 PM

AWS Well-Architected Framework. And Why Do You Need It?

As organizations increase cloud adoption, many are turning to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its cost efficiency and scalability advantages. AWS delivers countless tools or features to optimize organizations' cloud advantage and competitive edge, but with its many features and options, knowing what...

Amazon Web Services NoSQL

Did you know that web applications have recently become a key component of workplace collaboration? Databases are essential in building web applications, making NoSQL a popular choice for enterprises. 

Developers need a mastery of various databases and acquaint themselves with various front-end frameworks and back-end technologies. This article sheds more light on what is a NoSQL database. 

What is AWS NoSQL and How Does It Work?

You must understand that NoSQL databases use a non-relational approach to store and retrieve data. Therefore they are designed to handle large-scale and unstructured data. 

It is ideal for web and big analytics DevOps because they use various data models, such as key-value, document, columnar, and graph. They offer high scalability and performance thanks to their distributed nature. Some popular NoSQL databases include MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, and Couchbase,

If you use AWS NoSQL databases --you can store data with flexible schema and various models. You get to have high performance and functionality for modern applications.

And you know what? Unlike other AWS databases, NoSQL databases provide low latency and hold large data volumes, so that you can expect a high throughput and quick indexing. Regarding modern applications, AWS NoSQL databases are a great fit. They are agile-- scalable, flexible, high-performance, and provide great user experiences.

Below are the six types of AWS NoSQL databases models which you can choose from;

Ledger Databases

First, we have the ledger databases, which can store data based on logs that record events based on data values. Ledger databases can be handy in creating tools for registrations, supply chains, and banking systems.

Key-Value Databases

Choose the key-value-chain database if you want to store data in pairs with a unique ID and data value using Key-value databases. Given this functionality, they are primarily used in gaming, high-traffic sites, and eCommerce systems.

Comprehensive Column Databases

What are comprehensive databases? These are databases based on tables, and unlike other databases, they don't have a strict column format. Typical uses include fleet management, route optimization, and industrial maintenance applications.

Document Databases

These special-type databases store keys and values in documents written in markup languages. So you can expect compatibility with YAML, JSON, and XML. Some of the best use cases for document databases include catalogs, user profiles, and content management solutions.

Time Series Databases

Choose a time series database if you need a database to store data in time-ordered streams, which users manage based on time intervals. 

Graph Databases: Graph databases are designed as collections of edges and nodes. They allow users to track related data; some use cases are social networking, recommendation engines, and fraud detection.

What to Consider When Choosing an AWS NoSQL Service

AWS offers different NoSQL database services, and here are key considerations when selecting an AWS NoSQL service.

Look at the data model and querying capabilities: What type of data and querying capabilities does it support? A good example is: Neptune is best suited to manage complex relationships. But DynamoDB is best suited for dealing with large amounts of unstructured data.

It thus makes sense, before selecting a database, to find out what data model and queries you will be working with. This will help you choose an ideal database that best handles your case.

Think about scalability and performance: NoSQL databases scale horizontally, but what does that mean? Depending on your needs, you can have a database that supports more storage capacity and processing power: so when choosing a database, look at what you can afford vs. what you need. Developers prefer automatically scaling databases to those requiring manual intervention to support more nodes.

Consider the costs: Money is a factor too. Consider costs when determining an AWS NoSQL service. What's your budget for the database and other costs associated with maintaining your database? You must understand that different databases have different pricing. For example, Neptune charges depending on the number of nodes, whereas DynamoDB charges depending on the amount of data stored.

Security and Compliance: Security and compliance are crucial when dealing with sensitive data. Choose an AWS NoSQL database with security features and access control, as this can help your industry’s compliance requirements. This way, you will be able to protect your data best and ensure you comply with the law.

Data Consistency and Durability: When choosing NoSQL databases, you must ensure that your data is consistent even with network issues. With NoSQL databases, you can choose from various data consistency and durability options, giving you the required reliability.

 

Summary 

AWS provides various NoSQL databases--you're most likely to find a solution that fits your needs and provides the required service. When choosing an AWS database for your needs, consider the above factors.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/06
Jun 27, 2023 12:40:52 PM
Amazon Web Services NoSQL
NoSQL

Jun 27, 2023 12:40:52 PM

Amazon Web Services NoSQL

Did you know that web applications have recently become a key component of workplace collaboration? Databases are essential in building web applications, making NoSQL a popular choice for enterprises. 

Amazon Neptune Serverless

Has it come to your attention that Amazon’s Neptune has a new technological advancement? Yeah, that's right, the Neptune Serverless is now causing a revolution in graph Databases. It carries the advantage of a serverless architecture and the ability to leverage the flex and power of graph databases. Let's check in on some of the features of the Neptune serverless. But first, 

How Neptune Serverless Works

Alright; imagine you being focused on your app and data modeling. Then Amazon web services handle the infrastructure management. This is the rationale behind Neptune Serverless. The question is, how does it manage a serverless structure? Read on 

On-demand resource allocation 

Neptune Serverless is on automation for provisioning and allocating compute and storage resources. It's not now about manually setting up some servers or clusters. Its dynamics are to scale resources as per your database's workload and requirement. It is equal to saying goodbye to upfront capacity planning and welcoming efficiency. 

Automated scaling 

As your workload fluctuates, so does the scaling function of the Neptune serverless. It's designed to monitor new requests and traffic patterns. In return, it ensures you have sufficient resources for peak load. And it limits overprovisioning in low activity. Suffice it to say it's cost-effective since it aligns resources per the demand. 

Pay-per-use model  

You only pay for what you are going to use. There are no upfront costs or waste of resources. Your payment is calculated based on your database usage per second. As such, in a period met with inactivity, resources scale down or pause to save you from wasteful spending. 

Completely managed service  

Let’s not forget AWS provides Neptune Serverless as a fully managed service. They handle everything involved: maintenance, administration, software patching, and backups. And all that is required of you? Well, it's just focusing on your app and data modeling. You can do query optimization without the stress of management. 

Using Neptune Serverless for optimized performances  

So, Neptune Serverless handles infrastructure. Then at the same time offers performance optimization, which may boost the efficiency of your graph database functions. Here is a breakdown of how it works.

Smart caching  

Neptune serverless query check can store results from frequent queries. In return, the requests from the same data can be attended too quickly. In short, it's cut-off repetition to improve overall speed. 

Adaptive indexing  

Neptune serverless can identify the most accessed data patterns. Then it will create the necessary indexes for you. This means that the most queried data will be readily available, and the responses will be quick. 

Smart query routing  

Neptune serverless intelligently routes queries to the relevant databases. It analyzes patterns and distributes your workload throughout the shared cluster. And guess what? This optimally ensures optimal and efficient usage of your compute resources. It cuts down response latency. 

What are the standout features of Neptune Serverless  

If you thought the flex of Neptune Serverless stops there, I beg to differ. There is much more if you read about its unique features. Let's get started;

Multi-region access 

Neptune is serverless and allows you to replicate data throughout different AWS regions using a read replica. It’s a geographic redundancy that promotes availability. At the same time, it allows for disaster recovery plans. Even in a blackout, your data is still accessible. 

Gremlin and SPARQL integration  

Okay, you might be using Gremlin or SPARQL as your query languages. No problem; Neptune Serverless integrates with them. All left is for you to leverage your existing graph application and query approaches. 

Cost optimization  

Now, talking about money, Neptune Serverless optimizes your spending in two ways. To begin with, you only pay for your actual usage per second. Again, its autoscaling ensures when there is inactivity, overprovisioning is thwarted. So no upfront overestimation of costs. 

 

Let's wrap it up

Amazon Serverless is now on a path to redefining how developers and data scientists work with graph databases. Call it stress-free, cost-efficient, or scalable, but it only manages abstract infrastructure.

Now, it's just for you to focus on building your app and getting insights from your graph data. It's the right time for you to unlock the full potential of graph databases. After all, AWS manages everything from maintenance to backup and optimization. 

yura-vasilevitski
2023/06
Jun 21, 2023 1:12:27 PM
Amazon Neptune Serverless
Serverless

Jun 21, 2023 1:12:27 PM

Amazon Neptune Serverless

Has it come to your attention that Amazon’s Neptune has a new technological advancement? Yeah, that's right, the Neptune Serverless is now causing a revolution in graph Databases. It carries the advantage of a serverless architecture and the ability to leverage the flex and power of graph...

ScaleOps: Solution for Scaling and Optimizing Cloud Workloads

 

In the ever-changing world of cloud-native workloads, organizations of all shapes and sizes strive to optimize their Kubernetes resources. All this while saving costs without compromising their service level agreements (SLAs).

We’ll delve into the innovative ScaleOps platform. This automatic cloud-native resource management platform provides DevOps teams with the ability to seamlessly optimize cloud-native resources, empowering organizations to achieve up to 80% cost savings and enhance workload performance and availability, while providing a hands-free experience for DevOps teams and freeing them from broken repeated manual work. The ScaleOps platform integrates with Karpenter to enhance its resource optimization capabilities, allowing organizations to optimize their cost and performance.

At Cloudride, we are continuously innovating and helping clients to seamlessly integrate cutting-edge technological solutions to elevate their cloud-native operational efficiency.

AWS Cluster Autoscaler?

Cluster Autoscaler is an integral part of the Kubernetes ecosystem, which was developed to support the ideal cluster size in tandem with the changing pod requests. Its primary role is to determine pending pods that cannot be scheduled because of resource constraints and then take proper measures to address them.

You don’t have to worry about pods sitting idle and twiddling their virtual thumbs. When these nodes feel underappreciated and underutilized, the autoscaler evolves into a master of resource optimization. It skillfully rearranges the workload, guaranteeing every pod finds its perfect spot and no precious resources go to waste.

However, Karpenter and ScaleOps take things a little further in terms of efficiency. Karpenter enables quicker node provisioning while eliminating the need for configurations. ScaleOps optimizes the containers' compute resources in real-time and scales Kubernetes pods based on demand.

What is Karpenter?

This open-source autoscaler is designed to optimize cluster resource usage and slash costs in different clouds, including AWS. Karpenter is a custom controller, working behind the scenes to ensure your Kubernetes cluster perfectly harmonizes with your workload.

Using its advanced algorithms and the Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Cluster Autoscaler, Karpenter becomes a dynamic force for:

What is ScaleOps?

ScaleOps automatically adjust computing resources in real-time to enable companies to see significant cost savings of up to 80%, while providing a hands-free experience for scaling Kubernetes workloads, and freeing engineering teams from worrying about their cloud resources.

It intelligently analyzes your container’s needs and scales your pods dynamically and automatically to achieve the ever-growing demands of the real-time cloud. 

The installation takes 2 min and immediately provides visibility to the potential value DevOps team can achieve from the automation using read-only permissions.

ScaleOps, in collaboration with Karpenter, empowers DevOps engineers to overcome the challenges of scaling and optimizing cloud-native workloads.

ScaleOps and Karpenter 

In the ongoing expenses of cloud workloads, satisfying business objectives is the ultimate mission of any DevOps team. 

The powerful combination of ScaleOps and Karpenter ensures smoother workload changes and optimized performance and costs. ScaleOps will help you update compute resource requests and ensure resource utilization matches demand in real-time. Karpenter will focus on eliminating waste by reducing the gap between resource capacity and recommendations. Karpenter enables faster node provisioning, accelerating response times. ScaleOps continuously optimizes HPA triggers to match SLAs, enforcing an optimal replica number for running workloads.

Automated scaling and provisioning: ScaleOps simplifies managing clusters and can help you significantly reduce the number of nodes per cluster. Karpenter tracks resource requests and needs and automatically provisions nodes. This combination of functions is highly recommendable for fluctuating workloads.

Cost cutting: ScaleOps gives insights into your cluster resource usage and patterns and identifies areas for automatic optimization. Karpenter quickly selects instance types and sizes in ways that minimize infrastructure and costs.

Better scheduling: Creating constraints is possible with Karpenter, including topology spread, tolerations, and node taints. ScaleOps helps you manage the constraints to control where pods go in your cluster for better performance and resource usage. 

Cloudride to Success

At Cloudride, our team of professionals and experts have a profound understanding of the complex requirements for performance and cost optimization on AWS and other clouds. This knowledge and wealth of experience enable us to offer custom-made solutions, support, and integration for powerful cloud integrations like ScaleOps and Karpenter.

Starting with the initial assessment and crafting of the perfect architecture, all the way to the seamless deployment, monitoring, and optimization, we can help your cloud-native environment to hit its maximum potential in performance as well as cost efficiency.

Conclusion

In this age of rapid technological advancements, an organization's ability to scale infrastructure with ease is critical. ScaleOps and Karpenter deliver robust solutions to this challenge.

Businesses now have the platform to automate resource allocation, maximize cost efficiency, and improve performance. The best cloud solution integrations can help you unleash your cloud-native initiatives with exceptional confidence, and at Cloudride, we have your back.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/05
May 29, 2023 10:31:26 AM
ScaleOps: Solution for Scaling and Optimizing Cloud Workloads
Auto-Scaling, Scalability

May 29, 2023 10:31:26 AM

ScaleOps: Solution for Scaling and Optimizing Cloud Workloads

OpenSearch Serverless

Finally, the long wait is officially over; Amazon OpenSearch Serverless has recently been launched as a managed search and analytics service, following its initial preview at the recent Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference. During the preview period, we had the chance to analyze this innovative new service and unearth several intriguing features and capabilities.

What is OpenSearch serverless?

The AWS OpenSearch service provides a fully managed solution that easily handles the automatic installation, configuration, and security of petabyte-level data volumes on Amazon's dedicated OpenSearch clusters. 

Each of these clusters has total autonomy over its cluster configurations. However, when it comes to working with unpredictable workloads like search and analytics, users prefer a more streamlined approach. 

It is for this reason that AWS introduced the Amazon OpenSearch serverless option, which is built on the Amazon OpenSearch service and is meant to drive use cases like real-time application monitoring, log analysis, and website search. 

OpenSearch Serverless Features 

Some of the main traits of OpenSearch Serverless include:

Easy set-up

Setting up and configuring Amazon OpenSearch Serverless is a breeze. You can easily create and customize your Amazon OpenSearch Service cluster through the AWS Management Console or AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). Users can also configure their clusters according to their preferences.

In-place upgrades 

Upgrading to the latest versions of OpenSearch and Elasticsearch (all the way to version 7.1) is a piece of cake with the Amazon OpenSearch Service. Unlike the manual effort required for previously upgrading domains, the new service has simplified the process of upgrading clusters without any downtime for users. 

Furthermore, the upgrade ensures that the domain endpoint URL remains the same. This eliminates the need for users to reconfigure their services which communicate with the domain in order to access the updated version, thus ensuring seamless integration.

Event monitoring and alerting 

This feature is used to track data stored in clusters and notifies the user based upon predetermined thresholds. This functionality is powered by the OpenSearch alerting plugin, and users can also use the OpenSearch Dashboards interface or Kibana and REST API to manage it. 

Furthermore, AWS has done a wonderful job of integrating Amazon OpenSearch Service with Amazon EventBridge seamlessly. This has allowed the delivery of real-time events from various AWS services straight into your OpenSearch Service. 

You can also set up your personalized rules to automatically call functions upon the occurrence of the said events. For instance, the triggering of lambda functions, activating Step Functions state machines, and many more!

Security

Amazon OpenSearch Service now offers security and reliability in the manner in which you link your applications to the Elasticsearch or OpenSearch environment. This has opened up a flexible way to connect through your VPC or the public internet.  

You now don’t have to worry because your access policies are specified by either VPC security groups or IP-based policies. What’s more, you can also manage your authentication and access control policies through Amazon Cognito or AWS IAM. If you desire only some basic authentication, you can just use a username and password. 

Unauthorized access has also been sorted out thanks to the OpenSearch security plugin, which delivers fine-grained authorizations for files, indices, and fields. Plus, the new service's built-in encryption for data-at-rest and data-in-transit will always assure you that your data is ever safe. 

To meet all the compliance requirements, Amazon OpenSearch Service has been licensed as HIPAA-eligible and fully complies with SOC, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and ISO standards. This has made it extremely easy for users to create compliant applications that satisfy these regulatory standards. 

Cost

Amazon OpenSearch Service now allows you to search, analyze, visualize, and secure your unstructured data like a boss. All this while paying for only what you use. No more worrying about minimum fees or other usage requirements.

Their pricing model is so simple, and it is based on three dimensions.

  • Instance hours
  • Storage, and 
  • Data transfer

As for their storage costs, they usually fluctuate depending on your storage tier and instance type. 

If you want to get a feel for their services without committing, the AWS Free Tier feature is available for such usage. This implies that you get 750 free hours monthly of a t2.small.search or even a  t3.small.search instance, and upwards to 10 GB per month of the optional Amazon Elastic Block Store storage. 

But what about if you need more resources? AWS  has Reserved Instances where, as the name implies, you can reserve instances for either a one- or three-year span and enjoy substantial savings as compared to the On-Demand instances. All these free trial features provide similar functionality to the On-Demand instances; therefore, you will have the entire suite of features.

 

Conclusion 

OpenSearch Serverless has become a game-changing solution in the world of search applications. Transformative and robust features, including ease of use and low maintenance requirements, have made this service an excellent application for organizations of all shapes and sizes.

With OpenSearch Serverless, you can now effortlessly ingest, secure, search, sum, view, and analyze data for different use cases and run petabyte-scale workloads without worrying about handling clusters. 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2023/05
May 18, 2023 9:46:09 AM
OpenSearch Serverless
Serverless, OpenSearch

May 18, 2023 9:46:09 AM

OpenSearch Serverless

Finally, the long wait is officially over; Amazon OpenSearch Serverless has recently been launched as a managed search and analytics service, following its initial preview at the recent Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference. During the preview period, we had the chance to analyze this innovative...

FinOps on the way vol. 4

 

 

How did we achieve a 0.5 million $ reduction

in cloud costs?

This time We will share How we reduced cloud costs by 0.5 million $ a year. This case is a bit different from the others since it involves a change of configuration from the company.

Background:

The organization operates a Connectivity Platform, using cellular bonding and dynamic encoding. The platform is already deployed and in use by several customers.

The organization’s main services are EC2 running on-demand.

 

image-png-3

So, what did we do?

Since spot instances were not an option for them, a solution out of the box was needed. In this case, it was initiated by the company side.

To make a long story short, they put their customers' servers in their customers' clouds, instead of those servers deploying in the company’s cloud.

The outcome was a massive reduction in the number of servers the company uses.

Now it was our time to attribute to the company's effort to reduce cloud costs and we did it by these methods:

EC2 Rightsizing - We did downsize to EC2 instances with a low CPU utilization, and a low use of memory (Requires shutdown of the instances).

EC2 Stopped Instances - When working with EC2 you pay for every hour the instance is on (on demand), so when you switch the instance off you don’t pay. However, you are still paying for the Volumes attached to the instances and for the IPs.

EBS Outdated snapshots - old snapshots that are no longer needed. It is very important that when applying backups policies, you also define the time limit for saving the snapshots!

EBS Generation Upgrade - We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (for example- from GP2 to GP3). In the EBS upgrade, there is no downtime!

EC2 Generation Upgrade - We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (from t2 to t3).

NAT Gateway Idle - There were several NAT Gateways underutilized.

 

We’re still not done and monthly costs are still dropping by 10%-20% every month. The plan is to finish all those procedures and buy SP/RI.

For now, the monthly costs dropped from $50K to $10K and there is still work to be done, An impressive 80% reduction, and at least half a million $.

Book a meeting with our FinOps team to make your Cloud environment more efficient and cost-effective

 

nir-peleg
2023/05
May 14, 2023 2:58:06 PM
FinOps on the way vol. 4
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Fintech

May 14, 2023 2:58:06 PM

FinOps on the way vol. 4

AWS SQS + Lambda Setup Tutorial – Step by Step

Many cloud applications rely on backends or web apps to trigger external services. But the challenge has always been the reliability and performance concerns that abound when there is an overprovisioned service in high-traffic seasons. 

Lambda has an event source mapping feature that allows you to process items from AWS services queues that don’t invoke Lambda services directly. It then becomes possible to set queues as event sources that get your lambda functions triggered by messages. These queues can help control your data processing rate to increase or reduce computing capacity per the data volume.

This article walks you through the steps of creating Lambda functions that connect with SQS queue events. We’ll begin with the basics of both Lambda and SQS and later get into the tutorial.

What is AWS Lambda?

The AWS Lambda service offered by AWS lets you run code and provision resources without server management requirements.  The event-driven cloud computing services run code when triggered by events – you can use it for any computing task, from processing data streams or serving website pages.

AWS Lambda features include automated administration, auto-scaling, and fault tolerance. 

What is AWS SQS? 

Amazon SQS lets you integrate various software components and systems with scalability, security, and high availability benefits. The hosted solution on AWS eliminates the need to manage your service infrastructure manually.  It excels in the in-transit storage of messages between apps and micro-services –it makes life easier regarding message-oriented AWS software systems.

Users can connect with SQS using an API provided by AWS. It can send requests to available queues by other services. It can receive messages that are pending in the queue. It also allows for the deletion of queue messages following proper processing.

Lambda + SQS

You can have a lambda function as part of the SQS queue. It would become a consumer of the queue using it as an event source. It then polls this queue-invoking function with events that contain queue messages.

Lambda will read the messages in batches and invoke functions for each batch. The functions invoked are within a specific payload threshold set by Lambda.

Lambda sets an invocation payload size quota that is also a threshold for invoking a function. It is 6MB for each response and request.

SQS + Lambda Tutorial

Step 1: Create an SQS Queue

Sign in to your AWS Management Console.

Navigate to the SQS service by searching for "SQS" in the search bar.

Click "Create Queue."

Choose "Standard Queue" for this tutorial and name your queue, such as "MySQSQueue."

Leave the rest of the settings as default and click "Create Queue."

Step 2: Create a Lambda Function 

Navigate to the AWS Lambda service by searching for "Lambda" in the search bar.

Click "Create Function."

Choose "Author from scratch" and give your function a name, such as "MySQSLambdaFunction."

Choose a runtime, such as "Python 3.8."

Under "Function code," you can write your code inline or upload a .zip file containing your code. For this tutorial, let's use the following inline code to process messages from the SQS queue:

Under "Execution role," choose "Create a new role with basic Lambda permissions."

Click "Create Function."

Step 3: Grant Lambda Access to SQS

In the Lambda function's "Configuration" tab, click "Permissions."

Click on the role name under "Execution role."

Click "Attach policies."

Search for "AWSLambdaSQSQueueExecutionRole" and select it.

Click "Attach policy."

Step 4: Configure Lambda Trigger

Go back to your Lambda function's "Configuration" tab.

Click "Add Trigger."

Choose "SQS" from the trigger list.

In the "SQS Queue" field, select the SQS queue you created earlier (e.g., "MySQSQueue").

Set the "Batch size" to a value between 1 and 10. For this tutorial, set it to 5.

Click "Add."

Step 5: Test Your Setup

Go back to the SQS service in the AWS Management Console.

Select your queue (e.g., "MySQSQueue") and click "Send and Receive Messages."

Type a test message in the "Send a message" section and click "Send Message."

Your Lambda function should automatically trigger when messages are added to the queue. To verify this, navigate to the Lambda function's "Monitoring" tab and check the "Invocations" metric.

Now you have successfully set up an AWS SQS and Lambda integration. You can now send messages to your SQS queue, and your Lambda function will automatically process them. This highly scalable and cost-effective serverless architecture allows you to focus on your application's core functionality.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/05
May 2, 2023 7:07:02 PM
AWS SQS + Lambda Setup Tutorial – Step by Step
AWS, Lambda

May 2, 2023 7:07:02 PM

AWS SQS + Lambda Setup Tutorial – Step by Step

Many cloud applications rely on backends or web apps to trigger external services. But the challenge has always been the reliability and performance concerns that abound when there is an overprovisioned service in high-traffic seasons. 

Migrating Databases with AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

AWS Database Migration Service can migrate data to and from the most extensively used commercial and open-source databases. This powerful service can help you migrate your databases to AWS quickly and securely. In this article, we will discuss how to migrate databases using AWS Database Migration Service.

Meet the Prerequisites

Before starting a database migration using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), you should ensure to meet the following prerequisites:

An AWS account

You must have an Amazon Web Services account to use AWS Database Migration Service. If you don't already have one, you can sign up for a free trial account at the AWS website.

Access to the AWS Management Console

If you're an account administrator, you already have this access. Access to the AWS Management Console can help you configure and manage the migration process. You need access to the AWS Management Console. If you don't have access, request access with permission from your account administrator.

Access to source and target databases 

Before migrating data using AWS DMS, ensure that both the source and target databases are accessible. Additionally, the source and target databases must be compatible with the DMS service. Check the AWS DMS documentation here https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dms/latest/userguide/CHAP_Source.html) for a list of supported database engines. You should have the necessary credentials and permissions to access the databases. 

Set up AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

When you open the AWS Management Console, navigate to the AWS Database Migration Service page.

Click the "Create replication instance" button.   Enter a name for the replication instance, choose the appropriate instance class, and select the VPC and subnet.

Select the security group for the replication instance, then click on the Create button to create the replication instance.

Create Database Migration Task  

A migration task defines the source and target databases, as well as other parameters for the migration. Once you have set up the replication instance, create a migration task. 

  1. Enter the AWS Management Console and navigate the AWS Database Migration Service page.
  2. Click on the Create migration task button
  3. Enter a name for the migration task
  4. Select the source and target database engines
  5. Enter the connection details for the source and target databases
  6. Choose the migration type (full load or ongoing replication)
  7. Set the migration settings, including table mappings, data type mappings, and transformation rules.
  8. Click on the Create button to create the migration task.

Start the Migration

Once you have created the migration task, you can start the migration. In the  AWS Management Console, navigate to the AWS Database Migration Service page. Click Start or Resume when choosing the migration task you want to start.

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) supports different ways of migrating data from the source database to the target database, including:

Incremental Migration: Incremental migration is ideal for migrating data to the target database while the source database is still being used. Changes to the source database are captured and continuously replicated to the target database in near real-time.

Full Load Migration: A one-time full load is performed to copy the entire source database to the target database. After the initial load, any changes made to the source database are not replicated in the target database.

Combined Migration: This is a combination of incremental and full-load migration. A full load migration is performed to copy all existing data to the target database. Next, a gradual migration is done to replicate any changes made to the source database continuously.

AWS DMS captures changes to the source database using logs or trigger-based methods. These changes are executed on the target database in one transaction, ensuring data consistency and integrity.

Monitor the Migration 

You can monitor the progress of the migration. In the AWS Management Console and go to the AWS Database Migration Service page and choose the migration task that you want to monitor.

Under the Task Details tab, you can view the migration status. You can also monitor progress through CloudWatch Logs.

What Problems Does DMS AWS Database Migration Solve? 

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) solves several challenges associated with database migration. 

Data Loss: AWS DMS ensures data accuracy and completeness by replicating changes from the source database to the target database. Inaccurate or incomplete data transfer can result in data loss during database migration.

Application Compatibility: AWS DMS allows replicating database changes while preserving the existing data model, reducing application compatibility issues. This saves you from changing the data model or schema, which can lead to application compatibility issues.

Database Downtime: Traditional database migration methods often require significant downtime, during which the database is not accessible to users. AWS DMS minimizes downtime by enabling you to migrate data to the target database while the source database is still running.

Cost: Traditional database migration methods can be expensive, requiring significant resources and expertise. AWS DMS provides a cost-effective way to migrate databases to the cloud, with pay-as-you-go pricing and no upfront costs.

Data Security: Data security is a critical concern during database migration. AWS DMS provides end-to-end encryption for transit data and can mask sensitive data during migration.

Conclusion

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is a powerful service that can help you migrate your databases to AWS quickly and securely. Follow the steps above to set up and run a migration using DMS quickly.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/04
Apr 23, 2023 10:22:35 AM
Migrating Databases with AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
Cloud Migration, Data, DMS

Apr 23, 2023 10:22:35 AM

Migrating Databases with AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

AWS Database Migration Service can migrate data to and from the most extensively used commercial and open-source databases. This powerful service can help you migrate your databases to AWS quickly and securely. In this article, we will discuss how to migrate databases using AWS Database Migration...

FinOps on the way vol. 3

 

 

This is How we achieve a 33% reduction in cloud cost for an SMB fintech business

Background: The company developing a system for the real estate industry.

The company main services were: EC2, R53, Elastic Kubernetes Service, Elasticache

We started their cost opt. when the daily cost was around $42.

In February the daily cost was reduced to $28, a 33% decrease in the monthly bill which means a higher revenue every month.

 

image-png-2

 

So, what did we do?

These are the main methods we used for this account. Obviously, for each account and application, there are different methods that we apply, depending on the customer's needs.

EC2 Rightsizing - We did downsize to EC2 instances with a low CPU utilization, and a low use of memory (Requires shutdown of the instances).

EC2 Generation Upgrade - We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (for example- from t2 to t3).

Compute Saving Plan - Since the company is still considering changing the instances type and considering changing the current region, we choose the compute SP which is the most flexible.

ElastiCache - ElastiCache is a fully managed, Redis- and Memcached-compatible service delivering real-time, cost-optimized performance for modern applications. After a thorough check, it turned out that the elasticate was not needed so we deleted it.

The outcome of the above techniques was a reduction of 33% in monthly costs.

nir-peleg
2023/03
Mar 28, 2023 4:14:35 PM
FinOps on the way vol. 3
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Fintech

Mar 28, 2023 4:14:35 PM

FinOps on the way vol. 3

Elasticity vs. Scalability AWS

 

Scalability and elasticity can be achieved on AWS using various services and tools. AWS Application Auto Scaling, for instance, is a service that can automatically adjust capacity for excellent application performance at a low cost. This allows for easy setup of application scaling for multiple resources across multiple services. Let's talk about the difference between elasticity and scalability. These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they're pretty different.

Elasticity

Cloud elasticity refers to the ability to scale Computing Resources in the cloud up or down based on actual demand. This ability to adapt to increased usage (or decreased usage) allows you to provide resources when needed and avoid costs if they are not.

This capability allows additional capacity to be added or removed automatically instead of manually provisioned and de-provisioned by system administrators. It is possible through an elastic provisioning model.

Scalability

Scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work or its potential to be enlarged in various ways. A scalable solution can get scaled up by adding processing power, storage capacity, and bandwidth.

A cloud can increase or decrease its resource capacity dynamically. With scalability, there is no having to provision new hardware, install operating systems and software, or make any other changes to the running system. Cloud scalability allows a cloud operator to grow or shrink their computing resources as needed.

Cloud scalability helps keep costs down. No more underutilized servers sitting idle while waiting for an application spike. It provides access to a large pool of resources that can be scaled up or down as needed.

Cloud scalability allows you to add and release resources as needed automatically. You can allocate your budget according to workloads, so you only pay for the computing power you use when you need it most.

AWS Scalability

AWS cloud scalability is vital because apps tend to grow over time. You can't predict how much demand they'll receive, so it's best to scale up and down quickly as needed. Here is how to achieve scalability using AWS.

AWS auto-scaling is a feature of AWS that allows you to scale your EC2 instances based on a series of triggers -automatically. Auto-scaling is easy to set up, but there are some things to remember when using it. This can be especially useful if you have an application that requires a lot of resources at peak times and less during off-peak hours.

Use a scalable, load-balanced cluster. This approach allows for the distribution of workloads across multiple servers, which can help to increase scalability.

Leverage managed services. AWS provides various managed services that can help increase scalabilities, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and Amazon RDS.

Enable detailed monitoring. Thorough monitoring allows for the collection of CloudWatch metric data at a one-minute frequency, which can help to ensure a faster response to load changes.

AWS cloud elasticity

Elasticity allows you to allocate and de-allocate computing resources based on your application's needs. It is a crucial feature of cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Ensures you have the right resources available at all times. Achieving elasticity on AWS involves several key steps:

Design for horizontal scaling: One of the most significant advantages of cloud computing is the ability to scale your application using a distributed architecture that can be easily replicated across multiple instances.

Use Elastic Load Balancing: ELB can automatically detect unhealthy instances and redirect traffic to healthy ones. It distributes incoming traffic across multiple instances of your application, helping to ensure that no single model becomes overloaded.

AWS CloudWatch allows you to monitor the performance of your application and the resources it uses. You can set up alarms to trigger Auto Scaling actions based on metrics such as CPU utilization, network traffic, or custom metrics.

Conclusion

Elasticity refers to how fast your application can scale up or down based on demand, while scalability refers to how the system can handle much load. Elasticity and scalability are two critical factors to consider when building your application on the cloud.

nir-peleg
2023/03
Mar 28, 2023 12:08:15 AM
Elasticity vs. Scalability AWS
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Fintech

Mar 28, 2023 12:08:15 AM

Elasticity vs. Scalability AWS

How to Use Dockers in a DR - The Right Flow to Utilize ECR & ECS

This blog post will discuss using the ECS and ECR for your application development and deployment in a DR scenario using Docker. We will also discuss how to configure our systems for a seamless transition from local stateless containers to cloud-based containers on ECR.

Docker makes it possible to create immutable containers.

Docker makes it possible to create immutable containers. This means you can deploy your application once and then use it forever without worrying about updating or patching it.

Docker uses layered file systems so that each new version of an image only contains changes from the previous version -- not all of them. This makes it easier for Docker to save disk space, which is especially important on AWS, where many applications run on ECS due to its high availability features (like Auto Scaling Groups).

Docker is the most popular containerization tool

Docker has a vast community, and it's the de facto standard for containerization. Docker has a large ecosystem of tools, including Docker Swarm (for clustering), Kubernetes (for orchestration), and OpenFaaS (for serverless functions).

Docker is open-source and free to use with no license fees or royalties. You can also get paid support from companies like Red Hat or Microsoft if you want additional features like security scanning or support in your DevOps pipeline. AWS offers docker scanning via the AWS Inspector…

ECR - Amazon Elastic Container Registry

AWS ECR is a fully managed Docker container registry that stores, manages, and distributes Docker container images. ECR can be used to store your private images, or you can use it to distribute public images.

ECR is integrated with AWS CodeCommit and Other pipelines like GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions and others, so you can use them in conjunction with each other if needed.

ECS - Amazon Elastic Container Service

ECS is an AWS service that makes it easy to run, manage, and scale containerized applications on a cluster of instances. ECS allows you to run Docker containers on a cluster of EC2 instances. You can use the ECS console or API to create and manage your clusters and tasks; monitor the overall health of your clusters; view detailed information about each task running in the cluster; stop individual tasks or entire clusters; and get notifications when new versions are available for updates (and more).

Using Docker and ECR/ECS in DR 

Here's a possible flow to utilize ECR and ECS in a DR scenario:

Create ECS cluster

Create an ECS cluster in your primary region, and configure it to use your preferred VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), subnets, and security groups. In a disaster recovery situation, it is highly recommended to have an environment replicating your production environment. This ensures you can access your data and applications when you fail to access the DR site.

Create a Docker image

You should have a Docker image that contains all the software required for your application. Docker images allow you to package your application and its dependencies into a single file that can be stored locally or in a private registry.

This makes it easy to deploy your application anywhere because the image does not require access to any other environment or infrastructure. You can take this image and run it on an EC2 instance or ECS cluster, depending on whether you want to run stateless or stateful applications.       

Create ECR repository

Create an ECR repository in your primary region. You can use the AWS CLI to push the docker image from our local machine to ECR. The following command will push our local repository to the ECR.

This step should be automated so that every new Docker image version is automatically pushed to the ECR repository. Once you have done this step, you must configure your environment variables for your Docker container registry.

Create ECS task definition

To use ECS, you need to create a task definition. The task definition is a JSON file that describes your container and its environment. You can specify which docker image to use, how much memory it should have, what port it should expose, and more.

Create an ECS service that launches the task definition, and configure it to use an Application Load Balancer to distribute traffic to the containers.

Test the service

Test the service to ensure it works as expected in your primary region. Next, create a replica of the ECS cluster in your secondary region, using the same VPC, subnets, and security groups as the primary region.

Replication pipeline

Create a replication pipeline that replicates the Docker images from the ECR repository in the primary region to the ECR repository in the secondary region. This pipeline should be configured to run automatically when a new Docker image version is pushed to the primary repository.

Configure the ECS service to use the replicated ECR repository in the secondary region. Configure the load balancer to distribute traffic to the containers in the secondary region if the primary region is down.

Test the DR failover

Test the DR failover scenario to ensure that it's working as expected. This should involve simulating a failure of the primary region, and verifying that traffic is successfully rerouted to the secondary region.

 

Conclusion

Overall, this flow involves creating an ECS cluster and an ECR repository in the primary region, deploying Docker containers using an ECS service and load balancer, and replicating the Docker images to a secondary region for DR purposes. The key to success is automating as much of the process as possible so it's easy to deploy and manage your Docker containers in primary and secondary regions.

We will touch the Database replication to other regions in our next blog post.

yura-vasilevitski
2023/03
Mar 1, 2023 8:17:01 PM
How to Use Dockers in a DR - The Right Flow to Utilize ECR & ECS
ecs, Docker, ecr

Mar 1, 2023 8:17:01 PM

How to Use Dockers in a DR - The Right Flow to Utilize ECR & ECS

This blog post will discuss using the ECS and ECR for your application development and deployment in a DR scenario using Docker. We will also discuss how to configure our systems for a seamless transition from local stateless containers to cloud-based containers on ECR.

FinOps on the way vol. 2

 

 

Preface

From $3K to $51... Big yes!

This time I will share How we reduced cloud costs from $3K to $51 in a month of 1 service without harming the functionality of the application.

Background: The organization is a middle business size with multiple finance services, working with cities' payment systems and other national services. Using global developers as well as local ones.

They were using Amazon MQ for a while in 2 accounts: production & development.

Amazon MQ is a managed Message broker that allows software systems, to communicate and exchange information.

The Av. Daily cost for amazon MQ was $105.

 

image-png-1

So, what did we do?

  1. We mapped the use of the service and found out that there is a broker running in the prod environment and 2 bigger brokers running in the Dev environment, which was weird.
  2. We started to buy and downsize one of the Dev brokers and monitor if it had an impact on the activity.
  3. We continue to downsize the Dev brokers and changed the type of machine till we got to a t3.micro.
  4. We did the same with the Prod brokers.

In the end the Av. The daily cost for amazon MQ was $1.65.

 

It turns out that there was no need for the brokers the organization was using.

We handed up reducing the MQ costs from $3K to $51 a month. Meaning the company paid thousands of $ to AWS, for no reason, over the years.

Let's Book a Meeting to see how We can assist and reduce your cloud costs too.

nir-peleg
2023/02
Feb 23, 2023 4:56:12 PM
FinOps on the way vol. 2
FinOps & Cost Opt., saving plans

Feb 23, 2023 4:56:12 PM

FinOps on the way vol. 2

FinOps on the way vol. 1

 

 

Preface

Though the phrase “FinOps” (Financial Operations) became very popular and knowledgeable in the industry, with the rising of cloud usage, not many people understand the profound impact of FinOps on the organization's revenue.

I am not going to explain all FinOps responsibilities (Who cares anyway?) But in a nutshell, FinOps main job is to optimize cloud costs or in other words to reduce costs and increase revenue.

There are many creative and uncreative ways to reduce cloud costs.

In the following blogs, I will share proper live case studies of real customers from verses industries and scales.

With no further ado, let’s begin...

 

Case study #1

How did we achieve a 66% reduction in cloud cost for an SMB healthcare business?

The client's main services were: EC2, Amazon elastic container service, Elastic load balancing, RDS & Amazon document DB (MongoDB).

We started their cost opt when the daily cost was around $62.

In February the daily cost was reduced to $21, a 66% decrease in the monthly bill which means a higher revenue every month.

image-png (1)

So, what did we do?

These are the main methods we used for this account. Obviously, for each account and application, there are different methods that we apply, depending on the customer's needs.

EC2 Rightsizing- We did downsize to EC2 instances with a low CPU utilization, and a common use of memory (Requires shutdown of the instances).

EC2 Generation Upgrade- We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (for example- from t2 to t3).

EC2 Stopped Instances- When working with EC2 you pay for every hour that the instance is on (on demand), so when you switch the instance to off you don’t pay. However, you are still paying for the Volumes attached to the instances and for the IPs.

EBS Generation Upgrade- We updated the generation type to a newer version with better performance and lower energy consumption (for example- from GP2 to GP3). In the EBS upgrade, there is no downtime!

EBS Outdated snapshots- old snapshots that are no longer is needed. It is very important that when applying backups policies you also define the time limit for saving the snapshots!

Compute Saving Plan- Since the company is still considering changing the instances type and considering changing the current region, we choose the compute SP which is the most flexible.

In addition to the above methods, we used more techniques that are not listed above, and we examined more cost opt techniques which the company decided not to apply eventually for several reasons like Changing the type of EC2 instances, RDS RI, Elasticache RI, and more.

Let's book a meeting to find out the best cost-saving strategies for your cloud environment to make it more efficient and cost-effective.

 

*This content was not written by chatGPT *

nir-peleg
2023/02
Feb 19, 2023 10:43:07 AM
FinOps on the way vol. 1
FinOps & Cost Opt., saving plans

Feb 19, 2023 10:43:07 AM

FinOps on the way vol. 1

K9S - Manage Your Kubernetes Smart

Kubernetes is one of the most popular deployments of container orchestration. It's also one of the fastest-growing technologies in cloud computing and DevOps communities. As Kubernetes continues to grow, it will be necessary for organizations to have a management platform that can help them manage their workloads on this open-source platform.

Why is it important to automate Kubernetes management?  

Managing Kubernetes can be time-consuming and complex. It's essential to automate your management process so that you can improve efficiency, security, and scale as needed.

K9s is a project that automates everyday tasks in Kubernetes environments. This makes it easier for organizations to manage their clusters without worrying about doing everything manually.

What is K9s?

K9s is an input/output terminal user interface for managing Kubernetes. It allows you to access, navigate and view your deployed applications in a single interface. The command line interface for managing Kubernetes makes it easier to access, navigate and view your deployed applications in one place.

K9s tracks changes made by DevOps teams so they can see how their changes affect production environments while also allowing them to create commands that interact with resources.

With K9s, you can use commands to access and manage your cluster's resources.

K9s is a tool that provides you with commands to access and manage your cluster's resources. It tracks real-time activities on Kubernetes standard and custom resources, handles both Kubernetes standard resources and custom resource definitions, and gives you commands for managing logs, restarts, scaling and port-forwards, etc.

Use the / command to search for resources.

K9s has a / command which you can use to search resources. This eliminates the need for long kubectl output chains and makes it easier to find what you're looking for.

You can use this functionality to search for resources based on their tags or a specific pattern match.

To view a resource, prefix the resource type with a colon (:). For example, if you want to see your pods, type: pods and hit enter.

Use j and k to navigate resources.

K9s makes it easy to navigate through your help. You can use j and k to navigate down and up through the returned resources. You can also use the arrow keys if you have lost your grasp on vim.

It's important because it allows users to quickly find what they're looking for in a sea of information--something that can be difficult when using traditional tools like kubectl or even Helm Charts.

Using the l command to view logs

To view logs in Kubernetes, you can use the l command. This is helpful for quickly tracking errors and issues. For example, if your application is not responding as it should and you want to see what happened before it went down, you can use p on your previous log entries so that they appear in chronological order.

The need for automated log viewing in Kubernetes becomes apparent when dealing with large amounts of data (such as when running multiple instances). The alternatives to K9s K8s log viewers are:

  • Kibana - An open-source tool used primarily by developers who want a graphical interface over their data because they find it easier than using CLI commands or text files;
  • Fluentd - A daemon process that collects logs from various sources, such as syslogs and application logs, into one place where they can be processed or stored;
  • Logstash - A tool used by DevOps teams who want centralized logging capabilities across multiple servers while allowing them flexibility when choosing where those servers will run from, geographically speaking.

Editing configurations 

K9s allows you to edit configurations in real-time. You can use the editor on any resource, from pods to services and custom resources. The changes you make will affect your cluster immediately, but these changes can be overwritten by future CI/CD deployments.

K9s provides a node-level operation called "cordoning" that allows you to pause all containers running on a node until they are drained cleanly or deleted (once drained). This helps prevent accidental termination of running containers during configuration changes or upgrades.

There are also alternatives, such as K8s Config Editor, which provide similar functionality but less flexibility than K9s.

Monitoring and visualizing resources and events

K9s make it easy to monitor and visualize resources and events. Use: pulses mode to visualize resources or Tab to select the exact pulse you want to see more details about. If there are any warnings or errors associated with your cluster, they will be displayed here as well so that you can take action right away!

The d command provides detailed descriptions of all events and warnings generated by the K9s smartwatch monitoring system.

Create command shortcuts with aliases. 

As you start working with K9s, you'll find yourself typing commands repeatedly. To speed up these repetitive tasks, you can create shortcuts with aliases.

To get started, create an alias file in the .k9s/ directory:

  • Run cd $HOME/.k9s to find the correct directory
  • Then create an alias.yml file using your favorite text editor (vim or nano)
  • Define it in the format of alias: group/version/resource

Achieve configuration best practices with Popeye scanning 

Popeye is a tool for scanning Kubernetes configurations. It examines a configuration and generates a report of the findings. You can then open this report using the: popeye command in your terminal, which will open up a scan summary page that lists all components analyzed by Popeye.

The next step would be to dig into each component, but we'll leave that for another time.

 

Conclusion

K9s is an excellent tool for managing your Kubernetes cluster. It allows you to easily manage the resources used by your applications and ensure that they run smoothly.

 

mor-dvir
2023/02
Feb 15, 2023 6:11:41 PM
K9S - Manage Your Kubernetes Smart
Kubernetes, k9s

Feb 15, 2023 6:11:41 PM

K9S - Manage Your Kubernetes Smart

Kubernetes is one of the most popular deployments of container orchestration. It's also one of the fastest-growing technologies in cloud computing and DevOps communities. As Kubernetes continues to grow, it will be necessary for organizations to have a management platform that can help them manage...

The Importance of Cloud Security, and Security Layers

The cloud has opened up new opportunities for organizations of all sizes and industries. With the flexibility to deploy applications and services, IT can more quickly meet the needs of its users. Cloud computing provides organizations with access to a shared pool of virtualized resources, which means no upfront capital expenditures are required.

Having said that, the cloud environment also requires certain measures to be taken, to avoid the challenges of network security and vulnerability to malicious attacks. With so much information available today, it might be difficult to keep up to date with all the relevant threats. With more updates to the system adding new security modules, the Skyhawk Security Platform is taking charge and will put your mind at ease with its advanced protection capabilities.

How important it is to focus on actual threats?

In cybersecurity, it's easy to get caught up in the details. There are so many things that need to be done and they all seem like they're important. But if you're not careful, you can spend too much time on things that aren't that crucial.

The problem is that there are so many ways to protect your company from cyberattacks. Trying them all at once is tempting, but this can lead to wasted time and resources. The best way to protect your business from threats is to focus on the most critical ones, the ones that represent actual breaches, first.

This is where Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform and Cloudride come in handy, allowing businesses to automatically prioritize their security efforts based on what matters most.

Various ways of focusing on real threats

We focus on real threats by offering a comprehensive suite of security solutions including:

Runtime Threat Detection

Skyhawk Synthesis is the only platform to combine threat detection of runtime network anomalies together with user and workload identity access management, to surface actual threats that need to be resolved immediately. Skyhawk’s unique Cloud threat Detection & Response (CDR) approach adds complete runtime observability of cloud infrastructure, applications, and end-user activities.

In addition, the platform’s deep learning technology uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide real-time attack sequences. It uses machine learning algorithms to score potential malicious activities. The platform uses context to create a sequence of runtime events that indicate a breach is, or could be, progressing.

Attack Prevention

Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform alerts users when a threat has been detected but enables security teams to stop the attack before it reaches its target.

Attacks are prevented using the Skyhawk Malicious Behavior Indicators, or MBIs. These are activities that Skyhawk has identified as risky behaviors that pose a threat to your

business based on our own research, as well as the MITRE ATT&CK framework. They are

detected within minutes of log arrival in your cloud.

Policy Implementation

Organizations face several security challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT) era. These include the rising cyber-attacks and data breaches, which require a proactive approach to secure your organization’s digital assets and data against these threats.

Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform provides a comprehensive set of compliance reports and governance tools covering all aspects of cybersecurity management, from prevention to detection, for assets on multiple clouds.

 This means the platform implements policies based on risk assessment, meaning you can customize your security policy depending on what needs protecting or where assets are located within your organization.

Ongoing Threat Monitoring 

Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform is a unique solution that provides a holistic view of the threat landscape, alerts and recommendations. The platform monitors threats and provides insights into the attack methods and their evolution.

This platform includes all three components: monitoring, protection and analysis. The monitoring component allows the security team to take action against new threats before they reach the organization's crown jewels. It also enables them to detect existing threats and track their evolution over time.

The protection component guards against known and unknown threats using an automated approach that adapts to changing threat landscapes. The analysis component provides insights into how attackers are operating so that organizations can anticipate new attacks, adapt defenses in real time and prevent breaches from happening in the first place.

Deployment and management

Cloudride will deploy and manage the Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform for our customers. By working hand in hand with the customer, Cloudride offers a truly innovative solution that takes cybersecurity monitoring to the next level, thus ensuring a secure environment for the customer with AI capabilities.

  

Conclusion

To conclude, Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform and Cloudride incorporate runtime observability and cyber threat intelligence services, which are critical aspects of an organization's overall cyber security strategy. Our solutions provide intelligence-driven security by drawing on expertise and knowledge from an established global community of threat intelligence professionals.

We provide a comprehensive solution that helps you to detect, analyze and respond to threats. Our solutions are designed to be an integrated platform across your entire organization, including the cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2023/01
Jan 29, 2023 6:26:02 PM
The Importance of Cloud Security, and Security Layers
Cloud Security, Security, Skyhawk

Jan 29, 2023 6:26:02 PM

The Importance of Cloud Security, and Security Layers

The cloud has opened up new opportunities for organizations of all sizes and industries. With the flexibility to deploy applications and services, IT can more quickly meet the needs of its users. Cloud computing provides organizations with access to a shared pool of virtualized resources, which...

Cloudride Glossary

A – Aurora

Amazon Aurora is a fully managed MySQL-compatible relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases.

B – Bucket

A bucket is a container for objects. To store your data in Amazon S3, you first create a bucket and specify a bucket name and AWS Region. Then, you upload your data to that bucket as objects in Amazon S3. Each object has a key (or key name), which is the unique identifier for the object within the bucket

C – CI/CD

CI and CD stand for continuous integration and continuous delivery/continuous deployment. CI is a modern software development practice in which incremental code changes are made frequently and reliably. Automated build-and-test steps triggered by CI ensure that code changes being merged into the repository are reliable. The code is then delivered quickly and seamlessly as a part of the CD process. In the software world, the CI/CD pipeline refers to the automation that enables incremental code changes from developers’ desktops to be delivered quickly and reliably to production.

D – DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB Streams is an AWS service that captures a time-ordered sequence of item-level modifications in any Amazon DynamoDB table. This service also stores this information in a log for up to 24 hours. Applications can access this log and view the data items as they appeared before and after they were modified, in near-real time

E – Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web-based service that allows businesses to run application programs in the Amazon Web Services ( AWS ) public cloud. Amazon EC2 allows a developer to spin up virtual machines (VMs), which provide compute capacity for IT projects and cloud workloads that run with global AWS data centers.

F – FinOps

FinOps is an evolving cloud financial management discipline and cultural practice that enables organizations to get maximum business value by helping engineering, finance, technology, and business teams to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions

G – Gateway

A cloud storage gateway is a hardware- or software-based appliance located on the customer premises that serves as a bridge between local applications and remote cloud-based storage.

H – Heroku

Heroku is based on AWS. It supports efficient building, deploying, and fast scaling. It is popular for its add-on capabilities as it supports many alerts and management tools

 

I – Intrusion Detection System (IDS)

An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a monitoring system that detects suspicious activities and generates alerts when they are detected

J – Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source automation server. With Jenkins, organizations can accelerate the software development process by automating it. Jenkins manages and controls software delivery processes throughout the entire lifecycle, including build, document, test, package, stage, deployment, static code analysis, and much more.

K – Kubernetes

Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes automates operational tasks of container management and includes built-in commands for deploying applications, rolling out changes to your applications, scaling your applications up and down to fit changing needs, monitoring your applications, and more—making it easier to manage applications

L – Lambda

AWS Lambda is a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets you run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers. You can trigger Lambda from over 200 AWS services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and only pay for what you use. Use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to trigger AWS Lambda data processing in real-time after an upload, or connect to an existing Amazon EFS file system to enable massively parallel shared access for large-scale file processing.

M – Migration

Cloud migration is the process of moving digital assets — like data, workloads, IT resources, or applications — to cloud infrastructureCloud migration commonly refers to moving tools and data from old, legacy infrastructure or an on-premises* data center to the cloud. Though “cloud migration” typically refers to moving things from on-premises to the cloud, it can also refer to moving from one cloud to another cloud. Migration may involve moving all or just some assets. It also involves a whole lot of other things. That’s why we’ve compiled this guide to cover all things cloud migration.

N – NoSQL

NoSQL databases (aka "not only SQL") are non-tabular databases and store data differently than relational tables. NoSQL databases come in a variety of types based on their data model. The main types are document, key-value, wide-column, and graph. They provide flexible schemas and scale easily with large amounts of data and high user loads.

O – On-Premises

On-premises refers to IT infrastructure hardware and software applications that are hosted on-site. This contrasts with IT assets that are hosted by a public cloud platform or remote data center. Businesses have more control of on-premises IT assets by maintaining the performance, security, and upkeep, as well as the physical location

P – Public Cloud

Public Cloud is an IT model where on-demand computing services and infrastructure are managed by a third-party provider and shared with multiple organizations using the public Internet. Public cloud service providers may offer cloud-based services such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (Saas) to users for either a monthly or pay-per-use fee, eliminating the need for users to host these services on-site in their own data center

Q – Query string authentication

An AWS feature that you can use to place the authentication information in the HTTP request query string instead of in the Authorization header, which provides URL-based access to objects in a bucket

R – Redshift

Amazon Redshift uses SQL to analyze structured and semi-structured data across data warehouses, operational databases, and data lakes using AWS-designed hardware and machine learning to deliver the best price-performance at any scale.

S – Serverless

Serverless is a cloud-native development model that allows developers to build and run applications without having to manage servers. There are still servers in serverless, but they are abstracted away from app development. Your application still runs on servers, but all the server management is done by AWS

T – Terraform

Terraform is an infrastructure as a code tool that lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share. You can then use a consistent workflow to provision and manage all of your infrastructure throughout its lifecycle. Terraform can manage low-level components like computing, storage, and networking resources, as well as high-level components like DNS entries and SaaS features

U – Utility billing

Unit testing is defined as a quality assurance technique where application code is broken down into component building blocks – along with each block or unit's associated data, usage processes, and functions – to ensure that each block works as expected.

V – Vendor

An organization that sells computing infrastructure, software as a service (SaaS), or storage. Vendor Insights helps simplify and accelerate the risk assessment and procurement process

W – WAF

A WAF or web application firewall helps protect web applications by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the Internet. By deploying a WAF in front of a web application, a shield is placed between the web application and the Internet. While a proxy server protects a client machine’s identity by using an intermediary, a WAF is a type of reverse proxy, that protects the server from exposure by having clients pass through the WAF before reaching the server

X – X-Ray

AWS X-Ray is a web service that collects data about requests that your application serves. X-Ray provides tools that you can use to view, filter, and gain insights into that data to identify issues and opportunities for optimization.

Y – YAML

YAML is a digestible data serialization language often used to create configuration files with any programming language. Designed for human interaction, YAML is a strict superset of JSON, another data serialization language. But because it's a strict superset, it can do everything that JSON can and more.

