As the name suggests, a cloud service provider is essentially a third-party company that offers a cloud-based platform for application, infrastructure or storage services. A cloud service provider generally establishes public cloud platforms, manages private cloud platforms and/or offers on-demand cloud computing services such as:

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
• Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS)

What Is a Public Cloud?

In a public cloud, all of the hardware, software, networking and storage infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud service provider. The public cloud infrastructure is heavily based on virtualization technologies to provide efficient, scalable computing power and storage. The public cloud provider makes these resources available to customers over the internet.

Since you pay only for the amount of cloud services you use, based on your business requirements, adopting cloud computing can help in reducing business costs as compared to owning and operating on-premises datacenters.

Cloud adoption also provides businesses with flexibility and scalability by not restricting them to the physical limitations of on-premises servers. In addition, you can also take advantage of the reliability of multiple cloud data centers as well as responsive and customizable load balancing that evolves with your changing demands.

In this blog, we’ll compare the three leading public cloud providers, namely Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

According to a Canalys report, the global spending on cloud infrastructure grew a sizeable 33% to $142 billion in 2020, with AWS having 31% of the market share, followed by Microsoft Azure at 20% and Google Cloud at 7%.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Overview

A subsidiary of Amazon, AWS was launched in 2006 and offers on-demand cloud computing services on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis. It is one of the most comprehensive and broadly adopted public cloud platforms across the globe. As one of Amazon’s strongest revenue segments, AWS generated a whopping 45$ billion in net sales in 2020.

Common cloud functionalities offered by AWS that can help businesses scale and grow include:

• Networking and content delivery
• Analytics
• Migration
• Database storage
• Compute power
• Developer tools
• Security, identity and compliance
• Artificial intelligence
• Customer engagement
• Internet of Things
• Desktop and app streaming

What Are the Advantages of AWS?

Let’s look at some of the major advantages of AWS:

Ease of Sign-Up

One of the key benefits of adopting AWS is that the onboarding process is a breeze. All you need to provide are a few key credentials and you’re good to go. There is no need to sign an agreement. If you’re unsure, you can opt for the one-year free tier that includes a bunch of the most popular AWS services free of charge up to a certain limit.

Scalability and Elasticity

AWS offers the Auto Scaling service that allows you to easily scale up, down or out your computing resources depending on your changing business requirements.

Along with scalability, you can also leverage the Elastic Load Balancer service to distribute your incoming application traffic across several different targets including containers, messaging services, instances, IP addresses and more.

Access to a Diverse Range of Tools

AWS offers an array of dynamic services such as virtual private cloud (VPC), elastic compute cloud (EC2), simple storage service (S3), relational database service, AWS Lambda and more.

Easy Training and Certifications

Apart from detailed documentation for each of its services, Amazon also offers training and certification programs for the users to gain a better understanding of the usage and application of AWS.

Greater Security

AWS ensures end-to-end security for its cloud infrastructure by implementing software, physical and operational measures wherever required.

Cost-Efficient

With no up-front commitments or long-term contracts, you pay only for the resources (storage, compute power, etc.,) you use. This reduces your IT operational costs and helps boosts profits.

What Are the Disadvantages of AWS?

As with every technology, AWS has its own set of disadvantages as well. Some of these are:

Limitations of Amazon EC2

There are default limits set for AWS resources, such as snapshots, volumes and images, that vary from one region to another. As such, the user is allowed to launch only a certain number of instances per area. In addition, there is a limitation on the availability of information for the resources that are managed by Amazon VPC and Amazon EC2 consoles.

Charges for Technical Support

You will be charged a fee for technical support based on the package you opt for, namely developer, business or enterprise. There is a pricing list that defines the standard pricing for the packages.

Security Limitations

As a security measure, AWS has implemented limitations on some of its features, such as EC-2 classic and EC2-VPC, with no room for any customization.

Cost Management Limitations

One of the key disadvantages of AWS is that it can be difficult for users to optimize costs across on-demand and reserved instances.

Microsoft Azure Overview

Commonly referred to as simply Azure, Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service that was introduced by tech-giant Microsoft back in 2010 for the purpose of testing, building, deploying and managing services and applications. According to Forbes, 63% of enterprises are currently running apps on Azure.

