“Cloud computing is an information technology (IT) paradigm that enables ubiquitous access to shared pools of configurable system resources and higher-level services that can be rapidly provisioned with minimal management effort, often over the Internet.”
Using this definition, the key elements of cloud computing are as follows:
- Network access
- Shared groups of systems and services
- Rapid (and dynamic) provisioning
- Minimal management
Nothing in this definition speaks to the size of the “data center” which houses these systems and services. Most of us probably think of Amazon, or Google, or Microsoft when we think of cloud services. But it need not be a multi-million dollar investment for it to be a part of cloud computing.
Data Center Consolidation
This past weekend, we closed one of our data centers. Specifically, we shut down the facility in Waldo, Missouri. This “data center” was a collection of systems and services. It hosted the web site, the file servers, and one of our DNS servers. But these weren’t housed in a vast data center. The services were located in a room within a residential property. For the past four months, we ran this site remotely. And this past weekend, we consolidated all the Waldo services at our Elgin facility.
Like most moves, there was a plan. And the plan was fluid enough to deal with the challenges that arose. And as happens with most consolidations, some spare gear became available. We reclaimed the DNS server (a Raspberry Pi). And we re-purposed the premise router as a test platform at our Elgin site.
Since this site was both business and residential, we had to re-architect the storage infrastructure to accommodate multiple (and dissimilar) use cases. We also moved key data from local storage on the servers to the consolidated storage farm.
Once cleared out, we returned the property back to the landlord.
Service Consolidation
As noted, we consolidated all of the file servers into a single storage farm. But we did need to migrate some of the data from the servers and onto the new storage. Once we migrated the data, we consolidated the streaming servers. The overall experience for our streaming customers will become much simpler.
Hardware Re-use
With the release of one of our routers, we are now able to put a test bed together. That test bed will run DD-WRT software. The process of converting the Netgear infrastructure to DD-WRT was quite tedious. It took four (4) different attempts to reset the old hardware before we could load the new software. This wasn’t anticipated. And it took us beyond the anticipated change window. Fortunately, we kept our customers informed and we were able to amend customer expectations.
Once deployed, the new network build will provide VPN services to all clients. At the same time, we will be turning up DNSSEC across the company. Finally, we will be enabling network-wide QOS and multi-casting. In short, the spare gear has given us the chance to improve our network and our ability to deliver new services.
The Rest of the Story
All of this sounds like a well-oiled plan. And it did go without any real incidents. But the scale of the effort was much smaller than you might expect. The site in Waldo was a room in a rental. The servers were a desktop, a couple of laptops, a NAS box, a cable modem, a Netgear R8000 X6 router, a Raspberry Pi, and a variety of streaming devices (like a TV, a few Chromecast devices, and the mobile phones associated with the users (i.e., members of my family.
So why would I represent this as a “data center” move? That is easy: when you move connected devices across a network (or across the country), you still have to plan for the move. More importantly, cloud services (either at the edge or within the confines of a traditional data center) must be manged as if the customer depends upon the services. And to be fair, sometimes our families are even more stringent about loss-of-service issues than are our customers.