Everyone has seen the meme that the cloud is just someone else’s computer. Or that people don’t understand the cloud. I think either has become too simplistic of an explanation. The fact of the matter is, we all have embraced the cloud in some fashion.
Think about our Google or iCloud drives that we save documents, music, or photos to. How many of us subscribe to a music app that delivers music over the net? Streamers? Do we have TV streamers around? The cloud is taking over for sure. It’s starting to become the platform of choice in business. It’s fast to ramp additional resources, it simplifies the infrastructure, and all you need to do as the consumer is to feed it money.
No ground under the cloud
What happens to your music, documents, pictures, or SQL server if the internet is down? Or there is an outage because not only did a fiber line get cut, but the electrical grid had a massive failure? How resilient is the cloud then? What’s the cost associated with that outage and is it worth it?
Obviously the cloud is here to stay….but jumping all in may not be the best practice either. As a DBA, I always work at leaving myself an out. If code goes bad, a server crashes or some other unplanned nuisance rears its ugly head, I generally have an alternative in mind. We should be adopting that same strategy with the cloud as well. If Amazon, Azure, or someone else goes down for an extended time…..what’s the fall back plan other than just being down? In other words, do you have a parachute, and is it working?