Some of the key functionalities that Azure offers include:

• Computing power
• Database storage
• Content delivery network (CDN)
• Caching
• Business Analytics
• SQL database
• Virtual services
• Application and infrastructure migration
• Media services
• Mobile services

What Are the Advantages of Azure Cloud?

Some of the major advantages of Azure Cloud are listed below:

High Scalability and Availability

Owing to Microsoft’s vast global footprint, Azure offers high scalability and availability to its users. In addition, Azure is well-equipped to scale up or down, depending on the changing needs of your business. You can modify the computing power required with just a few clicks.

Analytics and Intelligence Capabilities

One of the key benefits of Azure is that it offers SQL and NoSQL data services and provides built-in support for gaining deep and meaningful insights into the strategies that businesses can adopt to improve their operations and decision-making. Also, it might be interesting to note that Azure is the only cloud platform that offers unique capabilities like cognitive APIs, bots, machine learning and Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS).

Cost Efficiency

You can opt for the pay-as-you-go payment plan offered by Azure to have the level of control you need to make sure that you don’t exceed your IT budgets. Leveraging Azure’s SaaS applications helps reduce your infrastructure costs and the expenses of maintaining and managing your IT environment.

Compliance, Security and Disaster Recovery

Azure is one of the most secure cloud platforms out there. With its array of compliance certifications, Azure has emerged as the preferred cloud platform for high-risk industries such as government agencies and healthcare. Azure provides high-end protection for its customers and offers additional services, such as multifactor authentication and enterprise-grade disaster recovery capabilities, that help secure and recover your critical business data with minimum downtime.

What Are the Disadvantages of Azure Cloud?

The disadvantages of Azure Cloud include:

Regular Management Required

In order to make efficient use of Azure, you need to hire Azure experts that can handle server monitoring and patching of your cloud infrastructure. That said, while you do save a lot of money from not having to purchase hardware or locally maintain your IT infrastructure, you will still need to spend on hiring professionals that can help you manage the platform.

Platform Expertise Required

As opposed to local servers, deploying Azure requires platform expertise for it to run efficiently. Over-provisioning of cloud services is one of the most common mistakes that admins make due to a lack of awareness and understanding of the inner workings of the cloud servers.

Google Cloud Platform Overview

Launched by Google in 2008, Google Cloud is a suite of cloud computing services that operates on the same infrastructure that is used by Google internally for its most popular end-user products including YouTube, Gmail, Google Search and file storage.

Major functionalities of Google Cloud include:

• Big data services
• Compute engines
• Live migration
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Cloud management
• Machine intelligence
• Networking
• Cloud storage
• Identity and security

What Are the Advantages of Google Cloud?

Google Cloud offers a host of benefits such as:

Google-Grade Security

One of the major advantages of Google Cloud is that it operates on Google’s unique security model that features an end-to-end security process, developed as a result of over 15 years of experience focused on customer security on apps like Google Apps and Gmail.

Live Migration

Unlike Azure and AWS, Google Cloud offers live migration of virtual machines (VMs). As such, there is no change in cloud performance even when the VMs are being migrated. Since your VMs will always be up and running, the Google Cloud engineers are better equipped to resolve updating and patching issues more efficiently.

Environment-Friendly

As compared to typical data centers, Google Cloud data centers run on relatively low energy and utilize 100% renewable energy wherever available.

High Reliability

In the event of an incident that disrupts a data center from functioning, the system switches to a secondary data center, ensuring that the users do not face any business interruption.

What Are the Disadvantages of Google Cloud?

A few of the aspects in which Google Cloud misses the mark include:

Insufficient and Expensive Support

One of the major drawbacks of Google Cloud is that the support offered for customer issues is not the best in class. All users of the platform are offered free-of-charge Bronze-level support by default. However, you can buy the Silver, Gold or Platinum package to avail additional support services. However, the charges for these higher-level packages are quite high.

Less Choice of Functionalities

Compared to its competitors AWS and Azure, Google Cloud offers a smaller range of cloud services.

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud

In this section, we’ll do a service-based comparison of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud to help you better understand which one suits you best.

