Cloud Computing Failures And How To Avoid Them

Guideline No. 4: Consider ISP redundancy

Thoroughly assess the reliability of your existing ISP. When the Internet connection is down or degraded, business productivity will be impacted. Consider having multiple providers in case one has a performance issue.

Guideline No. 5: Hold service providers accountable

Today, if a problem occurs within the network core, the engineer can monitor the entire path of network traffic from the client to the server in order to locate the problem source. With service providers controlling the majority of information in cloud computing, it becomes more difficult to monitor, optimise and troubleshoot connections.

As a result, service-level agreements (SLAs) take on greater importance, ensuring expected network and Internet performance levels. SLAs should outline the delivery of expected Internet service levels and performance obligations that service providers must meet, as well as define unacceptable levels of dropped frames and other performance metrics.

An SLA by itself is not enough to guarantee an organisation will receive the level of service promised. Since it is not in the provider’s interest to inform a client when its quality of service (QOS) fails, clients must rely on an independent view of WAN link connections. Utilise a network analyser with a WAN probe to verify QOS and gauge whether the provider is meeting SLA obligations.

Cloud computing is more than the latest IT buzzword; it’s a real way for companies to quickly obtain greater network flexibility, scalability and computing power for less money. But similar to most technologies, these services are not without potential problems. Cloud computing requires proper preparation and refocused management efforts in order to succeed.

Dave Kofflin is a Manager of Sales Engineering at Network Instruments. Dave has been building and managing networks for over 15 years. He can be reached at dkofflin@networkinstruments.com