Z – Zone Awareness

Zone awareness helps prevent downtime and data loss. When zone awareness is enabled, OpenSearch Service allocates the nodes and replica index shards across two or three Availability Zones in the same AWS Region. Note: For a setup of three Availability Zones, use two replicas of your index.

 

yura-vasilevitski
2023/01
Jan 16, 2023 9:52:28 AM
Cloudride Glossary
FinOps & Cost Opt., AWS, Cloud Container, Cloud Migration, CI/CD, Cost Optimization, Lambda, Terraform, Cloud Computing, Kubernetes, WAF

Jan 16, 2023 9:52:28 AM

Cloudride Glossary

A – Aurora

Amazon Aurora is a fully managed MySQL-compatible relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases.

AWS Database migration in 2023

Cloud computing has become increasingly important for many companies in the last few years. However, there are always challenges when moving data between environments. Organizations adopting cloud technologies will only increase the need for effective database migration strategies. In 2023, there are several trends that we expect to see in database migration to AWS:

Increased use of automation

As more organizations move to the cloud, they are looking for ways to automate their database management processes. This includes automating tasks such as provisioning and de-provisioning databases, monitoring performance and availability, and managing backups.

Greater focus on data security

As more and more companies move their workloads into public clouds such as AWS or Microsoft Azure, they're starting to realize that they must take security more seriously than ever before. After all, if you store sensitive data in the cloud, it's only a matter of time before someone steals it through hacking or insider threats.

More hybrid database deployments

Companies are increasingly deploying multiple deployment models in their production environments. This hybrid approach allows IT teams to leverage the best of both worlds without sacrificing availability or performance.

Improved data governance 

Data governance is a key aspect of any database migration project. As large volumes of data are transferred from on-premises databases to the cloud, it is important to ensure that data quality is maintained. By using automated tools, businesses can ensure that data is migrated in a consistent manner across multiple databases and applications.

Increased use of cloud-based solutions

This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to remember that not all databases are suitable for use in the cloud. This is especially true if they require high processing power levels or high availability features that aren’t available through public cloud providers like AWS or Azure.

Increased use of database-as-a-service (DBaaS) tools

Migrating databases from on-premises environments to AWS has always been challenging because it requires expertise in multiple disciplines. But today, companies use database-as-a-service (DBaaS) tools for migration projects. These tools help IT teams quickly move data from one place to another without having to write code or perform complicated tasks manually.

The most popular DBaaS tools include Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Amazon Aurora Serverless, and Amazon DynamoDB Streams.

Increased use of containers 

Container technology is poised to revolutionize database migrations. It allows multiple processes to share a single operating system instance while retaining private resources, such as file systems and network connections. This will enable various databases to be migrated at once without affecting each other's performance or stability.

Greater focus on data quality 

The quality of the migrated data is critical because it affects how well other systems can utilize it in your organization. Cloud migration tools can now perform extract, transform and load (ETL) functions to help ensure that any data migrated into the cloud is high quality.

Many vendors also offer tools that will monitor database performance after the migration so that you can identify any issues before they become serious problems.

Greater use of artificial intelligence 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more common in database management software because it can automate many tasks that require human intervention today, such as detecting anomalies in user behavior patterns and generating recommendations based on those patterns. This gives IT administrators more time to focus on resolving problems instead of performing mundane tasks like monitoring servers or responding to alerts.

More open-source options 

As the cloud-native movement grows, more companies are moving away from traditional database software and choosing open-source solutions. Many leading database vendors are now offering their software as open-source projects with support from community members.

The most popular open-source databases include MongoDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch. These products are gaining popularity because they're easy to install and use. They can also be deployed on various cloud platforms, including AWS.

In addition to these three popular choices, many other open-source databases are available on AWS Marketplace, including MariaDB and PostgreSQL.

Takeaway

By keeping these trends in mind, organizations can develop a successful database migration strategy to AWS in 2023 that meets their business needs and helps them take advantage of the benefits of the cloud. Want to learn more? Book a call with one of our experts!

yura-vasilevitski
2023/01
Jan 9, 2023 10:47:30 AM
AWS Database migration in 2023
Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Jan 9, 2023 10:47:30 AM

AWS Database migration in 2023

Cloud computing has become increasingly important for many companies in the last few years. However, there are always challenges when moving data between environments. Organizations adopting cloud technologies will only increase the need for effective database migration strategies. In 2023, there...

The Full Guide to Cloud Migration for Smooth Sailing Into 2023

Cloud migration is a complex task, but it's necessary. Without the proper planning and strategy, your business could be left behind by competitors who have already moved to cloud computing. We've broken down some of the most critical steps of any cloud migration project in 2023, so you can navigate them confidently and successfully.

What Does Cloud Migration Mean for Your Business?

 Cloud migration is the process of moving resources and applications to the cloud. Cloud migration can help businesses gain access to new services and capabilities, reduce costs, and become more agile and flexible.

The various benefits of cloud migration include the following:

  • Improved security and compliance with regulations 
  • Reduced operational costs 
  • Improved agility
  • flexibility and scalability
  • Improved business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities 
  • Ability to develop new capabilities

Do You Really Need to Migrate in the First Place?

You should move data and workloads to the cloud for many reasons. You may be looking for more cost-effective storage, or you may or looking for better ways to manage applications. 

Whatever the case, it is essential that you know what you’re getting into before making any decisions about migrating.

If considering a cloud migration is the right choice for your business, do some research first and consider whether the cost outweighs any potential benefits—and vice versa!

Most Common Cloud Migration Challenges 

There are many challenges to cloud migration. Here are the most common cloud migration challenges and how to overcome them confidently.

Workload Migration

How do you move workloads from one environment to another? There are many different types of workloads, which means there are multiple ways to migrate them into the cloud. 

And depending on your use case, some of those options may not be feasible for your specific situation. Your best bet is to work with a partner who can help you determine which solution is best suited to your requirements and goals. 

Security and Compliance

How do you ensure your cloud-based data is secure and compliant with industry regulations? This is a common concern for businesses looking to move their workloads into the cloud. And while it can be pretty daunting at first, there are several ways to address this challenge. 

One option is to partner with a managed service provider (MSP) that specializes in helping organizations migrate data securely and stay compliant with industry regulations. 

Cost Savings

How do you ensure that migrating your workloads to the cloud will save you money? This can be a difficult question to answer, as it depends on many different factors (including the size of your organization and how much data needs to be migrated). 

However, there are some ways to determine whether migration is financially viable before diving in.

Is There a Right Way to Migrate?

As a business, you may wonder whether there’s a right way to migrate your data.

This depends on several factors, including:

  • The type of migration you’re doing (e.g., cloud-native to cloud-native or on-premises to the cloud)
  • The technology you’re migrating (e.g., applications and databases)
  • The size of your business and its workload

Is There a Wrong Way to Migrate?

The answer is no; there’s no wrong way to migrate. But you should always be aware of the pitfalls of undertaking such an important and ambitious project.

Underestimation The Scope Required in Migrating

One of the biggest problems seen over the years by cloud migration specialists is that many companies need to realize how much time and resources it takes to get their data ready for moving into the cloud. 

They need to pay more attention to how much work they'll need to put in before they can even start migrating, which results in things falling behind schedule or, worse: failing altogether.

Lack of Enough Resources

 

It's also common for companies not to have enough money set aside for migration costs—but this doesn't mean you should give up! There are many ways to finance cloud migration with minimal cost or effort on your part.

Lack of Planning

 

Finally, one thing that has caused countless delays over the past decade is the need for more planning on behalf of IT teams worldwide. From small businesses to enterprise organizations with tens of thousands of employees worldwide. 

It's vital during this process that everyone involved knows exactly what needs to be done next so that nothing gets overlooked during those busy days ahead. This is especially if there is little budget left after the initial investment.

What Should You Consider Before Migrating?

 

Deciding whether to migrate your applications is a big decision. Here are some things to consider before making a move:

  • What is the goal for your migration? Do you want to reduce costs, increase mobility and agility, or both?
  • What applications are you migrating? How important are they? Is it worth the risk of downtime if something goes wrong during the migration process?
  • What risks are involved in migrating these applications into a cloud platform?
  • How much time do you have available before starting your migration project? Will this affect the cost or schedule management efforts at all?

 

Conclusion 

Cloud migration for smooth sailing in 2023 can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. If you plan ahead and understand the benefits of migrating, you can reduce the risk and ensure a successful transition. Whether you need help deciding whether or not to migrate and how best, we are here for you! Please get in touch with us with any questions or concerns about your next move into the cloud.

yura-vasilevitski
2022/12
Dec 26, 2022 3:16:32 PM
The Full Guide to Cloud Migration for Smooth Sailing Into 2023
Cloud Migration, Cloud Computing

Dec 26, 2022 3:16:32 PM

The Full Guide to Cloud Migration for Smooth Sailing Into 2023

Cloud migration is a complex task, but it's necessary. Without the proper planning and strategy, your business could be left behind by competitors who have already moved to cloud computing. We've broken down some of the most critical steps of any cloud migration project in 2023, so you can navigate...

Lambda SnapStart

You might be aware of how Cold Starts negatively impact the user experience. Cold Starts are well-known in the serverless space but annoy developers, so they search for solutions and ways to avoid them. The new release of the AWS Lambda Snapstart for Java 11 functions features several improvements aimed at improving Cold Start Latency. In this post, you’ll learn how to take advantage of SnapStart and drastically reduce your App Server start time.

What is a Cold Start?

Cold starts are when an application starts for the first time. This is a common problem for applications that run on Lambda, as AWS does not have access to your application data or configuration to know what to do when you call your function.

There are two ways to handle cold starts:

  1. Use a library like SnapStart that handles cold starts for you by using DynamoDB and other services (like SNS) to track the state of your application. You can then use this state information to optimize future executions of your Lambda functions.
  2. Write your code that handles cold starts for you by using DynamoDB and other services (like SNS) to track the state of your application.

What is Lambda SnapStart?

The Lambda SnapStart feature is a new feature that speeds up your cold start time, which is the time it takes for your app to start up and respond to requests.

This can be particularly useful when you have many users accessing your application at once or hosting a highly interactive site with many users who frequently request resources.

When you use SnapStart, you take advantage of AWS Lambda's ability to run multiple versions of your Lambda function simultaneously and make them available in parallel.

Lambda's SnapStart provides the following:

  • Easily create an AWS Lambda function using a simple drag-and-drop interface
  • Automatically configure and deploy the function to AWS Lambda with one click
  • Inspect your function logs in real time
  • Run multiple instances of your functions locally without incurring any costs

How Lambda SnapStart works?

Initialization occurs when your function starts up, regardless of whether it is a phone app or a serverless Lambda function. All applications require initialization, regardless of their programming languages or applications. When you publish your application on AWS Lambda, SnapStart handles the initialization of your function before it is published.

SnapStart creates a Firecracker micro VM snapshot for low-latency access and caches it for low-latency access. Rather than starting up new execution environments from scratch when your application scales, Lambda resumes them from a cached snapshot, improving startup time.

What’s in a Snapshot? 

A snapshot is a collection of files and metadata that captures the state of your AWS Lambda function. Snapshots are useful for creating backup copies of your code and role configuration, testing new versions of your code, and reverting a deployment to a previous version.

A snapshot contains the following information:

The Lambda Function Code

This includes the ZIP file containing the function code and any additional files, such as packages or dependencies.

The Lambda Role Configuration

This includes IAM permissions, execution role ARN, and other configuration details.

Snapshots are useful for several reasons:

  1. They can be used as backups for recovery from accidental deletion or corruption of objects (such as S3 buckets) or restoring deleted accounts to their previous state after a breach or other incident.
  2. They allow you to create new accounts with identical configurations to existing ones so that you don't have to recreate existing infrastructure when you want to test changes.
  3. Snapshots can be used to speed up the deployment of new applications by providing a snapshot of the current state of an application's environment.

Pricing

There is no extra charge for the use of Lambda SnapStart. You pay only for the AWS resources you provided as part of your Lambda function.

Network connections

One potential pitfall for serverless developers to be aware of is that storing and resuming network connections won't work with Lambda SnapStart. This is because though HTTP or database libraries are initialized, socket connections cannot be transferred or multiplexed. These connections must be re-established.

Conclusion 

Lambda SnapStart is a simple and effective way to get your API up and running quickly, with all the options covered in the API-first workflow. If you're serious about deploying your API more frequently and easily, we encourage you to try Lambda SnapStart and see how it works for you.

 

yonatan-yoselevski
2022/12
Dec 18, 2022 2:45:28 PM
Lambda SnapStart
AWS, Lambda, SnapStart

Dec 18, 2022 2:45:28 PM

Lambda SnapStart

You might be aware of how Cold Starts negatively impact the user experience. Cold Starts are well-known in the serverless space but annoy developers, so they search for solutions and ways to avoid them. The new release of the AWS Lambda Snapstart for Java 11 functions features several improvements...

What is Data Lake and Why Do You Need It

If you work with large amounts of data, you probably know how hard it is to get everything in the right place. Data lake is a solution to this problem. It's a pool of data that you can access from multiple sources. Whenever you need information from your database, all you have to do is call up the data lake and let it provide the information for you. This article explains what a data lake is and why you need it. 

What is Data Lake?

Data Lake is a storage repository that stores all types of data, regardless of the source or format. It is a single, centralized pool of data that anyone in the organization can use.

Data Lake helps to overcome the limitations of the traditional data warehouse. It’s very scalable and has no limits on the data size. It stores structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Data Lake can also store metadata about the stored files, such as when they were created and who had access to them at any time.

The Essential Elements of a Data Lake

Here are some essential elements of Data Lakes:

Data management

A Data Lake provides a secure place for storing data for future use. This process allows the movement of data from one location to another using various techniques like batch processing and real-time streaming. This can be done using tools like Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).

Securely store and catalog data.

A data lake securely stores all types of unstructured and structured data, including text files, images, video, and audio files. The ability to store and catalog all types of data allows users to search for specific files within the lake using different parameters, such as date range or keywords.

Analytics

A data lake can give you access to valuable analytics tools that let you analyze large amounts of data in new ways. These tools may include database management systems like Hadoop and Spark, which let you perform analytics on huge volumes of data at scale. They also include visualization tools, which let you create reports about your business using charts, graphs, and other visuals.

Machine Learning

Data Lake allows companies to use machine learning to analyze data and discover trends or patterns humans would have otherwise missed. Machine learning also creates predictive models that give insights into what may happen in the future.

Benefits of a Data Lake

Data lakes have many benefits that make them attractive to businesses, including:

Cost-efficiency

Data lakes have a lower cost than traditional structured databases because they don't require expensive software licenses and hardware. This means they can be easily scaled up or down as needed, which reduces waste and overhead by eliminating unused capacity.

Flexibility

Data lakes are built on a flexible platform that allows you to store any data in any format, not just structured relational data. This makes it easier to integrate disparate systems and applications into one cohesive system that's easy to analyze later.

Data security

Since all your company's raw data is stored in one location, it's easier to control access permissions on individual files or folders within the lake. You can also control who has access by setting up groups within your organization that include or exclude particular people or departments.

Ease of access

Data lakes help you to make sense of your organization's vast amounts of data by storing everything in one place. This makes it easier to analyze trends over time or compare multiple datasets. It also allows you to create new applications using the data stored within them.

Scalability

Because you can store data in a data lake, its scalability is limitless. If your company grows and you need more storage for your databases, you add more servers and storage space to accommodate the increase in demand.

Conclusion

The Data Lake is not just a standard data warehouse nor a simple file system for unstructured data. It combines the best elements of other technologies by providing a reliable and scalable platform to store data collected from multiple sources. In a nutshell, in Data Lake architecture, information is cleansed, integrated, and analyzed in one place. 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/11
Nov 14, 2022 11:39:54 AM
What is Data Lake and Why Do You Need It
AWS, Cost Optimization, Database, Data Lake

Nov 14, 2022 11:39:54 AM

What is Data Lake and Why Do You Need It

If you work with large amounts of data, you probably know how hard it is to get everything in the right place. Data lake is a solution to this problem. It's a pool of data that you can access from multiple sources. Whenever you need information from your database, all you have to do is call up the...

Auto-Scaling AWS

It was not too long ago, that businesses needed to manage their AWS resources to meet scaling demand manually. You had to purchase hardware, keep track of it, and figure out what resources you needed to meet your customers' needs. This was a lot of work, and it didn't give you full visibility into how much capacity was available at any given time. Fortunately for us, AWS has taken this burden off our shoulders and introduced automatic scaling functionality that can be used with different configurations depending on what kind of workloads you're running on their platform.

Scale based on metrics

It's easy to forget that the entire world is not Amazon Web Services. Scaling up and down based on usage can be trickier when your app resides outside AWS.

Fortunately, third-party services make it possible to scale based on an application metric like CPU or memory usage. You can use these services to trigger scaling events when an event is reached (e.g., if CPU usage reaches 80%) or a specific threshold (e.g., if CPU usage reaches 100%).

For example, you can set up Amazon CloudWatch alarms to notify you when certain metrics reach predefined thresholds and then configure auto-scaling policies to scale out or automatically respond to those notifications!

Scale based on time 

Scaling up or down, depending on what kind of action it is. There are many ways these values can be set depending on what kind of system architecture and performance needs exist within any given organization. 

However, keep in mind that higher values mean more flexibility but also more risk because they allow larger swings above/below their thresholds before triggering actions themselves--which means fewer false positives while still allowing us some room for error. For example, if you wanted my alarm set up so that whenever CPU utilization goes above 80%, then your auto-scaling group would launch another m3 large instance into production. However, if my CPU utilization drops below 50%, then my auto-scaling group would terminate one of its m3 large instances so as not to waste resources any more than necessary.

Launch Configs

A launch configuration is a collection of settings you can use to launch instances. You can use launch configurations to save time when launching instances by giving you the option to configure them once and then replicate them multiple times.

For example, if you want to launch an instance inside the EC2 zone in VPC with a security group that allows SSH connections from anywhere but only from other AWS accounts owned by your company, then all you have to do is create a launch config and attach it as an attribute for each instance type (EC2 Linux) in which you want this specific configuration applied.

Target Groups

So, you've decided that you want to scale up or down? You're in luck because AWS has a handy feature called target groups. Target groups allow you to manage the number of running instances, which can be used in conjunction with autoscaling groups or launch configs.

Target groups come in two flavors: one for scaling services and another for scaling capacity on EC2 instances. The former is used when you want to scale up or down your application's resources; the latter helps optimize your use of Amazon EBS volumes.

AWS will automatically scale to meet the demand

AWS will automatically scale to meet demand. This can be intimidating for some people, but rest assured that AWS will not send an army of servers over to your data center and start using them for crypto mining or something.

The automatic scaling process is based on health checks and monitoring metrics like CPU and memory usage. If there's no activity happening on an instance you're running, it won't be scaled back up again until it is needed.

In addition to this feature being smart enough not to waste time or resources scaling instances when they aren't needed, it also reduces costs by not having unnecessary resources sitting idle in the cloud when they can instead be used elsewhere where they may have been requested.

Conclusion

AWS is a powerful and flexible cloud platform, but it can initially be overwhelming. Luckily for you, we've covered all the ways AWS can automatically scale your application and infrastructure so you can focus on what matters: building great software. For any additional assistance, book a free consultation call today!

yura-vasilevitski
2022/11
Nov 14, 2022 11:34:39 AM
Auto-Scaling AWS
AWS, Cloud Computing, Auto-Scaling

Nov 14, 2022 11:34:39 AM

Auto-Scaling AWS

It was not too long ago, that businesses needed to manage their AWS resources to meet scaling demand manually. You had to purchase hardware, keep track of it, and figure out what resources you needed to meet your customers' needs. This was a lot of work, and it didn't give you full visibility into...

Redshift Serverless

Redshift serverless is a fully managed database service for Amazon Redshift that uses the AWS Lambda serverless computing platform. It enables you to run SQL queries on data stored in Amazon S3 and other sources by executing them from within your application code. With Redshift serverless, you get an easy-to-use web application that lets you define the schema of your tables and then run queries against them.

Serverless Spectrum

Serverless is a term floating around cloud computing for a while now, but what exactly is it? Serverless is a system where you don't have to manage servers or deal with scaling issues. Instead, you can focus on building your application and let the providers handle everything else.

Spectrum is an extension of AWS Lambda that allows you to run serverless applications on multiple clouds at once (currently including Google Cloud Platform). With Spectrum, you can write code using familiar languages like Python, Java, and NodeJS, then run them across multiple platforms without worrying about portability issues or vendor lock-in.

The benefits of using Spectrum include:

No dedicated infrastructure

There are no dedicated resources on Redshift serverless, so you don't need to purchase or manage hardware. You also don't have to worry about hardware failure or upgrades, maintenance, security, and other issues with owning infrastructure.

You can focus on your application rather than managing servers.

Ability to scale storage and compute independently

With Redshift serverless, you can scale storage independently of compute. This means that if you want to add more capacity to your database but don't need more processing power, you can do it without having to provide any new computer.

The same holds true in reverse: you can scale compute independently of storage by scaling up or down simultaneously. This makes Redshift serverless especially useful for workloads with unpredictable traffic patterns and cyclical spikes in usage.

Automatic storage scaling

Redshift Serverless automatically scales storage based on the size of your data and can automatically scale up or down as your data grows or shrinks.

When you create a cluster, it comes with a set amount of disk space from Amazon S3. The minimum disk size is 5 GB, but you can increase that limit by specifying an Amazon S3 bucket name for your cluster in the Redshift Serverless console (e.g., mybucket). The default bucket name is "redshift-cluster-data," which will also be used if you don't specify anything else during setup.

You can manually scale up/down your storage by clicking on the Storage tab in the left navigation bar in the console.

Fully managed by AWS

The first thing to know about Redshift is that AWS fully manages it.

This means you don't have to worry about managing your data warehouse's physical hardware, storage, or security. Instead, you can focus on building your data pipeline and querying your data using SQL-like queries called Amazon Redshift Spectrum Query Language (ASQL).

The second thing to know about Redshift is that it uses shared-everything architecture. This means that all nodes in a cluster share storage and compute power, but each node has its database engine process (known as an instance).

You pay for what you use.

As a user, you pay for what you use. You can scale storage and compute independently. You can scale up or down in real-time. In fact, as a serverless user, there are only two things that are charged: data transfer and data storage.

Supports external tables and UDFs

 Redshift Serverless supports external tables, which means you can use the same Redshift data in a SQL query using traditional SQL. In addition to that, Redshift Serverless also supports UDFs. The usage of UDFs is identical to regular UDFs. You can call them as part of your query, and they will be executed as part of the query plan at runtime.

Redshift serverless is the future.

Redshift serverless is the future. It's a great choice for your data warehouse because it gives you all the power of Redshift but with much less complexity. The only thing you need to manage is an AWS account and an API key or password, and everything else runs itself in the background!

Future proof your next project using Redshift serverless—you'll be glad you did!

Conclusion 

Redshift serverless is the future of data warehousing. In fact, it's already here. Redshift serverless allows you to build a data warehouse without having to manage infrastructure or worry about scaling. It brings together all of the best features from other databases and makes them available in one place — with no upfront commitment!

yura-vasilevitski
2022/10
Oct 15, 2022 11:52:35 PM
Redshift Serverless
AWS, Redshift Serverless

Oct 15, 2022 11:52:35 PM

Redshift Serverless

Redshift serverless is a fully managed database service for Amazon Redshift that uses the AWS Lambda serverless computing platform. It enables you to run SQL queries on data stored in Amazon S3 and other sources by executing them from within your application code. With Redshift serverless, you get...

Terraform State Restoration

Terraform is a powerful tool for building and managing infrastructure, but it's also critical to take steps to back up and restore your state data. You should be aware of the following best practices:

Premise

Terraform State is the state of your infrastructure as defined by Terraform. That can be all kinds of things, like a list of resources created and where they are in AWS or GCP, the specific values they were given, what IP addresses they have been assigned, etc.

This file is called "terraform state," and it lives in your project root folder (in most cases). It's this file that allows us to restore our infrastructure after we make changes because we're not just creating it from scratch every time; we're using what has already been created before! To use Terraform State with HashiCorp Tools (Terraform Enterprise), you need to store it on disk somewhere.

 

What is Terraform State?

Terraform state is the data that Terraform uses to track the state of your infrastructure. It tracks all of your resource configurations and any modules, outputs, and variable values created in this configuration process so that you can apply multiple resources or change existing configurations again and again without causing unexpected changes in your infrastructure.

Terraform state is stored in a local file (or files) or a remote backend. The default location for these files is .terraform/. You can view the contents of this folder by running the terraform show command.

 

Configuration Best Practices

Terraform has built-in state persistence, so if you run terraform apply on a machine and lose power, it will resume from where it left off when the power comes back up. It has a built-in state-checking mechanism that will prevent you from accidentally destroying resources you've created during manual operations or other automated processes like Jenkins jobs.

Use modules for organization and ease of use. This keeps your plans modular and reusable across multiple environments (dev, staging, prod).

Use Terraform's built-in locking system to prevent concurrent access between teams/users/projects.

 

Modules

Terraform modules are the way to organize and reuse your Terraform configurations. They're reusable across multiple environments and projects, so you can share common infrastructure components between multiple environments without duplicating code.

 

Backend Configurations

To back up your Terraform state file, you can do the following:

  • Save the current state to a file. If you're using Terraform 0.13 or later, this can be done by running `terraform save` in any remote directory with elevated privileges.
  • If necessary, copy the file somewhere else, such as an S3 bucket or another cloud service provider. You might even want to keep it on-site so that if there's ever an emergency where you have to rebuild infrastructure from scratch (e.g., a fire), this data will already be available!

 

Backup Best Practices

There are several ways you can back up your Terraform state files, depending on what you're backing up and how much of it you want to keep. You may have some or all of the following:

  • Backup your Terraform backend configurations, which are stored in files named .tfstate. The TFSTATE_DIR environment variable determines where this file is saved.
  • Backup your Terraform backend data (data for backends that use a local datastore like S3), which is stored in bucketed .terraform directories within the .tfstate directory mentioned above. 

 

Disaster Recovery Best Practices

Back up your Terraform state. Using a remote state backend, such as Consul or Vault, it's important to regularly back up the state for disaster recovery. You can do this manually by exporting the values of your resources into files. Or you can automate this process with an application such as Terraform State Backup or TFSBManager.

Use version control. Version control is critical when working with Terraform and creating and managing infrastructure artifacts like AWS IAM IDs, secret keys, and access tokens that are needed during application deployment activities.

By using a versioning system such as Git or Mercurial (Mercurial is better since it doesn't require making commits), you'll be able to easily revert to any previous versions if something goes wrong during deployment/upgrade activities.

Use snapshot tools that support state restoration functions: Snapshots allow users to record their current states so they can restore them later if anything goes wrong during manual upgrades.

 

For any Terraform state, backup and recovery are critical

Terraform state restoration is an important topic to understand and apply. You can use the following best practices to help ensure that you can recover from any failure:

Ensure that your backup process is reliable. A reliable backup system will protect your state data from corruption, allow for easy restores, and provide a way to quickly restore service functionality after a failure.

Use Terraform's built-in backup options whenever possible. When you use the native terraform plan command with the --backup flag, Terraform will automatically generate both file-based backups (JSON files) and S3-compatible backups. This greatly simplifies recovery compared to manually creating backups yourself or writing custom scripts around other tools like Packer or Ansible Vault.

 

Conclusion

We hope this article has helped you better understand the importance of Terraform state and the best practices for managing it.

yura-vasilevitski
2022/10
Oct 15, 2022 11:41:19 PM
Terraform State Restoration
AWS, Terraform

Oct 15, 2022 11:41:19 PM

Terraform State Restoration

Terraform is a powerful tool for building and managing infrastructure, but it's also critical to take steps to back up and restore your state data. You should be aware of the following best practices:

Cloud migration - Q & A

 

On-premise vs Cloud.

Which is the best fit for your business?

Cloud computing is gaining popularity. It offers companies enhanced security, the ability to move all enterprise workloads to the cloud without needing upfront huge infrastructure investment gives much-needed flexibility in doing business, and saves time and money.

Therefore 83% of enterprise workload will be in the cloud and on-premises workloads would constitute only 27% of all workloads by this year, according to Forbes.

But there are factors to consider before choosing to migrate all your enterprise workload to the cloud or choosing an on-premise deployment model.

There is no one size fits it approach. It depends on your business and IT needs. If your business has global expansion plans in place, the cloud provides much greater appeal. Migrating workloads to the cloud enable data to be accessible to anyone with an internet-enabled device.

Without much effort, you are connected to your customers, remote employees, partners, and other businesses.

On the other hand, if your business is in a highly regulated industry with privacy concerns and with the need for customizing system operations then the on-premise deployment model may, at times, be preferable.
To better discern which solution is best for your business needs we will highlight the key differences between the two to help you in your decision-making.

Cloud Security

With cloud infrastructure, security is always the main concern. Sensitive financial data, customers’ data, employees’ data, lists of clients, and much more delicate information are stored in the on-premise data center.

To migrate all this to a cloud infrastructure, you must have conducted thorough research on the cloud provider’s capabilities to handle sensitive data. Renowned cloud providers usually have strict data security measures and policies. 

You can still seek a third-party security audit on the cloud providers you want to choose, or even better yet, consult with a cloud security specialist to ensure your cloud architecture is constructed according to the highest security standards and answers all our needs.

As for on-premise infrastructure, security solely lies with you. You are responsible for real-time threat detection and implementing preventive measures. 

Cost optimization

One major advantage of adopting cloud infrastructure is its low cost of entry. No physical servers are needed, no manual maintenance cost, and no heavy cost incurred from the damage on physical servers. Your cloud providers are responsible for maintaining the virtual servers.

Having said that, Cloud providers use a pay-as-you-go model. This can skyrocket your operational costs when administrators are not familiar with the cloud pricing models. Building, operating, and maintaining a cloud architecture that maximizes your cloud benefits, while maintaining cost control - is not as easy as it sounds, and requires quite a high level of expertise. For that, a professional cloud cost optimization specialist can ensure you get everything you paid for, and are not bill-shocked by any unexpected surplus fees. 

On the other hand, On-premise software is usually charged a one-time license fee. On top of that, in-house servers, server maintenance, and IT professionals deal with any potential risks that may occur. This does not account for the time and money lost when a system failure happens, and the available employees don’t have the expertise to contain the situation. 

Customization 

On-premise IT infrastructure offers full control to an enterprise. You can tailor your system to your specialized needs. The system is in your hands and only you can modify it to your liking and business needs.

With cloud infrastructure, it’s a bit trickier. To customize cloud platform solutions to your own organizational needs, you need high-level expertise to plan and construct a cloud solution that is tailored to your organizational requirement. 

Flexibility 

When your company is expanding its market reach it’s essential to utilize cloud infrastructure as it doesn’t require huge investments. Data can be accessed from anywhere in the world through a virtual server provided by your cloud provider, and scaling your architecture is easy (especially if your initial planning and construction were done right and aimed to support growth). 

With an on-premise system, going into other markets would require you to establish physical servers in those locations and invest in new staff. This might make you think twice about your expansion plans due to the huge costs.

Which is the best? 

Generally, the On-premise deployment model is suited for enterprises that require full control of their servers and have the necessary personnel to maintain the hardware and software and frequently secure the network.

They store sensitive information and rather invest in their own security measures on a system they have full control over than have their data move to the cloud. 

Small businesses and large enterprises - Apple, Netflix, Instagram, alike move their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud due to the flexibility of expansion and growth and low cost of entry. No need for the huge upfront investment in infrastructure and maintenance. 

With the various prebuilt tools and features, and the right expert partner to take you through your cloud journey - you can customize the system to cater to your needs while upholding top security standards and optimizing ongoing costs.

6 steps to successful cloud migration

There are infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity on the cloud. Cloud migration is a process that makes your infrastructure conformable to your modern business environment. It is a chance to cut costs and tap into scalability, agility, and faster market time. Even so, if not done right, cloud migration can produce the opposite results. 

Costs in cloud migration 

This is entirely strategy-dependent. For instance, refactoring all your applications at once could lead to severe downtimes and high costs. For a speedy and cost-effective cloud migration process, it is crucial to invest in strategy and assessments. The right plan factors in costs, downtimes, employee training, and the duration of the whole process. 

There is also a matter of aligning your finance team with your IT needs, which will require restructuring your CapEx / OpEx model. CapEx is the standard model of traditional on-premise IT - such as fixed investments in IT equipment, servers, and such, while OpEx is how public cloud computing services are purchased (i.e operational cost incurred on a monthly/yearly basis). 

When migrating to the public cloud, you are shifting from traditional hardware and software ownership to a pay-as-you-go model, which means shifting from CapEx to OpEx, allowing your IT team to maximize agility and flexibility to support your business’ scaling needs while maximizing cost efficiency. This will, however, require full alignment with all company stakeholders, as each of the models has different implications on cost, control, and operational flexibility.

Cloud Security  

If the cloud is trumpeted to have all the benefits, why isn't every business migrating? Security, that's the biggest concern encumbering cloud migration. With most cloud solutions, you are entrusting a third party with your data. A careful evaluation of the provider and their processes and security control is essential.   

Within the field of cloud environments, there are generally two parties responsible for infrastructure security. 

  1. Your cloud vendor. 
  2. Your own company’s IT / Security team. 

Some companies believe that as cloud customers when they migrate to the cloud, cloud security responsibilities fall solely on the cloud vendors. Well, that’s not the case.

Both the cloud customers and cloud vendors share responsibilities in cloud security and are both liable for the security of the environment and infrastructure.

To better manage the shared responsibility, consider the following tips:

Define your cloud security needs and requirements before choosing a cloud vendor. If you know your requirements, you’ll select a cloud provider suited to answer your needs.

Clarify the roles and responsibilities of each party when it comes to cloud security. Comprehensively define who is responsible for what and to what extent. Know how far your cloud provider is willing to go to protect your environment.

CSPs are responsible for the security of the physical or virtual infrastructure and the security configuration of their managed services while the cloud customers are in control of their data and the security measures, they set in place to protect their data, system, networks, and applications.

Employees buy-in 

The learning curve for your new systems will be faster if there is substantial employee buy-in from the start. There needs to be a communication strategy in place for your workers to understand the migration process, its benefits, and its role in it. Employee training should be part of your strategy. 

Change management to the pay-as-you-go model

Like any other big IT project, shifting to the cloud significantly changes your business operations. Managing workloads and applications on the cloud significantly differ from how it is done on rem. Some functions will be rendered redundant, while other roles may get additional responsibilities. With most cloud platforms running a pay-as-you-go model, there is an increasing need for businesses to be able to manage their cloud operations in an efficient manner. You’d be surprised at how easy it is for your cloud costs to get out of control.

In fact, according to Gartner, the estimated global enterprise cloud waste is appx. 35% of their cloud spend, is forecasted to hit $21 Billion wasted (!!!) by 2021. 

Migrating legacy applications 

These applications were designed a decade ago, and even though they don't mirror the modern environment of your business, they host your mission-critical process. How do you convert these systems or connect them with cloud-based applications? 

Steps to a successful cloud migration 

You may be familiar with the 6 R’s, which are 6 common strategies for cloud migration. Check out our recent post on the 6 R’s to cloud migration.  

Additionally, follow these steps to smoothly migrate your infrastructure to the public cloud: 

  1. Define a cloud migration roadmap 

This is a detailed plan that involves all the steps you intend to take in the cloud migration process. The plan should include timeframes, budget, user flows, and KPIs. Starting the cloud migration process without a detailed plan could lead to a waste of time and resources. Effectively communicating this plan improves support from senior leadership and employees. 

Application assessment 

Identify your current infrastructure and evaluate the performance and weaknesses of your applications. The evaluation helps to compare the cost versus value of the planned cloud migration based on the current state of your infrastructure. This initial evaluation also helps to decide the best approach to modernization, whether your apps will need re-platforming or if they can be lifted and shifted to the cloud. 

Choose the right platform 

Your landing zone could be a public cloud, a private cloud, a hybrid, or a multi-cloud. The choice here depends on your applications, security needs, and costs. Public clouds excel in scalability and have a cost-effective pay-per-usage model. Private clouds are suitable for a business with stringent security requirements. A hybrid cloud is where workloads can be moved between the private and public clouds through orchestration. A multi-cloud environment combines IaaS services from two or more public clouds.  

Find the right provider 

If you are going with the public, hybrid, or multi-cloud deployment model, you will have to choose between different cloud providers in the market (namely Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) and various control & optimization tools. Critical factors for your consideration in this decision include security, costs, and availability.  

There are fads in fashion and other things but not technology. Trends such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote working can have extensive implications for a business's future. Business survival, recovery, and growth are dependent on your agility in adopting and adapting to the ever-changing business environment. Moving from on-prem to the cloud is one way that businesses can tap into the potential of advanced technology.

The key drivers 

Investment resources are utilized much more efficiently on the cloud. With the advantage of on-demand service models, businesses can optimize efficiency and save software, infrastructure, and storage costs.

For a business that is rapidly expanding, cloud migration is the best way to keep the momentum going. There is a promise of scalability and simplified application hosting. It eliminates the need to install additional servers, for example, when eCommerce traffic surges.

Remote working is the current sole push factor. As COVID-19 lays waste to everything, businesses, even those that never considered cloud migration before, have been forced to implement either partial or full cloud migration. Employees can access business applications and collaborate from any corner of the world. 

Best Practices

Choose a secure cloud environment 

The leading public cloud providers are AWS, Azure, and GCP (check out our detailed comparison between the 3) They all offer competitive hosting rates favorable to small and medium-scale businesses. However, resources are shared, like in an apartment building with multiple tenants, and so security is an issue that quickly comes to mind.

The private cloud is an option for businesses that want more control and assured security. Private clouds are a stipulation for businesses that handle sensitive information, such as hospitals and DoD contractors. 

A hybrid cloud, on the other hand, gives you the best of both worlds. You have the cost-effectiveness of the public cloud when you need it. When you demand architectural control, customization, and increased security, you can take advantage of the private cloud. 

Scrutinize SLAs

The service level agreement is the only thing that states clearly what you should expect from a cloud vendor. Go through it with keen eyes. Some enterprises have started cloud migration only to experience challenges because of vendor lock-in. 

Choose a cloud provider with an SLA that supports the easy transfer of data. This flexibility can help you overcome technical incompatibilities and high costs. 

Plan a migration strategy

Once you identify the best type of cloud environment and the right vendor, the next requirement is to set a migration strategy. When creating a migration strategy, one must consider costs, employee training, and estimated downtime in business applications. Some strategies are better than others:

  • Rehosting may be the easiest moving formula. It basically lifts and shifts. At such a time, when businesses must quickly explore the cloud for remote working, rehosting can save time and money. Your systems are moved to the cloud with no changes to their architecture. The main disadvantage is the inability to optimize costs and app performance on the cloud. 
  • Replatforming is another strategy. It involves making small changes to workloads before moving to the cloud. The architectural modifications maximize performance on the cloud. An example is shifting an app's database to a managed database on the cloud. 
  • Refactoring gives you all the advantages of the cloud, but it does require more investment in the cloud migration process. It involves re-architecting your entire array of applications to meet your business needs, on the one hand, while maximizing efficiency, optimizing costs, and implementing best practices to better tailor your cloud environment. It optimizes app performance and supports the efficient utilization of the cloud infrastructure.

 Know what to migrate and what to retire 

A cloud migration strategy can have all the elements of rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring. The important thing is that businesses must identify resources and the dependencies between them. Not every application and dependencies needs to be shifted to the cloud. 

For instance, instead of running SMTP email servers, organizations can switch to a SaaS email platform on the cloud. This helps to reduce wasted spend and wasted time in cloud migration.

 Train your employees

Workflow modernization can only work well for an organization if employees support it. Where there is no employee training, workers avoid the new technology or face productivity and efficiency problems.

A cloud migration strategy must include employee training as a component. Start communicating the move before it even happens. Ask questions on the most critical challenges your workers face and gear the migration towards solving their work challenges. 

Further, ensure that your cloud migration team is up to the task. Your operations, design, and development teams are the torchbearers of the move. Do they have the experience and skill sets to effect a quick and cost-effective migration?

To Conclude: 

Cloud migration can be a lengthy and complex process. However, with proper planning and strategy execution, you can avoid challenges and achieve a smooth transition. A fool-proof approach is to pick a partner that possesses the expertise, knowledge, and experience to see the big picture of your current and future needs, thus tailoring a solution that fits you like a glove, in all aspects. 

At Cloudride, we have helped many businesses attain faster and more cost-effective cloud migrations.
We are MS-AZURE and AWS, partners, and are here to help you choose a cloud environment that fits your business demands, needs, and plans. 

We provide custom-fit cloud migration services with special attention to security, vendor best practices, and cost efficiency. 

Click here for a free one-on-one consultation call!

yura-vasilevitski
2022/10
Oct 6, 2022 12:32:58 PM
Cloud migration - Q & A
Cloud Security, AWS, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Cloud Computing

Oct 6, 2022 12:32:58 PM

Cloud migration - Q & A

DevOps as a service and DevOps security

 

DevOps as a service is an emerging philosophy in application development. DevOps as a service moves traditional collaboration of the development and operations team to the cloud, where many of the processes can be automated using stackable virtual development tools.

As many organizations adopt DevOps and migrate their apps to the cloud, the tools used to build, test, and deploy processes change towards making ‘continuous delivery’ an effective managed cloud service. We’ll take a look at what such a move would entail, and what it means for the next generation of DevOps teams.

DevOps as a Managed Cloud Service

What is DevOps in the cloud? Essentially it is the migration of your tools and processes for continuous delivery to a hosted virtual platform. The delivery pipeline becomes a seamless orchestration where developers, testers, and operations professionals collaborate as one, and as much of the deployment process as possible is automated. Here are some of the more popular commercial options for moving DevOps to the cloud on AWS and Azure.

AWS Tools and Services for DevOps

Amazon Web Services has built a powerful global network for virtually hosting some of the world’s most complex IT environments. With fiber-linked data centers arranged all over the world and a payment schedule that measures exactly the services you use down to the millisecond of computing time, AWS is a fast and relatively easy way to migrate your DevOps to the cloud.

Though AWS has scores of powerful interactive features, three particular services are the core of continuous cloud delivery.

AWS CodeBuild

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed service for compiling code, running quality assurance testing through automated processes, and producing deployment-ready software. CodeBuild is highly secure, as each customer receives a unique encryption key to build into every artifact produced.

CodeBuild offers automatic scaling and grows on-demand with your needs, even allowing the simultaneous deployment of two different build versions, which allows for comparison testing in the production environment.

Particularly important for many organizations is CodeBuild’s cost efficiency. It comes with no upfront costs and customers pay only for the milliseconds of compute time required to produce releases and connect seamlessly with other Amazon services to add power and flexibility on demand without spending six figures on hardware to support development.

AWS CodePipeline

With a slick graphical interface, you set parameters and build the model for your perfect deployment scenario and CodePipeline takes it from there. With no servers to provision and deploy, it lets you hit the ground running, bringing continuous delivery by executing automated tasks to perform the complete delivery cycle every time a change is made to the code.

AWS CodeDeploy

Once a new build makes it through CodePipeline, CodeDeploy delivers the working package to every instance outlined in your pre-configured parameters. This makes it simple to synchronize builds and instantly patch or upgrade them at once. CodeDeploy is code-agnostic and easily incorporates common legacy code. Every instance of your deployment is easily tracked in the AWS Management Console, and errors or problems can be easily rolled back through the GUI.
Combining these AWS tools with others in the AWSinventory provides all the building blocks needed to deploy a safe, scalable continuous delivery model in the cloud. Though the engineering adjustments are daunting, the long-term stability and savings make it a move worth considering sooner rather than later.

DevOps and Security

 

Transitioning to DevOps requires a change in culture and mindset. In simple words, DevOps means removing the barriers between traditionally siloed teams: development and operations. In some organizations, there may not even be a separation between development, operations, and security teams; engineers are often required to do a bit of all. With DevOps, the two disciplines work together to optimize both the productivity of developers and the reliability of operations.

DevOps_feedback-diagram

The alignment of development and operations teams has made it possible to build customized software and business functions quicker than before, but security teams continue to be left out of the DevOps conversation. In a lot of organizations, security is still viewed as or operates as a roadblock to rapid development or operational implementations, slowing down production code pushes. As a result, security processes are ignored or missed as the DevOps teams view them as an interference toward their pending success. As part of your organization's strategy toward security, automated and orchestrated cloud deployment and operations - you will need to unite the DevOps and SecOps teams in an effort to fully support and operationalize your organization's cloud operations.

devsecopspipeline

A new word is here, DevSecOps

Security teams tend to be an order of magnitude smaller than developer teams. The goal of DevSecOps is to go from security being the “department of no” to security being an enabler.

“The purpose and intent of DevSecOps are to build on the mindset that everyone is responsible for security with the goal of safely distributing security decisions at speed and scale to those who hold the highest level of context without sacrificing the safety required,” describes Shannon Lietz, co-author of the “DevSecOps Manifesto.”

DevSecOps refers to the integration of security practices into a DevOps software delivery model. Its foundation is a culture where development and operations are enabled through process and tooling to take part in a shared responsibility for delivering secure software.

For example, if we take a look at the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, we see that we as a customer of AWS have a lot of responsibility in securing our environment. We cannot expect someone to do that job for us.

Shared_Responsibility_Model_V2.59d1eccec334b366627e9295b304202faf7b899b

The definition of the DevSecOps Model is to integrate security objectives as early as possible in the lifecycle of software development. While security is “everyone’s responsibility,” DevOps teams are uniquely positioned at the intersection of development and operations, empowered to apply security in both breadth and depth. 

Nowadays, scanners and reports simply don't cover the whole picture. As part of the testing that is done in a pipeline, the developer adds a penetration test to validate that the new code is not vulnerable and our application stays secure.

Organizations can not wait to fall victim to mistakes and attackers. The security world is changing, development teams are leaning in over saying “No”, nor open to hearing and working with Open Contribution & Collaboration over Security-Only Requirements.

Best practices for DevSecOps

DevSecOps should be the natural incorporation of security controls into your development, delivery, and operational processes.

Shift Left

DevSecOps are moving engineers towards security from the right (at the end) to the left (beginning) of the Development and Delivery process. In a DevSecOps environment, security is an integral part of the development process from the get-go. An organization that uses DevSecOps brings in its cybersecurity architects and engineers as part of the development team. Their job is to ensure every component, and every configuration item in the stack is patched, configured securely, and documented.

Shifting left allows the DevSecOps team to identify security risks and exposures early and ensure that these security threats are addressed immediately. Not only is the development team thinking about building the product efficiently, but they are also implementing security as they build it.

Automated Tests 

The DevOps Pipeline performs several tests and checks for the code before the code deploys to production workloads, so why not add security tests such as static code analysis and penetrations tests? The key concept here is to understand that passing a security test is as important as passing a unit test. The pipeline will fail if a major vulnerability will be found.

Slow Is Pro

A common mistake is to deploy several security tools at once such as AWS config for compliance and a SAST (Static application security testing) tool for code analysis or deploy one tool with a lot of tests and checks. This method only creates an extra load of problems for developers which slows the CI/CD process and is not very agile. Instead, when an organization is implementing tools like those mentioned above they should start with a small set of checks which will slowly get everybody on board and get the developers used so that their code is tested.

Keep It A Secret

“Secrets” in Information Security often means all private information a team should know such as API Keys, Passwords, Databases connection strings, SSL certificates, etc. Secrets should be kept in a safe place and not hard-coded in a repo for example. Another issue is to keep the secret rotated and generate new ones every once in a while. A compromised access key can cause devastating results and major business impact, constantly rotating these keys is a mechanism determined to protect against old secrets being miss used. There are a lot of great tools for these purposes such as Keepass, AWS Secret manager, or Azure Key Vault.

Security education

Security is a combination of engineering and compliance. Organizations should form an alliance between the development engineers, operations teams, and compliance teams to ensure everyone in the organization understands the company's security posture and follows the same standards.

Everyone involved with the delivery process should be familiar with the basic principles of application security, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10, application security testing, and other security engineering practices. Developers need to understand thread models, compliance checks, and have a working knowledge of how to measure risks, exposure, and implement security controls

At Cloudride, we live and breathe cloud security, and have supported numerous organizations in the transition to the DevSecOps model. From AWS, MS Azure, and other ISV’s, we can help you migrate to the cloud faster yet securely, strengthen your security posture and maximize business value from the cloud. 

It's safe to say that AWS certifications are some of the most coveted certifications in the industry. There are many different certification opportunities to choose from. And the best part about AWS certifications is that they're all very comprehensive, so you can start at any level and work your way up from there.

AWS Certified - Cloud Practitioner

The AWS Certified - Cloud Practitioner certification is the most entry-level of all the certifications that AWS offers. It's designed to test your knowledge of basic cloud services and features and how they can be used together. This certification isn't as comprehensive as others, so it's better suited for people just starting with AWS.

The exam consists of a multiple-choice exam with 50 questions and an essay question (100 points total). The multiple-choice exam lasts 90 minutes, while the essay portion takes 60 minutes to complete. There's no minimum score required to pass this test; however, you must meet certain benchmarks to earn up to 11 bonus points on your final scorecard from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS Certified FinOps Practioner

The value of an AWS Certified FinOps Practioner is at an all-time high. This is because the world is going digital, and everything from finance to accounting has to change.

FinOps (short for financial operations) allows businesses and organizations to automate their financial processes using new technologies like cloud computing, blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

The AWS Certified FinOps Practioner certification covers topics like how to build a cost model for your business using AWS services; how to use Amazon Quick Sight for analytics; how to integrate data into an application by using Amazon Athena; or how you can use Amazon Kinesis Streams to make sense of streaming data generated by various systems within your organization.

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

For junior developers, the AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification is a great first step into cloud computing. Having this certification on your resume shows that you have a basic understanding of AWS, can program in some of its most popular languages—JavaScript and Python—and understand how to use tools like DynamoDB.

This certification can be a good starting point for developers looking to move into DevOps roles because it requires an understanding of programming languages (and not just AWS services) and an awareness of security issues in the cloud.

If you're interested in moving into security roles such as penetration testing or system administration, completing this coursework shows that you understand some core concepts about how AWS works and what types of threats are present when working within it.

AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty

Advanced Networking is a specialization that adds to the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate certification. It provides specialized knowledge of designing, securing, and maintaining AWS networks.

The Advanced Networking – Specialty certification will validate your ability to design highly available and scalable network architectures for your customers that meet their requirements for availability, performance, scalability, and security.

The AWS Advanced Networking exam tests your ability to use complex networking services such as Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon Route 53 in an enterprise environment built upon Amazon VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud). You must have passed the Solutions Architect – Associate level before taking this exam because it covers advanced topics that are not covered in the associate level courseware or exam.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional certification is the most popular of all of the AWS certifications. It is designed for those who want to be or are already architects and need to design scalable and secure cloud computing solutions.

This certification requires you to have mastered designing and building cloud-based distributed applications. You will also need to understand how to build an application that can scale horizontally while minimizing downtime.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

DevOps is a software development process focusing on communication and collaboration between software developers, QA engineers, and operations teams. DevOps practitioners aim to improve the speed of releasing software by making it easy for members of each team to understand what their counterparts do and how they can help.

DevOps Engineer has mastered this practice in their organization and can lead others through it. A good DevOps Engineer can adapt quickly as requirements change or new technologies emerge—and will always work toward improving the delivery process overall.

The value of becoming a certified professional in this field is clear. Businesses are increasingly reliant on technology. There will always be a demand for experts to ensure that all systems run smoothly at every level (software design through deployment). In short: if you want a job where your skills are never outmoded or obsolete, choose DevOps!

 

 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/10
Oct 3, 2022 3:48:19 PM
DevOps as a service and DevOps security
DevOps, AWS Certificates, Security

Oct 3, 2022 3:48:19 PM

DevOps as a service and DevOps security

FinOps and Cost Optimization

FinOps is the cloud operation model that consolidates finance and IT, just like DevOps synergizes developers and operations. FinOps can revolutionize accounting in the cloud age of business, by enabling enterprises to understand cloud costs, budgeting, and procurements from a technical perspective.

The main idea behind FinOps is to double the business value on the cloud through best practices for finance professionals in a technical environment and technical professionals in a financial ecosystem.

What is FinOps?

In the cloud environment, different platforms and so many moving parts can make the cost-optimization of cloud resources a challenge. This challenge has given rise to a new discipline: financial operations or FinOps. Here’s how the FinOps Foundation, a non-profit trade association for FinOps professionals, describes the discipline:

FinOps is the operating model for the cloud. FinOps enables a shift — a combination of systems, best practices, and culture — to increase an organization’s ability to understand cloud costs and make tradeoffs. In the same way that DevOps revolutionized development by breaking down silos and increasing agility, FinOps increases the business value of the cloud by bringing together technology, business, and finance professionals with a new set of processes.

How to optimize your cloud costs?

If you’re a FinOps professional – or if you’re an IT or business leader concerned about controlling expenses – here are several ways to optimize cloud costs.

#1 Make sure you’re using the right cloud. Your mission-critical applications might benefit from a private, hosted cloud or even deployment in an on-premises environment, but that doesn’t mean all your workloads need to be deployed in the same environment. In addition, cloud technologies are getting more sophisticated all the time. Review your cloud deployments annually to make sure you have the right workloads in the right clouds.

#2 Review your disaster recovery strategy. More businesses than ever are leveraging AWS and Azure for disaster recovery. These pay-as-you-go cloud solutions can ensure your failover site is available when needed without requiring that you duplicate resources.

#3 Optimize your cloud deployment. If you’re deploying workloads on a cloud platform such as AWS or Azure for the first time, a knowledgeable partner who knows all the tips and tricks can be a real asset. It’s easy to overlook features, like Reserved Instances, that can help you lower monthly cloud costs.

#4 Outsource some or all of your cloud management. Many IT departments are short-staffed with engineers wearing multiple hats. While doing business, it’s easy for cloud resources to be underutilized or orphaned. The right cloud partner can help you find and eliminate these resources to lower your costs.

#5 Outsource key roles. Many IT roles, especially in areas like IT security and system administration, are hard to fill. Although you want someone with experience, you may not even need them full-time. Instead of going in circles trying to find and recruit the right talent, the use of a professional service company with a wide knowledge base can give you the entire solution, it's a huge advantage and can save you a lot of money.

# 6 Increase your visibility. Even if you decide to place some or all cloud management, you still want to keep an eye on things. There are several platforms today such as Spotinst cloud analyzer that can address cloud management and provide visibility across all your cloud environments from a single console.  Nevertheless, the use of these platforms should be part of the FinOps consultation. 

AWS Lambda Cost Optimization

Although moving into the cloud can mean that your IT budget increases, cloud computing helps you customize how it runs. There are many advantages to using AWS - whether you're using it for just one application or using the cloud as a data center. The advantage of using AWS is that you save money on other aspects of your business, allowing you to spend more wisely on AWS services. For example, monitoring time zones to the only charge for the services used at peak times means that costs can be managed anytime.

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of understanding how to lower costs, let's review how Amazon determines the price of AWS Lambda. Amazon's Lambda has several indicators to calculate how much it will cost to run them. The duration is measured according to the time your code began executing until it completes or otherwise ends. The price depends on how much memory your function requires.

The AWS Lambda service is part of Compute Savings Plans, which provide low prices for Amazon EC2, Amazon Fargate, and AWS Lambda if you commit to using them consistently for a period of one or three years. You can save up to 17% on Amazon Lambda when you use Compute

Request pricing

  • Free Tier: 1 million monthly requests
  • Then $0.20 for every million requests

Duration pricing

  • 400,000 GB-seconds free per month
  • $0.00001667 for each GB-second afterward

 Function configuration memory size.