Compute Services

Database Services

Storage Services

Networking Services

Pricing

Conclusion

Regardless of which cloud platform you choose, you need to manage and optimize your usage to keep costs under control.

Want to know how Kaseya VSA can help you with that? Request a demo today!

The post AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud: Comparing Cloud Platforms appeared first on Kaseya.

What Are Containers?

Containers may be described as packages that include everything needed to run a single application or micro service. This includes its dependencies and run-time libraries. Containers allow the application to be run quickly and reliably from anywhere, right from desktop computers to physical and virtual servers and even the cloud.

The container is abstracted away from the host operating system (OS). Each container shares the OS kernel with other containers rather than including its own full OS. Access to underlying OS resources is limited. As such, a containerized application can be run on different infrastructure types such as the cloud, virtual machine, bare metal and so on, without the need for refactoring the application for each IT environment.

Since containers typically share the machine’s OS kernel and don’t have the overhead of having a full OS within each container, they are often regarded as being more “lightweight” than virtual machines (VMs).

How Does Containerization Work?

Containerization may be defined as a type of OS virtualization wherein applications are run within isolated user spaces (containers) that all share the same OS kernel. It is the encapsulation of an application and the environment required to run it so it can be efficiently and consistently run across several different computing platforms.

Containerization is emerging as the preferred approach for software development and DevOps pipelines. The creation and deployment of applications are faster and more secure with containerization.

When code is developed using traditional methods in a specific computing environment and transferred to a different computing platform, it can often result in errors. However, containerization effectively eliminates this problem by encapsulating the entire application code along with its related libraries, dependencies and configuration files required for it to run.

Pros and Cons of ContainerizationLike every technology out there, containerization has its fair share of advantages and disadvantages that you must take into consideration.

Pros of Containerization

• One of the major advantages of containerization is that it provides a fast and lightweight infrastructure for you to run your applications. The relatively lightweight containers are more flexible, and you can create and move them more quickly than VMs.
• Containerization supports policy-based optimization. You can use an automation layer to locate, auto-migrate and execute on the best platform.
• Containerization is helpful in lowering your software development and operational costs.
• Containerization also provides greater scalability. Compared to VMs, many more containers can be created and run on a physical server since they don’t require a full OS to be included in each container. In addition, monolithic applications can be broken down into smaller micro services using containers. You can then scale and distribute the individual features.

Cons of Containerization

• One of the major drawbacks of containerization technology is that it requires a significant amount of work to set up in an organization so that it performs efficiently.
• Since the technology is relatively recent, the required application support and dependencies still remain insufficient.
• It’s hard to find qualified container developers.
• Containers share the host OS kernel. That said, in the event of the kernel becoming vulnerable, all the associated containers would become vulnerable too.
• Container technology can be more expensive in terms of application development costs.

What Problems Do Containers Solve?

As per a forecast by GartnerInc., the global container management revenue is estimated to witness strong growth from $465.8 million in 2020 to a sizable $944 million in 2024.Gartner also predicts that by the year 2022, north of 75% of global businesses will likely be running containerized applications in production.

The containerization technology provides tremendous portability across computing platforms and environments. It allows the developers to write the application once and then run it anywhere they like.

Being a key component of the private cloud, containers are fast emerging as a game-changer for many businesses. Private cloud has become the favored approach for organizations to deliver the flexibility and control required while also enabling efficient consumption of multiple cloud services.

What Are Virtual Machines?

A virtual machine (VM) may be described as a virtual environment where each VM is a complete virtual computer with its own guest OS, virtual memory, CPU, storage and network interface. VMs function as software-defined virtual computers running on physical servers.

Usually referred to as a guest, a VM is created within a physical computing environment called a “host.” Multiple VMs can share the resources of a single host such as memory, network bandwidth and CPU cycles and run concurrently. However, each VM will have its own OS and operate independently of other VMs that might be located on the same host.

How Does Virtualization Work?

As the foundation of cloud computing, server virtualization enables more efficient utilization of physical computer hardware. You can utilize the full capacity of a physical machine by running multiple VMs on a single server.

Server virtualization is executed by running a virtual instance of a computer system within a layer, called a hypervisor, that is abstracted from the actual hardware. The hypervisor allocates hardware resources, such as CPUs, memory and storage, to each VM. Server virtualization allows running more than one OS on a single computer system at the same time.

