SaaS For IT Management
This blog is all about using Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT Management.
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Reliability And The Cloud
Posted on July 9th, 2009 No commentsArs Technica, one of the best blogs in tech has an article from Chris Foreman and Jon Stokes today entitled "Cloud computing promise still stormy with reliability issues" citing some recent high-profile outages as reason to question the claims of reliability by those on the side of cloud computing and SaaS:
In the last week alone, there have been several high profile outages at data centers that host sites, such as video site DailyMotion, credit card authorization service Authorize.net, and Microsoft’s Bing Travel. Even the Google App Engine—a platform for third-parties to run their own cloud services—experienced performance issues that resulted in high latency and even data loss.
Rackspace Hosting, which provides servers that run untold numbers of websites, experienced a power outage Tuesday in its Dallas data center for as long as 45 minutes. Once power was restored, though, it took some sites several hours to come back fully. It was the second such power outage for the company’s Dallas data center in just over a week, though it’s not particularly common; as TechCrunch noted, the last time the company had a major outage was in November 2007. However, the recent incidents illustrate the problem—there are still risks associated with using the cloud.
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Many of the IT pros who are evaluating cloud services name reliability as a major concern with cloud services, and have been doing so in the Ars forums and in closed-door sessions for over a year now. Many of these folks are at large companies and are used to having control over and responsibility for all of the servers that the business uses, so the idea of putting parts of their business on rented, "black box"-style cloud services makes them uneasy.
Many of the vendors that we hear from either downplay the reliability concerns or offer some version of "it hurts to be on the cutting edge." And with this last response, they do have a point. Often1, the decision to use cloud services instead of in-house systems is a decision that’s made for reasons of either cost and flexibility (in the case of SaaS) or development speed (in the case of actual cloud infrastructure).
All excellent points, and points that are valid in any instance when a business outsources mission-critical processes to a third-party. When it comes to selecting cloud or SaaS services, IT professionals will, like the article says "have to carefully balance the downtime risks with the cost and agility benefits of using the different tiers of cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS).
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