An invocation consumes 1.5 GB or less of memory, multiplied by the duration. In practice, GB-sec proves to be rather complicated, despite its simple appearance. If you want to see what your function might cost, you can try an Amazon Lambda cost calculator.

How to Optimize AWS Lambda Costs?

 Monitor All AWS Lambda Workloads

There are over 120,000 AWS Lambda functions in the wild. Let's say you own a business. If you want to see every single function, you'd need over 2000 computers in your network just to keep up with what's running. While that's a horrible amount of computer resources, many of us don't have that capability. You can create instances with many cores, memory, storage, and other resources to monitor what's going on.

Your Lambda function will keep running, but as long as you can monitor the outcome, it's effortless to see what's going on in there. AWS Lambda dashboard from AWS allows you to view metrics from your Lambda functions. You can see live logs of how long functions run and which parts of your code are processing or not.

 Reduce Lambda Usage

Lambda usage can be easily optimized and significantly cut down, by simply turning off and downing Lambda services whenever they are not in use. You can configure AWS Lambda to function on a per-task basis. It might even inspire you to do the same for your other services. Don't use lambdas for simple transforms, or you will find yourself paying more than $0.20 per 1000 calls. If you are deploying a serverless API using AWS AppSync & API Gateway, this happens quite often.

 Cache Lambda Responses

Instead of sending a static string to all API endpoints, developers can send response headers that include the exact value the user needs and even identify the intended application using a unique ID.

One of the keys to delivering a very efficient response is to cache those responses, so your endpoints don't need to send them all the time.  A function that is not called doesn't add to your bill. Further, this allows developers to save time and energy and achieve implementations that enhance user experience.

 Use Batch Lambda Calls

Sometimes, a server may be under heavy load, and the peak traffic will fluctuate due to intermittent events. Good use of queue could be utilized to make this an effective, fast solution to pause Lambda execution and "batch" code executions. Instead of calling functions on every event, you will be calling only a set number of times during a specific event period. If the function call rate is constant, the other requests can wait until the function is called.  For outstanding performance, Lambda has native support for AWS queuing services such as Kinesis and SQS. It's essential to test your function optimally and follow these best practices to ensure your data is batched properly.

 Never Call Lambda Directly from Lambda

If you want to change the AWS Lambda endpoint on the server, you can't call it directly. This is another example of why Lambda isn't meant to be a transactional backend or database but rather a real-time event-sourced service. You may be using AWS Lambda today without knowing this, but it's easy to minimize your AWS Lambda costs with this knowledge in mind. There are many options available when it comes to AWS queuing services. SQS, SNS, Kinesis, and Step Functions are just a few that set AWS apart for those tasks that require heavy-hitting responses. You can notify clients with WebSockets or email as your needs arise.

Cloudride specializes in providing professional consultancy & implementation planning services for all cloud environments and providers. Whether the target environment is AWS, Azure  GCP, or others, Cloudride specialists are experienced experts with these systems and cater to any need. You no longer have to worry about reducing cloud costs or improving efficiency—just leave that to us. Give us a call today for your free consultation!

Book a meeting today. 

 

 

michael-kahn-blog
2022/09
Sep 29, 2022 4:17:39 PM
FinOps and Cost Optimization
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Financial Services

Sep 29, 2022 4:17:39 PM

FinOps and Cost Optimization

FinOps is the cloud operation model that consolidates finance and IT, just like DevOps synergizes developers and operations. FinOps can revolutionize accounting in the cloud age of business, by enabling enterprises to understand cloud costs, budgeting, and procurements from a technical perspective.

AWS Cloud Computing for Startups

With a cloud computing-based solution, you can set up your systems and scale them up or down depending on your needs. This allows you to plan for peak loads or unexpected surges in traffic. In this article, we will discuss why AWS is a game changer for startups, how AWS cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem, and, more importantly, why it makes sense to go with AWS as your primary infrastructure provider.

Powering startups with the cloud

The cloud is a game changer for startups. It's the best way to ensure your company's success by ensuring that you are prepared for anything, from growth spurts and technical difficulties to business expansion.

AWS has revolutionized the startup ecosystem by providing scalable and flexible technology at an affordable price. This makes it easy for all kinds of companies—from enterprise businesses, nonprofits, and small businesses to large enterprises—to take advantage of what the cloud offers.

As a founder who deals with many systems and platforms daily, it is important to have access to reliable infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) like AWS Marketplace or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

These services allow you to help customers perform better and free up time so that you can focus more on improving processes internally rather than worrying about server maintenance tasks such as manually provisioning instances or performing upgrades manually when they become necessary.

How cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem

 

Cloud computing has revolutionized the startup ecosystem by helping entrepreneurs to focus on their core business, customers, employees, and products. The cloud allows you to run applications in a shared environment so that your infrastructure costs are spread across multiple users rather than being borne by you alone. This allows startups to scale up quickly without worrying about being able to afford the necessary hardware upfront.

In addition, it also provides them access to new technology such as AI and machine learning which they would not have been able to afford on their own. This helps them innovate faster and stay ahead of the competition while enjoying reduced costs simultaneously!

Reasons for AWS for startups

 There are many reasons why a startup should consider using AWS.

AWS is reliable and secure: The Cloud was built for just that, to ensure that your critical data is safe, backed up, and accessible from anywhere. It's not just about technology. Amazon provides excellent customer support.

Cost-effective: There are many benefits when pricing as well; you pay only for what you use hourly, so there are no long-term commitments or upfront fees. You also get access to all features that come with AWS operating system, including backups, monitoring systems, and security tools, at no extra cost!​

How AWS is a game changer 

Cost savings. AWS saves money by running your applications on a highly scalable, pay-as-you-go infrastructure. Using AWS is typically lower than maintaining your own data center, allowing you to focus on the business rather than the infrastructure aspects of running an application.

Speed - When you use AWS, it takes just minutes to spin up an instance and start creating your application on their platform. That's compared to building out servers and networking equipment in the house, which could take weeks or even months!

Changes - As soon as you make a change, it gets reflected instantly across all environments – staging or production – so there's no need for error-prone manual processes or lengthy approvals before rolling out updates. This makes it easier for teams within companies that use this service because they don't have to wait around until someone else finishes making changes before moving forward (which doesn't happen often).

AWS Global Startup program 

The AWS Global Startup program is a new initiative that provides startups access to AWS credits and support for a year. The program assigns Partner Development Managers (PDMs) to each startup, who will help them use AWS services and best practices. 

PDMs help startups with building and deploying their applications on AWS. They can also provide valuable assistance for startups that are looking for partners in the AWS Partner Network or want to learn more about marketing and sales strategies.

Integration with Marketplace Tools

Amazon enables startups to integrate their applications with Marketplace Tools. This set of APIs enables startups to integrate their applications with Amazon's marketplaces.

Marketplace Tools are available for all AWS regions and service types, enabling you to choose the right tools for your use case.

Fast Scalability 

When you're building a business from scratch and don't have any funding, every second counts—and cloud computing speeds up your development process. You can get to market faster than ever before and focus on your product or service and its customers. You don't need to worry about managing servers or storing data in-house; AWS does all this for you at scale.

This frees up time for other important tasks like meeting with investors, hiring new employees, researching competitors' services (or competitors themselves), or perfecting marketing copy.

Conclusion

The cloud is a very flexible environment that can be adapted to suit the needs of your business. With AWS, you have access to a wide range of services that will help make your startup stand out from the crowd.

 

Need help getting started? Book a free call today! 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/09
Sep 7, 2022 8:26:07 PM
AWS Cloud Computing for Startups
AWS, Cloud Computing, Startups

Sep 7, 2022 8:26:07 PM

AWS Cloud Computing for Startups

With a cloud computing-based solution, you can set up your systems and scale them up or down depending on your needs. This allows you to plan for peak loads or unexpected surges in traffic. In this article, we will discuss why AWS is a game changer for startups, how AWS cloud computing has...

Amazon Cognito - Solutions to Control Access

When you need to control access to your AWS resources, Amazon Cognito offers a variety of solutions. If you want to federate or manage identities across multiple providers, you can use Amazon Cognito user pools and device synchronization. If your app requires an authorized sign-in process before providing temporary credentials to users, then the AWS Amplify library simplifies access authentication.

Identity management for developers 

Amazon Cognito is a fully managed service that makes it easy to add user sign-up and sign-in functionality to your apps. You can use Amazon Cognito to create, manage, and validate user identities within your app.

With Amazon Cognito, you can:

Easily add new users by allowing them to sign up with their email addresses or phone numbers. After signing up, you can associate them with an AWS account or provide other custom attributes like first and last names.

Automatically recognize returning customers using Amazon Cognito Sync or federated identity providers such as Facebook or Google Sign-In (GSI). This allows existing users who have been previously verified in another service provided by Amazon or one of its partners (e.g., Facebook) to be automatically recognized/identified when logging into multiple applications using different credentials.

Backend 

You can use Amazon Cognito to deliver temporary, limited-privilege credentials to your applications. You no longer have to manage user credentials in your application code.

You also get flexible integration options with other AWS services (such as Amazon S3 storage buckets), allowing you to easily build secure web applications without writing any server-side code.

Client frontend Cognito 

You can create new user accounts, update existing user accounts, and reset passwords using Amazon Cognito.

With Amazon Cognito, you don’t need to write any code to manage users; instead, you can use an API that abstracts the complexities of authentication out of your application’s infrastructure. You provide the parameters for your users (such as names) or groups (for example, “members”), and Amazon Cognito handles everything else—including signing in or signing up the user on behalf of your application.

AWS amplify simplifies access authentication

AWS amplify simplifies access authentication. It’s a cloud-based service that Amazon manages, so you don’t have to worry about setting up a separate identity system or managing user credentials.

Amazon offers a free tier of amplifying, allowing you to authenticate users and control access to resources, including AWS services. In addition, the service integrates with other components of the AWS enterprise suite, such as IAM (Identity Access Management), CloudFront CDN (Content Distribution Network), CloudWatch Logs Event Notification Service, and S3 (Simple Storage Solution).

User pools and device synchronization

User pools and device synchronization are two separate features within Cognito. User pools manage user identity, while device synchronization manages device identity. They can be used together or independently of one another, but you need to choose which one works best for your organization’s needs before proceeding with the steps in this tutorial.

The following sections describe how each feature works:

User Pool Identity - This identity system allows you to create groups of users and assign them roles as needed. You can choose from predefined roles like “Admin” or “Guest” or create custom ones that best suit your organization’s needs.

Device Identity - This feature lets developers associate a user account with one or more devices, so they know which app sessions belong to which devices (and vice versa).

Federate identities 

Federate identities within Cognito enable you to use your existing credentials to sign in and access other applications. With this feature, you can connect your AWS account with other services that support SAML 2.0 federation protocols or JWT bearer tokens for authentication.

  • Federated identity is an authentication model that allows users to use their existing credentials to sign in to multiple applications.
  • A federated identity provider is a third party that authenticates users and issues security tokens that can be used to access other applications.

You can use Amazon Cognito to deliver temporary, limited-privilege credentials

Amazon Cognito is a secure and scalable user identity and access management solution that allows you to easily add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your website or mobile app. This can be useful if you are building an application that needs to store data in an Amazon DynamoDB table or make calls against Amazon S3 buckets.

To use Amazon Cognito to control access:

  • Create an App Client ID with the appropriate permissions for your application’s use cases
  • Create a Cognito User Pool containing the users who your applications will grant temporary credentials
  • Generate temporary credentials for those users

When you use Amazon Cognito, instead of requesting new temporary security credentials every time they need access to AWS resources, users sign in once through a custom authentication process. They only need to provide their unique identifier for the service that authenticated them, and all subsequent requests can be made with this identifier. This means that users don’t have to enter their credentials again when accessing AWS resources from your application.

Amazon Cognito has no upfront costs. 

Amazon Cognito has no upfront costs and charges based on monthly active users (MAUs). Active is defined as any unique user who accesses your app in a given calendar month.

The Amazon Cognito pricing structure is based on the number of MAUs you have, including all users who use your app without being prompted to sign in or authenticate their identity before using it.

There are lots of ways to control access to Amazon resources

 There are lots of ways to control access to Amazon resources. Developers can use identity management APIs that provide robust functionality, including single sign-on (SSO), session management, and role-based access control.

To reduce the time and effort developers need to spend managing user identities, Cognito simplifies access authentication by abstracting out common tasks like implementing the web flow or sending an email message after sign-in.

In addition to providing a simpler developer experience through AWS Amplify, you can also use other tools on the AWS Marketplace, such as Cognito User Pools and Device Sync, if you want more control over your users who are authenticated within your app.

Let's talk! 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/09
Sep 7, 2022 8:18:32 PM
Amazon Cognito - Solutions to Control Access
Cloud Security, Cognito, Access Control

Sep 7, 2022 8:18:32 PM

Amazon Cognito - Solutions to Control Access

When you need to control access to your AWS resources, Amazon Cognito offers a variety of solutions. If you want to federate or manage identities across multiple providers, you can use Amazon Cognito user pools and device synchronization. If your app requires an authorized sign-in process before...

Best AWS Certifications

It's safe to say that AWS certifications are some of the most coveted certifications in the industry. There are many different certification opportunities to choose from. And the best part about AWS certifications is that they're all very comprehensive, so you can start at any level and work your way up from there.

AWS Certified - Cloud Practitioner

The AWS Certified - Cloud Practitioner certification is the most entry-level of all the certifications that AWS offers. It's designed to test your knowledge of basic cloud services and features and how they can be used together. This certification isn't as comprehensive as others, so it's better suited for people just starting with AWS.

The exam consists of a multiple-choice exam with 50 questions and an essay question (100 points total). The multiple-choice exam lasts 90 minutes, while the essay portion takes 60 minutes to complete. There's no minimum score required to pass this test; however, you must meet certain benchmarks to earn up to 11 bonus points on your final scorecard from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS Certified FinOps Practioner

The value of an AWS Certified FinOps Practioner is at an all-time high. This is because the world is going digital, and everything from finance to accounting has to change.

FinOps (short for financial operations) allows businesses and organizations to automate their financial processes using new technologies like cloud computing, blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

The AWS Certified FinOps Practioner certification covers topics like how to build a cost model for your business using AWS services; how to use Amazon Quick Sight for analytics; how to integrate data into an application by using Amazon Athena; or how you can use Amazon Kinesis Streams to make sense of streaming data generated by various systems within your organization.

AWS Certified Developer – Associate

For junior developers, the AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification is a great first step into cloud computing. Having this certification on your resume shows that you have a basic understanding of AWS, can program in some of its most popular languages—JavaScript and Python—and understand how to use tools like DynamoDB.

This certification can be a good starting point for developers looking to move into DevOps roles because it requires an understanding of programming languages (and not just AWS services) and an awareness of security issues in the cloud.

If you're interested in moving into security roles such as penetration testing or system administration, completing this coursework shows that you understand some core concepts about how AWS works and what types of threats are present when working within it.

AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty

Advanced Networking is a specialization that adds to the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate certification. It provides specialized knowledge of designing, securing, and maintaining AWS networks.

The Advanced Networking – Specialty certification will validate your ability to design highly available and scalable network architectures for your customers that meet their requirements for availability, performance, scalability, and security.

The AWS Advanced Networking exam tests your ability to use complex networking services such as Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon Route 53 in an enterprise environment built upon Amazon VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud). You must have passed the Solutions Architect – Associate level before taking this exam because it covers advanced topics that are not covered in the associate level courseware or exam.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional certification is the most popular of all of the AWS certifications. It is designed for those who want to be or are already architects and need to design scalable and secure cloud computing solutions.

This certification requires you to have mastered designing and building cloud-based distributed applications. You will also need to understand how to build an application that can scale horizontally while minimizing downtime.

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

DevOps is a software development process focusing on communication and collaboration between software developers, QA engineers, and operations teams. DevOps practitioners aim to improve the speed of releasing software by making it easy for members of each team to understand what their counterparts do and how they can help.

DevOps Engineer has mastered this practice in their organization and can lead others through it. A good DevOps Engineer can adapt quickly as requirements change or new technologies emerge—and will always work toward improving the delivery process overall.

The value of becoming a certified professional in this field is clear. Businesses are increasingly reliant on technology. There will always be a demand for experts to ensure that all systems run smoothly at every level (software design through deployment). In short: if you want a job where your skills are never outmoded or obsolete, choose DevOps!

 

Conclusion

If you're looking for the best AWS certifications, this article has covered it for you. If you want more in-depth information about the different paths and programs – book a quick call and we’ll walk you through.

yura-vasilevitski
2022/08
Aug 16, 2022 11:24:06 PM
Best AWS Certifications
AWS, AWS Certificates

Aug 16, 2022 11:24:06 PM

Best AWS Certifications

It's safe to say that AWS certifications are some of the most coveted certifications in the industry. There are many different certification opportunities to choose from. And the best part about AWS certifications is that they're all very comprehensive, so you can start at any level and work your...

AWS Recommended Security Tools

Security is one of the most important aspects of any cloud-based solution. It's your responsibility to ensure the security of your data and applications, and AWS provides several tools that you can use to improve your security posture.

Utilizing these tools can detect and respond to threats more quickly, reduce false positives and avoid unnecessary alerts, and help protect your environment from vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection attacks.

Here are some of the best tools that AWS recommends for enhancing your cloud security:

GuardDuty

The GuardDuty service is a fully managed threat detection service that monitors malicious or even unauthorized behavior to assist you to protect your AWS accounts and workloads. GuardDuty analyzes your AWS account activity to detect anomalies that might indicate unauthorized and unexpected behaviors. It also generates detailed security reports containing information about the detected threats, including potential root causes and recommended mitigation actions.

You can use Amazon GuardDuty to find unauthorized Amazon S3 bucket access, access to your EC2 instances and security groups, unauthorized Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) health checks, and other risky actions that indicate a possible compromise. With Amazon GuardDuty, you can scan your AWS accounts in near real-time for threats with no configuration required; it is fully integrated with AWS CloudTrail, so you don't need any additional tools or services.

Inspector 

The Inspector service helps you automatically identify security weaknesses in your AWS resources, including Amazon S3 buckets, Amazon EC2 instances or groups of instances, and Amazon RDS databases. You can use Inspector to test your security policies by simulating attacks such as brute force password guessing and SQL injection on your resources. 

The results of these tests can help you determine whether you need to strengthen your security policy or adjust permissions on your resources. For example, Inspector can help you determine whether an attacker could gain access to confidential data stored in Amazon S3 buckets by guessing their passwords through brute force attacks.

Cognito

Cognito provides authentication, authorization, and user management for mobile devices. Cognito supports using Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) for push notifications and Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) for background processing. 

It enables you to easily create an identity pool representing a group of users, such as customers in an e-commerce application, and then securely manage their credentials and permissions.

With Cognito, you can easily add authentication to existing web applications using Amazon Cognito Identity Pools. The developer console guides you through creating an identity pool for your application, associating it with an API Gateway endpoint, creating app client credentials for accessing the API gateway endpoint through a web browser or mobile device SDKs (such as Android or iOS), and configuring login screens for users to enter their credentials.

Macie

Macie is a security tool that helps you discover sensitive information stored in your AWS cloud environment. You can search for data using a variety of parameters such as file type, ownership, or location. For example, if you have an Amazon S3 bucket that contains sensitive data, then Macie can help you identify it quickly so you can take action on it before someone else finds it first!

Macie also analyzes user, device, and application behavior to detect risky or anomalous activities. You can use Macie to create custom policies based on your unique compliance requirements. This can help reduce risk to your organization by allowing only compliant access to sensitive data.

Audit Manager

Audit Manager monitors AWS CloudTrail events for suspicious activity. It does this by comparing current events against historical events and alerts you when something looks out of place. This means that the Audit Manager can help protect against data breaches like accidental deletions or unauthorized access (data leaks).

Audit Manager collects information about all changes made within a given timeframe for each resource type or group of resources. This information can be used to detect suspicious activities such as unauthorized access attempts or changes made by malicious actors who have gained access to your account through stolen credentials.

To Conclude: 

The AWS recommended security tools are very user-friendly and deliver enormous value. The tools make it much easier to investigate attacks, compliance monitoring, and more. They provide comprehensive protection and prepare your company for meeting increased regulatory requirements. 

to learn more, book a free call with us here

yura-vasilevitski
2022/07
Jul 18, 2022 10:20:22 AM
AWS Recommended Security Tools
Cloud Security, AWS

Jul 18, 2022 10:20:22 AM

AWS Recommended Security Tools

Security is one of the most important aspects of any cloud-based solution. It's your responsibility to ensure the security of your data and applications, and AWS provides several tools that you can use to improve your security posture.

AWS Cost Tagging

It’s no secret that AWS is a minefield of hidden costs. Pricing structures change frequently, and new services and features are constantly added. Even the best-intentioned vendors are forced to update their pricing structures so that they can continue to offer new products at competitive prices. The good news is that it’s easier to avoid hidden costs by using tagging properly.

What are cost allocation tags in AWS?

The goal of cost allocation tagging is to enable you to track and control how AWS charges you for your resources. The tags are labels that help you track the resources you use. You can either have AWS charge you for each resource you use or have AWS charge you for a set amount of resources you use.

For example, if you have a micro instance with 1 CPU and 1 GPU running on AWS and then use that instance to run an application, then AWS will charge you for both CPU and GPU hours. To decide which to charge you for, AWS calculates an allocation rate for CPU and GPU hours. 

How to tag an AWS resource

There are two ways to tag resources in AWS. The first is using tags that are part of the AWS Billing System. Billing tags are the standard tags that AWS vendors use to manage their billing. You can see some examples of these tags in the AWS Billing System. The second way to tag resources is by using tags that AWS generates.

This is done through AWS CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk, and OpsWorks. This tag type is known as a “user-defined cost allocation tag.” User-defined tags allow you to track cost allocation for non-standard resources in AWS. For example, you can track cost allocation for an instance you use for a custom application or for an S3 bucket that you use for archiving.

When to use Cost tracking with AWS tags

 When you launch your account, using cost allocation tags in AWS is a critical first step. This is because it allows you to track the costs associated with resources that you launch. If you don’t do this now, you’ll be guessing at your costs in the future.

Another reason you should start using cost allocation tags right away is that the cost allocation of a particular resource will change over time.

For example, if you’re using an instance with 1 CPU and 1 GPU, the cost allocation of that instance may change over time as AWS scales up its service offerings without increasing the number of instances. In this scenario, your cost allocation is changing, and it’s essential to track it now.

Lookup and use a tag in your billing report.

If you choose to use tags from the AWS Billing System, you’ll be able to look up the cost allocation for specific resources. We have an easy-to-use web app for this purpose. All you have to do is go to your AWS Management Console and click on the Billing tab.

You can click on the Resources tab and select the resource you want to look up costs for. Once you’ve selected the resource, you can click on the Tags tab, click on the Cost Allocation Tracking dropdown, and select the cost allocation tag you want to look up costs for.

For example, if you want to look up costs for an RDS instance, you’d select the RDS tag. You can also look up costs for resources you don’t use directly. For example, if you want to look up costs for an S3 bucket, then you can use the S3 tag. If you also want to look up costs for an EBS volume that you use with that S3 bucket, then you can add the EBS tag to that lookup.

Critical challenges with AWS cost allocation tags

As a rule of thumb, tracking the cost allocation for each resource you use is essential. This makes it easy to understand your cost exposure and forces you to be strategic about your resources. Unfortunately, managing the cost allocation for all your resources can be pretty challenging.

AWS offers a large number of different resources, and they change frequently. Most of the time, you’ll want to track the cost allocation for AWS costs, but you may also want to track costs for other things associated with an AWS resource. This can quickly become a critical challenge.

Best Practices for Using AWS Cost Allocation Tags

Start by looking up the cost allocation for all your resources. This will allow you to track costs for everything associated with them. Once you know the cost allocation for each resource, you can start tracking costs associated with other things that are associated with them.

You can use tag management tools to simplify this process. For example, you can use AWS CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk, or OpsWorks to manage your tags. You can also use AWS Data Pipeline to manage your data flow.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that AWS is a cost-prohibitive investment for most organizations. With such a high cost and constant change in pricing structures, it can be tough to control your costs. Fortunately, cost allocation tagging can help you track your AWS costs and also help you track costs for other things associated with AWS resources.

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/07
Jul 11, 2022 9:58:36 AM
AWS Cost Tagging
AWS, Cost Optimization

Jul 11, 2022 9:58:36 AM

AWS Cost Tagging

It’s no secret that AWS is a minefield of hidden costs. Pricing structures change frequently, and new services and features are constantly added. Even the best-intentioned vendors are forced to update their pricing structures so that they can continue to offer new products at competitive prices....

Why AWS WAF?

WAF (Web Application Firewall) is an extremely powerful technology built into the AWS Cloud that allows you to protect your web applications from attacks such as SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). It gives developers visibility into the activity within their web application, reduces the risk of being attacked by a DDoS attack, and protects against DoS (Denial of Service) attacks.

What is AWS WAF?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall (WAF) service designed to protect against web attacks and keeps your website secure. It helps protect your web applications from several attacks. You can also use AWS WAF to enforce custom security policies to allow some traffic while blocking others.

AWS WAF Classic 

AWS WAF Classic protects from common attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF). You can also use it to block common malicious URLs, IP addresses, and domains.

It's easy to get started with AWS WAF Classic —enable the service in the Security Hub console and select "classic" mode. Then select one of these three options:

Block known bad requests; automatically block only those requests blocked previously by other applications or your own customs policies. This option is ideal for protecting against common web application vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).

Block known bad requests and new threats; automatically block all unknown requests that have been blocked previously by other applications or your own customs policies and new threats that may not be present in those lists yet.

What does it do?

It analyzes inbound and outbound HTTP requests to detect and block malicious requests before reaching your web applications. The service uses a combination of rules and machine learning to determine whether an HTTP request is potentially harmful or not. 

If AWS WAF detects a potential threat, it blocks the request and sends you an email notification so that you can investigate further. If AWS WAF doesn't detect anything suspicious, it allows the request through your web application without interruption.

You can create rules to block malicious requests, mitigate the impact of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, or prevent users from accessing known malicious sites. You can also use AWS WAF to detect potential security issues in your traffic, such as SQL injection attempts or cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.

Why don't we keep building our web application firewall?

Building your own WAF is hard! It requires significant time and effort to build a complex solution that works well enough for most people. AWS WAF has been designed from the ground up to be easy and efficient for developers to use, so you can focus on building your apps instead of building security infrastructure.

It comes with a library of preconfigured rules that make it easier to protect your web apps against common vulnerabilities like SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting (XSS). You can also easily add custom rules for more complex attacks that the predefined rules library doesn't cover.

What are some of the benefits of using AWS WAF?

There are several reasons why you might choose to use AWS WAF. Some of these include:

Cost savings: You can control the costs by setting up rules that block unwanted traffic and allow only the traffic you want. This is important because AWS WAF charges based on the number of requests that you block. There's no cost for using it if you aren't blocking any requests.

Security: AWS WAF protects your applications from common web attacks by blocking malicious requests before they reach your application. The service automatically learns about known threats and updates itself with new attack patterns as they emerge. It uses machine learning models to identify unique characteristics of known attack patterns and signature-based detection for all other attacks to ensure maximum protection against known and unknown threats.

Performance: AWS WAF has been designed to be fast, reliable, and scalable so that it doesn't adversely affect your application performance or availability.

Why would someone be technically inclined to love AWS WAF? 

If you have a team of engineers and security professionals interested in learning how to secure their web applications, then AWS WAF could be a good fit for you. The service provides easy-to-use and configured rules that will help protect your applications from common web application vulnerabilities. You can also easily automate the creation of new rule sets based on specific events or requests.

What happens if I start with AWS WAF and then decide it's not for me?

AWS WAF offers a free tier to test out the service before making any commitments. This way, even if you decide it's not for you after testing out the free tier, it won't cost you anything!

AWS WAF gives you the ability to protect your website with comprehensive and flexible web application firewall (WAF) rules, allowing you to implement security policies as unique as your web applications themselves.

 

Want to learn more? Let's talk!

 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/06
Jun 16, 2022 12:24:48 AM
Why AWS WAF?
AWS, WAF

Jun 16, 2022 12:24:48 AM

Why AWS WAF?

WAF (Web Application Firewall) is an extremely powerful technology built into the AWS Cloud that allows you to protect your web applications from attacks such as SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). It gives developers visibility into the activity within their web application, reduces the...

AWS Database Solutions

Amazon has a variety of database services that can help you build cutting-edge apps, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Redshift. You can build web-scale applications and run them on the same infrastructure powers, Amazon.com and Netflix.

Amazon DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for all your data storage needs. Amazon DynamoDB gives you low latency performance at 1 millisecond or less and delivers single-digit millisecond latency on all actions. You can easily scale your throughput capacity using the AWS Management Console, AWS SDK, or command-line tools.

Because Amazon DynamoDB is fully managed, it can be used in serverless architectures. The AWS Lambda functions or the AWS Step Functions state machines can directly call the Amazon DynamoDB API using the lambda function proxy integration model.

Amazon RDS

Working with AWS is like baking a cake. Amazon RDS, AWS's database technology, is like the eggs in the batter. The eggs are reliable, they perform well no matter what, and they only need to be put in one place. Now it's time to add flour (Amazon EC2) and sugar (Amazon EBS) to start making our cake rise up right.

With Amazon RDS, you get:

  • Scale capacity with just a few clicks without having to worry about upgrading hardware
  • A fully managed service so you can deploy applications faster;
  • Ease of use with point-and-click management features that enable seamless integration between your applications and databases;
  • Automated backups for high availability

Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift is a managed, petabyte data service that makes it quite easy and cost-effective to efficiently analyze your own data using the same familiar SQL-based business tools. Amazon Redshift was designed from the ground up for the cloud and optimized for commodity hardware, making it fast and cost-effective to operate.

Redshift is a columnar data warehouse. It's designed to perform well for queries that are aggregations over large amounts of data. As such, it's not a good fit for applications that need to perform small, fast queries on individual records or transactions.

Amazon Database Services

On top of the above-mentioned AWS database solutions, Amazon cloud offers the below database services:

Amazon Aurora

Amazon Aurora offers up to five times better performance than standard MySQL. It provides consistent, low-latency performance at 1/10th of a second for every SQL query, regardless of data volume or workload. Amazon Aurora also offers up to 99.999999999% (11 9's) of durability, so you never have to worry about losing data.

Amazon Aurora is available as part of AWS Database Services, which include Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift. You can get started with these services by signing up for AWS!

Amazon ElastiCache

Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store service that scales automatically to match the size of your largest workloads, delivering blazingly fast performance at any scale. This service is available in multiple configurations—from a single node to more than 500 nodes—with each node having up to 64 TB of memory capacity per node (2 TB per core), delivering an average 8X performance improvement over traditional disk-based systems for reads and writes!

Amazon Neptune

Neptune is a graph database service that allows you to store and query relationships between entities using property graphs instead of RDF triples or SPARQL statements like most other NoSQL databases do today. Neptune supports both transactional and non-transactional queries over the same graph data model, allowing you to choose which form of query best fits your application needs.

The Benefits:

1. Purpose-built:

AWS is designed for the cloud and has been since its inception in 2006. AWS Database Services provides a suite of purpose-built services for the cloud and help you build, operate, and scale databases in the cloud.

2. Scalable performance:

With Amazon Aurora, you get up to five times more performance than with MySQL at a price that's about 60 % less than Oracle. Depending on your needs, you can also choose between General Purpose or Storage Optimized configurations.

3. Available and secure:

Amazon RDS is designed from the ground up to be highly available and secure by default. In addition to being fully managed, so you don't have to worry about managing patches, upgrades, or backups, Amazon RDS continuously monitors your DB instance health, automatically provisions capacity as needed, and performs automatic failover if required — all without any application changes or downtime for you or your users.

4. Fully managed

One of the main advantages of using AWS is a fully managed service. This means that Amazon takes everything from hardware to software maintenance and security updates. The only thing you need to worry about is what kind of workloads you want to run on AWS, which isn't much at all!

There are numerous reasons to use the right database for your application, with AWS giving developers access to a range of options. No matter what choice you make, keep in mind the suggestion that Amazon's guide provides: finding the solution that works best for your application is a lengthy and thoughtful process.

Want to learn more? Let's talk!

 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/06
Jun 16, 2022 12:16:56 AM
AWS Database Solutions
AWS, Database

Jun 16, 2022 12:16:56 AM

AWS Database Solutions

Amazon has a variety of database services that can help you build cutting-edge apps, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Redshift. You can build web-scale applications and run them on the same infrastructure powers, Amazon.com and Netflix.

Recap: Cloudride - AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022

Last week, the Cloudride team was at the AWS Summit in Tel Aviv. The conference felt like a huge gathering of cloud computing specialists and product managers from all over the country. There were many interesting talks and opportunities to meet hundreds of professionals from local start-ups and global companies using cloud services for their business and looking for ways to improve their applications.

It was an amazing opportunity to introduce the company and our services to the Israeli market, meet our partners and customers, and hear from AWS product leaders.

In addition to the keynote address by Harel Ifhar, we heard from many other executives at Amazon Web Services in Israel. The event included breakout sessions with topics such as Artificial Intelligence on AWS, Serverless Computing on AWS, and more.

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Cloud Migration

In the opening keynote, there were discussions on cloud migration strategies for massive databases. Cloud migration is a complex topic, and there are many factors to consider when moving workloads to the cloud. This talk was aimed at helping you make better decisions about which database architecture fits your use case best.

We looked at some common patterns that arise when dealing with large-scale databases and how they might fit into your business model or application needs. Then we provided an overview of several options available on AWS in terms of cost efficiency, performance efficiency, and flexibility so that you can make informed decisions about where (and how) to run your data platform.

 

Cloudride Presentation on VPC Endpoints Services

We are experts in cloud computing, and we develop custom solutions for different customers using AWS services. One of our main goals is to make it easy for our customers to use AWS services without dealing with security issues or architecture problems from different accounts or regions.

With  VPC endpoints, we create a hotspot that various AWS clients can connect securely with their AWS accounts on a private medium (VPC). The VPC Endpoint Services are updated by Amazon automatically, so you don't need any manual work.

 

Using WAF automation 

Amazon's WAF (Web Application Firewall) automation sits at the endpoints of Amazon worldwide. The WAF improves the performance of an application by forcing it to use CloudFront and reducing response time to a single-digit number of milliseconds.

The WAF knows how to give labels to incoming requests, so if you have an application like ours that receives traffic from many different sources and we need to differentiate between them for our security rulesets to apply correctly, we can do this with this mechanism.

 

Automations for Reducing Cloud Usage Waste

We also discussed a few possible automations for reducing Cloud Usage Waste. The first one was the AWS Instance Scheduler for cost optimization. Although this is not new, it's still worth mentioning since it's so effective and easy to use. You can set up an automation that will run every day or week and terminate any idle instances of your choice (for example, those with no network activity in 30 days). 

This is especially useful when you have many EC2 or RDS servers that are often forgotten once they're launched and forgotten forever. You don't need to worry about these servers anymore because AWS will take care of them by terminating them after 30 days without any activity.

Another important tool that helps reduce costs is the AWS Limit Monitor, which allows you to monitor all limits associated with your account (such as Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances purchases). For example, suppose you purchased too many RI's than required by your application. In that case, there may be some unused ones sitting around somewhere in S3 storage, costing money without making any difference for your business! 

With this tool, we'll know exactly how many reservations were purchased during each month and their price tag so we can easily identify unnecessary spending!

 1652941919406

To conclude

It was a great honor to exhibit at this year’s AWS Summit TLV, especially for the first in-person event in a long time… The Cloudride team looks forward to more opportunities in the future to share our message about how we deliver powerful applications that solve problems for companies that handle large amounts of data. We are excited to meet more partners and customers, hear from AWS product leaders, and discuss the latest innovations.

Want to learn more? Contact us here

danny-levran
2022/05
May 30, 2022 11:48:36 PM
Recap: Cloudride - AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022
AWS Summit

May 30, 2022 11:48:36 PM

Recap: Cloudride - AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022

Last week, the Cloudride team was at the AWS Summit in Tel Aviv. The conference felt like a huge gathering of cloud computing specialists and product managers from all over the country. There were many interesting talks and opportunities to meet hundreds of professionals from local start-ups and...

Cloudride Exhibiting at the AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022

The AWS Summit is coming to Tel Aviv on May 18, 2022. The event brings together the cloud computing community to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Attendees will participate in the latest technical sessions with industry-leading speakers, hands-on use-cases, training sessions, and more.

Cloudride is excited to be exhibiting at this year's event!

Join us at our booth #8B, where we will demo Cloudride’s wide array of services and capabilities and discuss how to maximize your cloud performance, while maximizing cost control, and scalable agility.

2022 AWS Summit Agenda

The AWS summit includes a keynote to the Global Vice President of the AWS S3 team, followed by breakout sessions targeted at beginners, mid-level, or advanced users. This year's topics cover everything from AWS products and services to building and deploying infrastructure and applications on the cloud. So, whether your organization is well along its journey to the cloud or just beginning one, there's something for everyone at these events!

Cloudride will be exhibiting in booth 8b, showcasing our migration management services and tools that help companies optimize costs and performance in the cloud faster.

Cloudride is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and an APN Launchpad Member. We are excited to be attending the 2022 AWS Summit in Tel Aviv. If you're planning on attending this event and want to set up a meeting with us at our booth, please reach out here!

The Cloudride team has extensive experience helping startups, SMB’s and enterprises maximize & optimize their use of cloud infrastructure, whether they're just getting started with cloud migration or seeking ways to more effectively leverage the capabilities of their cloud platforms.

 

Let's Show You How We Migrate and Optimize Your Cloud Environment 

Cloudride solutions and services include cloud migration and environment optimization.

Migration

Our expert engineers can help companies develop a migration strategy, assess their application portfolio, design a target cloud architecture, perform the actual migration and make sure everything works as expected in the new environment.

Our ready-to-use services are designed to assist our customers at every step of their transformation, from developing a roadmap to executing the migration strategy. They were created for companies that need an experienced partner for their digital transformation journey. We can help you learn how to execute your strategy and create new business models in the cloud era by transforming your infrastructure and operations and accelerating your innovation.

Cloud Management as a Service (CMaaS)

Our company provides comprehensive solutions for migrating entire application portfolios or individual workloads to the public clouds. In addition, Cloudride offers full suit CMaaS for managing cloud infrastructure and reducing operational costs.

DevOps as a Service

At Cloudride we specialize in Planning, building, and automating complex, large-scale, distributed systems on public cloud platforms. As such, we are happy to invite you to one of our focus tracks - "Infrastructure at Scale" that covers continuous deployment and integration, microservice architecture, data analytics, and server-less applications.

Environment optimization 

Our award-winning solutions provide easy ways to optimize cloud environment usage, ensure compliance and improve productivity. These benefits help our clients accelerate their digital transformation efforts while reducing costs associated with managing and maintaining on-premises infrastructure.

Security 

Cloudride is excited to share our expertise on cloud security, especially regarding securing data across multiple clouds and hybrid environments. We'll be discussing how organizations can better manage their multi-cloud strategy by leveraging a common security posture throughout their entire environment—including public clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and on-premises data centers.

Whether your organization uses 10 or 10,000 accounts, we can help you maintain consistent security and compliance policies throughout.

We can't wait to talk with you at the conference!

We are excited to meet those of you who haven't already had the pleasure of working with us. If you are one of our existing clients, just come by for a coffee!

We are looking forward to seeing many of you at the conference! It is a great event that brings together thousands of people and allows them to collaborate on some amazing projects across the AWS ecosystem! Here’s a signup link 

 

danny-levran
2022/05
May 15, 2022 10:42:24 PM
Cloudride Exhibiting at the AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022
AWS, AWS Summit

May 15, 2022 10:42:24 PM

Cloudride Exhibiting at the AWS Summit Tel Aviv 2022

The AWS Summit is coming to Tel Aviv on May 18, 2022. The event brings together the cloud computing community to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Attendees will participate in the latest technical sessions with industry-leading speakers, hands-on use-cases, training sessions, and more.

CI/CD AWS way

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment. It is a development process aiming to automate software delivery. It allows developers to integrate changes into a central repository, then tests and deploy. In other words, every change made to the code is tested and automatically deployed to the production environment if it passes all tests.

AWS CI/CD Pipeline and its use cases

AWS Code Pipeline is a hassle-free way to automate your application release process on the AWS cloud. You can define your process through visual workflows, and AWS Code Pipeline will execute those for you. This means you only have to define your pipeline once and then run it as many times as required. AWS Code Pipeline offers support for integrating with other services like Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, and AWS Lambda.

Use Cases for CI/CD Pipeline in AWS

  • Static code analysis
  • Unit tests
  • Functional tests
  • System tests
  • Integration tests
  • UI testing
  • Sanity tests
  • Regression tests

 

Benefits of using AWS CI/CD Workflows

With Continuous Deployment, teams can achieve the following benefits:

No deployment bottlenecks: Once you are ready with your code changes, you can deploy it. There is no waiting for a specific time or day to deploy your code. Deployment can happen at any time during the day. Furthermore, frequent deployments also help increase confidence in the software quality in production, which leads to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Customers get additional value from the software quicker: Continuously delivering small increments of value to customers allows them to provide feedback on what is important for them and increase focus on high-value work. Quicker feedback cycles also reduce rework because issues are discovered earlier in development when they are cheaper to fix.

Less risky releases: Small changes that get gradually integrated into the mainline over time are less likely to cause major problems when they go out with other features than large changes developed separately over long periods before being released.

Implementing CI/CD Pipeline with AWS 

AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, and AWS CodeDeploy are three separate services that can be deployed within any environment. 

CodePipeline helps in continuous integration and deployment of applications. It supports popular programming languages such as Java, Python, Ruby, Node.js, etc.

CodeBuild is used to build output artifacts of your application on demand when needed by other services such as CodePipeline or Lambda.

CodeCommit is a fully-managed source control service that makes it easy for companies to store and share Git repositories on AWS.

This is how you implement a CI/CD pipeline with these services.

Step 1: Create a new project in the AWS console, e.g., myproject

Step 2: Allocate a resource to the project (AWS CodePipeline)

Step 3: Choose the type of build you want to perform, e.g., Minimal testing or Full deployment

Step 4: Configure build settings for your build configuration, e.g., source control repositories and automated builds (e.g., GitLab)

How to Integrate Security into CI/CD Pipeline In AWS 

Many organizations are now using static code analysis tools like OWASP    to regularly test the code for vulnerabilities. You can easily set up a SAST pipeline using AWS CodeBuild. CodeBuild is an AWS-managed service used to build and test the software. 

If you are using Jenkins, you can use the CodeBuild plugin to trigger the build job within Jenkins. You can use AWS Lambda to trigger the build job when a new push happens to source control for other build tools. Also, please set up pre-commit hooks so that you don’t have to wait until a push happens to trigger the build.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is another security test performed in the CI/CD pipeline. The test identifies the potential vulnerabilities by interacting with the applications at runtime. It is also known as grey-box testing. The test can be configured to fail the build if any vulnerability is identified. 

The tools used for DAST in AWS can be either commercial or open-source. Open-source tools like OWASP ZAP have an option to fail builds when a critical severity vulnerability is found, while other tools like Burp Suite require custom scripts to perform this functionality.

Runtime Application Security Testing (RASP) is a new security test that analyzes application behavior in real-time while an application runs in its production environment and detects anomalies from normal behavior that could indicate a security issue. It can also be used to detect and block attacks. 

Some teams use runtime scanners such as Arachni or OWASP ZAP inside their pipelines, while others choose to run security scans as part of their performance tests to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities present during stress testing.

CI/CD best practices in Amazon Web Service

The best practices you can follow are as follows:

  • Continuously verify your infrastructure code to ensure no security flaws are introduced in the system and allow teams to fix them faster than before.
  • Implement a continuous delivery pipeline for your applications using AWS CodePipeline, with AWS CodeBuild for building and testing.
  • Use AWS Lambda functions to run tests by adding them into CodeBuild projects or integrate with third-party tools like Sauce Labs or BlazeMeter to run performance tests on-demand or as part of your pipelines.
  • Set up notifications (e-mail/Slack) between phases so team members can respond quickly when something goes wrong in any pipeline phase.
  • Implementing CI/CD in AWS helps to improve code quality, hasten delivery, reduce human intervention, enhance collaboration and reduce integration errors.

Want to learn more? Book a free consultation call right here 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/05
May 12, 2022 12:11:47 AM
CI/CD AWS way
Cloud Security

May 12, 2022 12:11:47 AM

CI/CD AWS way

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment. It is a development process aiming to automate software delivery. It allows developers to integrate changes into a central repository, then tests and deploy. In other words, every change made to the code is tested and automatically...

2022 – The Year of Kubernetes

While still a relatively young technology, Kubernetes has seen rapid adoption by IT organizations around the world. In 2017, Gartner predicted that by 2022 half of enterprises' core services would run in a container orchestration environment. This has already proven to be the case. According to Google Trends, Kubernetes is at its highest popularity since it was open-sourced in 2014. This article will explain why Kubernetes is important, how it works, and the challenges that lie ahead, primarily around security and scalability.

The history and development of Kubernetes

 Google launched the Kubernetes project in 2014. Google used containers in its production environment long before that time and had developed an internal container management system called Borg, which inspired Kubernetes. In June 2014, Google announced that it was making Kubernetes available as open source. In March 2015, Google partnered with Red Hat, CoreOS, and others to form the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The CNCF is the umbrella organization for Kubernetes and other cloud-native technologies such as Prometheus and Envoy.

The following are some popular benefits of using Kubernetes: 

Cross-cluster deployment with ease – One of the biggest advantages that Kubernetes offers is cross-cluster deployments. This means that developers can deploy their app on any cloud provider they want, which provides them with incredible flexibility while also making deployment simple.

Easily scalable applications – Another big advantage offered by Kubernetes is its scalability. Developers can easily scale up or down on-demand as traffic fluctuates, making it a versatile tool for application deployment.

High availability - This feature allows you to ensure that all your apps are highly available from different zones or regions.

Self-healing - When an application crashes or gets stuck on a node, Kubernetes helps replace them with new pods automatically, so there is no downtime for applications.

Load Balancing - With the load balancing feature, all the containers get equal CPU and memory resources as per their need. Hence, it balances the load across all the containers running within a cluster.

Kubernetes has been around since 2014, so why is 2022 labeled as 'the year of Kubernetes'?

Kubernetes provides all the necessary tools for developers to deploy and manage their applications at scale. This service is ideal for teams looking to scale in terms of the number of containers or the number of nodes in their deployment.

Even though Microsoft Azure, VMware, and Google Cloud have been offering the service for a while, AWS has announced that it will be adding full support for Kubernetes in 2022.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) has officially confirmed that they will be expanding support for Kubernetes in 2022. That means users will finally be able to run containers without worrying about extensive underlying platform adjustments. 

Improvements or changes you expect to see with Kubernetes in 2022

 As Kubernetes is becoming the standard for container orchestration, it's important to know what to expect as it continues to mature.

Here are some areas where we expect Kubernetes will improve:

Its networking model will improve.

Kubernetes' current networking model, the Container Network Interface (CNI), is not the most flexible or scalable option and leaves room for improvement. A new networking model called Service Mesh Interface (SMI) has been proposed and will be a welcome addition to Kubernetes.

The SMI provides a specification that enables different service mesh providers to integrate with Kubernetes and allows developers to choose their preferred mesh without making changes at the infrastructure level.

It will become easier to use and manage.

 Kubernetes is complex by design, but that complexity becomes less with good tooling and documentation. As more and more developers start using Kubernetes, tools like Compose can help those already familiar with Docker Compose get started immediately with minimal effort. In addition, as more people start using Kubernetes, we'll see more detailed documentation that helps answer questions related to specific use cases.

The complexity of stateful applications will be easier to manage

Kubernetes is a great tool for running stateless applications which don't store data. But when you need to store data, it's more work — with Kubernetes, you have to set up your storage system.

Developers will be able to build apps faster with it

Another thing that makes it hard to use Kubernetes is that it takes a lot of time to learn and configure. As the platform sees more adoption and more developers become familiar with it, this learning curve should flatten out, making it easier for new users to get started.

Security will be more robust.

Kubernetes has received criticism as being insecure by default. The platform itself has various security features, but they are disabled by default and require configuration and careful management. This means that many Kubernetes clusters aren't very secure. Shortly we'll likely see the platform become more secure by default.

For now, Kubernetes remains a young project - still subject to rapid change and innovation. But by 2022, that's likely to change. We may look back on this post someday and compare it to the early days of discussion around the open-source platform.

Want to learn more? Book a call today

yura-vasilevitski
2022/04
Apr 13, 2022 9:24:41 PM
2022 – The Year of Kubernetes
Cloud Computing, Kubernetes

Apr 13, 2022 9:24:41 PM

2022 – The Year of Kubernetes

While still a relatively young technology, Kubernetes has seen rapid adoption by IT organizations around the world. In 2017, Gartner predicted that by 2022 half of enterprises' core services would run in a container orchestration environment. This has already proven to be the case. According to...

Server-Less AWS – Making Developers' Life Easy In 2022

Serverless computing is a cloud model where customers do not have to think about servers. In the server-less model, the cloud provider fully manages the servers, and the customer only pays for the resources used by their application. AWS Serverless computing takes care of all the operational tasks of provisioning, configuring, scaling, and managing servers.

What is serverless?

Serverless is an architectural style that allows developers to focus on writing code instead of worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Serverless computing comes in two different flavors:

Backend as a service (BaaS) offers pre-built cloud-based functions that developers can use to build applications without configuring servers or hosting them on their own hardware.

Function as a service (FaaS) provides developers a way to build and run event-driven functions within stateless containers that a third party fully manages.

Serverless computing applies to any compute workload. It works well for applications with a variable workload or needs to scale up or down quickly and independently from other applications running in the same environment.

Why go serverless?

Serverless eliminates the need to provision or manage infrastructure. You upload your code to AWS Lambda, and the service will run it for you.

The service scales your application dynamically by running code in response to each trigger. You pay only for what you use, with no minimum fees and automatic scaling, so you save money.

Here are some of the benefits of using Server-Less architecture:

Cost-Effective: When you use a serverless application, you don't need to manage it. It automatically scales with the number of events. You can pay only for the resources used by your application.

Focus On Core Business: Serverless architecture allows you to focus on your core business logic without worrying about infrastructure details or other technical issues.

Ease of Development: You no longer have to worry about infrastructure management, as you do not need to create or maintain any servers

How AWS Server-less Makes Developer's Life Easy In 2022

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda helps build backend applications and scalable server implementations, triggered by numerous events that sometimes occur all at once. One could use AWS Lambda to build in-depth applications as well as powerful servers not only quickly but also easily – adding new products and services with simple voice commands from Alexa!

AWS Lambda runs your code on a compute infrastructure and does all of the administration of the compute resources, including both server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling, logging and code monitoring.

AWS Lambda supports up to 10 GB ephemeral storage

 In addition to the 512 MB of memory and 100 ms of execution time previously offered, AWS Lambda now offers 1.5 GB of memory and 300 ms of execution time at no additional cost. You can now create functions that require up to 3,008 MB of memory and up to 5 minutes of execution time for a fraction of the price previously offered.

Ephemeral storage is temporary storage used for testing and short-time processing. It is suitable for workloads that require temporary storage with low latency. Amazon Redshift Serverless - run analytics without managing infrastructure.

Amazon Redshift Serverless

A few years ago, AWS introduced Amazon Redshift, an easy-to-use, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. It delivers faster performance than other data warehouses using machine learning, column storage, and parallel query execution on a high-performance disk.

Now, you can have the same performance as Redshift at a fraction of the cost with no infrastructure to manage and pay only for what you use with Amazon Redshift Serverless.

Amazon Redshift Serverless automatically starts, scales, and shuts down your data warehouse cluster while charging you on a per-second basis for as long as your queries run. Redshift Serverless provides simplicity and flexibility with no upfront costs, enabling you to pay only for what you use during interactive query sessions.

Serverless application repository

Amazon has developed a new repository for serverless applications called AWS Serverless Application Repository. It offers a collection of serverless application components that developers can use to build and deploy their apps quickly.

AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) extends AWS CloudFormation, infrastructure, as a code service that allows you to model your application resources using a simple text file.

SAM makes it easy to define the resources needed by your application in a simple, declarative format. It also provides a simplified syntax for expressing functions and APIs, defines the mapping between API requests and function invocations, and handles deployment details such as resource provisioning and access policy creation.

AWS serverless has made servers unnecessary and effectively uses the capacity and power available on cloud computing systems. With Server-less developing applications, the development process becomes much faster as developers don't need to worry about setting up a server, configuration, and functionalities.

Want to learn more? Book a call today

yura-vasilevitski
2022/04
Apr 13, 2022 9:17:51 PM
Server-Less AWS – Making Developers' Life Easy In 2022
Cloud Computing, Server-Less

Apr 13, 2022 9:17:51 PM

Server-Less AWS – Making Developers' Life Easy In 2022

Serverless computing is a cloud model where customers do not have to think about servers. In the server-less model, the cloud provider fully manages the servers, and the customer only pays for the resources used by their application. AWS Serverless computing takes care of all the operational tasks...

What can we expect in EdTech 2022?

The cloud has made possible many of the advances in EdTech that we have seen over the last few years and those that will come in the future. We're likely to see greater automation in the cloud, which will enable organizations to focus on their core strategic goals rather than on maintaining their data centers. Here are more trends to watch out for.

Newer capabilities for remote learning  

The pandemic has forced educational institutes to adopt remote learning technologies with little or no time for preparation. This led to many teething problems like difficulty adapting the technology, poor internet connectivity, lack of proper tools for teachers and students, etc. 

We can expect the coming years to address these issues by introducing more sophisticated technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). These technologies are already being widely adopted in other industries and are showing great promise in EdTech. VR will help create immersive experiences for students, while AR will help them with real-time data at their fingertips.

Greater adoption of the cloud 

The popularity of online courses and online degree programs is likely to increase the need for cloud-based education services. According to the Education Cloud Market Forecast 2019-2024 report, the industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 25% from 2019 to 2024. The growth will be driven by increased use of e-learning, adoption of analytics in education, and improved access to broadband internet across the globe.

Big data  

Cloud computing can make it easier for schools to adopt new technology applications in the classrooms. Cloud computing offers schools a new way of providing learning materials, whether through interactive lessons or online homework assignments.

This provides access to data and information needed for better decision-making based on previous experience and trends. Data also plays an important role in understanding how students learn best and how they respond to different learning techniques.

Cloud automation 

Cloud automation is expected to be the next big thing in tech in the coming years. It will enable a single system to manage various cloud-based services. Cloud automation will help simplify and streamline the deployment of workloads across multiple clouds and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of different processes. The number of educational institutes deploying cloud services is increasing, which has led to an increased demand for cloud automation services.

Zero trust cloud security

The number of threats targeting the public cloud has increased dramatically over the past few years. This is due mostly to how popular the public cloud has become in enterprise environments and because attackers are now going after big targets like AWS S3 buckets. Although there are many challenges to overcome regarding security on the public cloud (such as monitoring, patching, etc.), one solution that can help secure your data is zero trust security architecture.

Multicloud and hybrid cloud models 

After most universities were forced to move their teaching and learning online due to COVID-19, they had no choice but to adopt cloud applications and infrastructure. There are lessons learned from this experience that will have a lasting impact on how the EdTech sector approaches cloud adoption. 

For instance, there is an understanding that all cloud applications don't have to be hosted on the same model. Hence, we expect more educational institutions to look at a mix of public clouds (AWS/Azure/GCP), private clouds (VMware/OpenStack), and managed services.