The global virtualization software market is estimated to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 30% over the next two years.

There are four types of virtualization:

• Server Virtualization – With over 90% of businesses in Europe and North America using it, server virtualization is the most common type of virtualization.Server virtualization segregates one physical server into several isolated virtual server instances, as described above.
• Network Virtualization – Network virtualization allows for the creation of abstract versions of physical network resources, including firewalls, routers and switches, within separate layers of the virtual network.
• Storage Virtualization – Storage virtualization abstracts, aggregates and manages multiple physical storage resources to make them look like a single, centralized storage pool. The storage resources can be from different vendors and networks.
• Desktop Virtualization – Creates a virtual version of the workstation, along with its operating system, that can be accessed remotely.

Pros and Cons of Virtualization

Let’s discuss some of the major advantages and disadvantages of virtualization.

Pros of Virtualization

• One of the key benefits of virtualization technology is that it enables efficient hardware utilization. You can create multiple virtual instances on the same hardware and reduce hardware costs.
• Increased uptime and availability is another upside of virtualization. With capabilities such as fault tolerance, storage migration, live migration, distributed resource scheduling and high availability, VMs allow IT to quickly recover from unforeseen outages.
• Virtualization helps lower IT operational costs since it requires a smaller number of hardware servers and associated resources to achieve the same level of scalability, availability and performance. This means less time managing and maintaining hardware resources.
• Backup, duplication and recovery are relatively easier and quicker with virtualization. With real-time data backup and mirroring, there is negligible data loss and quick recovery from the last saved state that was mirrored on a separate virtual instance.

Cons of Virtualization

• With the initial setup cost of storage and servers being higher than usual, the high initial investment is one of the major downsides of virtualization.
• In order to implement and manage a virtualized environment, you need to train your IT staff or hire experts that are well-versed in virtualization technologies.
• Testing is critical to ensure your systems work flawlessly in a virtualized environment.

What Problems Are Solved With Virtual Machines?

Organizations today often require many servers in different physical locations, each operating at their highest capacity, to drive efficiency and ROI. As such, it has become a standard practice to use virtualization to increase the utilization of computing resources.The key idea behind virtualization was to boost the efficiency of IT systems.

Virtualization helps boost IT scalability, flexibility and agility while reducing operational costs.In addition, availability of resources, increased performance, automated operations and workload mobility are some of the reasons why virtualization has become mainstream in the IT industry.

The 2020 State of Virtualization Technology report predicts that by 2021, the rate at which enterprises adopt virtualization technology is estimated to grow significantly. While 75% of enterprises are likely to adopt application virtualization, nearly 69% are expected to start using desktop virtualization.

Containers vs. Virtual Machines: What’s the Difference?

In this section, we’ll discuss the key distinguishing factors between the two technologies. The diagram below shows that VMs each have their own “Guest” OS and sit on top of the hypervisor layer. Each VM has its own binaries and library files. Containers, on the other hand, may share binaries and libraries and don’t contain an OS. There’s a container engine in place of the hypervisor.

Here’s a comparison table:

When Should You Use Containers?

Containers might be the right choice if you’re looking to cater to your short-term application needs. Since containers are portable and can be set up and started up quickly, they can help elastically scale your applications to align with demand. Examples include event-driven video streaming, web service delivery, insurance claims or online order fulfillment.You should opt for containerization when your priority is to maximize the number of applications you’re running on a minimal number of servers. However, containers have the limitation of not being supported by dedicated storage resources and processing and operating systems.Containers are well-suited for packaging micro services and building cloud-native apps.

When Should You Use Virtual Machines?

VMs are the best option for businesses that need to run multiple applications that require the comprehensive functionality and support of a dedicated OS.VMs are best suited for applications that you need to use for extended time periods and run within a virtualized environment that is more versatile and secure.

Virtualization is better suited for housing traditional, legacy, monolithic workloads, provisioning infrastructural resources, running one OS inside another and isolating risky development cycles.

Monitoring Your Virtual Environment

When it comes to monitoring and managing your virtual servers, make sure that your endpoint management tool provides complete visibility into your virtual environment so you can quickly identify issues and resolve them.

