True Cloud Story About: IaaS, PaaS & SaaS
Studding, analyzing & Planning for an out of the box business intelligent server infrastructure ( Tableau server: http://www.tableau.com/products/server ) and what could be the best implantation practice in term of cost, performance, availability and long term sociability the choices so far are 3 and they are as following:
(1) IaaS: Purchase the tableau server OS(Software) with the license and a server computer (Hardware) with limited resources from Tableau company directly:
- Pros: You own the server on you premises, which means security of your physical devices & the data is 100% guaranteed and it’s one shot deal then you own everything.
- Cons: You will need to take responsibility of all maintenance and security management tasks, you also need to connect the server to the external networks ( the web) through a firewall, and maintain all performance issues, you also need to pay for any needed equipment to scale the performance of the server if you have more users and web traffic than what the initial installed sever equipment can actually serve. not to mansion the need for stable permanent internet connection all the time to achieve 99% SLA or 0 1% down time ( This is clearly impossible with the current state of Yemen ISPs unreliable provided service ), The clouding Architecture in this case is called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
(2) PaaS: Move to the Cloud ( Microsoft Azure ):
As long as tableau server VM is not available on Microsoft’s Azure Market Place yet, the only choice is to purchase the server OS ( without the hardware), prepare it and convert it to a Virtual Machine Disk(VMD), and finally upload it to Microsoft Azure, the infrastructure implemented here is Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Pros: You get to save more than 50% up front and that by only purchasing tableau server OS, and don’t forget about hardware maintenance 99% SLA guaranteed by Microsoft and server is always online with the support of the best network balancing services . users all over the world will get the same speed to access and navigate around the services provided by the server, in case you need to upgrade the server anytime it’s not as expensive as buying extra equipment, this will magically happen in matter of minutes with as many as 3 clicks ( or even automatically based on pre defined occasional load percentage on the server ), and finally the best thing is that you can scale down at anytime the load on the server gets back to normal .
- Cons: You still need to take care of the software and OS maintenance and performance under the cloud VM. You Still have to pay for both the tableau server license and the hosting VM Server ( Windows or Linux ) and the supported services such as VPN and remote desktop connection by hours .
(3) SaaS: Move to the Cloud ( Amazon Web Services (AWS ) :
The best thing in this infrastructure, is that Tableau server is provided as architecture called Software as a Service (SaaS) https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00W2SU9U4
- Pros: It means that we don’t need to pay upfront for niter the hardware nor the software of the tableau server or the hosting OS, We also don’t have to care for any maintenance, backup or even connectivity issues, everything is taken care of by Amazon’s engineering and guaranteed that your server and services are up and working in very good performance to your users .
- Cons: You actually never own anything, as you only pay for a monthly subscription of the services ( it’s kind of buying an apartment where you are responsible for everything because it’s yours or renting a room at a hotel, where you get to pay less and receive the best services and the owner have to make sure it’s always clean and all equipment needed in the room are functional).
Last and not least the moral of this technical story was to share with you the 3 famous and basic infrastructures of cloud computing, where and how it’s shine in term of cost, performance, required manpower and time saving, according to a personal experience and actual business needs scenario.
Looking forward to hear from you in the comments, to know about your own cloud computing story and how any or all our 3 main characters play their role to make your business life easier.