Nano learning (micro-lessons that last 10 minutes)

 Nano learning involves quick bursts of information and is designed for easy consumption on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Nano learning allows people to learn without devoting long periods to educational activities.

The Internet of Things

In 2022, the internet of things will most likely be accessible to all schools. This is something that is already becoming popular in today's world, but it hasn't yet become a popular trend in the education world. The internet of things allows you to connect various devices over the internet for remote control and monitoring. Think about how easily you’ll be to manage your school if you had a device that could control your classroom from anywhere.

Artificial intelligence 

Artificial intelligence is one thing that we can expect to see incorporated into educational systems by 2022. Imagine having an artificial intelligence system that will create a personalized learning plan for each student based on their own personal abilities and knowledge level. It wasn't long ago that artificial intelligence was just something that was seen in the movies. Nowadays, it's becoming more of a reality in our everyday lives with products such as Siri and Alexa.

In a nutshell 

In 2022 the EdTech market will continue to evolve, and we feel that the larger distinctions between Edtech and e-learning software will become even less defined over time. It will likely be an event-driven market, with vendors needing to keep up with constantly changing technology to remain relevant.

Want to learn more? Book a call today

yura-vasilevitski
2022/03
Mar 23, 2022 9:23:22 PM
What can we expect in EdTech 2022?
Cloud Computing, Edtech

Mar 23, 2022 9:23:22 PM

What can we expect in EdTech 2022?

The cloud has made possible many of the advances in EdTech that we have seen over the last few years and those that will come in the future. We're likely to see greater automation in the cloud, which will enable organizations to focus on their core strategic goals rather than on maintaining their...

Cloud Meets Education

Cloud computing is redefining how we do business. It's also transforming education, offering new opportunities to learn and grow. This article explores the impact of the Cloud on K-12 learning, higher education, and corporate training.

Why now?

Historically, educational institutions have been slow to adopt new technologies. This can be attributed to several factors: a lack of budget, the need to maintain legacy infrastructure, and the time required to change processes and procedures. However, these obstacles are being removed by cloud computing.

Cloud in Higher Education

Learning is increasingly personalized. Once we were taught as part of a group, today's technology enables adaptive learning. This means students can have their own unique learning experience at their own pace and in their own time. The Cloud makes this possible by bringing together all the elements needed for learning - teacher, student, and content – to create an educational ecosystem where everyone can learn and share knowledge.

Cloud enables education to be adaptive and flexible. It helps educators make learning more student-centric and personalized, allows them to discover new teaching methods, and enables learners to take full responsibility for their own learning.

How the Cloud is transforming K-12 Learning 

Today's K-12 students are digital natives who want to learn in a way that matches their lifestyle. They want to collaborate with other students and share ideas, use the Internet to get information, and access content anywhere and anytime. The Cloud is making this possible.

In addition, education institutions have to deal with shrinking budgets, so they are looking for innovative ways to deliver learning at a lower cost. It's also why they're taking a closer look at the Cloud as a means of sharing resources and providing more flexible learning options.

The benefits of the Cloud in Corporate Training 

Cloud-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) are key tools for corporate training. They allow trainers to store their content and manage their courses from any device, anywhere. LMSs enable collaborative learning in real-time, making communication easier and more efficient between all parties. 

When you bring artificial intelligence (AI) to the mix, you have an even more powerful set of capabilities. Using AI, you can automatically detect where your audience is disengaging with content or identify language barriers that may be impeding comprehension. 

The Overall Impact of the Cloud in Education 

More Connectivity

The Cloud provides greater connectivity for teachers and students. The Cloud allows students to log in from any computer with internet access, unlike in previous years when students had to use the computers at their schools or be at home to access their files. 

Now, students and teachers have more flexibility to work on school assignments or projects and still have access to all of their materials. They can go home early due to illness, travel, or even a family emergency, which would otherwise have meant missing out on lessons and assignments. Still, now they can make up that work without skipping a beat.

Improved collaboration

One of the biggest impacts of cloud computing in education is improving collaboration among students and teachers alike. This has been attributed to cloud-based learning tools' ability to connect students with each other and their teachers via real-time video conferencing, instant messaging, and virtual classrooms where they can share ideas and work together.

Improved storage for recorded content/learning materials

The education sector has benefitted tremendously from the Cloud. The Cloud has allowed students to access their learning resources in files, documents, and images from anywhere in the world.

This flexibility and freedom to study at a time and place that suit you, along with a much more diverse range of learning materials that can be accessed, have led to significant improvements in student performance across the board.

Easier access to equitable education 

Education is not always available for every student around the world. However, through technology like cloud computing, it is now possible for students from all walks of life to have equal access to high-quality education programs. For example, if you wanted to complete a master's degree but were unable to because of work or family commitments, or perhaps because you are located overseas, online courses are now available to everyone through platforms such as LinkedIn Learning.

Analytics for Better Student Performance

Educators now have access to data about student performance. Instead of guessing what each student needs, teachers, can pull up detailed analytics about how well each learner is doing in each subject area and use that information to tailor lessons accordingly.

In a nutshell

Cloud is transforming conventional learning models and helping teachers and educators improve engagement with their students, create personalized learning experiences, and enable everyone to develop digital skills for tomorrow's jobs.

Want to learn more? Contact us here

yura-vasilevitski
2022/03
Mar 23, 2022 9:17:25 PM
Cloud Meets Education
Cloud Computing, Edtech

Mar 23, 2022 9:17:25 PM

Cloud Meets Education

Cloud computing is redefining how we do business. It's also transforming education, offering new opportunities to learn and grow. This article explores the impact of the Cloud on K-12 learning, higher education, and corporate training.

Cloud Computing Top 2022 Trends

Cloud computing is changing how we view technology and the world.  At Cloudride, we continue to see more and more innovations around cloud computing every day. The evolution of cloud computing will be interesting to watch over the next decade. So, what can companies expect to see this year? 

Cloud computing will continue to grow. 

Today, the cloud is a major part of doing business. Companies are expected to spend $232 billion on public cloud services alone in 2022, increasing nearly 80 percent over 2017 spending levels, According to IDC.

By 2022, IDC predicts total enterprise IT spending will reach $3.7 trillion, with almost half (48 percent) of those funds going toward cloud infrastructure and operational expenses.

Cloud computing will scale with demand.

There are strong indications cloud computing is becoming an integral part of many businesses. However, companies still have to figure out how they can effectively use cloud solutions and how they can get their workers trained on this new technology.

Therefore, businesses also need to figure out how to keep up with cloud solutions if their demands increase or decrease quickly. 

Because cloud computing is built for scalability, we expect to see more companies building their applications on the cloud.

Data centers will go mobile.

Since cloud computing is all about flexibility, organizations will be able to move their data center anywhere they need it to be. This means that organizations can set up shop in areas where labor or real estate is less expensive. They'll be able to scale up or down as needed without spending millions of dollars on purpose-built infrastructure.

A focus on Artificial Intelligence

We predict Artificial Intelligence getting a major boost in popularity as the technology becomes more refined and accessible for businesses. One of the biggest benefits for businesses will be that AI allows cloud computing solutions to scale automatically with demand – something that small businesses won't be able to afford on their own.

Therefore, we believe that AI will help businesses cope with extreme uncertainty by providing greater predictive decision-making capabilities.

Cybersecurity in the cloud will take center stage. 

Every day, we witness high-profile breaches making cyber security an even greater priority than ever before, and this trend will continue to grow as businesses continue to rely on the cloud for storage and processing capabilities.

But cloud computing service providers (CSPs) will double their efforts to make their platforms more secure. 

We can predict that the threats to cybersecurity and attacks on CSPs will increase as the volume of data they manage increases. In response, CSPs will start to move away from perimeter security approaches toward multi-layered defense approaches based on trust, transparency, and automation.

In addition, the perceived risk of moving sensitive information into the cloud will decline, but the lack of trust in cloud vendors' security capabilities will persist. This trend is primarily driven by an inability for CSPs to demonstrate their ability to detect and prevent data breaches effectively.

Enterprise cloud will still lead the charge in 2022

Enterprise cloud services will be considered mainstream in terms of their business value. “The value of cloud services available to consumers through SaaS and IaaS platforms will increase from $408 billion to $474 billion," reads a Gartner report. 

Although there is a lot of discussion around public cloud services and how small businesses can use them, we think the reality is that enterprise cloud will continue to dominate through 2022. The largest growth will be seen in small business enterprise cloud use for simple applications rather than heavy-duty graphics or other resource-intensive applications.

Cloud and containers will grow with small business uses 

Our internal data shows that smaller businesses may currently not have the IT staff or experience to implement these technologies independently, but still, many are successfully using services from Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure for hosting or content delivery purposes.

Containers and tech will grow in the cloud.

Containers and cloud-native technologies will grow in the cloud due to its scalability as a platform to build and deploy applications using containers. Containers have been around for a long time and have become an integral part of DevOps processes. The market is still in its early days for containers, but I think the technology has huge potential.

Cloudride has witnessed the vendors we represent, such as AWS, Microsoft, and GCP, add features such as database services and middleware, and this bundling strategy has also helped increase adoption. 

Hybrid Cloud from Public Cloud Vendors is offering a single interface for cloud usage across multiple public providers. Therefore, businesses are increasingly using public clouds for computing, storage, database, and application hosting purposes. The hybrid cloud strategy is gaining popularity among enterprises due to its low-cost structure compared to private clouds.

At Cloudride, we know that businesses want faster time to value, increased flexibility, and better cost control. We can help you achieve all of this with expert cloud migration and performance and cost optimization services. Contact us here to get started!

 

danny-levran
2022/03
Mar 7, 2022 9:40:03 PM
Cloud Computing Top 2022 Trends
Cloud Computing, Top Trends

Mar 7, 2022 9:40:03 PM

Cloud Computing Top 2022 Trends

Cloud computing is changing how we view technology and the world.  At Cloudride, we continue to see more and more innovations around cloud computing every day. The evolution of cloud computing will be interesting to watch over the next decade. So, what can companies expect to see this year? 

AWS Saving Plans Benefits

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a wide range of products and services for all your enterprise computing needs. Whether you are hosting a website or developing an app, AWS provides the infrastructure, platform and software stack you need to scale and grow most cost-effectively.

AWS Savings Plans

AWS offers savings plans for EC2, SageMaker and Amazon EC2 for Compute in exchange for a specific usage commitment. You can choose from hourly or two-year commitments. The amount of discount varies depending on the plan you select. 

For example, if you commit to running 10 instances for one year at $0.15/hour on an m4.large instance, you will get a discounted rate of $0.105/hour (15% off). Compute Savings Plans can slash your costs by up to 66%, EC2Instance Plans by up to 72% and SageMaker Savings Plans by an average of 64%.

You can choose from hourly or two-year commitments. 

The amount of discount varies depending on the plan you select. You can save more by paying upfront instead of receiving the discounted rate over time. AWS will optimize your usage to get you up to that commitment level – this could mean that your use is either greater than or less than the initial commitment. 

For example, if you commit to using 1,600 hours per month in the T2 instance family (compute optimized), the upfront pricing discount will be 50% off the demand price. If you pay upfront by making a prepayment equal to three months' worth of this commitment ($8,400 per month), then your total cost for those three months would be $4,800 (three months at $1,200 per month). This is a savings of $4,000 over what it would cost if you paid hourly for those same three months ($12,000).

The amount of discount is flexible depending on the plan you select

If you are an enterprise user and have a big data project with high cost, Amazon provides you with different saving plans. These plans are flexible with the amount of discount, which is good for large scale users.

The AWS saving plans provide for auto-scaling of computing resources and are ideal for any scenario where you don't know how many loads you'll need to handle at any given time. The saving plans provide the ability to scale up or down depending on the number of resources used by your application. This makes sure that AWS won't charge you any more than what your application is using.

You can save more money by paying upfront. 

You pay a one-time fee for the right to use an AWS resource, like an EC2 instance or RDS database, for a certain period or until the instance comes out of its one- or three-year Reserved Instance term. You can buy a Reserved Instance in exchange for partial up-front payment and balance later.

Suppose you're not in a hurry to launch your application and don't need immediate access to your Reserved Instance resources. In that case, you can let your current term expire and then re-launch with a new term when AWS releases its next price reductions, typically every July and January.

AWS will proactively notify you when your Reserved Instance is about to expire so that you have time to act on any price reductions. You can buy an extended-term at the current rates, renew the current term at lower rates from a previous year (called "reseller pricing") or request AWS's best price for a future 12-month period (called "future pricing").

It's easy to get started. 

Signing up for a Savings Plan is easy. Just visit the AWS Cost Explorer and click on the blue "Sign Up" button at the top of the page. You'll see plans based on your usage, and you can purchase either a one-time or annual plan. 

The AWS team has made it easy to choose the right plan by introducing a new Cost Explorer tool called Savings Calculator. With this tool, you can evaluate the cost savings based on your actual usage and compare it with the cost savings available from other plans.

Log into the AWS Console and click on 'the Cost Explorer' tab under 'Tools' to use this feature. Then click on the 'Savings Calculators' tab and select the calculator based on your region (e.g., US East or the Asia Pacific). For example, if you are located in US East (Northern Virginia), you have to select US East (Northern Virginia) because that is the location of your data center. When you select a calculator, it will show your current plan details and also provide cost savings available from other plans.

AWS will optimize your usage to get you up to that commitment level – this could mean that your use is either greater than or less than the initial commitment

The AWS service limits and pricing options are updated regularly based on usage patterns of other customers. This keeps costs down for everyone.

Even when you only use up 10% of your committed resources, AWS will optimize your usage to get you up to that commitment level – this could mean that your usage is either greater than or less than the initial commitment.

The Takeaway 

AWS has a wide variety of different services that can be used to save costs and improve the performance of your business's cloud infrastructure. Looking to save money on AWS services? contact us today!

Interested to learn more? Book a call here today.

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/02
Feb 16, 2022 8:03:05 PM
AWS Saving Plans Benefits
AWS, Cost Optimization

Feb 16, 2022 8:03:05 PM

AWS Saving Plans Benefits

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a wide range of products and services for all your enterprise computing needs. Whether you are hosting a website or developing an app, AWS provides the infrastructure, platform and software stack you need to scale and grow most cost-effectively.

How Cloud Computing Benefits the Sports Industry | Cloudride

Cloud Computing is a game-changer for a lot of industries. In the last decade, it has been a significant factor in the evolution of technology. The benefits are enormous, not only from an operational perspective but also from a strategic one. Cloud computing can help teams better organize their data and make them more efficient. With cloud-based storage, data is accessible from anywhere at any time. They can also be accessed by anyone who needs it with the right security measures in place to protect sensitive information.

The benefits of the cloud for sports:

Fewer injuries thanks to real-time tracking

NFL players are not allowed to play with GPS trackers. However, many coaches use such devices during their training. GPS is far from a foolproof system. This is the reason why the NFL decided to update itself using an RFID system. Each player will be equipped with two RFID chips incorporated into their shoulder pads. These chips will send location and speed data measured using accelerometers.

It is, for example, possible to set up new formations, imagine new trajectories, or understand the particular style of each player. However, the real power of these chips lies in the ability to make sense of numbers and statistics. Cloud computing solutions help to transform sports data into concrete visuals allowing decisions to be made. This sport and Big Data tool makes it possible to visualize the teams' performance and their main qualities.

Thanks to player tracking, it is also possible to better prevent injuries. The players and coaches are more aware of their hydration rate and physical condition in general. Likewise, for the NFL, blows to the head can be detected. Despite the awareness of the danger of concussions in professional sport, little has changed in a few years. Coaches can turn data into preventative measures. Many hope that tracking will reduce the number of injuries.

Predict fan preferences

Cloud-based analytical technologies can improve the experience for sports fans. The more ticket sellers and teams know about fan preferences, the more they can pamper them. Fans today come to stadiums with smartphones and want technology to improve their experience. In response, sporting event organizers and stadium owners are turning to the cloud, mobile, and analytics technologies to deliver a never-before-seen experience.

Shortly, several changes are expected. The spectator can be guided to the nearest parking space using a mobile application when arriving at the stadium. In the field, it will be possible to access instant replays, alternate views, and close-up videos. With a mobile device, the fan will order food and drinks and have them delivered to their place without wasting a moment of the match. The smartphone will also be able to indicate the nearest toilets. Finally, after the game, the app will provide traffic directions and suggest the fastest home route.

Player health

Using cloud solutions, data from the connected objects wearables type, such as the connected bracelets, glasses AR, or smartwatches, provide statistical information in real-time on each player. The speed, rhythm, or acceleration of the heart are all data that these devices can measure. Likewise, wearables help reduce the number of injuries. The sensors record the impact of collisions and the intensity of the activity and compare them with historical data from a database to determine if the player is at risk of injury.

The rise of network science

The science of networks is playing an increasingly important role in sports and big data analysis. This science considers each player as a knot. It draws a line between them as the ball moves from one to the other. Many mathematical tools have already been developed to analyze such networks, and this technique is therefore beneficial for sports science.

For example, it is easy to determine the most critical nodes in the network using the so-called centrality measure. In football, goalkeepers and forwards have the lowest centrality, while defenders and midfielders have the highest.

This science also helps to divide the network into clusters. This way, team members can pass the ball or act more efficiently. However, the problem with network science is that there are many ways to measure centrality and determine clusters. The most effective method is not always clear, depending on the circumstances. It is, therefore, necessary to systematically evaluate and compare these different methods to determine their usefulness and value.

Looking forward

In the future, cloud-driven and Machine Learning will add context to sports data. In addition to measuring speed and distance, it will provide insights, for instance, on how many sprints were made by the athlete or if these accelerations were carried out under pressure.

By adding context to the data collected, coaches and analysts will spend more time focusing on strategic elements such as the correlation between actions or the quality of the opportunities created.

Interested to learn more? Book a call here today.

 

yura-vasilevitski
2022/02
Feb 3, 2022 2:41:36 PM
How Cloud Computing Benefits the Sports Industry | Cloudride
Cloud Computing, Sports

Feb 3, 2022 2:41:36 PM

How Cloud Computing Benefits the Sports Industry | Cloudride

Cloud Computing is a game-changer for a lot of industries. In the last decade, it has been a significant factor in the evolution of technology. The benefits are enormous, not only from an operational perspective but also from a strategic one. Cloud computing can help teams better organize their...

How Cloud Computing Has Changed the World of Games and Gaming

Technological innovations are constantly evolving. Cloud computing is now crucial in a fast-paced world to be able to keep up with market demands. In particular, the online entertainment sector has needed to change its concepts: accessibility at any time and from any place has become the priority for gaming and gambling platforms.

Both for the most classic video games and online casino platforms, the advent of Cloud Computing, a real revolution for the entire gaming world, impacts the sector's evolution. Cloud computing is nothing more than a remote server made available by a supplier via the internet, in which software and hardware resources of various kinds can be loaded. The user, usually upon subscription, has access to an ample virtual space, which allows overcoming the physical and memory limitations of a classic hard disk.

Improved gaming experience

Cloud computing has many benefits for players, especially gamers who are looking for an immersive experience. It's easier to store different saves of games. Players don't have to worry about losing their progress because cloud saves can be restored at any time.

Once you understand cloud technology, it becomes easy to understand the concept of cloud gaming: the loading of entire video games on a virtual server that players can access at any time. Various platforms already use the service. It aims to replace the various hardware components of PCs and consoles, improving performance and eliminating the need for a powerful physical medium that processes information. A step that could be no small feat if we consider the increasing heaviness of games on a graphic level and beyond.

Statistical predictions

An exciting innovation such as data modeling can be developed through cloud computing. It is mainly used in the economic field to predict trends thanks to statistical and historical data and finds applications in the gambling sector.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the Gambling Commission has designed data modeling to predict lottery sales over the next three years. Building models is costly, but the advent of data modeling will allow you to work without fainting too much and, above all, recording significant economic savings.

In the field of gambling, data modeling allows the development of a game that approaches a user's needs to satisfy him in all his requests. In this sense, a company that is making great strides is Betfair, which has launched the Betfair Predictions program. The system allows players to create their betting and horse racing models and is enjoying considerable success.

Virtual reality

Also worth noting is the novelty of Loot Box's virtual reality. The developed model aims to decrease the difference between video games and games of chance through a fusion in which the user can bet while playing actual gameplay. This revolution aims to bring the experience that is lived inside a casino directly to the home of those who play.

Efficiency in development

Cloud computing is beneficial for game developers because they can develop games more quickly, and they don't need to worry about the hardware that their game will be played on.

Last year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it would be launching its cloud-based game service - AWS GameLift. With AWS GameLift, developers can focus on their games rather than spending time and resources on managing their own servers.

Theoretically, you don't need to buy any equipment or hire expensive staff to run your game development project with cloud computing services. You just need a good internet connection, and then you can start playing with cloud gaming software!

Live to stream

AWS powers cost-effective and low latency live streaming, now available on all major platforms, including Twitch and YouTube Gaming. This has grown exponentially in popularity in recent years as people can stream their games and play with others online. The world of games and gaming will continue to evolve and change as we rely more heavily on cloud computing than ever before.

In nutshell

Modern gaming as we know it would be impossible without the Cloud. Cloud gaming services are cheaper than most consoles, more scalable, don't require expensive hardware, can be accessed by almost anyone with a decent internet connection, and play games with graphics that are at least on par with what consoles can offer.

A game's progress is saved in the Cloud, so you never have to worry about losing your data again. They also allow for cross-platform multiplayer, so you can play against or team up with other players on any platform of your choice.

Want to get your head in the game? Contact us here today!

yura-vasilevitski
2022/01
Jan 24, 2022 4:14:27 PM
How Cloud Computing Has Changed the World of Games and Gaming
Cloud Computing, Gaming

Jan 24, 2022 4:14:27 PM

How Cloud Computing Has Changed the World of Games and Gaming

Technological innovations are constantly evolving. Cloud computing is now crucial in a fast-paced world to be able to keep up with market demands. In particular, the online entertainment sector has needed to change its concepts: accessibility at any time and from any place has become the priority...

AWS Cloud control API

AWS Cloud Control is a unified API that enables developers to automate the management of AWS resources. Amazon Web Service recently released the API. It allows developers to access a centralized API for managing the lifecycle of tons of AWS resources and more third-party resources. With this API, developers will be able to manage the lifecycle of these resources consistently and uniformly, eliminating the need to manage them separately.

Find and update resources.

The API can create, retrieve, update, and delete AWS resources. It can also list resources or check the current resource state. The API contains various resource types representing different AWS services and third-party products that integrate with AWS. For example, the Amazon S3 bucket is a resource type.

The advantage here is that you can make sure that your application will interact with AWS resources without having to code it yourself. For example, the Amazon EC2 service offers many different instance types and sizes, making it hard to develop an application capable of working with all possible EC2 instances. However, by using the EC2 API's you can discover what instance types exist on AWS and how they should be addressed in your application code.

Discover resources and identify resource type schema

The Amazon Web Services control API provides an interface for creating, reading, updating, and deleting AWS resources. This API is used to discover resources and identify resource-type schema.

These API calls allow you to retrieve the descriptive metadata for a specified resource, such as its name, kind, associated tags, or any other user-defined tags. You can also use these API calls to determine the resource type of a specified Amazon EC2 instance image or Amazon EBS volume.

Create and manage resources

The AWS API provides a set of web services that enable you to create and manage AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon S3 buckets, and Amazon DynamoDB tables. You can use the API when you need programmatic or automated access to AWS resources.

The AWS API enables you to control your AWS resources with simple HTTP requests, which means you can automate many of the tasks that you would otherwise have to perform manually. Because AWS uses REST-based access, you can also use any programming language and development environment that support HTTP calls to integrate it into your application infrastructure.

Expose AWS resources to clients  

There are many reasons you might want to expose new AWS resources to your customers automatically. Maybe you want to give them a self-service way to create their own IAM policies and roles, or you need to launch a new database for them and don't want them to have to contact you.

Whatever the case may be, it is possible through the AWS Cloud control API. The API was designed for this exact use case: automating things so that customers can do it themselves without going through support.

One of the most common use cases is creating additional security groups for an EC2 instance. To illustrate this, imagine that our company has launched an EC2 instance with two security groups: one for public access and another for internal access only.

When customers launch an EC2 instance with our AMI, they will default to the public security group. However, they may want the option to change this group type at run time, depending on their needs. They could request this change via email or chat, but it's much more convenient if they can just do it themselves!

Provision resources with third-party infrastructure tools

Cloud control APIs let you provision AWS resources with third-party tools. These tools can be used to manage infrastructure as code (IaC). You can manage your resources through configuration files and scripts. These scripts are versioned and executed by CI/CD system.

The Cloud control API provides a consistent interface for provisioning cloud resources across multiple regions with different partners. It minimizes errors while creating order management and deployment in the AWS cloud.

In a nutshell

Cloud control API helps developers automate many routine tasks associated with cloud computing. Tasks like creating on-demand instances or deleting them when they are no longer needed can be automated using the Cloud control API. This makes it easier for developers to focus on writing their own applications without having to worry about every little detail that comes with managing operations in the cloud.

Want to learn more? Schedule here with one of our experts today

kirill-morozov-blog
2022/01
Jan 16, 2022 8:59:35 PM
AWS Cloud control API
AWS, API

Jan 16, 2022 8:59:35 PM

AWS Cloud control API

AWS Cloud Control is a unified API that enables developers to automate the management of AWS resources. Amazon Web Service recently released the API. It allows developers to access a centralized API for managing the lifecycle of tons of AWS resources and more third-party resources. With this API,...

The Latest Updates from AWS re:Invent: Cloudride’s Insight

In our last blog post reporting from AWS re:Invent, we covered The Most Prominent Innovation and Tech Developments in the Field of Backup & Storage.This week we’re all about Networking, Content Delivery and Next Generation Compute. So let’s get down to business with the most important highlights for 2022:

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) IP Address Manager (IPAM)

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) IP Address Manager (IPAM) is a simple and secure way to connect applications running in a VPC to resources outside of the VPC. This new feature, in addition to existing connectivity options such as VPN connections and AWS Direct Connect, helps customers extend their existing network infrastructure into the AWS cloud. In addition, VPC with PrivateLink makes it easier for customers to manage their expanding IP address needs by introducing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) IP Address Manager (IPAM).

You can use IPAM to discover and monitor the IP addresses in your VPCs and manage address space across multiple VPCs. IP addresses can include static IP addresses and Amazon Elastic IP addresses (EIPs). You can use IPAM to find unused addresses in your VPCs so that you can consolidate IP addresses. IPAM provides visibility into an organization's IP usage, allowing administrators to see IP address utilization across their AWS environment and control and automation tools that allow them to manage IP address requests.

The feature is part of Amazon's larger effort to make it easier for companies of all sizes to move workloads into the cloud. IPAM uses native VPC functionality to provide subnet-level visibility into each customer's entire public IPv4 address space. Customers simply create a VPC and then add their subnets, and IPAM automatically provisions IP addresses for each subnet, without any further configuration required by the customer.

Kinesis Data Streams On-Demand

Tectonic shifts are happening in cloud computing: with serverless computing on the rise and SaaS applications becoming increasingly dependent on streaming data, AWS's new Kinesis Data Streams service is designed to help companies capture and analyze this data.

Kinesis Data Streams enables you to build and run real-time data applications by using a serverless approach. That means you can have a data stream up and running in minutes without having to provision or manage any infrastructure. The service scales automatically and runs your code when events occur. It also handles the operational details of running your code, like monitoring for failures, managing upgrades, and applying security patches.

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams enables you to capture a high volume of data in real-time, process the data for custom analytics, and store the data for batch-oriented analytics. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams can stream data for various use cases, from microservices to operational analytics and Data Lake storage, among other scenarios. You can build and host your own applications to process and store data or use the AWS SDKs to build custom applications in Java, .Net, PHP, Python, or Node.js.

Graviton3

New Amazon EC2 C7g instances, powered by Graviton 3, are designed to deliver the performance and cost savings that allow you to run more of your workloads on AWS while also providing lower latency, higher IOPS, and higher memory bandwidth than previous generations of EC2 compute instances.

The new C7g instances include eight Graviton3 CPU cores, each with 128 KB of L2 cache and SSE4.1 support for improved floating-point performance. Each core is independently multithreaded and can run simultaneous threads at 2.5 GHz.

Custom-designed AWS Graviton3 processors provide greater compute density and power efficiency than general-purpose processors. They allow for more CPU cores per rack unit, more RAM per instance, and higher I/O bandwidth per instance than in previous generations of EC2 compute instances.

Tests have shown that with a mixed workload of MySQL and Memcached technologies, EC2 C7g instances can achieve up to a 75% reduction in latency for applications with increased throughput and reduced tail latencies.

 

AWS Karpenter; a new open-source Kubernetes cluster autoscaling project

AWS Karpenter is a new open source project that makes setting up and manages Kubernetes clusters across multiple AWS regions. Karpenter can be used to provision and manage AWS EC2 instances to autoscaling in response to traffic. It uses Amazon CloudWatch Events as an input to trigger scaling operations on Kubernetes clusters running on AWS.

If you're in the process of migrating to a containerized platform, or you're looking for a way to help your developers build and deploy applications faster, Karpenter might be an interesting project to check out.

The cluster management system allows users to allocate resources across a set of Kubernetes cluster instances. The key benefit of the cluster manager is it allows users to scale the number of nodes in the cluster dynamically according to traffic patterns. This results in lower running costs and higher throughput during peak periods.

Users can easily specify their application requirements, select the best infrastructure and software configuration, receive a deployment plan, and have their cluster ready in minutes.

As a Certified AWS partner, we expect AWS to be previewing even more new technology and innovation on an ongoing basis. If you are interested in AWS services, be sure to give the book a free call here for white-glove consultation on migration, cost, and performance optimization.

 

danny-levran
2022/01
Jan 9, 2022 7:13:13 PM
The Latest Updates from AWS re:Invent: Cloudride’s Insight
AWS, AWS re:Invent

Jan 9, 2022 7:13:13 PM

The Latest Updates from AWS re:Invent: Cloudride’s Insight

In our last blog post reporting from AWS re:Invent, we covered The Most Prominent Innovation and Tech Developments in the Field of Backup & Storage.This week we’re all about Networking, Content Delivery and Next Generation Compute. So let’s get down to business with the most important highlights...

What's new in Backups & Storage from AWS re:Invent

This year’s AWS re: invent conference held in Las Vegas on November 29th – December 3rd of 2021, was incredible, presenting dozens of new innovations and technologies, covering practically every aspect of the public cloud. To make things easier on you – here’s a series of several posts where we’ve gathered the most important highlights, and we’re proud to open with (drumroll) – The Most Prominent Innovation and Tech Developments in the Field of Backup & Storage.

AWS announces Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval 

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval will allow users to access archived data in less than five minutes, thanks to intelligent access technology. The service will also offer up to 90 percent savings on storage costs compared with Amazon S3 SIA.

Amazon S3 Glacier offers the following storage classes: one for frequent access with the lowest per-gigabyte retrieval costs; one for long-term archive and infrequent access; and one for use cases that require even lower retrieval costs.

Tiered storage will be available to all AWS customers in all AWS regions and supported by S3 and Amazon Glacier. Archive-IA's pricing is similar to that of the Simple Storage Service (S3) Standard-IA storage class. Both offer a lower per GB price and per request price than S3 Standard-Infrequent Access, which offers faster retrieval times at a higher price.

IMG-20211227-WA0016

AWS Develops Amazon Dynamo DB Standard-Infrequent Access 

In Amazon's cloud database, DynamoDB, the company has recently introduced a new database storage class called DynamoDB Standard-IA. This Infrequent Access storage class reduces database storage costs by up to 60 percent. DynamoDB tables using the Standard-IA storage class provide the same high throughput, low latency performance, and throughput capacity units as the existing Provisioned I/O and Throughput Optimized storage classes. Data in this storage class is stored on the same replicated storage infrastructure that provides the high availability and durability that DynamoDB customers expect.

Implementing the DynamoDB key-value store will use less capacity and cost less money for apps that don't need high write performance and low latency. It's still in preview mode but will become generally available early next year. Developers will get to build applications that retrieve infrequently accessed data directly from Amazon DynamoDB tables at a fraction of the cost of other options such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

AWS Unveils AWS Backup for Amazon S3

AWS Backup for S3 further simplifies the backup data management with built-in compression and encryption, policy-based retention, flexible restore, and retrieval options. You can easily create a backup policy in AWS Backup that backs up data in an Amazon S3 bucket associated with an Amazon EC2 instance or an RDS database.

The protection you can get by backing up an Amazon S3 bucket is the same as when backing up an Amazon EC2 instance or an RDS database. You can recover to the most recent point in time, you can recover individual files and folders, and you can protect data from malware with VMR.

The first step to using AWS Backup for Amazon S3 (Preview) is creating a backup policy. You can then assign the Amazon S3 buckets to be included in a backup job. You can specify filters that limit the Amazon S3 buckets that are backed up. You can use the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface to get started.

AWS Backup offers advanced functionality to ensure that you can maintain and demonstrate compliance with your organizational data protection policies to auditors.

AWS announces Amazon Redshift Serverless  

Amazon Redshift Serverless is a fully managed data warehouse that makes it easy to quickly analyze large amounts of data using your existing business intelligence tools. Amazon Redshift Serverless automatically provisions the right compute resources for you to get started. You only pay for the processing time you use, and there are no upfront costs or commitments.

You don't need to provide the infrastructure because Amazon Redshift does it for you. You can focus on getting your data loaded, performing queries, and processing results, without having to worry about provisioning resources and managing servers.

The platform is built upon PostgreSQL, an implementation of the Structured Query Language (SQL), which means you can use the same skills and knowledge you have built up over the years to access the information in your company's data warehouse. 

Amazon Redshift offers scale and performance that traditional data warehouses do not, using a columnar storage system that allows for faster data processing. Whether you want to use it for a big data project or a small project, this is the tool for you to use.

VS. (9)

Takeaway:

As a trusted AWS Partner, we know first-hand that Amazon Web Services is always coming up with new ideas and innovations. Wait for the next chapter in our AWS re:Invent series or just book a call here to find out more.

 

danny-levran
2021/12
Dec 28, 2021 8:50:37 PM
What's new in Backups & Storage from AWS re:Invent
AWS, AWS re:Invent

Dec 28, 2021 8:50:37 PM

What's new in Backups & Storage from AWS re:Invent

This year’s AWS re: invent conference held in Las Vegas on November 29th – December 3rd of 2021, was incredible, presenting dozens of new innovations and technologies, covering practically every aspect of the public cloud. To make things easier on you – here’s a series of several posts where we’ve...

Ways Cloud Computing Can Help the Agriculture Industry Grow

Agriculture can be considered a perfect field in which the main emerging technologies, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, IoT, robotics, and edge computing, can find immediate application quickly and on a large scale.

Innovating agriculture and food production systems is one of the most critical and complex challenges that modern society must face in the short term. The progressive increase of the world population and the consequent further erosion of already limited resources to meet billions of individuals' increasingly elaborate and sophisticated needs could lead to the collapse of the entire system in the absence of a digital revolution capable of completely innovating.

It is, therefore, necessary to introduce tools, technologies, and solutions capable of reducing the environmental impact and automating production processes. They should make the complex and articulated agro-food chain efficient, streamlined, safe, and "traceable" to promptly provide everyone with healthy products, fast and at controlled prices.

Imagine the possibility of having a fleet of agribots capable of plowing fields, of drones capable of accurately mapping the territory and starting photo-interpretation processes. Think of animals interconnected with an operations center thanks to the Internet of Things, to self-driving tractors.  Finally, picture a fully integrated system in which all the actors described so far coexist harmoniously. All these systems will rely on dependable and scalable operations on the cloud instead of traditional data centers.

Emerging Cloud Technologies in Transformative Agriculture: Case Studies

Grove Technologies AWS CEA

Let’s take a closer look at  Grove Technologies who uses AWS to unlock multi-faceted solutions that offer insights into crop performance. Using AWS IoT Greengrass, they connected intelligent edge devices to the cloud, for instance, for anomaly detection in an expertly designed controlled agriculture environment. Their software and configuration can now be deployed and managed remotely and at scale without updating firmware.

Growers use wireless sensors placed in the fields for various tasks, including estimating agricultural parameters that are critical such as temperature, watering levels, and yield estimates.

By using AWS IoT Greengrass, the data is streamed into AWS IoT Core. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon DynamoDB store ingested data using AWS IoT rules. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams are also used to batch and process incoming data. Technology is applied to send regular updates on crop/animal details,  farm conditions, or weather.

Solerfertigation

The Solarfertigation project, to which three universities have contributed in various capacities, indeed represents an important example of collaboration and strategic partnership between the private sector and the public administration.

Cloud operations and solutions helped to ensure a lower consumption of water resources and fertilizers by integrating a software module to support the farmer's decisions. Systems were deployed capable of concretely implementing the identified solutions based on analyzing the data from the network of “intelligent” sensors.

Fascinating is their integration of a photovoltaic system, which makes the product energy self-sufficient and allows farmers to arrive even in areas of their land not served by electricity. Furthermore, the system is equipped with an automatic module for the dosage of fertilizers to manage different crops in different parts of the same field.

To continuously improve irrigation activities and calibrate them based on soil conditions.  Solarfertigation also allows farmers to collect environmental data from the field, integrate with meteorological information and develop the correct fertigation solution to increase the productivity of the land, simplify the management of the field and recover fertile areas.

Accenture hybrid Agri cloud integration

A different approach is based not on specific "vertical" applications but aimed at guaranteeing a "holistic" vision of an agricultural company.  This approach is adopted by the famous  multinational Accenture, which has implemented a service to overcome the transition period towards digital.

Farmers get to manage multiple IT tools and solutions separately to start a new era in which technology does not produce sectorial information but coordinates the entire activity through a series of correlated actions based on the data collected and processed in real-time.

Specifically, Accenture's goal is to help farmers make data-driven operational decisions to optimize yield and increase revenue by minimizing expenses, crop failure chances, and environmental impact while increasing profitability. Total of an estimated $ 55 to $ 110 per acre.

The digital agriculture service by Accenture, in particular, aggregates granular data in real-time from multiple heterogeneous sources such as environmental sensors. It combined data from images obtained by remote sensing (which show the stress of the crop before it is visible to the naked eye), "equipment from the field,” meteorological information, and soil database supported on different clouds.

 

To Conclude,

Many customers today seek to leverage the cloud’s never ending storage capacity and strong compute abilities.

 Agro-tech like many other industries processes incredible amounts of data from their sensors and devices and what can be better than storing then in an available & durable manner like the cloud? We recommend on using S3 for object storing and the ability to run queries on the data with services such as Amazon Athena. You can setup integration with Sage Maker to build and train models based on that data and many more applications, helping you leverage the cloud storage and ML pre-built tools.

 

Want to learn more? Book a meeting today. 

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/11
Nov 23, 2021 6:00:59 PM
Ways Cloud Computing Can Help the Agriculture Industry Grow
Cloud Computing, Agriculture

Nov 23, 2021 6:00:59 PM

Ways Cloud Computing Can Help the Agriculture Industry Grow

Agriculture can be considered a perfect field in which the main emerging technologies, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, IoT, robotics, and edge computing, can find immediate application quickly and on a large scale.

Guide for Preparing Your Infrastructure for Black Friday Surges

Black Friday is becoming a longer sales marathon, and that of 2021 is the first post-pandemic. For brands that want to take the opportunity to increase sales, increase and retain their customers, it's imperative to bolster infrastructure in readiness for massive web traffic.

For many people, the shopping season is the best time of the year, but it is certainly the busiest for retailers. Hordes of eager gift shoppers flock to stores and websites during November and December, with sales that can account for up to 30 % of a company's annual sales. And especially on peak shopping days, such as Black Friday. Online merchants see three times more traffic than usual.


This figure is destined to grow further this year, given the eCommerce boom linked to the pandemic. To take advantage of this increased activity on the web, retailers must rapidly expand their infrastructures and operations to cope with the surge in demand. It is not an easy task, but AWS provides an architecture center that delivers deep architecture insights, diagrams, solutions, patterns, and best practices for optimal enhancements before, during, and after Black Friday.

AWS Best Practices Framework Helps You Not Miss a Single Sale

We know that increasingly customers want frictionless shopping experiences. Forward-thinking eCommerce stores and retailers will leverage AWS Well-Architected Framework to help users effortlessly and comfortably complete their online shopping. 

Imagine the frustration that a potential customer might feel, perhaps already ready to click on "Buy now" to see that the site collapses and is no longer reachable. No, no, no. Bad sign! And often, this will lead him to give up and turn to a competitor.

AWS Well-Architected Framework helps sellers and retailers figure out what is working and what is not and what could be better in their entire infrastructure. This delivers opportunities for efficiency in the face of extreme traffic spikes and ways to cut costs and improve security. 

AWS Solutions for Black Friday IT

To avoid losing customers and damaging the brand image due to an unplanned website block, the most experienced technology leaders test their infrastructures well in advance. Many rely on AWS cloud solutions to dynamically add more compute and storage resources as site traffic rises and then automatically scale down as demand decreases. In addition to preventing outages, the transfer of traffic often reduces the cost of hosting the infrastructure.

Furthermore, another aspect not to be underestimated is related to speed. While smartphone purchases are overtaking desktop purchases, over 50% of sites are abandoned when it takes more than three seconds to load.

To reduce latency on their mobile sites and apps during the holidays, retailers can use  AWS cloud solutions that deliver content across all points of presence distributed globally. AWS' fault injection simulator empowers retailers to test their websites (undertones of pressure) for failures before the actual high traffic day. This is the famous chaos engineering that could save you thousands of dollars in losses this Black Friday.

But it's not just about online sales. AWS high-speed hosting can help shorten waiting times - and long queues - even for in-store shoppers, now that many retailers have adopted cloud-based solutions that allow salespeople to make payments by card. Because all the information gets stored in the cloud rather than locally, these systems have the added benefit of seamlessly integrating with other data sources, such as loyalty program records and recommendation engines.

What Are the Characteristics of The Ideal Cloud Server for Black Friday?

Even when you can seamlessly adjust the computing power of your cloud server or, more generally, of your architecture in time, the importance of careful and continuous monitoring, which is a sort of operational supervision, must be considered.

Suppose the campaign you have in mind for Black Friday, for example, was to be very successful. In the face of particular traffic spikes, a slowdown in the loading times of the landing pages or even their unreachability would cause severe damage to your business. You will witness a practically immediate abandonment of users, not to mention the reputation of your brand.

Hence technical factor, i.e., the adequacy of the cloud infrastructure and the human one, i.e., the adequacy of the type of assistance offered by the provider, is essential.

To summarize in a few points, the below characteristics make AWS an ideal cloud for Black Friday and the optimal reaction to traffic spikes:

  • It has immediate scalability that does not involve variations of any kind: where it is enough, in short, to adapt the resources with vertical upgrades 
  • You can add other virtual machines and scale those machines that already make up the web architecture
  • Ease of use and flexible, good infrastructure optimization/tuning 
  • Reliable security and encryptions 
  • Amazon Cloudfront helps with low latency and seamless content delivery
  • Workload sharing enables seamless collaboration for robust architecture implementation for transparency, efficiency, and security
  • Fast response one-on-one support

Do you want to know more about how AWS solutions can empower you to create a high-performing infrastructure for Black Friday? We have helped many eCommerce providers optimize efficiency and profitability with cloud solutions. Book a meeting today. 

 

yura-vasilevitski
2021/11
Nov 7, 2021 3:36:03 PM
Guide for Preparing Your Infrastructure for Black Friday Surges
AWS, E-Commerce, Black-Friday

Nov 7, 2021 3:36:03 PM

Guide for Preparing Your Infrastructure for Black Friday Surges

Black Friday is becoming a longer sales marathon, and that of 2021 is the first post-pandemic. For brands that want to take the opportunity to increase sales, increase and retain their customers, it's imperative to bolster infrastructure in readiness for massive web traffic.

CloudFormation vs Terraform: Which One is Better for business?

Code-based infrastructure is on the rise. Essentially, it means that you're deploying IT on servers and managing it as software instead of as hardware. Instead of buying or configuring individual servers, which may be an up-front cost but later require subsequent costs for upkeep and maintenance, you can simply use another server with your virtual environment - it's easier to upgrade this way.

AWS has a tool named CloudFormation, which is used for provisioning and managing EC2 instances along with storage devices, security features, and networking components. There is also an open-source alternative called Terraform. This article will go over the differences and similarities between these two tools and provide you with information to help you choose the right one for your business needs.

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation refers to an AWS service that changes how you manage your cloud infrastructure, providing security and ensuring that your enterprise cloud environment is efficient. In addition, you can build AWS or third-party apps easier with this framework, allowing you to view the entire deployment library as one unit of the whole application.

CloudFormation allows individuals and teams to quickly provide a well-defined application stack that can create predictable destruction of cloud-provided resources accurately and predictably, enabling teams to change their infrastructure more efficiently.

Terraform‍

Terraform is an open-source software tool for managing several remote cloud services simultaneously while allowing users to control their configurations more effectively. Terraform will enable clients to devise plans that interface with each service's specific configuration parameters, then automatically generate documentation-compliant responses.

This open-source software tool was built by HashiCorp and helped users set up and provision data center infrastructure. In Terraform, APIs are codified into declarative configurations that team members can share, edit, review, and version.

State management

The Amazon CloudFormation service allows users to track and report on changes to provisioned infrastructure. It is possible, for instance, to change some parameters of an AWS resource without destroying or rebuilding some help, but some parameters must be reconstructed. AWS CloudFormation will determine if dependency on the resource exists before it deletes the resource.

The Terraform infrastructure state is stored locally on the working computer or remotely (for team access). A Terraform state file describes which service manages resources and how they are configured. The state file is in JSON format.

AWS CloudFormation won't stop the deployment if it suddenly realizes that one of your provisioned resources has become unavailable. On the other hand, Terraform will roll back the deployment to the last update if there is a glitch.

Language

Terraform is written in HashiCorp Configuration Language, HCL, while AWS CloudFormation is written in JSON or YAML. Overall, YAML is an easier format than JSON because it has fewer requirements and it's far more readable. However, there's still one thing that you must watch out for, and that's indentation because things go wrong if you mess up. HCL only has a handful of validators, and they all enforce basic formatting requirements. This helps developers to go through the most fundamental parts of their projects quickly.

Modularity

Terraform helps developers create reusable templates by allowing them to keep their code in self-contained modules. Since the templates are maintained at high levels, you can quickly build your infrastructure without being bogged down by details.

Nested stacks are used in CloudFormation, allowing a templated way to create or change infrastructure resources. You can call one template within another, which becomes even more complex if multiple templates call each other. Stack sets help with this by following some extra guidelines to ensure everything runs smoothly without human error.

Compared with CloudFormation, Terraform is more module-centric. Companies can create their modules or pull in modules from any provider who supports them.

Configuration

Terraform works with data providers of all kinds responsible for returning the data required to describe the managed infrastructure. This is done modularly, allowing users to use data and functionality outside Terraform to generate or retrieve information that Terraform then uses to update or provision infrastructure.

CloudFormation has a limit of 200 parameters (previously 60) for every template. Each of these parameters is referenced by an 'id' you choose for it at the time of creation, and CloudFormation uses this id to recognize which variables are which when they appear in templates. The different variable ids are handy when your templates start growing in size since it's easy to spot the IDs in place of total words when writing them into template language. This makes writing these templates much easier when using dynamics id’s that change with every loop statement, etc. - hopefully making it easier for new users to get up to speed more quickly.

In a nutshell, neither tool is inferior to the other when it comes to managing cloud infrastructure. AWS CloudFormation might be a better choice if you already use AWS tools and want no external ties to 3rd parties. On the other hand, Terraform might be more valuable for you if you are interested in integrating a platform that works across multiple cloud providers.

With Cloudride, you can rest easy knowing that we work with cloud providers to help you choose the solution that meets your needs. We will assist you in finding the best performance, high security, and cost-saving cloud solutions to maximize business value.

Book a meeting today. 

 

yarden-shitrit
2021/10
Oct 17, 2021 9:25:28 AM
CloudFormation vs Terraform: Which One is Better for business?
AWS, CloudFormation, Terraform

Oct 17, 2021 9:25:28 AM

CloudFormation vs Terraform: Which One is Better for business?

Code-based infrastructure is on the rise. Essentially, it means that you're deploying IT on servers and managing it as software instead of as hardware. Instead of buying or configuring individual servers, which may be an up-front cost but later require subsequent costs for upkeep and maintenance,...

AWS Lambda Cost Optimization Strategies That Work

Although moving into the cloud can mean that your IT budget increases, cloud computing helps you customize how it runs. There are many advantages to using AWS - whether you're using it for just one application or using the cloud as a data center. The advantage of using AWS is that you save money on other aspects of your business, allowing you to spend more wisely on AWS services. For example, monitoring time zones to the only charge for the services used at peak times means that costs can be managed anytime.

This means there are great opportunities to save money if users pay only for what they need, making sure that costs are minimized while also providing abilities to scale back when things are quiet.

AWS Lambda Cost Optimization

With AWS Lambda, you only pay for the time your code is running. More time means more money. The best part about this billing model is that it removes virtually all of the guesswork that used to go into planning your infrastructure costs. Since server capacity is provisioned automatically when needed, there's no need for expensive hardware allocations to handle surges in demand!

How AWS Lambda Pricing Works

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of understanding how to lower costs, let's review how Amazon determines the price of AWS Lambda. Amazon's Lambda has several indicators to calculate how much it will cost to run them. The duration is measured according to the time your code began executing until it completes or otherwise ends. Price depends on how much memory your function requires.

The AWS Lambda service is part of Compute Savings Plans, which provide low prices for Amazon EC2, Amazon Fargate, and AWS Lambda if you commit to using them consistently for a period of one or three years. You can save up to 17% on Amazon Lambda when you use Compute

Request pricing

  • Free Tier: 1 million monthly requests
  • Then $0.20 for every million requests

Duration pricing

  • 400,000 GB-seconds free per month
  • $0.00001667 for each GB-second afterward

Function configuration memory size.

An invocation consumes 1.5 GB or less of memory, multiplied by the duration. In practice, GB-sec proves to be rather complicated, despite its simple appearance. If you want to see what your function might cost, you can try an Amazon Lambda cost calculator.

Ways to Optimize AWS Lambda Costs

 

Monitor All AWS Lambda Workloads

There are over 120,000 AWS Lambda functions in the wild. Let's say you own a business. If you want to see every single function, you'd need over 2000 computers in your network just to keep up with what's running. While that's a horrible amount of computer resources, many of us don't have that capability. You can create instances with many cores, memory, storage, and other resources to monitor what's going on.

Your Lambda function will still keep running, but as long as you can monitor the outcome, it's effortless to see what's going on in there. AWS Lambda dashboard from AWS allows you to view metrics from your Lambda functions. You can see live logs of how long functions run and which parts of your code are processing or not.

Reduce Lambda Usage

Lambda usage can be easily optimized and significantly cut down, by simply turning off and downing Lambda services whenever they are not in use.

You can configure AWS Lambda to function on a per-task basis. It might even inspire you to do the same for your other services. Don't use lambdas for simple transforms, or you will find yourself paying more than $0.20 per 1000 calls. If you are deploying a serverless API using AWS AppSync & API Gateway, this happens quite often.

Cache Lambda Responses

Instead of sending a static string to all API endpoints, developers can send response headers that include the exact value the user needs and even identify the intended application using a unique ID.

One of the keys to delivering a very efficient response is to cache those responses, so your endpoints don't need to send it all the time.  A function that is not called doesn't add to your bill. Further, this allows developers to save time and energy and achieve implementations that enhance user experience.

Use Batch Lambda Calls

Sometimes, a server may be under heavy load, and the peak traffic will fluctuate due to intermittent events. Good use of queue could be utilized to make this an effective, fast solution to pause Lambda execution and "batch" code executions. Instead of calling functions on every event, you will be calling only a set number of times during a specific event period.

If the function call rate is constant, the other requests can wait until the function is called.  For outstanding performance, Lambda has native support for AWS queuing services such as Kinesis and SQS. It's essential to test your function optimally and follow these best practices to ensure your data is batched properly.

Never Call Lambda Directly from Lambda

If you want to change the AWS Lambda endpoint on the server, you can't call it directly. This is another example of why Lambda isn't meant to be a transactional backend or database but rather a real-time event-sourced service. You may be using AWS Lambda today without knowing this, but it's easy to minimize your AWS Lambda costs with this knowledge in mind.

There are many options available when it comes to AWS queuing services. SQS, SNS, Kinesis, and Step Functions are just a few that set AWS apart for those tasks that require heavy-hitting responses. You can notify clients with WebSockets or email as your needs arise.

 

Cloudride specializes in providing professional consultancy & implementation planning services for all cloud environments and providers. Whether the target environment is AWS, Azure  GCP, or others, Cloudride specialists are experienced experts with these systems and cater to any need. You no longer have to worry about reducing cloud costs or improving efficiency—just leave that to us. Give us a call today for your free consultation!

Book a meeting today. 

 

haim-yefet
2021/10
Oct 6, 2021 10:23:20 PM
AWS Lambda Cost Optimization Strategies That Work
AWS, Cost Optimization, Lambda

Oct 6, 2021 10:23:20 PM

AWS Lambda Cost Optimization Strategies That Work

Although moving into the cloud can mean that your IT budget increases, cloud computing helps you customize how it runs. There are many advantages to using AWS - whether you're using it for just one application or using the cloud as a data center. The advantage of using AWS is that you save money on...

AWS Fintech Architecture

Rapid innovation, lean six sigma processes, flexible working conditions for employees, and the end of expensive IT infrastructure in-house: cloud computing can be a real cost-saver in a fintech company. In this article, we will review the advantages of AWS for Fintech.

Requirements for Implementing the Cloud in Fintech systems

Many fintech companies have adopted the cloud, and SaaS solutions are being used mainly in peripheral, non-core solution areas, like collaboration, customer relationship management, and the human resources department.

Several capabilities can be identified as related to the infrastructure and tools that can contribute to the Cloud adoption process from an infrastructure standpoint. Cloud Computing will proceed as long as the business strategy and business model are in place. As part of the Cloud Computing model, the key drivers are agility, lower barriers of entry, cost-efficacy, and efficiency. Business innovation, estimated costs, coordinating principles, and desired benefits are the other deciding factors.  

AWS for Fintech:

Since Fintech startups are not dependent on legacy systems, they can take advantage of the cloud, the blockchain, and other revolutionary technologies. The low capital expenditure prices associated with Amazon Web Services Cloud are hugely beneficial for companies in the Fintech sector.

AWS Benefits for Fintech:

  • One-click regulatory compliance 
  • The backup of all transaction data is seamless and secure
  • Scalability and performance guarantee
  • Full-time availability
  • Promotes the DevOps culture

The AWS Fintech Architecture

AWS makes it possible to establish a configuration server, map each server, and set up pricing. Applications are secured using a private virtual server. Redundancy is provided by resource storage in multiple availability zones. AWS EC2 instances are used to host web servers. 

The architecture uses Elastic Load Balancer to balance traffic on your servers. The architecture minimizes latency with CloudFront distribution. It maintains edge locations by acting as a cache for traffic and streaming and web traffic. 

The architecture uses Elastic Load Balancer to balance traffic on your servers. The architecture minimizes latency with CloudFront distribution. It maintains edge locations by acting as a cache for traffic and streaming and web traffic.

Key Components of AWS Architecture for Fintech

Amazon S3

Banks usually have a web of siloed systems, making data consolidation difficult. But auditors expect detailed data presented understandably under Basel IV standards.

Creating a data pipeline will allow us to overcome this first challenge. Fintechs must inventory each data source as it is added to the pipeline. They should determine the key data sources, both internal and external, from which the initial landing page will be populated. 