Kaseya VSA discovers the two most popular virtualization infrastructures, VMWare and Microsoft Hyper-V, and includes hosts and VMs on its Network Topology Map.

Learn more about Kaseya VSA. Request a demo today!

The post Containers vs. Virtual Machines (VM): All You Need to Know appeared first on Kaseya.

A major expense that most modern businesses incur is IT infrastructure costs. In fact, based on data in the Spiceworks 2020 State of IT report, hardware and software infrastructure costs are typically about 29% of the IT budget. And, according to Deloitte Insights, on average, IT budgets are about 3.3% of revenue. There are several potential ways to optimize your IT infrastructure costs and keep your business moving forward in these turbulent times.

Switch to Serverless Computing

While businesses the world over have been making a definitive shift to cloud services, the pandemic has further fueled the transition to the cloud. Serverless computing is a more recent development that offers an array of potential benefits ranging from cost savings and easier scalability, to faster deployment of new applications. With serverless computing, you ‘pay as you use’ for backend services. This can be less costly than traditional ‘server-full’ cloud services where you typically have to pay for a certain amount of capacity, even if it is not used.

Move from VMs to Containerization

Containers offer huge cost-saving potential for businesses looking for new ways of cutting back on their infrastructure expenses. Containerization reduces infrastructure costs because containers are more lightweight compared to virtual machines (VMs). Since you don’t need to have multiple OS images—one for each application on the server—more applications can run on the same hardware. This could reduce the number of hosts needed to deploy your applications.

In addition, containerization also promotes better coordination between the engineering and development teams, facilitates faster CI/CD pipelines and involves low maintenance costs. Container orchestration and containerized applications not only promote cost savings but also allow your developers to utilize their time and resources more productively. You can not only maximize your hardware utilization with the help of containers but also get the opportunity to run your applications on cheaper devices. For example, you can link together powerful PCs that will perform as well as more expensive mid-range servers when you are using containers.

Leverage Other Cloud Services, Such as DRaaS

In many cases, leveraging a cloud service can prove to be an excellent way to cut back on IT infrastructure costs. You can outsource the infrastructure components on a pay-per-use model and gain access to various advanced services and technologies. For example, DRaaS (Disaster Recover as-a-Service) is an advanced IT solution that can be accessed at a reasonable price. You can get the backup protection you need, with pricing based on the recovery time you want. The DRaaS provider should provide automated testing of recoveries on a weekly or monthly basis.

Consolidate IT Management Tools

Another portion of your operational costs involves the licensing and/or maintenance fees for your IT management tools. You can optimize these costs by eliminating the fees for IT management tools you no longer need once you have a core IT management platform in place.

The essential tools you need include Endpoint Management (RMM), Service Desk (or PSA in the case of MSPs), and Knowledge and Configuration Management (IT Documentation).

An IT management platform that offers seamless workflows across this core set of applications can be extremely helpful in boosting your IT efficiency and reducing costs that are otherwise spent on multiple, disparate tools. Workflow integrations mean that you can easily access other functions from the tool you are already working in. For example, access the remote endpoint management function from your IT documentation solution. Another example is the ability to run automation scripts from the service desk solution to automatically remediate IT incidents and close tickets faster.

We estimate that you can improve IT technician efficiency by 25 percent by using “workflow integrated” tools and IT automation.

You can also save money by eliminating redundant and overlapping tools. For example, having separate remote management and patch management tools or separate endpoint management and network management tools shouldn’t be necessary.

Consolidating multiple IT solutions into a core, streamlined platform helps businesses save a lot in terms of both time and money. Workflow integration helps eliminate the time wasted looking up information, retrieving passwords and switching between applications. Having a consolidated IT management platform enables your technicians to be more productive, which should also reduce operational costs.

Reducing your IT infrastructure costs is an excellent strategy for optimizing your overall business expenditures and maintaining profitability in a slow economy.

To learn more about strategic ways to reduce IT costs, please read our eBook: Strategic Ways to Boost IT Operational Efficiency & Cut Costs.

The post Key Ways to Cut IT Infrastructure Costs appeared first on Kaseya.