Which is the best cloud for Windows Gurus?
In this post we look at why Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the true cloud home of Microsoft Windows. Find out how AWS lets you use your Windows skills to make the cloud work for you.
As an IT Guru, if you’re not working in the cloud, then you’re almost certainly working to transition there. Companies want the agility, scalabity and cost savings on offer, and its our job to guide the organisation without falling into the many traps along the way.
Windows Developers and Administrators may see Microsoft Azure as the default cloud choice, largely because Microsoft is aggressively pushing Azure as its core business. However you will soon discover that they’re playing catch up to the biggest game in town, AWS.
To really understand something, particularly a technology platform, I think it’s good to understand where it came from.
You may recall Microsoft Azure was originally branded as “Windows Azure”, an “Operating System for the Cloud”. When Ray Ozzie announced this I thought I was seeing a new internet based platform for writing new applications on. I found out it didn’t work too well for existing applications. Over time, Microsoft evolved the environment to support Virtual Machines and other services.
Amazon Web Services began with isolated services that could be used by existing applications. At first this with S3, a storage platform useful for backups and web content, which was followed by a Virtual Machine infrastructure called EC2 that was programmable. They then continued provide many similar supporting services, eventually culminating in their Lambda platform, which supports “Serverless” applications. Basically the same kind of thing that Windows Azure was trying to do originally.
AWS hasn’t stopped its momentum in delivering new services. It does so at an astonishing rate. Wall Street analysts at Jeffries declared in a research note recently that “With new features and services in 2015 on track to exceed the 515 introduced in 2014, the pace of AWS innovation is very likely unmatched by any of its competitors.”
When evaluating cloud platforms then, use the one that fits your organisational aims and strategy. For organisations with existing applications of many kinds, Amazon AWS is ideal, as you can usually move your computer center over to the cloud first, then evolve your infrastructure over time to take advantage of all the services.
When I first looked at cloud technologies I felt overwhelmed by confusing pricing and the focus on operational concepts such as network partitioning. It seemed that a wrong move could cost a great deal. I started to believe that maybe the cloud was a shell game with a very expensive outcome.
I’ve discovered that to make the cloud work you need to know how to deploy applications in ways that use the features they provide as soon as you can. If you don’t it will cost much more than using a traditional hosting service or your own hardware.
As a Windows professional you may be wondering if your existing skills are any use in this new world? Fortunately, the answer is yes, but you need to change a few of your assumptions.
One example is cost. The main reason why it can be cheaper to run applications on the cloud is that you can pay for the CPU and storage that you need at a given instant in time. This contrasts greatly with on-premise deployments where servers run 24 hours a day without disk space being monitored.
To get real cost benefits you need to plan your compute requirements, then chose the resources that cost the least. Instead of over-provisioning, setup “elastic” compute that will increase resources as needed.
Utilising your existing skills is also vital. Using traditional metrics such as paging, cpu and disk queues to tune effectively can make a huge difference. It is not enough to leave the operating system at its default settings.
Tuning Windows Servers is only the beginning. Amazon have first class support for Microsoft Technologies such as Powershell, Visual Studio and SQL*Server. It is even possible to exclusively use Microsoft based technologies while deploying to the cloud.
For Windows professionals, Amazon AWS allows you to grow your expertise gradually into other operating systems, databases and technologies quickly and easily. An Amazon AWS deployment soon becomes a hybrid, with many different operating systems and services working together seamlessly.
Shameless plug time! I’ve put together a course on A Cloud Guru just for Windows Administrators like you. Just launching this week my course “AWS Essentials for Windows Administrators” is everything you need to know when running Windows on AWS.
The course shows you how to get up and running using Windows on the cloud quickly and effectively. It’s different from most AWS courses because it demonstrates AWS exclusively using Microsoft technologies and concepts. As a Windows Guru, you will give yourself the best possible introduction to the world’s leading cloud provider.
The best cloud for Windows is the one that gives you most flexibility and will grow as your capability grows. If this fits with you I think you’ll find Amazon AWS, as the leading provider of Cloud technology is an excellent choice.
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