Amazon S3 provides a highly reliable, durable service. S3 offers capabilities like S3 Object Lock and S3 Glacier Vault for WORM storage. Using Amazon S3, you can organize your applications so that each event triggers a function that populates DynamoDB. Developers can implement these functions using AWS Lambda, which can be used with languages like Python.

Amazon S3 provides a highly reliable, durable service. S3 offers capabilities like S3 Object Lock and S3 Glacier Vault for WORM storage

CI/CD pipeline

CI/CD helps development teams remain more productive. Rework and wait times are eliminated with CI/CD in FinTech. By automating routine processes, software developers can focus on more important code quality and security issues.

But to implement CI/CD, Your workflow will have to change, your testing process will have to be automated, and you will have to convert your repository to Git. Fortunately, this can be all handled on AWS—with ease.

CloudSageMaker pipelines automate and deploy software for teams. The AWS SageMaker service provides machine learning capabilities. Engineers and data scientists can use it to create in-depth models.

Using AWS CodeCommit, teams can create a git-based repository to store, train, and evaluate models. AWS CloudFormation can be used to deploy code and configuration files stored in the repository. The endpoint can be created and updated using AWS CodeBuild and AWS CodePipeline based on approved and reviewed changes.

Every time a new model version is added to the Model Registry, AWS CodeCommit automatically deploys any update it finds in the repository. Amazon S3 allows models, historical data, and model artifacts to be stored.

AWS Fargate

Under the soon-to-be-enforced Basel IV reforms, banks' capital ratios are supposed to be more comparable and transparent. They also call for more credibility in calculating risk-weighted assets (RWAs).

AWS Fargate empowers auditors to rerun Basel credit risk models under specified conditions using a lightweight application. AWS Fargate automates container orchestration and instance management, so you don't have to manage it yourself. Based on demand, tasks will get scaled up or down automatically, optimizing availability and cost-efficiency.

The scalability of Fargate reduces the need for choosing instances and scaling cluster capacities. Fargate separates and isolates each task or pod by running each within its kernel. Thus, fintechs can isolate workloads to evaluate different risk models. 

FinTech and AWS: A perfect match

AWS is a great fit for Fintech companies with an eye on ultimate digital transformations, thanks to its impeccable capabilities and full life cycle support.

At Cloudride, we simplify day-to-day cloud operations and migrations while also offering assistance with AWS cloud security and cost optimization and performance monitoring for Fintech companies.

Book a meeting today. 

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/08
Aug 16, 2021 1:20:23 PM
AWS Fintech Architecture
AWS, Financial Services, Fintech

Aug 16, 2021 1:20:23 PM

AWS Fintech Architecture

Rapid innovation, lean six sigma processes, flexible working conditions for employees, and the end of expensive IT infrastructure in-house: cloud computing can be a real cost-saver in a fintech company. In this article, we will review the advantages of AWS for Fintech.

Cloud Computing in Financial Services AWS Guide

You can’t afford to wait when it comes to shifting to reliable infrastructure. Technological change is happening faster today than at any other time in history, and in order to thrive, businesses must embrace digital transformation through leveraging cloud computing. Banks and other financial institutions need reliable, fast, scalable, and secure cloud computing to maintain a competitive edge in the industry. 

A case in point is the steady rise of the Fintech industry that has brought efficiency, accountability, and transparency in the ways the Banking & Finance industry operates. Banks and their Fintech must now modernize and leverage cutting-edge technologies in Mobile, Cloud computing, and crypto wallet technology like blockchain to survive in a market driven by disruptive tech.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) brings the universe’s most adopted comprehensive cloud resources to provide organizations with easy access to IT services like security, storage, networking, and more. This helps businesses to lower IT costs, transform operations and focus on delivering market demands.

Reasons for IT Decision-Makers in Finance to Adopt the AWS Cloud

Easy Compliance 

Security is critical for cloud financial service companies when migrating sensitive client data to cloud servers. AWS Cloud Financial Services ensure client data security is strengthened from their data center to their network and architecture. This cloud is designed for security-conscious organizations. AWS enables deployment of securer cloud architectures.

In an instant, IT executives can:

  • Deploy a secure architecture
  • Secure your apps by customizing your security requirements to protect applications, systems, platforms, and networks
  • Design virtual banking simulations that meet strict compliance requirements in the finance sector
  • Automate all banking processes securely in a short period

Integrating DevOps Culture 

Companies that churn out new finance features—such as money management apps—for their markets have been able to stay ahead of the curve and own the most significant share of the market. The only way for Fintech companies to achieve quick roll-outs is to embrace DevOps processes. 

AWS cloud services for Fintech offers inbuilt support for DevOps by providing a ready-to-use complete toolchain to provide developers with a private hosting git for their codebase to build automatically, test, etc.

Full-time availability

Speed and availability are critical in addressing today’s business challenges in finance. The market needs to access financial services all the time without encountering downtime, delays, or technical hitches and through internet accessing devices of all shapes and forms. Therefore, Fintech Companies have to be available 24/7, 365 days a year. 

AWS cloud services for Fintech are stored in secure servers to ensure the availability of client data and allow their customers to scale their EC2 capacity up or down according to the usage demands of their consumers. Virtualization enables Fintech companies to run apps on multiple AWS EC2 instances and has their services available 24 x 7 x 365.

Efficient, safe, and seamless data backups

The finance industry runs on transactions. Everyday transactional data must be managed efficiently in databases for future access. Transactional databases must be stored in line with localized disaster management and recovery protocols. In addition, processes dealing with data recovery in case of data loss must be accomplished instantaneously.

AWS’s industry-approved data recovery policies will ensure you recover your data in case of disruptions like natural disasters, power failures, etc., with the click of a button; thus you need not concern yourself with long bureaucratic procedures for data Backup associated with data centers.

Scaling and Performance

Fintech companies mostly deal with the consumer directly. Most likely, the load reliance of their digital apps will experience fluctuations in peak period use as the level of demand for these resources fluctuate with customer demand. 

Therefore, the AWS cloud services for Fintech have servers that downgrade or upgrade automatically to provide constant performance based on traffic. If your organization makes use of applications with predictable server demand patterns in usage, auto-scaling is the most cost convenient resource you can migrate to.

How agile is your current infrastructure? 

The future of financial services is cloud computing, and legacy IT infrastructure will be completely phased out as it can no longer support the needs of the financial market. Let Cloudride help build your infrastructure and network on AWS with guaranteed optimizations in costs, security, and performance. Click here to book a meeting. 

 

haim-yefet
2021/08
Aug 8, 2021 6:24:13 PM
Cloud Computing in Financial Services AWS Guide
AWS, Financial Services

Aug 8, 2021 6:24:13 PM

Cloud Computing in Financial Services AWS Guide

You can’t afford to wait when it comes to shifting to reliable infrastructure. Technological change is happening faster today than at any other time in history, and in order to thrive, businesses must embrace digital transformation through leveraging cloud computing. Banks and other financial...

Key Challenges Facing the Education Sector as Cloud Usage Rises

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, more than one-half of in-person education programs were postponed or canceled around the world. As a result, academic institutions are accelerating cloud adoption efforts to support demand for online and blended learning environments.

73% of respondents in the higher education sector reported an increase in the “rate of new product/new service introduction” as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gartner, Inc. 2021 CIO Agenda: A Higher Education Perspective

The rapid adoption of cloud computing by academic institutions and education technology organizations provides significant advantages when it comes to collaboration, efficiency, and scalability, but it also comes with a new set of challenges. It’s critical for organizations to understand the financial, security, and operational implications of the cloud and what steps they need to take to optimize their investment.

Benefits of cloud computing for education and digital learning

Cloud computing offers several benefits for academic institutions—students have the opportunity to access courses and research materials from any internet-connected device and collaborate with fellow students over projects. Similarly, educators can better monitor online coursework and assess each student’s progress without having to meet face-to-face.

Behind the scenes, online courses can be updated with the click of a mouse, student management is more efficient, collaboration tools can enhance cooperation and productivity between departments, and institutions don’t have to worry about managing their own servers or paying for maintenance and upkeep of on-premises data centers—they have access to nearly unlimited cloud-based storage with data copied across different locations to prevent data loss. This is also true for students who no longer need to purchase physical books or carry around external hard drives.

In short, the benefits of cloud computing in education can be boiled down to the following: 

  • Improved collaboration and communication
  • Easier access to resources
  • Long-term cost savings
  • Less operational and management overhead
  • Scalability and flexibility

Potential challenges of cloud computing for the education sector

Despite its many benefits, the cloud also comes with its own set of challenges for educational institutions—all of which are compounded and accelerated with the rapid pace and scale of adoption. Below we’ll cover the primary challenges these organizations may face when it comes to cloud financial management, operations, and security, and compliance, along with recommendations and solutions to help solve them. 

Cloud financial management

Colleges and universities often rely on donations and tuition to pay for campus facilities and day-to-day operations. It’s critical that these organizations are not wasteful with the money they have and are making every effort to optimize where and how they’re spending for the greatest return on investment.

The potential to save money in the cloud, as compared to on-premises, is huge. But once organizations are up and running, many find that they’re not saving as much as they anticipated, or they’re even spending more than they were before. This doesn’t mean moving to the cloud is a mistake. Overspending in the cloud often stems from a few primary reasons: 

  • The complexity of cloud pricing 
  • Legacy solutions and processes for allocating resources and spend
  • Lack of governance and policies to keep costs in control
  • Insufficient or incomplete visibility into cloud resources and activity 

This is not by any means a complete list, but it covers the primary reasons why we see organizations in the education sector struggle to keep cloud costs in check.

Cloud security and compliance

Security is constantly top of mind for universities and academic institutions—they collect, host, and manage massive amounts of confidential data, including intellectual property, financial records, and the personal information of students and staff. Cybercriminals are actively looking to profit from this information by exploiting security vulnerabilities in the organization’s infrastructure and processes.

As criminals become more sophisticated in their abilities to exploit cloud misconfiguration vulnerabilities, security teams need a smarter approach to adhere to regulations and prevent security breaches. Organizations cannot afford to rely on traditional security methods that might’ve worked with on-premises infrastructure.

Security owners need to rethink classic security concepts and adopt approaches that better address the needs of a dynamic and distributed cloud infrastructure. This includes rethinking how security teams engage with developers and IT, identifying new security and compliance controls, and designing automated processes that help scale security best practices without compromising user experience or slowing down day-to-day operations. 

Cloud operations

The cloud enables education institutions to create a customized infrastructure that is more efficient and flexible, where they can quickly and easily scale up during peak usage times, (e.g. enrollment, back-to-school season, and graduation) and scale down over breaks when usage isn’t as high (spring break, winter holidays, summer, etc.). 

However, managing fluctuations in cloud usage and juggling reservations and discounts across several different departments, cost centers, locations, and needs can be overwhelming, especially when administrators are more accustomed to the traditional way of managing data centers and physical servers. 

Without holistic visibility into cloud activity or a centralized governance program, it’s not hard to see how cloud usage and spending can quickly get out of control. Cloud operations teams need to strike a delicate balance between giving cloud consumers what they need exactly when they need it, while also putting rules in place to govern usage. Continuous governance defines best practices, socializes them, then takes action when a policy or standard is violated. There are several methods for accomplishing continuous governance, including:

  • Creating guidelines and guardrails for efficient cloud operations
  • Setting policies and notifications for when assets drift from the desired state
  • Establishing good tagging hygiene 
  • Grouping all cloud assets by teams, owner, application, and business unit
  • Identifying misconfigured, unsanctioned, and non-standard assets, and rightsizing infrastructure accordingly
  • Establishing show back/chargeback
  • Integrate continuous governance to development and operations workflows

Cloud management solutions to consider

If this all still seems a bit overwhelming, don’t worry—you’re not alone! At CloudHealth, we’ve worked with thousands of organizations worldwide to effectively scale and govern their multi-cloud environments while keeping costs under control. 

The CloudHealth platform provides complete visibility into cloud resources, enabling schools, universities, and education technology organizations to improve collaboration across departments, boost IT efficiency, and maximize the return on their cloud investment.

  • Move faster in your cloud migration process
  • Align business context to cloud data
  • Optimize resource cost and utilization
  • Centralize cloud governance

K-12 schools, E-learning, and higher education institutions depend on Cloudride for experienced help in cloud migration and workflow modernization to improve the quality of the service given to students. We specialize in public and private cloud migration and cost and performance optimization. Contact us here to learn more!

ohad-shushan/blog/
2021/08
Aug 3, 2021 10:03:20 AM
Key Challenges Facing the Education Sector as Cloud Usage Rises
AWS, Education

Aug 3, 2021 10:03:20 AM

Key Challenges Facing the Education Sector as Cloud Usage Rises

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, more than one-half of in-person education programs were postponed or canceled around the world. As a result, academic institutions are accelerating cloud adoption efforts to support demand for online and blended learning environments.

Five Reasons Why Educational Institutions Are Moving to AWS

Cloud migration has increased steadily over the last few years as K–12 schools and colleges, and universities realized the cost benefits and flexibility of virtual workspaces. However, 2020 saw an unprecedented shift to the cloud in both higher education and K–12 learning as the coronavirus pandemic forced virtual learning to the forefront.

As K–12 schools and colleges, and universities make complex decisions around future technology needs, many administrators look to the cloud for answers. This article identifies the five top motivators that are driving institutions to embrace the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud—not just as an emergency solution but as a long-term answer to ongoing student and staff needs. Real-world implementations are included to exemplify how AWS Education Competency Partners can give schools fast, flexible access to the cloud.

Top Five Motivators

1. Cost Savings

With shrinking government funding, enrollment pressure, and unplanned costs, budgets are an ongoing concern for both K–12 school districts and higher education institutions. Schools are looking for the most cost-effective technology solutions. Today, technology needs to do more and cost less, be more flexible, and scale easily. The AWS Cloud offers scalability and pay-as-you-go opportunities that make it simple for schools to quickly and efficiently adjust costs based on budget restrictions and shifting priorities.

2. Data Insights

Increasingly, institutional leadership is recognizing that making smart, efficient decisions requires having access to the right data in real-time. Data lakes and simple-to-use data visualization tools are essential not only for making decisions but also for communicating those decisions effectively with communities and stakeholders.

3. Innovation

A key differentiator for the cloud is innovation. Schools want the flexibility to explore and experiment with new systems in a way that is simple and cost-adaptive, and AWS answers the call. During the COVID-19 pandemic, innovation has become an even higher priority as schools realized they could no longer rely on traditional systems or delivery methods used during in-person instruction. From enabling small-group discussions to handing back grades on tests, administrators needed innovations to empower teachers and professors to move their entire teaching model online.

4. Workplace Flexibility and Security

The role of schools and higher education institutions goes way beyond teaching, and non-teaching staff also need support. In 2020, schools started looking for ways to make it easier for staff to work from home—and for systems that work securely on any home device at any time. Migrating to the AWS Cloud brings greater workplace flexibility. App streaming and virtual desktops allow employees to use the applications they need on their home devices without compromising security.

5. Learning Continuity

After a lengthy school shutdown, staff, teachers, and administrators have one goal in mind: to maintain learning continuity. To do so, schools need to provide students with the resources they need to thrive, including accessible systems that allow students to leverage their own devices for use at home. Leveraging AWS Cloud technology like Amazon AppStream 2.0 enables learning to continue through any emergency and gives students equal access to the tools they need to thrive.

A Long-Term Solution

Many K–12 schools and colleges, and universities have migrated to the cloud in 2020 to respond to the crisis, but the benefits of AWS extend well beyond the current pandemic. The scalability, cost-effectiveness, and innovation of the AWS Cloud that has been a lifesaver during COVID-19 will continue to be relevant as schools and higher education institutions face a fundamental shift in their approach to education. Tapping an AWS Education Competency Partner helps schools get there faster and more efficiently, helping to make sure that they are leveraging every advantage that the cloud has to offer.

K-12 schools, E-learning, and higher education institutions depend on Cloudride for experienced help in cloud migration and workflow modernization to improve the quality of the service given to students. We specialize in public and private cloud migration and cost and performance optimization. Contact us here to learn more!



ohad-shushan/blog/
2021/08
Aug 3, 2021 9:45:02 AM
Five Reasons Why Educational Institutions Are Moving to AWS
AWS, Cloud Migration, Education

Aug 3, 2021 9:45:02 AM

Five Reasons Why Educational Institutions Are Moving to AWS

Cloud migration has increased steadily over the last few years as K–12 schools and colleges, and universities realized the cost benefits and flexibility of virtual workspaces. However, 2020 saw an unprecedented shift to the cloud in both higher education and K–12 learning as the coronavirus...

Cloud IoT for Medical Devices and Healthcare

As digitization advances, cloud computing and IoT are becoming increasingly crucial for the medical field. Making in-depth diagnoses and successful treatments in hospitals and monitoring patients at home are made possible by the Internet of Medical Things (IoT). The patient's data is collected and analyzed through the use of cloud-based medical solutions and connected devices. 

IoT Changes the Equation in Healthcare

Bringing together key technical and business trends such as mobility, automation, and data analytics to improve patient care outcomes is the key to transforming healthcare with the Internet of Things (IoT). A physical object is connected to a network of actuators, sensors, and other medical devices that capture and transmit real-time data about its status. These devices can collect data, which the health center then analyzes to:

  • Improve patient care by offering new or improved healthcare delivery and services to help data handling healthcare organizations differentiate themselves from the competition. 
  • Learn more about patient needs and preferences, enabling healthcare organizations to deliver better care and a personalized care experience. 
  • Make hospital networks smarter by the real-time monitoring of critical medical infrastructure and the automation of the deployment and management of IT infrastructure.

In 2025, the Internet of Medical Things will be worth $543B

IoT medical device providers that provide reliable, secure, and safe products will win, while those that do not will be left behind on the Internet of Medical Things market, which is will grow at a CAGR of 19.9% by 2025.

Cloud IoT Scenarios and the Benefit for Healthcare

Cloud IoT solutions for healthcare can make healthcare organizations smarter and enable them to attain success in patient outcomes and patient experience. Medical IoT can redefine the interaction and connection between users, technology, and equipment in healthcare environments, thereby facilitating the promotion of better care, reducing costs, and improving outcomes.

Applications of MIoT solutions: 

  • Connected medical equipment, such as MRIs and tomography scanners. These devices generate vast streams of data that interact with other IT infrastructures within the network, providing processing such as analysis and visualization.
  • Portable medical devices and remote patient monitoring provide safer and more efficient healthcare through real-time patient vital signs monitoring, post-operative follow-up, and treatment adherence, both in the hospital and remotely. With portable sensors on the body, physicians monitor remotely and can respond to patient's health status in real-time
  • CCTV cameras and security doors with electronic ID card readers increase security and prevent threats and unauthorized entry and exit.
  • Monitoring medical assets, using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to monitor and locate medical equipment, drugs, and supplies. 
  • Preventive maintenance solutions for medical equipment to avoid unplanned repairs to medical equipment, devices, and systems.

The Challenges of Deploying IoT 

MIoT enables unprecedented data flow management, posing a real challenge for the performance, operation, and management of the cloud network infrastructure, with security risks of all origins.

In addition, it increases the risk of cybercrime for healthcare organizations. As a result of the proliferation of sensors and connected devices in the healthcare industry, there has been an explosion of cybersecurity threats.

In healthcare, IoT devices might face particular security risks since many IoT devices aren't built with security requirements in mind or are manufactured by companies who don't know what these requirements are. This is resulting in IoT systems becoming weak links in hospital and healthcare cybersecurity.

IoT cloud network infrastructures for healthcare have to be built securely to protect devices, traffic, and IoT networks, a challenge not addressed by existing security technology. Multiple security measures are needed to achieve this goal.

Healthcare organizations must adapt their traditional network designs to provide the network with a higher level of intelligence, automation, and security to solve these problems.

Managing and operating a cloud network infrastructure suitable for hospitals, clinics, and healthcare facilities need to be secure and privacy-compliant. Infrastructural requirements include:

  • Must enable the integration of IoT devices in an automated and simple manner. A large number of devices and sensors make managing large IoT systems difficult and error-prone. An automatic integration system recognizes and assigns devices within a secure network to proper locations.
  • In order for the IoT system to work properly and efficiently, cloud network resources should be sufficient. An important aspect of the IoT system is the provision of crucial data, which needs a certain level of quality of service (QoS). The provision of reliable service is dependent on the reservation of an appropriate bandwidth over a high-performance cloud network infrastructure.
  • Protect your data and network from cyberattacks. Cybercrime is a serious concern due to the vulnerability of IoT and cloud devices. Security is crucial to reduce the risks. 

 

Cloudride helps hospitals, clinics, and healthcare facilities deploy cloud IoT systems to optimize their products and services, processes, save staff time, make workflows more efficient, and improve the quality of patient service. Contact us here to learn more! 

kirill-morozov-blog
2021/07
Jul 29, 2021 10:39:27 AM
Cloud IoT for Medical Devices and Healthcare
Cloud Security, Cloud Compliances, Healthcare

Jul 29, 2021 10:39:27 AM

Cloud IoT for Medical Devices and Healthcare

As digitization advances, cloud computing and IoT are becoming increasingly crucial for the medical field. Making in-depth diagnoses and successful treatments in hospitals and monitoring patients at home are made possible by the Internet of Medical Things (IoT). The patient's data is collected and...

CEO Report - Cloud Computing Benefits for The Healthcare Industry

Healthcare has shifted from the episodic interventions necessary for contagious diseases and workplace accidents during the post-World War II era. In today's health care system, prevention and management of chronic conditions are the primary goals.

The use of cloud technologies in the healthcare sector provides a way to unlock digital and analytics capabilities. Through better innovation, digitization (such as the digital transformation of stakeholder journeys), and strategic objectives, healthcare practices have the performance leverage they need.

We are witnessing the acceleration of digital health driven by increased consumer adoption, regulatory shifts, greater interoperability and healthcare offerings from tech giants, and business model innovations from healthcare industry incumbents. Ecosystems are evolving. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to transform healthcare digitally by leveraging cloud solutions and services.

Healthcare organizations use cloud technologies to overcome challenges such as interoperability by deploying easily scaled HIPAA-compliant APIs to execute tasks that ingest large quantities of health information at scale without requiring physical infrastructure.

 

How Cloud Computing is Helping Healthcare Organizations Overcome their Challenges

Security and HIPAA compliance 

Nowadays, healthcare information is derived from big data analytics, information from healthcare, and patient engagement. These advancements offer multiple advantages, such as improved accessibility, individualized care, and efficiency. Those same factors, however, can also be risky.

Healthcare providers need to protect sensitive patient information, which can have serious consequences if data privacy violations occur. Additionally, medical devices connected to the internet are vulnerable to attack by hackers because they lack necessary defense mechanisms. On-premise systems may not offer the same level of data security as the cloud.

Flexibility 

Cloud computing is an option that is both flexible and scalable for organizations handling huge amounts of data. The ability to move and manage workloads on multiple clouds facilitates a huge advantage to healthcare businesses, as does the ability to develop new services more quickly and seamlessly. The cloud can provide elasticity, allowing users to increase or decrease the capacity and features required by their business. 

Accessibility

In the cloud, healthcare providers have easy access to their patient data and can manage it efficiently. Access to the data, the assessment of medical experts, and the creation of treatment protocols are vital for all stakeholders.

A cloud-based data storage solution can also simplify the transition between consultations, treatments, insurance, and payments. Telehealth services and post-hospitalization care management are among the advantages of cloud computing.

Tele-health  

Patients and healthcare professionals can save a lot of time and eliminate the need to drive and wait in line through telehealth services. A medical device at home performs assessment of the patient's health, uploads the indicators to the cloud, then the doctor analyzes them and provides a diagnosis.

New research 

Medical devices, from a data perspective, represent small data pools today. This big data becomes readily available and useful for better healthcare delivery when providers switch to the cloud.

The cloud makes it possible to transition the research environment to the clinic environment. The available data can be analyzed using big data machine learning algorithms to research new therapies and care models.

Data-driven cloud medical compliance 

IoT technologies allow clinicians to easily capture and analyze data related to health management. It's hard to see the big picture without a way to centralize and review this data. In contrast, when clinical devices are connected to a cloud and data is sent to the cloud, clinicians can review all available patient data and make better data-driven decisions.

Better device management

IoT makes certain medical devices - like wellbeing trackers - even more effective. An individual's biological function must be monitored at all times with these medical devices. Through IoT integration, clinicians can monitor the performance of these devices "always on." The provider can examine the data if aberrations are detected to determine whether the issue is with the patient or the device.

Bringing predictive analytics to the cloud will allow healthcare providers to identify devices at risk of failure to take action proactively.

Better healthcare is tenable where there are systems in place to help people maintain their wellness, with customized care available when needed. The cloud offers healthcare organizations solutions that help them accomplish their objectives.

 

Are you interested in the feasibility and application of the cloud in the health industry? Contact us here to learn how to help you move to the cloud and accelerate your cloud healthcare compliance.




danny-levran
2021/07
Jul 22, 2021 9:40:38 AM
CEO Report - Cloud Computing Benefits for The Healthcare Industry
Cloud Compliances, Healthcare

Jul 22, 2021 9:40:38 AM

CEO Report - Cloud Computing Benefits for The Healthcare Industry

Healthcare has shifted from the episodic interventions necessary for contagious diseases and workplace accidents during the post-World War II era. In today's health care system, prevention and management of chronic conditions are the primary goals.

The use of cloud technologies in the healthcare...

HIPAA Compliance in the Cloud

Healthcare organizations have massive regulatory obligation and liability risk when using cloud services to store, or process protected health information (PHI) or building web-based applications that handle PHI, and therefore are subject to the strictest security requirements.

Risk Analysis of Platforms 

HIPAA certification does not guarantee the cloud provider's compliance. And even when they claim to be HIPAA compliant or support HIPAA compliance, covered entities must perform a risk assessment of the risks associated with using the platform with ePHI.

Risk Management 

Creating risk management policies related to a service is the next step after performing a risk analysis. There should be a reasonable and appropriate level of risk management for all risks identified.

The covered entity must fully comprehend cloud computing and the platform provider's services to perform a comprehensive, HIPAA-compliant risk analysis.

Business Associate Agreement (BAA) 

As a result of the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, businesses that create, receive, maintain, or transmit PHI are part of the HIPAA business associates' definition. Cloud computing platforms providers clearly fall under the latter two categories.

Therefore, an entity covered by a cloud platform must obtain a business associate agreement (BAA) from the provider. BAAs are contracts between covered entities and service providers. Platform providers must explain all elements of HIPAA Rules that apply to them, establish clear guidelines on the permitted uses and disclosures of PHI, and implement appropriate safeguards to prevent unauthorized disclosures of ePHI.  

Common Challenges for Covered Entities

A BAA doesn't automatically make you HIPAA compliant.

It is still possible to violate the HIPAA Rules even with a BAA in place. As a result, no cloud service by itself can truly comply with HIPAA. The responsibility for compliance falls on the covered entity. If an entity misconfigures or does not enforce the right access controls, it is the entity that is faulted for non-compliance, not Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.  

Complex requirements for access controls

Access to ePHI must be verified and authenticated before anyone is allowed access to it. That means that you must secure the infrastructure containing electronic health information in all its aspects—from servers to databases, load balancers, and more.

Extensive audit logs and controls

Reporting on all attempts to access ePHI, whether successful and unsuccessful, is mandatory. 

Security concerns in storage 

ePHI is stored in a lot of healthcare information systems. A document scan, X-ray, or CT scan are all classified under this category. Encryption and access management controls are mandatory to prevent unauthorized access to these files when they are sent over a network. 

Requirements for encryption of data-in-transit

To prevent the transmission of ePHI over an open wire on an open connection, all messages and data that leave a server must be encrypted.

Requirements for encryption of data-at-rest

There is no HIPAA requirement for encryption at rest. However, data encryption at rest is a best practice to protect it from external users with physical access to hardware. 

Access controls

One of the most robust ways of securing your servers is to firewall them so that only people with appropriate access can log on and use them to enable Active Directory integration. The result is a double layer of protection. This prevents operation system vulnerabilities from getting exploited by hackers.

Audit logs and controls

The software you write must allow for audit logging of every access to HIPAA data and when it was accessed. You can create a log file (or SQL database table) to track these logs.

Secure storage 

It's possible to store files in a secure manner using the following options:

Amazon S3: Amazon Simple Storage Service provides industry-leading storage, scalability, availability, security, and performance of data.

AWS EBS: AWS offers Amazon EBS (Amazon Elastic Block Store), which allows persistent block storage across Amazon EC2 instances

Encrypt data-in-transit

You can encrypt all traffic over NFS with an industry-standard AES-256 cipher and Transport Layer Security 1.2 (TLS). AWS's EFS mount helper simplifies using EFS, including configuring data encryption in transit through an open-source utility. 

Encrypt data at rest

The option for disk encryption is available when cloud providers provision disk storage for databases, file storage, disk storage, and virtual machines. If a hard drive were stolen from a cloud data center (highly unlikely), the data would be rendered useless by the encryption.

Conclusion

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 requires compliance by many organizations in the healthcare industry. Use this guide to set the foundation of your HIPAA compliance for your cloud-based health services and solutions, or contact us here for more information. 




kirill-morozov-blog
2021/07
Jul 13, 2021 6:12:24 PM
HIPAA Compliance in the Cloud
Cloud Compliances, Healthcare

Jul 13, 2021 6:12:24 PM

HIPAA Compliance in the Cloud

Healthcare organizations have massive regulatory obligation and liability risk when using cloud services to store, or process protected health information (PHI) or building web-based applications that handle PHI, and therefore are subject to the strictest security requirements.

RBAC to Manage Kubernetes

RBAC is an acronym for Role-Based Access Control. You can restrict users and applications to certain areas of the system or network using this approach. Access to valuable resources can be restricted based on a user's role when using role-based access control.

Control of access to network resources by role-based access control (RBAC) is determined by the roles of individual users within the organization. For example, an individual user's access refers to his or her ability to perform specified tasks, such as creating, reading, or editing a file.

Using this approach, IT administrators can create more granular security controls, but they must follow certain processes so they do not unintentionally create a cumbersome system.

For proper implementation of Kubernetes RBAC, the following approaches are recommended:

  • Enforce the principle of least privilege: RBAC disables all access by default. Administrators determine user privileges at a finer level. Ensure you only grant the necessities to users; granting additional permissions can pose a security risk and increase attack surfaces. 
  • Continually adjust your RBAC strategy: RBAC rules and roles are not autonomous - IT teams cannot simply put RBAC policies and walk away. Validating RBAC at a slow pace is the best approach. If a satisfactory state cannot be reached, implement RBAC in phases. 
  • Create fewer roles and reuse existing ones. The purpose of RBAC permissions should not be defeated by customizing Kubernetes roles to suit individual user needs. In RBAC, roles are used rather than users as the determining factor. Identical permissions should be assigned to groups of users, and roles should be reusable. It simplifies role assignments for existing roles, enhancing the efficiency of the role assignment process.

Authentication and Authorization in RBAC

Authentication

pasted image 0 (1)

Authentication occurs after the TLS connection has been established. This is the first step. Next, API servers are configured to run one or more Authenticator Modules by the cluster creation script or cluster admin. Passwords, Plain Tokens, and Client certificates are included in the authentication modules.

Users in Kubernetes

Users in Kubernetes clusters typically fall into two categories: service accounts that Kubernetes manages and normal users. 

Authorization

Authorizing the request should follow after verifying that it is coming from the selected user.  The request must indicate the user's name, the action requested, and the object affected by the request. If the user is authorized to perform the requested action by a policy, then the request is approved.

Admission Control

Modules for modifying or rejecting admission requests are known as Admission Control Modules. Admission Controller Modules can access the contents of the object being created or modified in addition to all the attributes that are available to Authorization Modules. Admission controller modules reject requests instantly, unlike authentication and authorization modules.

 

Role In RBAC

The role you assume in Kubernetes RBAC determines which resources you will access, manage and change. The Kubernetes RBAC model consists of three main components: subjects, roles and rolebindings:

Role and ClusterRoles

This set of permissions defines how permissions can be accessed. Roles govern permissions at the namespace level, while ClusterRoles govern permissions at the cluster level or for all namespaces within a cluster.

RoleBinding and ClusterRoleBinding.

Subjects are listed according to their groups and service accounts, and their associated roles are outlined. There are three types of role bindings: roles, ClusterRoles, and ClusterRoleBindings. RoleBindings bind roles; ClusterRoles  manage permissions on namespaced resources and ClusterRoleBindings bind ClusterRoles to namespaces.

Subjects

Traditionally, subjects in RBAC rules are users, groups, or service accounts.

Aggregated ClusterRoles

Combining several ClusterRoles is possible. ClusterRole objects with aggregate rules are monitored by a controller that runs within the cluster control plane. The rules field of this object provides a label selector that the controller can use to combine other ClusterRole objects.

Referring to subjects

Subjects and roles are bound by RoleBindings or ClusterRoleBindings. Groups, users, and ServiceAccounts are all valid subjects.

A username in Kubernetes is represented as a string. It might be a plain name such as "Ruth," an email name such as "kelly@example.com"; or a string of numbers representing the user's ID. Configuring authentication modules to produce usernames in the format you want is up to you as a cluster administrator.

Role bindings and default roles

API servers often create ClusterRoleBinding and ClusterRoles objects by default. The control plane manages many of these resources directly, as they are system: prefixed.

Auto-reconciliation

Each time the API server starts, missing permissions and missing subjects are added to the default cluster roles. As subjects and permissions change in Kubernetes releases, it allows the cluster to fix accidental modifications.

RBAC authorizers enable auto-reconciliation by default. Default cluster roles or role bindings can be set to false, preventing internal reconciliation. It is important to remember that clusters can become unusable when subjects and default permissions are missing.

 

To Conclude

Kubernetes implementation across organizations is at an all-time high. It is mission-critical, and it demands strict security and compliance rules and measures. By defining which types of actions are allowed for each user based on their role within your organization, you can ensure that your cluster is managed correctly.



ran-dvir/blog/
2021/06
Jun 30, 2021 11:08:38 AM
RBAC to Manage Kubernetes
Cloud Security

Jun 30, 2021 11:08:38 AM

RBAC to Manage Kubernetes

RBAC is an acronym for Role-Based Access Control. You can restrict users and applications to certain areas of the system or network using this approach. Access to valuable resources can be restricted based on a user's role when using role-based access control.

Transit Gateway in the Cloud

Ever wondered how to allow multiple applications that are on separate networks to use the same Shared Resources?

Networking in cloud computing can be complex. The cloud lets us create applications faster and in a more durable fashion without worrying about configuring infrastructure too much with services like AWS Lambda with Api Gateway for serverless architecture or Elastic Beanstalk for Paas and AWS Batch for containers. 

It is as simple as uploading our code and AWS creates the servers behind the scenes for us. 

When deploying many applications in AWS there is a lot of added value to separate them logically, use dedicated VPC for each application. 

 

When deploying an application to AWS we would like to create several environments for dev and production, once again separated logically to VPC's. This method allows us to protect our production environment from accidents and limit access to it so the production will stay available and keep profiting for us.

 

This is great but, proper networking will be creating subnets both public and private with network components such as Internet Gateways and NAT Gateways, Elastic ip's and more. Yes, it will be great because our network will be strong and highly available but also expensive. For example, NAT Gateway pricing is based per  instance, data processed by the NAT Gateway and the data transfer.  

 

So, what can we do? And why do we even want this NAT Gateway?

NAT Gateways allows us to access the internet from instances in private subnets. Without it we either use:

  • instances in public subnets (which is not so great for security reasons) 
  • VPC endpoints to access AWS resources outside our VPC for example, a DynamoDB table or S3 bucket.
  • Not go out to the public internet.

These options are not optimal, but there is a solution. We can set up a management VPC that will hold all of our shared assets such as NAT Gateways and let all VPC's in this region use it.

 

What does a  A Management VPC Look like?

This kind of a VPC will hold all of our shared resources, like Active Directory Instances, Antivirus Orchestrators and more. We will use it as a centralized location to manage and control all of our applications in the cloud, all the VPC will connect to it using a private connection such as peering or VPN. An example can be seen in the following figures:

This kind of a VPC will hold all of our shared resources, like Active Directory Instances, Antivirus Orchestrators and more

We will use it as a centralized location to manage and control all of our applications in the cloud, all the VPC will connect to it using a private connection such as peering or VPN

 


So, we just need to put a route in the route table for the Management VPC?

 

No, sadly it won't work. We do need to configure routing but this is not the way. There is an option to connect VPC's securely using VPC peering but it won't work. When using VPC Peering Traffic must either originate or terminate from a network interface in the VPC.

When using VPC Peering Traffic must either originate or terminate from a network interface in the VPC

We need to use a Transit Gateway!

Transit Gateway is a network component that allows us to transfer data between VPCs and On-premises networks.

 

Traffic Gateway has a few concepts such as:

    • Attachments - VPCs, Direct connect, Peering to another TGW, VPN Connection
  • Transit gateway Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) - the largest packet size allowed to pass in the connection.
  • Transit gateway route table  - route table that includes dynamic and static routes that decide the next hop based on the destination IP address of the packet
  • Associations - Each attachment is associated with exactly one route table. Each route table can be associated with zero to many attachments
  • Route propagation -  A VPC, VPN connection, or Direct Connect gateway can dynamically propagate routes to a transit gateway route table. With a Connect attachment, the routes are propagated to a transit gateway route table by default.

 

In the following example you can see an example of 3 VPCs sharing one NAT Gateway for outbound internet access. VPC A and VPC B are both isolated and can’t be accessed from the outside world. 

 

VPC A and VPC B are both isolated and can’t be accessed from the outside world

 

Transit Gateway pricing is based on hourly charge per attachment and for the amount of traffic processed on the transit gateway.

About the routing, we will need to add the following Route Tables:

  • Application VPCc needs to have in the private subnet route to 0.0.0.0/0 to the Transit Gateway

Destination

Target

VPC-CIDR

local

0.0.0.0/0

TGW- Attachment for VPC

 

  • The Egress or Management VPC needs to have two Route Tables:
    • Private Subnets that will point 0.0.0.0/0 to a NAT Gateway

Destination

Target

VPC-CIDR

local

0.0.0.0/0

NAT-GW

 

  • Public  Subnets that will point 0.0.0.0/0 to a IGW Gateway

Destination

Target

VPC-CIDR

local

0.0.0.0/0

IGW

 

Here is an example of that:

Application VPCc needs to have in the private subnet route to 0.0.0.0/0 to the Transit Gateway

 

What are the other use cases of Transit Gateway?

We can use  the Transit Gateway as centralized router, Network Hub, As a substitute of peering connection and more, all these use cases will direct traffic from our management vpc that users connect to via VPN to our resources in the isolated VPCs:

We can use  the Transit Gateway as centralized router, Network Hub, As a substitute of peering connection and more

 

Not sure if you need a Transit Gateway?

You can depend on Cloudride for experienced help in cloud migration and workflow modernization. We specialize in public and private cloud migration and cost and performance optimization. Contact us here

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/06
Jun 17, 2021 7:10:08 PM
Transit Gateway in the Cloud
AWS, Transit Gateway, High-Tech

Jun 17, 2021 7:10:08 PM

Transit Gateway in the Cloud

Ever wondered how to allow multiple applications that are on separate networks to use the same Shared Resources?

Data Protection in the Cloud and on the Edge

Confidential computing is the promise of working with hypersensitive information in the cloud without anyone being able to access it, even while the data is being processed. The booming field has seen the leading cloud providers’ launch offers since 2020. 

Google, Intel, and similar big players have all rallied behind confidential computing for the secure exchange of documents in the cloud. To be precise, we should rather speak of a hyper-secure and, above all, secret exchange. Unlike traditional cloud security solutions that encrypt data at rest and on transit, confidential computing goes a step further to encrypt your data in processing.

For businesses running operations on the cloud and the Edge, there is no shortage of potential uses of the technology, starting with the transmission of confidential documents liable to be stolen or modified, such as payment-delivery contact details between commercial partners. Or the exchange of give-and-take information between two companies through a smart contract prevents one of the partners from consulting the other's data without revealing their own.

Hardware isolation is used for encryption.

Confidential computing encrypts your data in processing by creating a TEE (Trusted Execution Environment), a secure enclave that isolates applications and operating systems from untrusted code.

Incorporated hardware keys provide data encryption in memory, and cloud providers cannot access these keys. By keeping the data away from the operating system, the TEE enables only authorized code to access the data. Upon alteration of code, the TEE blocks access.

Privacy and security 

This technology allows part of the code and data to be isolated in a "private" region of memory, inaccessible to higher software layers and even to the operating system. With a relatively straightforward concept: protect data while being processed and no longer encrypt it while in storage or transit.

Technologies offering this new type of protection are of interest to the leading developers of microprocessors (ARM, AMD, and NVIDIA) and the cloud leaders (Microsoft, Google, IBM via Red Hat or VMware).

One less barrier to the cloud

Confidential IT removes the remaining barrier to cloud adoption for highly regulated companies or those worried about unauthorized access by third parties to data. This paradigm shift for data security in the cloud spells greater cost control in matters of compliance.

Market watchers also believe that confidential IT will be a deciding factor in convincing companies to move their most sensitive applications and data to the cloud. Gartner has thus placed "privacy-enhancing computing" in its Top 10 technological trends in 2021.

Confidential computing is the hope that the Cloud and the Edge will increasingly evolve into private, the encrypted services where most users can be certain that their applications and data are safe from cloud providers or even unauthorized actors within their organizations. In such a cloud-based environment, you could collaborate on genome research with competitors from across several geographic areas while not revealing any of your sensitive records. The secure collaboration will allow, for example, vaccines to be developed and diseases to be cured faster. Possibilities are endless.

Cloud giants are all in the running.

As businesses move more workloads and data to the cloud, confidential computing makes it possible to do so with the most sensitive applications and data. The cloud giants have understood this, and the leaders have all launched an offer in 2020.

A pioneer in the field, Microsoft, announced in April 2020 the general availability of DCsv2 series virtual machines. These are based on Intel's SGX technology so that neither the operating system, nor the hypervisor, nor Microsoft can access the data being processed. The Signal encrypted messaging application already relies on confidential Microsoft Azure VMs.

A few months later, Google also launched in July 2020 a confidential computing offer, for the moment in beta. Unlike Microsoft, confidential Google Cloud VMs are based on AMD SEV technology. Unlike Intel's, AMD's technology does not protect the integrity of memory, but the solution would be more efficient for demanding applications. In addition, the Google-AMD solution supports Linux VMs and works with existing applications, while the Microsoft-Intel solution only supports Windows VMs and requires rewriting the applications.

Finally, the leader Amazon announced at the end of October 2020 the general availability of AWS Nitro Enclaves on EC2 with similar features. Unlike offers from Microsoft and Google, which use secure environments at the hardware level, AWS's confidential IT solution is based on a software element: its in-house hypervisor Nitro, the result of the takeover in 2015 of the start-up Israeli company Annapurna Labs. While the use of a software enclave is a subject of discussion, the advantage is that it works with all programming languages.

 

To Conclude:

These confidential computing solutions on the market will undoubtedly quickly give rise to many complementary solutions. Whether they are management tools that simplify the use of these environments or development tools to design applications that make the most of these technologies, confidential computing will not remain a secret for long. Contact us here for more details on the best solution for your business. 

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2021/06
Jun 10, 2021 10:54:14 PM
Data Protection in the Cloud and on the Edge
Cloud Security

Jun 10, 2021 10:54:14 PM

Data Protection in the Cloud and on the Edge

Confidential computing is the promise of working with hypersensitive information in the cloud without anyone being able to access it, even while the data is being processed. The booming field has seen the leading cloud providers’ launch offers since 2020. 

Google, Intel, and similar big players...

Cloud at the Heart of Digital Strategies

The cloud has changed the way of consuming and operating computing resources. More and more companies are using the cloud strategy to improve business performance and accelerate digital transformation.

The cloud driving innovation within companies

91% of business and IT decision-makers say they have already implemented innovative projects based on cloud computing solutions. Decision-makers working for operators (telecoms, energy, etc.) and the distribution sector are the first to have taken the plunge to innovate with the cloud.

These solutions allow them to accelerate access to the resources and technological environments necessary to implement advanced digital projects and improve them over time.

 

The promise of the cloud: cheaper, easier, and more agile

From the outset, cloud security presents a strong economic tropism that echoes the performance ambitions of CIOs. With the enrichment of the service catalogs of cloud service providers and the expectations of businesses in terms of digital transformation, the cloud has built its promise around several invariants:

Digital transformation and cost reduction

If done right - Cloud innovations ignite an overall reduction in costs and improved investment capacity enabled by new business capabilities. However, the economic assessment of cloud transformation, "all other things being equal," is complex to draw up and must be interpreted with caution and depends on cost efficiency measures getting implemented from the on-set.

The appeal of agility

Cloud innovations support the growth goals of businesses with a better time to market and a fluidity of the ATAWADAC (Any Time, Anywhere, Any Device, Any Content) experience for end-users.

The promise of cloud service providers thus perfectly echoes the challenges of CIOs. They also say that the primary triggers of their cloud transformation are economic performance and project acceleration. Behind the relatively monolithic promise lies an assortment of different suppliers and technologies. It is up to CIOs to choose which path to lead the digital transformation.

Business differentiation

There have been many disruptions and problems due to the pandemic, including issues in the enterprise. The constant challenges that businesses face have caused them to increase the pace of their digital transformation, resulting in an unprecedented demand for new business models, remote working solutions, and collaboration services.

In a context where digital transformation is emerging as a decisive competitive advantage and a factor of resilience in times of crisis, CIOs find hope in the possibilities of the cloud. Cloud transformation makes rapid strategic changes, extensive integrations, and boundless automaton leveraging ML and AI – possible. 

Operational efficiency 

For businesses focusing on process optimization for operational performance, the cloud gives CIOs a new state-of-the-art perspective. It also offers them an opportunity to rethink the activity in a transversal way to initiate transformations.

First, they can rethink their operation in the light of the expectations of the businesses to meet the need for responsiveness and flexibility. That means breaking down the silos of traditional hyper-specialized activities for performance purposes. This enables the implementation of DevOps and, more broadly, a redefinition of all development, integration, deployment, and operations in integrated multidisciplinary teams.

 

To Conclude: 

While the digital transformation of companies initially represents a significant financial, organizational and technical investment, it is truly one of the levers for future growth. It quickly leads to savings and gains in growth and competitiveness, therefore in a return on investment and an increase in market share. 

A McKenzie study shows that the most mature companies in their digital transformation have grown six times higher than the most backward companies. “A company that succeeds in its digital transformation could potentially see a 40 % gross increase in operating income while those that fail to adapt risk a 20 % reduction in operating income".

The goal of digital transformation is to go beyond the initial investment. It should not be approached as a necessary constraint that does not bring much to the company in the end. Cloud technology can be the springboard for the creation of new capabilities and new services.

Currently, the health crisis has put the continuity of economic activity to the test by forcing everyone to implement teleworking. In the long term, the tense economic context will require IT departments to find new approaches to efficiency and growth. Workflow automation by cloud migration is a sure bet for cost savings, efficiency, and the unlocking of new business opportunities.

You can depend on Cloudride for experienced help in cloud migration and workflow modernization. We specialize in public and private cloud migration and cost and performance optimization. Click here to schedule a meeting!



 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2021/05
May 31, 2021 11:59:17 PM
Cloud at the Heart of Digital Strategies
Cloud Migration

May 31, 2021 11:59:17 PM

Cloud at the Heart of Digital Strategies

The cloud has changed the way of consuming and operating computing resources. More and more companies are using the cloud strategy to improve business performance and accelerate digital transformation.

Architecture for A Cloud-Native App and Infrastructure

"Cloud-native" has become a concept integrated into modern application development projects. A cloud-native application is an application that has been designed specially for the cloud. Such applications are developed and architectured with cloud infrastructure and services in mind. These applications rely on services that ignore the hardware layers and their maintenance. The Cloud Native Foundation  is a community of doers who push to enable more Open-Source vendor-free applications

 

How to Design a Cloud-Native App and Environment

Design as a loosely coupled micro-service

As opposed to creating a huge application, the microservices design consists of developing several smaller applications that run in their processes and communicate using a lightweight protocol such as HTTP. Fully automated deployment tools make it possible for these services to be deployed independently of business capabilities. for example, see AWS Serverless Architecture for loosely coupled applications:

Cloudride 1

Develop with the best languages and frameworks.

An application developed using cloud-native technology should use the language and framework best suited to the functionality. For example, a streaming service could be developed in Node.js with WebSockets, while a deep learning-based service could be built-in Python and REST APIs using Spring-boot.

Connect APIs for collaboration and interaction

Typically, cloud-native services should draw their functionality from lightweight APIs based on REST protocols. Service communication between the internal services is based on binary protocols such as Thrift, Protobuff, GRPC, etc, a great tool for collaboration is Postman, which also runs on AWS

Make it scalable and stateless.

Any instance of the app should process a request in a cloud-native app because it stores its state in an external entity. Unlike the underlying infrastructure, these apps are not bound to it. They can run distributedly while maintaining their state autonomous of it.

Your architecture should be built with resilience at its core

Resilient systems can recover from failures and continue to function, no matter how significant they may be. But it is not just about preventing failures but responding to them in a way that prevents downtime or data loss. this is AWS’s suggestion on Resilience Architecture

cloudride 2

Build for scalability

The flexibility of the cloud allows cloud-native apps to scale in response to an increase in traffic rapidly. A cloud-based e-commerce app can be configured to use additional compute resources when traffic spikes and then turn those resources off once traffic decreases. for example see this Azure Web Application Architecture:

Cloudride 3

Cloud-Native Application Architecture Development Requirements

Cloud-native DevOps architectures are designed for managing an application and its infrastructure consistently, verifiably, and automatically between non-production environments (testing and development) and production environments (operations). DevOps dissolves the gap between the development, testing, and production environments as the norm of organizational culture.

Architecture for Cloud-Native App and Infrastructure with DevOps

DevOps principles for cloud-native web development mean building CI/CD pipelines by integrating DevOps technologies and tools. Consistent integration processes result in teams committing code changes to their repository more often, leading to lower costs and higher software quality.

An Example architecture form the Argo CD Project

Cloudride 4

DevOps architecture prototype components

Amazon EKS

EKS is an Amazon Web Services' container-as-a-service offering for Kubernetes. To automatically clear out any abnormal instances of control planes that might be causing issues within Availability Zones within a Region, Amazon EKS checks whether they are running across Availability Zones and restarts them as necessary. Through AWS Regions architecture, EKS enables Kubernetes clusters to be highly available by avoiding single points of failure.

OpenShift Container Platform

Known as a private PaaS platform, RedHat's OpenShift is a containerization system deployed on-premise or on public cloud infrastructure like AWS.

Hard Kubernetes cluster

Using a Kubernetes cluster to build a complex environment is recommendable. Dedicated clusters offer more flexibility and robustness and can be managed by highly automated tools.

AWS KMS Key Management

The KMS software creates and manages cryptographic keys quickly and easily, controlling their use across AWS services and within the cloud-native application. An application must meet the requirements that hardware security modules are conformant to FIPS 140-2 or in the process of being validated against it. 

Development Tools

  • AWS ECR: For reliable deployment of containers and the ability to manage individual repositories based on resource access, much like https://hub.docker.com/
  • Terraform: an Infrastructure as code software tool much like AWS CloudFormation or Azure Resource Manager, but they beauty of it is that it can support multi clouds.
  • Helm: It runs on top of Kubernetes to describe and administer an app according to its structure.
  • Argo CD: To enhance the process of identifying, defining, configuring, and managing app lifecycles with declarative and version-controlled definitions and environments.
  • CodeCommit: To host the Git repository, so the DevOps team does not have to run their source control system, creating a bottleneck when scalability is needed
  • Harbor: the trusted cloud native repository for Kubernetes
  • CoreDNS: a DNS server which can be used in a multitude of environments because of its flexibility.
  • Prometheus: an open source monitoring solution used for event monitoring and alerting in real-time metrics.

and many more can be found in:  the periodic table of DevOPS

SonarQube code quality and security analysis

A tool called SonarQube, available under the Apache open-source license can help with automated code review to identify errors in code, bugs, and vulnerabilities. In addition to enhancing coding guideline compliance, the tool can be used to assess general quality issues.

AWS IAM Cloud Identity & Access Management

Another security pillar is the management of identities and access. Because we're using AWS, IAM from AWS makes perfect sense. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Identity and Access Management (IAM) governs who can access the cloud environment and sets the permissions each signed-in user has.

DevOps Teams & Consulting

If your organization can benefit from expert consulting in DevOps or need a flexible, experienced team to deliver cloud-native applications or manage Kubernetes clusters, Cloudride is here to help. Get in touch with us!

ido-ziv-blog
2021/05
May 20, 2021 5:10:27 PM
Architecture for A Cloud-Native App and Infrastructure
Cloud Native, High-Tech

May 20, 2021 5:10:27 PM

Architecture for A Cloud-Native App and Infrastructure

"Cloud-native" has become a concept integrated into modern application development projects. A cloud-native application is an application that has been designed specially for the cloud. Such applications are developed and architectured with cloud infrastructure and services in mind. These...

How to Build Your IOT Architecture in the Cloud

Internet of Things is riddled with the challenges of managing heterogeneous equipment and processing and storing large masses of data. Businesses can solve many of the problems by building IoT in a scalable and flexible cloud architecture. The major cloud vendors - AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP - provide high-performance capabilities for such cloud architectures.

The Cloud Native Approach

Cloud-native approach involves building and managing applications that leverage the benefits of the cloud computing delivery model. So, it's a question of knowing how to create and deploy applications, not where. Thus, these applications can be delivered in both public and private clouds.
The cloud-native approach, defined by the CNCF, is characterized by microservices architectures, container technology, continuous deliveries, development pipelines, and infrastructure expressed in code (Infrastructure as a Code), an essential practice of the DevOps culture.

Picture1-May-09-2021-02-50-12-47-PMCritical Aspects of an IoT Architecture

An IoT infrastructure has three major components:
• A park of fixed or mobile connected objects, distributed geographically
• A network that allows objects to be connected by transmitting messages; it can be wired or short wireless (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.) or long-range, mobile (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, etc.)
• An application, most often developed in web technology that collects data from the network of objects to provide aggregated and reprocessed information.

Ingestion System: Data ingestion system is at the core of the architecture as it is mostly responsible for consuming data from assets (sensors, cars, and other IoT devices), validating the data and then storing the data in a specified database. The ingestion system receives data using the MQTT protocol. The MQ Telemetry Transport is a lightweight protocol, simple and capable of functioning in networks with limited bandwidth and high latency.

Reporting: This component is fundamentally responsible for showing/generating information about the assets and transmitting out alerts about them. It is best to split the reporting into three services: time series aggregation offline, stream time series online, and rules service (system triggers). Time series aggregation service offline queries the data of the assets. Stream time-series online monitors in real-time the activities of a given asset. The rule service will alert the asset owner whenever a rule is triggered by SMS or email.

Embedded system: The embedded system's role is to transmit data from IoT devices to Edge / Ingestion Service. Each IoT device can send a JSON with assets (id, token, tenantId) to the Edge / Ingestion Service. Devices convey a JSON document to Edge / Ingestion Service with asset information (id, token, tenantId) from the embedded system.

Building an IoT-Ready Cloud Architecture

The gateway function: The Gateway function is the gateway for exchanging messages between the application and the park of objects. The first objective is to authenticate and authorize the objects to communicate with the application. The second objective is to encrypt the messages passing through the network to prevent them from being intercepted.

