GMO Cloud

How to Minimize the Impact of Cloud Outages

There will be occasions when cloud outages occur for short periods of time. After all, even the best run in-house computer center has its occasional glitches. And while cloud outages are far more rare than the problems encountered by in-house centers, the fact is that cloud outages tend to get a lot more publicity.

If you are running a company that stands to lose much revenue, goodwill and reputation due to a cloud outage, you must take adequate care to ensure that the adverse effects are minimal. Fortunately, the cloud gives you both hot and cold options when it comes to service continuity.

Ultimately, you are responsible for providing the planned level of service to your clients and users. And unless you have explicitly covered a cloud failure situation in your contracts with your users, you will also be responsible for any service failure. Given that responsibility, it’s important to make the right preparations.

The option you choose will depend on the extent to which your operations are dependent on the web. There are a few options currently being used:

Cold Disaster Recovery – Multiple Regions: A very common strategy is to keep multiple copies of your applications and data in several cloud centers in various parts of the world. This ensures that a single hurricane (for example) will not knock out your data. If and when your main site is affected, you fire up the alternate sites. The cost of such a solution is quite low, but there is a tangible latency and your new sites will take an hour or so to come up. Since you have no servers running, you will need to create instances. This takes time, even if you have accurate server templates of your existing web and database servers. There is also an associated problem of keeping your DR database updated.

Warm Disaster Recovery – Multiple regions: In this approach, you run a parallel deployment in a different region(s). Most components are running and available. In the event of a failure, your slave database is promoted to master status and DNS is reconfigured to direct traffic to the alternate site. Costs depend on how many of the components of your application you choose to keep fired up. In typical scenarios, you can be up and running within the hour.

Hot Disaster Recovery: In this strategy, you have a complete parallel deployment in a different region. While your primary servers would get all traffic, you can ensure that the health of the standby site is continuously monitored and kept online. There is a need to maintain two copies of your database so that every event in your primary location is mirrored in your DR location as well. If you follow this strategy, your operations can be back to normal within five minutes.

Most users opt to use the warm DR approach. While this is more expensive than the cold DR approach, it offers good value for money and a reasonably short recovery time. Another option in the absence of available labor resources, is subscribing to the services of a cloud provider that offers disaster prevention measures. GMO Cloud offers a highly secure  cloud hosting that makes sure that all aspects of the hosting are taken care of – this is what they refer to as a multi-level security strategy. Read more about this approach at the Security page.

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About the Guest Author:

Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure.

He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.

Cloud Computing and Workload Management

Cloud computing can help businesses become more flexible and cost-effective by moving their workload into the cloud. As an alternative to traditional data centers, cloud computing is more agile and is especially suited to the needs of businesses dealing with dynamic workloads. While many companies already use cloud computing for many of their daily needs, the opportunity to take advantage of cloud computing to manage workloads is often overlooked and may be the biggest use of cloud computing technology for business in 2013. Rather than using traditional data centers, the cloud can be used to process increased computing workloads. While this technology is commonly used for storage and application hosting, cloud computing’s potential to help with increased batch computing workloads is often not taken advantage of – in fact, about 70 percent of these critical tasks are still handled at a traditional data center.

Enterprise workload automation tools can help businesses take advantage of the cloud’s power

Unlocking the cloud’s potential to handle increased workloads may be as simple as taking advantage of enterprise workload automation tools, typically an already critical part of any data center. The best enterprise workload automation tools ensure that computing jobs are done on time by making them as efficient as possible. They maximize output by ensuring that jobs are distributed in a sequence that takes into account resource requirements and available local and cloud-based resources.

Workload automation tools can also be tweaked so that they will have different priorities depending on your business’ needs, goals, and policies. Sending increased computing workload to the cloud can help reduce costs, increase speed, and help businesses avoid costly equipment expenses without sacrificing their potential to respond to increased workloads during specific times. Netflix is a good example of how a business can use cloud computing to handle increased workloads flexibly. Consumer demand for online television changes drastically during the day and one can observe how Netflix adjusts the number of active servers handling computing and processing at different times of day by cleverly managing local and cloud-based computing power.

How businesses can take advantage of cloud-based workload management

In the end it is all about efficiency. Cloud computing does away with the need for overcompensating when it comes to IT infrastructure to ensure that higher workloads can be handled. Thanks to cloud-based workload management, an IT department can get increased computing power only when required, having a great effect on operating and capital equipment costs. Workload management is not limited to a single kind of cloud model; hybrid, private, and public cloud models can all be used effectively for workload management.

Most data centers today are using the cloud in order to save energy and on hardware redundancy by using virtualization to increase access and avoid costly IT maintenance. Public clouds are typically used to host online applications and data. However, the potential for the cloud to help manage batch workloads has yet to be realized.

Batch workloads are tailor-made for cloud processing

There are several reasons why batch workloads are great candidates for this technology. These are usually the bulk of the processing done in data centers and are often critical to most companies, ranging from start-ups that are looking to grow as fast as possible to large multinationals that are already established.

The back-end processing involved in operations like handling reservations, automatic teller machines, and online retail is usually handled in critical batch workloads processed in traditional data centers. They are usually extremely important to a business and interruptions have a direct impact on a business’ day-to-day activities. Batch workloads also take considerable resources and – as more businesses move online and operate non-stop – require careful balancing and management to ensure that the capacity is there to handle the workloads. Since batch workloads represent about seventy percent of all workloads, applying cloud technology to increase efficiency can have a considerable effect on a company’s bottom line.

