Techcrunch has an interesting article about the top 10 biggest mistakes made with Amazon Web Services. While I don’t want to just copy what they say, I can see a lot of easy mistakes. For those who think in terms of an internal data center that has to scale to meet all future needs and spike, the tendency to over-build is huge. We have to do that in our own data centers. AWS and other cloud services change that model and we need to change with it. That probably also means you have to have some deep thought discussions on just how important complete high availability should be. If Amazon takes it to 99.8 because the infrastructure will stay up and now you only have to worry about software, maybe that’s good enough. Anyway, here’s an excerpt
Editor’s note: Zev Laderman is the co-founder and CEO of Newvem, a service that helps optimize AWS cloud infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides an excellent cloud infrastructure solution for both early stage startups and enterprises. The good news is that AWS is a pay-per-use service, provides universal access to state-of-the-art computing resources, and scales with the growing needs of a business. The bad news – AWS can be very hard for early stage companies to onboard, while enterprises usually spend too much time with ‘busy work’ to optimize AWS and keep costs under control.
We launched a private beta of ‘KnowYourCloud Analytics’ a tool that helps AWS users to get to the bottom of their AWS cloud. By gathering data streams from multiple compute resources and crunching this data with its state-of-the-art analytics engine, Newvem enables AWS users to discover potential cost savings, identify security vulnerabilities and gain more control over availability.
Since our private beta’s launch, we’ve watched over 100,000 AWS instances and have seen users make repeated mistakes over their cloud operations. Ssome are simple, but can result in massive security, availability and cost issues within an organization.
Here are the ten most common mistakes you should avoid in order to make the most out of your AWS cloud footprint.
Picking oversized instances. AWS offers a diverse variety of instance types and sizes for their operation. Although flexible, we found that many users pick instances that are far more powerful than they actually needed, which can lead to unnecessary costs.
Provisioning too many instances. In addition to size, AWS allows for flexibility in the amount of instances a user needs. As a result they may run too many instances in clusters or load balancers. AWS features an on-demand business model, meaning that you don’t need to kick-off all of cluster notes needed for peak loads. Users can add nodes as needed, but can also automate provisioning with AWS’s auto-scaling functionality within their platform.
Failing to make the right trade-offs when selecting instance types. AWS has a wide variety of instance types that differ based on use, such as general-purpose servers, CPU or memory intensive workloads, I/O performance, and size. Without proper application benchmarking, it’s very challenging to pick the most suitable instance type. As a result, users may choose instance types which are too big for their needs and much more expensive. Tracking resource utilization and frequently making the relevant instance trade-offs can help to optimize utilization and cost efficiencies.
Leaving instances running idle. One amazing advantage of AWS is the ability to choose and provision instances based on the operational needs of your business. It’s simply a matter of adding a new server through a simple wizard. However, as a by-product of this flexibility, users easily lose track of their instances and forgot to turn them off, like leaving a room with the lights on. This results in confusion, wasted time trying to figure out the process, and spiraling costs.
But Don’t Stalk Me
Fri, May 10th 2013 6:21a Michael Porter Back in March, I mentioned a Global Survey Oracle did on customer experience. That’s been a hot topic of late in my world. As part of that survey, they continue to build off of the nuggets of information found in that survey. Emil Fernandez pointed me to an update on that survey that includes a video on millenials and how they wish to engage or be engaged. The short video highlights a few way they would prefer to engage. I found it hilarious that at about 45 seconds, one teenager say [read] Keywords: oracle
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Portal Beauty and the User Experience
Thu, May 9th 2013 6:18a Michael Porter Dr. Marci Stochak-Chavez just posted an article on our health blog somewhat related to yesterday’s post. She focuses on whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder for a portal. In here article, she references a design a portal challenge in New York City. This challenge pushes contestants to create a nice interface while also using key standards like the Blue Button and the Direct Protocol to transmit medical records.
Dr. Marci makes one quote it’s easy to agree with.
I be [read] Keywords: interface
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If You Build a Patient Portal Why Won’t They Come?
Wed, May 8th 2013 6:21a Michael Porter Joe Jacobellis, a member of the Design Experience team at a client pointed out this interesting article about patient portals by Steve Wilkins. It’s titled, “If You Build a Patient Portal Why Won’t They Come?“ Before you read it, let me give you some history:
The Affordable Care Act mandates that all patients have access to their medical record (lab test, allergies, discharge instructions, etc.)
In various stages, hospitals and clinics need to give you electronic acc [read] Keywords: community
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Salesforce Communities: The Portal is Dead…Long Live the Portal
Thu, May 2nd 2013 6:18p Axel Newe Today Salesforce.com announced its long awaited release of Communities, which in Salesforce’s own words ended the era of legacy portal software. These are heady words, but Salesforce may have actually created something that is taking the portal concept into a different direction. The motor that is driving Communities is Chatter, Salesforce’s social collaboration platform. Salesforce.com used to have distinct offerings for Partner and Customer portals. With Communities, Partners, [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Gartner Keynote: Don Norman on emotion
Wed, May 1st 2013 4:18p Jonathan Distad Don Norman is well known cognitive scientist who has spoken and written extensively on emotion and design in everyday things. Today he is speaking at the Gartner Portal, Content and Collaboration Summit in San Diego. He talked about how why and how emotions drive our decisions and our behaviors. Something that we all know is important but in IT we often focus on the function and too little on the emotion.
Employees are people. If they are seen as a cost center that is a missed opportunit [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Gartner Portal, Content and Collaboration – Opening Session
Mon, Apr 29th 2013 10:17a Jonathan Distad Live blogging from the Gartner summit in San Diego, CA
Engaging at the nexus of Social, Mobile, Information and Cloud. Innovation supports a new reality.
The threat to China is the 3D printer and the reality is innovation is around us that are trivial and some that are game changing. They need to be in the context of our lives. Disruption is around us. We have to react to the disruptions. We need to apply disruptions in a positive way. Don’t be a deer in headlight when it comes [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Salesforce: Customer Company – Chicago
Thu, Apr 18th 2013 9:16a Jonathan Distad McCormick Place – Chicago
Waiting for Marc to hit the stage in this ‘intimate’ town hall here is Chicago. A client of ours, Cars.com, is talking about how they use Salesforce to help sell and crunch data:
Adding value to the data through customizing reporting back from the dealer giving a better experience for the consumer.
“we love chatter” – it is THE tool that makes work better. Onboarding has never been more fun that using Chatter.
Every person at t [read] Keywords:
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Sitecore a Strong Performer in WCM according to Forrester!
Tue, Apr 9th 2013 2:14p Jamie Stump Forrester Research recently released the “The Forrester WaveTM: Web Content Management For Digital Customer Experierence, Q2 2013”, which is a report where they evaluated 10 of the “most significant” WCM providers. Forrester evaluated the providers in their current offerings, strategy and market presence. The paper is specifically geared towards developers; however it is not so technical that a non-developer couldn’t read through it with good comprehension. I would highly rec [read] Keywords: applications
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Developing SharePoint 2013 Apps
Mon, Apr 8th 2013 7:16a Mark Polly I recently purchased the book Microsoft SharePoint 2013 App Development to try to get more familiar with the changes coming about in SharePoint 2013 apps. The link points to the O’Reilly site, but you can also get it from Amazon too. (As a side note, I find it very hard to read a printed book anymore; everything I’ve read in the last two years has been on one of my mobile devices.)
SharePoint 2013 introduces a new application model that Microsoft intends to correct several of the [read] Keywords: application
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