Message processing: Once the Gateway has been passed, it will be necessary to receive, process, and integrate the messages. Here the question of scalability is critical for seamless IoT cloud computing. This function must be able to absorb a highly fluctuating volume of messages. The success of an initial deployment can lead to a rapid expansion.

Park management: This function, internal as opposed to the data presentation application, must evolve at its own pace and independently from the rest of the application. Thus, it is good that it is designed as a separate module that can be updated without redeploying the entire application.

Database: The fleet of connected objects will feed the application with an increasing flow of data that will have to be stored, indexed, and analyzed. In this block, there must be relational databases and rapid databases of key-value types, indexing or search engine tools, etc. The security and integrity of data are critical. Being able to share databases between several front-end servers is essential to ensure the availability and scalability of the application. In terms of design, an N-tier architecture with an isolated database server is therefore essential. In particular, we could have an architecture that makes it possible to have a very short RPO (Recovery Point Objective) in the event of an incident.

Data virtualization: The objective of an IOT application is to process and present data to users who will connect to it, mainly via web access. The volume of connections to the application server will depend on its audience: limited for a professional application on a targeted audience, it can become significant on a general audience. In the latter case, it may be necessary to provide an auto-scaling system to add one or more servers in the event of load peaks and guarantee response times.

IoT devices can operate without a lot of resources upon connection to the cloud. Costs can be reduced, thus making IoT convenient for business usage. With the right architecture, the potential business value from your IoT implementation is invaluable.

Call us today, or better yet – click here to book a meeting.

 



 

kirill-morozov-blog
2021/05
May 9, 2021 5:57:47 PM
IoT
How to Build Your IOT Architecture in the Cloud
IoT

May 9, 2021 5:57:47 PM

How to Build Your IOT Architecture in the Cloud

Internet of Things is riddled with the challenges of managing heterogeneous equipment and processing and storing large masses of data. Businesses can solve many of the problems by building IoT in a scalable and flexible cloud architecture. The major cloud vendors - AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP -...

Serverless VS Microservices

Monochromatic Photo Yellow Typography Linkedin Banner

A good friend asked me last week, “Ido, as a DevOps Engineer, what do you prefer: a serverless architecture or a microservices one?”

My friend is a software engineer with knowledge and experience in both, but he is confused (much like several of our customers), so, I’ll try to help.

First, a small explanation on both

Microservices is a very popular concept right now, from the beginning of Docker in 2013 and the Kubernetes project everybody in the Tech community is talking about moving from Monolith applications to microservices such as containers. The Idea of microservices is decoupling the application to small pieces of code, each runs on its own server. When we want to develop a new feature or deploy a new upgrade to the application, working with microservices is idle. Simply update the part you want and redeploy the container while the other parts of the app remain available.

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The Concept of Serverless was introduced to the world in 2015 at the announcement of AWS Lambda. Serverless computing in general is event driven, the serverless code is running as a response to triggers. AWS Lambda can be triggered by more than 50 different services for example. The main Idea here is that developers and DevOps engineers can run small functions and perform small actions that only happen when needed, without the need to launch, configure, maintain and pay for a server.
Picture34

Next, find the differences

Although the two are different, they have a lot in common. They both were invented to minimize operational costs as well as the application deployment cycle, handle ever-altering development requirements, and optimize everyday time- and resource-sensitive tasks. The main difference is that microservices are eventually servers no matter how small they are, this fact has its own benefits such as accessing the underlying infrastructure and granting developers full access to relevant libraries. But, there are two sides to every coin: , the access to infrastructure comes with great responsibility of course.
Serverless and especially Lambda functions are limited to the libraries the cloud provider offers, for example not all Python libraries are available and sometimes you’ll need to improvise. In addition, Serverless is an automated way to respond to events, performing long calculations and processing might not be a great idea with Serverless because you pay-as-you-go and you are limited to max execution time.  

Now, how do I choose?

When architecting a new solution that will be deployed to the cloud we need to think of the traffic we are expecting to the application. The more we can anticipate the traffic it will be more cost effective to use servers such as containers or a kubernetes cluster. Serverless is a pay-as-you-go model that grants the business advantages such as small to almost no cost when the traffic is slow. But Serverless has it’s limitations such as concurrent executions for Lambda functions. Sure these limitations can be increased but for steady high intensive workloads Serverless is not the answer.

On the other hand, if the average usage of our servers is small and unpredictable, a serverless architecture is a better choice rather than servers, The infrastructure will be ready to absorb workloads without pre-worming or launching new servers. As a rule, if the average cpu utilization of your fleet is under 30% consider Serverless.

Keep in mind that serverless is meant for automated responses to events in our environment, so the use of both is important. The best solution will always consist a little bit of both. A company will deploy their application on a containers fleet with a load balancer and auto scaling and use Lambda and API Gateway as a serverless mechanism to deploy WAF rules on top of the Fleet. Another example is creating a Lambda to isolate and tighten the Security Groups of a compromised instance.

In a world that rapidly changes, in cloud environments that enable you to grow fast and reach clients all over the world, a business must know how to launch their applications faster.

Not sure which architecture is best suited for you? Give us a call

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/04
Apr 4, 2021 10:59:38 PM
Serverless VS Microservices
Serverless, microservices, High-Tech

Apr 4, 2021 10:59:38 PM

Serverless VS Microservices

A good friend asked me last week, “Ido, as a DevOps Engineer, what do you prefer: a serverless architecture or a microservices one?”My friend is a software engineer with knowledge and experience in both, but he is confused (much like several of our customers), so, I’ll try to help.

DevSecOps

Transitioning to DevOps requires a change in culture and mindset. In simple words, DevOps means removing the barriers between traditionally siloed teams: development and operations. In some organizations, there may not even be a separation between development, operations and security teams; engineers are often required to do a bit of all. With DevOps, the two disciplines work together to optimize both the productivity of developers and the reliability of operations.

DevOps_feedback-diagram

 

The alignment of development and operations teams has made it possible to build customized software and business functions quicker than before, but security teams continue to be left out of the DevOps conversation. In a lot of organizations, security is still viewed as or operates as roadblocks to rapid development or operational implementations, slowing down production code pushes. As a result, security processes are ignored or missed as the DevOps teams view them as an interference toward their pending success. As part of your organization strategy towards a security, automated and orchestrated cloud deployment and operations - you will need to unite the DevOps and SecOps teams in an effort to fully support and operationalize your organizations cloud operations.

devsecopspipeline

A new word is here, DevSecOps

Security teams tend to be an order of magnitude smaller than developer teams. The goal of DevSecOps is to go from security being the “department of no” to security being an enabler.

“The purpose and intent of DevSecOps is to build on the mindset that everyone is responsible for security with the goal of safely distributing security decisions at speed and scale to those who hold the highest level of context without sacrificing the safety required,” describes Shannon Lietz, co-author of the “DevSecOps Manifesto.”

DevSecOps refers to the integration of security practices into a DevOps software delivery model. Its foundation is a culture where development and operations are enabled through process and tooling to take part in a shared responsibility for delivering secure software.

For example, if we take a look on the AWS Shared responsibility Model, we see that us as a customer of AWS have a lot of responsibility in securing our environment. We cannot expect someone to do that job for us.

Shared_Responsibility_Model_V2.59d1eccec334b366627e9295b304202faf7b899b

The definition of DevSecOps Model, is to integrate security objectives as early as possible in the lifecycle of software development. While security is “everyone’s responsibility,” DevOps teams are uniquely positioned at the intersection of development and operations, empowered to apply security in both breadth and depth. 

Nowadays, scanners and reports simply don't cover the whole picture. As part of the testing that is done in a pipeline, the devsecops adds a penetration test to validate that the new code is not vulnerable and our application stays secure.

Organizations can not wait to fall victim to mistakes and attackers. The security world is changing, devsecops teams are leaning in over saying “No”, nor open to hear and work with Open Contribution & Collaboration over Security-Only Requirements.

Best practices for DevSecOps

DevSecOps should be the natural incorporation of security controls into your development, delivery, and operational processes.

Shift Left

DevSecOps are moving engineers towards security from the right (at the end) to the left (beginning) of the Development and Delivery process. In a DevSecOps environment, security is an integral part of the development process from the get go. An organization that uses DevSecOps brings in their cybersecurity architects and engineers as part of the development team. Their job is to ensure every component, and every configuration item in the stack is patched, configured securely, and documented.

Shifting left allows the DevSecOps team to identify security risks and exposures early and ensure that these security threats are addressed immediately. Not only is the development team thinking about building the product efficiently, but they are also implementing security as they build it.

Automated Tests 

The DevOps Pipeline performs several tests and checks for the code before the code deploys to production workloads, so why not add security tests such as static code analysis and penetrations tests? The key concept here is to understand that passing a security test is as important as passing a unit test. The pipeline will fail if a major vulnerability will be found.

Slow Is Pro

A common mistake is to deploy several security tools at once such as AWS config for compliance and a SAST (Static application security testing) tool for code analysis, or deploy one tool with a lot of tests and checks. This method only creates an extra load of problems for developers which slows the CI/CD process and is not very agile. Instead, when an organization is implementing tools like those mentioned above they should start with a small set of checks which will slowly get everybody on board and get the developers used so that they’re code is tested.

Keep It A Secret

“Secrets” in Information Security often means all private information a team should know such as API Keys, Passwords, Databases connection strings, SSL certificates etc. Secrets should be kept in a safe place and not hard coded in a repo for example. Another issue is to keep the secret rotated and generate new ones every once in a while. A compromised access key can cause devastating results and major business impact, constantly rotating these keys is a mechanism determined to protect against old secrets being missly used. There are a lot of great tools for these purposes such as Keepass, AWS Secret manager or Azure Key Vault.

Security education

Security is a combination of engineering and compliance. Organizations should form an alliance between the development engineers, operations teams, and compliance teams to ensure everyone in the organization understands the company's security posture and follows the same standards.

Everyone involved with the delivery process should be familiar with the basic principles of application security, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10, application security testing, and other security engineering practices. Developers need to understand thread models, compliance checks, and have a working knowledge of how to measure risks, exposure, and implement security controls

At Cloudride, we live and breathe cloud security, and have supported numerous organizations in the transition to the DevSecOps model. From AWS, MS Azure, and other ISV’s, we can help you migrate to the cloud faster yet securely, strengthen your security posture and maximize business value from the cloud. 

Check out more information on the topic here, and Book a free consultation call today here!

 

 

 

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/03
Mar 11, 2021 2:56:07 PM
DevSecOps
DevOps, Cloud Security, High-Tech

Mar 11, 2021 2:56:07 PM

DevSecOps

Transitioning to DevOps requires a change in culture and mindset. In simple words, DevOps means removing the barriers between traditionally siloed teams: development and operations. In some organizations, there may not even be a separation between development, operations and security teams;...

Cloud Cost Anomaly Detection Deep Dive

Amazon Web Service’s Cost Anomaly Detection is a complimentary service that screens your spending trends to identify anomalous spending and provide in-depth cause analysis. Cost Anomaly detection helps to reduce unexpected cost surprises for customers.

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection is backed by sophisticated AI and machine learning algorithms and can recognize and distinguish between gradual increases in cloud costs and one-off expense spikes. You can create your cost anomaly detection parameters and cost anomaly alerts in simple steps. You can make different subscription alerts for a similar cost monitor or various cost monitors for one subscription alert based on your business needs.

With every anomaly discovery, this free service gives a deep dive analysis so users can rapidly identify and address the cost drivers. Users can also provide input by submitting reviews to improve the precision of future anomaly identification. 

As a component of AWS’s Cost Management solution offering, Cost Anomaly Detection is incorporated into Amazon Web Service Cost Explorer so users can scan and identify their expenses and utilization on a case-by-case basis.

Steps to Use Cost Anomaly Detection

1. Enable Cost Explorer

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection is an element inside Cost Explorer. To get to AWS Cost Anomaly Detection, activate Cost Explorer. After you enable Cost Explorer at the admin account level, you can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to oversee admittance to your billing data for individual IAM clients.

You would then be able to give or deny access on an individual level for each account instead of allowing access to all accounts. An IAM client should have access to pages in the Billing and Cost Management dashboard. With the proper permissions, the IAM client should also see costs for his/her AWS account.

When you finish the setup, you should have access to AWS Cost Anomaly Detection. To get to AWS Cost Anomaly Detection, sign in to the AWS Management Console and open AWS Cost Management at https://aws.amazon.com/console/ .

Choose Cost Anomaly Detection on the navigation pane. After you enable the Cost Explorer, AWS prepares the data related to your expenses for the current month and year and projected figures for the following year. The current month's information is accessible for reviewing in around 24 hours. 

Yearly data takes a few days longer. Cost Explorer refreshes your cost information once every hour.

Cloudride cost anomaly detection - explorer

2. Create Monitor

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection right now supports four diverse monitor types:

  • Linked subscription account
  • AWS services (the only one that scans individual services for anomalies)
  • Cost categories
  • Cost allocation tag

Cloudride cost anomaly detection - monitor

 

Linked Account: This monitor assesses the spending of linked individual or group accounts. This type of monitoring can help your company segment cloud costs by teams, services, or environments attributable to an individual or group of linked accounts.

AWS Services: This monitor is recommendable for users who don't want to segment AWS costs through internal usage and environment. The AWS service monitor individually assesses AWS services for oddities. As you use new AWS services, this monitor will automatically begin to assess that service for cost inconsistencies without any configuration obligations from you.

Cost Allocation Tag – Like the Linked accounts monitor type; the cost allocation tag monitor is ideal when you need to segment spend by groups (environment, product, services). This screen type limits you to one tag key with multiple tag values.

Cost Categories: Since the start of Cost Categories, numerous clients have begun utilizing this service to intelligently create custom groups that can allow them to efficiently monitor and budget spend as indicated by their company structure. If you currently use Cost Categories, you can choose Cost Categories as your cost anomaly detection type. This monitor type limits you to the Cost Category values.

Cloudride cost anomaly detection - monito

3. Set alerts

When you enable anomaly detection for a metric, Cost Explorer applies machine learning and statistical calculations. These calculations evaluate system and application spend data in real-time to decide typical normal benchmarks and anomalies with minimal user intervention. The calculations produce a cost anomaly identification model. The model produces a scope of expected values that represent the typical trends of the metrics.

You can make anomaly detection alerts dependent on the typical, expected metric values. These kinds of alerts don't have a static limit to decide the alarm state. All things being equal, they continuously compare the metric value to the expected value based on the anomaly discovery model. You can configure notification alerts when the measurement value is less or more than the normal value band.

Cloudride cost anomaly detection - alerts

To Conclude:

Cost Anomaly Detection by AWS provides a practical way to track and reduce costs in the cloud environment. IT, DevOps, and CostOps teams can now get a holistic understanding of cloud costs and budgeting and implement strategies that optimize resource utilization. Cost Anomaly Detection is the key to a profitable cloud.

michael-kahn-blog
2021/03
Mar 4, 2021 5:32:14 PM
Cloud Cost Anomaly Detection Deep Dive
Cost Optimization

Mar 4, 2021 5:32:14 PM

Cloud Cost Anomaly Detection Deep Dive

Amazon Web Service’s Cost Anomaly Detection is a complimentary service that screens your spending trends to identify anomalous spending and provide in-depth cause analysis. Cost Anomaly detection helps to reduce unexpected cost surprises for customers.

Automated Security In the AWS Cloud

Amid Covid19 pandemic, and even prior, it seems as though cloud computing has become common grounds for companies of various fields, types and sizes, from small startups to enterprises - everyone is migrating to the cloud.

And this trend is happening for good reason.  Benefits such as high availability, scalability and reliability, are some of the cloud’s strong points.  Today it is so simple to launch a web application in the cloud, it takes a mere 10 minutes with AWS. 

During the Corona pandemic, more and more businesses started e-commerce and online retail to keep their businesses alive, so they created web and mobile applications. The need for a speedy launch has, unfortunately, also caused a huge gap in the implementation of security best practices, making many such sites vulnerable to security hazards. So, how do you ensure security for that Web application which obviously will be exposed to the internet?

Cloud computing has Security as one of it’s core concepts and thus to keep your cloud environment secure, you as a business need to follow several rules such as limit access to least privilege, encrypt data at rest and in transit and also harden your Infruscure and keep those machines patched up. Web Applications are exposed to the internet and need to be accessed today from all over the world, using any platform. To add security to that application there is a use of a Web Application Firewall - WAF.

Cloud Providers have their solutions and best practices and there are several great 3rd party applications out there in the market to help companies with that. But, these kinds of products and services need constant maintenance, update signatures and block off attackers. Not all businesses can, nor do they know how to do that according to best practices. Configuring WAF rules can be challenging and burdensome to large and small organizations alike, especially for those who do not have dedicated security teams.

 

How can my business automate the Security of its web application?

AWS WAF is a security service that enables customers to create custom application-specific rules that can block common attacks on their web application. 

AWS WAF Security Automations is an additional set of configurations made by CloudFormation template to help deploy a set of WAF rules to filter common web attacks.

At the core of the design is an AWS WAF web ACL that acts as a central inspection and decision point for all incoming requests. The WAF is made with pass-through nature, using services and basic rules to prevent simple attacks such as simple SQL-Injections. The additional layer of security with the automation is made with two main components:

  1. Analyzing logs for traces of suspicious behavior that can slow or harm the application, in addition to the inspection of the request content the rate per time interval is measured and gets blocked if a DDOS attack is suspected.  
  2. Using API-Gateway as a honeypot and Lambda Functions the WAF automatically adds malicious IP’s to it’s web ACL and blocks them.

For example, if a bot is scanning your site for open api’s it will search for the “admin” access, something like admin.your-web-application.com, the security automations template detects this non-valid user action and triggers a lambda function that adds the IP of that bot to the block list.

 

But, what happens to valid users?

The automation is not interfering with valid-user actions, every request made to the application is inspected and compared to the normal behavior, only non-valid actions are blocked. 

 

What kind of web-attacks are we talking about?

The system is built and made to block all kinds of common web attacks such as:

  • HTTP Flood
  • SQL Injection
  • XSS
  • Bad Bots
  • DDOS
  • Scanners and Probes

Even interaction with an IP recognized by one of the cybersecurity experts as malicious will be blocked.

The solution is made to protect Internet facing within the AWS infrastructure such as CloudFront and Application Load Balancers.

 

OK, How do I do that?

AWS published  cloudformation templates that can be deployed via bash scripts. The documentation can be found here: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-waf-security-automations 

 

The architecture:111

Not sure if this solution is the right one for you?

Book a free consultation call right here 

Read our Cloudride & Radware’s Workload Protection services - eBook here

 

ido-ziv-blog
2021/02
Feb 25, 2021 3:01:03 PM
Automated Security In the AWS Cloud
Cloud Security

Feb 25, 2021 3:01:03 PM

Automated Security In the AWS Cloud

Amid Covid19 pandemic, and even prior, it seems as though cloud computing has become common grounds for companies of various fields, types and sizes, from small startups to enterprises - everyone is migrating to the cloud.

2021 Cloud Security Threats

The worldwide pandemic has hugely affected businesses, the biggest challenge being the need for telecommuting. Numerous organizations have moved to the cloud much faster, and in many cases, this implies that the best security controls have not been implemented. Herein is an overview of the cloud security threats that may be identified as problematic in the upcoming months.

Persistency Attacks 


Cloud environments facilitate full adaptability when running virtual machines and creating instances that match any development capabilities needed. However, if not appropriately controlled, this flexibility can allow threat actors to launch attacks that give them long-term control over company data and assets on the cloud. 

An example is how Amazon Web Services makes it possible for designers to execute a script with each restart of an Amazon EC2 instance. If malicious programmers figure out how to misuse an instance leveraging a corrupted shell script, they can have unauthorized access and use of a server for a long time. 

The programmers can quickly move between the servers from that opening, corrupting, stealing, and manipulating data or using this as a launchpad for more sophisticated attacks. The first obvious solution: Administrators should configure the instances such that users must log in every time they access them. 

Generally, such cloud environments' agility is a significant shortcoming that businesses should watch out for. There are many chances of larger threats arising out of misconfiguration.

Data Breach and Data Leak

80 % of businesses surveyed in a 2020 data breach study confirmed that they had experienced a data breach in the previous 18 months. 

A data breach is a mishap where the data is gotten to and extricated without approval. Data breaches may lead to data leaks where private information is found where it shouldn't be. When organizations move to the cloud, many assume that the job of protecting their data falls on the cloud provider. 

This assumption is not absurd. By transferring sensitive data to a third party, the cloud provider, in this case, is required to have robust security controls where the data will reside. However, the data owners have a role to play in their data safety and security as well.

Therefore, public cloud platforms use the “Shared Responsibility” model. The provider takes care of some layers of software and infrastructure security, but the customer is responsible for how they access/use their data.

Sadly, even though the public cloud providers make comprehensive information on cloud security best practices widely available, the number of public cloud data leaks continues to rise. The error is on the customer's end; lack of proper controls and proper administrative maintenance, and poor configurations.

The threat of bots is real.

With increased automation today, bots are taking over computing environments, even on the cloud. But 80 % of these are bad bots, according to data by Global Dots. Threat actors could leverage bad bots to capture data, send spam, delete content or mount a denial-of-service attack.

Bots can use the servers they attack to launch attacks on new servers and users. As a form of advanced persistent threats, bots—as seen in attacks such as crypto mining—can take hostage an entire cloud asset to perform the functions of their malicious owners.

The risk with bot attacks isn't just confined to loss of computing resources. Newer forms of crypto mining malware can extract credentials from unencrypted CLI files. Administrators should consider implementing a zero-trust security model.

Misconfiguration in the cloud 

2020 and the years past have taught us many things concerning misconfigurations. For example, although As a default setting, Amazon S3 buckets are private and can only be accessed by individuals who have explicitly been granted access, Unsecured AWS S3 data buckets can cause costly data leaks. But this is not the only misconfiguration risk on the cloud. 

Threat actors are leveraging the advantage of the cloud to cause expansive mayhem with a single compromise. It calls for companies to secure their servers, tighten access rules and keep an updated inventory of systems and assets on the cloud. If businesses don't understand how to configure services and control access permissions, they expose themselves to more risks.

To Conclude

If you are reading this article, you are most probably already aware of the many advantages of the cloud environment, but security is a factor that cannot be overlooked at any given moment. Without the right security expertise, controls, and proper configurations, this environment poses significant risks as well. The good news is – they are preventable. 

At Cloudride, we live and breathe cloud security. From AWS, MS Azure, and other ISV’s, we can help you migrate to the cloud faster yet securely, strengthen your security posture and maximize business value from the cloud. 

Let's talk!

 



 

kirill-morozov-blog
2021/02
Feb 3, 2021 10:42:59 PM
2021 Cloud Security Threats
Cloud Security

Feb 3, 2021 10:42:59 PM

2021 Cloud Security Threats

The worldwide pandemic has hugely affected businesses, the biggest challenge being the need for telecommuting. Numerous organizations have moved to the cloud much faster, and in many cases, this implies that the best security controls have not been implemented. Herein is an overview of the cloud...

CI/CD as a Service

CI/CD and the cloud are like peas in a pod. The cloud eliminates the agony of introducing and keeping up actual servers. CI/CD automates much of the functions in building, testing, and deploying code. So why not join them and eliminate sweated labor in one go?

There are many CI services, and they all do the same things from a theoretical perspective. They start with a rundown of tasks like building or testing. And when you submit your code lines, the tools work through the list until they run into errors. If there are no errors, both IT and developers are happy.

CI is probably the best new operation model for DevOps groups. Likewise, it is a collaboration best practice, as it empowers app engineers to zero in on business needs, code quality, and security since all steps are automated.

Anybody can use CI in software development. Though, its biggest benefactors are large teams that are collaborating on the same and interlocking code blocks.

The introduction of CI allows software developers to work independently on the same features. When they are ready to incorporate these features into a final product, they can do so independently and quickly.

CI is an important and well-established practice in modern, highly efficient software engineering organizations.

Using CI enables development tasks to be done independently and uniformly among designated engineers. When a task is completed, the engineer will introduce that new work into the CI chain to be combined with the rest of the work.

The most intensive executions of a CI build and edit code before testing and retesting it, all looking for new mistakes and conflicting qualities that may have been made as various colleagues submit their code.

CI servers synchronize the work of the software engineers and assist the teams with recognizing issues.

Tasks for the CI server end with the tests. However, of late, an ever-increasing number of teams are stretching out lists to incorporate the new code's deployment. This has been dubbed continuous deployment.

Automated deployment worries some people, and they will regularly add in some manual pauses. Injecting a shot of human assurance and accountability into the process puts them at ease. This is dubbed Continuous Delivery. It conveys the code to testing where they trust that a human will make the last push to deployment.

If CI is excellent in the server room, it can be much better in the cloud, where there is a good chance of faster delivery and greater efficiency and speed.

Clouds can split a function and perform tasks in parallel. Services start with an enormous hardware pool and are shared by multiple groups.

As always, there are some risks and worries, and the biggest can be the a sense of loss of control. All cloud services demand that you give your code to a third party, a choice that may cause one to feel uncomfortable. This being said – security is a huge part of the cloud services offering in this sense.

Apart from all major languages' support, SaaS CI/CD services include much smaller, rarer, and newer ones. Task lists are more likely to be included as commands for another shell or command line, so continuous integration tools continue to issue commands until the list is exhausted or a particular road is invincible. Some languages like Java offer complex options, but the tools can accomplish anything you can do with the command line for the most part.

CI/CD as service means that developers can:

  • Use the company self-service portal to find the CI / CD chain they want and get it delivered quickly. They get to focus on building apps and features and not configuring elements in the pipeline.
  • Get all the CI / CD items of their choice; SVN Jenkins, Gits, jFrog Artifactor. The elements are automatically shipped and ready to work together without the extra effort required, contrary to the traditional method where they will have to prepare each item manually.

And IT teams can:

  • Deploy CI / CD chains error-free and without misconfiguration. IT Ops can serve multiple CI / CD configurations for individual LoB groups.
  • Send a CI / CD chain wherever they want, as it can work on any infrastructure. They spend less time on manual configurations and more time serving their internal customers.

 

So, we’ve established that Continuous Integration (CI) enables you to continuously add code into a single shared and readily accessible repository. On the other hand, Continuous Delivery (CD) empowers you to continuously take the code in the repository and deliver it to production.

And you already know, that as CI/CD pipelines may be amazing in the server room - they are mind-blowing on the cloud.

From GitLab to Bitbucket and AWS to CodePipeline, herein are some of the best CI/CD SaaS services to transform your app-building, testing, and deployment:

AWS CodePipeline

This is Amazon's CI/CD tool. AWS CodePipeline effectively conveys code to an AWS server while being available to more intricate pathways for your data and code. The tool offers a decent choice of pre-customized build environment for the leading languages: Java, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, .Net Core Android. It drops the result in an S3 bucket before directing it to a server for deployment.

There are so many layers with various names. For instance, CodeBuild gets your most recent code from CodeCommit when its CodePipeline starts it and afterward hands it off to CodeDeploy. If you must save time on configuration, you can start with CodeStar, which offers another automation layer. It's an advantage that you don't have to pay for these Code layers. AWS charges you only for computing and storage assets used in the cycle.

 

CloudBees

CloudBees Core began with Jenkins, the most notable open-source project for CI/CD. They now enable testing, support, plus assurance that the code will run optimally. The organization winnowed out the entirety of the test modules, added a couple, and afterward cleaned the correct ones, so expect them to function perfectly when you need them.

CloudBees uses 80 % of the Jenkins engineering team, and they as often as possible contribute code to the open-source project. You can be confident they have tons of expertise on this cutting-edge platform. To speed things up, CloudBees added broad parallelization just as instrumentation to follow your building cycle.

CloudBees offers different price packages that range from free trial plans to starter kits. The organization additionally helps with Jenkins for any individual who needs assistance with the service without cloud computing.

 

GitLab CI/CD

Perhaps the greatest contender on this list is GitLab, another organization that invests in automating your building and deployments. GitLab's building, testing, and deployment mechanisms are also linked to its Git repositories so that you can trigger them with commitment. The cycle is designed around Docker containers with a caching that dramatically simplifies the configurations that must be done on Jenkins builds.

The builds can be in any language. You have to trigger these via GitLab Runner. This adaptability helps you start any job on different machines, which may be great for architectures designed to do more than delivering microservices.

There are different price tiers based on your needs. Gold users get the entirety of the best features, including security dashboards and more than 40,000 minutes of building on a shared machine. You are not charged for using your own machines for part of the cycle or separate instances in a different cloud.

 

Bitbucket Pipelines

Atlassian, the owners of repository Bitbucket and job tracker, board Jira, chose to endow the engineering world with Bitbucket Pipelines. The latter is a CI/CD tool on the Bitbucket cloud. The magic wand here is extensive integration between build mechanism and Atlassian tools. Bitbucket Pipelines isn't so much as different. It's mostly an additional menu alternative for each task in Bitbucket. Another menu alternative focuses on organizations, allowing you to choose where the tasks end.

The extended integration is both a bane and a boon. When you select one of the formats previously characterized for the primary languages, you get to build and deploy your code in a snap. But it gets tough when you veer off the trodden path. Your options are limited.

Even so, Atlassian supports a marketplace of applications, including charts and webhooks, into different administrations. The top application links Bitbucket with Jenkins, which can help you accomplish more unrestrictedly.

Speed is the strongest selling proposition for Pipelines. The provider has pre-designed the greater part of the pathways from code to deployment, and you can leverage their templates for only a couple of dollars. It's challenging to analyze the expense of using Bitbucket because the builds are billed in minutes, as most serverless models, thus the hours add up even on weekends and evenings.

 

CircleCI

A significant number of the CI/CD tools center around code is in the Linux environment. While CircleCI can build and deploy in the Linux world, it likewise supports the building of Android applications and anything that emerges from Apple's Xcode; iOS, tvOS, macOS, or watchOS. If your teams are building for these platforms, you can submit your code and let CircleCI do the testing.

Tasks are defined in YAML documents. CircleCI utilizes Docker in the entirety of its multi-layered architecture to configure the test conditions for the code. You start the builds and tests with new containers. The tasks run in virtual machines that have a comparatively short life. This removes many issues with configuration because the perfect environments don't have junk codes lying around.

The billing is centered around the amount of CPU you use. The quantity of clients and the quantity of repositories is not capped. Build minutes and containers are metered, though. Your first container, which can run one build test, is free. But when you need more quantity and multitasking, be prepared to pay more.

 

Azure Pipelines

This is Microsoft's own CI/CD cloud service. The branding states, "Any platform, any language." While this is in all likelihood a bit of exaggeration and Azure presumably doesn't support ENIAC developers, it does noticeably offer Microsoft, macOS, and Linux paths for code. The Apple corner targets MacOS builds (not iOS or tvOS or watchOS).

Theoretically, the framework is like the others. Expect agents for executing tasks and delivering artifacts, with some being self-hosted. The stack embraces Docker containers that have no trouble running in Azure's hardware. These can be clicked along with a visual planner incorporated into a website page or named with YAML.

There is a free version with 1800 minutes of build time. For teams that need more parallelism or build time, prepare to pay. There is a free tier plan for open-source projects underlining Microsoft's longing to participate in the overall open-source network. However, on the off chance that Microsoft will burn through $ 8 billion to get a seat at the table by buying GitHub, all things considered, it makes sense.

 

Travis CI

Do your teams produce code that should be tested in Windows boxes? If yes, Travis CI should be top among your options for CI/CD as a service. The service supports Linux and macOS and recently Windows making it easier to deliver multiplatform code.

Tasks lists are named as YAML files and run in neat VMs with a standard design. Your Linux code gets some basic Ubuntu versions, and your Mac code runs in one of twelve versions of OS X and Xcode and JDK. Your Windows code ends up in Windows Server (1803). Travis CI offers a long list of 30 languages and assembles. Build rules are preconfigured and ready to run.

Pricing is based on the number of tasks you simultaneously execute. Minutes are not metered. There is no free version, but open-source projects are free.

 

Codeship

Designing your list of tasks is frequently the greatest test when utilizing a CI/CD solution. CodeShip adopts two distinct strategies to this in two stages of service. With the Basic plan, expect plenty of pre-configuration and automation plus a graphical UI for sketching task outlines.

All the other things are practically accomplished for you. With the Pro version, expect the capability to reach in the engine and play around with the design and the Docker containers used to characterize the build environments. One can choose the number of build machines and the degree of provisioning they need for their tasks.

This is something contrary to how the CI/CD business world typically functions. You pay more to accomplish more tasks. Here the Basic client gets everything automated. It doesn't seem real, but soon, you discover that you need something that is only available in Pro to accomplish a task.

The Basic tier offers a free plan with one build machine, limitless projects, and many users, but builds are metered at 100 per month. So, if you have more than 100 tasks, you will have to pay. When you begin playing, there's no cap on builds or build times. You pick the number of build machines, and test machines will deal with your tasks. The Pro tier also starts with a free version. However, once you begin paying, the price is dictated by the size and number of cloud instances devoted to your work.

 

Jenkins and Hudson

You can do it yourself. One of the fastest ways to create a CI/CD pipeline in the cloud is to lease a server instance and start Jenkins. There is always a prebuilt image from suppliers like Bitnami merely sitting tight for you to push start.

Jenkins and Hudson began as programs for testing Java code for bugs long ago in the past. They split when conflict occurred between some of the designers and Oracle. The split shows how open-source licenses enable designers to settle on choices about the code by restricting the control of the nominal proprietors.

And keeping in mind that Jenkins and Hudson may have begun as a platform for Java projects, they have long since diversified. Today you can use them to build in any language while using countless plugins to speed up building testing and deployment. The code is open source, so there's no charge for utilizing it. You only pay for the server and time.

 

Sauce Labs

Many of the solutions on this list recorded here focus on coordinating the code from repository to deployment. If you want something focused on testing, choose Sauce Labs. The cloud-based service offers many combinations for guaranteed efficiency. Would you like to test on Firefox 58 running on Windows 10? Or maybe about Firefox 56 on macOS? They are arranged for you with combinatorics that rapidly produce an enormous assortment of platform alternatives for testers.

The scripts can be written in the language you like—as long as you choose among Ruby, Node, Java, or PHP. Sauce Labs additionally integrates the tests with other CI instruments or pipelines. You can run Jenkins locally and afterward assign the testing to Sauce Labs.

Pricing starts at a discounted rate for (manual) live testing. You'll pay more for automated tests, estimated in minutes and number of paths. Sauce Labs additionally has an alternative to test your app on any of the many gadgets in the organization's cloud.

 

To Conclude

Switching to CI/CD as a service can be scary. However, our engineers and DevOps team at CloudRide have thorough expertise on CI/CD best practices. Together we can optimize and accelerate your DevOps tasks and shorten your deployment cycles to the Cloud.

Call us today, or better yet – click here to book a meeting.

 



 

ran-dvir/blog/
2021/01
Jan 7, 2021 6:36:34 PM
CI/CD as a Service
DevOps, CI/CD

Jan 7, 2021 6:36:34 PM

CI/CD as a Service

CI/CD and the cloud are like peas in a pod. The cloud eliminates the agony of introducing and keeping up actual servers. CI/CD automates much of the functions in building, testing, and deploying code. So why not join them and eliminate sweated labor in one go?

There are many CI services, and they...

Was Your Business Impacted by the AWS Outage?

Perhaps the critical takeaway from 2020 is that reliability, flexibility, and security in cloud computing are the key determinants of business success. From the massive surges in consumer usage of data centers driven by the need for remote working and stay home mandates, multi-cloud environments have stood as more reliable, secure, and cost-effective. 

Wednesday last week, the need for reliability was highlighted clearly by an AWS blackout. From early Wednesday to Thursday morning, websites, apps, and services on Amazon Web Service experienced a significant outage with incalculable losses. Sites and services including Adobe, Roku, Washington, and Flickr were rendered unavailable. 

An expansion of servers to Amazon's predominant distributed computing network set off a chain reaction of errors that caused the massive outage. Amazon said in a statement that “a small addition of capacity to Amazon Kinesis real-time data processing service” set off the widespread AWS blackout.

This made all the servers in the armada surpass the threshold of strings permitted by an OS design, says Amazon, leading to a domino of errors that took down countless websites and services. 

"In the present moment, we will be shifting to bigger CPU and memory servers, decreasing the number of servers and, consequently, strings needed by every server to communicate in the fleet,” said the company in describing their response strategy. “This will allow headroom in string count utilized given the number of strings every server must maintain is proportional to the number of servers in the fleet."

It is quite evident that it's time for companies to be proactive in their risk management approach, and look into multi-cloud implementation. The AWS outage is a wake-up call for companies to minimize risk and attain reliability in performance by using more than one cloud provider.

 

If you pack all your data on a cloud server and that server goes down, you clearly can't get to your data. That is, except if that information is additionally put away elsewhere. Numerous organizations execute methodologies that save data in different locations to maintain a strategic distance from issues on the off chance that one of the servers goes down. With a multi-cloud strategy, you store data on at least two separate cloud environments, so on the off chance that one goes down, your data isn't lost. 

Find cloud providers with server farms in different areas who spread workloads across different geographies. This strategy increases performance by topographically conveying traffic to the data center nearest to the end-user. It can likewise radically diminish the risk of unforeseen downtime. If one server farm goes down because of human mistake, malware, fire, or cataclysmic event, your workloads will securely failover to another area. 

The benefits of a multi-cloud environment include:

Advanced Risk Management 

Risk management is the most incredible advantage that accompanies embracing a multi-cloud system. Suppose one service provider has an infrastructural issue or is targeted by a cyberattack. In that case, a multi-cloud client can rapidly change to another cloud provider or back up to a private cloud. 

Multi-cloud environments enable the use of independent, redundant, and autonomous frameworks that offer robust verification systems, threat testing, and API resource combinations. When coupled with a robust risk-managed system, multi-cloud environments can guarantee reliable uptime for your business. 

Performance Improvements 

Multi-cloud environments allow you to create fast, low-latency systems while diminishing the costs of coordinating the cloud with your IT systems. By empowering businesses to stretch out their cloud computing needs to different vendors, a multi-cloud approach enables localized, fast, and low latency connections that improve application response time, leading to a better customer experience. 

Security 

A multi-cloud strategy can help secure an organization's primary business applications and data by offering backup and recovery capabilities that give business continuity when a disaster strikes, regardless of whether brought about by a cyber-attack, power blackout, or weather event. Adding a multi-cloud strategy to your business recovery plan gives it a higher sense of security by storing resources in several unrelated data centers.

Avoid vendor lock-in

You may discover a reliable cloud provider and bet everything on them, tuning your system to be entirely compatible with their infrastructure. But what happens if your enterprise outgrows the performance and features offered by this vendor? You will need to keep things moving at the speed that your clients expect.

If you focus on building compatibility with only one cloud provider, you make it both tedious and costly to move your system to a new provider when the need arises. You empower the vendor to control you. You will have to accept their pricing, restructurings, and features because moving to a new provider means starting from zero. You can avoid these problems by using a multi-cloud approach from the very beginning.

Cost control 

Each organization has cost as a central concern, and with the rate that innovation is developing nowadays, it is critical to measure need versus cost. Moving to the cloud can allow you to lessen capital costs on your equipment, workers, and so on. 

Nonetheless, downtimes and inefficient performance on a given cloud can cost you more time, money, and a bad reputation among customers. Finding a perfect blend of cloud providers that meet your specific needs and work with your budget can significantly reduce costs and improve performance. 

 

To Conclude: 

Implementing a multi-cloud strategy is not a simple assignment. Numerous organizations battle with legacy IT frameworks, on-premise infrastructure, and hardware providers. They are frequently restricted in their capacity to create and implement a multi-cloud strategy. Having said that, going multi-vendor will enable you to diversify your deployment, achieve better performance, and prevent service disruptions, and this can be a cost-effective and speedy undertaking with the right expert consultation. 

At Cloudride, we are experts in AWS, Azure, and other independent service providers. We provide cloud migration, security, and cost optimization services tailored to your needs. 

Let's help you create, test, and implement a multi-cloud strategy. Contact us here to learn more!

 



 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/12
Dec 6, 2020 7:36:08 PM
Was Your Business Impacted by the AWS Outage?
AWS, Multi-Cloud

Dec 6, 2020 7:36:08 PM

Was Your Business Impacted by the AWS Outage?

Perhaps the critical takeaway from 2020 is that reliability, flexibility, and security in cloud computing are the key determinants of business success. From the massive surges in consumer usage of data centers driven by the need for remote working and stay home mandates, multi-cloud environments...

3 ways you can cut your cloud consumption costs in half with FinOps

In challenging economic climates, cost control quickly rises up the executive agenda. The current crisis will, if it hasn’t yet, result in many organizations looking to reduce costs as they aim to weather the storm.

Complex billing systems and limited budget verification capabilities are already impacting companies, which struggle to understand their company’s cloud spend, with consumption potentially unlimited and purchasing fragmented. On top of that, the huge rise in remote working, (we’re not just talking Microsoft Teams here, everything now has to be accessed remotely) and therefore Microsoft Azure cloud consumption, means finance teams may find themselves hit with significant bills in the near future.

It’s easy to over-purchase cloud services without realizing it. 

Enter FinOps, often also referred to as cloud cost optimization. FinOps creates an environment where organizations can optimize their cloud expenditure and breaks down the barriers between finance, development, and operations teams. The end results? Lower costs, and the ability to move rapidly to take advantage of opportunities without over-provisioning.

Based on Cloudride’s direct experience, there are three core elements to effectively managing cloud costs:

  1. Optimization – reviewing current spend and reducing wastage quickly
  2. Visibility and control – a custom dashboard that gives you a constant overview, showing you what you are spending and where
  3. Governance – take back control with well-defined processes and roles so you can take action when you need to

It’s important to recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Every organization will need a custom optimization strategy with a clear direction to cut its Microsoft Azure cloud costs.

We’ve found that the vast majority of organizations are significantly overspending on their cloud consumption, this is also confirmed by analysts like Gartner, which states that companies are going to waste 75% of their cloud budget in the first 18 months of implementation. There are a few areas to focus on initiatives that can provide almost instant cost savings. 

The three most effective ways to cut costs quickly will be:

  1. Review and streamline
    • Streamline your subscriptions
    • Turn off your virtual machines when they’re not in use
    • Stop all unnecessary premium services
    • Delete orphan-managed disks
  2. Consume on demand
    • Autoscaling
    • Power scheduling
    • Storage optimization
  3. Check your sizing and fit size to your needs (you may not need everything you are paying for)
    • Azure Cosmos DB
    • Services pooling
    • VM resizing
    • Service resizing
    • Disk resizing

We’ve found that these steps can save around 50% of expenditure, within a few weeks. There are numerous other ways that initial savings can be made as well, too many to list in a blog, and every organization is different. Containers, building cloud-native applications, and knowing how to accurately estimate the costs when moving workloads to the cloud will help you to avoid surprises in the future.

To Summarize

While costs and efficiency are the key drivers for cloud adoption, these two can quickly become a problem for businesses. FinOps’ best practices are geared towards increasing financial visibility and optimization by aligning teams and operations.

At Cloudride, speed, cost, and agility are what define our cloud consultation services. Our teams will help you adopt cloud providers, infrastructures, by enabling solutions that deliver not only the best cost efficiency but also assured security and compliance.

Find out more.

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/10
Oct 19, 2020 3:56:11 PM
3 ways you can cut your cloud consumption costs in half with FinOps
FinOps & Cost Opt.

Oct 19, 2020 3:56:11 PM

3 ways you can cut your cloud consumption costs in half with FinOps

In challenging economic climates, cost control quickly rises up the executive agenda. The current crisis will, if it hasn’t yet, result in many organizations looking to reduce costs as they aim to weather the storm.

Best Practices for On-Prem to Cloud Migration

There are fads in fashion and other things but not technology. Trends such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote working can have extensive implications on a business's future. Business survival, recovery, and growth are dependent on your agility in adopting and adapting to the ever-changing business environment. Moving from on-prem to the cloud is one way that businesses can tap into the potential of advanced technology.

The key drivers 

Investment resources are utilized much more efficiently on the cloud. With the advantage of on-demand service models, businesses can optimize efficiency and save software, infrastructure, and storage costs.

For a business that is rapidly expanding, cloud migration is the best way to keep the momentum going. There is a promise of scalability and simplified application hosting. It eliminates the need to install additional servers, for example, when eCommerce traffic surges.

Remote working is the current sole push factor. As COVID 19 lays waste to everything, businesses, even those that never considered cloud migration before, have been forced to implement either partial or full cloud migration. Employees can access business applications and collaborate from any corner of the world.

 

Best Practices

Choose a secure cloud environment 

The leading public cloud providers are AWS, Azure, and GCP (check out our detailed comparison between the 3) They all offer competitive hosting rates favorable to small and medium scale businesses. However, resources are shared, like an apartment building with multiple tenants, and so security is an issue that quickly comes to mind.

The private cloud is an option for businesses that want more control and assured security. Private clouds are a stipulation for businesses that handle sensitive information, such as hospitals and DoD contractors. 

A hybrid cloud, on the other hand, gives you the best of both worlds. You have the cost-effectiveness of the public cloud when you need it. When you demand architectural control, customization, and increased security, you can take advantage of the private cloud. 

 

Scrutinize SLAs

The service level agreement is the only thing that states clearly what you should expect from a cloud vendor. Go through it with keen eyes. Some enterprises have started cloud migration only to experience challenges because of vendor-lock in. 

Choose a cloud provider with an SLA that supports the easy transfer of data. This flexibility can help you overcome technical incompatibilities and high costs. 

 

Plan a migration strategy

Once you identify the best type of cloud environment and the right vendor, the next requirement is to set a migration strategy. When creating a migration strategy, one must consider costs, employee training, and estimated downtime in business applications. Some strategies are better than others:

  • Rehosting may be the easiest moving formula. It basically lifts and shifts. At such a time, when businesses must quickly explore the cloud for remote working, rehosting can save time and money. Your systems are moved to the cloud with no changes to their architecture. The main disadvantage is the inability to optimize costs and app performance on the cloud. 
  • Replatforming is another strategy. It involves making small changes to workloads before moving to the cloud. The architectural modifications maximize performance on the cloud. An example is shifting an app's database to a managed database on the cloud. 
  • Refactoring gives you all the advantages of the cloud, but it does require more investment in the cloud migration process. It involves re-architecting your entire array of applications to meet your business needs, on the one hand, while maximizing efficiency, optimizing costs and implementing best practices to better tailor your cloud environment. It optimizes app performance and supports the efficient utilization of the cloud infrastructure.

 

Know what to migrate and what to retire 

A cloud migration strategy can have all the elements of rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring. The important thing is that businesses must identify resources and the dependencies between them. Not every application and dependencies need to be shifted to the cloud. 

For instance, instead of running SMTP email servers, organizations can switch to a SaaS email platform on the cloud. This helps to reduce wasted spend and wasted time in cloud migration.

 

Train your employees

Workflow modernization can only work well for an organization if employees support it. Where there is no employee training, workers avoid the new technology or face productivity and efficiency problems.

A cloud migration strategy must include employee training as a component. Start communicating the move before it even happens. Ask questions on the most critical challenges your workers face and gear the migration towards solving their work challenges. 

Further, ensure that your cloud migration team is up to the task. Your operations, design, and development teams are the torch bearers of the move. Do they have the experience and skillsets to effect a quick and cost-effective migration?

If not, we are here to help.

At Cloudride, we have helped many businesses successfully plan, execute, and optimize their cloud migration processes. We are partners with AWS, Azure, and GCP, accelerating cloud migration, and cloud business value realization through a focus on security, cost optimization, and vendor best practices.

Click here for a free consultation call!

 

 



 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/10
Oct 15, 2020 5:15:43 PM
Best Practices for On-Prem to Cloud Migration
Azure, AWS, E-Commerce, Cloud Migration, Healthcare, Education

Oct 15, 2020 5:15:43 PM

Best Practices for On-Prem to Cloud Migration

There are fads in fashion and other things but not technology. Trends such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote working can have extensive implications on a business's future. Business survival, recovery, and growth are dependent on your agility in adopting and...

Everything you Need to Know about Cloud Containers

Cloud containers are an improvement on virtual machines. They make it possible to run software dependably and independently in all types of computing environments. 

Cloud containers are trendy technology in the IT world. The world's top technology organizations, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and many others all use containers. Containers have also seen expanded use in software supply chains and eCommerce. They guarantee a seamless, easy, and surefire way to deploy apps on the cloud without the limitations of infrastructural requirements.

What are Cloud Containers? 

Containers share server operating systems in a lightweight, resource-free cycle that can be started instantaneously. This essentially improves agility and resource usage during application deployment. Container images carry an application and its system components and designs in a standardized and isolated arrangement. When applications are deployed through container images, the applications can be run reliably in various environments.

 

The Evolution: Physical machine > Virtual Machines> Containers

Decades ago, applications used to be installed in physical machines in data centers. Back then, the ability to run business applications on such physical infrastructure was seen as next-level innovation. Then, costs climbed over the roof: too many apps, too many machines, and limited flexibility and speed in resource utilization.

Cloud computing entered the scene with new possibilities. Among them was the virtualization technology. Applications would be run on virtual machines (VMs) with improved and agile resource utilization. Even so, VMs were nearly just as laborious as physical machines; apps need to be manually configured, installed, and managed. This limited delivery speed and increased costs.

Cloud computing technology matured, and this maturation introduced containers. 

 

Containers are like virtual machines but better. An application's code, dependencies, and configurations can be packaged into a single unit and run in a container. Unlike VMs that require an operating system installed in each, containers share a single OS on the server. Containers operate as resource-isolated processes. They are agile and reliable and lead to efficient app deployment. 

 

Why Use Containers Rather Than VMs? 

Containers help to save costs. Contrasted with VMs, cloud containers utilize fewer assets since they don't use a complete OS, they have quicker startup times, require less upkeep, and are genuinely compact. A container application can be written only a single time and afterward deployed repeatedly in any place. 

  • Compact 

A container is no more than a few megabytes in terms of size, on the other hand, a virtual machine with its whole working frame-work might be several gigabytes in size. Along these lines, one server can hold unquestionably a more significant number of containers than virtual machines. 

  • Economical 

Another significant advantage is that virtual machines may take a long time to boot up their working frameworks and start running their applications. In contrast, containerized applications can be started in a split second. That implies that cloud containers can be started up instantly when required and can be removed when they are not needed, helping to free up assets and save costs.

  • Available 

Another advantage is that containerization leads to better isolation and modularity. As opposed to running a whole intricate application inside one container, the application can be divided into modules. 

This is the microservices approach, and applications run this way are much easier to oversee because every module is generally simpler. Changes can be made to modules without rebuilding the whole application. Since containers are lightweight, singular modules (or microservices) can be started up just when required. Availability is instantaneous. 

  • Scalable 

IT frameworks regularly experience both surprising and unexpected traffic surges in the digital era, for example, eCommerce operations over the holidays. Cloud containers give full play to distributed computing versatility and decrease costs by optimizing resource consumption and deployment flexibility. 

For instance, with the current exponential growth of online traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic, learning institutions can use cloud containers to effectively support online classes for thousands of students across the country.

Suppose you have to deploy an application that was initially intended to run on a dedicated server into a cloud domain. In that case, odds are you will have to use a virtual machine in light of the OS, code, libraries, and dependencies needs of the app.

But if you are writing new code to run in cloud architecture, containers will make your work easy. Today most businesses have their cloud-native apps deployed in containers. 



One Important thing to bear in mind…

Above we’ve reviewed the most prominent pros of cloud containers, but we cannot conclude this article without mentioning the security issue. Containers are more vulnerable than VM’s in the sense that they have a larger attack surface than VMs.  Because they share an OS, a single compromised container can affect the entire machine. 

 

Container management solutions exist today to help businesses secure and manage containers hands-free. 

At Cloudride, we can help guide you through on everything related to the best utilization of cloud containers and other solutions, and help you better manage your cloud environment in the most secure and cost-effective manner. We specialize in AWS, MS-AZURE, GCP, and other ISVs. 

Click here to schedule a call to learn more! 

avner-vidal-blog
2020/10
Oct 6, 2020 2:06:29 PM
Everything you Need to Know about Cloud Containers
Cloud Container

Oct 6, 2020 2:06:29 PM

Everything you Need to Know about Cloud Containers

Cloud containers are an improvement on virtual machines. They make it possible to run software dependably and independently in all types of computing environments. 

Cloud containers are trendy technology in the IT world. The world's top technology organizations, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon,...

AWS ECS Fargate

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is indispensable. The scalability and high performance of ECS reduce costs and improve compatibility in container orchestration. 

Having said that, there is a great deal of manual infrastructure configuration, management, and oversight that goes into it. That's why AWS launched Fargate. 

AWS Fargate is a serverless container management service (container as a service) that allows developers to focus on their application and not their infrastructure. Fargate allows you to spend less time managing Amazon EC2 instances and more time building and helping with container orchestration. 

With AWS ECS Fargate, there is no server provisioning and managing. You can seamlessly meet your application's computing needs with auto-scaling, and benefit from enhanced security and better resource utilization. 

Before AWS Fargate, ECS required more of a hands-on approach, manual server configurations, management, and monitoring, which greatly impacted efficiency. One ended up with many clusters of VMs that reduced speed and complicated things.

Now with AWS Fargate, you can run containers without crashing under infrastructure management requirements. 

Let's explore this potential:

 

Reduced operational overhead 

When you run Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate, your focus shifts from managing infrastructure to managing apps. Once you pay for the containers, server management, scaling, and patching are taken care of. AWS Fargate will keep everything up to date.

In this compute engine, you can build and manage apps with both ECS and EKS. You can work from anywhere with assured efficient resource utilization, thanks to auto-scaling.

AWS Fargate makes work easy for IT staff and developers. Unlike before, there is no tinkering with complicated access rules or server selection. You get to invest more time and expertise in development and deployment. 

 

More cost savings

AWS Fargate automatically right-sizes resources based on the compute requirements of your apps. That makes it a cloud cost optimization approach worth exploring. There is no overprovisioning, for example, because you only pay for the resources that you use. 

Further, you can take advantage of Fargate Spot to save up to 70% on fault-tolerant applications. It works well for big data apps, batch processing, and CI/CD apps. On the other hand, the Compute Savings Plan gives you a chance to slash costs by up to 50% for your persistent workloads. 

Additionally; 

  • With Fargate, you only incur charges when your container workloads are running inside the VM
  • Cost isn't based on the total run time of the VM instance
  • Scheduling on Fargate is much better compared to standard ECS; that makes it easier to budgetize containers based on time for more savings 

 

Security enhanced and simplified 

AWS calls it "Secure isolation by design." Your ECS tasks run in their isolated underlying kernel. The isolation boundary dedicates CPU resources, memory, and storage to individual workloads, significantly enhancing each task's security.

With ECS, this isolation led to complexities. Having several layers of containers and tasks meant that you would need security for each one. Fargate simplifies things, in terms of infrastructure security. Using AWS ECS Fargate, you worry less about:

  • Compromised ports
  • API exposure
  • Data leaks from remote code execution

 

Monitoring and insights

You get improved monitoring of applications with AWS ECS Fargate. The compute engine has built-in integrations with Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights and other services. You will stay up to date on metrics and logs concerning your applications to detect threats and enhance your cloud infrastructure compliance.

You get ready compatibility with third-party tools for;

  • Collecting and correlating security telemetry from containers and orchestration 
  • Monitoring AWS ECS Fargate processes and apps
  • Tracking network activity in AWS Fargate
  • Viewing AWS CloudTrail Logs across AWS Fargate

 

There has to be a bit of a But:

Customization

Fargate reduces customization to improve ease of use. You may find, therefore, that your control is much limited when deploying ECS on Fargate. An alternative container-as-service management platform may offer greater fine-tuning. 