Productive cloud-based workload management

There are several reasons why using workload automation can help a business take full advantage of cloud computing. Fast-growing businesses can scale rapidly to meet increased demands without costly IT and staff expenditures. One of the main features of GMO Cloud thoroughly explains this as it explains the competitiveness that this function brings; visit the High Availability page to find out more.

Established multinational companies can cut costs and make acquisitions more efficient by avoiding the expense of adding on to existing IT infrastructure. These advantages are coupled with the “traditional” advantages of using cloud computing for other tasks, such as energy savings and more efficient hardware management. Rather than doing away with the traditional data center, cloud workload management can be an effective tool to help data centers become more dynamic and better at what they do.

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About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.

Moving Video Games to the Cloud

Popularity and increased application of cloud computing will definitely kill “consoles” in the gaming industry. While this may help game makers save on manufacturing cost, it also brings some comfort to game-players. Cloud gaming, as it is called nowadays, allows gamers to enjoy a series of games by merely connecting to the cloud (internet). So, in reality, gamers can have access to games through different machines.

Cloud computing streamlines the processes of playing games: now, game-players do not need to possess a physical copy of their games; all they need to do is just subscribe to online game-providers, download the games from the cloud and stream it on their devices. Inherently, this experience helps game-players quicken access to games, and they do not necessarily need to worry about losing or destroying physical copies!

Before this landmark transition to cloud gaming, every player was required to own a console. Hence, cloud gaming liberalizes the choice of devices to be used for game-playing. Similarly, no external installations are required to play these cloud games— players simply connect to the internet.

Since 2009, two frontline cloud-gaming companies that have taken the stage are Gaikai and OnLive. OnLive, in particular, allows game-players to access its cloud games using any of these devices: TV Consoles, tablets, PCs, Mac OS or smartphones. Customers can rent, purchase and download games from the cloud. Free trials are available, and game-players can buy the amount of playtime they can afford. This is contrary to the old way of enjoying games — every game-player was expected to buy a console and copy of the desired game. How expensive it was!

Gaikai, a prominent example of cloud-gaming providers, allows players to play games directly on its website or on devices. Players can select whichever game they desire from Gaikai’s library of games. If needed, they can access demonstrations of the games before they purchase them. Gaikai’s streaming ability has increased lately, and the company seems to be enjoying good relationships with other streaming partners, a factor that will probably open more of Gaikai’s games to international game-players.

It is interesting that the rapid development in cloud-gaming has caused even the big gaming players like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to seriously consider migrating their enter library of games to the cloud.
 

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About the Guest Author:

Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/

Risks and Expected Returns in Japanese Mobile Gaming

The kernel of Alvin Toffler’s 1970s book “The Third Wave” was the notion of human progress being mapped in three stages: the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the “third wave” of the electronic or computer revolution. Is cloud the champion surfer of the third wave?

Cloud Tufts

Cloud computing adoption has been in bursts. Anyone who has pitched the technology knows the concerns and resistance thrown up by the potential users. However, there is one niche where acceptance has been high: social gaming.

Compared to Japan, the United States has a long way to go in pushing games through other channels. The 2012 Japanese social game market sales were $3.4 billion. At the same time, the United States social game market reached $1.65 billion, with the worldwide sales cited as $6.2 billion.

Social Gaming Cultural Differences

The social gaming market is growing. But the rate of growth is dependent on several factors such as market size and monetization ability. Japanese games are not usually played outside of Japan due to the nature of distribution channels. Japanese companies like GREE and DeNA have only recently expanded outside of Japan.

The revenue per download of iOS games in the United States is $0.67, while Japan revenue is $1.90. This is in line with other studies which show that the higher revenues are due to the Japanese being more comfortable with purchasing premium content on their free-to-play games. The “comfort spending level” of Japanese social game players is estimated at $18 per month.

Penetrating the Japanese Market

In recent years there has been a rapid increase in acceptance of iOS and Android devices in Japan. On top of that, the top Japanese mobile game distributors, GREE and DeNA have been aggressively pursuing partnerships with American firms for the distribution of their titles outside of Japan. This points to a more aggressive monetization based upon in-game purchases.

For developers, this means that current titles can be distributed better within the Japanese market, subject to culturalization and localization. This further assumes partnerships with Japanese mobile game channels.

The cost of operating within the above constraints is offset by the different and higher revenue expectations from the much better monetization model used by Japanese distribution channels.
 

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Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

Contextual Advertising and Cloud Computing

Truly contextual advertising implies that the message not only relates to the preferences of the person but also to the context at a given moment. A person’s preferences can certainly be gauged from data about buying choices, web history and spending patterns. However, serving up advertisements merely based on these choices would still be a very ham-handed approach.

Only the Cloud can deliver

Such contextual targeting necessitates huge capabilities of collecting data and analyzing it in real time to get results. In this, only cloud-based systems are really able to cope up. Many major cloud companies active in advertising are using GPS enabled chips found in all smartphones to be better aware of peoples’ locations. Marketers build personas of clients and combine this with the GPS location to give the client a message in line with real-time context.

Retailers use the cloud to understand customer needs

Two people standing at the same street corner could get very different coupons from the same retailer. Even manufacturers gain – because they are able to get a better understanding of what the customer really likes. Such technology is also opening up new areas of cooperation between manufacturers and retailers.

At the heart of the entire system is Big Data, the mammoth mountain of small bits that represents huge insights. Until the advent of cloud computing, such data could not have been analyzed – both due to issues of performance and storage.
Cloud is helping circumvent two decades of traditional problems, especially by offering larger data the application crunches for better predictions.

GPS data from personal mobile devices, computing power from the cloud and some clever software will combine to make contextual advertising possible.
 

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.