Regional availability

AWS Fargate is not available everywhere. By mid-2020, the compute engine for EKS and ECS is not available in more than a dozen regions for their data centers. Businesses in these regions have no other option but to use alternative container management services. 



To Summarize: 

Fargate allows for building and deployment in a scalable, secure, and cost-effective manner. This is a fast-growing solution that reduces the infrastructure management needs for developers and IT staff. At Cloudride, we can guide you on Fargate and other container-as-service solutions to help you adequately deal with the challenges of cloud cost and security. We specialize in AWS, Azure, GCP, and other ISVs

Click here to schedule a call to learn more! 

avner-vidal-blog
2020/09
Sep 17, 2020 2:10:15 PM
AWS ECS Fargate
AWS, Cloud Container

Sep 17, 2020 2:10:15 PM

AWS ECS Fargate

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is indispensable. The scalability and high performance of ECS reduce costs and improve compatibility in container orchestration. 

AWS for eCommerce

Fact: Consumers expect lightning speed performance and seamless eCommerce experiences. 

The competition in online commerce has heated up in massive ways too. Consumers nowadays are far more knowledgeable about their shopping wishes. They know what they want, how much they should be paying for it, how fast they can expect to receive it, and with competition a mere click away – you are expected to provide a shopping experience that is no-less than perfect – every step of the way. 

ECommerce business owners are increasingly turning to cloud hosting solutions to supercharge online shop performance by taking advantage of its scalability and advantages to create a seamless user journey. 

Let’s review some of the AWS advantages for eCommerce applications

 

AWS Capabilities that Improve eCommerce Potential

AWS has numerous unassailable capabilities that position it as a reliable eCommerce cloud solution. These include security, scalability, server uptime, and a favorable pricing model. 

Security and Compliance 

It’s like a data breach Armageddon out there. Data security is the biggest agonizing factor for startups that focus on eCommerce. Business processes online involve the handling of sensitive customer data, such as credit card information. A recent data breach report shows that 62% of consumers do not trust the confidence of their data with retailers. 

AWS bolsters cloud security with absolute compliance with global data security and data privacy regulations. The provider can speed up your compliance through certifications such as SOC 1,2 & 3. You can run your eCommerce store knowing that your business and customer data are safe.

The commerce cloud computing solution will reliably secure your eCommerce store as you focus on securing the data you put on it. It is a shared responsibility model that speeds up compliance for businesses while reducing operating costs. To learn more about how to implement security best practices on the cloud – check out this ebook

AWS security features include:

  • AWS compliance program – It helps businesses attain compliance through best practices and audits 
  • Physical security—AWS guarantees the security of data centers across the world 
  • Data backup—This is an automated function on AWS and is critical for business continuity and disaster recovery. 
  • Transmission protection — the provider uses a cryptographic protocol that protects against eavesdropping and tampering 
  • 24-7-365 network and infrastructure monitoring and incidence response
  • Multifactor authentication, passwords, and access keys 
  • 509 certificates
  • Security logs 

 

Auto-scaling

Ecommerce traffic can be as unpredictable as the weather. For success in this digital business environment, one needs a hosting solution with limitless auto-scaling capabilities to handle sudden bandwidth surges in the middle of the night or holidays. 

The AWS cloud hosting solution is architectured to expand or shrink based on business demand. It helps to ensure that your eCommerce store doesn’t crash on peak season. The auto-scaling function covers all resources, including bandwidth, memory, and storage, guaranteeing steady and predictable performance for your cyber business.

How it works

  • AWS auto-scaling tracks the usage demand for your apps and auto-adjusts capacity 
  • You can budgetize and build auto-scaling plans for resources across your eCommerce platform 
  • You get scaling recommendations that can help to optimize performance and costs



On-demand pricing model

One great advantage of using AWS for eCommerce is cost-effectiveness. The provider uses a pay for consumption billing model, which means that you only pay for what you use. There are no upfront costs, and in the face of business uncertainties today, you might appreciate that clients are not tied with long term contracts on AWS. 

The pay per consume model empowers small startups to keep costs low and achieve business survivability. On top of that, you can explore other ways to reduce costs such as:

  • Using Compute Savings Plans 
  • Using Reserved Instances (RI)
  • Review and modifying the auto-scaling configuration
  • Leveraging lower-cost storage tiers

 

Global hosting for consistent brand performance 

AWS has data centers around the world. It makes it easy to deliver a consistent and seamless eCommerce performance for customers in any corner of the globe.  

This globalized hosting capability means that you can serve customers from each country uniquely in their languages. You can gather relevant regional data for accurate operations. All the while, you will be able to meet the global speed and performance demands and safeguard your business from costly downtimes. 

 

Consistent speed with a new and improved CDN

The AWS CDN will enable your eCommerce website to deliver images, videos, and the entire website faster regardless of bandwidth or geographical location. The CDNs speeds up load times and the overall user experience on your eCommerce store. Requests for content are automatically routed to the nearest server location, saving customers from high latency.

 

AWS eCommerce Support 

AWS provides customer support through people and tools that can help you amplify performance and reduce costs. Depending on your AWS SLA, you can get human support with a response rate of under 15 minutes, 24-7-365.

Types of support you can get on AWS  include:

  • Architectural guidance and introduction 
  • Operational and security guidance 
  • Dashboard monitoring solutions
  • Other benefits of the AWS architecture for eCommerce 

 

Broader cataloging 

ECommerce customers expect thousands of product options when browsing. Extensive cataloging is one of the reasons why Amazon is the leading eCommerce store. AWS can grant you a similar capability with its auto-scaling features.

 

A smooth and faster checkout process

Checkout service is a critical building block for any eCommerce store. AWS enables better coordination of checkout workflows and compliant storage and processing of credit card data and purchase history, leading to faster order processing. 

 

Ecommerce integration:

Several third-party providers have built platforms on the AWS infrastructure. You can leverage these integrations, including CRM, email marketing, and analytics solutions for better eCommerce. 

 

To Summarize

Hosting on the AWS eCommerce cloud computing solution can simplify your online business and accelerate growth in diverse ways. You are assured of security, availability, scalability, speed, and seamless shopping experience for your customers.

Need some more in-depth advice to get you started? Click here to schedule a free consultation call. 

yarden-shitrit
2020/09
Sep 15, 2020 11:02:40 AM
AWS for eCommerce
AWS, E-Commerce

Sep 15, 2020 11:02:40 AM

AWS for eCommerce

Fact: Consumers expect lightning speed performance and seamless eCommerce experiences. 

Cloud Computing - Top 10 Security Issues, Challenges, and Solutions

Cloud computing is oftentimes the most cost-effective means to use, maintain, and upgrade your infrastructure, as it removes the need to invest in costly in-house infrastructure. It can be defined as the outsourced IT infrastructure that improves computing performance. 

However, despite its many benefits in cost and scalability, cloud computing has various security challenges that businesses must be prepared for. Let’s explore:

  • Guest-hopping/ VM jumping

This is a cloud security challenge that arises when someone gets into your Virtual Machine and host computer by breaching a nearby Virtual Machine in the VMware server. Ways to reduce the risk of VM jumping attacks include regularly updating your operating system and separating database traffic from web-facing traffic. 

 

  • SQL injections

A website hosted on the cloud can be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, where the cyber vandals inject malicious SQL commands into the database of a web app. To prevent an SQL injection attack, you will have to remove all unused stored procedures. Further, assign the least possible privileges to the persons that have access permissions to the database.

 

  • Backdoor attacks 

The backdoor is intentional open access to an application created by developers for updating code and troubleshooting apps. This access poses a security challenge when attackers use it to access your sensitive data. The primary solution to backdoor attacks is to disable debugging on apps.

 

  • Malicious employees

Humans are the biggest risk to cloud computing and data security. Security challenges may arise when an employee with ill intentions is granted access to sensitive data. These people may compromise business and customer data or sell access privileges to the highest bidder. Regular and rigorous security auditing is critical to minimize this security threat.

 

  • CSP data security concerns

With public and hybrid cloud models, you hand over your data to the Cloud Service Provider (CSP). Depending on their compliance and integrity, these businesses might abuse your data or expose it to cloud threats through improper storage and processing. You can reduce the risk of that through:

  • Restricting your CSPs control over your data
  • Employing robust access authentication mechanisms 
  • Working with a CSP that is regulatory compliant 
  • Choosing a CSP that has a well-defined Data backup system 

 

  • Domain hijacking 

Attackers might change the name of your domain without your knowledge or permission. This cloud security challenge allows intruders to access sensitive data and undertake illegal activities on your system. One way to prevent domain hijacking is to use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), which uses an owner-only authorization key to prevent unauthorized name changes.

 

  • Denial of service attacks (DoS): 

DOS attacks will make your network or computing resources unavailable. In a DOS attack, the cyber threat actors flood your system with many packets in a short amount of time. The packets take over all of your bandwidth, and the attackers use a spoofed IP address to make tracking and stopping DOS difficult. 

DOS attacks can be advanced to multiple machines, in which case it becomes a Distributed DOS or DDOS. These attacks can be prevented using firewalls for packet filtering, encryption, and authentication.

 

  • Phishing and social fraud

There might be attempts to steal data such as passwords, usernames, and credit card information. The threat actors send an email containing a link to users leading them to a fraudulent website that looks like the real deal, where they freely disclose their information. Counter-measures to phishing include frequent system scanning, using spam filter and spam blockers, and training employees not to respond to suspicious emails. 

 

  • Physical security 

Physical security in CSP data centers directly plays a role in client data security. Datacenter facilities can be physically accessed by intruders that can tamper with or transfer data without your knowledge and approval. In order to mitigate physical cybersecurity concerns, businesses must work with CSPs with adequate physical security measures in their data centers and near-zero incidence response time. 

 

  • Domain Name System (DNS) attacks

DNS attacks exploit vulnerabilities in the domain name system (DNS), which translates hostnames into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for a web browser to load internet resources. DNS servers can be exposed to many attacks since all networked apps, from email to browsers and eCommerce apps, operate on the DNS. Attacks to watch out for here include Man in the Middle attacks, DNS Tunneling, Domain lock-up and UDP Flood attacks.

 

To Summarize: 

Unlike on-premise infrastructural security, cloud security threats come from multiple angles. Maintaining data integrity on the cloud takes collaboration between CSPs and business. At all times you must bear in mind that the responsibility for your company’s data is always your own. Consider adopting security best practices, monitoring solutions, and expert consultation for a secure cloud environment.

Want to talk to one of our experts? Click here to schedule a free consultation call.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/09
Sep 9, 2020 11:11:49 AM
Cloud Computing - Top 10 Security Issues, Challenges, and Solutions
Cloud Security

Sep 9, 2020 11:11:49 AM

Cloud Computing - Top 10 Security Issues, Challenges, and Solutions

Cloud computing is oftentimes the most cost-effective means to use, maintain, and upgrade your infrastructure, as it removes the need to invest in costly in-house infrastructure. It can be defined as the outsourced IT infrastructure that improves computing performance. 

However, despite its many...

5 Serverless Development Best Practices with AWS Lambda


Application development is changing and improving with new serverless technologies. You can shorten the amount of code needed to write and reduce or eliminate the issues associated with a traditional server-based model when you use a serverless model. But with this development model, there are some key aspects to focus on to ensure you are building robust applications.

We’re going to talk about Infrastructure as Code, Testing functions Locally, Managing Code, Testing, and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) and do a high-level recap of what serverless means.

What is Serverless?

A serverless application is an app that doesn’t require the provisioning or management of any servers. Your application code still runs on a server, of course; you just don’t need to worry about managing it. You can just write code and let AWS handle the rest.

Lambda code is stored in S3, and when a function is invoked, the code is downloaded onto a server, managed by AWS, and executed.

AWS also covers the scalability and availability of your code. When you receive traffic to your lambda functions, AWS will scale up or down based on the number of requests to your application.

This approach to application development makes it easier to build and scale your application quickly. You don’t have to worry about servers, you just write code.

1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

When creating your infrastructure, you can use the AWS CLI, the AWS Console, or IaC. IaC is what AWS recommends as a best practice when developing new applications.

When you build your infrastructure as code, you have more control overyour environment in terms of audibility, automatability, and repeatability. You could create a Dev environment with IaC templates and then replicate that environment exactly for stage or prod. (while with the alternative you increase the likelihood to do something incorrectly and not replicate environments). When testing your application, it’s important to replicate what’s in prod to be sure that your code does what you intend for itto do.

Traditionally when using AWS, you would write CloudFormationTemplates. CloudFormationTemplates can become very long and hard to read so AWS came out with a solution to this if you’re writing a serverless app. You can use AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model). These templates can be written in JSON or YAML format and AWS SAM has it’s own CLI to help you build your applications. SAM is built on top of CloudFormation. Designed to shorten the amount of code needed to build your serverless infrastructure.

2. Testing Locally — AWS SAM Local

Before making deployments and updates to your application you should be testing everything to make sure you’re getting the desired outcome.

AWS SAM Local offers command-line tools that you can use to test your serverless applications before deploying them to AWS. SAM Local uses Docker behind the scenes enabling you to test your functions.

You can locally test an API you defined in your SAM template before creating it in API Gateway. You can validate templates you create to make sure you don’t have issues with deployment. Using these tools can help reduce the risk of error with your application. You can view logs locally and debug your code, allowing you to iterate changes quickly & smoothly.

3. Optimizing Code Management

Ideally, Lambda functions shouldn’t be overly complicated and coupled together. There are some specific recommendations around how you should write and organize your code.

Coding Best Practices
  • Decoupling Business Logic from the Handler

When writing your Lambda functions, you should receive parameters from within the “handler.” This is the root of Lambda functions. For example, if you had an API Gateway endpoint as the event source, you may have parameter values that are passed into the endpoint. Your handler should take those values and pass them to another function that handles the business logic. Doing this enables you to have code that is decoupled. This makestesting your code much more accessible, because the code is more isolated. Also, this allows you to reuse business logic through your app.

  • Fail Fast

Configure short timeouts for your functions. You don’t want to have a function spinning helplessly while waiting for a dependency to respond. Lambda is billed based on the duration of your function’s execution time. There is no reason to incur a higher charge when your functions’ dependencies are unresponsive.

  • Trim Dependencies

To reduce cold start times, you should trim the dependencies included to just the essentials at runtime. Lambda function code packages are permitted to be at most 50 MB compressed and 250 MB when extracted in the runtime environment.

Code Management Best Practices

Writing good code is only a battle, now you need to manage it properly to win the war. Like stated earlier, the development speed of serverless applications is generally much faster than a typical environment. Having a good solution for source control and management of your Lambda code will help ensure secure, efficient, and smooth change management processes.

AWS recommends having a 1:1 relationship between Lambda functions and code repositories and organizing your environment to be very fine-grained.

If you were developing multiple environments for your Lambda code, Dev and Prod, it makes sense to separate those into different release branches. The primary purpose of organizing your code this way is to ensure that each environment has it’s own separate, decoupled, environment. You don’t want to work on developing a modern application only to be left with a monolithic coupled code-base.

4. Testing

Testing your code is the best way to ensure quality when you are developing a serverless architecture.

  • Unit Tests

AWS recommends that you unit test your Lambda function code thoroughly, focusing mostly on the business logic outside your handler function. The bulk of your logic and tests should occur with mock objects and functions that you have full control over within your code-base.

You can create local test automation using AWS SAM Local, which can serve as local end-to-end testing of your function code.

  • Integration Tests

For integration tests, AWS recommends that you create lower life-cycle versions of your Lambda functions where your code packages are deployed and invoked through sample events that your CI/CD pipeline can trigger and inspect the results of.

5. Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

AWS recommends that you programmatically manage all of your serverless deployments through CI/CD pipelines. Because the speed of development with a serverless architecture will be much more frequent. Creating manual deployments and updates along with the need to deploy more often can result in bottlenecks and errors.

AWS provides a suite of tools for setting up a CI/CD pipeline.

  • AWS CodeCommit

CodeCommit is AWS’s equivalent to GitHub or BitBucket. Providing private Git repositories and the ability to create branches. Allowing for best practices of code management with fine-grained access control.

  • AWS CodePipeline

CodePipeline automates the build, test, and deploy phases of your release process every time there is a code change. CodePipeline integrates with CodeCommit or other third-party services such as GitHub.

  • AWS CodeBuild

CodeBuild can be used for the build stage of your pipeline. You can use it to execute unit tests and create a new Lambda code package. Integrating it with AWS SAM to push your code to Amazon S3 and push the new packages to Lambda via CodeDeploy.

  • AWS CodeDeploy

CodeDeploy is used to automate deployments of new code to your Lambda functions, eliminating the need for error-prone manual operations. CodeDeploy has different deployment preferences you can use depending on what your needs are. For example, you can create a “Linear10PercentEvery1Minute” deployment, transferring 10% of your functions’ traffic to the new version of the function every one minute for 10 minutes.

  • AWS CodeStar

CodeStar is a unified user interface that allows you to create a new application with best practices already implemented. When you create a CodeStar project, it creates a fully implemented CI/CD pipeline from the start with tests already defined. CodeStar is the easiest way to get started building an application.

Sample Serverless Architectures

Now that we’ve covered some best practices for developing serverless applications, you should get some hands-on experience building applications. Here is a repository of tutorials for sample serverless applications.

Recap

Serverless applications take away the restraints of managing servers and allow you to focus on your application code. You can develop applications that meet business needs faster than ever. AWS provides a whole host of serverless technologies and tools to help you maintain and deploy your applications.

Need to dive fast into app development and deployment? At Cloudride, we provide end-to-end AWS Lambda serverless and other comprehensive services that help optimize the performance, business value, cost, and security of your cloud solution.

Contact us to learn more.

 

ran-dvir/blog/
2020/08
Aug 23, 2020 10:28:02 AM
5 Serverless Development Best Practices with AWS Lambda
AWS, High-Tech, Lambda

Aug 23, 2020 10:28:02 AM

5 Serverless Development Best Practices with AWS Lambda

Application development is changing and improving with new serverless technologies. You can shorten the amount of code needed to write and reduce or eliminate the issues associated with a traditional server-based model when you use a serverless model. But with this development model, there are some...

DevOps As A Service

DevOps as a service is an emerging philosophy in application development. DevOps as a service moves traditional collaboration of the development and operations team to the cloud, where many of the processes can be automated using stackable virtual development tools.

As many organizations adopt DevOps and migrate their apps to the cloud, their tools used to build, test, and deploy processes change towards making ‘continuous delivery’ an effective managed cloud service. We’ll take a look at what such a move would entail, and what it means for the next generation of DevOps teams.

DevOps as a Managed Cloud Service

What is DevOps in the cloud? Essentially it is the migration of your tools and processes for continuous delivery to a hosted virtual platform. The delivery pipeline becomes a seamless orchestration where developers, testers, and operations professionals collaborate as one, and as much of the deployment process as possible is automated. Here are some of the more popular commercial options for moving DevOps to the cloud on AWS and Azure.

AWS Tools and Services for DevOps

Amazon Web Services has built a powerful global network for virtually hosting some of the world’s most complex IT environments. With fiber linked data centers arranged all over the world and a payment schedule that measures exactly the services you use down to the millisecond of computing time, AWS is a fast and relatively easy way to migrate your DevOps to the cloud.


Though AWS has scores of powerful interactive features, three particular services are the core of continuous cloud delivery.

AWS CodeBuild

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed service for compiling code, running quality assurance testing through automated processes, and producing deployment-ready software. CodeBuild is highly secure, as each customer receives a unique encryption key to build into every artifact produced.

CodeBuild offers automatic scaling and grows on-demand with your needs, even allowing the simultaneous deployment of two different build versions, which allows for comparison testing in the production environment.

Particularly important for many organizations is CodeBuild’s cost efficiency. It comes with no upfront costs and customers pay only for the milliseconds of compute time required to produce releases and connect seamlessly with other Amazon services to add power and flexibility on demand without spending six figures on hardware to support development.

AWS CodePipeline

With a slick graphical interface, you set parameters and build the model for your perfect deployment scenario and CodePipeline takes it from there. With no servers to provision and deploy, it lets you hit the ground running, bringing continuous delivery by executing automated tasks to perform the complete delivery cycle every time a change is made to the code.

AWS CodeDeploy

Once a new build makes it through CodePipeline, CodeDeploy delivers the working package to every instance outlined in your pre-configured parameters. This makes it simple to synchronize builds and instantly patch or upgrade at once. CodeDeploy is code-agnostic and easily incorporates common legacy code. Every instance of your deployment is easily tracked in the AWS Management Console, and errors or problems can be easily rolled back through the GUI.
Combining these AWS tools with others in the AWSinventory provides all the building blocks needed to deploy a safe, scalable continuous delivery model in the cloud. Though the engineering adjustments are daunting, the long term stability and savings make it a move worth considering sooner rather than later.

 

Microsoft Azure Tools and Services for DevOps

Microsoft is bringing it’s a potent punch to the DevOps as a managed service space with Azure. Azure offers an impressive set of innovative and interoperable tools for DevOps.

With so many organizations having existing investment in Microsoft products and services, Azure may offer the easiest transition to hybrid or full cloud environments. Microsoft has had decades to build secure global infrastructure and currently hosts about two-thirds of the world’s Fortune 500 companies. Some of Microsoft’s essential DevOps tools include:

Azure App Service

As a trusted platform around the world with partners in every aspect of the IT industry, Microsoft’s Azure App Service provides endless combinations of options for development. Whether apps are developed in the ubiquitous Visual Studio app or the cloud’s largest offering of program languages, DevOps teams can create secure, enterprise-quality apps with this service.

Azure DevTest Labs

Azure DevTest Labs makes it easy for your DevOps team to experiment. Quickly provision and build out your Azure DevOps environment using prebuilt and customizable templates and get to work in a viable sandbox immediately. Learn the ins and outs of Azure in repeatable, disposable environments, then move your lessons to production.

Azure Stack

For shops that want to partially migrate to cloud-based DevOps, Azure Stack is a tool for integrating Azure services with your existing datacenter. Move current segments of your production pipeline like virtual machines, Docker containers, and more from in-house to the cloud with straightforward migration paths. Azure lets you unify app development by mirroring resources locally and in the cloud, enabling easy collaboration for teams working in a hybrid cloud environment.

Microsoft provides a wide array of tools for expanding your environment’s capabilities and keeping it secure.

To Summarize

The continuing evolution and merger of DevOps and cloud-based architecture open a world of possibilities. Some industry experts believe that DevOps itself was built around on-premise tools and practices and that migrating to the cloud will bring the end of DevOps and mark the beginning of the ‘NoOps’ era, where developers will have all the knowledge and resources they need to provision their own environments on the fly without breaking form the task of development. In the industry, there is concern that this may be the death knell for the operations aspect of DevOps.

But regardless of the tools and methods used, development has always been driven by human thinking and needs, and developers who focus on creating and improving software will always benefit from teammates whose primary aim is keeping infrastructure operating.

Contact us to learn more.

ran-dvir/blog/
2020/08
Aug 16, 2020 10:36:04 AM
DevOps As A Service
DevOps

Aug 16, 2020 10:36:04 AM

DevOps As A Service

DevOps as a service is an emerging philosophy in application development. DevOps as a service moves traditional collaboration of the development and operations team to the cloud, where many of the processes can be automated using stackable virtual development tools.

Automating your production workloads

As companies achieve better market penetration and expansion, they face challenges in efficiency, scalability, visibility, and speed in business processes. Unless they effectively unify and automate processes, costs begin to soar, and the quality of customer service declines. Workload automation is about improving back-office efficiency and streamlining transactions and processes.  

The process of workflow automation is grounded in technology. It involves establishing a single source of control for operations, process scheduling, and the introduction of self-service capabilities.  

Why bother with workload automation? 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning today lead to faster, precise, and cost-effective business processes. The cloud simplifies and accelerates the production workload automation process. Forbes reports that 83% of business workloads will be shifted to the cloud by the end of the year. 

Workload automation leads to streamlined and highly productive business operations while elevating the customer experience. The process removes routine, redundant, and inefficient tasks opening the way for purpose-driven, data-driven, timely, impactful, customer-centric, and cost-efficient operations. The process is closely related to job scheduling, and it involves making changes to your technology infrastructure and the way you gather, access, and use data.  

The use cases of workload automation include:

  • The sales process in marketing: SaaS software solutions can accelerate your lead generation and lead nurturing. The automation of sales and marketing processes leads to consistency in the buyer journey, even when messaging must be handled by diverse teams of staff, agencies, and consultants.  
  • Employee onboarding: Onboarding is a repetitive procedure fraught with the risk of human error. Self-learning cloud solutions can help remove the need to record an employee's personal and payment information manually.  
  • Self-service platforms: You can get access to automated customer service solutions that link to a knowledge database. It becomes easier to build bots that empower customers to serve themselves with guaranteed intelligent and accurate responses.  
  • Retail: An automated point of sales system automatically feeds sales data into a pricing or audit system daily. It leads to better tracking of sales and automated updating of retail pricing.
  • Security and resource utilization on the cloud: Automated provisioning and access control can lead to efficient cloud resource utilization and better security.  

Achieving workload automation 

In technology, workloads comprise data, application configuration, and the configuration of hardware resources, support services, and network connectivity. The process of automation requires a comprehensive audit of each of these components.  

Identify the right cloud solutions  

Modernization of business processes can cause severe disruptions. An incremental approach to cloud migration can help you get there cheaply and without impacting productivity. You can start the process by finding manual business operations that can benefit from self-enablement cloud solutions. 

Analyze application function and current environment 

Some workloads need high performing network storage and may thus not be suitable for the cloud. Some others are legacy in nature and are not designed for operation in distributed computing environments. The same is the case for seasonal needs apps such as those used for short term projects. A workload automation framework is less burdened when you leave these out. 

Assess computing resources and costs  

Batch workloads such as those designed to pore over your transaction data require a lot of memory and storage capacity. These workloads run in the background and are not time-sensitive. Online workloads need more computing and network resources. When creating the business case for the automation process, analyze the costs involved in running them on the cloud versus leaving them on-prem. 

Think about security and compliance 

Security itself is a task that can be automated in the cloud, but it should nonetheless be an underlying principle in workload automation and orchestration. Carefully evaluate the security and compliance risks of the cloud options - including public, private, and hybrid - that you choose for the destination of your business processes. 

Assess connectivity needs  

Moving workloads to the cloud require network reconfiguration with regards to availability & accessibility security. Only a secure, highly available and high performing network can support reliable and impactful automation of production workloads. 

Automate by department  

The easiest workloads to automate are the processes in marketing, HR, and finance. Even though your business has its unique pain points, the hurdles to efficiency in these processes are common in most enterprises. 

To Summarize: 

Cloud computing is a compelling option for production workload automation. But cloud workloads are vulnerable to data breaches, account compromise, and resource exploitation. In partnership with Radware, which provides an agentless, cloud-native solution to protect both the overall security posture of cloud environments, as well as protect individual cloud workloads against cloud-native attack vectors, Cloudride can help you automate workloads and achieve superior efficiency without compromising security.  

Radware’s Cloud Workload Protection Service detects promiscuous permissions to your workloads, hardens security configurations before data exposure occurs, and detects data theft using advanced machine-learning algorithms.

Together we offer end-to-end migration & production workload automation, helping companies just like yours get the best value from the cloud with services such as architecture design, cost optimization, and security, and a full suite SaaS solution for cloud workload security. The Radware cloud workload security solution automates and optimizes permission monitoring, data theft detection, and workload protection, complete with alerts and reports. 

Schedule an exploratory call. 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/07
Jul 26, 2020 4:13:51 PM
Automating your production workloads
Cloud Security

Jul 26, 2020 4:13:51 PM

Automating your production workloads

As companies achieve better market penetration and expansion, they face challenges in efficiency, scalability, visibility, and speed in business processes. Unless they effectively unify and automate processes, costs begin to soar, and the quality of customer service declines. Workload automation is...

5 Best Practices to reduce your bills in Azure

Cloud cost-saving should be part of the implementation and management strategies from the get-go. Businesses that transition to the cloud is increasingly realizing that cloud computing and cost management must go hand-in-hand. The pay-as-you-go structure of cloud computing can work in your favor, but it could also be what causes costs jumping through the roof. CIOs and CTOs should lead the cost optimization discussion and champion cost-aware computing across teams.

 

When working with MS-Azure, there a more than a few must-have Best Practices you need to implement to Reduce Bills, and we’re happy to bring about the 5 most important ones:

 

1. Optimize resources

Cost discussions should be part and parcel of technical discussions and strategies. Adopting FinOps and CostOps models is one such approach to create a cost evangelist out of everyone, from the finance teams to the development and operation squads. Developers have a natural affinity for selecting large and powerful resources that sometimes go unused or underused. Having the cost optimization discussion early on can help to steer a cost-efficient awareness and resource utilization.

Right-sizing virtual machines is among the most effective initiatives in optimizing resource and cost efficiency on Azure. Most developers spin up VMs that are larger than what is needed. Over-provisioning a VM can lead to higher costs. Stay on top of costs, the schedule starts, and stop times for these VMS. Embrace a performance monitoring approach for the under or over-utilization of the resource to guide a cost reduction that doesn't compromise performance.

2. Terminate unused assets

There are tools for auto-scaling your resources, but this can only be as effective as the metrics used to employ in the scaling. Use the parameters reported by the application, including page response time and queue length. These metrics can reveal idle resources maintained but not being used.

One of the most significant cost drivers in Microsoft Azure is unattached disk storage. When you launch VMs, disk storage gets assigned to act as the local storage for the application. This disk storage remains active even after you terminate a VM, and Microsoft continues to charge for it. Regularly checking for and deleting unused assets in your infrastructure, such as disk storage, can significantly reduce your Azure bill.

3. Use reserved instances

Pricing optimization is one other critical consideration for reducing spend in Azure. The provider offers reserved instances for workloads that you are confident will be running for a long & consistent time period, such as websites and customer apps. If you identify and anticipate such apps and their usage in advance, you can save a great deal by reserving instances. Reserved instances are an indispensable tool for companies that want to stay on top of their cloud budgets.

You get to take advantage of the great discounts offered when you pay for capacity upfront. Depending on how long you make the reservation for, both Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and Azure Hybrid can enable you to save up to:

  • 72% on Linux VMs
  • 80% on Windows VMs
  • 65% on Cosmos DB databases
  • 55% on SQL Databases

The best thing is that you can get out of the agreement anytime, and Microsoft will reimburse you for any unused credit.

4. Move workloads to containers

Azure VMs is a popular computing option for performance efficiency, but the Azure Kubernetes is more cost-efficient. The containers are lighter and thus cheaper than the VMs. They have a low footprint and support fast operability.

AKS will enable you to combine several tasks into a small number of servers. You will get features such as wizard-based resource optimization, built-in monitoring, role-based access control, and one-click updates. Containers are quicker to deploy than VMs.

5. Right-size SQL database

Your Azure cost management strategy is not complete without looking at your PaaS assets. Many developers use the Azure SQL database to manage apps. It's essential to track the utilization of the SQL Databases and the workloads running on them. Azure pricing for SQL Databases follows a DTU model that encompasses memory, compute, and IO resources.

There are three tiers, including Basic for development and testing, Standard for multi-user apps, and Premium for high-performance multi-user apps. Choose a service tier that gives you the best cost efficiency without sacrificing performance.

To Conclude:

Organizations need the right plans and automation tools for reducing Azure cloud computing costs. These five best practices are the basic techniques to adopt on the path to cost maturity based on Microsoft's 3 part formula:

  • Measure
  • Snooze
  • and Resize.

For a scaled evaluation and optimization of the Azure environment, you might need to invest in an intelligent cloud management solution that can drill down costs and track resource utilization and performance.

At Cloudride, we help our clients to plan and execute a comprehensive and hands-on cost optimization strategy in the cloud environment. From migration to architecture design and container management, we pay a close eye on costs and security to achieve an agile infrastructure that delivers the most business value.

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/07
Jul 14, 2020 5:15:40 PM
5 Best Practices to reduce your bills in Azure
Azure

Jul 14, 2020 5:15:40 PM

5 Best Practices to reduce your bills in Azure

Cloud cost-saving should be part of the implementation and management strategies from the get-go. Businesses that transition to the cloud is increasingly realizing that cloud computing and cost management must go hand-in-hand. The pay-as-you-go structure of cloud computing can work in your favor,...

Go Serverless With AWS Lambda

Go Serverless With AWS Lambda
Going serverless is the new tech trend for businesses. It helps with consolidated functionality in all use cases, speedy development, and automatic scalability, among other advantages. AWS Lambda is one of the leading cloud solutions that can spare you the time-consuming complexities of creating your server environment.

What does serverless mean?
Going serverless doesn't mean running code with no servers. That's a technical impossibility. Serverless computing means that your cloud provider creates and manages the server environment, taking the problem off your mind. This computing model significantly makes it simple and fast to deploy code into production with all maintenance and administration tasks handled by the provider.

How to go serverless with AWS Lambda: Example

In the AWS serverless world, there is:

● No server provisioning and management
● No managing hosts
● No pathing
● No OS bootstrapping

Lambda supports different programming languages. You can use python, Node.js Go, Ruby, C#, and Java for this serverless function example. To create and deploy a serverless function with AWS Lambda, go to the Services Menu of your AWS account and choose ‘Lambda’. Choose ‘Create Function’ to get started.

Use the integrated code editor in the Function Code section. Replace that code in the edit pane with this simple function example for starters:

exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {

const result = event.number1 + event.number2;

callback (null, result);
};

Picture1-3



In the upper right corner of the interface, navigate to ‘Test and Save’ and click on ‘Configure Test Events’. In the dialog box that comes up, choose Hello World as the Node.js blueprint and update it to:
{
"number1": 3,
"number2": 2
}

Picture1-2


Click the create button to test this function. Save and check to confirm that the created function features in the dropdown of functions. Once you click the Test button, this function will execute, giving you a result of 5.

Picture1-4


Use cases of a serverless cloud

● Day to day operations: You can leverage the platform for daily business functions such as report generations or automated backups.
● Real-time notifications: You can set SNS alerts that trigger under specific policies. You can integrate that with Slack and other services that add a mobility aspect to the Lambda alerts.
● Customer service: One other use case for the serverless cloud is chatbots. You can configure code such that it triggers when a user inputs a query. Like the rest of the features, you only pay when the bot is used.
● Processing S3 objects: The serverless AWS Lambda is the right platform for image-heavy applications. Thumbnail generation is a quick process. You can further expect advanced capabilities in resizing images and delivering all types of image formats.

Advantages

Reducing costs
The AWS Lambda serverless service operates on a pay-as-you-go model. You pay for what you use, and that helps to slash a significant fraction of your operating costs. The billing you get at the end of the month is in every cent equal to the time your apps were used. No resource wastage.
Unlike other cloud providers, AWS calculates your server time used and rounds up the figure to the nearest 100 milliseconds. That transparency improves your visibility on operating costs. Small and medium scale businesses have reported being able to save close to $30,000 every month by going serverless with AWS Lambda.

On-time scalability

The AWS Lambda serverless service is for businesses that want agile scalability. That means that if the use case of your app doubles overnight, you will have enough capacity to handle the server requests. AWS Lambda serverless is designed for your apps to scale automatically. Your app can jump from 4 server requests this minute to 3000 the next minute, without you having to step in to configure it anew.

Accelerated iterative development
With the AWS Lambda serverless platform, you can ship codes straight from the vendor console. That removes the need for continuous delivery tools. Developers, therefore, get the time to improve product features and capabilities. Further, you can move from the idea to production in a few days as opposed to months.
The steps involved in code ideation, testing, and deployments are shorter. For a business trying to save costs, the automaticity of the system means that you can maintain a lean team.

Better security
By switching to a serverless cloud, developers develop code that is in line with best practices and security protocols. That's because all development is forced to use code that functions within the serverless environment.

Centralized functions
There are limitless ways to consolidate business functions with AWS Lambda. For instance, you can integrate your marketing applications with a mass mailing service such as SES. Such functionality can enable your teams to work as one for better outcomes. It translates to efficient and streamlined operations.

Need to dive fast into app development and deployment? At Cloudride, we provide end-to-end AWS Lambda serverless and other comprehensive services that help optimize the performance, business value, cost, and security of your cloud solution. Contact us to learn more.

 

yarden-shitrit
2020/07
Jul 8, 2020 1:21:51 PM
Go Serverless With AWS Lambda
AWS, Lambda

Jul 8, 2020 1:21:51 PM

Go Serverless With AWS Lambda

Go Serverless With AWS Lambda Going serverless is the new tech trend for businesses. It helps with consolidated functionality in all use cases, speedy development, and automatic scalability, among other advantages. AWS Lambda is one of the leading cloud solutions that can spare you the...

AWS S3 - How to Secure Your Storage

Amazon S3 is one of the largest cloud storage solutions. Over the past few years, there have been countless security breaches on this platform, most of them stemming from S3 security setting misconfigurations.

Let's explore some of the S3 storage security challenges, their solutions, and best practices.

S3 Security Challenges

ACLs

This is an older access control mechanism on AWS S3. It has limited flexibility when it comes to usability. The XML document sets up the first layer of access. Even though only the owner has access, the account can be opened up to the public.

Bucket Policies

Bucket policy is the latest access control mechanism after ACLs. It uses a JSON format that makes it a bit more reliable than ACLs. There is the AWS Policy Generator that simplifies configuration with Bucket Policies. Nonetheless, ACLs are on the first tab, and it's easier to make something public than it is to change and review permissions on Bucket Policies.

IAM Policies

These are the permissions that you use to govern access throughout your AWS account. These permissions only apply to AWS users, so you cannot make your buckets public with them. Nonetheless, the service will expose your content when you allow access to another AWS service account.

Object ACLs and Policy Statements

These object-level controls use XML just like bucket ACL. These controls can grant access to anyone in any corner of the world with an AWS S3 account. There is a further risk of data leak with your policy statements. Both your Bucket and IAM Policy statements can override the object ACL and open up your buckets to the public.

Pre-Signed URLs

These are short-lived object-level policies used to share files. They are created using code, and anyone with the URL will have open access to your data.

How to protect data stored in AWS S3 buckets

Amazon Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) is among the oldest cloud services by AWS. Started in 2006, the service’s flexibility in storage sizes has made it popular among businesses regardless of the security challenges. The AWS 3 security model may be partially to blame for the cloud storage security challenges, but a large number of the breaches happen because users misunderstand the configurations.

Here are some possible solutions:

Use Amazon S3 block public access.

You can set up unified controls that limit access to your S3 resources. When you use Amazon S3 block access, the security controls are enforced regardless of how your resources are set up.

Use multi-factor authentication (MFA)

MFA works reliably well. Enforce MFA on your AWS Identity, Root user, and IAM users. You can similarly use MFA at your federate identity provider. That helps you to utilize the same MFA processes that currently exist in your organization.

Enforce least privilege policies

Control who gets permission to each of your AWS 3 resources. Set up actions that you want to allow and restrict. That will ensure that people only get the permission they need to perform a task.

Use IAM roles for applications

Do not store AWS credentials in the application. Instead, work with IAM roles to manage the temporary credentials for apps that need to access AWS S3. Do not distribute passwords to AWS service or Amazon EC2 instance.

Security Best Practices for AWS S3

S3 is not necessarily an insecure storage solution. The security and reliability of your resources depend on how well you secure, access, and use your data. Use these S3 best practices to enhance your AWS services security:

  • Protect data at rest and on transit with encryption
  • Configure life policy to move unwanted data and secure it
  • Identify and audit your S3 buckets
  • Identify and audit the encryption status of all your Amazon S3 buckets with Amazon S3 inventory
  • Use AWS S3 security monitoring solutions and metrics to maintain the security and reliability of your Amazon S3 resources.
  • Use Cloud Trail to log and maintain each event across AWS services.

Whether you are facing security, compliance, or performance challenges on AWS or any other cloud service, Cloudride has got your back. We provide comprehensive consultancy and implementation cloud solution services and have handled dozens of cloud migrations and optimization initiatives for businesses across all industries. We can help you optimize and maximize your business value from the cloud with assured security, compliance, and best practices.

Contact us to learn more.

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/06
Jun 23, 2020 2:48:25 PM
AWS
AWS S3 - How to Secure Your Storage
AWS

Jun 23, 2020 2:48:25 PM

AWS S3 - How to Secure Your Storage

Amazon S3 is one of the largest cloud storage solutions. Over the past few years, there have been countless security breaches on this platform, most of them stemming from S3 security setting misconfigurations.

GitOps - One For All

GitOps is an IaC (infrastructure as code) methodology where your Git repository is your one single source of truth, offers a central place for managing your infrastructure and application code. GitOps can apply to containerized applications (e.g YAML files for Kubernetes) and non-containerized applications (e.g Terraform for AWS). That allows DevOps to harness the power of Git including versioning, branches, pull requests, and incorporate that into their CI/CD pipelines. Adopting GitOps enhances developer experience, speeds up compliance and stability, and ensures consistency and repeatability.

GitOps help you manage your infrastructure close with your application code and allow your teams to collaborate easily and quickly. Here is an example of infrastructure change using the GitOps methodology:

  • A developer needs a larger instance type for his application.
  • He opens a pull request In the relevant Git repository with the updated instance type.
  • the pull request triggers the CI pipeline to verify that the code is valid.
  • The DevOps team reviews the changes and the pull request is approved and merged.
  • After a new commit was added to the master branch, the CD pipeline is triggered and the changes take effect automatically.

The above is what is described as a GitOps workflow. It makes it possible to achieve faster deployment without having to apply manual and “of the record” changes to your infrastructure.

GitOps vs. DevOps

GitOps is a subset of DevOps that leverages Git as the source control software, following best practices as the operating model for building cloud-native apps. The purpose of GitOps is to help the DevOps teams to take control over his infrastructure by making code configuration management and deployments more efficient.

On the other hand, GitOps makes it easier for DevOps to take on IT's self-service roles, developers can easily push new changes and after the DevOps approved the change it applies immediately and automatically.

When adopting GitOps, here is how your life becomes easier:

  • DevOps can implement new changes to the infrastructure safely and quickly.
  • Developers can collaborate with DevOps.
  • All changes are audited and can be reviewed and revert.
  • Enforcing ONE idle state of your infrastructure.
  • Each change is documented and approved.
  • Integrations to CI/CD systems.
  • Easily replicate your infrastructure across environments.
  • Best suits for Disaster Recovery scenarios.

But there are some drawbacks in GitOps:

  • All manual changes will be overridden.
  • When the workflow is not defined correctly, changes can impact your application performance.
  • Security best practices need to be enforced and regularly checks.
  • Small and quick changes need to go through all the GitOps processes before applied to production.

GitOps For Kubernetes

GitOps processes are often used with containerized applications because Kubernetes can take declarative input as the desired state and apply the changes. By using Git as the version control system, DevOps and Developers teams can collaborate more easily and manage their environments deployments because GitOps make the deployment process shorter and transparent. Kubernetes is the most known with GitOps because it became the container orchestration standard, the same desired state files can be applied to various environments (EKS, AKS, GKE, OpenShift, etc...) with almost no changes and prevent “vendor lock”.

GitOps In The Cloud

Cloud providers natively support GitOps processes, using Git with a combination of various IaC tools (e.g Terraform, Ansible, etc) and CI/CD systems you can automatically create and manage your cloud infrastructure (including Load Balancers, Auto Scaling Groups, Object Storage, etc). GitOps can also help you gain more control over your monthly bill, by enforcing only one state and override manual creation of instances, clusters, etc. that can accrue cost very quickly.

GitOps can also help you gain more control over the security and cost of your cloud account, by enforcing one state that complies with the company security requirements and override manual creation of instances, clusters, etc. that can accrue cost very quickly.

Adopting GitOps processes can be intimidating, but our DevOps team at CloudRide has in-depth expertise in security best practices and GitOps processes. together we can simplify and speed up your DevOps workflows and shorten your deployment cycles to the Cloud.

 

Set a call today.

 

avner-vidal-blog
2020/06
Jun 16, 2020 5:54:32 PM
GitOps - One For All
DevOps

Jun 16, 2020 5:54:32 PM

GitOps - One For All

GitOps is an IaC (infrastructure as code) methodology where your Git repository is your one single source of truth, offers a central place for managing your infrastructure and application code. GitOps can apply to containerized applications (e.g YAML files for Kubernetes) and non-containerized...

Private or Public Cloud - Which is Right for Your Business?

It wasn’t long ago when cloud computing was a niche field that only the most advanced organizations were dabbling with. Now the cloud is very much the mainstream, and it is rare to find businesses that use IT that doesn’t rely, in whole or in part, on cloud environments for their infrastructure. But if you’re going to add cloud services to your company, you'll need to choose between the private cloud and the public cloud.

Of course, cloud computing is dominated by some of the biggest names, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure – all of which offer private and public cloud services. So, how do you know which one is right for you?

Here we take a look at the public cloud and the private cloud so as to establish the strengths and weaknesses of each, and try to help you decide which is most suitable for your business.

Public Cloud

The public cloud is the more commonly used form of cloud computing. It’s essentially a server that shares resources between a number of different customers. As such, public cloud environments can be perfect for smaller businesses or those organizations that are just looking into the prospect of cloud computing and want to see how it can potentially benefit them. The public cloud can offer enormous infrastructure resources at no set-up cost and with a simple cost structure moving forward.

Having said that, cost structures in public cloud platforms can get complicated rather quickly once you start to scale, so check out our cost optimization best practices to make sure you are able to keep it simple from start to finish. 

Of course, there are downsides to the public cloud, such as loss of control and high volume capacity prices. It is sometimes believed that because the cloud is public, it’s not secure. But that’s not necessarily true.

High-quality public cloud providers keep up-to-date with all the latest security regulations. This means it’s important for organizations to look into the specifics of their provider, but there are many excellent cloud computing companies offering highly secure services. There may be some instances where a public cloud may not be deemed secure enough, mostly because of regulations, but for the vast majority of businesses and organizations, it’s sufficient.

As we see it, regarding security, if not taken seriously it’s really easy to become vulnerable to security threats in the public cloud environment.

The security of your cloud environment is a joint responsibility between your cloud provider and you, so you need to be knowledgeable of the shared responsibility model of your provider, and set in place the means to maintain security on your end.

There are, however, some issues and concerns you need to be aware of. For example, without proper monitoring and enforcement, the bill can accumulate very fast without noticing. 

Public clouds also have a lot of benefits. For example, using serverless infrastructure that allows you to pay only for what you actually use. Smaller companies that don’t have the capital can benefit enormously from the reliability, simplicity, and scalability of the public cloud.

 

Private Cloud

The private cloud is the opposite of the public cloud. A public cloud is shared by multiple businesses and organizations, whereas a private cloud is entirely dedicated to the needs of a single company. Private clouds are often preferred by larger companies with more complicated IT needs and requirements, that have the resources to maintain a private cloud infrastructure.

If your business has very specific security regulations that it needs to follow, a private cloud might be your answer (if your preferred public cloud provider doesn’t have a data center in your region).

The main reasons to choose a private cloud are price and customization, on an enterprise-scale, you can benefit from the high volume discounts from vendors (some cloud providers also offer enterprise-level agreements), and that allows you to customize your physical and virtual infrastructure for your exact needs.

 

With the benefit of customization and price, there are also disadvantages, from securing the data center from the physical aspect to the virtual aspect. And most important you need to develop or purchase all the software that allows you to have the “modern” cloud experience and services while managing your capacity to answer the demand.

Typically, private clouds are used by larger businesses with complex requirements. However, if your organization does not have the technical expertise to work with a private cloud alone, you can opt for fully-managed third-party providers.

 

Hybrid Cloud

Another commonly-held myth is that you must choose between the public or private cloud. In fact, you can opt for hybrid cloud services that take a little from both. These can be extremely useful for business continuity and data resilience. For example, if your applications require high availability and you only have one private data center, you can use the public cloud infrastructure for disaster recovery or backup storage purposes, a hybrid cloud environment could be perfect.

 

Which cloud to choose?

The choice between public, private, and hybrid cloud solutions depends on a variety of factors, use cases, and limitations. In the real world, it’s not an either/or situation, especially since organizations tend to leverage all three types of cloud solutions considering the inherent value propositions and tradeoffs.

 

If you are not certain which form of cloud computing is right for your business, then you should discuss the needs of your business with professionals. Choose a cloud service provider that has expertise in working with businesses similar to yours. They will be able to recommend the best form of cloud services for you.

At Cloudride, we work with AWS, Azure as well as other cloud vendors and can help you choose a solution that delivers the best performance, reliable security, and cost savings.

Find out more.

 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/06
Jun 4, 2020 11:30:00 AM
Private or Public Cloud - Which is Right for Your Business?
AWS, E-Commerce, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Healthcare, Education

Jun 4, 2020 11:30:00 AM

Private or Public Cloud - Which is Right for Your Business?

It wasn’t long ago when cloud computing was a niche field that only the most advanced organizations were dabbling with. Now the cloud is very much the mainstream, and it is rare to find businesses that use IT that doesn’t rely, in whole or in part, on cloud environments for their infrastructure....

Your Guide to FinOps and CostOps

FinOps is the cloud operation model that consolidates finance and IT, just like DevOps synergizes developers and operations. FinOps can revolutionize accounting in the cloud-age of business, by enabling enterprises to understand cloud costs, budgeting, and procurements from a technical perspective.

The main idea behind FinOps is to double the business value on the cloud through best practices for finance professionals in a technical environment and technical professionals in a financial ecosystem.

What is FinOps?

FinOps can be defined as the guide to a profitable cloud through processes and practices that harmonize business, engineering, and leadership teams. According to FinOps.Org, this operating model has three phases that include information, optimization, and operations.

Accountability and visibility

The information part of the FinOps lifecycle targets to create accountability through visibility and empowerment. Businesses can develop or adopt processes that help them see sources of cloud expenditure and how resources are spent. It is possible to leverage customized cloud pricing models to make efficient budgetary allocation and create expenditure projections based on cloud data usage stats.

  • Some of the FinOps best practices in accountability include:
  • Each team must take ownership of their cloud usage
  • Each team must align their cloud usage to budget
  • There must be tracking and visibility in spending
  • Reports must be continuously generated and be fully accessible

Optimization

The optimizations that follow are based on the visibility gained in the information part of the FinOps journey. By using the spend analysis, businesses can tune performance and spend money where a considerable return is guaranteed. FinOps cost optimization helps to minimize resource wastage through strategies such as reservation planning and Committed Use Discounts.

Further, FinOps optimization relies on measures such as:

  • Centralizing the management of Reserved Instances, Saving plans and Committed Use Discounts and Volume with cloud providers
  • Centralizing discount buying process
  • Granular cost allocations to the teams and their direct cost centers
  • Search for idle or underutilized resources and take action, This could result in significant savings.

Harmonized Operations

FinOps is not complete without a multi-disciplinary approach to operations to set business objectives and evaluate cloud business performance based on those metrics for efficiency in resource usage. This task requires financial experts, developers, and management on board for a refined cloud resource balancing. Businesses can deploy automation that streamlines these processes for accuracy and time-saving.

The best FinOps operation structure in an organization is defined as one where:

  • Finance works at the speed of IT
  • Costs is one of the new metrics for the engineering team
  • Efficiency and innovation are the primary goals of all cloud operations
  • There are clear governance and controls for cloud usage

Sound FinOps needs a Cultural Shift

FinOps cloud operations rely on the successful merging of all teams that partake in cloud resources and expenses. When these teams come together, old accounting models are broken, giving rise to new cost optimization procedures that lead to operational control and financial gain.

Intensified collaboration and cultural shift was the critical message in the 2019 AWS FinOps summit in Sidney. The cloud provider believes that there is a need for distributed decision making along with empowering feature teams to manage their resource usage, budgeting, and accountability.

As cost becomes everyone's agenda, enterprises must also focus on cloud providers' availed opportunities for cost savings. These include the Azure FinOps components such as the Hybrid Benefit and Reserved Instances that help to make accurate calculations and flexibly control spending. FinOps Amazon cloud considerations for your teams include AWS Volume Discounts and EC2 Saving plans and Reserved Instances.

The FinOps foundation

FinOps is all about breaking down the silos between finance, development, and operations teams. The FinOps foundation is the non-profit organization set up to help companies develop, implement, and monitor best practices for cloud financial management.

According to a study by 451 research, “most enterprises that spend over $100,000 per month on cloud expenses remain unprepared to manage cloud spending.

Seeing as the vast majority of companies lack capacity and expertise for the proper financial management of cloud costs, the FinOps Foundation has defined a set of FinOps values and principles and offers certifications to individuals, helping to validate a person's FinOps knowledge after they have gone through the training course the organization provides.

The FinOps course is encouraged for your finance, IT, engineering, and management personnel, and relies on learning resources such as the O'Reilly cloud FinOps book to comprehensively define what FinOps entails for an organization.

To Summarize

While costs and efficiency are the key drivers for cloud adoption, these two can quickly become a problem for businesses. FinOps best practices are geared towards increasing financial visibility and optimization by aligning teams and operations.

At Cloudride, speed, cost, and agility are what define our cloud consultation services. Our teams will help you adopt cloud providers, infrastructures, by enabling solutions that deliver not only the best cost efficiency but also assured security and compliance.

Find out more.

michael-kahn-blog
2020/06
Jun 1, 2020 1:29:30 PM
Your Guide to FinOps and CostOps
FinOps & Cost Opt.

Jun 1, 2020 1:29:30 PM

Your Guide to FinOps and CostOps

6 Steps to a successful cloud migration

There are infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity on the cloud. Cloud migration is a process that makes your infrastructure conformable to your modern business environment. It is a chance to cut costs, tap into scalability, agility, and faster time to market. Even so, if not done right, cloud migration can produce the opposite results. 

Challenges in cloud migration 

Costs 

This is entirely strategy-dependent. For instance, refactoring all your applications at once could lead to severe downtimes and high costs. For a speedy and cost-effective cloud migration process, it is crucial to invest in strategy and assessments. The right plan factors in costs, downtimes, employee training, and the duration of the whole process. 

There is also a matter of aligning your finance team with your IT needs, which will require restructuring your CapEx / OpEx model. CapEx is the standard model of traditional on-premise IT - such as fixed investments in IT equipment, servers, and such, while OpEx is how public cloud computing services are purchased (i.e as operational cost incurred on a monthly/yearly basis). 

When migrating to the public cloud, you are shifting from traditional hardware and software ownership to a pay-as-you-go model, which means shifting from CapEx to OpEx, allowing your IT team to maximize agility and flexibility to support your business’ scaling needs while maximizing cost efficiency. This will, however, require full alignment with all company stakeholders, as each of the models has different implications on cost, control, and operational flexibility.

Security  

If the cloud is trumpeted to have all the benefits, why isn't every business migrating? Security, that's the biggest concern encumbering cloud migration. With most cloud solutions, you are entrusting a third party with your data. A careful evaluation of the provider and their processes and security control is essential.   

Within the field of cloud environments, there are generally two parties responsible for infrastructure security. 

  1. Your cloud vendor. 
  2. Your own company’s IT / Security team. 

Some companies believe that as cloud customers, when they migrate to the cloud, cloud security responsibilities fall solely on the cloud vendors. Well, that’s not the case.

Both the cloud customers and cloud vendors share responsibilities in cloud security and are both liable to the security of the environment and infrastructure.

To better manage the shared responsibility, consider the following tips:

Define your cloud security needs and requirements before choosing a cloud vendor. If you know your requirements, you’ll select a cloud provider suited to answer your needs.

Clarify the roles and responsibilities of each party when it comes to cloud security. Comprehensively define who is responsible for what and to what extent. Know how far your cloud provider is willing to go to protect your environment.

Basically, CSPs are responsible for the security of the physical or virtual infrastructure and the security configuration of their managed services while the cloud customers are in control of their data and the security measures they set in place to protect their data, system, networks and applications.

Employee buy-in 

The learning curve for your new systems will be faster if there is substantial employee buy-in from the start. There needs to be a communication strategy in place for your workers to understand the migration process, its benefits, and their role in it. Employee training should be part of your strategy. 

Change management 

Just like any other big IT project, shifting to the cloud significantly changes your business operations. Managing workloads and applications on the cloud significantly differ from how it is done on rem. Some functions will be rendered redundant, while other roles may get additional responsibilities. With most cloud platforms running a pay-as-you-go model, there is an increasing need for businesses to be able to manage their cloud operations in an efficient manner. You’d be surprised at how easy it is for your cloud costs to get out of control.

In fact, according to Gartner, the estimated global enterprise cloud waste is appx. 35% of their cloud spend, forecasted to hit $21 Billion wasted (!!!) by 2021. 

The good news is, that cloud management and monitoring platforms help you gain better control over your cloud infrastructure applications and obtain better cost control. A good example for one is our partner Spot.io, which ensures our customers obtain the infrastructure scalability they need for their cloud applications, while monitoring and minimizing cost at all time.

Migrating legacy applications 

These applications were designed a decade ago, and even though they don't mirror the modern environment of your business, they host your mission-critical process. How do you convert these systems or connect them with cloud-based applications? 

Steps to a successful cloud migration 

You may be familiar with the 6 R’s, which are 6 common strategies for cloud migration. Check out our recent post on the 6 R’s to cloud migration.  

Additionally, follow these steps to smoothly migrate your infrastructure to the public cloud: 

  1. Define a cloud migration roadmap 

This is a detailed plan that involves all the steps you intend to take in the cloud migration process. The plan should include timeframes, budget, user flows, and KPIs. Starting the cloud migration process without a detailed plan could lead to wastage of time and resources. Effectively communicating this plan improves support from senior leadership and employees. 

  1. Application assessment 

Identify your current infrastructure and evaluate the performance and weaknesses of your applications. The evaluation helps to compare the cost versus value of the planned cloud migration based on the current state of your infrastructure. This initial evaluation also helps to decide the best approach to modernization, whether your apps will need re-platforming or if they can be lifted and shifted to the cloud. 

  1. Choose the right platform 

Your landing zone could be a public cloud, a private cloud, hybrid, or multi-cloud. The choice here depends on your applications, security needs, and costs. Public clouds excel in scalability and have a cost-effective pay-per-usage model. Private clouds are suitable for a business with stringent security requirements. A hybrid cloud is where workloads can be moved between the private and public clouds through orchestration. A multi-cloud environment combines IaaS services from two or more public clouds.  

  1. Find the right provider 

If you are going with the public, hybrid, or multi-cloud deployment model, you will have to choose between different cloud providers in the market (namely Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) and various control & optimization tools. Critical factors for your consideration in this decision include security, costs, availability.  

 To Conclude: 

Cloud migration can be a lengthy and complex process. However, with proper planning and strategy execution, you can avoid challenges and achieve a smooth transition. A fool-proof approach is to pick a partner that possess the expertise, knowledge and experience to see the big picture of your current and future needs, thus tailoring a solution that fits you like a glove, on all aspects. 

At Cloudride, we have helped many businesses attain faster and cost-effective cloud migrations.
We are MS-AZURE and AWS, partners, and are here to help you choose a cloud environment that fits your business demands, needs, and plans. 

We provide custom-fit cloud migration services with special attention to security, vendor best practices, and cost-efficiency. 

Contact us to get started.  

 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/05
May 24, 2020 11:56:34 AM
6 Steps to a successful cloud migration
Azure, AWS, Cloud Migration, Cost Optimization, Cloud Native, Healthcare, Education

May 24, 2020 11:56:34 AM

6 Steps to a successful cloud migration

There are infinite opportunities for improving performance and productivity on the cloud. Cloud migration is a process that makes your infrastructure conformable to your modern business environment. It is a chance to cut costs, tap into scalability, agility, and faster time to market. Even so, if...

AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP | Detailed Comparison

Self-hosted cloud infrastructure comes with many constraints, from costs to scalability, and businesses worldwide are making the switch to public and multi-cloud configurations. The top cloud providers in the market, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, provide full infrastructural support plus security and maintenance. But how do these cloud services compare to each other? Let's investigate. 

Amazon Web Services 

AWS is the leading platform with a 30 % stake in the public cloud market. AWS boasts high computing power, extensive data storage, and backup services, among other functionalities for business processes and DevOps.  

AWS storage  

AWS has a hybrid storage model through the Storage Gateway. The latter synergistically combines with Amazon's back up feature, Glacier. There are options for simple block S3 storage or block storage with E2B. AWS elastic file storage expands at the speed of file creation and addition. 

Computation 

The AWS compute service, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, is integrable with other Amazon Web Services. The resultant agility and compatibility help with cost-saving in data management. You can scale these services in minutes, depending on your business needs. There is also the Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) that can be used to manage your applications, website IP addresses, and access security groups. AWS has a Kubernetes container service as well.  

AWS ML & AI 

Amazon Web Service champions machine learning and artificial intelligence through features such as Sage, Comprehend, Translate, and a dozen others. These ML and AI tools help with analytics and automation. And a Lambda serverless computing function gives you the freedom to deploy your apps straight from their server repositories. AWS security features include API activity monitoring, vulnerability assessments, and firewalls. 

 

AWS Security 

AWS security features include API activity monitoring, vulnerability assessments, and firewalls. You can expect other controls for data protection, access management, and threat detection and monitoring. The AWS cloud also lets you filter traffic based on your rules and track your compliance status by benchmarking against AWS best practices and CIS benchmarks.

 AWS pricing 

AWS offers a tiered pricing model that accommodates startups and Fortune 500 companies. A free tier option offers small startups 750 Hours of EC2 service every month. 

AWS SLA

The monthly uptime is 99.95 %. Service credits are computed as a percentage of the total amount paid by customers for AWS EC2 or EBS if they were unavailable in the region affected for the billing cycle in which unavailability occurred. 

 

AWS Features

  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud 
  • AWS Elastic Beanstalk 
  • Amazon Relational Database Service 
  • Amazon DynamoDB 
  • Amazon SimpleDB 
  • Amazon Simple Storage Service 
  • Amazon Elastic Block Store 
  • Amazon Glacier 
  • Amazon Elastic File System 
  • Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC  
  • Elastic Load Balancer  
  • Direct Connect 
  • Amazon Route 53 

 

Microsoft Azure 

Azure has a 16 % stake in the market and is the second most popular cloud platform. Azure has a full set of solutions for day-to-day business processes and app development. There is no limitation to computing capacity on MS Azure. You can scale that in minutes. The cloud service provider also accommodates apps that must run parallel batch computing. Most azure features can integrate with your existing system, delivering unlimited power and capacity for your enterprise business processes.  

MS Azure storage  

The MS cloud platform offers Blob Storage, a storage option dedicated to REST-based objects. You can also expect storage solutions for large scale data and high volume workloads from Queue storage to disk storage, among others. Like AWS, Azure has a large selection of SQL databases for extra storage. MS Azure offers hybrid storage capabilities for cloud and on-prem Microsoft SQL Server functions.

MS Azure computation  

Azure cloud computing solutions run on virtual machines and range from app deployment to development, testing, and datacenter extensions.  

Azure compute features are compatible with Windows servers, Linux, SQL Servers, Oracle, and SAP. You can also choose a hybrid Azure model that blends on-prem and public cloud functionalities. The Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on the other hand is a serverless orchestration platform for faster containerization, deployment, and management of apps 

MS Azure ML & AI 

Like AWS, azure offers select ML and AI tools. These tools are API-supported and can be integrated with your on-prem software and apps. Their serverless Function platform is event-driven and is useful in the orchestration and management of complex workloads. Azure IoT features like Sage are tuned towards high-level analytics and business management. The Azure Security Center covers tenant security, and you also get an activity log monitoring. 

MS Azure Security 

The Azure Security Center covers tenant security, and you also get an activity log monitoring. The security controls are built-in and multilayered, enabling protection for workloads, cryptographic keys, emails, documents, and common web vulnerabilities. The continuous protection extends to hybrid environments.

MS Azure Pricing 

The hourly server on the Azure cloud starts from $0.099 per hour. In terms of GB and RAM, azure pricing is comparable to AWS.  

 

MS Azure SLA

The monthly uptime percentage is 99.99 %. The provider has service credits, including 25 % for 99 per cent availability and 100% for less than 95% uptime. 

MS Azure Features 

  • Virtual Machines 
  • App Service and Cloud Services 
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 
  • Azure Functions 
  • SQL Database 
  • Table Storage 
  • Azure Cosmos DB 
  • Disk Storage 
  • Blob Storage 
  • Azure Archive Blob Storage 
  • Azure File Storage 
  • Virtual Networks (VNets) 
  • Load Balancer 
  • ExpressRoute 
  • Azure DNS 

 

Google Cloud Platform 

GCP entered the public cloud market a little later than AWS and Azure, and therefore its market share is still at an infant stage. Even so, this cloud platform excels in technical capabilities and AI and ML tools. GCP also boasts undersea server deployment and a user-friendly console that makes setup an easy task. 

GCP Storage 

GCP provides cloud storage, disk storage, and a transfer service along with SQL and NoSQL database support.  

GCP Computation 

Google was the original developer of the Kubernetes platform, and it is, therefore, their primary service function. GCP supports Docker containers, and they can deploy and manage apps for you, monitor performance and scalability based on traffic and run code from Google Cloud, Assistant, or Firebase. 

GCP ML & AI 

Google Cloud has robust ML and AI capabilities and features. These include speech recognition, natural language processing, and video intelligence, among others. GCP includes custom security features within its Cloud Security Control Center. 

GCP Security

GCP includes custom security features within its Cloud Security Control Center. GCP is built on a secure architecture from hardware infrastructure to storage and Kubernetes. IT logs and tracks each workload, providing 24/7 monitoring for all data elements and communication channels. Identity and data security are two of the most critical parameters for Google Cloud Platform. 

GCP Pricing 

GCP uses a pay-as-you-go model of pricing. The platform has excellent discount offers for clients that work with it for more than a month. 

GCP SLA

The GCP SLA guarantees a monthly uptime of not less than 99.5% for all its cloud services. If that's not met, you are guaranteed credits of up to 50% in the final bill. 

GCP Features

  • Google Compute Engine 
  • Google App Engine  
  • Google Kubernetes Engine  
  • Google Cloud Functions 
  • Google Cloud SQL 
  • Google Cloud Datastore  
  • Google Cloud Bigtable 
  • Google Cloud Storage 
  • Google Compute Engine Persistent Disks 
  • Google Cloud Storage Nearline 
  • ZFS/Avere 
  • Virtual Private Cloud 
  • Google Cloud Load Balancing 
  • Google Cloud Interconnect 
  • Google Cloud DNS 

 

To Summarize

You realize that not every cloud platform is designed the same. Even the best provider might not have features that adequately address your business needs. AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP comparisons should be about weighing what works well for your business.  

At Cloudride, we work with AWS, Azure & GCP as well as other cloud vendors and can help you choose a solution that delivers the best performance, reliable security, and cost savings. 

 

Contact us to learn more. 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/05
May 8, 2020 9:16:34 AM
AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP | Detailed Comparison
Azure, AWS, E-Commerce, Multi-Cloud, Healthcare, Education

May 8, 2020 9:16:34 AM

AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP | Detailed Comparison

Self-hosted cloud infrastructure comes with many constraints, from costs to scalability, and businesses worldwide are making the switch to public and multi-cloud configurations. The top cloud providers in the market, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, provide full infrastructural support plus...

Kubernetes Security 1O1

Kubernetes is a popular orchestration platform for multi-cloud applications that need to be deployed with versatile scalability. The adoption of cloud Kubernetes services has been steadily increasing over the past few years. But as more companies implement open source software, security emerges as a critical point of interest.

In March 2019, the high and medium severity issues, CVE-2019-1002101 and CVE-2019-9946, were discovered. These vulnerabilities can allow attackers to edit code on any path of the user's machine or delete and replace files in the tar-binary container.

These two followed closely on the discovery of the runC vulnerability that can enable an attacker to acquire root privileges in a container environment. Given such concerns, Kubernetes security should be a priority for all operations in cloud-native application development. 

 

The Kubernetes Architecture

Google initially developed this open-source and portable platform for managing containerized workloads. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is now the body in charge of Kubernetes. The software does not discriminate between hosts, any host by a cloud provider or a single-tenant server can be utilized in Kubernetes. 

The platform interfaces a cluster of virtual machines using shared networks for server-to-server communication. In this cluster, all Kubernetes capabilities, components, and application lifecycles can be configured. This is where you can define how your applications run and how they can be configured.

The Kubernetes ecosystem has a master server that exposes an API for users and provides methods for container deployments and cluster administration. The other machines in the cluster are the slave servers or nodes that dedicatedly run the containers delegated by the master.

 

Kubernetes Security Risks

The security challenges and vulnerabilities on a multi-cloud Kubernetes architecture include:

  • Unvetted images

Misused images pose a significant security risk on the containerization platform. Organizations must ensure that only vetted and approved images registries run and that there are robust policies on vulnerability severities, malware, and image configurations.

  • Attackers listening on ports

Containers and pods must talk to each other in a Kubernetes ecosystem. It can be easier for attackers to intrude on this communication by listening to distinctive ports. It's critical, therefore, to monitor multi-directional traffic for all signs of breaches. Consider vendors that provide a Kubernetes load balancer service during deployment. How a breach spreads from one container to the other depends on how broadly it communicates with the other containers.

  • Kubernetes API is exposed

The API service in Kubernetes is the front door to each cluster. Because this API is needed for management, it is always exposed during Kubernetes deployment. Robust role-based access authentication is needed, along with policies for managing kubectl command operations. The best access control system leverages Kubernetes webhook admission controller for attaining upstream computability in Kubernetes implementation.

  • Hackers can execute code in your container 

The Kubelet API, used for managing containers on separate nodes in clusters, has no access authentication. Attackers can use this as a gateway to execute codes in your container, delete files, or overrun your cluster. Incidences of Kubelet exploits have been on the increase since 2016.

  • Compromised containers lead to compromised clusters

When an attacker achieves a remote code execution within a node, then automatically, clusters become susceptible to attacks. These attacks propagate in cluster networks targeting both nodes and pods. Organizations need Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), preferably the types that combine anomaly and signature-based mechanisms. Many vendors provide IDS capabilities as part of their software suites.



What Measures to Take? 

AWS solves the Kubernetes security complexity with policy-driven controls based on native Kubernetes capabilities, run time protection, network security control, and service and image assurance. The EKS load balancer provides for traffic observability, while they have EKS security policies for access control and compliance checks. The elastic cloud on Kubernetes also has CI/CD pipelines that are benchmarked with internal and external policy frameworks and guided by the AWS global network security procedures.

The Azure Kubernetes service has similar security concepts for nodes and clusters in the orchestration platform. To the native Kubernetes security components, AKS Kubernetes adds orchestrated cluster patches and network security groups. You can strengthen access control on your master API server with the Azure Active Directory that's integrable with AKS services.

GCP leverages the principle of least privilege in access control on Kubernetes workloads. You can use the Google Cloud Service Account to manage and configure Kubernetes security through RBA. The vendor similarly offers protection through a load balancer service, network policies, Cloud IAM, and Cloud Audit Logging.


To Conclude 

Kubernetes as a service allows for the deployment and management of cloud-native apps in a scalable manner. This is a fast-growing technology, but it's also fraught with complexities that can compromise security. 

At Cloudride, we will help you find a cloud Kubernetes solution that solves your business challenges with regards to security and cost-efficiency. We specialize in MS-AZURE, AWS, GCP, and other ISVs. 

Contact us to learn more.

avner-vidal-blog
2020/04
Apr 30, 2020 5:03:39 PM
Kubernetes Security 1O1
DevOps

Apr 30, 2020 5:03:39 PM

Kubernetes Security 1O1

Kubernetes is a popular orchestration platform for multi-cloud applications that need to be deployed with versatile scalability. The adoption of cloud Kubernetes services has been steadily increasing over the past few years. But as more companies implement open source software, security emerges as...

The Rise of FinOps & Cost Optimization

Cost optimization of IT resources is one of the benefits that first attracts enterprises to the cloud. CFOs and CEOs love how converting CapEx to a more easily managed and predictable OpEx can help them gain tighter control over finances and free up capital for other investments.

Cloud computing can also help organizations better utilize their human as well as non-human resources. IT leaders love the idea of not having to staff and maintain an on-premises data center. Outsourcing IT responsibilities to a knowledgeable managed service provider means important tasks are getting done – and getting done right. IT leaders no longer have to deal with the shortage of qualified IT technicians in areas like IT security nor pay the six-figure salaries those roles command.

But, many organizations still struggle with the cost optimization of cloud resources. 80% of companies using the cloud acknowledge that poor financial management related to cloud cost has had a negative impact on their business. This is where FinOps comes in. 

What is FinOps?

In the cloud environment, different platforms and so many moving parts can make cost-optimization of cloud resources a challenge. This challenge has given rise to a new discipline: financial operations or FinOps. Here’s how the FinOps Foundation, a non-profit trade association for FinOps professionals, describes the discipline:

FinOps is the operating model for the cloud. FinOps enables a shift — a combination of systems, best practices, and culture — to increase an organization’s ability to understand cloud costs and make tradeoffs. In the same way that DevOps revolutionized development by breaking down silos and increasing agility, FinOps increases the business value of cloud by bringing together technology, business and finance professionals with a new set of processes.

We expect to see a growing number of organizations of all sizes using FinOps services as part of their business life cycle. This is irrelevant if you are a small company that uses one person from your IT team or a large enterprise using individuals, the responsibility, accountability, and involvement of the FinOps expert should enhance the use of cloud resources.

6 Ways to Optimize Cloud Costs

If you’re a FinOps professional – or if you’re an IT or business leader concerned about controlling expenses – here are several ways to optimize cloud costs.

#1 Make sure you’re using the right cloud. Your mission-critical applications might benefit from a private, hosted cloud or even deployment in an on-premises environment, but that doesn’t mean all of your workloads need to be deployed in the same environment. In addition, cloud technologies are getting more sophisticated all the time. Review your cloud deployments annually to make sure you have the right workloads in the right clouds.

#2 Review your disaster recovery strategy. More businesses than ever are leveraging AWS and Azure for disaster recovery. These pay-as-you-go cloud solutions can ensure your failover site is available when needed without requiring that you duplicate resources.

#3 Optimize your cloud deployment. If you’re deploying workloads on a cloud platform such as AWS or Azure for the first time, a knowledgeable partner who knows all the tips and tricks can be a real asset. It’s easy to overlook features, like Reserved Instances, that can help you lower monthly cloud costs.

#4 Outsource some or all of your cloud management. Many IT departments are short-staffed with engineers wearing multiple hats. In the course of doing business, it’s easy for cloud resources to be underutilized or orphaned. The right cloud partner can help you find and eliminate these resources to lower your costs.

#5 Outsource key roles. Many IT roles, especially in areas like IT security and system administration, are hard to fill. Although you want someone with experience, you may not even need them full-time. Instead of going in circles trying to find and recruit the right talent, the use of a professional service company with a wide knowledge base, that can give you the entire solution, it's a huge advantage and can save you a lot of money.

# 6 Increase your visibility. Even if you decide to place some or all cloud management, you still want to keep an eye on things. There are several platforms today such as Spotinst cloud analyzer that can address cloud management and provide visibility across all your cloud environments from a single console.  Never the less, the use of these platforms should be part of the FinOps consultation. 

   

About Cloudride

Cloudride specialized cost optimization solution methodology which consists of two parallel capabilities.
Cloud FinOps - Our analyst will work with your technology and finance governance teams and will create, under best practices knowledge, a user-friendly dashboard divided per organization/tag/product / P&L or any other organization structure tailor-made to you.
Reporting per division on schedule weekly/monthly base.
Building a cost strategy - Spot, reserve capacity or on-demand and other valid saving capabilities, based on current and future technology needs - We will build a strategy for you.

To learn more about FinOps services, or just get some expert advice, we’re a click away.

michael-kahn-blog
2020/04
Apr 20, 2020 5:28:17 PM
The Rise of FinOps & Cost Optimization
FinOps & Cost Opt., Cost Optimization, Financial Services

Apr 20, 2020 5:28:17 PM

The Rise of FinOps & Cost Optimization

Cost optimization of IT resources is one of the benefits that first attracts enterprises to the cloud. CFOs and CEOs love how converting CapEx to a more easily managed and predictable OpEx can help them gain tighter control over finances and free up capital for other investments.

Five-Phase Migration Process

Visualizing the five-phase migration process

 

Picture1

 

The five-phase migration process can help guide your organizational approach to migrating tens, hundreds, or thousands of applications. This serves as a way to envision the major milestones of cloud adoption during your journey to AWS.

 

Phase 1 - Migration Preparation and Business Planning

Establish operational processes and form a dedicated team

Developing a sound mission-driven case requires taking your objectives into account, along with the age and architecture of your existing applications, and their constraints.

Engaged leadership, frequent communication, and clarity of purpose, along with aggressive but realistic goals and timelines, make it easier for your entire company to rally behind the decision to migrate.

You will want to establish operational processes and form a team dedicated to mobilizing the appropriate resources. This team is your Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), and they will be charged with leading your agency through the organizational and mission-driven transformations over the course of the migration effort.

The CCoE identifies and implements best practices, governance standards, automation, and also drives change management.

An effective CCoE evolves over time, starting small and then growing as the migration effort ramps up. This evolution helps to establish migration teams within your organization, and decide which ones will be responsible for migrating specific portions of your IT portfolio to AWS. The CCoE will also communicate with the migration teams to determine areas where you may need to work with AWS Professional Services, an APN Partner, or a vendor offering a solution on AWS Marketplace to help you offset costs and migrate successfully.

Picture1-1

 

Phase 2 - Portfolio Discovery and Planning

Begin the process with less critical and complex applications

Full portfolio analysis of your environment, complete with a mapping of interdependencies, and migration strategies and priorities, are all key elements to building a plan for a successful migration.

The complexity and level of impact of your applications will influence how you migrate. Beginning the migration process with less critical and complex applications in your portfolio creates a sound learning opportunity for your team to exit their initial round of migration with:

  • Confidence they are not practicing with mission critical applications in the early learning stages.
  • Foundational learnings they can apply to future migration iterations.
  • Ability to fill skills and process gaps, as well as positively reinforce best practices based on experience.

The CCoE plays an integral role in beginning to identify the roles and responsibilities of the smaller migration teams in this phase of the migration process. It is important to gain familiarity with the operational processes that your organization will use on AWS. This will help your workforce build experience and start to identify patterns that can help accelerate the migration process, simplifying the method of determining which groups of applications can be migrated together.

 

Phase 3 + Phase 4 - Application Design, Migration and Validation

Each application is designed, migrated and validated

These two phases are combined because they are often executed at the same time. They occur as the migration effort ramps up and you begin to land more applications and workloads on AWS. During these phases the focus shifts from the portfolio level to the individual application level. Each application is designed, migrated, and validated according to one of the six common application strategies. (“The 6 R’s” will be discussed in greater detail below.)

A continuous improvement approach is often recommended. The level of project fluidity and success frequently comes down to how well you apply the iterative methodology in these phases.

 

Phase 5 - Modern Operating Model

Optimize new foundation, turn off old systems

As applications are migrated, you optimize your new foundation, turn off old systems, and constantly iterate toward a modern operating model. Think about your operating model as an evergreen set of people, processes, and technologies that constantly improves as you migrate more applications. Ideally, you will be building off the foundational expertise you already developed. If not, use your first few application migrations to develop that foundation, and your operating model will continually improve and become more sophisticated as your migration accelerates.

 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/03
Mar 30, 2020 12:12:44 PM
AWS
Five-Phase Migration Process
AWS

Mar 30, 2020 12:12:44 PM

Five-Phase Migration Process

Visualizing the five-phase migration process

Six Common Migration Strategies: “The 6 Rs”

Organizations considering a migration often debate the best approach to get there. While there is no one-size-fits all approach, the focus should be on grouping each of the IT portfolio’s applications into buckets defined by one of the migration strategies.

At this point in the migration process, you will want to have a solid understanding of which migration strategy will be best suited for the different parts of your IT portfolio. Being able to identify which migration strategies will work best for moving specific portions of your on-premises environment will simplify the process. This is done by determining similar applications in your portfolio that can be grouped together and moved to AWS at the same time.

Screen Shot 2020-03-27 at 14.50.12

 

Diagram: Six Common Migration Strategies

 

The “Six R’s” – Six Common Migration Strategies

1 - Rehost

Also known as “lift-and-shift”

In a large legacy migration scenario where your organization is looking to accelerate cloud adoption and scale quickly to meet a business case, we find that the majority of applications are rehosted. Most rehosting can be automated with tools available from AWS, or by working with an APN Partner who hold an AWS public sector competency or a vendor offering from AWS Marketplace.

2 – Replatform

Sometimes referred to as “lift-tinker-and-shift”

This entails making a few cloud optimizations in order to achieve some tangible benefit, without changing the core architecture of the application.

3 – Repurchase

Replacing your current environment, casually referred to as “drop and shop”

This is a decision to move to a newer version or different solution, and likely means your organization is willing to change the existing licensing model it has been using.

4 – Refactor (Re-Architect)

Changing the way the application is architected and developed, usually done by employing cloud-native features

Typically, this is driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in the application’s existing environment.

5 - Retire

Decommission or archive unneeded portions of your IT portfolio

Identifying IT assets that are no longer useful and can be turned off will help boost your business case and help focus your team’s attention on maintaining the resources that are widely used.

6 - Retain

Do nothing, for now - revisit later

Organizations retain portions of their IT portfolio because there are some that they are not ready (or are too complex or challenging) to migrate, and feel more comfortable keeping them on-premises.

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/03
Mar 27, 2020 2:54:35 PM
AWS
Six Common Migration Strategies: “The 6 Rs”
AWS

Mar 27, 2020 2:54:35 PM

Six Common Migration Strategies: “The 6 Rs”

Organizations considering a migration often debate the best approach to get there. While there is no one-size-fits all approach, the focus should be on grouping each of the IT portfolio’s applications into buckets defined by one of the migration strategies.

Azure Migrate Server Assessment with CSV File

Overview: Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate facilitates migration to Azure cloud. The service offers a centralized hub for assessment and migration of on-premises infrastructure, data, and applications to Azure.

Azure Migrate allows the assessment and migration of servers, databases, data, web applications, and virtual desktops. The service has a wide range of tools, including server assessment and server migration tools.

Azure Migrate can integrate with other Azure services, tools, and ISV offerings. The service offers a unified migration platform capable of starting, running, and tracking your entire cloud migration journey.

 

Azure Migrate: Server Assessment

Azure Migrate server assessment tool discovers and assesses on-premises physical servers, VMware VMs and Hyper-V VMs to determine if they are ready to be migrated to Azure. The tool helps to identify the readiness of on-premises machines for migration, sizing (size of Azure virtual machines or VMs after migration), cost estimate of running the on-premises servers, and dependency visualization (cross-server dependencies and the best way to migrate dependent servers).

 

Azure Migrate server assessment with CSV file

Microsoft announced new Azure Migrate server assessment capabilities with CSV at Microsoft Ignite Conference in November 2019. Previously, there was no functionality that allowed server inventory stored in CSV files to be used within Azure Migrate to conduct an assessment.

This means you had to set up an appliance in your premises to discover and assess physical servers, VMware VMs and Hyper-V VMs. Currently, Azure Migrate also supports import and assessment of servers without deploying any appliance.

The CSV import based assessment allows Azure Migrate server assessment to take advantage of features such as sustainability analysis, performance-based rightsizing, and migration cost planning. The import-based assessment offers a cloud migration planning solution when you aren’t able to deploy an appliance because of security or pending organizational constraints preventing you from installing the appliance and opening a tunnel to Azure.

Importing servers is easy with CSV. Simply upload server inventory via a CSV file according to the Azure Migrate template provided. You need four data points only, namely: the server name, # of cores, OS name, and size of memory. Although it's possible to run an assessment using minimal information (four data points only), it is important to run an assessment with other information i.e., disk data to allow disk sizing assessment. You can begin creating assessments ten minutes after the CSV import is complete.

If a server isn't ready for migration, remediation guidance is provided automatically. Server assessment can be customized by changing properties such as target location, target storage disk, reserved instances and sizing criteria. Assessment reports can also be regenerated. They offer detailed cost estimation and sizing.

You can optimize cost through performance-based rightsizing assessments. By specifying performance utilization values of on-premises servers, migrating servers that may be overprovisioned in your data center get an appropriate Azure VM and disk SKU.

 

MS Azure Migrate server assessment with CSV in 4 simple steps:

Step 1: Setup an Azure Migrate Project & add server assessment to the project.

Step 2: Gather inventory data from your vCenter server, Hyper-V environment, or CMDB. Proceed and convert this data into the CSV file format (using Azure Migrate CSV file template).

Step 3: Import the servers by uploading the inventory in a CSV file according to the template.

Step 4: On successful importation, create assessments and review assessment reports.

 

Cloudride is a cloud migration expert team that provides hands-on professional cloud services for MS AZURE, AWS, and GCP and other independent software vendors. Our engineers will study your needs, helping you plan and implement your cloud migration in the optimal, most cost-effective way while maintaining security best practices and standards.

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/03
Mar 22, 2020 11:44:10 AM
Azure Migrate Server Assessment with CSV File
Azure

Mar 22, 2020 11:44:10 AM

Azure Migrate Server Assessment with CSV File

Overview: Azure Migrate

ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System

ISO/IEC 27701 PIMS aligns with a wide range of data protection regimes. Implementing the privacy information and management system requirements can help organizations accelerate or automatically achieve compliance with GDPR, the DBA 2018, California Consumer Privacy Act, among other data protection regulations for cloud operations.

ISO 27701 details the specific requirements and outlines guidelines for creating, implementing, managing, and enhancing your PIMS in the cloud environment. This information system privacy and data safety standard borrows heavily from the controls and objectives of ISO 27001.

The new standard outlines the policies and processes for capturing personal data, ensuring integrity, achieving accountability, safeguarding confidentiality, and guaranteeing the availability of the same data at all times. The new standards create a convenient integration point for cloud security and data protection by establishing a uniform framework for handling personal data for both data controllers and processors.

Data safety and security on the cloud often become precarious because the data is located in multiple locations across the globe. Some of the data safety and security challenges for businesses on the cloud include:

  • Hard to prove vendor compliance with data privacy policies.
  • It is not very easy to know who has access to your data on the vendors’ end.
  • Hard to prove fair, lawful and transparent handling of data in the cloud.
  • Too many data security and privacy regulations at a given time.
  • Technical challenges in security and data safety, systems and processes.
  • Expensive audit processes for each regulation.

The ISO 27701 certification has operational advantages that businesses can leverage to solve these security and data privacy concerns. This is a certifiable standard by independent auditors and can, therefore, attest to a business’s compliance with a full set of cloud security regulations.

 

Summary of requirements for ISO/IEC 27701 certification

  • Identifying internal and external issues that threaten data privacy and security.
  • Leadership participation in data privacy policy creation, implementation, and documentation.
  • Information security risk assessments.
  • Employee awareness and communication.
  • Operationalization of a broad set of technical controls for secure cloud architecture.
  • Continuous testing.
  • Constant improvement.

The ISO 27701 reconciles contrasting privacy regulatory requirements. It may also help businesses work on a single standard at home and abroad. While GDPR and DBA are regional-specific, ISO offers an opportunity for worldwide adoption and adherence to data protection principles that are key to all cloud operations.

Additionally, PIMS provides customers the blueprint for attaining compliance with new data privacy regulations fast and cost-effectively. The ISO/IEC 27701 certification eliminates the need for further audits and certifications for new data laws. That can be crucial in complex supply chain relationships, especially where there is a cross-border movement of data.

In January, Azure became the first US Cloud provider to achieve certification for ISO/IEC 27701 as a data processor. The certification conducted through a third party and independent audit confirms the cloud provider’s reliable set of management and operational controls in personal data security, privacy, and safety.

Apart from being the first cloud provider to obtain the ISO/IEC 27701 certification, Azure is also the first in the US to attain compliance with EU Model Contract Clauses. The cloud provider is also the first to extend the GDPR compliance requirements to its customers across the world.

One of the critical requirements for data security and safety in the cloud for all regulations is that businesses work with a compliant vendor. Azure customers can get to build upon Microsoft’s certification and compliance score to speed up their process of compliance with all major global privacy regulations.

 

At Cloudride LTD, we provide hands-on professional cloud services for MS AZURE, AWS, and GCP and other independent software vendors. Our engineers are experts in global security and privacy policies and compliance requirements, helping you choose and implement the best solution for your business needs with the most cost-effective compliance to regulatory policies.

 

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/03
Mar 18, 2020 9:56:27 PM
ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System
Azure

Mar 18, 2020 9:56:27 PM

ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System

ISO/IEC 27701 PIMS aligns with a wide range of data protection regimes. Implementing the privacy information and management system requirements can help organizations accelerate or automatically achieve compliance with GDPR, the DBA 2018, California Consumer Privacy Act, among other data protection...

Everything you need to know about CIS Benchmarks and Azure Blueprints

Transformative and empowering as cloud platforms might be, they come with significant security challenges in the front end and back end of their architectures. Successful deployment of business processes and applications on the cloud requires planning and understanding of all the relevant risks and vulnerabilities and their possible solutions.

Top seven critical Security Concerns on the Cloud

  • Malware-injection attacks
  • Flooding attacks
  • Identity and access management
  • Service provider security issues
  • Web applications security threats
  • Privacy and personal data protection and compliance challenges
  • Data encryption on transmission and processing challenges

 

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) outlines the best practices for secure deployment and protection of your IT system at the enterprise level or on the cloud. Key international players in cybersecurity collaboratively create these globally recognized standards. The CIS benchmarks provide a roadmap for establishing and measuring your security configurations. Azure Cloud customers can leverage these standards to test and optimize the security of their systems and applications.

 

The benchmarks by the nonprofit organization support hundreds of technologies from web servers to operating systems, databases, web browsers, and mobile devices. The configuration guidelines take account of the latest evolved cyber threats and the complex requirements of cloud security.

 

Benefits of the CIS Benchmarks for Cloud Security

  • They enable easy and quick configuration of security controls on the cloud.
  • They entail mapped out steps that address critical cloud security threats.
  • You can customize benchmark recommendations to fit your company standards and compliance policies.
  • Automatic tracking of compliance using the benchmarks save time.

 

CIS Microsoft Azure Foundations Benchmark

The Microsoft-CIS partnership taps into Microsoft’s proven experience and best practices in internal and customer level Azure deployments while leveraging the CIS’s consensus-driven model of sharing configurations.

 

The new Azure blueprint for CIS Benchmark prescribes expert guidelines that cloud architects can use to define their internal security standards and assess their compliance with regulatory requirements.

 

The CIS Microsoft Azure Foundations Benchmark includes policy definitions on:

 

  • Access control - multifactor authentication and managing subscription roles on privileged and non-privileged accounts.
  • Vulnerability monitoring on virtual machines.
  • Monitoring storage accounts that allow insecure connections, unrestricted access and those that limit access from trusted Microsoft services.
  • SQL Server auditing and configuration.
  • Activity log monitoring.
  • Network monitoring where resources are deployed.
  • Recoverability of key vaults in the event of accidental deletion.
  • Encryption of web applications.

 

Azure Blueprints

Azure Blueprints are the templates used by cloud architects to design and implement the appropriate cloud resources for adhering to company standards and regulatory requirements. These Blueprints are pivotal in attaining a robust cloud security posture. You can design and deploy compliant-ready environments in the shortest time, and be confident that you are meeting all the right standards with minimal risk and resource wastage.

Critical applications of Azure Blueprints:

Simplifying Azure deployment

You get a single blueprint definition for your policies, access controls, and Azure Resource Manager templates, which simplify large scale application deployments on the Azure environment. You can use PowerShell or ARM Templates to automate the deployment process, but without having to retain large declarative files and long scripts. The versioning capability within these blueprints means that you can edit and fine-tune the control and management of new subscriptions.

Streamlining your creation environment

Azure blueprints enable the deployment of several subscriptions in one click, which results in a uniform environment from production to development and QA subscriptions. One can also track and manage all blueprints in a centralized location. The integrated tooling makes it easier to maintain control over every resource and deployment specifications. The resource locking feature is especially critical in ensuring that new resources are not interfered with.

 

Achieving compliant development

The Azure blueprint has a self-service model that helps to speed up compliance with your application deployment. You can create custom templates or use the blueprints to meet standards where there is no established framework. The built-in compliance capabilities of Azure Blueprints target internal requirements and external regulations, including ISO 27001, FedRAMP Moderate, and HIPAA HITRUST, among others.

 

The new Azure blueprint for CIS benchmark sets a foundational security level for businesses deploying or developing workloads on the Azure Cloud. Nonetheless, it’s not exhaustive in its scope of security configurations. Site-specific tailoring is required to attain full compliance with CIS controls and requirements.

 

Cloudride LTD provides cloud consulting services, including security and networking blueprint, architecture design, migration, and cost optimization, among others. Our cloud partners include MS-AZURE, AWS, and GCP alongside other independent service providers. We’re happy to help you achieve a competitive advantage with a robustly secure and agile cloud infrastructure.

Contact us to learn more.

 

 

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/03
Mar 16, 2020 12:41:16 AM
Everything you need to know about CIS Benchmarks and Azure Blueprints
Azure

Mar 16, 2020 12:41:16 AM

Everything you need to know about CIS Benchmarks and Azure Blueprints

Transformative and empowering as cloud platforms might be, they come with significant security challenges in the front end and back end of their architectures. Successful deployment of business processes and applications on the cloud requires planning and understanding of all the relevant risks and...

Advancing safe deployment practices | Cloudride

Cloud computing certainly has a lot of perks. From scalability, through cost-effectiveness (when done right), flexibility, scalability and much more. However, these great benefits might come at the price of service reliability.

Service reliability issues are the various types of failures that may affect the success of a cloud service.

Below are some of the causes:

  • Computing resources missing
  • Timeouts
  • Network failure
  • Hardware failure

But above all, the primary cause of service reliability issues is change.

Changes in the cloud encompass various advantages including new capabilities, features, security and reliability enhancements and more.

These changes are also subject to setbacks such as regression, downtime and bugs.

Much like in our everyday lives, change is inevitable. Change signifies cloud platforms such as Azure are evolving and improving in performance, so we can’t afford to ignore change, rather we need to expect it and plan for it.

Microsoft strives to make updates as transparent as possible and deploy changes safely.

In this post, we will look at the safe deployment practices they implement to make sure you, the customer, is not affected by the setbacks caused by such changes.

How Azure deploys changes safely

How does Azure deploy their releases / changes / updates?

Azure assumes upfront there is an unknown problem that would arise as a result of the change being deployed. They therefore plan in a way that enables the discovery of the problem and automate mitigation actions for when the problem arises. Even the slightest of change can pose a risk to the stability of the system.

Since we’ve already agreed that change is inevitable, how can they prevent or minimize the impact of change?

  1. By ensuring the changes meet the quality standard before deployment. This can be achieved through test and integration validations.
  2. After the quality check, Azure gradually rolls out the changes or updates to detect any unexpected impact that was not foreseen during testing.

The gradual deployment gives Azure an opportunity to detect any issues on a smaller scale before the change is deployed on a broad production level and causes a larger impact on the system.

Both code and configuration changes go through a life cycle of stages where health metrics are monitored and automatic actions are triggered when any anomalies are detected.

These stages reduce any negative impact on the customers’ workloads associated with the software updates.

Canary regions / Early Updates Access Program

An Azure region is an area within a geography, containing one or more data centres.

Canary regions are just like any other Azure regions.

One of the canary regions is built with availability zones and the other without. Both regions are then paired to form a “paired region” to validate the data replication capabilities.

Several parties are invited to the program, from first-party services like Databricks, third-party services (from the azure marketplace) like Barracuda WAF-as-a-service to a small set of external customers.

All these diverse parties are invited to cover all possible scenarios.

Untitled design-3These canary regions are run through tests and end-to-end validation, to practice the detection and recovery workflows that would be run if any anomalies occur in real life. Periodic fault injections or disaster recovery drills are carried out at the region or Availability Zone Level, aimed to ensure the software update is of the highest quality before the change rolls out to broad customers and into their workloads.

Pilot phase

Once the results from canary indicate that there are no known issues detected, deployment to production phase begins. Starting off with the pilot phase.

This phase enables Azure to try out the changes, still on a relatively small scale, but with more diversity of hardware and configurations.

This phase is especially important for software like core storage services and core compute infrastructure services, that have hardware dependencies.

For example, Azure offers servers with GPUs, large memory servers, commodity servers, multiple generations and types of processors, Infiniband, and more, so this enables flighting the changes and may enable detection of issues that would not surface during the smaller scale testing.

In each step along the way, thorough health monitoring and extended 'bake times' enable potential failure patterns to surface, and increase confidence in the changes while greatly reducing the overall risk to customers.

Once it’s determined that the results from the pilot phase are good, deployment of the changes progresses to more regions gradually. changes deploy only as long as no negative signals surface.

The deployment system attempts to deploy a change to only one availability zone within a region and due to region pairing, a change is first deployed to a region then its pair.

Safe deployment practices in action

Given the scale of Azure, it has more global regions than any other cloud provider, the entire rollout process is completely automated and driven by policy.

These policies include mandatory health signals for monitoring the quality of software. This shows that the same policies and processes determine how quickly software can be rolled out.

These policies also include mandatory ‘bake times’ between the stages outlined above.

Why the mandatory ‘bake times’?

The reason to have software sitting and baking for different periods of time across each phase is to make sure to expose the change to a full spectrum of load on that service.

For example, diverse organisational users might be coming online in the morning, gaming customers might be coming online in the evening, and new virtual machines (VMs) or resource creations from customers may occur over an extended period of time.

Below are some instances of safe deployment practices in action:

  1. Global services, which cannot take the approach of progressively deploying to different clusters, regions, or service rings, also practice a version of progressive rollouts in alignment with SDP.

These services follow the model of updating their service instances in multiple phases, progressively deviating traffic to the updated instances through Azure Traffic Manager.

If the signals are positive, more traffic gets deviated over time to updated instances, increasing confidence and unblocking the deployment from being applied to more service instances over time.

  1. the Azure platform also has the ability to deploy a change simultaneously to all of Azure instead of the gradual deployment.

Although the safe deployment policy is mandatory, Azure can choose to accelerate it when certain emergency conditions are met.

For example, for a fix where the risk of regression is overcome by the fix mitigating a problem that’s already very impactful on customers.

Conclusion

As we earlier said, change is inevitable. The agility and continual improvement of cloud services is one of the key value propositions of the cloud. Rather than trying to avoid change we should plan for it, by implementing safe deployment practices and mitigating negative impact.

We recommend keeping up to date with the latest releases, product updates, and the roadmap of innovations, and if you need help to better plan and rollout your architecture to control impact of change on your own cloud environment, we’re a click away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

kirill-morozov-blog
2020/03
Mar 8, 2020 12:53:59 PM
Advancing safe deployment practices | Cloudride
Azure

Mar 8, 2020 12:53:59 PM

Advancing safe deployment practices | Cloudride

Cloud computing certainly has a lot of perks. From scalability, through cost-effectiveness (when done right), flexibility, scalability and much more. However, these great benefits might come at the price of service reliability.

Cloud computing cheat sheet

When you start with a cloud provider it’s easy and straight-forward, you pay for what you use.

But as you start scaling, maybe have a number of developers or even several accounts, it’s hard to keep track of your expenses and as we know the biggest chunk of the bill at the end of the month is usually the computing section.

l laid out the most fundamental best-practices to optimise your compute resources and maybe even leave you with a few spare bucks in your pocket.

Right-Sizing

The aim of right-sizing is to match instance size and type to your workloads and capacity requirements at the lowest possible cost. It is also aimed to identify opportunities to eliminate, turn off idle instances and right-size instances poorly matched to the workload.

How do you choose the right size?

You can do this by monitoring and analysing your use of services to have an insight into performance data then locate the idle instances and instances that are under-utilised.

When analysing your compute performance (e.g. CloudWatch), two key metrics to look for are memory usage and CPU usage.

Identify instances with a maximum memory and CPU usage of less than 40% over a period of four weeks. These are the instances you would want to right-size to reduce cost.

 
** Pro tip: create alarms to get notified when your utilisation is low or high so you can have your finger on the trigger at any time.

 

Reserved Instances

Compute workloads vary over time making it difficult to predict, but in most situations, we can predict the “minimum” capacity that we’ll need for a long period of time.

Amazon Reserved Instances / Azure Reserved VM Instances allow you to make-instance workload reservations for workloads like these.

Reserved Instance pricing is calculated using three key variables:

  1. Instance attributes
  2. Term commitment
  3. Payment option

Instance attributes that determine pricing include instant type, tenancy availability zone, and platform.

To illustrate, purchasing a reserved instance with instance type m3.xlarge, availability zone us-east-1a, default tenancy, and Linux platform would allow you to automatically receive the discounted reserved instance rate anytime you run an instance with these attributes.

Reserved instances can be purchased on either 1 year or 3-year term commitment. The 3-year commitment offers a larger discount.

By using Reserved Instances for these workloads you can save up to 60% when compared to standard on-demand cloud computing pricing.

Having said that, it is important to state that purchasing and managing reserve instances requires expertise. Purchasing the wrong type of instances, under-utilisation or other such mishaps, may end up increasing your costs, rather than reducing them.

 

Spot Instances

Spot instances are excessive capacity of compute in a region, that are priced as low as 90% off the on-demand price, but with a catch:.

Spot instances are subject to interruption, meaning that you should not use spot instances for long running mission-critical workloads.

 

תמונה1

 

So, how does that work? You bid for the number of EC2 instances of a particular type you wish to run.

When your bid beats the market spot price - your instances are run. The current spot price is determined by supply and demand.

When the current spot price increases above your bid price, the cloud vendor reclaims the spot instances and gives them to another customer.

Spot instances can be a cost-effective option for short-term stateless workloads.

 

Serverless

Instead of paying for servers that are idle most of the time, you can consider moving to on-demand serverless services in the form of

Event-driven compute service.

Although not suitable for all businesses’ needs, for many developers serverless computing offers a number of advantages over traditional cloud-based or server-centric infrastructure, such as greater scalability, more flexibility, and quicker time to release, all at a reduced cost.

In a serverless environment, You pay only for what you actually use, as code only runs when backend functions are needed by the application, and scaling up is automatic on need.

 

On/Off Scheduling

We all know the situation that we set up a server in our development environment only to find out after returning from the weekend that we forgot to turn off the machine.

You can save around 60% on running these instances if you maintain an “on” schedule on prime operation hours. If your teams work irregular hours/patterns and you adjust your on/off schedule accordingly - you can save even more.

You can save even more by utilising measures to determine prime-time usability or apply a schedule that is by default stopped unless interrupted upon the need of access.

 

Single cloud vs. Multi-cloud

A multi-cloud environment certainly has its drawbacks, from complex infrastructure, through central visibility, but a well-planned multi-cloud strategy can lead to great cost savings. E.g. Different prices for the same instance types and numerous spot markets.

Having said that, volume-related perks when spending with a single cloud vendor are not to be overlooked either. Weigh the pro’s and con’s of your cloud environment needs and capabilities, and you can benefit significant savings with one or the other.

 

Update your Architecture regularly

Cloud environments are dynamic, new products and services are released regularly.

There is a good chance you can harness this new Serverless service or Auto Scaling group feature to better utilise your workloads or remove overhead from your developers while minimising costs.

 

Conclusion

Optimising your cloud cost is an ongoing process. You constantly need to monitor the services you use and the computing power you need to effectively leverage the excess capacity or unused EC2 instances to benefit from significant savings. It’s important to set in place real-time monitoring tools that will enable you to stay on top of your infrastructure performances and utilisation.

To learn more about Cloud Optimization, or just get some expert advice, we’re a click away.

 

 

 

avner-vidal-blog
2020/03
Mar 1, 2020 4:33:20 PM
Cloud computing cheat sheet
DevOps

Mar 1, 2020 4:33:20 PM

Cloud computing cheat sheet

When you start with a cloud provider it’s easy and straight-forward, you pay for what you use.

On-premise vs Cloud. Which is the best fit for your business?

Cloud computing is gaining popularity. It offers companies enhanced security, ability to move all enterprise workloads to the cloud without needing upfront huge infrastructure investment, gives the much-needed flexibility in doing business and saves time and money.


This is why 83% of enterprise workload will be in the cloud and on-premise workloads would constitute only 27% of all workloads by this year, according to Forbes.


But there are factors to consider before choosing to migrate all your enterprise workload to the cloud or choosing on-premise deployment model.


There is no one size fits it all approach. It depends on your business and IT needs. If your business has global expansion plans in place, the cloud provides much greater appeal. Migrating workloads to the cloud enables data to be accessible to anyone with an internet-enabled device.

Without much effort, you are connected to your customers, remote employees, partners and other businesses.


On the other hand, if your business is in a highly regulated industry with privacy concerns and with the need for customising system operations then the on-premise deployment model may, at times, be preferable.
To better discern which solution is best for your business needs we will highlight the key differences between the two to help you in your decision making.

Security

With cloud infrastructure, security is always the main concern. Sensitive financial data, customers’ data, employees’ data, list of clients and much more delicate information is stored in the on-premise data center.

To migrate all this to a cloud infrastructure, you must have conducted thorough research on the cloud provider’s capabilities to handle sensitive data. Renowned cloud providers usually have strict data security measures and policies. 

You can still seek a third-party security audit on the cloud providers you want to choose, or even better yet, consult with a cloud security specialist to ensure your cloud architecture is constructed according to the highest security standards and answers all our needs.

As for on-premise infrastructure, security solely lies with you. You are responsible for real-time threat detection and implementing preventive measures. 

Cost

One major advantage of adopting cloud infrastructure is its low cost of entry. No physical servers are needed, no manual maintenance cost and no heavy cost incurred from the damage on physical servers. Your cloud providers are responsible for maintaining the virtual servers.

Having said that, Cloud providers use a pay as you go model. This can skyrocket your operational costs when administrators are not familiar with the cloud pricing models. Building, operating and maintaining a cloud architecture that maximises your cloud benefits, while maintaining cost control - is not as easy as it sounds, and requires quite a high level of expertise. For that, a professional cloud cost optimization specialist can ensure you get everything you paid for, and not bill-shocked by any unexpected surplus fees. 

On the other hand, On-premise software is usually charged on a one-time licence fee. On top of that, in-house servers, server maintenance and IT professionals to deal with any potential risks that may occur. This does not account the time and money lost when a system failure happens, and the available employees don’t have the expertise to contain the situation. 

Customisation 

On-premise IT infrastructure offers full control to an enterprise. You can tailor your system to your specialized needs. The system is in your hands and only you can modify it to your liking and business needs.

With cloud infrastructure, it’s a bit more tricky. In order to customise cloud platform solutions to your own organisational needs, you need high level expertise to plan and construct a cloud solution that is tailored to your organisational requirement. 

Flexibility 

When your company is expanding its market reach it’s essential to utilise cloud infrastructure as it doesn’t require huge investments. Data can be accessed from anywhere in the world through a virtual server provided by your cloud provider, and scaling your architecture is fairly easy (especially if your initial planning and construction were done right and aimed to support growth). 

With an on-premise system, going into other markets would require you to establish physical servers in those locations and invest in new staff. This might make you think twice on your expansion plans due to the huge costs.

Which is the best? 

Generally, On-premise deployment model is suited for enterprises which require full control of their servers and have the necessary personnel to maintain the hardware and software and frequently secure the network.

They store sensitive information and rather invest in their own security measures on a system they have full control over than have their data move to the cloud. 

Small businesses and large enterprises- Apple, Netflix, Instagram, alike move their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud due to the flexibility of expansion and growth and low cost of entry. No need for the huge upfront investment on infrastructure and maintenance. 

With the various prebuilt tools and features, and the right expert partner to take you through your cloud-journey - you can customise the system to cater to your needs, while upholding top security standards, and optimising ongoing costs.

Still not sure which model is best for you? 

We are a conversation away. Handling all your cloud migration, cloud security and cloud cost optimization needs.

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/02
Feb 4, 2020 6:17:22 PM
On-premise vs Cloud. Which is the best fit for your business?
E-Commerce, Cloud Migration, Multi-Cloud, Healthcare, Education

Feb 4, 2020 6:17:22 PM

On-premise vs Cloud. Which is the best fit for your business?

Cloud computing is gaining popularity. It offers companies enhanced security, ability to move all enterprise workloads to the cloud without needing upfront huge infrastructure investment, gives the much-needed flexibility in doing business and saves time and money.

Taking the cloud workload security off your mind

As much as cloud environments come with their perks; High speed, effective collaborations, cost-saving, mobility and reliability, they do have their share of challenges, cloud security being one of the most prominent ones.

 

What is cloud security?

Cloud security refers to a broad set of policies, technologies, applications, and controls utilized to protect data, applications, services, and the associated architecture of cloud infrastructure. When companies are looking to migrate all or part of their operations to the cloud environment, they encounter the inevitable matter of security: “Does the cloud environment make our company extra susceptible to cyber attacks? Will we have in place measures to prevent and handle such cyber attacks? What's the best way to implement cloud security for our organizational needs?” are only some of the questions facing every CIO, IT manager or CTO when considering their cloud architecture.

 

 

How cloud security risks can affect your business

When a security breach happens in your company you might be quick to point a finger at hackers.

“We were hacked!”

Yes, you might be hacked but your employees play a part in the breach of data. They might not have knowingly given out information to hackers but inadvertently contributed to the breach.

Promiscuous permissions are the #1 threat to computing workloads hosted on the public cloud. Public cloud environments make it very easy to grant extensive permissions, and very difficult to keep track of them. As a result, cloud workloads are vulnerable to data breaches, account compromise and resource exploitation.

 

Once you realise this, it is too late.

With cloud security, you have to be proactive, not reactive.

 

How can you stay ahead in cloud security?

This basically means being able to identify threats and devising measures to prevent any attacks before they happen.

Cloud security done right ensures various layers of infrastructure controls, such as safety, consistency, continuity, availability and regulatory compliance to your cloud based assets.

Measures you can take include traffic monitoring, intrusion detection, identity management and many more according to your security needs.

All this can be time-consuming and requires skills and knowledge to effectively set in place the needed protective measures.

That’s where Cloudride steps in, providing you with tailored cloud service solutions for your organizational needs.

Driven by market best practices approach and uncompromised security awareness, Cloudride’s team of experts works together with you to make sure all your company needs are met. Cloudride provides cloud migration and cloud-enabling solutions, with special attention to security, cost efficiency and vendor best practices.

With promiscuous permissions being the number one threat to computing workloads hosted on the public cloud, Cloudride recently announced it has partnered with Radware, a globally leading provider of centralized visibility and control over large numbers of cloud-hosted workloads, that helps security administrators quickly understand where the attack is taking place and what assets are under threat. Cloudride’s partnership with Radware will now enable Cloudride customers to benefit from agentless, cloud-native solutions for comprehensive protection of AWS assets, to protect both the overall security posture of cloud environments, as well as protect individual cloud

Taking cloud security off your mind so you can focus on streamlining business processes.

ohad-shushan/blog/
2020/01
Jan 23, 2020 4:52:21 PM
Taking the cloud workload security off your mind
Cloud Security

Jan 23, 2020 4:52:21 PM

Taking the cloud workload security off your mind

As much as cloud environments come with their perks; High speed, effective collaborations, cost-saving, mobility and reliability, they do have their share of challenges, cloud security being one of the most prominent ones.

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